Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

The whereabouts of Murphy was never traced because his first name apparently had been forgotten, and hundreds of Murphys passed through St. Mary’s before it surrendered its charter and became a Jesuit seminary sometime after the First World War. People who knew the place in the eighties are not surprised at Gutzon’s declaration that his real inspiration came from there. It was a small school that had grown out of an early mission to the Potowatomi Indians, but it had few characteristics that identify the tank-town college. Out of it in half a century came a singular troop of famous persons, many of whom no doubt crossed Gutzon’s path without realizing that he was a fellow alumnus. Judges, lawyers, bishops, educators, engineers, builders, doctors, merchants, chiefs, sailors, soldiers, politicians, inventors, musicians and all the rest of them are included in the list. It is interesting to note that Borglum is the institution’s only offering to sculpture.

His life at old St. Mary’s seems to have been perfectly normal. He had several fights which he remembered ever after. He remembered, too, that he was always in the right, which is likewise perfectly natural. His chief exploit in fisticuffs was a wrangle with three rather hard lads in the dining room, and there is a tradition that he won. At any rate, he learned how to protect himself with his bare fists—a skill that he always counted as a major asset.

He finished the academy course—the equivalent of high school—when, at that period in the West, he was considered sufficiently adult to find a job. Dr. James suddenly moved his family to California. Gutzon quit St. Mary’s and went to work as a lithographer’s apprentice in Los Angeles, and studied engraving and designing on stone. At the end of six months he was producing work that he thought was good. That, of course, was nothing to cause any emotional outbursts among the lithographers, because Gutzon thought that everything he produced was good.

The young man wanted better pay, but he didn’t get it. The lithographer said that if he stayed at his work he would someday be an experienced hand. But Gutzon sacrificed this opportunity. He went to work for a fresco painter, and he got more money. He rented a little studio and did part-time work as he pleased.

On a ranch somewhere in the vicinity was Solon Borglum. Of all the family he was closest to Gutzon because he had shown interest in art. Gutzon eventually got him to leave the ranch and to take up the study of painting and sculpture seriously. He contributed to Solon’s support and, in time, to his tuition in a Cincinnati art school. But there is little mention of this in his written record, for he was shy about such things.

California was a constant surprise to him. He was by himself and supporting himself. He felt free and able, and he was proud of himself. His father had gone back East with a family that in time totaled nine. Someplace with that brood was August, Gutzon’s companion at St. Mary’s. It was to be a long time before Gutzon would see some of his other brothers and sisters. But no matter! California was warm in the winter, and it didn’t cost much to get things to eat. And he kept meeting people who interested him. While he was still with the lithographer he met an artist named Eberlie, a really good painter of the Düsseldorf school. Eberlie turned out beautiful ensembles that seemed perfect in color and design. Gutzon yearned to do the same thing.

Something had awakened in him. He went on and on with his work in the tiny studio, producing little that looked like anything, learning slowly what was wrong. He couldn’t have quit. He was still there even after Dr. Borglum and the family had moved back to Omaha.

Information about his early years in this paradise, however, doesn’t come so much from him as from strangers. Charles F. Lummis, whom he knew well and with whom he later wrangled extensively, wrote a piece about him in The Land of Sunshine (later, Out West) magazine in 1906. He said:

It was a matter of nine years ago. Los Angeles was a country town, just emerging from adobehood. This writer found a green, serious lad belaboring canvas in a bare room on what was then Fort Street. He had no money and not many friends. The painting he was at had many shortcomings and showed his lack of art education. Yet there was in them a creative breath that promised to make him heard from....

He was born in the West and was Western in every fibre. Soon after graduation from seminary he came to Los Angeles, and presently began the long, hard struggle of an unbefriended artist. By and for himself, by sheer dint of pluck and brains, he hewed his way. At last his pictures attracted the attention of one of the few connoisseurs then here.... A couple have been sold to Easterners at good prices....