This mask, if it is still in existence—which is not probable—would be an invaluable addition to the portraiture of Burr.
Of Lincoln, as of Washington, two life-masks were made—one in Chicago in the spring of 1860, by Mr. Leonard W. Volk, and here reproduced; one in Washington, by Clark Mills, three or four years later. Mr. Volk, in the Century Magazine for December, 1881, gave a pleasant account of the taking of the former. Lincoln sat naturally in the chair during the operation, watching in a mirror every move made by the sculptor, as the plaster was put on without interference with the eyesight or with the breathing of the subject. When, at the end of an hour, the mould was ready for removal—it was in one piece, and contained both ears—Lincoln himself bent his head forward and worked it off gradually and gently, without injury of any kind, notwithstanding the fact that it clung to the high cheek-bones, and that a few hairs on his eyebrows and temples were pulled out by the roots with the plaster.
This is, without question, the most perfect representation of Lincoln’s face in existence. I have watched many an eye fill while looking at it for the first time; to many minds it has been a revelation; and I turn to it myself more quickly and more often than to any of the others, when I want comfort and help. What Whittier wrote to James T. Fields of the Marshall engraving of Lincoln may be said of this life-cast. “It contains the informing spirit of the man within.... The old harsh lines and unmistakable mouth are there without flattery or compromise; but over all, and through all, the pathetic sadness, the wise simplicity, and tender humanity of the man are visible. It is the face of the speaker at Gettysburg, and the writer of the second Inaugural.”
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The Clark Mills mask, said Mr. John Hay, in a later number of the Century Magazine, is “so sad and peaceful in its infinite repose that the famous sculptor, Mr. St. Gaudens, insisted when he first saw it that it was a death-mask. The lines are set, as if the living face, like the copy, had been in bronze; the nose is thin, and lengthened by the emaciation of the cheeks; the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst, without hope of victory, is on all the features; the whole expression is of unspeakable sadness and all-sufficing strength. Yet the peace is not the dreadful peace of death; it is the peace that passeth understanding.”
Speaking of Webster, Mr. O. F. Fowler, in his Practical Phrenology, said: “A larger mass of brain, perhaps, never was found, and never will be found, in the upper and lateral portions of any man’s forehead. Both in height and in breadth his forehead is prodigiously great.” The head of Clay, according to the same authority, was also “unusually large. It measured seven and three-eighths inches in diameter, and it was very high in proportion to its breadth; the reasoning organs were large, and the perceptive and semi-perceptive organs still larger.” Mr. G. P. A. Healy, the painter, said that Mr. Clay’s mouth was very peculiar; that it was thin-lipped, and extended from ear to ear. This last is not particularly noticeable in the familiar portraits of Clay, not even in that painted by Mr. Healy himself. Both Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. Hartley incline to the opinion that the mask of Clay in my collection is a cast from the actual face, and, notwithstanding the fact that the eyelids are open, that it is from life. Lewis Gaylord Clark, writing in 1852 in Harper’s Magazine of Clay’s funeral, said: “His countenance immediately after death looked like an antique cast. His features seemed to be perfectly classical, and the repose of all his muscles gave the lifeless body a quiet majesty seldom reached by living human beings.”
Comparing Calhoun with Webster, Mr. Fowler attributed to Calhoun the greater power of analysis and illustration; to Webster, the greater depth and profundity. In Calhoun he found, united to a very large head, an active temperament and sharp organs, the greatest peculiarity of his phrenology consisting in the fact that all the intellectual faculties were very large. The casts of Webster and Calhoun were made in Washington by Clark Mills from the living faces—Calhoun’s in 1844, Webster’s in 1849; and they are, consequently, of no little interest and value.