Give the man room

by Robert J. Casey; Mary Montgomery Borglum

Six years ago I said to myself, “I’ll be great at thirty, or never.” I am thirty. I have had the disturbing pleasure of being called “master” by the French critics and some Americans, yet at the moment I cannot spend sixpence without wondering where the next one will come from. Art is not self-sustaining until it becomes commercially valuable, and a man is not to be counted until he is in popular demand.

Gutzon’s reach was far beyond his grasp, and his Heaven was far away. Undoubtedly he was extravagant. He loved beauty and costly things, rare books, rich stuff and tapestries. But the problem of where the next dollar was coming from began to worry him less and less. He got big commissions in America, in England and all through his life. His trouble was not that he failed to make money but that he never learned how to keep it.

He never seemed to know the value of a dollar, nor did he care. His real extravagance was in putting into commissioned work added richness of detail or extra figures that he thought would add to the effect. That was why he rarely came out of an undertaking with any great profit to himself and was hounded by debt all his life.

He rarely spent money on his person, except for small lovely things that he could carry in his pocket. He often had holes in his shoes, and his unpressed clothes were always a distress to his friends. To emphasize the sacrifices of a struggling artist, he used to tell of buying baked potatoes on the street corners of London to keep his hands warm. The potato-buying story was undoubtedly true, but it was hardly a record of a typical condition.

Building was his chief delight—always. In London, after he had lived for months in a studio apartment in West Kensington, he rented a villa in St. John’s Wood and proceeded to make repairs and additions to it, regardless of cost. The villa had a rose garden, and he frequently talked of how he mowed the lawn early in the morning before starting the day’s work. All his life he enjoyed the work of beautifying his surroundings. During the years he built at least six other studios and houses for himself without ever being satisfied. His ideal home, which he was always ready to describe in detail and with feeling, was a fabulous sort of place that existed only in his restless mind.

In his diary he mentions having gone shopping with the painter Frank Brangwyn to consider taking over Sir Edward Leighton’s studio. They decided it was too pretentious. In Paris he rented a studio in the Boulevard Arago. He still found some of his old friends and business acquaintances in the neighborhood when he visited it in 1931, thirty years after he had moved out of it. It was a place of rare memories. He had fitted the little stove with a red isinglass front, and he had burned a solitary candle in it in those freezing days to give the illusion of rosy warmth.

In Gutzon’s reminiscences it seems always to have been cold in the neighborhood of Boulevard Arago. A sculptor, living in one of the garrets with which the region seems to have been plentifully supplied, fashioned a masterpiece. It was still in the wet clay when the thermometer dropped below freezing. The artist was frantic. In the bitter cold of night he began to fear for his statue. He got up and wrapped it in rags of clothing and finally in his only blanket to keep the ice away. He died of the cold. But the statue for which he froze to death now reposes in warm, serene quarters in the Luxembourg.

Frank Brangwyn, some of whose work may be seen in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City, was the one artist who made a deep impression on Gutzon in England. The Borglum diary is filled with notations such as this: “November 19, 1897—Short half hour with Brangwyn.... He belongs to art and will do work that will live.” And the feeling was mutual. In later years Brangwyn wrote, “I admire those strong virile things of yours. It is like a strong sea breeze on a hot and listless day to see your honest works....” Each foresaw for the other a greatness that he could not hope for himself.

The sculptor met Ruskin briefly and was so impressed with his features that he made a statuette of him. The figure is seated with a rug over the knees and was one of Borglum’s most successful pieces. A copy of it is now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

He also met George Bernard Shaw, although little of art figured in their association. In a letter years later he mentioned Shaw’s attendance at meetings of what he called the “Kingsley Society.” “This,” wrote Gutzon, “was a lively debating society and we visited once a week at one another’s homes. I debated with Shaw on ‘The Ignorance of Educating Me.’ I forget which side. Shaw likes to play smart, but at heart he is a serious, lovable, great man.”