In due course the baby was taken to Bridgeport to pose for the baby faces spouting water from the rim of the Wheeler Fountain. In that same fountain he was christened by his uncle, Rev. Marshall Montgomery, after which he was registered in near-by St. John’s Church, for which Gutzon had made the reredos.
The child, apparently, was the most important thing that had yet come into the sculptor’s life. He took him everywhere he was allowed to, presented him to friends up and down the Atlantic coast, and presumably was grateful that the child’s mother was a calm and tolerant woman. Once, when Lincoln was four years old, Gutzon picked him up suddenly and said they were going to Boston on a two-day trip. But they weren’t back in two days—or in thirty days. By that time the anxious mother was telegraphing to every place where she thought Gutzon might have chanced to go. And from Atlanta she got an answering wire: “Don’t worry. Both boys here. And well.”
When his daughter Mary Ellis was born on her father’s birthday, March 25, 1916, he began to make plans to have her with him wherever he went. But he learned that the arrangements were not so easily taken care of. However, by the time of the Stone Mountain break, Mrs. Borglum had learned to drive a car and the four Borglums were constantly on the go, exiles from home, but, wherever humanly possible, together.
Life at the Stamford home and studio is recalled by those who took part in it as a continuous carnival. Michow Ito, Japanese dancer, moved onto the old campsite of Mrs. Lanier and the Greenwich girls with a summer school. He taught dancing and listed classes in history and provided some art theory, taught by an old American artist. His men pupils and his staff, including a Japanese cook, lived in tents. The girl students were billeted in the old Czech barracks. One of the girls, Angna Enters, stayed on after the rest had gone. She wrote several books and became famous as a dancer, but is known best locally for Silly Girl, in which the days of the fantastic summer school are recalled.
Ito, who was an odd character, is now known to history principally because one of his pupils posed for the leading figure in Gutzon’s “Wars of America” group. Ito had plans for establishing the peace of the world through the promotion of fine arts. But he wasn’t consistent at it. One day, when he heard that a Japanese envoy had arrived in Washington to take part in the 1922 naval conference, he borrowed a Bible and hurried down to the capital with a message. There he created something of a sensation by arguing with the Japanese delegate that it would be better to throw away the sword altogether than to haggle about its relative length. The envoy thanked him kindly and paid no attention.
Probably because of friendship with Henry Miller, Gutzon knew many actors. They were in and out of Stamford for years. When Margaret Anglin was rehearsing her play The Bronze Woman she sent her leading man, who was playing the part of a sculptor, to the Borglum studio to pick up local color. He borrowed some authentic stage properties such as a mallet and chisel.
Later Gutzon, who knew Edgar Davis, tried to get a part for Miss Anglin in The Ladder. This play was about Davis’ thoughts on reincarnation, but that is not what one remembers it for now. Its Broadway record was established chiefly by the fact that nobody had to pay to see it. The tickets were given away free. And it went on almost to a performance record with virtually nobody in the house. Miss Anglin, however, never played in it.
With much interest the sculptor liked Laura Hope Crews. She played in The Great Divide by William Vaughn Moody, another of Gutzon’s favorites. Gutzon found a resemblance between Moody’s philosophy and his own, particularly as shown in the poet’s The Fire Bringer. Gutzon frequently talked of Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound as he might have concerned himself with somebody living, breathing and immortal. He was a glamorous, free spirit, and anyone who had anything to do with his chronicle was a demigod.
Another seldom chronicled trait about Gutzon is the fact that he was passionately fond of the violin. He had to give it up in order to find time for his modeling, but he cherished an old fiddle for years until vandals broke into his Stamford studio and smashed it and other things to bits. Toward the end of his life Congressman Kent Keller gave him another violin which is somewhat remembered by those about him. He received the gift on the ranch in Hermosa and, thereafter, it was his custom to rise at five in the morning to practice before the day’s work began.
Whatever one’s criticism of this almost secret work as a virtuoso, it must be conceded that he liked good music and probably tried to learn to play it. He knew and loved the great classics—and also the country’s folk tunes. He hated grand opera, but he liked brass bands.