In a letter to Mrs. Frémont he mentioned meeting a Madame Helen Bricka, who brought his work to the attention of the Duke and Duchess of Teck of whose household she was a member. Gutzon visited the Duke and Duchess and so met, and threw into the air, a little boy who grew up to be the Duke of Windsor and, for a time, the King of England.
Through Madame Bricka he was summoned by Queen Victoria to bring his work, both painting and sculpture, to Windsor Castle for an exhibition. But for a young man born on the shore of Bear Lake, Idaho, the invitation was not clear enough. One may be permitted a bit of speculation as to what might have happened if he had caught the meaning—if he had paraded with his work under royal patronage before the aristocracy of Great Britain. But it is futile thought. He sent his art to Windsor for an exhibition, but he never met the queen. It never occurred to him that a queen might want to see him.
He had a very successful one-man show at Macmillan’s in Bond Street, and he made many friends in England and France, some of them American artists. Some of these appeared later in his life and in his correspondence in the United States. One of them was Carl Sobieski, descendant of the famous Polish general. Another, who noted his experience entertainingly, was the writer R. M. Eassie. He told Gutzon of hearing of his connection with the Angels of St. John the Divine, in the heart of Africa, thirty-five miles from the nearest whites.
One of Gutzon’s last entries in his London journal tells of a party in 1901 at his home, “Harlestone Villa,” in St. John’s Wood. It is worth mentioning in that it honored Isadora Duncan and marked her debut as a dancer.
Gutzon had known the Duncans in California. Isadora’s father had recently been in London and was on his way back to America when his ship, the Mohegan foundered off the Irish coast. The sculptor had gone from England to take charge of Duncan’s body and to see that he was properly buried.
Isadora, her brother and sister had come from California after their father’s death. August Borglum, Gutzon’s brother, was a guest at the party and always recalled the impression Miss Duncan made as she danced out from the studio onto the lawn, scattering red rose petals that she had been gathering in the villa garden. Isadora, Gutzon observed, brought an active revival of memories from home. “The fresh western breeze that came with her,” he said, filled him with nostalgia.
Very likely it did. Shortly afterward he had gone over to Paris and was standing idly on a street corner. It was a day like any other in his life except that he had had a brief meeting with a casual American tourist in a café, and that there was an unusual amount of cash in his pocket.
Suddenly there came to him an irresistible urge to return to the United States—to go home. All his pent-up irritation over spiritual repressions and his grievance over decadent art conditions in Europe surged over him at once. He leaped at a passing
