Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

The unveiling took place July 3, 1929, just sixty-six years after Pickett’s Charge failed to win its objective and the Confederacy was plainly doomed. Governor Gardner of North Carolina presided, and the sculptor’s old friend, former Governor Angus McLean, delivered the principal address.

A special train brought hundreds of North Carolina people to join in the dedication of their memorial. An airplane, engaged by the sculptor, dropped roses over the battleground and dipped its wings in tribute to the honored dead. By that time Gettysburg had become, as it has been ever since, a lure for tourists and sight-seers from every part of our country. Only a year after the unveiling of the Borglum monument C. W. McDevett published in the Raleigh News and Observer a long description of a visit to the battlefield, ending with this tribute:

It may be a quiet day at Gettysburg with only a few hundred visitors scattered through its tens of thousands of acres, while on other days the visitors are numbered by thousands. But the biggest group anywhere, any time, will more than likely be found around North Carolina’s memorial.

That was the case on a day this summer. It was a quiet day, but there were dozens before the five bronze giants, silent dozens, studying the master’s work in reverent admiration. They were from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Maryland, as their automobile licenses indicated. They murmured praise of the picture in stone and metal. The men doffed their hats unconsciously. All gazed into those faces of bronze—faces that seemed filled with life—and paid tribute to the likenesses of men—strong, purposeful, clean-limbed, clean-minded men—who had been their fathers’ and their grandfathers’ foes. Borglum had imagined them worthy foemen, indeed, and his genius had made his hands the servant of his thoughts. Borglum carves mountains into battle panoramas. Borglum will never carve anything to equal his Tar Heel heroes at Gettysburg.

A year before the Gettysburg memorial was dedicated, a foreign-looking letter, postmarked Morges, Switzerland, came to Gutzon at San Antonio. As he was away at the time and it was Mrs. Borglum’s job to oversee his vast correspondence, she opened this letter with some curiosity. She uncovered a six-page autograph beginning, “My great, good friend,” and signed, “Affectionately, gratefully and devotedly yours, I. J. Paderewski.”

The gist of the letter was that Paderewski’s compatriots desired to erect a monument “to the memory of Poland’s most generous benefactor, President Wilson”; that a competition had been staged; that the first prize had been awarded; that the prize winner’s model was “horrible”; and that, in despair of getting a satisfactory design at home, the committee had left the decision to the writer. The letter concluded: “My decision is that the statue of that great American should be done only by the greatest American artist, by the greatest living sculptor in the whole world.”

By way of explaining Paderewski’s greeting and highly emotional signature, one should remember how close the two artists had become in their efforts to promote an association of mid-European republics.

Gutzon had been present when the representatives of these states had met in Independence Hall, Philadelphia. Paderewski was the first speaker at this convention, and in the few minutes of his oratory he was transformed from a civilian pianist into a soaring apostle of freedom. Professor Masaryk, who followed him with what was expected to be the key speech, could barely speak at all. He threw away his prepared address because, he said, Paderewski had said it all and said it better. “I have never listened to such an inspired speech,” he said in conclusion. “I can give no explanation other than that Ignace Jan Paderewski is an artist.”

Paderewski’s letter to Gutzon in San Antonio begged an immediate answer by cable, inasmuch as it was hoped to have the memorial unveiled on Wilson’s birthday the next year. Gutzon was in Georgia on another of his futile attempts to revive the Confederate memorial; so his wife sent him a telegram in care of the Venables:

SIX PAGE LETTER FROM PADEREWSKI WANTS MEMORIAL TO PRESIDENT WILSON BY QUOTE THE GREATEST SCULPTOR IN THE WHOLE WORLD END QUOTE. CAN YOU GUESS WHO? WANTS CABLE ANSWER.