All parties returned from the convention in a state of complete exhaustion. E. B. Johns wrote, “It was three or four days before I got back to normal, and I am still doing some mental swearing at the stupidity of Colonel Roosevelt and some of his advisors.” For Gutzon it was one of the bitterest experiences of his life.
Wilson, it will be remembered, was elected by the vote of California after most of his newspaper support had conceded the victory to Hughes. It took three days to find out who had won.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AND DR. TRUDEAU
Three works that Gutzon Borglum completed around 1915 had nothing at all to do with war or politics. One was a tablet with a bas-relief sketch in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson, the second a touching memorial to Governor Altgeld of Illinois, and the third a simple and beautiful memorial to “The Beloved Physician,” Dr. Edward Livingston Trudeau. The three are linked intangibly through the same fine quality of emotions that brought them into existence. The subjects of all three accomplished much in the world and were well loved.
Once in Stevenson’s wanderings as a consumptive vainly questing health he stayed for a year at Lake Saranac in the Adirondacks in the care of the not-so-well-known Dr. Trudeau. Trudeau, also tubercular, had cured others but had started too late to cure himself. He was the central character of Stephen Chalmers’ engaging book The Beloved Physician.
The idea of a memorial to Stevenson originated with Mr. Chalmers and was brought to the sculptor’s attention by his friend Bob Davis. Gutzon was busy at the time working on two monuments in the South, and Davis caught up with him in Grand Central Station as he was boarding a train for Chicago. His interest was aroused, and from the train he wrote to Davis to say he would be delighted to do anything “to promote attention to this kind of men of genius.” He further offered to make the bronze tablet, bas-relief of Stevenson and an inscription to be decided on by the committee for just what it would cost—somewhere around $200. The tablet would be placed on the cottage in Saranac where Stevenson had lived.
It was September 1915 before the sculptor could find time for a day at Saranac, where he looked over the ground, listened to all that was told him about Stevenson, was taken to see Dr. Trudeau and returned to New York on the night train. The work was finished and ready for unveiling in October of the same year, as the committee had hoped, “because it was the gorgeous month of the year.” The only sad note was that Dr. Trudeau was not well enough to take a prominent part in the proceedings. He died the following month.
On receiving the preliminary photographs of the tablet, Mr. Chalmers wrote to Borglum:
I congratulate you on the tablet. You have done something in that bas-relief that Saint-Gaudens didn’t do. You have brought out the spirit of the sick man who didn’t believe in lying in bed, and the little uplift of his head is a perfect expression of “Come!” said I to my engine, “let’s work anyway!” This thing requires no study. It hits you between the eyes first glance. I showed it to Mrs. Baker, who owned the cottage where the Stevensons lived, and the best compliment from that old lady is this: “Yes, it’s just the way he looked when he was here.”
A few months later Lord Guthrie, acknowledged leader of the Stevenson cult in Scotland, wrote: