Texas owed something to Gutzon for the suggestion of the Four-City Centennial celebration of 1936. This hundredth year that Texas had been independent of Mexican rule had to be something unique. The sculptor wrote a letter about his idea to Jesse Jones, the managing director, stating that the great fair should begin in San Antonio, the ancient Mexican capital, then proceed to Dallas and Fort Worth and end in Houston. He outlined the historical features of these cities, listed their natural advantages as exhibition towns and finished with an unusual thought: “These cities will draw enormous income from the tourist travel that the centennial will surely set in motion. For that reason all exhibition buildings should be made permanent in character, thus saving what might otherwise be considered an enormous total loss.”
But though many of his suggestions were carried out, and though an art committee from each of the four cities consulted him, not one of the more than forty monuments they built was his design. The explanation is that each committee was hidebound by the idea of a competition with prizes, and Gutzon would have none of that.
He worked hard for the beautification of roads in that part of Texas where the greenery gives way to the desert. He was appointed chairman of an advisory committee to supervise the spending of the W.P.A. and the Federal Highway Department funds. But local rivalries kept many a town out of funds, and the Federal Highway Department’s $5,000,000, allotted for road beautification in Texas, was demanded by an influential highway engineer who outweighed Gutzon. All road funds, he declared, must be under the State Highway Department’s control; and to this simple proposition the federal government would not agree. So Texas got little, and the beautification of Texas roads was left to Texas.
Looking back over the record of those years, one can’t but figure them the most disheartening in all of Borglum’s life. The sculptor himself hadn’t changed much—except for the better. He was still motivated by his love for the big things—for the projects that would give more joy, more comfort or more safety to humankind. But somehow none of the plans was working out well.
Stone Mountain, as he must have known in his heart, was finished. The head of Lee would presently be an outrageous blot on a tall cliff. He had had no part in the Texas Four-City Centennial celebration; he had been thrust out of any plans to beautify Texas highways. He had been thwarted in his effort to provide a sea-front development and bridge for Corpus Christi. He had lost the job of designing the San Antonio open-air theater, which he would have enjoyed doing. Five times in a row he had put out his best effort and finished nowhere.
He might have been saved a lot of trouble had he known that few outsiders ever succeed in getting anything out of the preserves of Texas politicians—especially those busy keeping happy a Texas tenor. But those who knew him in San Antonio say that he showed no consciousness of his reverses. He was gracious to the people he thought deserved his kind words. He blasted the louts that he thought needed blasting. And on the whole all went well. He continued to be Gutzon Borglum.
His art work was by no means neglected because of his apparent absorption in civic improvements and expositions and music festivals. Nor had ill repute deriving from the Stone Mountain Association’s adverse publicity given him any lack of employment. He had not quite finished the Trail Drivers’ memorial when he was given a commission for the memorial to Alexander Stephens. The armchair in which Stephens is seated was made in the San Antonio studio and cut out of marble at a local stoneyard. The marble was the gift of the Georgia Marble Company at Marietta.
The place of this model in the studio was immediately taken by a memorial to General John Greenway, of Rough Rider and earlier Yale football fame. He was a resident of Arizona, engaged in copper mining when the First World War broke out. Though past the age limit, he bought a uniform and, with the aid of Washington friends, got into the army.
His widow, Isabella Greenway, one of the most distinguished women in the country, came to the Stamford studio, bringing with her a request for the statue by the state of Arizona. Greenway had been honored as a favorite son and chosen for a place in Statuary Hall, Washington.
Unfortunately Gutzon Borglum was in Texas. Telegrams were exchanged, and he met Mrs. Greenway in 1928—at the Democratic National Convention in Houston. Mrs. Greenway brought to the San Antonio studio not only photographs of her husband but some of his clothes and favorite gear. She knew, the sculptor said, more about her husband’s appearance and characteristics than any person he had ever met who tried to tell him what he wanted to know of a departed hero—and must know if he were to complete a perfect likeness.