Gutzon walked around the model, seriously studying it. He stopped and picked up an ax. “Tucker,” he said, “I believe I can improve that horse.” And without further discussion he began to hack down part of the armature and added two weeks to the work.
This habit was well known to his assistants. Once his colored attendant, Banks, reported on the progress of a statue: “Guess the boss is about through. He’s started pulling it to pieces.”
The personal contacts he made during the production of the Sheridan monument were particularly pleasing to Gutzon. “Big Bill” Thompson, storm center of political controversy, was mayor of Chicago at the time. They became warm friends. Stamford political leaders declined an invitation to meet the mayor when he was due to look at the models, but Thompson knew nothing about that. He arrived at the studio accompanied by nine carloads of New York politicians.
Michael J. Faherty, Chicago’s commissioner of public works, was the mayor’s first deputy in the memorial project. He had a summer home near Hartford and would drop in at the studio at unexpected moments on his frequent trips back and forth from Chicago. His chief interest was in the development of the oversize model of horse and rider that nearly filled the studio.
To save the expense of casting bronze in the United States the contract was given to Vignali Brothers of Florence. There was an endless interchange of letters and cables. Telephone wires had to be removed and replaced to permit the trucking of the bronze casts to Genoa because some of them were too high. This was the fault of the foundry and added expense for Gutzon. On its trip from New York to Chicago the group encountered patches of the same difficulty and had to be rerouted on a wild course to avoid low underpasses. Faherty, who was anxiously watching all this, finally reported, “Winchester and Sheridan still twenty miles away.”
Sheridan eventually arrived for the unveiling. A special “Sheridan Day” had been declared. And there was a big military display with speeches by the governor, the mayor and other dignitaries. All went as scheduled, after which Faherty found time to write of his own troubles. To Borglum he wrote:
Surprises turn up as usual in reference to expense. The governor has ordered the soldiers to turn out, but the officers have no money; and the Sheridan Monument Association is called upon to pay $2,500 to defray their expenses. The total receipts from the State and others will amount to about $43,000, and the expenses will be about $53,000. However, the job is done and meets with satisfaction, for which I have to thank you and your wife.
Gutzon felt that he had never had a more pleasant association.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
WARS OF AMERICA MEMORIAL
The Wars of America group in Newark, New Jersey, is the story of a nation told in figures from life and not by allegorical or classic symbols. It is one of the largest bronze memorials in the world, composed of forty-two human and two equestrian figures, all of heroic size. It is the first monument in America to depict mass action. It took three years in the molding, another three years to put it into bronze and ten years of preliminary thought and study.