Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

Another Norbeck road over the so-called Pine Creek route between Rushmore and Hill City, again a masterpiece of scenic road building, was the cause of the sculptor’s abandoning his original plan of placing Jefferson on Washington’s right in the Rushmore grouping. There was a contributing factor in this decision due partly, he thought, to poor work. Up to summer of 1931 Gutzon had been trying to place the figure of Jefferson where he believed he belonged—on Washington’s right. Work had continued after the unveiling until the fall of 1930 and was resumed in the following spring. In July of that year the sculptor went to Poland, taking Lincoln Borglum with him, to erect his statue of Woodrow Wilson. He left Tallman and Villa in charge.

There was no way of testing the stone in the location for the Jefferson head, so he had quickly roughed out the block and left Villa pointing the face.

When he returned from Europe and motored out to Rushmore he noticed while still a mile away that something was radically wrong. He exclaimed to Villa, “What’s wrong with the Jefferson head?” Villa answered by turning to Tallman: “Didn’t I tell you the master would notice it from a long way off?” Then he said, “Well, there was a little difficulty about the pointing.” The trouble, he explained, was too deep a depression under the eye and there was not enough stone to push the head farther back.

The sculptor did not wait to find out what had gone wrong—rock or work. He was almost too angry for words. Gutzon thought he had taken all precautions. About half the work was finished and it wouldn’t do. Who or what was to blame did not matter. The damage was done. There was not enough stone to allow free modeling of Jefferson’s face, and Norbeck’s new road, exposing the back of the head, made a change in the composition advisable. The sculptor made a bold decision to abandon what had been done on Jefferson and place his figure on Washington’s left. This necessitated a change in the whole grouping, while the flaws in the rock in Jefferson’s new position were so deep that he had to go back sixty feet before he found good stone for the carving. Senator Norbeck, the only one consulted in the matter, gave complete approval.

Villa left shortly after this incident, but came to see his old master in Texas a year or so later and greeted him with his old-time affection. Nothing ever came between them again. Subsequently he flitted in and out of the Rushmore studio at unpredictable times. But Villa was a city man and was not at home in this rugged community. Gutzon missed him, for he brought to the studio a breath of the charm found in the Old World wherever art is active.

The year of Washington’s bicentennial, 1932, witnessed the shutdown of work at Rushmore for lack of funds, which to the sculptor seemed an unforgivable disgrace. However, there on the mountain was the portrait of the first President, which Mr. Cullinan had declared was the best in existence. The face seemed to belong to the mountain, having taken on its elemental courage, and Gutzon figured it as vital as he could make it. He occupied himself with regrouping the models in the studio. It had disturbed him to have the figures as close together as in the original composition, and now this had been opened up by putting Jefferson so far inward that it gave room for the sun to pass back of Washington and light Jefferson’s face. The flaws in the rock which made this necessary began to appear a blessing in disguise.

The recomposition also involved changing Washington’s shoulders in relation to his head. The left shoulder was moved back seven feet and then another seven feet, while the right shoulder was moved seven feet forward. When word got around that Borglum was moving Washington’s head there were loud alarms. Norbeck was flustered. Monument lovers from Rapid City rushed out to the mountain to see how a head that weighed several tons could be transported. There was some disappointment when they saw nothing more novel than the chiseling of the shoulders; but they talked, and the story, it is said, made good publicity.

John A. Boland of Rapid City, chairman of the executive committee of the Rushmore commission, was charged with the hiring of workers, purchase of materials and payment of salaries and bills. And it must be said that these worthy endeavors were seldom fraught with any sweetness and light. Boland’s office was in Rapid City—too close to Rushmore, he thought—and he could not move it because of his statewide business. He sat there quietly and never interfered with the carving operations. He felt that Borglum was a great artist and that the carving of Mount Rushmore was a noble undertaking. He may one day be considered a great patriot.

One of Boland’s handicaps in the situation was his unwillingness to spend any money that he didn’t happen to have. This attitude was, of course, diametrically opposed to that of Borglum, who never could be convinced that money really mattered. And it is said that these two stalwarts had “occasional clashes.” “Occasional clashes,” one regrets to say, is a highly erroneous and short-weight title for what they had.

Gutzon once said that he could feel his blood pressure rising when he got within 500 miles of Rushmore and faced the prospect of seeing Boland. Boland’s blood pressure went up only when Borglum needed money. But the men met, discussed the Shrine of Democracy, swapped observations about the current financial situation and brought the language of toe-to-toe wrangling to a new high.