An entertaining character who worked in the studio and slept there was a Japanese called “Humbo” by the others; and there was another student from Japan, scholarly Takamura, who was admitted by an introduction from Daniel Chester French and a somewhat exceptional letter written by himself. This notice had begun:
If you will not take me, I must greatly disappoint myself. I must have no work, no study, no hope, no pleasure. My coming to this country must end by all in vain. Please, please let me have your favor, just like Mr. Honpo. I do not care much of money. I shall be quite satisfied with only a little, if you could. I will do anything you order. Pray accept my request, sympathising with a lonely little soul from a far country over the sea.
Other models included young Lieutenant Phil Sheridan, who spent many hours posing for the equestrian statue of his father in Washington. Among the horses were Smoke, a Virginia hunter, and Halool, a thoroughbred Arab imported by Walter Davenport, the cartoonist. These horses wandered about the studio on the days they were needed, and were perfectly gentle. They were kept at a riding academy in the park where Gutzon occasionally rode bareback with a group of army men.
Edith Wynne Matthison, the actress and a dear friend, posed for the heroic-sized figure called “Rabboni” in Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. That figure is in startling contrast to the beautiful, brooding figure of the Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the same place. The “Rabboni” expresses joy and hope, while the other is complete negation. Still others who came to pose were the Mortimer Schiff children of whom the sculptor made a portrait relief to accompany the portrait of the Jacob Schiff children made in the previous generation by Saint-Gaudens.
One of the sculptor’s most revered friends was John S. Clark, much older than himself, who came all too seldom from Boston. He was engaged in writing a life of John Fiske, the historian, and took a great interest in the sculptor’s work. He liked most of all the marble figures of “Conception,” “Motherhood” and “Martyr,” which he spoke of as a trilogy. In a letter written in 1907 Clark makes this interesting comparison of literary and sculptural work:
I daily realize that I am engaged in a task not unlike several you have in hand. I have really to create an imaginary portrait of a great man with mere words. My task is to create so distinct an image that it can be realized by the imagination as a truthful representation of the real man. In the process of work I have to employ many of your methods for producing effects, and I can see more clearly than ever before how widely different is genuine artistic work from imitative work of literal reproduction.
Whether you come to Boston or not, know this—that you stand in my heart as one of my dearest friends and that there is no success or honor that comes to you that does not warm the “cockles of my heart” to a ruddy glow.
In those early days in New York, before Gutzon became involved in many big public memorials, he had more time to express his creative fancies or “pipe dreams” in marble. A larger than life-size nude figure of a woman which he called “Conception” or “Inspiration” caused some stir and was considered too daring in certain circles. To him it represented the holiness of creation, and his small marble called “Wonderment of Motherhood” was produced in the same reverent, humble spirit.
A second marble figure symbolic of motherhood represented a woman on her knees, holding up her infant child in her arms as if offering it on an altar. This was a step toward his marble “Atlas,” a female figure on her knees, about four feet high, holding a globe representing the world in her arms, lifting it up to God instead of balancing it on her back as in the old mythology. Of his “Conception,” which with other of his works was exhibited at Columbia University, George Luks, the painter, said: