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AUGUST

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
"When Saint Gaudens's statue of
Lincoln was unveiled in London,
Lloyd George made an address which
is as applicable now as it was then.
He said:

'I doubt whether any statesman
who ever lived sank so deeply into
the hearts of the people of many lands
as Abraham Lincoln did. I am not
sure that you in America realize the
extent to which he is also our posses-
sion and our pride. His courage, for-
titude, patience, humanity, clemency,
his trust in the people, his belief in
democracy, and, I may add, some of
the phrases in which he gave expres-
sion to those attributes, will stand out
forever as beacons to guide troubled
nations and their perplexed leaders.
Resolute in war, he was moderate in
victory. Misrepresented, misunder-
stood, underestimated, he was patient
to the last. But the people believed in
htm all the time, and they still believe
in him. In his life he was a great
American. He is an American no
longer. He is one of those giant fig-
ures, of whom there are very few in
history, who lose their nationality in
death. They are no longer Greek or
Hebrew or English or American —
they belong to mankind. I wonder
whether I will be forgiven for saying
that George Washington was a great
American, but Abraham Lincoln be-
longs to the common people of every
lind.' "

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
AT LOS ANGELES

The Reminiscences of
Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Volume I.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF
AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

EDITED AND AMPLIFIED BY

HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS

VOLUME ONE

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PUBLISHED BY THE CENTURY CO.
NEW YORK ***** MCMXIII

Published, October, 1913

Art

Libra ;

21
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SmAz
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TO MY MOTHER

UNTIRING IN HER ENERGY AND AFFECTION

UPON WHOM MY FATHER LEANED IN HOURS OF ANXIETY

DEVOTED IN HER EFFORT TO FURTHER

WHAT REMAINED TO BE DONE AFTER HIS DEATH

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED

CM1

CONTENTS

PAGE

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD, 1848-1857 ... 8

The Name Legend — Parentage — Emigration — Many Homes —
Lispenard Street — Bernard Saint-Gaudens as a New York
Shoemaker — First Memories — The North Moore Street School
— Outings — Staten Island — The Furor ^Esthetic — The Big
Nosed Boy.

A NEW YORK DECADE, 1857-1867 88

American Art Previous to 1848 — The Fork in the Road — The
Merit in Rigorous Training — Apprenticed to Avet — The First
Appreciation of Country — New York in Wartime — Discharged
by Avet — A Kinder Master — Hard Work in the Cooper In-
stitute— The Night in the Cell — The National Academy of
Design — The Draft Riots — Lincoln's Assassination — More
Lady Loves — Preparations for Europe.

Ill
THE BEAUX ARTS, 1867-1869 56

The New York Art of Saint-Gaudens' Boyhood — Optimism —
Lupi, the Cameo Cutter — Paris — French Relatives — Poverty
and many Lodgings — Modeling at the Petite Ecole — " The
Marseillaise" in English — Three Friendships — Amusements
and Activities — Walking Trips — The Tramp through the Juras.

THE FIRST STAY IN ITALY, 1869-1872 93

War Declared on Germany — The Desire to Enlist — Wartime
in France — The Journey to Rome — The Beauty of Rome —
William Gedney Bunce— A Studio with Soarcs — The Eruption
of Vesuvius — Dr. Henry Shiff — Roman Fever — The Gener-
osity of Montgomery Gibbs — The Hiawatha — Other Commis-
sions— The Return Home.

CONTENTS
v

v PAGE

THE SECOND STAY IN ITALY, 1872-1875 .... 128

New York Activities — The Death of Mary Saint-Gaudens — An
Intoxicated Frenchman and a Half-Dressed German — From
Paris to Rome — On Foot to Naples — Difficulty with the Si-
lence— Cameos — Other Misfortunes — The Death of Rhinehart

— Light Ahead — Paris According to Bion.

A FOOTHOLD, 1875-1877 152

The Progress of American Art — The German Savings Bank
Building — Running Water — Chiseling out Henry Ward Beecher

— White and McKim — Teaching at Dobb's Ferry — Admira-
tion for John La Farge — The Farragut Obtained — The Randall

— Anxiety and Stress — Italian Debts — The Society of Amer-
ican Artists.

VII
WORK FOR LA FARGE, 1877-1878 190

The French Salon in a Rut — The St. Thomas Reliefs — The
Protestant in Art — Details Across the Ocean — Will H. Low

— Painting the Reliefs — Time Presses — Appreciation and Crit-
icism by La Farge — A Contemporary Opinion — The King
Tomb.

VIII
PARIS ACTIVITIES, 1878-1880 213

Paris Activities — Friendship with Stanford White — Bas-reliefs —
Bastien-Lepage — White's Letters — The Morgan Tomb — The
Randall Monument — Struggles with the Farragut Monument.

IX
PARISIAN AMUSEMENTS, 1878-1880 243

White's Activities — White and the Bust at Lille — Down the
Rhone with White and McKim — Friendships — The Society of
American Artists in Paris — The Paris International Exposition

— Life at the Time.

CONTENTS

PAGE

NEW YORK AND ITS FRIENDSHIPS, 1880-1890 . . 263

The Farragut Unveiling — Other Work in the Sherwood Studio

— The Randall — The Destruction of the Morgan Tomb —

— Friends — Louis Saint-Gaudens — Joseph M. Wells — Stan-
ford White— Thomas Dewing — George Fletcher Bahh — Rich-
ard Watson Gilder — Daily Life — Western Trip with White.

XI
BY-ROADS, 1882-1889 306

The Sleight of Hand — The Sunday Concerts — Cornish, New
Hampshire — The First Summer — The Improvement of Home

— Dewing, Brush and Others — The "Single Tax"— A Trip
to Europe.

XII

THE SHAW, 1881-1897 327

Richardson's Respect for Saint-Gaudens — Richardson's Person-
ality — The Shaw Commission — Negro Models — Bohutinsky
and the Negro — Studio Rages — Technical Difficulties — Con-
centrated Work — A Letter from Bion — A Letter to Gilder.

XIII

EARLY THIRTY-SIXTH STREET WORK, 1881-1892 . 348

Commissions out of Confusion — The Vanderbilt Work — The
Smith Tomb — The Lincoln — The Puritan — The Adams Mon-
ument.

XIV
STEVENSON AND OTHERS, 1881-1892 S67

McCosh in the Studio — Meeting with Stevenson — The Visit to
Manasquan — The Sherman Bust — Soldier and Author — Vari-
ations in the Relief — Letters from Stevenson — Love of Per-
sonality and Literature — The Washington Medal — The Diana.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME I PAOB

Augustus Saint-Gaudens Frontispiece

Street in Aspet, France 7

A Bust of the Father of Augustus Saint-Gaudens . ... 14

The Mother of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, from the drawing by

the son 25

Georgian house in Dublin, Ireland, in which Augustus Saint-
Gaudens was born in 1848 86

Augustus Saint-Gaudens at his cameo lathe 48

House on Fourth Avenue, near the corner of Twenty-third
Street, New York, where Bernard Saint-Gaudens had his
shoe-store » 53

Studies for a Fountain 65

Studies of drapery and a composition from the student sketch-
book of Augustus Saint-Gaudens 76

Sketch portrait of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, drawn by himself . 85

Plaster cast of the right hand of Augustus Saint-Gaudens . . 96

Photograph of Augustus Saint-Gaudens sent from Rome in the

sixties 105

Silence 116

Hiawatha 116

Dr. Henry SchifF 125

Augustus Saint-Gaudens, George Dubois, and Ernest Mayor.

during a walking trip in 1871 136

Photograph of Augustus Saint-Gaudens taken in Rome, 1872 . 145

Roma and Piace, Photographers.

Augusta F. Homer, wife of Augustus Saint-Gaudens. at the time

of their engagement I*5

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Relief caricature of Henry Adams 156

Relief caricature of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Stanford White

and Charles F. McKim 156

" Adoration of the Cross by Angels," modeled in high relief and
placed in the chancel of St. Thomas's Church, New York
City. Destroyed by fire, August 8, 1905 197

Augustus Saint-Gaudens in Paris about 1878 208

Bastien-Lepage 217

Three views of the Morgan Tomb Angels in process of con-
struction 228

Statue of Admiral Farragut in Madison Square, New York City 269

Portrait in bas-relief of the sons of Prescott Hall Butler . . 280

From a photograph by 6. C. Cox.

Portrait in bas-relief of a young lady 289

Augustus Saint-Gaudens modeling a bas-relief of Mrs. Cleveland 300

From a photograph taken by R. W. Gilder.

New York Studio in Thirty-sixth Street during a Sunday con-
cert 309

Original barn used as first studio 320

House in Cornish the first summer 320

Various sketches for the Shaw Memorial 329

Facsimile of a manuscript sentiment that Augustus Saint-Gau-
dens set as his standard 329

Two early sketches for the monument to Robert Gould Shaw . 340

Miss Violet Sargent 351

Three sketches of the Adams Monument, showing the original

idea of Socrates 358

Sketch for the high relief of Dr. McCosh 369

Robert Louis Stevenson, modeled in bas-relief in 1887, during

Stevenson's illness in New York 380

PREFACE

During his last years my father was frequently urged
to write his reminiscences ; but recognizing the difficulties
of the professional in his own sphere of art, he was
reluctant to appear as the amateur seeking to establish
himself among those who held rank in literature.
Therefore he refused to make any attempt at a biogra-
phy until, during the early spring of 1906, while recover-
ing from a surgical operation in the Corey Hill Hospital
at Brookline, Massachusetts, the dictation of an account
of his life was pressed upon him as a means of passing
the hours.

The work once begun, after his return to Cornish it
became easy for him to continue with the help of a
phonograph. He thought to rewrite the whole with me
later, adding and changing as seemed necessary, for he
was a careful man about his manuscript, giving much
thought even to unimportant letter- writing; but from
August, 1906, when he finished his rough dictation, pain
never left him until his death, so our plan of revision
came to naught.

The details of those parts of his text which form the
pith of the book I have left almost intact; only the order
of thought and anecdote, somewhat tangled for lack of
revision, I have shifted back and forth into a methodical
orderliness.

In one way the autobiography offers more than might

xiii

PREFACE

be expected. Sick as he was, the energy of my father's
thoughts threw off that pessimism which might easily
have crept into his last days. His unfailing sense of
humor and his dislike of morbid introspection left in his
writing that air of health, wide sympathy, and belief in
the world that was so characteristic of his life. He well
understood where his work was lacking; he was wisely
happy where it was good.

In other directions, however, his autobiography fails
to awaken an interest beyond that of the more outward
events of his life, since, because of his horror of "art
talk," he has given few opinions on art and sculpture,
which frequently seemed good or bad to him only
though the presence or absence of a peculiar power ex-
ceeding the reach of definition. Often he would say,
"I could not answer that man, but I know he is wrong."
So with a faith founded more on intuition than on theory
or reason, he became reluctant to discuss even answer-
able questions.

Accordingly I have done my best to supply what is
missing concerning his attiude toward art and artists
past and present, as well as to illuminate portions of his
life by what his friends have told me, by various personal
recollections, and by letters.

Indeed, it is with deep gratitude that I speak of these
friends who have courteously assisted me. Two men in
especial whose devotion and generosity of time and labor
proved their affection for my father and for me were
Mr. Royal Cortissoz and Mr. Witter Bynner. Mr.
Cortissoz, for years my father's intimate friend and
admirer, an art critic, and a biographer of keen insight
and charm, advised me materially in the selection and

xiv

PREFACE

arrangement of what was fitting, in the elimination of
what seemed beside the point. It has been a task of
characteristic generosity for him to leave the crowded
demands of his own work to give this manuscript the
benefit of his penetrating understanding. Mr. Bynner
is my closest friend, a poet, an editor, a man to whom my
father loved to turn in those last days of his renewed
youth here in Cornish. Through Mr. Bynner's experi-
ence in revising many books, he has developed a clear
understanding of literary detail, and out of this knowl-
edge he has offered both constructive and affectionate
criticism.

I am under the deepest obligations, also, to the many
others who have offered their earnest cooperation,
placing at my disposal such valuable information,
papers, and anecdotes as were in their possession.
Without their help my task would have been seriously
handicapped. My mother, of course, with her clear
recollection of the past, has been invaluable. It is to be
lamented that virtually the entire collection of the most
vital letters? — those between my father and my mother —
were lost in the destruction of the studio by fire in 1904.
My uncle, Mr. Louis Saint-Gaudens, probably possessed
a more intimate understanding than any one else of my
father's outlook on life; therefore he remained all-
important in supplying details, revising, and recalling
the intimate sides of my father's attitude toward the
world. Mr. Richard Watson Gilder proved untiring
in the aid he rendered both through his own definite
memories and through much gleaned from letters which
my father wrote him. Mr. James Earle Fraser, Mr.
and Mrs. Henry Hering, Miss Frances Grimes, Mr.

PREFACE

Charles Keck, and Mr. Adolph Weinman, who had as-
sisted my father from time to time, contributed, with
many others, an undimmed point of view of his state of
mind when actually at work. Mr. Keck, Mr. and Mrs.
Hering, and Miss Lucy Perkins were fortunate in hav-
ing worked under him as pupils in the Art Students'
League of New York, and, therefore, could speak with
ready knowledge of his attitude while teaching. Many
others, too, were able to illuminate this or that period of
my father's life: Mr. Thomas Moore, who was with
him when he first attended night school in New York;
M. Alfred Gamier, whose long and charming letters
vividly describe his student days in Paris; Mrs. John
Merryless, who knew the young sculptor well during his
struggles in Rome ; my aunt, Mrs. Oliver Emerson, who
saw much of him after he had made his active start in
Paris.

Moreover, I should make my most grateful acknowl-
edgments to those who have provided me with invaluable
letters; as have Mr. Henry Adams, Mrs. Stanford
White, Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons (for permission
to use letters of Robert Louis Stevenson) , Mr. William
A. Coffin, Mr. John La Farge, Mr. Will H. Low, and
Miss Helen Mears. I quote largely, too, from my
father's correspondence with his niece, Miss Rose S.
Nichols. Indeed, to every one mentioned in the text I
express my sincerest thanks for courteous assistance.
Nor is that all : many others have given me a word here,
a paragraph there, that tell much of my father's
character in the years I did not know him. Without the
generous aid of such cordial friends, the outcome would
have seemed hopeless.

xvi

PREFACE

Yet when all is written, the best biography of my
father remains to be found in his art; for if work ever
typified the man, his did. "Strength with elegance,"
refinement of ideals, a single devotedness toward clarify-
ing the sculpture of his land — all this he stamped into his
bronze

Homer Saint-Gaudens.

Cornish, New Hampshire.
July 2, 1913.

xvn

The Reminiscences of
Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Volume I.

The reader will note that this book is set
in two kinds of type, differentiating the au-
tobiographical from the biographical por-
tions of the text. This device was necessary
to obviate confusion in the reader's mind as
Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Homer Saint-
Gaudens — his son and biographer — have both
written in the first person.

The Reminiscences of
Augustus Saint-Gaudens

RECOLLECTIONS OF CHILDHOOD

1848-1857

The Name Legend — Parentage — Emigration — Many Homes — Lis-
penard Street — Bernard Saint-Gaudens as a New York Shoemaker
— First Memories — The North Moore Street School — Outings —
Staten Island — The Furor iEsthetic — The Big-nosed Boy.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS constantly used to
speak of his father's "Gascon imagination"; and the
phrase suits a gift which that same Bernard Saint-
Gaudens may well be said to have handed untarnished to his
son, Augustus. For, observing always the larger truth, Au-
gustus Saint-Gaudens was yet ready and happy, on occasion,
to point a moral or adorn a tale with adapted circumstance.
Even in the opening paragraphs of the reminiscences where
he tells of his ancestry, he seems to have thought the larger
truth of a man's descent to be of more importance than the
exact order of his coming. Therefore, lest those who read
these pages take amiss such trifling with what is usually re-
garded as gospel, I have tried to order my father's text, in so
far as I may, with literal truth. If here and there, contrary
to my purpose, I too am to be suspected of "Gascon imagina-
tion" I shall not quarrel with the heritage.

I begin, after the fashion of all good historians, with
mythology, taking up the legendary origin of the Saint-

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Gaudens family. Briefly, it was settled in this wise by Ber-
nard Saint-Gaudens : Gaudens, the architect of the Roman
Coliseum, celebrated the completion of it by becoming its first
Christian martyr. Whereupon he was canonized, and a town
in France named in his honor.

To this beautiful tradition Bernard clung until finally he
came to believe in it himself. But as the old shoemaker's "Gas-
con imagination" was, in this case, even more than usually
inexact, I will amend it with a popular form of the legend by
giving an adaptation of a small portion of Felix Regnault's
"Geographie de la Haute-Garonne."

"During the Fifth Century, the Saracens of the Spanish
Pyrenees frequently crossed the mountains to kill those of
Christian faith in France. One day, on riding over the
passes, a number of these Mussulmans met a young shepherd
who, while guarding his flock, was repeating his prayers.
The soldiers scoffed at his devotion, and insisted that he re-
nounce his belief, which they regarded as an insult. Instead
of obeying, however, the child declared that his heart knew
but a single fear, the dread of displeasing God and of dis-
obeying his mother. At that a Saracen drew his scimitar
and, with a blow, cut off the head of the shepherd. But the
boy, instead of falling to the ground, at once picked up his
head and ran with it towards the door of a small church not
far away.

"The soldier who had struck the blow stood petrified for a
moment. Then he leaped upon his horse, and pursued the
child so swiftly that the boy had no more than time to enter
the church door and to close it before the Saracen drove his
animal so violently against the wood that the prints of the iron
hoofs have ever since remained marked upon the panel.

"The child was called 'Gaudens,' and, after his martyriza-
tion, the town received his name."

From the time of this legend the name has been common
enough. For instance, in addition to being identified with a

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

bit of French soil, it was also connected, according to Augus-
tus Saint-Gaudens' statement, with one of the murderers of the
Due de Guise. Alexandre Dumas uses the name in the "Dame
aux Camelias." Also our old friend Mme. Alfred Gamier,
at one time an actress upon the French stage, has told us
that, in her day, Saint-Gaudens was a pseudonym often
adopted by players. Why the name ever attached itself to
our family J do not know. No other group of persons seems
to bear it.

Now Jet me turn to somewhat more definite information.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens* paternal grandfather was called
Andre Saint-Gaudens. In his birthplace, the comfortable
French town of Aspet, set at the head of a winding road which
climbs into the barren Pyrenees, Andre took to himself a wife
whose maiden name was Boy. Tradition has it that she sold
butter and eggs in the market-place at Aspet, and that she
became a miser, upon her death leaving under her bed the
conventional box crammed with gold pieces. The resulting
children were a single daughter and four sons.

The daughter married the village apothecary, one Labarthe.
The first son, Jean, remained a shoemaker in his native town.
Of his two children, Hector and Ulysses, the former is still
alive, a mail-carrier in Aspet. Bertrand, the second son, be-
came first a shoemaker on a large scale, and later a contractor
in Paris. He had four children. Francis, the third son,
though educated for the church, remained in the army until
he developed into a minor politician, living in a country house
at Lieusaint. He had three children: a boy, Andre, and two
girls, Pauline and Clorinda. Bernard, the fourth son, and
the youngest, was Augustus Saint-Gaudens' father.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens' mother, Mary McGuiness, came
from Bally Mahon, County Longford, Ireland. She was the
daughter of Arthur McGuiness, who worked in the Dublin
plaster-mills and married a girl by the name of Daly. Plas-
ter, as well as shoes, seems to have run in the family. Her

THE REMINISCENCES OF

first children were George, who died at the age of six, and
Louis, who lived but a few weeks.

So it was as the third son that Augustus was born. He
was not destined to remain long in Ireland, however, for, when
but only six months old, "red-headed, whopper- jawed, and
hopeful," as he often explained, the famine in Ireland com-
pelled his parents to emigrate with him to America, setting
out from Liverpool in the sailing ship Desdemona.

With such a prefatory elucidation of my father's own ref-
erence to his forebears, fragmentary in the unrevised condition
of the text, I take up his reminiscences. He begins them thus :

Reminiscences are more likely to be tiresome than
otherwise to the readers of later generations, but among
the consoling pleasures that appear over the horizon as
years advance is that of rambling away about one's
past. So, if what I tell amuses or interests some
dreamy grandchild of mine to read, half as much as I
believe now that it will entertain me to write, it will
have served its purpose.

Like every one else, were I to set down everything
about myself, as well as everything I know of others, I
could a tale unfold that would make what follows appear
like candle-light in sunshine ; but various considerations,
conventional and otherwise, bar the way vexatiously. If
the reader hopes to find herein a disquisition on art or
the production of artists, it will be well to close the book
at once. There is nothing of that in these pages.
Moreover, I will not indulge in any acrimonious
opinions, delightful as it is to do so, because I have few.
And even where they do exist I should hesitate, since,
for instance, nothing biting that I might say about the

STHKKT IN ASPF.T, FUANCK

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

policeman who put me in prison when I was nineteen
could be strong enough to satisfy me.

I was born March 1, 1848, in Dublin, Ireland, near 35
Charlemount Street. If that is not the house, no doubt
the record in the nearest Catholic church would give the
number.

My mother's maiden name was Mary McGuiness.
Of her ancestry I know nothing except that her mother
was married twice, the second time to a veteran of the
Napoleonic wars. The only member of my mother's
family of whom I ever had a glimpse was her brother,
George McGuiness, whom I saw in Forsyth Street. I
have a daguerreotype of his delightfully kind and ex-
tremely homely face, a face like a benediction, as I have
heard some one describe it. He, of all men, became the
owner of two slaves in the South; and, judging from the
daguerreotype, married an equally homely and kindly-
looking woman. He was in some way connected with
the navy-yard at Pensacola. The war cut off all fur-
ther communication with him.

My father's full name was Bernard Paul Ernest
Saint-Gaudens ; "Bernard Paul Honeste, if you please,"
he called it later in life. It sounded nicer. He was
born in the little village of Aspet, about fifty miles
from Toulouse, at the foot of the Pyrenees, five miles
south of the town of Saint-Gaudens, in the arrondisse-
ment of Saint-Gaudens, in the department of the
Haute-Garonne, a most beautiful country, as the many
searchers for health at the baths of Bagneres-de-
Luchon must realize. Of his ancestry I am as ignorant

THE REMINISCENCES OF

as of my mother's, knowing only that his father, a
soldier under Napoleon, died comparatively young and
suddenly after what I suspect was a gorgeous spree.

At a very early age my father, with his family, left
his native village, and went to the little town of Salies
du Salat about five miles to the east. From there they
moved to Carcassonne where he learned his trade of
shoemaker in the employment of his elder brother, Ber-
trand, who had quite a large establishment of thirty or
forty workmen. When through with his apprentice-
ship, following the custom of the time, he moved north-
ward from his native village as a journeyman shoe-
maker, a member of the "Compagnons du Tour de
France." This was a popular organization of that pe-
riod, which facilitated the traveling of workmen from
town to town, the members being pledged to procure
employment for one another as they arrived. They
each had some affectionate sobriquet; my father's was
"Saint-Gaudens la Constance," of which he was very
proud.

Three years my father passed in London and, later,
seven years in Dublin where he met my mother in the
shoe-store for which he made shoes and where she did
the binding of slippers.

Father told me that an overcrowded passenger-list
prevented his leaving Dublin with my mother, with me
at her breast, in a ship named Star of the West that
burned at sea during the trip. But because he told
me this does not mean that it was so. His Gascon im-
agination could give character or make beauty when-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ever these qualities were necessary to add interest to
what he was saying.

I do know, however, that they landed at Boston town,
probably in September, 1848; he a short, stocky, bullet-
headed, enthusiastic young man of about thirty, with
dark hair of reddish tendencies and a light-red mus-
tache; she of his height, possessed of the typical, long,
generous, loving Irish face, with wavy black hair, a few
years his junior, and "the most beautiful girl in the
world," as he used to say.

Leaving mother in Boston, — where, by the way, I
am beginning this account in the hospital fifty-six years
afterward, — he started to find work in New York. In
six weeks he sent for her. He said we first lived in
Duane Street. Of this I knew nothing.

From there we went to a house on the west side of
Forsyth Street, probably near Houston Street, where
now is the bronze foundry in which the statue of Peter
Cooper that I modeled was cast forty-five years later.
There my brother Andrew was born on Hallowe'en, in
1850 or 1851, and there I made the beginnings of my
conscious life.

Ecstatic, dreamlike playing, and the picking of
flowers in the twilight among the graves of an old bury-
ing-ground just over the fence from the first house I
have any vision of, blended with similar ecstatic en-
joyment of the red wheels of the locomotive in some
journey out of New York, are my first impressions,
vaguely discerned in the gray, filmy cobwebs of the past.
But soon we went to the Bowery, whence delightful re-

THE REMINISCENCES OF

miniscences of the smell of cake in the bakery at the cor-
ner of the street, and of the stewed peaches of the Ger-
man family in the same house, have followed me through
life.

From the Bowery we moved to 41 Lispenard Street.
Here father branched out for himself, hiring a whole
building, and subletting it to one or two tenants,
among them a Dr. Martinache, one of whose daughters
subsequently married Mr. Olin Warner, the sculptor.
I believe Dr. Martinache was a French political refugee,
and I have a recollection of others coming to father's
home at that time, among them an enormous man by the
name of Cossidierre, who held Falstaffian court in the
wine-shop down-stairs.

The beginnings of my father's business were peculiar,
since what interested him infinitely more than his store
were the two or three societies to which he belonged and
of which he generally became "The Grand Panjan-
dium." The principal organization was the "Union
Fraternelle Francaise," a mutual-benefit affair of which
he was one of the founders and for many years the lead-
ing figure. Of course such work necessitated frequent
meetings of committees and subcommittees when there
were not general ones. As a result, in the daytime,
notwithstanding mother's gentle pleadings, instead of
preparing work, he was ever writing letters about these
societies, all naturally to the serious detriment of his af-
fairs.

This confused condition of things he complicated to a
still greater extent by his remarkable theories as to how

A BUST OF THE FATHER OF AUGUSTUS
SAINT-GAUDENS

This bust was modeled by the son shortly before he

left home for his first trip abroad, at the time

that be made the drawing of his mother

Copr. DeW.O.W«rd

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

shoes should be made, which he propounded and carried
out with the greatest insistence in the face of the pro-
tests and tortures of his customers. It is a mystery to
me how any ever returned to him, and that he did hot
lose them all. His idea was that the toes should have
plenty of room to spread to prevent suffering. To in-
sure this it was necessary that the foot be squeezed about
two inches behind them. "Naturally, if you compress the
foot in this manner, the toes will open out like a fan,
thus," he would say, squeezing his hand and extending
his fingers to prove his contention. "It is mechanical,
you see, and cannot but be successful in securing com-
fort, incidentally adding to the beauty of the foot by
giving the long, narrow appearance." Consequently,
misfits resulted in the majority of cases. It was rarely
that his shoes satisfied at first, since they were all tight,
and had to be made over two or three times after inter-
minable waitings. The result was that the stock of the
store actually became made up of misfits. But father
did not mind this, for he had a supreme contempt for
shoes manufactured for sale, and he refused to indulge
in that lowering occupation! The only time that the
shoes were properly completed in his establishment was
during a six-weeks' absence abroad, when he came to
see me, and mother had charge of the store. There
were no complaints during that period; but on his re-
turn the less prosaic conditions were resumed.

Nevertheless, for so small an establishment, father
had an extraordinary clientele, embracing the names of
most of the principal families in New York, Governor

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Morgan, General Dix, some of the Astors, Belmonts,
and so on. Among his first customers, I recall dis-
tinctly the wife of General Daniel E. Sickles, who or-
dered a large number of white satin slippers to be used
at some functions in Washington. She seemed very
beautiful to me, and she it was who led to the tragedy
of the shooting of Key, an admirer of hers, by General
Sickles in the streets of Washington.

No doubt those who came were attracted by my
father's picturesque personality, by the fact that at
that time everything French was the fashion, and by
the steadiness of his assurance as to the superiority and
beauty of his productions. His sign, "French Ladies'
Boots and Shoes," must have been irresistible, when
taken together with the wonderfully complex mixture
of his fierce French accent and Irish brogue. This
bewildering language remained just as bad at the end
of fifty years as when he first landed. In the family he
spoke English to mother, and French to me and to my
two younger brothers, Andrew and Louis; we spoke
English to mother and French to him; mother spoke
English to all of us.

Moreover, further to adorn his discourse, Bernard Saint-
Gaudens constantly embroidered his remarks with fantastic
proverbs of uncertain and international origin. "As much
use as a mustard plaster on a wooden leg," he would say, or
"Sorry as a dog at his father's funeral," or "As handy with
his hands as a pig with his tail," or "A cross before a dead
man," or this, which Augustus Saint-Gaudens repeated after
him through all his life, "What you are saying and nothing
at all is the same thing." Also Bernard Saint-Gaudens re-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

mained steadfastly enamored of Greek mythology, Virgil, Rab-
elais, and the plays of Voltaire, and enjoyed the making of
speeches at Irish festivals where he would round off his con-
clusions with spirited perorations in the Gaelic tongue. To
support this excitable state of mind, especially as he had been
brought up in the country, he indulged in the usual rustic's
love of bright colors, a fancy which caused untold annoyance
to his more soberly-dressed city-bred children. Then during
the Civil War he became an abolitionist, a "Black Repub-
lican." And finally, to cap the whole, he set himself up as a
white Freemason, who would insist on associating with the
negro Freemasons and presiding at their initiations. The
other white Freemasons accordingly blacklisted him. So he
told them to go elsewhere, and, in the future, never attended
any but negro lodge meetings, though he always explained to
his children that Freemasonry was a sublime and impressive
order.

Perhaps it was this interesting succession of paradoxes that
induced Horace Greeley, in addition to those other customers
already named, to become a steady purchaser at Bernard
Saint-Gaudens* store, for Greeley must have delighted to
wrangle with this argumentative shoemaker upon the philoso-
phy of footwear. He alone stuck to his point that the Saint-
Gaudens method of constructing shoes was essentially wrong,
and therefore had special lasts made for his daughters of a
shape utterly at variance with those employed in the store,
though from the conventional point of view quite as radical
in still a different direction.

It was not Greeley, however, but yet another customer, ap-
pearing in the early days, who became the most important of
them all to Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This man, Dr. Cor-
nelius Rea Agnew, first noticed my father drawing pictures
in pen and ink of the shoemakers at work, and instantly added
his word to the boy's desire that his life be turned into artistic
channels.

THE REMINISCENCES OF

But I am drawing ahead of my father's text. He writes:

My brother Louis was born in this Lispenard Street
House, and that occurrence, together with the arrival
of a comet and a prayer which puzzled me profoundly,
dominates my memory of this period. The prayer was
the "Hail Mary, full of grace; the Lord is with thee;
blessed art thou amongst women" ; and so on. Mother,
with her sweet Irish brogue, pronounced "grace,"
"grease." That Mary should be full of "grease" was
very strange. "Amongst women" was either "a monk
swimming," as I imagined a cowled monk, or " a
monkey swimming" across a dark river. Which of the
two latter possibilities was correct perplexed me, as I
knelt at her knee in the dimly lighted room. The
comet, which I must be forgiven for returning to, trav-
ersed a great piece of the Western sky, and, at the
hours when I saw it, was low down on the horizon.
Its head touched the houses on the south side of the
street, its tail brushed those on the north side, the spire
of St. John's Church standing in relief against it.
None of the comets I have since seen can begin to com-
pare with this extraordinary spectacle. Donates, I be-
lieve, was its name.

My recollections here still farther enlarge and spread
out from the graveyard and red wheels of Forsyth
Street, and the bake-shop and stewed peaches of the
Bowery, to the playing with the fantastic shadows in
the moonlight on the sidewalks, intermixed with the
knocking off of men's hats in the night by stretching

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

strings from the stoops to the wagons standing in the
streets. The trick was not meant for policemen, how-
ever, but for beings much humbler, and the terror and
flight to our various homes or hiding-places on seeing a
policeman go under the string, with the resulting loss of
head-gear and dignity, any man who has been a boy will
appreciate and enjoy. I stole much butter and sugar
also, — putting a layer an inch thick of each on a piece of
bread the size of one's hand, — as well as sweet potatoes,
which we baked in the street in furnaces made of cob-
blestones. Another delight was the penny's worth of
round hearts bought at the little candy-store kept by
Billy McGee's mother in Church Street. Then it was
that the sight of the target companies passing down
Broadway on their march to the country in the morn-
ing, with the gaudy negro carrying the target follow-
ing, and their return in the afternoon with the battered
target and, hung on their warlike breasts, their prizes of
silver cups and things, gave visions of a heaven to which
I dared not aspire and was simply happy in admiring.
Here, also, comes the horror of seeing, with a file of
other children, burning horses being led out of a stable
on fire, and of kissing a dead man in a room over the
corner grocery-store; the widow, in her grief, having
gathered us in from the street. This was during the
period of the Crimean War, which we learned about in
the news bureaus on the northeast corner of Canal
Street and Broadway. At that time also my mother's
cousin, John Daly, a marine on one of the United
States government ships, paid us a visit. He read to

THE REMINISCENCES OF

us in papers brought from Honolulu, and showed us
great walrus teeth that had come from the Pacific.
And finally I can see myself among the other children
who attended the Sunday-school of St. Patrick's Cathe-
dral in Elizabeth Street, and I can recall the terrible
gloom of the recital of some prayer ending with the
words, "through my fault, through my fault, through
my most grievous fault," all the children bending for-
ward in unison and striking their breasts as they ut-
tered these dismal words. What the fault could have
been caused deep perplexity in my innocent mind.

Following this period, a dreamlike recollection of a few
school-days in Chrystie Street, near Forsyth, is over-
powered by the horror of being dragged to the North
Moore Street School, when we went to live in Lispen-
ard Street. Here my real male pugnacity put in an
appearance; for I was unusually combative and morose.
The street fights began with the enemies of West
Broadway, who ran with Fire-Engine Company Num-
ber Sixteen, the "Gotham," and with those of Greene
Street and other distant territories, who ran with other
engines. Showers of stones, isolated personal strug-
gles, and one solitary encounter with a negro boy, stand
out conspicuously, while heroic charges and counter-
charges up and down Lispenard Street, bold forays
into the enemy's ground to defend the honor of "Lady
Washington's White Ghost," Engine Number Forty,
which "lay" in Elm Street, dominated life then as
much as anything has since. The running of races
around the block and the jumping over the fence of the

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Brandreth's Pill building, follow in my memory. The
first dog, a yellow one; the first sled; lickings galore in
school and out, those in school being received from
"Pop" Beldon, whom I recollect mainly because of
the mass of dandruff on his shoulders, also appear.
There were about fifteen of us bad ones who were col-
lected every afternoon and lined against the wall of
what was called the private classroom for our daily
punishment. "Pop" would begin at one end of the
line and administer the rod to the extended hands of
the boys, who would receive the blows without other
sound than perhaps a low whine, but with much squeez-
ing of fingers under armpits, so that by the time he had
finished there were fifteen or twenty squirming boys.
Occasionally a youngster would withdraw his palm be-
fore the blow came down, and then he would receive a
double dose.

Here is the story of one of my typical crimes. The
boy by my side in the classroom whispered to me,
"Say!" As I turned to him, his extended forefinger,
which was meant to hit my nose, found itself at the level
of my mouth. I bit it. He howled. I was "stood
up" with my back to the class and my face close against
the blackboard, immediately behind the teacher who,
turned toward the class, could not see me. To relieve
the monotony of the view, I took the rubber, covered
my features with white chalk, and grinned around at
the class. The resulting uproar can be imagined. I
was taken by the scruff of the neck and sent to the pri-
vate classroom, where I had the honor of a solitary and

THE REMINISCENCES OF

tremendous caning on parts of my body other than my
hands. The hatred and the feeling of injustice pro-
duced in me by this event were as profound as any that
have occurred in later years.

In fact, my life at the North Moore Street School,
with the exception of the playing at recesses, when I
occasionally indulged in a fight with my pet enemy,
Harry Dupignac, was one long misery, one long im-
prisonment; for, besides the beatings, I was "kept in,"
with a few other evil spirits, for an hour or so every
day after all the others had gained the open air and
freedom. I recall the sinking of my heart as I saw the
white clouds floating by the window in the patch of
blue sky, and the unattainable liberty they revealed to
me in that awful place.

One relief to the unhappy school memories of this
Lispenard Street period comes, however, with the recol-
lections of the delights of the Sunday outings, when
I and my brother Andrew crossed the North River on
the Canal Street Ferry and walked along the Jersey
shore to the Elysian Fields. Elysian Fields they really
seemed to my mind at that time, and they certainly
were, in comparison with the awful waste of smoke,
docks, stone sidewalks, cinders, brick, mortar, soot,
chimneys, trolleys, foul-smelling asphalt, and all the
other delights of the advancement of modern civiliza-
tion which now occupy the place of those idyllic
groves. The roaming about under the trees, and the
going to and fro on the river, seated with a line of other
boys on the front of the boat, our legs dangling over

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

the edge, was untold enjoyment. These were great
days, for on Sundays father gave us each five cents,
two to pay the ferry over, two back, and one to
spend.

Also, in the midst of this period, after an attack of
typhoid fever, came the pleasure of sleeping in a coun-
try home. This was on Staten Island, in a building
owned by a friend of Garibaldi's, which Garibaldi him-
self had honored by occupying. At that time he was off
on his Sicilian campaign. Or am I out in my history?
At any rate, it was one of his noble adventures in South
America or Italy. In front of the house was a bare
hill. The going to that hill was a thing looked for-
ward to for days, and its climbing one afternoon, to
find that there were hills still farther away, was my first
feeling of the ever-mysterious beyond.

There seems to be no end to these recollections, for
at this time came the wonderful trials of skill between
the volunteer fire-engines at the liberty-pole on the
corner of West Broadway and Varick Street, the con-
test being over which engine could throw a stream of
water the highest, and, if possible, above the pole. The
screaming delight of the boys, as they ran out of the
adjoining school at three o'clock and witnessed this con-
test, may be judged. The broom which decorated
the triumphant engine remains in my memory. No
doubt it was a survival of the Dutch traditions of New
York, founded on the story of Admiral Van Tromp's
victory over the English in the North Sea, when he
nailed a broom to his masthead in token of having swept

THE REMINISCENCES OF

the seas clear of the enemy. Memories of a broken
marble statue of William Pitt, on the stoop of a saloon
on the southwest corner of West Broadway and near
the liberty-pole, also survive in connection with this.

Now, too, the delights of the first story, the reading of
"Robinson Crusoe," entered my life, together with the
Hallowe'en sports of ducking for apples in tubs, or
biting at those hung by strings from the ceiling. Soon
after, Mrs. Southworth's "Hidden Hand" and Ulrich's
"The Gun-Maker of Moscow," with the short stories of
Fanny Fern, made Thursday, when the New York
Ledger appeared with those wonderful tales, a day to
be looked forward to with indescribable expectations.

During this period also come dim visions of Rachel
playing "Virginia" at Niblo's Garden, of Edwin Forrest
playing "Coriolanus" in old Wallack's Theater, on the
corner of Broome Street and Broadway, of the great
procession celebrating the laying of the Atlantic Cable,
and of the Prince of Wales, now King Edward, driv-
ing down Broadway in 1860. I was struck with his
being what I would now call a comely youth, and by
the singular sensation of watching all the people on the
streets take their hats off to him.

In addition, of course, at this time there developed the
first heart-beats of an intense passion for a curly-headed
angel named Rose. She must have been seven, for I
was about nine. I confess to being at the same time
as intensely in love with another angel who lived far-
ther down the street, the daughter of a shoemaker.

Finally and naturally, with my growing self-con-

Till-; MOTHKR OF AICISI'I'S SAINT fiAIDKN'S. FROM Till-". DKAWIM! IIV TNI SON

This wna manY liy AiiKiistna Saint fiaml.iia nlmrllv ln-1'.nf !»■ !• It I

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

sciousness, my "fureur esthetique" began. First I
drew upon a slate in the North Moore Street School
a representation of two regiments of soldiers lined in
perspective, shooting straight into one another's face,
with the smoke issuing from the guns in great clouds.
Joyously I rubbed the chalk over them in the confusion
of battle, and covered all with oblivion. Then I
scrawled things with bits of charcoal upon the walls of
some white-painted house in the country, to the angry
protest of the hostess. And at last I created a much
more ambitious painting, on the fence in the back yard,
of a negro boy with a hole in his trousers, through which
the bare knee was seen. The joy derived from that
knee ! He carried a target at which I shot with a cross-
bow and arrow, thus combining the delights of the
chase and of the artist. The production of this work,
however, resulted in an appalling attack of "colly wob-
bles," caused by the use of saliva instead of water in the
mixing of colors.

So it went, and such memories as these and many oth-
ers pass across the field of my vision like ships that ap-
pear through a mist for a moment and disappear.

What Augustus Saint-Gaudens has related here brings to
my mind two memories of my own younger days, and to my
hand a portion of an account of himself as a child, which my
father sent me in instalments when I was a boy of four.

The first of these memories is of a winter evening when, after
listening to certain of my own school troubles, he replied with
an account of a few of his North Moore Street experiences. In
those years James Haddon and Lawrence Hutton were his espe-
cial cronies, and not long after the day of that exceptional

THE REMINISCENCES OF

caning of which he has written, the three organized a deep and
never-to-be-renounced plot to murder the teacher when they
grew up. Another of my father's most bitter irritations here
arrived in the person of a young aristocrat, — aristocrat from
my father's point of view,' — who took advantage of the paper
currency, then issued for even small change, by bringing a
number of such "shin plaster" bills to class each morning
and tearing them up before his poorer schoolmates' faces,
purely for the joy he derived from their resulting expressions.
This ingenious method of torture ended in disaster to the in-
ventor at my father's hands, since, as he has already explained,
he was an adept with his fists.

My second memory harks back to one spring evening when
I, still a youngster, shot with an air-gun at a sorry target
upon the back fence, until my father came home from the
studio and stood watching me.

"Isn't that bull's-eye crooked?" he asked, after a few pel-
lets had gone astray.

I admitted the design to be impromptu.

"If you '11 wait, I '11 draw you another. I know just how
to do it," he said.

I agreed, and fetched a bit of charcoal.

Thereupon, until it became quite dark, he created again
just such a target as he has described, held by just such a
negro boy, with just such a bare knee. I recollect the smile
on his face as he worked, while his silence through the pro-
ceeding caused me no end of boy-wonder.

Finally, the letter he sent me explains itself, a fitting en-
largement to his reminiscences of that time:

Dear Homer:

I will tell you a story about a sculptor. There was
once a little boy who had a long nose, and the first thing
he can recollect about is when he went up to Morrisania

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in a shu-shu car with red wheels. His father held him
in his arms and he had a splendid lot of fun. The trees
were beautiful green, and the sun was bright, and the
train went Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo Ooo.

Well, the next thing that the sculptor with a big nose
recollects is when he was playing in his Mama's room,
and a great big man with a black beard came upstairs.
Mama was so glad that she went and put her arms
around him and kissed him and hugged him. She was
so glad because he was her brother whom she had not
seen for a great many years. . . .

This uncle came from Pensacola. He was a sol-
dier. He was a very good man, and he had a lot of
niggers who had little nigger children that they called
Pickaninnies, and they used to play with oranges and
alligators. But when the little Pickaninnies did n't
take care, the alligators swallowed the Pickaninnies and
oranges and all together. When the Pickaninnies
came in from the fun they would sit down at the table
with the big people, and were so quiet and good that the
big people thought the Pickaninnies were big people
too. So the little boy with the big nose did as the little
Pickaninnies, and sat and was quiet like the big peo-
ple. . . .

Well, after the uncle had gone, the little boy's father
moved away. . . .

Then sometimes the big-nosed little boy used to go
out with the other boys. Some had small noses, some
had big feet, others had big ears, and they used to go
by a bake-shop, and it used to smell nice and soft.

THE REMINISCENCES OF

There used to be a gold eagle in front of the house op-
posite where he lived that he liked to look at very much.
The street where this was was Broome Street. They
called it so because a broom was never seen in it.
When you come to New York I will show you Broome
Street.

But the little boy grew bigger and bigger, and one
day he did what his mother told him not to do. He
bought a banana of an old woman in the street, and it
made him so sick that his mother thought he was going
to die. And one night he woke up while he was sick,
and he saw his mother and his mother's friend kneeling
and praying by the bed. It was very quiet, and in the
little light he saw his good mother had big tears in her
eyes. And all he recollects of the sickness after that
was his friend Jimmy Haddon. He was very fond of
Jimmy Haddon. His father was a gold-beater, and
he used to have four or five men with big, strong, bare
arms with big veins on them, and they used to beat
gold in a basement until it was so thin you could blow
it away, and there was a sign over the door, of an arm
just like the men's arms, and it was gold. Well, he
recollects Jimmy Haddon coming into the room and
holding his mother's hand. But they would n't let him
go near the bed, as he might get sick too. And then,
the next thing, Nosey was brought to the country, just
as you are now, and it seemed so beautiful and
green. . . .

After that Nosey lived in Lispenard Street, and
there, when he woke up one morning, he found a little

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

baby in a cradle in the room, and he went and kissed
it, and it had lots of dimples. It was a pretty little
baby, and they kept it in the house, and he grew very
fond of it. Then one day he found a red dog in the
street and brought him home, and he was very fond of
the red dog, but he did n't have him long. One day he
was gone, and then he had to play with something else.

Not long after that a pretty little boy who lived in
the next house back, leaned out of the window and said
to Nosey: "I am going to die. Don't you want my
things, my top, my sled and kite?" He said it so sweetly
that Nosey recollected all his life the pale little boy with
the golden hair leaning out of the window. Well, he
died, and Nosey was given the boy's sled. It was a
strong, good sled, and Nosey was very fond of it and
of dogs too. So he went and painted a dog's head on
the sled and called that sled "Mastiff." That 's a fine,
good-natured dog's name.

In fact the big-nosed boy liked dogs so much that
when he grew up he had a dog with long hair, whose
name was Ariadne, and it was a very funny dog. She
used to go and get the newspaper every morning, and
she used to carry the keys of the little boy with the
big nose's father, and stand up on her hind legs, and
when the little boy used to say, "Ready! Aim! Fire!
Bang!" she would fall down and close her eyes and play
she was shot. Was n't that funny?

Good-by, old boy. Sometimes I go to Washington
Square to see where you used to play, and sometimes I
don't.

A NEW YORK DECADE

1857-1867

American Art Previous to 1848 — The Fork in the Road — The Merit
in Rigorous Training — Apprenticed to Avet — The First Apprecia-
tion of Country — New York in Wartime — Discharged by Avet —
A Kinder Master — Hard Work in the Cooper Institute — The Night
in the Cell — The National Academy of Design — The Draft Riots
— Lincoln's Assassination — More Lady Loves — Preparations for
Europe.

IN his autobiography, Augustus Saint-Gaudens continues
to speak of his boyhood, but, from the opening of the
chapter, his attitude toward his surroundings alters.
His school-days end, and the engrossing work of his life be-
gins with his apprenticeship to the cameo-cutter, Avet.

The impulse which caused him to seek such an occupation
sprang from the very center of his being. Often in after
years he would say that no one ever succeeded in art unless
born with an uncontrollable instinct toward it. This instinct
in him must have been of the strongest to survive its sur-
roundings, since his family lacked artistic leanings, and the
young Republic to which he had been brought was only slowly
feeling its way along paths of artistic development.

Painting formed the basis of the arts of design yet, from
the years of its first real activity, it had scarcely fallen to a
lower ebb than in 1848, when it had broken away from the
ideals and methods borrowed from English models by such
men as Copley and Stuart in the Colonial period, and yet had
not come to its own truly national expression through the
"Hudson River School" of landscape artists.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

If a depressing condition of affairs was characteristic of
painting, the outlook for sculptors proved still more thor-
oughly unsatisfactory, with its difficult medium and fewer prac-
titioners. For though Copley and West and Stuart made
their names known abroad, no sculptor appeared in this land
to parallel their efforts. True, about 1812, William Rush of
Philadelphia turned from the carving of ship figure-heads to
the designing of an occasional fountain or bust, with Heze-
kiah Augur from New Haven, Connecticut, and John Frazee
of Railway, New Jersey, following close on his heels. Yet,
even when in 1834 the Boston Athenaeum boasted of seven
busts from the hand of Frazee, there remained a timidity and
isolation about the results that makes it obvious that sculp-
ture did not attain a crude form of its own until after the
latter date. Then, at last, scarcely fifteen years before my
father's birth, we find the first small group of men who devoted
themselves to their art as professionals from the very outset,
who went abroad for serious study and never turned back
from sculpture as their life-work. It was composed of Hora-
tio Greenough, who began his extraordinary semi-nude statue
of Washington in Rome; Thomas Crawford, who had joined
him in the Eternal City; Hiram Powers, who was seeking
funds to follow them ; Ball Hughes, and H. K. Brown, now de-
veloping their first earnest efforts in the United States. But
these men can scarcely be said to have founded any American
School. One and all they sought Italy as soon as they had
means to get there. That was a natural quest. At home
they could neither be taught nor learn from example. More-
over, materials for their tasks were conspicuous by their ab-
sence. No good marble could be obtained, and bronze foun-
dries did not exist. Where these men were at fault was not
in going to Rome or Florence, but in lingering there when
their student days were over, and working after the fashion
of the Italians in preference to meeting the crude conditions
of their native land.

THE REMINISCENCES OF

With the few painters scattered from New York to Cincin-
nati, in a day when Boston was virtually as far from New
York as Chicago is now, with the sculptors remaining in Rome
on their aesthetic pedestals, and with the Puritan blue-stock-
ings still frowning upon life-classes, the beginnings of socie-
ties to encourage young men to work at painting or sculpture
are worth recognition only to show how small was their effect.
New York took the first step when, in 1802, it founded the
Academy of Fine Arts. Three years later Philadelphia fol-
lowed suit. Twenty years then elapsed before the Boston
Athenaeum exhibited a few casts and marbles which made it a
place to be marveled at. And indeed not until 1825 did F. S.
Agate, T. S. Cummings, and S. F. B. Morse at last rouse art
circles to some activity by organizing the New York Drawing
Association, a society which later developed into the National
Academy of Design.

Nevertheless, despite such depressing conditions, Saint-
Gaudens was impelled toward sculpture from the very first,
and, when the time came, entered upon the work under the
greatest difficulties, profiting by a beneficently vigorous train-
ing which he constantly discussed in after life. For while
now and again he would say : "Be happy while you are young ;
I regret I did not get more enjoyment when I had youth and
health," he still more frequently repeated, with even greater
emphasis, his opinion that the production of good results in
art, or literature, or anything else comes only at the cost of
training our minds and bodies to perform what is uncongenial.
Some one compared the evolution of a work of art to the
pregnancy and pain of childbirth. This he thought very true,
and that the younger a man received his training for this
production the better his work through life. He believed that
the rigors of his own apprenticeship from thirteen to twenty
were what made him accomplish all he did. Indeed, the de-
tails of that drill must have been severe. Once in Washing-
ton, for example, I heard him tell Mr. Henry Adams and the

GEORGIAN HOUSE IN DUBLIN, IRELAND, IN WHICH AUGUSTUS
SAINT-GAUDENS WAS BORN IN 1848

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Honorable John Hay how, as a boy, he had cut such a number
of lion's head cameos that when, twenty years later, he started
to assist his brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens, in modeling the
lions for the Boston Public Library, he found that his hands
still worked at the task automatically.

Here, then, let us take up the reminiscences:

About the time of these romantic revelations
I have made concerning Rose and the other angel,
I reached what I call the end of the first period
in my progress. For directly after this, probably
in May, 1860, my father opened his shop at 268 Fourth
Avenue, next door to the corner of Twenty-first
Street, and hired a little apartment for us to live
in above a grocery store in Twenty-first Street, be-
tween Second and Third Avenues. Thence I was sent
to the Twentieth Street School, presided over by Mr.
David B. Scott, a writer of one of the text-book his-
tories of the United States. What little time I stayed
there sufficed to show a marked contrast with the pre-
vious North Moore Street experience. Here I was
never punished, and consequently I dearly loved my
teacher. I did not remain long, however, as I had
reached the fork of the road in my life which led to the
one I am still traveling.

Up to this time, after school, my free hours had
been occupied in carrying the shoes, first to father's
workmen to have them made, and later to the customers
by whom they were ordered ; an exciting occupation, as
in some of these trips I had to pass through the enemy's
country, frequently at the cost of a piece of shoe-last

•*

THE REMINISCENCES OF

or leather findings lost in the fray. But now, since I
was just thirteen, my father said to me one day: "My
boy, you must go to work. What would you like to
do?"

"I don't care," I replied, "but I should like it if I
could do something which would help me to be an
artist."

Consequently father apprenticed me to a man named
Avet, a Savoyard, dark, with a mustache which ex-
tended down along the side of the cheek and jaw.
When he was not scolding me he sang continuously. I
believe that I am not wrong in stating that he was the
first stone cameo-cutter in America, though stone seal-
engravers there were already in New York, as well as
shell cameo-engravers, at which occupation Palmer and
Launt Thompson were adepts in the early periods of
their careers. For it was the fashion at that time for
men to wear stone scarf-pins with heads of dogs, horses
and lions, cut in amethyst, malachite and other stones.
I was Avet's first apprentice, and the stones which I
prepared for him he would finish, occasionally allowing
me to complete one myself. He was employed prin-
cipally by Messrs. Ball, Black & Company, who had
their store on the corner of Spring Street and Broad-
way, and now and then by Tiffany, to both of which
shops I took the cameos when completed, always with a
profound impression of the extraordinary splendor of
those places.

Avet was certainly an old-time, hard task-master, so
I can only describe my years with him as composing a

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

miserable slavery. To this training, nevertheless, I
attribute a habit of work which, although it has been of
the greatest benefit, has at the same time contributed to
my struggle for health as well as limited my vision to
what was immediately in my surroundings, and made
me oblivious to what lay beyond the four walls of my
studio.

For a time Avet hired a room just north of Eleventh
Street on the east side of Broadway. Later he moved
down to the corner of John Street and Broadway,
where he remained for some little while, before return-
ing up town to Bleecker Street and Broadway. I had
to be at work every morning at seven o'clock, so the
journey to John Street from Twenty-third Street was
a heroic undertaking on foot for a boy who disliked
walking as mortally as all boys do. Those were the
days of "omnibuses" and great four-horse sleighs on
Broadway, the delights of which could only be legally
obtained by paying ten cents. As I was never rich
enough to indulge, I would have had to imagine their
charm from afar on the sidewalk, had I obeyed the law.
I did n't. I solved the question of transportation by
"cuttin' behind," as the boys called it, on the step at the
back of these vehicles, which were the one means of pub-
lic communication between down-town and up-town,
up-town then being limited by Forty-second Street.
The solution would frequently be enlivened by a fight
with some "feller" who tried to crowd me off, or with
one that I tried to crowd off, or by the switch of some
cross driver's whip.

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Avet's was a singular nature, for, between his fits of
rage, he would take me to the country on shooting ex-
cursions. During these trips my keen appreciation of
the beauty and wonders of the landscape was so intense
that no subsequent experience has ever come up to it.
I can only compare my feelings to those in Jean
Jacques Rousseau's description of his similar enjoy-
ment in his walking trip from Geneva to Paris. The
memory of the first lying on the grass under the trees
and the first looking through the branches at the flying
clouds, will stay by me if I live to be as old as ten
Methuselahs. It will even eclipse my visions of fishing
on the docks, of catching eels with Avet off the sandy
beach near Fort Hamilton, Staten Island, of learning
to swim among the rocks at the foot of Sixtieth Street
and North River, and of the visit of the Great Eastern
to New York.

Such gentle thoughts, however, were the exception
to the steady run of excitement which held upon these
hunting trips. For during them we would constantly
pass through narrow lanes in the woods, Avet in front
of me, with the gun thrown over his shoulder. At such
times, the two muzzles pointing directly at me, the ham-
mers cocked, and the percussion caps seen along the
edge of the barrels, did not contribute to my enjoyment
of these adventures. Yet, on the contrary, I can recall
my devilish glee when, in jumping down from the stone
fence behind him, with my gun held upright, and my
fingers on the triggers, I accidentally discharged both
barrels within three feet of his head, and sent him leap-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ing into the air in a paroxysm of fright, curses, and
shouts.

Then came great visions and great remembrances;
the political meetings ; the processions before the Presi-
dential election, with carts bearing rail-fences in honor
of "Honest Abe, the Rail- Splitter"; in Madison
Square the assembling of the cavalry squadrons, with
the horses parked together and tied to the trees; the
camping of regiments about City Hall; the barracks
there; the recruiting tent near the statue of Washing-
ton in Union Square, where the green and the trees
were still inclosed by a high iron fence. At this time
the windows of Avet's little place looked out from the
first floor of the Broadway house just north of Eleventh
Street. His lathe was at one window, mine at another,
and from my window I saw virtually the entire con-
tingent of New England volunteers on their way to the
Civil War, a spectacle profoundly impressive, even to
my youthful imagination. The troops arrived at
Twenty-seventh Street and Fourth Avenue, where the
Grand Central Station then stood on the present site
of the Madison Square Garden. They marched down
Broadway to Cortland Street, and from there took the
ferry south. They all sang "John Brown's Body," as
they tramped by.

Now followed the years of the war, with their intense
excitement; the crowds reading the bulletins, in front
of Brentano's on the east side of Broadway, somewhere
near Washington Place; the mob before the news-
paper offices down-town, particularly at the time of the

THE REMINISCENCES OF

first battle of Bull Run; the temporary hospitals, the
legless and armless men from the battle-fields ; the con-
stant extras of victories, victories, victories; finally, the
delight over the real ones by Grant ; a vision of General
Grant himself on horseback, with his slouch hat, during
some great parade in New York City (his face I liked
because of its kindliness) ; and a glimpse of General
Sickles, minus a leg, reviewing the troops in front of
Niblo's Garden. Also I recall distinctly the departure
of Ellsworth's Zouaves, and the news of his death by
shooting in Alexandria a few days after. But, above
all, what remains in my mind is seeing in a procession
the figure of a tall and very dark man, seeming en-
tirely out of proportion in his height with the carriage
in which he was driven, bowing to the crowds on each
side. This was on the corner of Twentieth or Twenty-
first Street and Fifth Avenue, and the man was Abra-
ham Lincoln on his way to Washington.

Perhaps it is the flight of time that makes this and
all the rest seem much more heroic and romantic than
the extraordinary events of our age. When our pres-
ent day is in the sunset it will no doubt take on the
same romantic glow to the grandchildren who may read
this.

I have spoken of Avet's scoldings. They were
so wonderful that I can find nothing better to com-
pare with these fits of anger than the storms in Rossini's
"William Tell" or Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony."
During the last years I was with him our lathes ad-
joined each other. We ran them very much as sewing-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

machines are run, only on an infinitely more delicate
scale, the light hum of the wheels pervading the room.
As he raged, the rapidity of his pedaling increased with
oaths, that rose from a low "Nom de Dieu, de Nom de
Dieu, de Nom de Dieu, de Nom de Dieu," in an ascend-
ing scale as his paroxysm gathered force, then pass-
ing down and up again like thunder in the distance,
until at the third or fourth climax he would pound his
fist upon the table with a terrible "Nom de Dieu!" and
a blow so violent that all the little tools lying around on
our lathes jumped and fell in unison. Whatever his
fury was about, I grew cooler as he grew hotter, and I
looked forward to the jumping of those implements
with keen interest, if not delight. But, at last, one day,
on coming into the shop in an exceptionally violent
state of anger, he suddenly discharged me because I
had forgotten to sweep up the crumbs I had dropped
on the floor while lunching.

I took off my overalls, wrapped them up, went to
father's store, and explained the story to my parents,
feeling that the end of the world had arrived. Within
half an hour Avet appeared. I was sent on some er-
rand, and on returning was told that he wanted me back
at an advance of five dollars a week on my wages. Al-
though I felt that I might not be able to obtain other
work of that sort, and that three and a half years of my
life had been lost together with my hopes of an artistic
career, and in fact of everything in life, I replied that
I would not return under any condition. This was no
doubt the most heroic act of my existence, if not the

THE REMINISCENCES OF

only one having real style. I recall father's proud
smile concealed in his mustache as I made my speech.

Nevertheless the incident, as will presently appear,
opened the second by-road in my career which led to my
being a sculptor. At this time there lived in New
York a man entirely the reverse of my first employer,
Mr. Jules LeBrethon, a shell-cameo cutter, who earned
his living by making the large shell-cameo portraits in
vogue during this period of big hoop-skirts. He was
very dark, and possessed a mass of bushy black hair
that stood out like that of a South Sea Islander. He
had his place in the building where Wallack's Theater
stood on the corner of Broome Street and Broadway.
As the greater included the less, I had learned very
easily with Avet the cutting of shell-cameos, this being
a far simpler affair. Therefore I applied to LeBrethon
for employment, though feeling that I was lowering
myself by engaging to cut shell-cameos. To my de-
light, I discovered that he had a stone-cameo lathe,
which he could not use. I began work at once, and the
three years or so with him were as day is to night in
comparison with my previous experience. The only
thing that he had in common with Avet was that he also
sang from morning to night. He, however, never
scolded or showed anything but consideration in my af-
fairs. Indeed, because of this interest, he even allowed
me an extra hour every day, beside my dinner period, in
which to model, and gave me instruction at that time.
My ardor almost doubled the hour by devoting three-
quarters of my lunch-time to the modeling.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Now to go back for the moment, it was during those
opening two or three years of my apprenticeship to
Avet that my earliest definite aspirations and ambitions
had made themselves felt. For immediately after my
first employment I applied for admission to the draw-
ing school of the Cooper Institute. There every even-
ing, upon my return from work at six o'clock and my
hasty tea I went. And there my artistic education be-
gan. The feeling of profound gratitude for the help
which I have had from that school abides with me to
this day. Even at the time I realized it strongly, for
so young a boy. I can go so far as to recall the kindly
impression produced on me by Abram S. Hewitt as he
glanced at me during some function. Father, at that
time, was making shoes for the Cooper family, and I
suppose that that is why he looked in my direction.

With such an incentive I became a terrific worker,
toiling every night until eleven o'clock after the class
was over, in the conviction that in me another heaven-
born genius had been given to the world. I can remem-
ber thinking in public conveyances, that if the men stand-
ing on the platform around me could realize how great a
genius was rubbing elbows with them in the quiet-look-
ing boy by their side, they would be profoundly im-
pressed. Indeed I became so exhausted with the con-
fining work of cameo-cutting by day and drawing at
night that, in the morning, mother literally dragged me
out of bed, pushed me over to the washstand, where I
gave myself a cat's lick somehow or other, drove me to
the seat at the table, administered my breakfast, which

THE REMINISCENCES OF

consisted of tea and large quantities of long French
loaves of bread with butter, and tumbled me down
stairs out into the street, where I awoke.

Because of these late hours, also, I had my first jostle
with the law in the shape of the Cooper Institute police-
man. He was a "cross duck," stationed to keep order
in a building where there was never any disorder. For
some trifling reason we became bitter enemies. One
night about eleven o'clock, as I was going through the
long corridor with a German comrade, Gortelmeyer,
who with me had the fever for working late, we passed
by a room where a debating society was fiercely raging
on the usual topic of the negro and slavery. The meet-
ing had spilled over into the hall, and we were laughing
as we skirted it. Mr. Policeman told us to "Behave!"
I retorted, "Do so yourself!" whereupon he yelled a
"Clear out!" And then as I replied with "When I
please," he escorted me into a cell in the Mercer Street
Station, somewhere near Washington Place.

The horror of that night I shall never forget. To
those who do not know what imprisonment is, I cannot
possibly describe the form of misery that overwhelmed
me. To take the iron bars in my hands and feel that I
could not get out, was awful. Of course I did not
sleep a wink, but all night long lay watching men and
women of varying degrees of debasement, drunken,
snoring, and cursing, being placed in the other cells of
the row. When they removed me in the morning I
was covered with whitewash. Then Mr. "Sweetness
and Light" came for me again, and took me to the Jef-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ferson Market Police Court, traversing Washington
Square in the clear sunlight. At court I was herded in
a pen with thirty or forty of the riffraff of both sexes,
broken-headed, black-eyed, and stupefied with drink,
that had been centralized there. And in that pen they
held me until father arrived. Then I was bound over
in one dollar to keep the peace. I can remember both
the judge's holding up his hand in a gesture of depre-
cation upon the policeman's description of my utter
degeneracy, and the policeman's indignation at the
judge's leniency.

For that experience I could have murdered Mr.
Policeman, had opportunity offered, at any time dur-
ing the next twenty years. But my wish was never
realized, since about this time, which was shortly after
my beginning with LeBrethon, I went from the Cooper
Union to the National Academy of Design, the pic-
turesque Italian Doge's palace on the corner of Fourth
Avenue and Twenty-third Street. My father's store
adjoined it, he having moved there just before my ad-
mission. His place was torn down to give room for
the Lyceum Theater, and that, with the Academy of
Design, has in turn disappeared before the enormous
Metropolitan Life Insurance Building.

This studying in the Academy of nights was very
dreamlike, and there, in the surrounding quiet, broken
only by the little shrill whistle of an ill-burning gas-
jet, I first felt my god-like indifference and scorn of all
other would-be artists. Here, too, came my apprecia-
tion of the antique and my earliest attempt to draw

THE REMINISCENCES OF

from the nude with the advice of Mr. Huntington and
Mr. Leutze, the latter being the painter of the popular
"Washington Crossing the Delaware," and the "West-
ward the Star of Empire Takes its Way," on the walls
of the Capitol in Washington.

In thinking of these and other artistic notables of
that generation, I remember chiefly how during this
period when the Academy of Music in Fourteenth
Street was in the heyday of its popularity, on rare oc-
casions I indulged in the delights of listening, from the
top gallery, to Clara Louise Kellogg and Brignoli in
the, to me, divine Italian operas then in the full height
of their glory. Also I made a call on Launt Thomp-
son, whose beautiful busts of William Cullen Bryant
and Edwin Booth placed him, to my thinking, high
on the top of Mount Olympus. I remember only his
amiability during the visit. Two other lasting aesthetic
impressions of the time I received upon seeing Ward's
"Indian Hunter" in plaster in the back of some picture
store on Broadway, and Gerome's painting of "The
Death of Caesar," exhibited in the window of Goupil's,
then on the northeast corner of Tenth Street and
Broadway, the location now occupied by Wanamaker.

While with LeBrethon, too, I underwent a memo-
rable and weird experience, that of the Draft Riots.
Leaving my work because LeBrethon, in some excite-
ment, had told me to go home one afternoon at an early
hour, I noticed the strange appearance of the abso-
lutely deserted streets; no omnibuses on Broadway,
which was always crowded at that hour, and not a soul,

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

wagon, car, or anything that seemed alive on Third
Avenue as I turned into it. A moment later men
with guns, running in the distance, gave the only signs
that the city was not dead. Then I vividly recollect
my pounding upstairs, and my mother taking me wildly
into her arms. She had been in a paroxysm of fear as
to what had become of me, the others of the brood al-
ready resting safe at home. Later on, as the storm
lessened, it was strange to see two cannon posted in
Twenty-first Street at the corner of Gramercy Park,
pointing due east in the direction of the rioters.

Then came the news of Lincoln's assassination. I
recall father and mother weeping, as he read of it to
us in the morning at breakfast, before starting for
work. Later, after joining the interminable line that
formed somewhere down Chatham Street and led up
by the bier at the head of the staircase, I saw Lincoln
lying in state in the City Hall, and I went back to the
end of the line to look at him again. This completed
my vision of the big man, though the funeral, which I
viewed from the roof of the old Wallack's Theater on
Broome Street, deepened the profound solemnity of
my impression, as I noticed every one uncover while
the funeral car went by. Finally the boyish "watching
out" among the crowds, to try and detect anybody who
looked like the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, who
seemed the perfection of manly beauty in his pictures,
closes my impressions of that extraordinary period.

In one other direction, however, was the steadiness
of my work with LeBrethon diversified. I had two

THE REMINISCENCES OF

more love affairs, one with Mary F , who worked

in the button factory upstairs, and the other with a
most scrumptious Irish girl in the employ of the house-
keeper. The latter also appeared the most beautiful
girl in the world, and a luscious peach is as worthy a
comparison as I can make of her beauty, after all these
years.

Of Mary F I was terribly afraid. However, I

took her to see "Never Too Late to Mend," and that,
with the two plates of ice-cream that followed, made a
big hole in my weekly income. I also cut a cameo, and,
for sixteen dollars, had a mounting made for it by some
workmen I knew in Tiffany's. Then the night before
I sailed for Europe I called at her house, — she lived
over a grocery store; grocery stores seem to pervade
events in this part of my life, — and, suddenly present-
ing her with the box containing the pin, I told her that
I was going away the next day, said good-by, shook
hands, and there was an end to that.

This first trip to Europe, which was another turn-
ing-point in my life, came about when, at the beginning
of the year 1867, Father asked me if I would like to
see the coming Paris Exposition. To my enthusiastic
assent he said, "We will arrange that," since I had, of
course, been giving my wages, which were ample for
a boy of that age at that time, to help the running of
the family.

Between that date and the moment upon which my
steamer sailed, three incidents alone hold their place in
my memory. The first of them concerns one of the

HOUSE ON KOI Kill AVKNI'K, NEAR TIIK COKSKH <)K IWKNTY llllltl) SIKI I I,
NEW YORK, WHERE BERNARD SAINT (iAlDI AS HAD HIS SIMM- ST»UU

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

large and hilarious dinners interspersed through our
lives which, on this occasion, father planned in honor
of my departure. The second deals with another ban-
quet furnished by good-hearted LeBrethon the night
before I left, at which, as I picked up my napkin, I
found under the plate one hundred francs in gold,
"To pay for a trip to father's village in France." But
most of all I recall how, during those last nights and
Sunday, I made a bust of father and a drawing of
mother. The latter, being perhaps the possession I
treasured most in the world, was destroyed in the fire
that a year ago burnt down my studio.

Ill

THE BEAUX ARTS

1867-1869

The New York Art of Saint-Gaudens' Boyhood — Optimism — Lupi,
the Cameo Cutter — Paris — French Relatives — Poverty and many
Lodgings — Modeling at the Petite £cole — "The Marseillaise" in
English — Three Friendships — Amusements and Activities — Walk-
ing Trips — The Tramp through the Juras.

BY way of a preface to the previous chapter I at-
tempted to describe the artistic conditions in Amer-
ica when Augustus Saint-Gaudens was brought here
in 1848. In that chapter also my father dwelt upon his earli-
est efforts, which covered the years before his trip abroad.
From his description it can be seen how rapidly American art
was advancing beyond the state of affairs first mentioned; a
school in the Cooper Institute as well as the National Acad-
emy of Design, Huntington and Leutze as painters, Launt
Thompson and J. Q. A. Ward as sculptors of reputation, all
this had arisen in the ensuing nineteen years.

Nevertheless, the opportunities for an artistic education
still appeared bitterly circumscribed. The first equestrian
statue in America, Jackson by Clark Mills, in Washington,
was not unveiled until 1853, just fifty years before my father's
Sherman was erected in New York. Greenough, Crawford, and
Powers still stood as the masters. To produce any real art it
is as needful that the creator have something to say as that
he be able to say it. Yet, possibly excepting Greenough, these
earlier sculptors remained mostly craftsmen rather than think-
ers. With the passing of the influence of this group, however,
competent workmanship and national thought began to show

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

themselves. More and more did the sculptors return home
to their tasks after they had learned all that Europe could
profitably give them. Once back, they deserted their brothers
overseas in their homage to the Greeks and Romans in order
to strive with their own sculptural translation of American
life. What was real, what was vital crept from beneath their
hands while classic notions faded into the past. Then the
blast of the Civil War swept over the land. None could live
in such days unstirred by new emotions. None with the power
to express such emotions could any longer feel timidity in
putting forth their expressions. Within those four years
captive slaves, wounded warriors vanished. In their place
came new heroes to glorify, men of flesh and blood at the
sight of whom the sculptors themselves had thrilled.

As this wave gathered strength eight fresh names appeared,
the names which dominated sculptural circles during the final
years of Saint-Gaudens' New York adolescence. They were
Henry Kirke Brown, Erastus D. Palmer, William Wetmore
Story, Thomas Ball, Launt Thompson, Randolph and John
Rogers, and J. Q. A. Ward.

Brown's best work alone antedated the Civil War. It was
his Washington, begun one month after the unveiling of Mills*
General Jackson and erected in New York in 1856. Yet no
two objects could be further from one another in merit than
these equestrian monuments. Brown placed before his pub-
lic a group dignified, truthful, potent; not only the best art
of its own time, but strong sculpture for any generation.

Palmer follows in company with Brown, a vivid contrast
to William Wetmore Story, his contemporary. For while
Palmer never obtained an opportunity to study abroad, and
showed scant patience with diluted imitations of Roman copies
of Greek ideas, Story remained in Rome almost his whole life,
a close follower of Canova's art. Palmer's greatest success,
his "White Captive," set before the world in 1858, still remains
one of the most naively charming nudes in American art ; and

THE REMINISCENCES OF

what is more, for long after nothing from Europe appeared
before us so sympathetically human. Story's chief work came
four years later, "Cleopatra" it was called, and developed in a
wholly cold and opposite vein.

Thomas Ball stood between the two men, notable chiefly
for his " Washington," erected in 1864 in the public gardens
in Boston, a statue of dignified, conscientious workmanship.
With him should be mentioned Launt Thompson, of whom my
father has already spoken, and whose reputation in these
years rested solely on his busts; Randolph Rogers, with two
important statues of Lincoln and Seward; and John Rogers,
remembered to this day for his "groups."

J. Q. A. Ward, though the youngest, I have purposely left
to the last, since the public to-day recognizes him as a mod-
ern in every sense of the word. Ward, indeed, was only twelve
years my father's senior; but those twelve years made his age
twenty-seven when his "Indian Hunter" came before the pub-
lic and Saint-Gaudens' youthful admiration. Truly the
group remains a work which justifies the instant attention
given it, vividly convincing, more to be acknowledged than any
ideal figure conceived up to that time, or long after it.

It can be seen then that, through this second period, sculp-
ture had at last earned its right to exist as more than an
afterthought of painting. Also the general spirit of those
years had swung nearer the monumental field of art than the
pictorial one. The deep emotions of the war were fitter for
expression in stone or bronze than on canvas. Nevertheless
the stir of those days brought with it an indirect effect on the
latter art. For interest could not be aroused in the one
division without showing its influence in the other until the
prosperity of painting became no longer open to question.
The population was increasing faster than its demands could
be satisfied in the day of undeveloped photography, inane
wood cuts, and an absolute lack of art magazines as we un-
derstand them. Moreover, the painters, like the sculptors,

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

were the travelers, the cultured group in the busy trade city.
They formed the circle to which the merchant, with even the
slightest thought for the aesthetic sides of life, might turn
of an afternoon for an hour or two of surreptitious education.

The chief movement so fostered among these artists was
that of landscape painting. A. B. Durand and Thomas Cole
were really the pioneers, but those who won a more established
place for themselves were William Bradford, Samuel Coleman,
William T. Richards, Homer D. Martin and Thomas Moran.
For the most part they, and many of those who joined with
them, formed what is now known as the Hudson River School.
They believed in the out of doors, in nature, in American na-
ture. All of them studied in Europe, yet most of them were
mature before they went abroad, were men who, by that time,
understood their own desires and what they needed to satisfy
them. Therefore when, having acquired the technique they
needed, they returned to this their land, they devoted their
lives to expressing what they considered the keynote of this
nation's character, its landscapes. Patriotism, at last, was
in their very bones, a true patriotism which drove them forth
with the explorers and naturalists to return with their repro-
ductions of the beauties of their mother country.

Such, then, was the spirit of art in the United States at the
time my father reached his nineteenth year and turned to
Europe for study. At first glance it might be thought that,
if all this activity was aroused, there surely could be no vital
need for Saint-Gaudens to leave this land at such an age and
at the cost of such sacrifices in order to make sufficient prog-
ress. But on a little consideration it becomes obvious that,
though there were then so many who were learning, as yet no
capable men had arrived at that stage where they either cared
to teach, or were able to do so. Consequently, unless a youth
was willing to take his chances at learning hit or miss, which
was never the philosophy of my father's studious mind, Eu-
rope alone offered any proper training. It should be noticed,

THE REMINISCENCES OF

also, that in going to France for his earliest instruction
Saint-Gaudens followed a program quite different from that
of the usual run of student sculptors. I do not believe that
his action was thought out at the time. He visited Paris both
because of the exhibition there, which he has mentioned, be-
cause he had relatives in that land, and because his father was
a Frenchman. But his unconscious choice proved his salvation.
Paris was a vitalizing influence where Rome would have been a
deadening one, since it is not hard to fancy what an unfortu-
nate distortion Rome might have given him in those younger
days. Even later, when he studied there, the tendencies of
the "Eternal City" acquired a prompt grip upon the indi-
viduality of his conceptions which luckily his strength in his
craft, manifest by then, allowed him to cast aside.

In the reminiscences that follow, my father turns to his
attempt to support himself while studying art in Paris. His
account, however, requires a foreword; since, while he gives
some description of the straits he was put to, it is necessary
to remember the optimism of his nature to realize beneath
his words the depths of his poverty. This cheerful facing
of hard times in the cause of art was consistent through all
his student days. Indeed he ever insisted that the manner in
which to meet material difficulties was with a sense of their small
importance compared to the outcome. "Try not to dwell on
the ugly side of things," he would say. "Make the best of
everything. Of course discontent is what creates progress,
but harping on conditions is unwise. If it is possible, I would
grin at troubles. There is no doubt about that. Grin!"

The certainty that in this early time he practised what later
he preached lies in the fact that every friend testifies of him
as a happy youth. Mr. Thomas Moore, who knew him in
the New York student days, has written: "I often think
of the old times when we four, Gus, Herzog, Gortelmeyer,
and myself, after class hours at the Cooper Institute on
Saturday nights, took long walks arm in arm to Central

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Park shouting airs from 'Martha,' the Marseillaise, and the
like, in which Gus was always the leader with his voice and
magnetic presence." Of the period now especially to be dealt
with, M. Alfred Gamier has said: "In Jouffroy's class, when
Gus became a senior, he was one of the most turbulent of the
lot, singing and whistling to split your ears. All of which
did not hinder him from working with his whole soul and think-
ing of the future."

Before recurrence to my father's text I should mention also
the kind attitude of the third cameo-cutter for whom he worked,
M. Lupi, a man who, realizing the worth of Saint-Gaudens'
nature, gave every possible effort to aid in the young man's
advancement. The most constantly repeated of his employ-
er's precepts needs a reference here, since this advice, my
father ever after insisted, contributed as much as anything
else to his later success in relief modeling.

"Beware of the 'boule de suif !' " Lupi would say.

"Boule de suif" is translated as a "drop of grease." What
Lupi meant by his warning was that the sculptor should be
certain to give character to the outlines of relief surfaces by
a method of accenting which involved a technical principle,
elementary, but seldom practised.

The reminiscences now take up these early Paris days:

Father paid for my passage abroad, and gave me
one hundred dollars which he had saved out of my
wages. In February, 1867, I sailed for Europe on
The City of Boston which was subsequently lost at
sea. This is not one of my parent's gasconades, my
experience differing from his in that I did not intend
to sail on The City of Boston on the trip when she
disappeared. At that time I was just nineteen. I
went over in the steerage, where I was sicker than a

THE REMINISCENCES OF

regiment of dogs. The experience Was just as horri-
ble as the night in the cell only more prolonged.
Somehow or other I got from Liverpool to Paris. I
can recall nothing but the cursed misery of crossing the
channel from Folkestone to Dieppe.

The arrival in Paris, however, was extraordinarily
impressive. I walked with my heavy carpet bag from
the Gare du Havre down to the Place de la Concorde,
where I stood bewildered with the lights of that square
and of the Avenue des Champs ^lysees bursting upon
me. Between the glory of it all and the terrible
weight of the bag, which increased as I made my way
up the interminable Avenue des Champs £lysees to
the Arc de Triomphe, I arrived in a mixed state of
collapse and enthusiasm where my uncle Francois
Saint- Gaudens lived on the Avenue de la Grand-
Armee. Here I was welcomed, with thorough-going
French emotion for the strange "Cousin d'Amerique,"
by my uncle, a nervous man who had been a great gym-
nast in his youth, and by his two daughters, Pauline
and Clorinda. Francois was what the French call an
"entrepreneur de demolition," with his affairs in an
ugly condition, never having recovered from some bad
contracts for the removal of public buildings.

For the most part during my stay, however, I saw
my relatives only occasionally. My uncle, who was in
bad straits, I left as soon as my hundred dollars had
gone through his fingers. Besides, I became thor-
oughly engrossed in my work and they were far off.
Now and then, however, I visited one of these cousins

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

who had married a wealthy iron-master and lived at a
place called Lieusaint, a short distance from the scene of
the robbery of the Lyons Mail, an event which has been
dramatized with tremendous success in French, trans-
lated and acted, as we all know, in a wonderful way by
Sir Henry Irving. But these trips to the country
bored me beyond measure and in consequence were few,
although with this cousin I had perhaps more in com-
mon than with any other member of the family. Her
husband, M. Maritz, came from Strasburg, being a
nephew of a French General of Engineers who mar-
ried the other sister.

A day or two after my arrival I went about in
search of employment at cameo cutting and of admis-
sion to the School of Fine Arts. The cameo cutting
I obtained at once from an Italian, Lupi, who lived in
the Rue des Trois Freres in the picturesque quarter
near the top of Montmartre. When I left my uncle's
house I lived first in a room adjoining Lupi's, attend-
ing a modeling school in the mornings and nights, and
supporting myself on what I earned by the cameos I
cut in the afternoon. But I worked so much at the
school and so little at the cameos that I became miser-
ably poor, barely earning enough for my living.

As far as I can recall there was nothing here of
amorous adventure, other than a letter from Mary
F asking me whether I still meant to "keep com-
pany" with her. I fear that the new life made me for-
get to reply to this note, for I was busy moving from
place to place, to cheaper and cheaper lodgings. As

THE REMINISCENCES OF

the journey twice a day to my school from Montmartre,
ten miles in all, became very fatiguing, I took a room in
the Rue Jacob in the Latin Quarter quite near the
school. From the Latin Quarter I went to some dis-
tant street in the Vaugirard Quarter, where I stayed
with the son of an old shoemaking friend of my father's.
After that I lived elsewhere, I have forgotten upon
what street, in the same Quarter. From the Vaugirard
Quarter I moved to Truman Bartlett's studio near the
Arc de Triomphe, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.
What stands out in my memory of this time is the
reading of Plutarch's Lives, as I walked each morning
down the Champs ^lysees from the Arc de Triomphe
to the School of Fine Arts. The things he wrote of
Germanicus and of the beauty of his character caused
me to make a great resolve to be the most lovable man
that ever was. Next, with an old-time Cooper Union
chum, I took my belongings over to the very dirty,
though interesting St. Jacques Quarter. This place
I found drenched with the odor from the perfume man-
ufactory downstairs. Accordingly, in process of time,
I and my friend Herzog occupied two small bedrooms
in the attic of a fine apartment-house opposite the Col-
lege of France.

While I am on the subject of this house I must tell
of the moving there from the St. Jacques Quarter.
This transfer we made by hiring a hand-cart for five
cents an hour, in which we stowed Herzog's and my
possessions. Our treasures consisted of two cot beds,
two pitchers, two basins, a lot of books and a modeling

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

stand, besides some clothes and bedding. Limited as
they were, they piled up more than the cart could con-
veniently carry. So, when we dragged it through the
streets with the aid of a third friend, we lost a good
quarter of them, in spite of the fact that one of us ran
behind to gather the driblets that were dropped along
the road. Another reason why this method of trans-
portation failed was that, in order to conceal the Spar-
tan simplicity of our household, we foxily undertook
our moving in the night.

Here in our latest abode, in addition to our other
troubles, I attempted for some little time to give sleep-
ing space to an enthusiastic friend. He was a young
Englishman of French origin, George Thierry, the son
of a wealthy shoe-dealer. He had run away from home
because his father wished him to declare himself a
French citizen and to submit to the French conscrip-
tion. He had no money and led a miserable dog's
life in Paris. When he started from his father's he
had purchased a handsome rifle, powder, and shot, his
idea being that he would go to Africa and hunt lions,
but the merciless and suspicious French Custom House
took away his shooting material and his romance. By
the time I knew him he was in a miserable condition.

This my first attempt at hospitality did not last long,
however. At the outset we attempted to sleep to-
gether on my cot which measured two and one-half
feet across. In order not to spill over on the sides we
had to stick to one another as tight as two spoons. To
save space Thierry lay with his head on my arm. In

THE REMINISCENCES OF

the middle of the night we turned over and I put my
head on his arm. This left us the next morning in a
condition which forbade a repetition of the experiment.
I then laid the mattress on the floor for him, while I
slept on the canvas bottom of the bed. But I suffered
so with cold coming from below, notwithstanding the
fact that I dragged all my clothes over me from the
rack at my feet, that even this arrangement had to be
abandoned.

To turn now to my studies, my entrance into the
Beaux Arts I found a formidable business. But after
much running around, I saw at last M. Guillaume, the
Director of the School of Fine Arts, who, to my think-
ing, received me with unusual affability for so wonder-
ful a man. I recall his smile as I told him that I ex-
pected to learn sculpture during the nine months I
proposed to remain in Paris, the limit to which I had
expected my fortune of one hundred dollars would ex-
tend. From him I gathered that I could enter only
through the formal application of the American Minis-
ter. I thereupon called on Mr. Washburne, then oc-
cupying that post. He also seemed kind, smiled as I
related my little story, and said that I would be in-
formed when the application had been accepted. This
notification I received exactly nine months after hand-
ing it in.

In the meantime, fortunately, I not only earned a
good living by cutting cameos, but also entered a
smaller school, though an excellent one, in the Rue de
l'J^cole de Medecine, and began my Parisian studies,

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

probably in March or April, 1868. We worked in a
stuffy, overcrowded, absolutely unventilated theater,
with two rows of students, perhaps twenty-five in each
row, seated in a semicircle before the model who stood
against the wall. Behind those who drew were about
fifteen sculptors and I look back with admiration upon
the powers of youth to live, work, and be joyful in an
atmosphere that must have been almost asphyxiating.
Here I modeled my first figures from the nude, and
laid an excellent foundation for the future.

The work in the little "liicole de Medecine," as they
called it, was enlivened by many amusing incidents, the
result of the radical difference in the characters of the
two professors who taught, one on Wednesdays and
the other on Saturdays. Jacquot, a short, loud-spoken,
good-natured professor came on Wednesday. He
was entirely democratic, saying the most amusing
things to the pupils, in which exuberant conversation
he let drops of saliva fly from his mouth into his lis-
teners' faces. Although merry and good-hearted, he
was a terror, from the fact that he indicated our errors
with very thick charcoal; so to those of us who had
learned to work rather delicately and firmly his marks
were only bearable because of the jollity with which
he made them. While he taught, the boys raised as
much noise as the uniformed and ill-natured "gardien"
at the doorway would permit.

On Saturdays Laemelin criticized, a man of a to-
tally different type. When he appeared, the class re-
mained silent. He was austere, taking the greatest

THE REMINISCENCES OF

care to apply his suggestions with light touches, always
certain and correct. Jacquot talked with a strange
kind of mixed-up lisp as if he had a marble in his
mouth, whereas Laemelin spoke with a deliberate nasal
tone. Jacquot maintained that you must draw freely
and with no fear of the paper, while Laemelin' s advice
was to the effect that you should draw lightly, care-
fully, and firmly, and not with sloppiness as do those
who pretend to work with vigor. The result of this
weekly divergence of views upon the boys can be im-
agined.

One Saturday evening Laemelin came as usual and
began criticizing in his peaceful way. He was half
around the lower tier, and the customary quiet pre-
vailed in his presence, When a noise was heard in the
corridor. To our surprise and delight, Jacquot tum-
bled in, sat down, and proceeded to correct the boys
who had already been corrected by Laemelin. Thor-
oughly absorbed in what he was doing, Laemelin did
not observe Jacquot's entrance, and only became aware
that something unusual was going on by the uproar
Jacquot made and by the undertone of confusion the
students slyly added.

"Well, well, my boy, let us shee! Let us shee!"
said Jacquot, the particles of saliva being shot over
the drawings. "Let us shee, um-m-m! Well, your
head's too big, too big. Your legsh are too short."
Then bang! bang! would come the black marks over the
drawing. "There you are! Fixsh that, my boy,
fixsh that!"

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Laemelin by this time had raised his head and, look-
ing over his spectacles in the direction of the noise, had
uttered a long "Sh-h-h!" Jacquot, making his own
disturbance, did not hear Laemelin. Neither saw the
other in their deep absorption. Therefore the second
time Laemelin added to his "Sh-h-h!" a "What is the
trouble? Are you ever going to stop that noise over
there?"

"Whatsh that? Whatsh that?" spat Jacquot.
"Whatsh the matter anyway?"

Laemelin, not recognizing Jacquot, continued:
"You 're making an awful lot of noise over there. Be-
have yourself!"

Jacquot looked up. "Whatsh that? Whatsh that?
Why, ish that you, Laemelin? Hello! Why, what
day ish this?"

"To-day is Saturday," drawled Laemelin, slowly
and emphatically.

"Mon Dieu! Ish that so! I thought it wash Wed-
nesday. Isn't that funny? Thunder, isn't that
funny!" Jacquot roared.

By this time he was so amused at the incident that
his voice had become a shout. The pupils naturally
joined in until the disturbance reached such a pitch that
the "gardien" ejected a number into the night.
Finally Jacquot left in a storm of sputtering and hilar-
ity, and the theater resumed its placid and serene quiet.

Any artist tends to make his drawings of a nude re-
semble his own figure, and our friend Jacquot was
twisted, distorted, and gnarled in every member of his

THE REMINISCENCES OF

body, but vigorously, like a great root. In especial
he must have had the most remarkably knotty thighs;
for, though I have spoken of the energy of his correc-
tions, I could not attempt to describe his particularly
persistent criticism that the thighs of the drawings of
the pupils were never big enough. To overcome this
I one day made the thighs on my study enormously
large.

"Very good, very good, very good, my boy!" he said
in his criticism, turning around to look at me. Then
he slowly surveyed the model over his spectacles.
"But perhapsh I would add just a little bit on the
thighs, eh?" And here fell his merciless marks!

I repeated this at his next visit, drawing my thighs
in still more exaggeration. He was high and loud
and unusually sputtering in his praise at this, and, af-
ter some minor remarks, was for getting up, when I
said:

"M. Jacquot, do you think that I have the thighs
big enough?"

"Yesh. Yesh." Then he hesitated and looked at
the model. "Sthill, perhaps I would add justh a
shade, justh a shade, more." And again came his in-
evitable marks.

Finally on the third occasion, when I had the thighs
resembling balloons, he repeated the enthusiastic ap-
proval of the previous visit, and I impertinently re-
peated my question as to their size. He surveyed the
drawing, and then, evidently recollecting what had
passed before, although it had been dispersed over

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

three weeks, turned to me with a strange look in his
wide-spread, crooked, china eyes and said:

"It sheems to me you are trying to make a damned
fool of me!"

All this, of course, added to the delight of the sur-
rounding scamps, for he delivered his remark in such
a way that it was I who found myself in the position of
the "damned fool."

I have stated his name as Jacquot. I am not certain
of that. It might have been Durant, or Martin. But
if it was not Jacquot it ought to have been, and in
calling him that I give the truer impression. It cer-
tainly describes his personality better than do the other
titles.

In these surroundings, then, I prospered until at
last I was awarded the first prize, and, subsequently,
with a lot of other successful youths, received, With the
medal, a crown of laurel, presented by a M. de
Nieuquerque, a large man, probably Master of Fine
Arts, who was much in favor at the Tuileries.

At this time also, at the end of these nine months of
the Petite ficole, I felt much impressed by the receipt
of a large envelope with the United States seal on it,
notifying me of my admission to the Beaux Arts.
This was a great joy. My first step then was to ob-
tain the authorization from the Master whose atelier I
wished to enter. I followed the advice of a boy, Al-
bert Dammouse, since then one of the leading ceram-
ists of France, a man of exquisite taste, whose friend-
ship I had made in the little £cole de Mcdecinc;

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and selected Jouffroy both because Dammouse had a
friend with that master and because at that time Jouf-
froy's atelier was the triumphant one of the Beaux
Arts, his class capturing, as a rule, most of the prizes.
From there Barrias had received his Prize of Rome
three years before I arrived, Falguiere two years be-
fore, and Mercie the year after.

Jouffroy was tall, thin, dark, wiry, with little, intel-
ligent black eyes and a queer face in profile, his fore-
head and nose descending in a straight line from the
roots of his hair to within an inch of the end of the
nose, which suddenly became round and red and pim-
ply— though the ball was discreet in size; it would
have been in bad taste had it been larger. He also
had stringy hair and a nasal voice. He made his criti-
cism in a low, drawling tone, nine-tenths of the time in
a perfunctory way, looking in an entirely different di-
rection from the model and from the study. Occa-
sionally he worked on the figures in a strange fashion,
his right hand pawing the clay, while in his left he held
a little wad of bread which he constantly rolled. He
was much in vogue at the Tuileries at that time, al-
though he had achieved his distinction some ten or fif-
teen years before my arrival by one of the master-
pieces of French sculpture, — and that is saying a good
deal, — called "The Secret of Venus." It is the figure
of a young girl standing on tiptoe, whispering into the
ear of a Hermes. This remarkably beautiful nude he
modeled in the classical direction then prevailing, but
with such distinction, reserve, and personality that the

STUDIES OF DRAPERY AND A COMPOSITION FROM THE STUDENT SKETCH-
BOOK OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

He was always extremely fond of a cowled head

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

affectation added to its charm instead of detracting
therefrom. I know nothing of his other sculpture, ex-
cept the large decorative groups on each side of the
arches at the entrance of the Place du Carrousel, as
approached from the river Seine, and one of the four
groups in front of the Grand Opera. They are
neither one thing nor the other.

To Jouffroy, therefore, I brought my drawings.
In two days I was admitted and immediately plunged
into work, being the only American in the class, though
Olin Warner followed me some six months later. It
subsequently became the atelier where most of the
Americans studied, under the teachings of Falguiere
after the death of Jouffroy and under Mercie after
the death of Falguiere. I was by no means a bril-
liant pupil, though the steadiness of Jouffroy 's compli-
ments consoled me for my inevitable failures in direct
competition. These failures did not for a moment dis-
courage me, however, or create any doubts in my mind
as to my assured superiority. Doubts have come
later in life, and in such full measure that I have abun-
dantly atoned for my youthful presumption and
vanity.

Mercie, of whom I have spoken, entered the atelier
at the same time I did and his money and mine were
united for the benefit of the students in the customary
grand spree. In the midst of the uproar I was asked
to sing, and created a furore of enthusiasm by giving
the Marseillaise in English. The song they made me
repeat again and again, encouraging me by praise of

THE REMINISCENCES OF

my voice, which in my idiotic vanity I imagined to be
as beautiful as they said. I proved an easy victim.
The following day they told me that the noise, which
rarely ceased in the atelier, would stop the moment
the massier, the President and Treasurer of the class,
entered the studio, because he was a person of im-
portance and had to be treated with respect. That,
of course, was all nonsense, as he was simply one of the
pupils a little older than the rest. But on his arrival
there fell a hush, and presently certain of the boys
came over to me like a deputation, saying that the
massier wished me to sing the Marseillaise in English.
I refused with becoming modesty and much fright.
They retired with my message, but soon came back to
me with another from him insisting on the song, as he
had heard that I had "a wonderful voice." I again re-
fused. The third time they explained that the order
was imperative and that if I did not obey I would regret
it. I immediately began and bawled away at the top
of my lungs, to hysterical applause. They kept this
up every day, for so long a time that I am ashamed to
recall it, before I realized that they were making fun of
me. That was why I was not made to undress, or to
be painted nude, or to undergo any of the numerous
ignominies that the poor beginner frequently endures.
I was finally admitted to full membership and teased
no more, becoming in my turn one of the most boister-
ous of the students.

While I was at JoufFroy's I formed three of my
greatest friendships; one was for Alfred Gamier, an-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

other for Paul Bion, a long, thin, intellectual young fel-
low who had been brought up piously, and who had
been most shamefully hazed on entering the school.
He possessed a nobility of character unusual in such
surroundings. Perhaps I was a shade less brutal than
the others, and for that reason we became friends.
Our care for each other continued without break or
quarrel to the day of his death, thirty years afterwards.
The third friendship I made was with a Portuguese,
Soares dos Reis. He, too, was long, dark, and thin, of
an effeminate nature, inclined to melancholy, the kind-
est man in the world. He committed suicide in Portu-
gal some fifteen years later, through marital troubles.
He had an exquisite talent and I shall speak more of
him later on.

Although this was certainly a very important part
of my existence, when I come to it I do not seem to be
able to recall incidents as I did of an earlier period,
nor do I remember appreciating seriously any of the
things that ought to be appreciated. My life in the
atelier was the regular life of a student, with most of
its enthusiasms and disheartenings. But my ambition
was of such a soaring nature, and I was so tremen-
dously austere, that I had the deepest scorn for the
ordinary amusements of the light operas, balls, and
what not and I felt a Spartan-like superiority in my
disdain for the famous Schneider in Offenbach's pro-
ductions which had a tremendous success at that time.
I have since entirely changed my point of view and
regret nothing more than that I missed the plays which

THE REMINISCENCES OF

have become classic, and which were then done in a
way that probably will not be repeated.

On the other hand my profundity allowed me to go
to the Sunday Classical Concerts at the Cirque
d'Hiver on the Boulevard which I attended with great
regularity. There are seven or eight such concerts
now, I am told, whereas at that time there was but one,
the leader of which was M. Pasdeloup. I heard all his
good music and was a witness of the Sunday battle
when he attempted to introduce Wagner to the French
audiences, a large part of whom came with the delib-
erate intention of suppressing and howling down the
"Flying Dutchman," one of the principal pieces on
the program. In France, the whistle is the sign of
derogation and disapproval, and the spectators brought
numbers of them. As soon as the leader raised his
arm for the first bars of the music, the storm com-
menced. It was so great that it was impossible to
hear the musicians. We could see the fiddlers fiddling
away at a tremendous rate and evidently making a
lot of noise, but in the overpowering uproar of the
audience it seemed like a dumb show. At last Pasde-
loup gave it up. Then he began again. The uproar
was repeated. After this second attempt he turned to
the audience, — he was a short, chubby man, — and said
that this piece was on the program, that those who
disliked it had not been forced to come and could have
remained away if it was distasteful, that therefore he
was going to play it right through, regardless of any
antagonistic demonstration, and that if they did not

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

wish to hear it they had better go out at once. He
began again and the uproar and the dumb show were
repeated. Now, however, the friends of Wagner
added to the tumult by constant applause, until little
by little the anti-Wagnerites gave way and the last
half was heard in comparative order.

At this time I was active beyond measure. After
drawing-school at night I went to a gymnasium where
I exercised more violently than the others, and where I
took colder douches. Also I constantly visited the
swimming baths, where I remained longer than my
friends. Now, too, I began to make trips into the coun-
try with Dammouse and Gamier. But as I recall
them, rather than a wild love of Nature, these were the
unconscious expenditures of superabundant energy
wherein the number of kilometers covered furnished
the principal pleasure. Two excursions stand out con-
spicuously. One was a walk from Paris to St. Valery,
and from there along the coast to Dieppe, and back in
the cars. Here was recalled that sense of delight at
seeing hill beyond hill that came to me on Staten Is-
land.

Another trip which we took to Switzerland on an
absurdly small sum, one hundred to one hundred and
fifty francs, had for me an interesting, amusing, pain-
ful, and sensational beginning. It took place while,
with my friend Herzog, I occupied that attic opposite
the College of France. The morning I started from my
sixth floor I shouldered my heavy knapsack with a tin
drinking-cup attached, and laced up my heavy shoes

THE REMINISCENCES OF

protected with smooth hob-nails. The floors of the
staircase were, as those familiar with that class of house
in Paris know, thoroughly waxed, polished, and slip-
pery. So my feet went out from under me on the top
step of the top floor, and I jangled down on a part of
my body not intended for locomotion, with a tremen-
dous clatter of the cup and other paraphernalia. The
next flight I approached with caution, but ineffectu-
ally, and the riotous descent was repeated. Again on
the stairs below I resumed my unconventional slide, un-
til persons rushed out on the landings from their
apartments, and servant girls stuck their heads from
the kitchens upon the resounding court in wonder and
alarm at what was taking place.

From that scene the three of us went on one of those
awful excursion trains as far as Strasburg. Then we
walked to Basel in Switzerland and along under the
Jura mountains to a point above Coppet. It was
here, after a ferocious climb up some almost inaccessi-
ble hill, that the stupendous view of the Alps burst
upon us, recalling again the enchantment of my first
experience of nature when I was thirteen, but not
equaling it. From Coppet we went along Lake Gen-
eva to the Chateau Chillon at the end of the Lake,
walked to the Chamounix Valley, climbed Mont Blanc
as far as the Montanvert, thence returned on foot in a
drenching rain-storm to Geneva, and finally reached
Paris with a franc each in our pockets.

In November, 1907, M. Gamier wrote to Mr. Louis Saint-
Gaudens a long letter describing his intimate acquaintance

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

with my father at the time. His account is so charmingly
vivid and true that I am only too glad of the opportunity to
translate it here, almost in its entirety:

". . . It was at the end of the year 1868 or the begin-
ning of the year 1869 that I first knew Augustus. I had
heard through a cameo engraver that an American, a pupil
of Avet's, had arrived in Paris, with the intention of entering
the Beaux Arts School, where I was already. I think that
they had told me his name. Anyhow a few days afterwards,
upon going in the evening to a little gymnasium which I fre-
quented in a street near the Pantheon, I saw a young man
who for some reason or other seemed to me to be the Amer-
ican in question.

"What was it attracted me to him? Was it his face? Was
it his eyes, so frank, so candid? Yes, perhaps it was his eyes.
But I speak of course of his eyes of twenty years. You do
not remember them as I do, for I must explain that a few
years later they entirely changed. At this earlier period Gus
felt that the uncertainty of the morrow had vanished, that
he was about to be able to earn his living easily, that his grow-
ing talent had begun to be known. Later a tranquillity re-
placed his cheerfulness. When the one came the other went
away, and the candid look in his eye disappeared. By that
time he had seen life and discovered its fickleness. He told
me that either you or he once said, upon meeting a young dog
who gazed at you with frankness and innocence: 'There is
another who wishes to be deluded.' Gus, in the beginning so
open-minded and ingenuous, soon learned that life was de-
ceitful.

"The day after our meeting, Sunday morning, I went for
a walk before lunch in spite of rainy, foggy weather. Many
persons then were in the habit of going, out of curiosity, to
look at the show-windows of a celebrated picture dealer of
the time, named d'Angleterre, who lived at the corner of Rue
de Seine and another little street which entered it, forming a

THE REMINISCENCES OF

sharp angle. . . . After having turned into this quar-
ter, very much changed since then, I naturally strolled towards
d'Angleterre's. There I saw my American. I went up to
him and spoke, perhaps with a little impertinence. To all
of my advances he answered only indifferently, making me feel
that I would do him a very sensible pleasure if I left him
alone. But in spite of his unwillingness, when he turned from
the show-windows without saying either 'Good-day' or 'Good-
night,' I remained beside him, and, to my own surprise, walked
along with him under the rain which fell heavily, and con-
tinued a one-sided conversation. In such a manner we went
around all the little streets of that region, he, no doubt, wish-
ing to have me leave him; until at last he arrived in the Rue
Jacob, where, coming before a house, he saluted me coolly,
saying that he was now home, and disappeared. . . .

"On the next occasion in the gymnasium, however, my demon
got hold of me still more strongly and, in spite of efforts
to the contrary, I stayed with Gus until I ridiculed myself.
Finally, after a few more such evenings, we wrestled with our
bodies all naked except for a pair of trunks and the slippers
on our feet. Then after having thrown each other a dozen
times into the black sawdust — you can imagine how we looked
with all that sawdust stuck by the sweat to our faces and to
our bodies — we rushed to the shower-baths, and the bitter cold
water which came from the reservoirs placed in the open lofts
ran over us, and a fog-like vapor rose from our skins till the
gas was dimmed. Augustus was crazy about wrestling. Ah,
the good old times ! After we had plentifully rolled each other
around and crushed each other's skin, after the sweat of one
had run down with the sweat of the other, the ice was finally
broken. My good star had well guided me that morning
when, in spite of his unwillingness, I forced Gus to submit to
my presence in the rain as far as his door. I had met my true
friend, the one I have always held before all the others for
whom I have cared. . . .

SKETCH PORTRAIT OK AUC.ISTIS SAINT OAIDKNS. DRAWN BY IIIMSKI.K

Tins w»« inmii- prubalily iilmut Hi. tin. i» "r*l lri|> Nlmm.l

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

"I was chiefly impressed by Gus' possessing so strongly the
qualities of a man who was bound to succeed. I often went
to see him in his room where he engraved cameos to earn his
livelihood, as you know. For though in the mornings he came
to the class room of the school, his afternoons had to be con-
secrated to earning his living. At this period Augustus was
the gayest of young men, though that did not prevent his
undertone of seriousness and reflection. I remember how
much he was moved when he received a few dollars which his
parents sent to him. He thought probably of the privations
which he imposed on them for the sake of his success, and he
used to ask himself if the time would ever come when he would
be able to help them in his turn. But I repeat that then he
was the most joyous creature that one could see.

"For amusement we often swam in the baths of the Louvre.
When one of us suggested it, we always added, 'Are n't you
coming, Saint-Gaudens?' for we knew this to be his weakness.
He would go in the morning at five o'clock in order not to in-
terrupt his work. But frequently somebody would be able
to lead him astray again during the day. I always accom-
panied him. He swam well and with unusual enjo}rment. For
that reason it was fine to see him. His health so glowed
in his body that one day I said to him, 'You arc as pretty
as a little nursing pig.' You should have seen him throw
himself from the top of the stairs, diving, disappearing, and
reappearing. I tell you again it was intoxication for
him.*

* This love of swimming continued through all his life. He has made a
number of references to it through the book. Also on July 26, 1899, he
wrote to my mother this characteristic paragraph: "I received your letter
from Cornish which makes me very homesick for it. But, as usual with
every one who writes me from that place, you give me no details of what
interests me more than anything else on earth, wife, child, God, and the
Angel GabrieJ, everything, t. e., the POOL back of the studio and the
water works pertaining to it. Please write a letter about nothing else
but that, if you wish me to bear with life."

THE REMINISCENCES OF

"Several times we took long walks with Dammouse, of
twelve or fifteen leagues a day. Once in especial we went from
Paris by railroad as far as Nantes and from there, each of
us with a knapsack, we passed through Rouen afoot as far
as St. Valery en Caux. Five minutes after we reached the
seashore we were in the water in spite of the heavy waves,
for as soon as he saw the water Gus had to enter, and I had
to follow, thinking that the sea was always heavy like that.
Soon we heard persons yelling at us, because the day before a
young man had been drowned there. Then we came back to
the shore. On that occasion Dammouse, who was prudence
itself and who always remained concentrated prudence,
watched us tranquilly. But afterwards we all went in swim-
ming again time after time, for we followed the coast as far as
Dieppe.

"For the vacation of 1869 Augustus, Dammouse, and I
planned a journey into Switzerland. As soon as we men-
tioned it to Gus he wanted to start. But it was necessary to
provide a purse and baggage and good shoes. We had all
the trouble in the world to get Augustus to understand this.
He said, 'Better leave at once. We will see about those things
afterwards.' Finally, however, like ourselves, he scraped to-
gether a little money, his knapsack, and what was necessary
to put into it. We left in a third-class excursion-train bound
for Strasburg. I do not remember just how we managed to
sell our return tickets, but we sold them. . . .

"The next day we visited the cathedral and went to the top
of the spire to admire the panorama. Augustus was always
the best and the most enthusiastic in his admiration. Nobody
got his money's worth so well as he. Everything seemed en-
chanting, everything beautiful. We bathed in the Rhine.
We passed over it on a bridge of boats and drank beer in
Germany. It was wonderful. Fortunately we had given our
money to Dammouse to keep; he was charged to pay the ex-
penses. We knew that he was more reasonable than our-

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

selves, and therefore would prevent our committing fol-
lies. . . .

"From Strasburg we directed our steps across the beautiful
country of Alsace to Basel. There we visited the museum, al-
though it was not the entry day, because we were furnished
with a letter from M. Guillaume, on the official paper of the
Minister of Fine Arts, which described us as distinguished
pupils of the school traveling for instruction.

"The next morning we left Basel at the caprice of the winds.
After a few leagues we began to follow a valley through which
ran a brook that from time to time we saw below the road.
Then, all at once, on the slope beyond the stream, we caught
sight of a little old castle. We stopped to admire it, where-
upon, at a window, a large window way up near the top, ap-
peared a woman. Was it a woman or a young girl? From
the distance we could not tell. Naturally, however, she ap-
peared to us young and beautiful, seen in a castle from
afar by youths of twenty. Perhaps we were more visible to
her than she was to us, for we had on white blouses with
striped waistbands, trousers tucked in our gaiters, slouch
hats, and knapsacks on our backs. At any rate, after a mo-
ment, our delightful young girl, whom we made out so indis-
tinctly, waved a white scarf. Immediately the imagination
of Augustus and myself took fire and flame, though not so
the imagination of our little pocket-book, Dammouse. We
began to ask ourselves, 'Is she not an unfortunate woman im-
prisoned in this castle by some horrible husband? Would it
not be generous and chivalrous for us to deliver her?' Ah,
how charming were all those foolish notions which passed
through our heads! 'Yes, but we still have a long journey
to make before arriving at our stopping-place,' our cashier
interrupted. So with a hunch of our shoulders to replace
our knapsacks, we once more took the road.

"Finally, when night had almost fallen, we reached a pic-
turesque village of German Switzerland. At the same time a

THE REMINISCENCES OF

formidable storm began to threaten. So we inquired the di-
rection of the Hotel de l'Ours, to which we had been recom-
mended, from some children around a fountain, who promptly
ran away. But at last we came upon the inn, an immense
and beautiful chalet of wood, reached by a flight of about ten
steps. Augustus was in a state of ravishment, and I also.
The place was large, clean, and hospitable.

"By this time the storm had unchained itself, the thunder
rolling from valley to valley as one long peal. Nevertheless
we ate a cozy meal with five or six of us at the table, among
others a White monk who had beside him an enormous dog.
The monk seemed a good man. He ate little, gave slices of
his food to the dog, and, as he left us, he asked permission
of the company to take a flower from the little bouquet which
was on the table. When we went up to bed the door of the
monk's room was wide open and the dog asleep on the thresh-
old. I said, 'Is n't it true, Augustus, that we are really happy
to be alive?'

"The next morning at dawn we arose, and asked for some
cold meat left over from the previous supper. We each had
a gourd, in one of which we carried white wine; also we pos-
sessed a tin box in which we placed butter. While passing
through a village we filled the other two gourds with milk, and
bought a big loaf of bread of five or six pounds' weight which
we tied on to the top of a knapsack. Our elegant meal cost
not more than thirty cents for the three. Kings were not
cousins to us as we walked on again until eleven o'clock at night.

"Every day we did about the same thing, hardly ever lunch-
ing at a tavern. We had little money and spent little. We
passed by Bienne to Neuchatel, following the Jura until we
arrived above the lake of Geneva and later above Coppet.
While on this road we were lost in the enormous declivity of
the mountain from which we could not extricate ourselves ex-
cept by climbing a precipice of several hundred feet. On the
summit we were attacked by a bull.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

"Once we were surprised by the coming of night and rain ;
and, far from any village, we perceived in a hollow below the
road that we were following an isolated cabin which bore above
the door a branch from a gin bush, a sprig of green which
was the sign of a tavern. We knocked before entering, on ac-
count of the dogs that had already annoyed us. A horrible
woman came to open the door for us and said at once, 'The
gendarmes are here!' For seeing us all wet, with our big
overcoats, our hats, and our knapsacks, she took us for smug-
glers. I understood her mistake and we entered, to her ter-
ror. Indeed there was a sergeant of the gendarmes inside,
for we had just crossed the frontier and were in France. We
explained ourselves very amicably to the gendarme, who for-
tunately was far from stupid. Then the woman told us she
would give us dinner and a bed. My God, what a dinner and
what a bed !

"Another time some of these French Custom House men,
drunk as pigs because they had swallowed the brandy which
they had confiscated at the frontier, wanted to arrest us, say-
ing that we had no passports. They would have thrown us
into prison if we had not shouted so much louder than they
that they were afraid.

"On reaching Coppet, we followed the shore of the lake as
far as Lausanne, taking baths at intervals, for we always
jumped in when there was water. Once Augustus wished that
we two should swim across a sort of little bay. All went
well until I was half way on the trip, when, having turned my
head and seeing myself far from both shores, I became fright-
ened. Augustus was a few strokes ahead of me. 'Don't swim
so fast! I want to catch up to you,' I shouted. And then
the fear ceased as I encouraged myself in thinking that if I
were to drown he would drown also in trying to save me. To-
gether we finished the crossing easily, but I never dared to tell
him of my fright.

"About thirty years afterwards, in our beautiful trip

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

through Italy, Augustus often remarked to me that our jour-
ney through the Juras and in Switzerland was one of the fin-
est he ever had, incomparable to any others. I agree with
him."

IV
THE FIRST STAY IN ITALY

1869-1872

War Declared on Germany — The Desire to Enlist— Wartime in
France — The Journey to Rome — The Beauty of Rome — William
Gedney Bunce — A Studio with Soares — The Eruption of Vesuvius
— Dr. Henry Shiff — Roman Fever — The Generosity of Montgom-
ery Gibbs — The Hiawatha — Other Commissions — The Return
Home.

THE joy of that walking trip so charmingly described by
M. Gamier did not, however, remain long with my
father and his young friends. For scarcely had they
reached home when the gathering clouds of the Franco-Prus-
sian struggle closed over them. M. Gamier describes that
moment : —

"Gus and I were at the opera with Pablo Defelice at the
time that war was declared. I believe they were playing 'La
Muette de Portici.' At any rate, near the end of the per-
formance, the principal actor came before the audience with
a flag in his hand to call on them to sing the National Hymn.
Then every one went crazy and we no less than the others, so
crazy that soon we found ourselves, with Bastion-Lepage and
one of his friends, on the Boulevard des Italiens, where we
hammered with fists and canes a number of idiots who were
crying 'To Berlin !' "

The question of whether or not to follow the example of
almost all his friends and enlist, gave my father infinite dis-
tress ; and his ultimate leaving of Paris for quieter parts was
only at the cost of much pride, sacrificed to the wishes of his

THE REMINISCENCES OF

mother, for whom he held the greatest affection. A letter
which I will translate, written by him to Mr. Gamier, pre-
sents with much vividness my father's attitude during the bit-
ter months of the conflict. From this letter I will turn
abruptly to the reminiscences which give the point of view of
the man so many years later. Despite the fact that he did
not know of the existence of the letter at the time he wrote
his autobiography, the two frames of mind are strikingly
similar, his sadness over the barbarous futility of war clash-
ing then, as later, with his ardent patriotism. The situation
offers a typical opportunity to show how unusually mature
were his judgments as a youth. The letter reads:

Limoges, Septembre 21, 1870.
Cher Alfred:

Quoique le service regulier des postes est interrompu
j'espere que ceci te parviendra. Je suis persuade, et
je ne t'en blame pas, que tu dois te dire: Voila un
lache! Mais je tiens (et je suis certain que tu me com-
prendras) a me justifler 'j'etais a Lieusaint le 3 Sep-
tembre, done j'ignorais ce qui s'etait passe, soit la de-
faite de Sedan et la prise de l'Empereur. Je rentre
tard a Paris, me couche, et pars de tres bonne heure
le lendemain, quoiqu'en allant a la gare, j'avais vu la
proclamation des ministres de l'Empereur; mais le peu
de confiance que j'avais et que Ton renverserait tout, et
ma preoccupation pour le depart m'ont empeche de
rester; j'achete le Siecle, je le mets dans ma poche; au
bout d'une heure je le lis et je vois les paroles de Jules
Favre du jour precedent. Alors j'ai regrete mon de-
part, mais je me disais que 9a ne se ferait pas si vite;
je vais a Limoges et je reviens de suite avec Lafont.

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

J'apprends que la Republique s'est faite sans coups;
je me suis de suite decide a revenir a Paris et m'en-
gager. Je vais voir Lafont le lendemain. II me dit
qu'il ne peut pas venir car il tire au sort dans quelques
jours. J'ai reste un jour de plus. Lafont s'est engage
dans une compagnie lOme regiment de ligne. Je pars.
En approchant Paris, voila des femmes qui entrent
dans le train, pleurant, sanglotant, pour leurs maris et
fils a la guerre. Ceci commence a me faire penser a
mon chez moi; ma mere et ma longue absence. Ca
m'embete! En arrivant a Paris je vois des bataillons
qui partent, encore les memes scenes mais plus vio-
lentes. Tout 9a ebranle mes bonnes resolutions quand,
vlan! je recois une lettre de 8 pages de ma mere. Elle
etait dans une douleur effrayante; elle m'implorait de
ne pas me meler de politique et de revenir n'importe
comment en Amerique. Toi, qui je sais, aimes ta mere
et qui sais comme j'aime la mienne, mets toi a ma place.
Q'aurais tu fait? Comme moi j'en suis certain. Je
sais bien que le devoir pour une belle cause comme celle-
ci devrait passer avant l'amour de ses parents. Mais
j'avoue que dans ce cas-ci je ne suis pas comme 9a. En-
fin je reviens a Limoges, mais je t'assure que je ne
m'amuse guere; mes pensees sont tou jours avec toi et
je maronne de penser que tu es la-bas au danger et moi
ici inactif. Je t'assure que je voudrais maintenant ne
pas avoir mes parents pour que je ne puisse pas avoir
d'entraves a mes principes. Mais vois tu c'est dtir; ils
seraient ici que je n'hesiterai pas. Mes parents sont
vieux, ils m'aiment bien; ils ont travaille fort toute leur

THE REMINISCENCES OF

vie; sont pauvres et travaillent tou jours et si j'e'tais en-
leve! Tu ne te figure pas comme 9a m'ennuie; c'est
un tourment continuel.

Ton ami, Gus

[translation]
Bear Alfred: "Limoges, September 21, 1870.

Although the regular postal service is interrupted,
I hope this will reach you. I feel persuaded you think
me a coward, and I don't blame you. But I am going
to explain what happened, and then I am certain you
will agree that I was justified in doing what I did.

On the third of September I was at Lieusaint, and
heard nothing of the defeat of Sedan and capture of
the Emperor. I returned to Paris very late and went
to bed. Early the next morning I started for the rail-
way station, and, on the way, saw the proclamation of
the Emperor's ministers; but my lack of confidence in
their ability and my preoccupation prevented my re-
maining in Paris. The "Siecle" which I bought I put
in my pocket. About an hour after, I took it out and
read the speech made by Jules Favre the day before;
and then, though I regretted my going away, I said
to myself, "There is no hurry. I am traveling only as
far as Limoges where I will find Lafond, who I am
sure will come back with me at once." On my arrival
there I learned that the Republic was proclaimed, and
that settled my mind to revisit Paris and to volunteer.
Soon I found Lafond, who told me he was on the con-
scription list and that therefore he had to remain where

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

he was. The next day he was drafted into the 10th
Infantry, and I returned to Paris alone. The train
was filled with women weeping for their husbands and
sons at the front, which made me think of home, my
mother, and the years of absence, all of which sad-
dened me. On reaching Paris, I found more regi-
ments leaving and more scenes of misery to weaken my
resolution, and then, to cap the climax, an eight-page
letter from my mother telling of her state of mind con-
cerning me, imploring me to keep out of political af-
fairs and to return to America at any cost.

I know you love your mother, and you realize how
much I think of mine. What would you have done in
my place? You would have done as I did, I feel sure.
I understand that one's duty to a great cause should be
paramount to the love one bears his parents, but I con-
fess I had no such stern resolve. Once more I am
back in Limoges, where I can assure you I am not at
all happy. My thoughts are continually with you on
the field of danger, while regretting my inactivity here.
I feel now that I would rather be bereft of those par-
ents whose existence interferes with the defense of my
principles. So you see I am hard pressed.

If they were only here, I would not hesitate a mo-
ment. But they are getting old, and love me. They
have worked hard all their lives, are poor, and are still
working. What would happen if they should lose me
now? You can imagine what a miserable state of mind

I am in. Your friend,

Gus.

THE REMINISCENCES OF

The Reminiscences continue in this same vein:

Shortly after our trip through the Juras, war was
declared. In common with most Republican sympa-
thizers, I felt violent antagonism to the action of the
French Government. I believe it is not generally ap-
preciated that the Republican party opposed the war.
Nothing was more striking to me than to see the Paris
regiments going up the Boulevard de Strasbourg to
the railroad station, straggling along apparently in con-
fusion, followed by their wives, children and friends,
while many of the men shouted "Vive la Paix!"
Again I recall watching some of the provincial troups
marching to the same stations in the night, but in more
regular order, many of them intoxicated, singing the
Marseillaise. As they filed by in the dark, they pro-
duced upon me strongly the impression of sheep being
driven to the shambles. Indeed so vivid was their mis-
ery and so intense the pathos, that, in my sympathy, I
rushed up and embraced two or three of the soldiers as
they went by.

Before this I had fortunately been given a stone-
cameo portrait to do for which I was to be paid one
hundred dollars, an enormous sum to me at that time.
The lady who ordered it, a widow from Canada, de-
parted suddenly for America when the war broke out,
and I sent the cameo to her by her father. Knowing
therefore that I was to have this money, I left Paris on
the fourth of September for Limoges, where my
brother, Andrew, worked in the employ of one of the
New York porcelain firms. On that day the Republic

100

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

was declared and I learned of it when I arrived at
Limoges at night.

Immediately followed Bismarck's rejection of Jules
Favre's proclamation that the Republican party, then
in power, would be willing to stop the war and pay an
indemnity, but would not relinquish a stone of their
fortresses or an inch of their territory. This brought
the Republicans to the defense of their country, and I
started back to Paris to join either the active army or
the ambulance corps. On arriving there I found a
letter from my mother so pathetic that my courage
failed, and I decided to return to Limoges. I was in
Paris long enough, however, to be present at the
entrance into the city of the troops from Brittany,
marching in at the Porte d'Orleans, with no uniforms
but in simple blouses; while crowded with them, in ut-
ter confusion and dust, were droves of sheep and cat-
tle, being led to the Jardin des Plantes, in preparation
for the coming siege. This was a vision of war that
I can never forget. Another spectacle which made a
profound impression on me was that of the defeated
army of MacMahon, which had been hurried into
Paris, bivouacking on the magnificent Avenue de la
Grand Armee, the troops in their weathen-worn uni-
forms, the camp fires, and the stacked arms. I appre-
ciate only now the irony of these defeated legions under
the shadow of the great Arch erected to the honor of
Napoleon's victories.

With these visions I left Paris and returned to my
brother in Limoges, to find that another friend, La-

101

THE REMINISCENCES OF

fond by name, also a Republican, had enlisted at once
on the change of the Government. He had a most ad-
venturous career within the next twelve months. He
was sent to Bourbaki's army, was in the flight to
Switzerland, and subsequently enrolled in one of
Thier's regiments that were encircling Paris fighting
the Communists. In one of the charges of his regi-
ment through the cemetery of Mont Parnasse towards
the Communists on the other side, he fell directly un-
der the opposing wall feigning death, while his regi-
ment retired, for his sympathies being with the Com-
munists he wished to join them. The Communists,
coming out, took him and were for shooting him, drag-
ging him along the streets as a spy. Were it not that
they met an old flame of his, who recognized him and
assured his captors of his sincerity, he would not have
escaped death. Then he fought with the Communists
against the Versaillais and later was taken prisoner by
them. He told me that the greatest fear he experi-
enced in all his adventures was that which occurred
when he and all his fellow-prisoners were formed in
line and the commanding officer walked by, picking out
those who were to be immediately marched off and
shot. The moment of the Colonel's looking him in the
eye was one of awful terror. His refined and gentle
look no doubt protected him.

After remaining in Limoges for three or four months
I borrowed one hundred francs from my brother and
started for Rome, as I knew that there I would find an
Italian friend and, very probably, work. It was mis-

102

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

erable November weather. I crossed France to Ly-
ons, in the hope of taking a steamer which I was told
descended the Rhone to Avignon, near Marseilles, at
a very reduced price. But at Lyons I found the serv-
ice stopped, so I had to go down in the cars. While
loitering at the station, it was queer to see some twenty
or thirty Prussian prisoners awaiting a train, calmly
lounging about, smoking their peaceful, family-look-
ing porcelain pipes.

At Marseilles I just missed a boat that went to
Civita Vecchia, the point of landing for Rome; conse-
quently I had to wait three days more. I was not the
most respectable object in the world, and so, as I was
followed once or twice during the first day by other sus-
picious-looking individuals, through fear I determined
to pass my time away from the city. This I did by go-
ing to the hill called Notre Dame de Bonne Garde, from
which there was a marvelous view of Marseilles, the
Mediterranean, and the coast.

During all this time, in fact during the whole trip
from Limoges, I lived on figs and chocolate and pieces
of an extraordinary pate, given me by the big, fat,
whole-hearted wife of the owner of the pension where
my brother lodged. So by the time I boarded the lit-
tle steamer for Civita Vecchia, my stomach was not in
a condition to be tossed about. My other possession
beside this pate was the box containing my cameo-cut-
ter's lathe, to which I clung during the forty or fifty
hours that the journey between Marseilles and Civita
Vecchia lasted. I suffered the tortures of the damned,

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

rolling round the deck in misery and in my more lucid
intervals catching glimpses of the sailors seated before
my pate, which they, no doubt, seeing that I was un-
able to appreciate, concluded to dispose of themselves.

In contrast to this, the trip to Rome from Civita
Vecchia, when the cars rolled through the soft air of
the Campagna, seemed like the entrance into Para-
dise. I arrived there at night and called immediately
on my friend, who they told me was in an adjoining
house. There I found him paying court to the most
beautiful creature in the world. I slept in his room,
and the following morning I awoke to the blessed
charm of Rome.

The fascination of the Holy City, as I stepped into
the street the first time that morning, can only be ap-
preciated by those who have lived there. Coming so
soon after the misery of the gray, bleak weather of
France, the war and its disaster, and the terrible Med-
iterranean trip, it seemed all the more exalting. As
I turned the corner from the Via Sistina where my
friend lived and looked up the Via Porte Pinciana, the
first view of a stone-pine at the head of the street ap-
peared incomparably beautiful in the gentle welcome
which seemed to pervade it all. It was as if a door
had been thrown wide open to the eternal beauty of the
classical. Therefore though one phase of my life in
Paris was repeated while I was in Rome, my enthusi-
asm for my work making me neglect the earning of
pennies to such an extent that I was down at the heel
most of the time, a greater appreciation of surround-

104

a i 'ci si i s sain ;t-<;.\i dkns

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ing nature than that which existed in France came
over me, and the classic charm of the Campagna, of the
Sabine Mountains, of Tivoli, Albano, and Frascati
were by no means lost on me during my frequent Sun-
day trips to these places.

Shortly after my arrival in Rome also I wit-
nessed one of those scenes which it seems to me are
possible only in Italy, for that country has an extraor-
dinary gift for public celebrations which always
shows itself in a surprising measure. King Victor
Emmanuel's formal entrance into the city was the
event in the history of Italy at the time, and the popu-
lation meant that it should be memorable. The pal-
aces and houses on each side of the Corso, which was
crowded with people, were made alive and gorgeous
with all manner of rugs, flags, flowers and garlands.
Along its narrow sidewalks, from the railroad station
at one end of the route to the palace of the Quirinal at
the other, soldiers stood within a foot or two of one
another. After the usual wait that seems inevitable in
all affairs of this kind, I became conscious of a con-
fused sound in the distance which increased gradually
to a roar. Up the street there seemed to be a cloud
approaching us with increasing rush of noise. As it
drew near it was seen to be a tremendous storm of
flowers. Then came a bewildering instant of wild en-
thusiasm from the people as the king was driven past
at a very high speed, preceded and followed by a crowd
of dragoons. As he flew by we found ourselves in the
height of the noise and confusion and the flowers. But

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in a moment the storm disappeared down the street
like a tornado diminishing in the distance. Such was
his entry, and the haste no doubt was a wise precaution
against possible bombs.

To fall back once more upon the prosaic things in
life, however ; through my friend whom I visited on com-
ing to Rome I immediately obtained cameos to do for a
dealer, Rossi by name, a man with a big red beard, who
lived on the Via Margutta. He paid what seemed to
me large prices, and I set about to find a studio in
which to model my first statue, which was to astonish
the world. Truman Bartlett, whose place I have said I
occupied for a short time in Paris, informed me that, if I
would delay a little, there was an American dying near
by who had precisely what I wished, with a studio ad-
joining, and that it would not be long before I could
obtain possession. While awaiting the event, another
friend came to me saying that he knew this very sick
American, whom it would be a kindness to visit. He
had had a stroke of paralysis. So I was told that, al-
though his speech was incoherent, it would be well to
pretend to understand him and to cheer him up.
When I called, I found a living dead man on a low
cot in a little room. But he needed no cheering up,
for, notwithstanding the incoherency of his language,
he seemed perfectly happy and contented, nailed to
his bed as he was. I went frequently to see him after
that. We became fast friends. This was thirty-six
years ago and still he is alive, as sound as a drum, as
lively as a cricket, and likely far to outlive those of us

108

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

who expected to attend his funeral and to occupy his
studio in Rome. I speak of Mr. William Gedney
Bunce, the artist who has painted such beautiful vi-
sions of Venice.

In Rome, too, I met one day another of my Paris
friends who had come there to escape the war: Soares,
"Heart of Gold" as Bion called him. He was a Fine
Arts pensioner of the Portuguese Government. We
took a studio together, and in it I set up the figure that
should open people's eyes. He also began one, which
represented "The Exile," the hero of a poem by Camo-
ens, written while he, Camoens, was in banishment.
This figure with its melancholy was in complete accord
with Soares' own nature, and a beautiful work he made.
A big sheet hung across the studio, separating us. On
the other side of the sheet I began the statue of Hia-
watha, "pondering, musing in the forest, on the welfare
of his people," and so on. This accorded with the pro-
found state of my mind, pondering, musing on my own
ponderous thoughts and ponderous efforts. Soares'
was really a noble nature. No breath of quarrel ever
came between us, and that is saying a good deal, con-
sidering my ever-read iness for one. His utmost protest
was an occasional "Ouf" which he uttered, when, follow-
ing the habit of my masters in New York and my own
renown in Paris, I began bawling the moment I entered
the studio, never to stop until I left it at one o'clock to
go to my bread-winning cameos. He told me that I
sang precisely like a hand-organ, that I had a regular
routine of songs, one following the other until the list

109

THE REMINISCENCES OF

was exhausted. Some of these songs were interesting
because they dated from a generation much earlier than
those that the young people of my period were familiar
with. And to the boys in the Beaux Arts in Paris, it
seemed more than strange to have this "pasteboard
American," as they called me, sing to them French
songs of which they knew nothing. These songs I had
taken from Avet and LeBrethon who had learned them
in their youth. They were popular between 1830 and
1850 and had gone entirely out of date.

Moreover, to try my friend's patience even further, I
accepted from Mercie, upon his moving to Naples, a
great Italian greyhound, an animal so wild that it cur-
tailed our liberty to a large extent. It was the painter
Regnault's dog, who had left it with Mercie when he
started to join the army in Paris, where he was one of
the last men to be shot in one of the last engagements
with the Prussians. He had an extraordinary talent
and was most popular. That he should be selected for
death was miserable business. Indeed, he was so much
the great man of the time that it was an honor to be asso-
ciated with him in any way, even to the keeping of his
dog.

In the midst of all this, that is to say in 1872, occurred
the great eruption of Vesuvius. So with a hilarious
band of comrades I took a train one fine morning to
see the stupendous spectacle. As we went South, the
day grew grayer and we grew happier and happier,
Soares, in his delight, devouring large quantities of
Gruyere cheese, forgetting that the mere sight of it had

110

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

hitherto always made him sick. Oh, mental science!
Then the sky became more and more leaden in tone, and
at first we concluded we were in for one of those sirocco
days which occur in Italy and which scorch everything.
The heat did not increase, however, although the sur-
rounding country took on a weird appearance, until
when we were about midway between Rome and Naples,
we saw that the foliage of the trees had become grayish.
A little later it appeared ashy, the roads turned from
yellow to gray, and where cart wheels passed over them
they left a light track as they lifted the dust which
proved to be the cinders of Vesuvius blown north.
This continued with increasing intensity until our ar-
rival at Naples.

Naples itself seemed in the midst of a driving storm,
the mountain being visible only in the rifts of the
smoke and cinders. We walked to the hotel in the
midst of the shower, many of the population under um-
brellas, and on arriving collected enough of the cinders
off the rims of our hats to fill a wine-glass. In the
evening we went down to the Quay and looked across
the bay to the mountain, where we could see the oc-
casional discharges of flame and hear the constant un-
derground rumble as of thunder in the distance. I
should be very much more impressed by it now than I
was in those light-hearted, empty-headed years, for
that night our chief interest lay in hiding a musket that
we found in our room in the boarding-house and a
cavalry sabre between the sheets of Soares' bed. His
exclamation upon touching the cold metal, and his

111

THE REMINISCENCES OF

anger and difficulty in getting them out, gave us dia-
bolical pleasure.

That night I was awakened by a dream in which I
felt that the whole house was moving and swaying. It
was actually doing so, and our Italian hosts had rushed
into the street. We, however, in our indifference and
fatigue, turned over and fell asleep again.

The next morning we made preparations to go up as
near the cone as we could get a man to take us. We
set out boldly on this adventure. But we had not ad-
vanced any great distance before the increase of the
gloom and the terrifying noises so alarmed our guide
that he refused to proceed further.

Then we returned to Rome and I resumed my la-
bors on Hiawatha, soon to find that I had nearly com-
pleted the statue. I was in much distress of mind as to
how I could get the money to cast the figure in plaster,
however, when by a lucky chance I made the acquaint-
ance of a young theologian, Mr. Nevins, afterwards Dr.
Nevins, then interested in the establishment of the
Young Men's Christian Association in Rome. I was
the last person in the world to be associated with such
an organization, yet our similar nationality and his
kindness of spirit drew me to him until he persuaded me
to go to the rooms. The result was that shortly after
this he brought to my studio, during my absence, Mr.
Montgomery Gibbs, who, with his wife and two daugh-
ters, both young and attractive, lived at the Hotel Con-
stanzi on the Via San Nicola da Tolentino, opposite the
lovely spot where we had our studio. Upon inquiry

112

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

into the condition of my exchequer and my prospects
generally, he told Soares that he thought he would ad-
vance me the money to cast my figure of Hiawatha, and
that in return I might model the portraits of his two
daughters. I recall distinctly the bright afternoon
when Soares rushed out to tell me of a rich American
who had been to the studio, who wished to see me, and
who proposed helping me, if I could be helped. This
was one of the happiest moments in my life, for I had
been certain that, if I could ever get my wonderful pro-
duction before the American public, I would amaze the
world and settle my future. Here was the opportunity
in my grasp.

I immediately began my busts of the young ladies.
Whereupon, to add to my delight, the Gibbs family,
who Were on intimate terms with Senator William M.
Evarts, one day brought to my studio Miss Hettie
Evarts, now Mrs. Charles C. Beaman, with the result
that I received, if I am not mistaken, my first commis-
sion for copies of the busts of Demosthenes and Cicero,
which it was then the fashion for tourists to have made
by the sculptors in Rome. At the same date Mr. Gibbs
induced Mr. Evarts, sitting in Geneva at the Alabama
Arbitration Tribunal, to consent to pose for his head on
his return to America.

Those, therefore, were days of great joy as well as
of great misery, for mixed with the pleasure of a cer-
tain future was the unhappiness I suffered from Roman
fever and the incessant dunning of the restaurant man
who had been confident enough to trust me to the ex-

113

THE REMINISCENCES OF

tent of a thousand lire, an enormous sum at that time
and under those conditions.

The restaurant was a remarkable place. The pro-
prietor was a fat man with an equally fat wife, both of
them monstrously dirty and greasy. We dubbed him
"The Hippopotamus," and by this name the restaurant
remained known. To it came many of the men who
have since become distinguished — Merson, Blanc, Mer-
cie, Carolus Duran, and others of similar strength.
The place was indescribably dirty, but extraordinarily
picturesque. Not only "The Hippopotamus" but the
son helped at the table. He was long, lank, and loose,
and was called "The Kangaroo." Which of the three
members of the family was the least clean is a point still
unsettled.

Indeed, at this restaurant and at the Cafe Greco on
the Via Condotti, many of the artists of other countries
and of my generation assembled at night for the inevi-
table little cup of black coffee. The Cafe Greco, I
believe, dates back before the days of Byron and
Thackeray, and still remained in existence when I re-
turned to Rome five years ago.

It was in such surroundings that I made the ac-
quaintance of my great comrade, Dr. Henry Shiff,
whose friendship has continued until this day. I sup-
pose that, on the whole, he exerted a more powerful in-
fluence in forming what little character I have than
any other man I have ever met. He was born in New
Orleans, his father a Hebrew and his mother a Catho-
lic. He was educated in France, served as a surgeon

114

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, came
to New York, where he practised a short while, and
then retired to Rome.

However, this form of life soon ended, as Mr. Gibbs,
seeing how I was held down by Roman fever and realiz-
ing that I had been five years away from home, very
kindly offered to advance me passage money with
which I might go to America and return, after visiting
my parents. My departure was far from serene. "The
Hippopotamus" getting wind of it, awaited me at
the station, to prevent my leaving until my debt had
been paid. He was perfectly right. But a voluble
mutual friend assured him that by stopping me they
were preventing the means of my paying them.

On my way north it was strange to go through Paris
and see the traces of the awful combats of the Com-
mune. On all the principal streets, houses could be
found with pieces knocked off by musket bullets and
cannon balls, the Montparnasse Railway Station being
covered with these dents, while the iron shutters of
some of the great department stores and barracks down
near the large square called the Chateau d'Eaux were
literally so filled with bullet holes that they resembled
sieves.

I remained in Paris but a day or two, stopping as
well in London, on my way to Liverpool, to see my
English friend of the lion-hunting ambitions, who had
been reinstated in his father's good graces. After his
refusal to enter the French Army in time of peace he
had shown the stuff he was made of, when the republic

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was declared, by volunteering in a Zouave regiment
which was well known for being always in the thick of
things.

At Liverpool I took the steamer for America. The
ship sailed by the coast of Ireland in very rough
weather, so near that we could see the breakers. At
the time I was especially struck by the fact that the
man on the bridge, either the captain or some other
high officer, had been indulging in too much of the cup
that cheers. This did not lead to my unalloyed confi-
dence. I reached home safely, however, to the sur-
prised delight of my family. For, as I was a very bad
correspondent and wrote to my parents only on rare oc-
casions, I had given them no idea of my project, and
marched into Father's store quite without warning.

This account by Saint-Gaudens of his vital struggles in
Rome needs somewhat of an afterword, for the period, and
especially the meeting with the Gibbs family, was far too im-
portant a step in his development to be passed over without
comment. Therefore I will turn first to a letter which Saint-
Gaudens sent to M. Gamier from Rome on March 21, 1871.
He writes:

Rome, March 21, 1871.
Mon cher Alfred:

. . . Je ne veux pas parler de cette guerre. C'est
trop triste et je reserve de t'en causer pour quand je te
reverrai; mais toi, donne moi quelques petits details
seulement. Tu ne te figure pas avec quelle avidite je
lirais la moindre chose qui ait pu vous arriver. Vous en

118

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

avez vu de dures, et pendant que moi j'etais sain et sauf
loin de tout danger. Vous me faites envie je vous
assure. Quand a moi je n'ai qu'a me r6jouir de ma
situation pecuniaire.

Je gagne beaucoup d'argent et je vais pouvoir faire
la figure que je commencerai cette semaine, non seule-
ment en platre, mais en marbre. lis payent les camees
ici bien plus qu'a Paris. lis sont bien moins exigeant.
La vie et meilleure marche, les modeles moitie moins
cheres qu'a Paris; atelier, etc., de memes. En plus je
commence a avoir des relations avec de riches Ameri-
cains et des camees a faire pour eux exessivement bien
payes. La sante va tres bien et nous faisont des prome-
nades magnifiques. Soares, Simoes, Pablo, Defelice
et moi nous faisons des grandes marches ou nous depen-
sons tres peu et ou nous nous amusons beaucoup!

Le bon jour aux camarades aussi si tu en vois! Je
te donne une bonne poignee de main.

Ton ami,

Gus.
[translation]
Dear Alfred:

. . . I don't want to speak to you about this war.
It is too sad, so I will refrain from mentioning it until
we see each other again. Instead I will ask you to
give me some small details about yourself. You don't
know with what avidity I would read about the slight-
est things which might happen to you. You must have
seen some terrible times while I have been safe and
sound, far from all danger. I envy you, I assure you.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

Personally I have nothing to do but to congratulate
myself on my pecuniary situation.

I am making a lot of money and will be able to com-
plete my statue, which I will begin next week, not only
in plaster, but in marble. The cameos are better paid
here than at Paris. The jewelers are less exacting.
Living is very much cheaper and models are only half
as dear as in Paris. Rents, etc., are equally cheap.
More than this, I am beginning to get into relations
with rich Americans, and the cameos I make for them
are extraordinarily well paid. My health is excellent
and we have magnificent walks together. Soares, Sim-
oes, Pablo, Defelice and I take great tramps which cost
us very little, and upon which we enjoy ourselves
hugely. . . .

Remember me to all the comrades also whenever you
see them. With a good hand clasp I remain your
friend

Gus.

Again it must be remembered that the optimism expressed
here and in the reminiscences resulted from a frame of mind
rather than from truly fortunate conditions. For instance,
all Saint-Gaudens' oldest friends will testify that in those days
he was often seriously ill with Roman fever, a fact that he
barely touches upon; while, to give a more concrete example
of his characteristic despising of difficulties, I will quote di-
rectly from a letter written by Mrs. John Merrylees, then
Miss Belle Gibbs. She says:

"Mr. Gibbs asked a few ladies about having a cameo cut of
Mary Stuart. They told him of a young American who had
designed some for them and who greatly needed work, and

120

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

they gave his address to Mr. Gibbs. It was the address of
Augustus Saint-Gaudens' studio. Upon going there, Mr. Gibbs
found only a little boy, who told him that his master was very
ill, but that he had taken care of 'the model' and had kept it
wet. He then undid the wrapping from the clay figure of
Hiawatha, which so impressed Mr. Gibbs that he hastened to
discover the sculptor. He found him dangerously ill in a low
attic, and immediately had him removed to better quarters and
nursed. On his recovery, Mr. Gibbs undertook to support
him while he finished the Hiawatha, and to obtain an order for
a bust from his friend, Senator William M. Evarts. . .
Mr. Saint-Gaudens cut the cameo before anything else, as he
said that the search for a cameo-cutter had brought him his
friend, and so Mr. Gibbs' wish for a Mary Stuart must be ful-
filled."

This assistance rendered by Mr. Gibbs was both real and
generous. Moreover, it lifted my father over obstacles then
otherwise unsurmountable. There is no telling what his future
might have been without this cordial hand in aid. Mr. Gibbs
himself well expressed his attitude in a letter to my father in
which he wrote: "I am sure that the last thing of which I
stand in need is a marble statue, particularly one of the dimen-
sions of your 'Hiawatha.' But for the fact that I sympathize
very strongly with you in your struggles to maintain yourself
here until your genius and labors shall have met the reward
to which I feel they are entitled, I would not have thought of
attempting any arrangement by which you might be enabled
to complete your large work and make yourself known." Then
he went on to explain his promptly-accepted plan by which he
was to pay the expense of the completion of the statue, move
it to America, exhibit it as his own, sell it if possible, refund
the loan to himself, and present the young sculptor with the
remainder of the profits.

It is good to know that the "Hiawatha" proved worthy of the
money so invested. The statue ultimately became the prop-

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

erty of Mr. E. D. Morgan, and now stands in Hilton Park,
Saratoga, New York.

It is even more pleasant to realize that Mr. Gibbs lived to see
the young artist he assisted succeed to the full extent of all
his anticipations and yet to retain an undiminished gratitude
for the kindness accorded him. Indeed the whole acquaintance
was a memorable and charming one for my father. Not only
did he obtain the aid and commissions mentioned in the remi-
niscences, but, in addition, through Mr. Gibbs, while in Rome
he came into the way of meeting Miss Augusta F. Homer, to
whom later he was married, as well as others who proved
staunch in friendship and assistance during his American
struggles. Here, to conclude, are portions of a letter from my
father to Mr. Gibbs which shows the young sculptor's frank re-
lations with his patron.

Rome, May, 1872.
My Dear Mr. Gibbs;

. . . I have been thinking very seriously for the
last few days in regard to the making of the "Hiawatha"
in bronze. . . . My figure, if reproduced, will not
improve so much in bronze as it will in marble for the
reason that to have it in bronze the clay has to be ex-
cessively finished, which would take a great deal more
time. . . . Also, as the figure was originally in-
tended for the marble, certain forms and arrangements
were made so that they would acquire certain effects in
the marble which would be quite lost on the bronze.
. . . There is the other reason, that the marble will
no doubt be much cheaper, and also, as you have the in-
tention of getting it in the Art Museum in New York,

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

which I would desire a great deal, the marble would
certainly be far preferable. ... I am certain that
if you see it reproduced in that substance you will not
regret it. . . .

In regard to Mr. Evart's bust, I should prefer to do
it on my return here, only I dread the waiting. May
he not change his mind? If you think he will not, why
I shall wait, but if the contrary, I shall do it now.
About the twentieth of this month I shall send him the
Cicero that I am now making. It is smaller than its
companion head, the Demosthenes. I have had it cut
so on mature reflection, as I think it much better to
have the authentic size of both. I do not believe it
right to sacrifice to uniformity the correctness and
truthfulness to the original.

Miss Belle's bust will be finished in two or three
days and I am highly satisfied. I cannot say the same
though of Miss Florence's bust. It has been quite un-
fortunate. After having the rest of the bust roughed
out and commencing to work on the features, a spot in
the marble appeared over the left eye, so of course the
cutting could not go on. I have been obliged to buy
another piece, this time not so cheaply. It cost fifty
francs. I have had it commenced immediately and now
I am sure we shall not be so unfortunate. The misfor-
tune takes back the economies I had made on the first
two pieces, because to the sum must be added the forty
francs for what work the bufFator had done on it. This
of course makes it impossible to have it finished for my
departure. The features will be finished, but the hair

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

and the accessories will take some time after my de-
parture.

Yours very truly,

Aug. St. Gaudens.

With such cordial assistance, then, Saint-Gaudens' Roman
work went forward until he started upon his first return to
America. Yet I must not close this chapter without a word
more as to my father's old friend, Dr. Henry Shiff.

Dr. Shiff was considerably the senior of the two, a man
with a clear analytical brain, of immense literary acquirement,
and a dilettante in art. He never returned to this country
during his later years, but lived in Italy, Spain, or Paris. He
long made a hobby of Japanese and Chinese bronzes, especially
of toads and frogs, which explains, to a certain extent, the
peculiar inscription on the bas-relief which my father mod-
eled of him a few years after their meeting. This inscription
reads : —

ALL' AMICONE DOTTORE HENRY SHIFF AETATIS
XXXXVIL DEI ROSPI DI ROMA E DEI PUZZI RO-
MANI AMANTE. DI FILOSOFIA E DI BELLE ARTI
DILETTANTE. DEL TIPO GATTESCO INAMORATO:
IN PARIGI NEL MESE DI MAGGIO DELL' ANNO
MDCCCLXXX. (To the dear friend Doctor Henry ShifF at
the age of forty-seven. Lover of the toads and smells of
Rome, dilettante in philosophy and the fine arts, admirer of
the feline type: in Paris in the month of May of the year
MDCCCLXXX.)

As has been indicated, ShifPs philosophy brought forth
an eager response from similar qualities in my father's own
nature which no one else had stirred. Indeed such was their
intimacy up to 1880 that, though in the seventeen years which
followed they saw one another only once, on my father's re-
turn to Europe they found their ties in no wise broken by

124

I)K. I1KNKY SI 1 IKK

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

the long separation. Again the two resumed their old rela-
tions. Again Shiff held forth on socialism and morals in
Montmartre brasseries, and on a peculiar breed of anarchy
which he tempered by optimism in working-men's cafes in the
St. Antoine Quarter. Again he laid before Saint-Gaudens
his cheerful outlook that in early days so opened the sculp-
tor's receptive eyes to things beyond his art and later so
encouraged him in his periods of despondency.

127

THE SECOND STAY IN ITALY

1872-1875

New York Activities — The Death of Mary Saint-Gaudens — An In-
toxicated Frenchman and a Half-dressed German — From Paris to
Rome — On Foot to Naples — Difficulty with the Silence — Cameos
— Other Misfortunes — The Death of Rhinehart — Light Ahead —
Paris According to Bion.

SAINT-GAUDENS has little to say of his stay in New
York upon his return from Europe. It was success-
ful and short though full of intense nervous stress;
for beside his troubles with the five patrons of whom he
speaks, he obtained a number of other orders only through
great persistence. One of these commissions for a large, semi-
circular panel for the Adams Express Company Building in
Chicago, represented a bull-dog, with revolvers and bowie
knives to assist him, guarding a couple of safes. Another, for
a silver candelabra, which Tiffany was to place in the Gordon
Bennett yacht Mohawk, was a figure of an Indian dancing
with knife and scalp. Moreover the sculptor successfully
sought out orders for copies of antique figures and busts, such
as those of Antonius and Apollo, a bust of Samuel Johnson to
be modeled from engravings, and a statue of Psyche. And all
the while he taught his brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens, his
friend, Louis Herzog, and two others to cut camoes.

Such energy would have been exceptional enough with the
firmest foundation. But my father struggled along on only
the flimsiest basis, since at that time the results of the great
panic of 1873 made money extremely hard to obtain. What
buoyed him up through all these struggles, however, was that

128

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

self-confidence which led him, on leaving Rome, to tell Miss
Belle Gibbs that though he was then traveling in the steerage
he knew that eventually conditions would be altered and that,
as a well-known artist, he would be crossing the ocean in the
cabin.

Also before taking up his brief account of this New York
visit, I have a word more to add in connection with his final
glimpse of his mother which he barely mentions ; because, as
he expressed himself much later in life, "there is always the
'triste' undertone in my soul that comes from my sweet Irish
mother." It is a pathetic outcry from a nature little accus-
tomed to exhibit its sorrows, and is contained in this letter
from him to his close friend, Richard Watson Gilder, written
in 1885, after the death of Mr. Gilder's mother:

Dear Gilder:

I have gone through the same grief you are hav-
ing; and, although at times it seemed as if I could not
bear it, again I felt that I could have no heart when
it seemed as if nothing had occurred and I had a light
heart. But that has all gone by. Now I know that I
had a heart as regards my mother, and the trial has been
like a great fire that has passed, and it seems, after all
these years, as the one holy spot in my life, my sweet
mother. I am with you in your grief, believe me.

Affectionately,

A. St.-Gaudens.

I turn to the reminiscences :

I was not long idle in New York, as, shortly after
my arrival, I began the bust of Senator Evarts in the
dressing-room of his house on the southwest corner of

129

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Second Avenue and Fifteenth Street. Thereafter one
thing rapidly led to another. Through Mr. Evarts I
received a commission for a bust of Mr. Edward
Stoughton, and later of Mr. Edwards Pierrepont, then
Attorney General under Grant. After that followed
an order from Mr. Elihu Root, now Secretary of State,
for two copies of the busts of Demosthenes and Cicero,
which made me feel richer than I have ever felt since.
And lastly, Mr. L. H. Willard, an admirer of my old
employer LeBrethon, on learning that I was returning
to Italy, commissioned me to have a sarcophagus cut
for him and to model a figure of Silence, to be placed at
the head of the principal staircase in the Masonic Build-
ing on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Sixth Ave-
nue. The less said about that statue the better.

With this, to me, bewildering amount of work, I
sailed on the Egypt for Liverpool, my brother Louis
having gone abroad a month or so ahead of me to see
that things were ready when I got to Rome, and inci-
dentally to earn his living, as I had done, by cameo cut-
ting. The day of my departure was a sad one, for it
was the last I saw of my mother when she stood weep-
ing on the dock, and it seems as if I had a presentiment
that it would be so.

On my way to Rome I remained some months in the
Rue des Saints-Peres in Paris whither I was followed
from New York by my friend Gortelmeyer, a lithog-
rapher who drew beautifully. There very early one
morning, while walking along the Boulevard St. Michel,
I suddenly encountered an old comrade of Rome, by the

130

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

name of Noel. A peculiarity about him was that, al-
though austere in the ordinary go of life, for some
inexplicable reason he became unusually affectionate
toward me when he had imbibed more than necessary.
Upon this occasion he had evidently been indulging to a
joyous degree, for he hugged me in the most exuberant
Latin fashion, until in my desire to escape I gave him
my address, thinking he would promptly forget it.

I was wrong. For very early on a morning shortly
after my sidewalk encounter, as I opened the door at
the foot of our little dark, narrow stairs in answer to a
ring of the bell, I found that I had admitted my happy
friend.

"Hello! Hello!" he shouted, as he fumbled and
rumbled up the narrow stairs.

Then he got to the top of the flight, and strange
things began to happen.

In the first place, my friend Gortelmeyer wore as a
night-shirt an undershirt so shrunk that it came down
to but six or eight inches below his arms. Moreover,
his first requirement on awakening was his glasses,
which he always had difficulty in finding. So, awak-
ened at the noise, by the time we arrived he was on his
feet, and a spectacle for the gods, as he stood with his
back toward us, bending over the chair next to his bed.

Noel, on seeing this vision, threw up his arms and
shouted, "God in Heaven, what is that? What is that?"

"Gortelmeyer," I said, as he continued his blind, help-
less search, "for Heaven's sake, turn round! Let me
introduce you, Mr. Gortelmeyer — Mr. Noel. Mr. Noel

131

THE REMINISCENCES OF

— Mr. Gortelmeyer." Whereupon the long, thin, lank,
blond Prussian, in the undress I have described, shook
hands in a most dignified manner, in the white four-
o'clock light of the studio, with the short, fat, intoxi-
cated Frenchman, until Noel, shouting up to the last,
sat down and begged me to let him wash his face.

"Go into the bedroom, and you will find a sponge
and water," I replied.

There followed a great splashing, and in a moment
Noel appeared crying and in an awful condition.

"My God ! My head has never been as dirty as this !"
he bubbled.

He was right ; for, in the dimness of his mind, he had
used the pail in which the soiled water was thrown.

Shortly after this Dammouse and I went to Rome by
way of Venice and Leghorn, stopping at the latter place
to see Mr. Torrey, the American Consul there, who
was to advise with me as to the carving of the sarcoph-
agus for Mr. Willard. I recollect a delightful drive
on the sea road and a dinner at his house, where I was
so impressed by the gorgeousness of the butler who was
serving at table and so ignorant of the complex work-
ings of the utensil used for taking asparagus from the
plate that I discharged a great forkful of that interest-
ing vegetable over my knees and onto the floor. I con-
fess to still finding difficulty with that tool, and I be-
lieve many of my readers have a similar trouble, but
fear to confess it.

On arriving in Rome, I was of course welcomed with
open arms by "The Hippopotamus" family, whose debt

132

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

I was now able to cancel. Promptly also I took up the
routine of my life very much as I had left it, except
that Soares had gone, and now, in my opulence, I occu-
pied the entire studio. I began work at once on the
figure of Silence; and in addition inaugurated a fifth
love affair, a very brief one, however, with a beautiful
model, Angelina, by name, with whom I wanted to elope
to Paris. She was wise enough to refuse, and that
passed away like those which preceded it.

From this point the tide began to turn in my favor.
For, soon after, Governor Morgan, on a visit to Italy,
learning of my presence there, came to call on me. The
fact of my being in Rome, the charm of that city, the
idyllic loveliness of the garden in which my studio was
smothered, and, to be literal, its nearness to his hotel,
the Costanzi, must have appealed peculiarly to him
upon his realizing that here was the son of the interest-
ing man who had made shoes for him in New York.
Accordingly, upon his request, I went to see him at the
hotel, where he asked me what it would cost to cut in
marble the statue of Hiawatha, which, through the gen-
erosity of Mr. Gibbs, I had succeeded in casting in
plaster before going to America. I have forgotten
what the price was ; I think in the neighborhood of eight
hundred dollars. He said he would take the statue if
I would execute it for him for that sum. I suppose I
danced with glee when I reached my studio after that
visit, as here again was one of the happiest days of my
life. There seem to be plenty of them as I proceed.

Immediately I set about having the statue carved, and

133

THE REMINISCENCES OF

presently my studio was a busy place. The "Hiawatha,"
the "Silence," the busts I had made, and the copies
of antiques, were being cut in marble. I was working
away completing the portraits of the two daughters of
Mr. Gibbs,-^I must confess to a weak spot for one of
them, — and I was beginning the studies of statues with
which I was to embellish the world. The first repre-
sented Mozart, nude, playing the violin. Why under
heaven I made him nude is a mystery. The second dis-
played a Roman Slave holding young Augustus on the
top of a Pompeian column and crowning him with
laurel. This group a sarcastic but good-natured friend,
the Swiss architect, Arnold, said looked like a locomo-
tive.

Turning from work to play days, I remember how at
this time, in company with George Dubois, the land-
scape painter, and Ernest Mayor, a Swiss architect,
I made a walking trip from Rome to Naples. We took
the cars sometimes, the diligence frequently, and
donkey-back often, but for the most part we footed it
through the heart of the Calabrian mountains. We
were told that this was dangerous business, as there
were brigands at large, and in consequence ostenta-
tiously displayed revolvers at our belts. One morn-
ing on arriving at some town in the center of the
district, each went in a different direction to make
sketches. Presently a big gendarme touched me on the
shoulder and asked me for my passport. I feigned
ignorance of Italian, but he insisted. I showed him my
card, yet that did not appease him; the result being

134

from a photograph owned by Thnmiw Moore. Cnpr,

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS (SRATKD), GEORGE DUBOIS (AT THE LEFT),
AND ERNEST MAYOR, DURING A WALKING TRIP IN 1871

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

that we marched together to the municipio, the city hall
of the place. There I was locked in a room in which,
plastered on the wall, was a printed poster offering so
many thousand francs for the capture, dead or alive, of
three brigands, and describing their names and build.
Shortly after my arrival, Mayor was brought in, and
he was soon followed by Dubois. With a gendarme
passing to and fro outside the door, we were kept in
this room for a long while before we were ushered into
another chamber and brought into the presence of the
sindaco, who corresponds to the mayor of our towns.
He endeavored to have us explain in Italian what we
were about. But finding that difficult business, he
presently questioned us in French, which he spoke ad-
mirably, with the result that in a short time we were dis-
missed with good wishes and with the advice not to
show our weapons so openly, and to carry regular pass-
ports.

On arriving at Naples, we walked along the divine
road to Sorrento. It seems impossible to give in words
the impression of the charm that pervaded that journey.
We were, of course, in the full glow of youth and
health, which caused it to seem all the more intensely
beautiful. The view through the perfumed orange and
lemon groves of the wonderful bay of Naples, with
Ischia in the distance, made that day one upon which it
could be said with truth that life was worth living.
We loafed around at Sorrento, and finally rowed over
to Capri, the immortal. Of course no one who has ever
been to Capri can forget it and its impressions. The

137

THE REMINISCENCES OF

dominant note to me, as I look back, are the fields
of flowers, fields and fields of flowers — it was like
an enchantment — that and a religious procession
passing through the narrow, white-walled streets,
where the inhabitants literally flung bushels of
flowers over the priests and their followers, as
they chanted their religious hymns. We were
seated on a height where we could see the windings
of the procession and the shower of flowers, that be-
came almost too fairy-like and dream-like to be true.

Other, but secondary, visions are of the palace of
Tiberius and the marble baths of that time half -sunken
in the winter, and of a dance one evening with some
Anacapri girls. This was especially amusing because
of the contrast in the build of Mayor and Dubois; for
Mayor was as short as Dubois was tall, standing about
five feet six in height, most of which was trunk and
head and beard. His short legs seemed to be construc-
ted behind his body and joined on in a funny way.
Of course the two had to choose partners quite the op-
posite in figure, and the one Mayor selected appeared
voluminous to say the least. She was dressed in white
and it was a merry sight to see him buried in her ample
bosom as he danced around with barely anything visible
but his short legs.

We returned to Rome again at the end of our vaca-
tion, and there, shortly after, I met Miss Augusta F.
Homer, who later became Mrs. Saint-Gaudens. This
time I remained for two years or so in the seductive spot,
making five years, in all of residence, during most of

138

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

which I had the advantage of being thrown in with
charming Italian families and, by living there in the
summer months, of seeing the spontaneous Italian life.
The concerts on the Piazza Colonna on those warm
nights, with the soft air, the lovers, the ease of it all, so
far from the stress of existence here, form unforgettable
memories.

At first glance it may seem strange that in this account of
Rome my father makes scarcely a mention of the other Ameri-
can sculptors about him. Yet the attitude is typical of his
frame of mind throughout the whole book from the very begin-
ning, where he explains that his writing would not be a com-
ment on art and artists. Moreover, here in Rome he was
singularly out of key with the majority of the sculptors from
his own land, since they, to a greater extent than those at
home, clung to the "classic" tradition from which Saint-
Gaudens so desired to break away. Randolph Rogers and
William Wetmore Story stood at the head of this group.
Rogers at that time must have been finishing his huge seated
statue of W. H. Seward, now in Madison Square, New York.
Story was modeling on his female figure of "Jerusalem in Her
Desolation," which, beyond doubt, irritated my father's youth-
ful and radical turn of mind, despite the respect he enter-
tained for the elder sculptor as a cultivated man of the world.

Indeed, of all those followers of classicism Saint-Gaudens
only mentions one, William H. Rinehart of Baltimore. For
Rinehart, though twenty-four years my father's senior, was,
like him, ever youthful and enthusiastic in spirit; while his
sculpture displayed a refined delicacy as yet lacking in his
contemporaries. During the few years that Saint-Gaudens
knew him he was completing his "Latona and Her Children,"
a group which bore the mark of strong dignity in conception
and breadth and power in modeling. Rinehart died in 1874.

139

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Saint-Gaudens was his companion to the end, and, curiously
enough, many years after became one of the trustees for the
fifty-thousand-dollar fund Rinehart left to provide a Roman
scholarship for young sculptors. The loss of this friend I
know was a severe shock to my father. Here is an extract
from a letter he wrote concerning it to his patron, Mr. L. H.
Willard:

Of poor Rinehart's death you know long before this.
I stayed with him two nights before he died. Nobody
thought he was going off so soon. He went very sud-
denly but bravely when he did know it. Yesterday
Fortuny, the best modern painter, also a young man,
died here. These two deaths make a very painful im-
pression here indeed. Rinehart's body is being taken
home.

Indeed Saint-Gaudens* days in Rome immediately after his
return from America were far from cheerful. In the first
place, the "Silence" failed to progress smoothly, as is shown
by these portions of two more letters to Mr. Willard, illustra-
ting the limitations he fought and his methods of work, which
were strangely typical of those in almost every commission
he received through after-life. He writes:

August, 26th, 1873.
Dear Mr. Willard:

. . . I have set up a large sketch of the "Silence."
. . . It is not Egyptian though, but much nearer to
your own idea of arrangement of the drapery, and is
far more impressive than it could be in the Egyptian
style. She has fine drapery over her body that gives a
pleasing character, and a heavy kind of veil that covers

140

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

her head, drooping over the face so that it throws the
face in shadow and gives a strong appearance of mys-
tery. . . .

I have nevertheless got all the necessary information
for the Egyptian figure in case you wish it. But I very
strongly prefer what I have done, as do all who have
seen it. Besides, the subject being abstract, I think it
better after all not to follow any exact style, for the
reason that Silence is no more Egyptian than it is
Greek or Roman or anything else. I think in that case
"Le Style Libre" is the best.

Again :

Rome, December 7, 1873.
My Dear Mr. Willard:

I enclose a photograph that I have had taken from a
study of drapery that I have made for the "Silence."
. . . Of course there are to be a great many modifica-
tions, but you can get the idea. . . . The drapery
on the body is light, showing the form, the principal
fastening between the two breasts being the rose. The
drapery in the photograph covers the left leg more than
I have the intention of doing. . . .

. . . I am now a little short and should be thankful
for some funds by return of post. For two reasons I
was in hopes that I would not be obliged to ask for
some time. First I hoped to get two thousand francs
for some copies of antiques that I have in hand, which
sum I was to receive this month on the figures getting
to America. Everything was all right until a work-

141

THE REMINISCENCES OF

man broke two fingers off one of the figures, "The
Venus of the Capitol," and I have been obliged to com-
mence it over again, and so will not get my money until
February. Secondly, my brother for whom I had or-
ders for cameos for which he was to receive a good sum
of money fell sick of pneumonia three weeks ago. He
was expected to die and is only now commencing to get
better. . . .

To all of this Mr. Willard replied with most kindly but
disconcerting letters in which he criticized the veil, the hands,
parts of the drapery, short-waisted women, and the likelihood
of losing grace to obtain dignity. So that, what with these
and other troubles before and after, the commission brought
my father little but misery. Here is the letter which he wrote
to the sculptor, Mr. J. Q. A. Ward, regarding the outcome :

153 Fourth Avenue, July 5th, 1876.
J. Q. A. Ward., Esq.,
My Dear Sir:

I received your note to-day and I must thank you
sincerely for your good wishes and very kind offer to
express yourself favorably in regard to me. I regret
though that you have not seen the figure at Gov. Mor-
gan's, for I don't think that the "Silence" does me jus-
tice. I am satisfied with it only in having obtained as
much as I did from the restrictions forced upon me in
regard to making it. Had I had my own way com-
pletely I would have created an entirely different thing,
with broad, heavy drapery instead of its being very
fine. The left hand would have crossed the body sus-
taining the drapery and would have been entirely con-

142

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

cealed. The hands which are bad, particularly the
right one, I have yet to work upon a great deal. I left
the figure to be cut in Rome, and of course during my
absence the workmen went at it free and easy. So I
am still anxious to have you suspend judgment till you
have seen the "Injun" which I modeled in '71.
Thanking you again, I am

Yours very truly,

August St.-Gaudens.

Also besides his difficulties with the "Silence," other worries
beset my father, worries rather typically explained in the fol-
lowing portion of a letter to Senator William M. Evarts:

I have been unwell for the last two months from a
blow I received in falling from a platform in the studio.
Previous to that my brother was dangerously ill for six
weeks, and again before that I could not work for nearly
two months on account of repairs in the studio. I give
these as the succession of circumstances that have been
the cause of my great delay in delivering your orders.
The Psyche is very far advanced but I 'm afraid it can-
not be finished soon enough to send with your bust which
I 'm now desirous you should have immediately. . . .

As the result of all this, and other misfortunes of a similar
nature, in order to keep his head above water Saint-Gaudens
was forced to return to his cameos. By this time he had
established himself as the most skilful cameo-engraver in Paris
or Rome. So, when the carving of brooches and seals in onyx,
amethysts and such semi-precious stones became the only re-
munerative labor at his command, he set up a shop in which

143

THE REMINISCENCES OF

his brother Louis, Herzog, and a couple of others worked
under his eye. Occasionally also, when in especial need of
twenty-five or fifty dollars, he would sit at the lathe himself,
though he cordially hated the task, and finish a brooch and
two ear-rings in twelve hours. One of the most successful
of these commissions of which there is still a memory is a
cameo that Louis Saint-Gaudens cut under my father's direc-
tion for Mr. E. W. Stoughton. The brooch brought the
young men one hundred and fifty dollars, and was especially
admired, as Stoughton, with his picturesque masses of long
hair, formed a most interesting subject.

Fortunately for my father this was almost the last occa-
sion in which cameo-cutting played a part; the final one he
did, not long after, for my mother's engagement ring. His
interest in this phase of his development nevertheless always
remained with him in later life, and whenever a chance came
he would ask to see his stones. Usually he had no recollec-
tion of having cut them, nor was that surprising when it is
remembered how many hundreds he did between the ages of
nineteen and twenty-five.

But, to return to conditions in Rome, the sky was not al-
ways overcast, and indeed when the change for the better did
arrive it was all my father's optimistic frame of mind could
desire. My mother, who had but recently met him, tells me
that so great was the excess of his enthusiasm over the height
of his wave of fortune, that he purchased for himself an in-
explicably high silk hat, his first, beneath which he promptly
walked across the Piazza di Spagna in the rain, and without an
umbrella, to visit her. Further to describe this new order of
things I will add extracts from two letters written to the
Gibbs family in the fall of 1874. The first is to Mr. Gibbs:

. . . Ever since I have been back from Paris I
have been working very hard, and have settled on what
I shall do as my next ideal statue, a Roman slave, a f e-

144

J> ~

2 t

x >

z o

'^ r-

-r X

- X

3 >

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

male, taking the Emperor Augustus as a child and plac-
ing him on a pedestal. For an inscription I shall have
"ave c^isar imperator!" The slave is crowning her
future Emperor. The child, quite young, shows al-
ready his dominating disposition and seems to realize
his dignity, being very serious, with a big palm in his
hand. I think it would be interesting as an idea.

The second letter is to Miss Florence Gibbs :

. . . I told you in a former letter of the plans I
have had for my next ideal figure. I have put it up and
it has come out beyond all my expectations. It is at
present as large as the statue will be, but in the state of
a sketch. I have been very highly complimented and
advised by everybody to do it as soon as possible. Miss
Brewster, the correspondent, told me that it was one of
the finest things she has seen in sculpture. Another
visitor told me that I would make my name and fortune
with it and that it was the best work that had been done
in Rome for a long while. By still others I have been
advised to carry it out for the Centennial. My hope
now is to go to America, leaving here by the end of De-
cember. I would take a cast of it with me as well as a
cast of another thing I have put up, a little Greek girl
about eight years of age lying full length on a low
Pompeian bed and kissing an infant; the arrangement
is different from what is generally seen. In America
I would rent a small studio to show them in and by and
by get commissions from them. If I did, or even got
any other good commission, I should then return as soon

147

THE REMINISCENCES OF

as possible so as to make the "Slave" for the Centen-
nial. I think that Miss Homer will send you a very
flattering notice of me. . . .

The city is changing a great deal and rapidly. In
the Coliseum they have dug down to a great depth and
it has altered the aspect immensely. The real arena
was not where you have seen it but much lower. Be-
sides, all below the old arena is one mass of construction.
It is very interesting. They have found water galler-
ies with the water still running and in good order, be-
side a large gallery of which you can see the end at the
furthest end of the Coliseum. There are interesting
marks or scratches on the stones of gladiators in their
armor, fighting amongst themselves and with bears and
elephants, and of dogs running after rabbits. Then
also they have found another very interesting place
where they thought they fastened the boats. . . .

To conclude this chapter I will insert a translation of a
letter from my father's friend, Bion:

My dear old San Gaudenzio:

I have just received your letter of the month of August
in what a strange state. Good Lord ! Your dear compatriot,
no doubt to take better care of it, must have soaked it in
oil. Some kind of an American invention, I suppose. But
at last I have it.

I have nothing against you for not having come to see me
this summer. I am myself too negligent about those who are
interesting to me to make a point of any ceremony with you.
And I reserve in a corner of my soul my friendship for the
day that it will please you to come and find it. I do not wish

148

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

to importune you, but seeing that when you came to Paris
you prolonged your silence as though I did not exist, I be-
came timorous and kept myself quiet. But I see that I was
wrong. Do not let us say anything more about it. Another
time I will not doubt you again.

I hope that you will succeed with your intended, for if I
have understood you, I believe she is charming and amiable.
Get married. Happiness is there. I believe the happiness of
others and their welfare lies in marriage. In a letter which
I wrote to you this autumn and which I kept for the above
named reasons, I preached to you about this subject, and
what I said was as gay as the Miserere sung by the Carmel-
ites. On that day the black water of melancholy was rushing
through my brain and I spoke to you about our friends and
our teeth which become spoiled as we get old. Therefore I
advised you at the end to get married and remedy it all. I
do not dare to say any more. To-day you have put me in a
very good humor with your epistle.

So you pitch into the Italians ! And that to me, who have
never been able to stand them, is just as if you were blowing
a trumpet to a war-horse. Those Italians! With their
honeyed tongues, their velvet paws ! Proud bed-bugs ! Heads
which you want to pound ! Hypocrites ! Infamous traitors !
Cruel cowards ! etc., etc. I could go on forever with these
imprecations.

As to the mysterious charm of Rome, I have heard the same
from others who like you have lived there for a long while.
I take your word for it, but it is probable that I will never
experience it.

Since we are talking about characters of people, what you
say about Marquestc * does not surprise me, as I knew it al-
ready. Marqueste is a somewhat proud fellow, conscious of

* A winner of the French Roman Prize who came from the same school
and class as Bion and Saint-Gaudens.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

a certain superiority which Nature has given him, a legitimate
pride which we must not confound with conceit. As little as
I was acquainted with him I was able to see through this aris-
tocrat, and he is one, and I had already predicted that in
Rome he would become puffed up less than the others. So
much the better for him! There is considerable complaint
here against the influence which these Grand Prix fellows en-
joy in the exhibitions and in the obtaining of commissions.
If they would come back and swallow their pills and be a little
less conceited it would not interfere a bit with their talent.

To continue the chapter about our comrades, I am going
to give you some advice. You see France a little too much
through the eyes of 1870. We are all rascally enough, but I
can judge better than you. And what I say is not through
misanthropy or skepticism. Be careful. The frank and gay
companions of the past are very much changed in five years.
Of course there are exceptions. You would now find fellows
very humble who have been very stiff, and others now having
very superb crests, who were then very humble. Also you
would find those putting on airs with great affectation who
used to have great simplicity and frankness. So when you
come back, do the same thing. Throw dust in our eyes, in
mine as well as in others. Praise yourself and make your gold
resplendent. Brag about your relations, your orders, and
promise a great deal. But do not be too generous or they
will make fun of you. In a word, astonish us as much as you
can decently without becoming ridiculous. All of this will
keep you from disenchantments and troubles which I would
not envy you.

I believe I am giving you a real pleasure in sending you my
photograph and I want the same kind of a present from you,
as you must have one about somewhere. I have not seen either
Gamier or Gortelmeyer, who was not in when I called there
to-day. At any rate I believe that you will soon be here
yourself. If over there you find anybody asking about me,

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

say all the good things you can. When you write to Soares,
that "Heart of Gold," just add a little word at the end to let
him know that I have never forgotten him. This is true, as
I have always had a great esteem for him and it interests me
to think that he may be happy, also that old Simoes, another
good fellow ! What a strange life ! Sometimes I think how
pleasant it was that we all lived together; at other times I find
myself wondering if perhaps they have been dead for two or
three years already. Before I finish, I must tell you that I
saw Ringel yesterday. That man knows how to do business,
and if he had shown the energy and activity in commerce that
he has done in sculpture, he would now be a rich man.

I will say good-night to you, old boy, as I am sleepy. I
am going to bed full of friendship for you.

Paul Bion.

151

VI
A FOOTHOLD

1875-1877

The Progress of American Art — The German Savings Bank Build-
ing— Running Water — Chiseling out Henry Ward Beecher —
White and McKim — Teaching at Dobb's Ferry — Admiration for
John La Farge — The Farragut Obtained — The Randall — Anxiety
and Stress — Italian Debts — The Society of American Artists.

IN 1875 Augustus Saint-Gaudens returned to the United
States at last to take up his career as a full-fledged sculp-
tor. For ten years he had worked in this land at his cameo-
engraving, a task that had demanded a keen eye and a deli-
cate hand. A large portion of that time, also, he had studied
of nights in art schools. At the age of nineteen he had gone
to Paris, mentally and physically grounded in the fundamen-
tals of drawing and low relief work, already taught by hard
discipline not to wait upon "inspiration" but to think best
with a modeling tool in his hand. For a year in the Petite
Ecole and two years in the Beaux Arts he had developed his
craft through a vital succession of weekly figures set up from
life, until the alphabet of the human figure became firmly
planted in his mind. Last of all, his trained artistic sense
had profited from a five-year residence in Rome ; since, know-
ing by then what was wise to select, what to leave untouched,
he had discerned below the poverty of the contemporary
classic movement the spontaneity of the early Italians, he had
acquired from them an ability to choose his subjects from
among the important figures of the moment, and then to give
his best eiforts to transforming them into vital and eternal
symbols.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Great changes had occurred in his own land during the eight
years he had been absent, though of course only a small por-
tion of these alterations were to be obvious on his return.
Story still stood as the most popular artist abroad, still sent
home his classic "Medeas." Palmer remained distinctly the
leader in the United States, executing such truly workman-
like monuments as that of "Chancellor Robert R. Livingston."
Ball was finishing his "Daniel Webster" for Central Park, New
York City. Randolph Rogers had set about constructing his
"Nydia." John Rogers continued to make his Civil War
"groups." Launt Thompson, Larkin G. Mead, and George
Bissell seemed as active as ever. Yet in reality, with the
period surrounding the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia
in 1876 the new spirit crystallized. Some of the older sculp-
tors, almost unconsciously, began to look about in order to
suit the changing demands. Brown, Ball, John Rogers, and
Palmer were learning to couple truth with sentiment. Others
who had studied their art in Italy seemed to be passing, while
those who had acquired technique in France were infusing into
it a truly American feeling. The frigid, complacent, Roman
finish appeared ready to give place to the power of creation
of picturesque truth and idealism. J. Q. A. Ward, with his
"Shakspere" fresh from the clay, became President of the
National Academy of Design. Olin Warner, only just re-
turned from abroad with sculpture too good for its surround-
ings, was seeking those other young revolutionists who were
ultimately to join him in founding the Society of American
Artists. Daniel Chester French had recently finished his
"Minute Man" in Concord, Massachusetts, and had returned
from a year in Italy to begin work on his pediment for the St.
Louis custom-house.

Yet, as I have said, it must not be thought that Saint-
Gaudens returned on the crest of an obvious wave. From the
nearer, narrower viewpoint the outlook still remained a dismal
one, with an unusually dreary studio in the German Savings

153

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Bank Building for a background. Such was the hopelessness
of his surroundings, indeed, that he even attempted to learn
to play the flute. He chose the flute, he said, because of the
very obstinacy of his character; since some one having told
him that it required a protruding upper lip to play it, in
this way strengthened his determination to do so in spite of a
"whopper jaw."

The reminiscences say :

At last, when my marbles were finished, I went back
to America. I had succeeded, meanwhile, in getting
rid of all my money, so that the first years of my stay in
New York were the usual hard ones of artists' begin-
nings. I took a studio on the corner of Fourteenth
Street and Fourth Avenue, in the German Savings
Bank Building, which still stands as I write. There
wfcre but three floors and no elevator. It goes with-
out saying that it was before the advent of the sky-
scraper. The first floor was occupied by the bank, the
second floor by offices, while the third contained rooms
rented out to Odd Fellows Lodges for occasional meet-
ings in the evening. The inconveniences of the build-
ing, and its restrictions, were probably the cause of the
non-rental of the offices on the second floor. I was the
first tenant, and the only one for a long time, so that it
became sad business going up this iron staircase alone,
and walking across the big corridor to my room, my
lonely steps echoing through the hall.

In a large measure this depression was lost on the
light-heartedness of my youth. Yet because of my
dislike of America and its conditions, the dislike com-

154

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

mon to young men of my age and frame of mind on
their return to America, I cast about for something to
bring back to my memory the paradise of my place in
Rome, until I came upon an idea. I would turn on
the water at the little wash-basin, let it run continu-
ously with a gentle tinkle, and thus recall the sound o£
the fountain in the garden at Rome.

One day, soon after, the engineer of the German
Savings Bank Building paid me a visit. He was a
man of middle height, portly, good-natured, with very
curly black hair, which seemed to be dripping grease,
a big, heavy, black mustache, and all the appearance
of what one would call a "Forty-niner." He had a
hare-lip which made him speak with a nasal twang
that seemed to proceed from some place between the
roof of his mouth and the back of his nose. The letter
"N" was the dominating note in his words. In fact he
could not get rid of it.

At the end of a few moments' stay, while gazing at
the wash-stand, he said:

" 'N* what are you lettin' that water run for?"

I felt that a very peculiar situation, and one difficult
of explanation, had arisen, and that I must come down
to his level ; so I said :

"You know I have been living in Rome in a very
lovely spot. There was a fountain in the garden. I
was so fond of it, and I am so blue here, I thought I
could recall Rome by letting the water run and hearing
that same sound. Of course that may seem strange to
you, but that is what it is."

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

"'N' is it, hey? Is it? Now I know where 'n'
that leak has been! *N' I Ve been hunting all over 'n
the buildin' to find it. 'N' I have been pumpin' water
up here for three weeks and wonderin' where'n blazes it
had gone to. 'N' you '11 have to 'n' let up on that,
young man!"

You can imagine his shoveling coal into the furnace
below in order to increase the pressure which was to
supply the poet upstairs with the romantic sound neces-
sary to his well-being. You can still further imagine
the reduction on the interest of the German depositors
coming from this extra consumption.

Another incident which lent diversity to this dreary
period of my life took place because of a cast made by a
sculptor, a friend of mine, who occupied an adjoining
room. He wished to model a bust, and, to do this, pro-
posed taking a mold from the living face of his sitter.
That is no trifling matter even to an expert, and it
showed the boldness of the novice, since, notwithstand-
ing my protestations, my friend undertook it without
ever having cast anything before. He wished me to
help him; but I told him that I should wash my hands
of the affair if he tried it. He disappeared.

Presently he rushed into my room crying, "For
Heaven's sake, come!"

In his studio, which was already one of monumental
disorder, confusion, and dirt, stretched out on an old
sofa, lay his subject with a solid mass of hard plaster
about two inches thick enveloping his head; while the
whole room, wall, ceiling, boxes, and floor, was covered

158

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

with the great spatterings of the plaster thrown wildly
about by the sculptor in the course of this extraordinary
proceeding.

There were the usual quills in the sitter's nose but
the weight of the cast was so great that we could hear
him mumble under it, praying us to get it off quickly or
he would die. It was really a serious business, this tak-
ing it off, as we had to bang at the plaster with chisel
and hammer. Fortunately there was no ill result, other
than a good bit of the subject's eyelashes being torn
away and his clothes ruined. He was one of those
happy men, however, who take everything with cheer-
fulness. The death of my tormentor would have been
my only satisfaction had I undergone the sufferings he
was put to.*

Here, too, in the German Savings Bank Building,
were brought to me, by I do not know whom, a couple
of red-heads who have been thoroughly mixed up in
my life ever since; I speak of Stanford White and
Charles F. McKim. White, who was studying with
Richardson, had much to do with the designing of
Trinity Church in Boston. He was drawn to me
one day, as he ascended the German Savings Bank
stairs, by hearing me bawl the "Andante" of Bee-
thoven's Seventh Symphony, and "The Serenade" from
Mozart's "Don Giovanni." He was a great lover of
music. I gave a false impression, for my knowledge

* My uncle, Mr. Louis Saint-Gaudens, tells me that the sculptor of this
story was Edmund Palmer, and the subject Henry Ward Beecher.

H. St.-G.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

came only from having heard the "Andante" from Le
Brethon, ten or fifteen years before, and the "Serenade"
from a howling Frenchman in the Beaux Arts who
could shout even louder than I, and sang it in a sin-
gularly devilish and comic way. McKim I met later
on. A devouring love for ice-cream brought us to-
gether.

Meanwhile, my affairs remained in such a state that
I did some teaching which required fabulous exertion;
for that old friend of my father's, Dr. Agnew, then liv-
ing on the Hudson opposite Dobbs Ferry, had a num-
ber of children to whom I gave lessons in drawing. It
seemed to me as if I started out at daybreak on those
hot summer days; taking the cars to Dobbs Ferry,
where I stood on the dock, and, with a string, pulled
a wooden arm which branched out of the top of a pole
to indicate to the man with a boat on the other bank of
the river, a mile or two away, that somebody wanted to
cross. Then an approaching speck on the water became
the ferryman, who had seen the sign and was coming
over to take me back. On landing I climbed a steep
hill in the hot sun, and taught the young pupils, who,
I am afraid, were not as much interested in what I said
as they should have been. They have since become
among the most charming of my friends. After an
hour or so with them, I descended the hill, crossed the
river in the row-boat, took the train, which deposited
me at Thirtieth Street on the North River, and walked
over to Twenty-third Street, where I arrived at one
o'clock more dead than alive.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

The necessity of teaching, the usual lack of money,
came at this time, not so much through my old habit of
underestimating expenses as through the failure of a
number of commissions to materialize after I had spent
many weeks in seeking them. For instance, I was en-
couraged to begin a statue of Sergeant Jasper planting
the flag on the redoubt at Fort Moultrie, South Caro-
lina, yet this eventually went the way of those inspira-
tions which I had had in Rome. But one direct result
of the various kinds of sculpture I executed at that time
compensated for all my failures. I speak of my first
associations with Mr. John La Farge in the execution
of the "King" monument to go in the cemetery at New-
port, Rhode Island. Part of the work I modeled in
Mr. La Farge's studio in that town. It was absolutely
his design, and possessed that singular grace, elevation,
nobility, and distinction which is characteristic of what-
ever he has touched. I was the tool that modeled for
him then, as I was subsequently in the painting I did for
him as an assistant in his decoration of Trinity Church
in Boston. Those again were great days, for he had
with him at that time Mr. Francis Lathrop, Mr. Frank
Millet, and Mr. George Maynard.

There is no doubt that my intimacy with La Farge
has been a spur to higher endeavor, equal to, if not
greater than any other I have received from outside
sources. Those who have had the honor of knowing
him can at once understand this statement. I am not
able, however, to mention with good taste all that I
feel and would like to say about his influence. Neither

161

THE REMINISCENCES OF

can I explain the many ways in which he assisted me,
though perhaps the most definitely helpful moment of
all fell one afternoon in the sad studio in the German
Savings Bank Building, when he saw some of my casts
of the Pisani reliefs of the fifteenth century, and when,
to my expressed despair of ever attempting to do me-
dallions after looking at those achievements, he said
quietly and incisively,

"Why not? I don't see why you should not do as
well."

This is no doubt the reason I have modeled so many
medallions since, yet I fear I have fallen far short of
what promise he saw in me.

Through La Farge, then, a period was finally placed
to the bad conditions of my affairs, for promptly more
good luck followed. To begin with, one day when I
had occasion to see Governor Morgan, he said to me,
after questioning me about some old sketches I had
made:

"I think there is a statue of Admiral Farragut to be
erected in New York. Do you know anything about
it?"

"No."

"Go and see Cisco."

Mr. John J. Cisco was a banker very prominent in
affairs at that time. I took Governor Morgan's advice
and visited him.

"Yes," said Mr. Cisco, "we have eight thousand dol-
lars for a statue to Farragut, but, before deciding to
whom it is to go, we shall have to have a meeting."

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

A meeting followed in a few days, and subsequently
Governor Morgan told me that, to his great surprise,
the work had been awarded to me, but "only by the skin
of the teeth," five of the committee having voted for giv-
ing the commission to a sculptor of high distinction,
while six of them voted for me. Again another glo-
rious day!

With that the tide turned wholly in my favor, for
upon my success in obtaining this commission Governor
Dix, to whose family my father was furnishing shoes,
immediately asked if I would model a statue of Robert
Richard Randall, for Sailors' Snug Harbor, Staten Is-
land. So that before I knew it I had the making of
two public monuments, while to cap all, La Farge com-
missioned me to execute those bas-reliefs for St. Thomas'
Church, which along with his master-pieces on each side
of them, were destroyed by fire.

The receipt of these commissions, the Farragut and
the Randall, settled another serious question which had
been pending for a long while, my marriage. This took
place at once, on June 4th, 1877, at Roxbury, Massa-
chusetts. My wife and I came back to New York on
the following day, and the next morning sailed for Liv-
erpool, just in time to see the last two days of the
French Salon.

This trip formed again a marked turning-point in my
life. Yet before dwelling upon it, let me mention the
one great New York interest, outside of my work,
which had been growing in my mind through my stay
there, to culminate just before my departure. I speak

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

of the Society of American Artists, my concern in
which originated through one of my Roman sketches,
the only one which endured; the others had gone to the
oblivion they deserved. The composition was that of a
young girl lying on her face on a low couch, dandling
an infant in her arms. As I recall it, and from the
pen-and-ink drawing I still possess — no, that also went
in the fire which burned my studio — it had an ingenuous
charm that I doubt very much my ability to achieve to-
day. This sketch I had brought with me to America,
and its rejection by the National Academy of Design
so angered me that, with four or five others in the same
recalcitrant state of mind, I joined the group which
founded the Society of American Artists. After years
of increasing success, that society is merging back into
the Academy of Design, enmity to which brought it
into existence. The field is open for another society of
younger, protesting men.

It is only proper to add that the rejection of the
sketch was justifiable. It was entirely too unfinished
a product to be exhibited, particularly considering the
general attitude of artists at that time.

My father's meeting with John La Farge, as he has said,
was certainly of vast importance to him. Therefore it is well
to correct even the slight error the mist of years caused Saint-
Gaudens to make in his explanation of how he came to meet
the great decorator. It was the Trinity Church work, not
that in Newport, which introduced the sculptor to the painter.
A letter from my aunt, Mrs. Oliver Emerson, sheds some light
upon this former fact. She says:

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

"At this time the new Trinity Church, in Boston, was being
built by Richardson, La Farge having charge of the decora-
tion of the interior. Several artists assisted him, among them,
to a limited extent, your father, who, if I remember rightly,
painted the seated figure with an open book, which is called
St. James, in the lunette in the half of the church towards
Boylston Street, not far from the main entrance, and worked
on the figure of St. Paul, the large figure at one side of the
chancel arch. I have an idea that he regarded this trial at
fresco painting somewhat in the light of an experiment, but I
am not sure. . . ."

The King tomb came later and was mostly carried out by
my father in Paris. During these two New York years the
commission was of interest only in producing an exchange, be-
tween my father and La Farge, of letters which show that
the mutual esteem the two men held for each other was as real
at that time as when the reminiscences were written.

Mr. La Farge wrote:
My dear Mr. St -Gaudens :

. . I hope you are getting on well, but take your own
way and time. I only regret having been led by the force of
events to inflict myself so much on you, and to have made you
use up so much valuable time. I shall do my best that it may
be no serious detriment to you, and shall try to have it at least
compensated. No news here as yet.

Yours very sincerely,

La Farge.

To which my father answered:

My dear Mr. La Farge:

. . . I only regret that I cannot remain here and
have it in my studio a year or so, in order to do it to
your heart's content, which would be mine too. I 'm
afraid Mrs. King would not see that though.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

As to your "infliction" I wish to tell you frankly and
sincerely, particularly as I fear that from my nervous-
ness and irritableness on some days you may have had a
different impression, that, as I said before, my peculiar
position requiring haste where time and thought were
necessary was what bothered me, and nothing else. I
feel that I owe more to you in an artistic sense than to
any man I ever met. And, believe me, it is my great-
est regret that by leaving the country I am to end a
close artistic connection with you.

I should like to do work with you and have such work
for years in the studio without any money consideration
whatever, and I trust that if I secure this other order I
may make myself enough of an income to be able to
work in that way.

In the matter of the Farragut, also, my father underesti-
mated the case. For the real incident was by no means as brief
as he describes it. He had already made a sketch of Farra-
gut's head in Rome, both through a vague hope of obtaining
the monument and because of an interest which he sustained
through life, writing on one occasion to Mr. Charles Keck:
"I have such respect and admiration for the heroes of the
Civil War that I consider it my duty to help in any way to
commemorate them in a noble and dignified fashion worthy of
their great service." But after his return to this land, what
became of more immediate moment to him than this latter al-
truistic consideration was the fact that my grandfather,
Thomas J. Homer, was unwilling that my mother and father
be married until he had received at least one important com-
mission. Of course, too, as he often remarked afterwards,
like most young men, he was in desperate fear lest some one
steal his ideas, not until years later evolving his motto, "You

166

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

can do anything you please. It 's the way it 's done that
makes the difference." So the plans and counter-plans di-
rected towards securing the work were forwarded with that
unrelenting energy which brought about the turning-point in
his career and later placed him at the head of his profession.
Fortunately for this book, while my mother was upon a trip
to the Azores, at this time, my father found himself on suffi-
ciently cordial relations with his father- and mother-in-law-
to-be to carry on with them a frank and intimate correspond-
ence, typical of his frame of mind toward the whole situation.
I will give three of these letters to Mrs. Homer:

. . . Governor Morgan's interest in me has in-
creased a great deal and he seems to have a decided
liking for me. He has tried twice to get John J. Cisco
to come up to see the figure and has finally succeeded.
To-morrow he goes to get him with his carriage to bring
him to my place ; Governor Morgan liked the Farragut
sketch a great deal. He gave me a nice letter of intro-
duction to Mr. Appleton who came the day after I saw
him. He thought the figure very fine, asked me the price
I proposed doing it for, and said he would talk to the
other members of the Committee. Also Mr. Moore,
my friend's brother, is the intimate friend of General
Shaler and he sent him up to me. He also spoke very
highly of Farragut and offered to lend me a little
statuette of Farragut that he had. He is going to bring
it to me himself. He said, "I want to help you be-
cause you are a young man. If you were an old man I
would let you stand on your own legs." He was very
cordial. He told me that Mr. Montgomery was the
man I should have. Now Mr. Montgomery is the inti-

167

THE REMINISCENCES OF

mate friend of both Mr. Messenger, who takes a great in-
terest in me, and Mr. Moore, my friend who sent Gen-
eral Shaler. Mr. Evarts gave me a card of introduc-
tion to Governor Dix whom I saw. He came the next
day, thought my sketch very fine, and admired greatly
several drawings of mine, beside the busts of Messrs.
Evarts and Woolsey (which all the above gentlemen be-
side himself were very prodigal of superlatives about).
He, Governor Dix, also invited me to his house. I went
last night and remained till eleven P. M. They were
very warm in their demonstrations of friendship, both
he and Mrs. Dix. They said: "Come to see us, come
often and tell us how you are getting along." And
Mrs. Dix added, "And if there is anything in the world
We can do for you, let us know." So you see I have
very good reasons for being hopeful for the Farragut,
though it will be spring before any action will probably
be taken. The return of Messrs. Montgomery and
Grinnell will take place then. Of the former I am
sure, also of the latter through a friend of Mr. Moore's
and Governor Morgan's recommendation. General
MacDowell, the other member of the Committee, will
come to see me at the desire of Mr. Stoughton, on his
arrival in the city, so I have surely Cisco, Shaler, Dix,
Appleton, and almost certainly Montgomery, Mac-
Dowell, and Grinnell. The only member I have any
doubt about is Marshall C. Roberts. . . .

May 31st— 76.
. . . I have had two good things happen in regard
to the Farragut. First : Governor Dix is very friendly

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to me; indeed he told Mr. Cisco that he intended
telling Mr. Grinnell, the chairman whose dilatory and
procrastinating habits are the cause of all the delay,
that he must either take immediate action, or resign his
position so that others might act. This I consider as
very favorable to me. Second Mr. Ward, the "big
sculptor" here, whose word is almost law in art matters,
told me last night that he would squeeze in a word for
me. Beside this I have very strong and direct in-
fluence bearing on both these gentlemen, and, in fact,
on all but one or two members of the Committee. On
Sunday or Monday Mr. McClure, a strong friend of
mine, and of the greatest influence with two members
of the committee, arrives from Europe. My chances
could scarcely be brighter. Nevertheless, I do not
hope too much. If I fail I will have my mind clear on
one point. I have never moved around about anything
as I have about this. I have made two models, a large
drawing and a bust, and I have not allowed the slight-
est or most remote chance for my bringing influence to
bear to escape me. I cannot think of a step that I
have neglected to take. As far as I can see I am in a
very fair way to have the commission, and events would
have to take a very unusual and unexpected turn for
it to be otherwise. . . .

Friday, June 16th, 1876.
From what Gussie wrote me I believe she must have
left Fayal on Monday of this week and that prob-
ably twelve or fourteen days more will find her in Bos-

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

ton. I would feel obliged if you would telegraph me
when you receive news of her arrival at New Bedford.
I am afraid I shall have no good news in regard to the
Farragut for her when she comes. In fact, I am afraid
that that affair is done for. I saw Moses Grinnell the
other night. He said that he had seen Ben. H. Field,
the only member of the Committee that I have had
reason to complain of, and two or three others of the
Committee, and that they thought that it would be bet-
ter for them to wait until they had a larger sum of
money. Also he said a great many other things the
gist of which was discouraging. Nevertheless there is
still a chance as nothing has been decided by the Com-
mittee officially and I am sure that three of the Com-
mittee out of the six, for the others are all absent, want
the thing done now. So on the day of the meeting I
will present an offer to do it for twelve thousand dol-
lars, the sum they have in hand. Mr. Grinnell told
me that he Was not going away until August, but I
believe that there are some of the "big" sculptors here
at the bottom of it.

After this remark about "big sculptors," and in view of
my father's own lifelong anxiety to help younger men, I am
glad of the opportunity to record the fact that the Farragut
Commission ultimately came to Saint-Gaudens through the aid
of Mr. J. Q. A. Ward. When the time for the final decision
arrived, in December, 1876, I understand that, upon the com-
mittee first voting six for Ward and five for Saint-Gaudens,
Ward declined to accept the offer and most generously used all
his influence towards having the work given to his rival. Here
is what my father wrote to Mr. Ward:

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

153 Fourth Ave., June 26, 1876.
Dear Mr. Ward:

I am about to make a proposal for the Farragut, and
I believe my chances would be increased a great deal
could I refer to you for an opinion in regard to my past
work and my general ability. I know it 's a very deli-
cate request to make, still as you were kind enough to
express your wish to say a good word for me, I would
be very desirous to take advantage of your kind feel-
ing. I think though it would be hardly fair for me to
ask you this until you have seen more of my work, and
if you will make an appointment I might go with you
to Governor Morgan's any day as early or as late as you
please. You would simply see the figure, and would
in no way be intruding on the Governor. Or you can
call there yourself. By your presenting the enclosed
card the steward will show you the figure. I must re-
peat that I do not wish to place you in a disagreeable
position, and for this reason let me assure you that there
would not be the slightest ill-feeling if after you had
seen my work you should not feel justified in giving
any opinion of my ability.

Yours sincerely,

Aug. St.-Gaudens.

To which Ward replied:

My dear Sir:

I have not yet had time to see your statue at Governor
Morgan's. But I saw the "Silence" at the Masonic Temple
last week. With reference to the proposed statue of Farra-
gut I sincerely hope that the gentlemen of the Committee in

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charge of the affair will commission you to do the work. If
you think that any reference to me in the matter would assist
them in coming to such a conclusion, I should most cheerfully
express my faith in your ability to give them an earnest and
most interesting statue. You can refer to me in any way
you choose. I spoke to Mr. Field about the matter some
three or four weeks ago.

Very truly yours,

J. Q. A. Wabd.

So much for the Farragut ; in regard to the Randall monu-
ment, I will give portions of two drafts of letters which set
forth some of my father's ideas that he was not permitted to
carry out in this commission. He writes:

Rev. Dr. Dix:

. . . The absence of all information in regard to
Mr. Randall makes it next to impossible to produce a
portrait of his figure. I do not think of any suffi-
ciently important association with his work to justify
making an ideal statue of him. A simple statue of a
man particularly restricts an artist in the treatment of
the character of his subject and this becomes even worse
when there is added to it the difficulty of dealing with
the unpicturesqueness of the modern costume. An
allegorical treatment besides being much superior in ar-
tistic beauty, leaves a greater scope for the imagination,
thereby allowing a fuller and more satisfactory re-
sult. . . .

Again :

. . . I would represent Captain Randall step-
ping from his cabin, his hat in his right hand, at the

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

same moment taking up his telescope. In my sketch I
have not given him a more distinctive nautical charac-
ter as I have not had time to search the proper author-
ity for that. I learn that I can obtain whatever data
I may need in that direction at New Bedford and
other New England ports. The birds at the corners
of the pedestals are to be sea-gulls. The whole charac-
ter of the support can very easily be made more nautical
when seriously studied, the pedestal, having its charm
in simplicity, giving the proportions necessary to ac-
company the figure.

On the sides can be placed whatever inscription the
committee may desire, the principal one going in front
if necessary, instead of the anchor. Bas-reliefs such
as I suggested in the first proposal sent in, and at the
same extra cost, can be placed on the sides.

The first sketch, with the figure of Benevolence, can
be treated so as to be much more nautical in character
by the suggestion in the accessories. I did not have
that idea in mind when I made the drawing.

I also inclose a rapid sketch made to-day in which
I have the pedestal as a fountain with two mermaids,
which might be tritons if thought best, sustaining a
tablet bearing Captain Randall's name, the water to
come splashing against them. . . .

Such was the fashion, then, in which my father sought a
footing with all the energy of his high-strung, earnest nature.
Yet in spite of this, four other attempts failed. The first of
these commissions was for a bas-relief of Mr. Joseph Ridgway
of St. Louis, modeled for his widow. The entire family, ex-

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

cepting this lady, her son-in-law, and two grandchildren, had
recently died, and, just as my father had almost completed his
work, the four sailed for Germany and were lost at sea on
the Schiller. No one remained who was sufficiently interested
in having the medallion made permanent in marble or bronze.

The second failure, an effort to obtain the order for a
statue of Charles Sumner, caused Saint-Gaudens to enter his
only competition. His seated model, about two and one-half
feet high, represented Sumner in his senator's chair, his head
thrown back and a little to one side, one hand vigorously
braced against an arm of the chair, as if he were about to
rise and speak in earnest debate, the other hand holding a
scroll. The pose was full of action, too full, my father used
to say, laughing to himself. He worked upon it all one
spring in the office of his future father-in-law, Mr. Thomas
J. Homer, in the Studio Building of Boston, Massachusetts.
At the end of that time the Committee, which had hitherto
insisted upon a seated figure, brushed aside all the submitted
designs and competitors, and gave the order to another for a
standing figure. The lack of faith shown by those in charge
so angered my father that he not only never again went into
a competition, but even refused to submit sketches of any
idea until a work had been definitely awarded him; while with
the tenacity with which he clung to any thought or feeling,
he fought through all his life, and up to the month of his
death, for some just method of guiding competitions in this
country, so that younger sculptors should have fairer oppor-
tunities.

The third and fourth commissions that my father vainly
sought never even reached the stage of the preceding ones which
I have named. Yet I will insert portions of drafts of letters
dealing with both of them. The first letter, sent in March,
1876, to Professor Gardner, regarding the monument to Ser-
geant Jaspar already mentioned, is interesting as an example
of the care and detail with which my father planned his work.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

The second letter, to Hon. William M. Evarts, shows vividly
the sacrifices the young sculptor was ready to make in the in-
terests of his art.

To Professor Gardner my father wrote:

Dear Sir:

. . . The "hair" part of your letter is particularly
interesting to me. As you suggested, I am making
him without the hat. I trust you will not think me
annoying if I ask you a question or two more. I be-
lieve that the uniform you described was ordered some-
time after the battle of Fort Moultrie, and conse-
quently he did not have it. Was there any uniform
before that time? Was the sword worn ever by a ser-
geant at the end of one of the cross belt straps? Might
it not have been attached to the belt around the center
of the body? I have seen pictures in which I find
Marion's men with a different uniform, a kind of skull
cap and a sort of jacket and boots. Is there any au-
thority for this? And might I not make my sergeant
with socks, and still be within the truth on account of
the irregularity of the uniform? I also desire to know
if there was not a collar attached to the ordinary shirt
worn at the time by the country people.

While to Senator Evarts he sent the following:

. . . Mr. Gibbs suggests that I ought to state in
a note to you, what my wishes are in relation to the
figure of Chancellor Kent, about which you were good
enough to speak to him in my interest. I would be
very glad indeed to make the proposed figure, success

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in which would, I feel sure, greatly aid me in my career.
I am fully aware that at my age, with so few large
works to point to, I must be content to labor for repu-
tation. If, in the preparation of any important com-
mission likely to enhance my reputation, I could, by
the liberality of any friend, be indemnified against
actual loss, I would consider that I had been greatly
the gainer.

If you should feel disposed to order the figure I
would at once undertake it, and would go on and com-
plete it without delay, accepting for it its cost to me.
I am sure that if I am successful, and I have no doubt
that I shall be so, in making a creditable work, its ex-
hibition will go very far to establish my reputation
here. I think I could complete the model in six or
eight months. I would be willing to practise every
economy and accept for the completed work the amount
of the actual expenses. These would be vouched for
by receipted bills as usual. The cost would be less
than one-fourth the sum a competent artist would de-
mand if an order were given for such a figure, less than
one-fourth the sum paid by Congress for statues of the
same class. . . .

I would esteem it a great advantage to be allowed
to make this farther step in my career with your gen-
erous assistance. . . .

So much for the individual commissions and their specific
disappointments. Surrounding these major problems were a
multitude of minor difficulties that produced still further anx-
iety and stress. Taken as a group, they are well described

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in still others of his letters which he wrote my mother and her
parents. I will give portions of five. The first is to my
mother :

314 Fourth Avenue, Wednesday Evening,

March 17, 1875.

. . . I shall go to Boston where I shall stay six
weeks, the time necessary to make the sketch, and then
return here. Therefore I shall then have ample time
to run around, and ample time to execute the orders I
have. I shall also have the sketches here by that time,
and as the Academy Exhibits will be going on, I shall
have there the busts of Messrs. Evarts and Stoughton.
"The Indian" will also be here. Now what I propose
to do, if I am unsuccessful during the summer in getting
other orders, is to rent a studio here and model a sketch
of Columbus or Gutenberg or the "Farragut," and on
that sketch try and get a commission so as to have it
presented to the Central Park. For I almost despair
of receiving any orders on the sketches that are coming
over. They are not finished enough I am afraid. The
more I go around the more I see how little the public
comprehends, and how necessary it is that a sketch be
highly polished for them to understand it. We shall
see. The photos of my sketches decidedly make im-
pressions only on artists. . . .

I saw Mrs. Ridgway and she showed me the likeness
that she wished to have, and asked me the price. I
told her, for a medallion three hundred dollars, and
for two of the same five hundred dollars. She said
she would tell me on Thursday, to-morrow. It is a

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very easy head to do, and in case she should give me the
order it will be the most profitable commission I have
ever received.

I felt very "blue" indeed yesterday, and I am glad
I could not find time to write you. First of all there
had been a misunderstanding in regard to the bust of
Ericsson for Mr. Sargent. He assured me that he had
not authorized Mr. Stoughton to give me an order for
it, and said he would see him to-day. Mr. Stoughton
told me to-day it was a mistake but that it was all right
as he, Mr. Sargent, was going to present it to the
"Historical Society."

I paid a visit to Mr. Evarts night before last to
solicit his support in the competition. He did not
treat me as nicely as I should wish. But it is his man-
ner. He is imperious with everybody, and I know
that, although he is not over amiable with me, never-
theless, he does all in his power for a person, and will
for me. When we were through with my conversation,
he ended by saying that he did not know what I
wanted, that a competition was to take place and that
it was to be awarded to the best. Then I riled up and
answered him right up and down that all the competi-
tions in the country were apparently fair ones. . . .

The remainder of the letter is missing. In it, by the way,
my father was quite correct in his estimate of Senator Evarts.
For at about this time the statesman wrote to Mr. Homer
concerning his future son-in-law: "All I know of the young
man is greatly to his credit. I predict for him a brilliant
future."

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Again Saint-Gaudens writes, on this occasion to Mrs.
Homer :•

Thursday, Dec. 23rd, 1875.
My dear Mrs. Homer:

I have never been so occupied and pressed for time
as I have been since I left Boston. I have tried to
write often, but one thing or another has stopped me,
not seldom the reason was my being discouraged.
"Up and down," "up and down," all the time. . . .

Governor Morgan did not come to the studio at the
time he promised, a young lady who wanted model-
ing lessons did not come when she promised, etc., etc.
But here is all that has taken place. I now have a pu-
pil in modeling, a Mrs. Swinburne, who comes every
morning and pays me fifty dollars a month. I very
probably am going to have others. To-night I have
news of the arrival of the Samuel Johnson bust. The
money which I 'm to receive on it will take my "Si-
lence" out. I have no further news from Mr. Evarts.
Mrs. Farragat has not come to see me. The gentle-
man from whom I expected the order for a bust did
not give it to me. And finally Governor Morgan
came to the studio and found the project for his tomb
beautiful but too dear. The architect, contrary to my
desire and because he wished to make a larger job of it,
elaborated the most expensive design, and passed over
in a very rough manner the two others that came within
the limit Mr. Morgan had mentioned. . . . He
said now he had seen that fine design he would have

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nothing less fine, and preferred waiting until he could
pay the price for it, rather than to pay a less price and
have something not so fine. . . .

Again, now to Mr. Homer:

Wednesday, Jan. 26th, 1876.
Dear Mr. Homer:

I received both yours and Mrs. Homer's letters, also
the portrait of that handsome young lady. You must
excuse my not writing. "Make hay while the sun
shines," is the proverb. I am trying to make a little
hay, and trying to make the sun shine a little. But
it 's hard work. I have little or nothing new to tell.
. . . I saw the other day that Congress had appro-
priated one thousand dollars for a bust of Chief Justice
Taney. I wrote to Attorney General Pierrepont
about it but received no answer. I felt hopeful about
it for a time. I was invited to Gov. Morgan's recep-
tion last night. It was a stylish affair. My figure
looks very well there. He told me that Mrs. Governor
Dix, on seeing it during the day, spoke of wanting me
to do something for her. I am going to call there to-
night. Tiffany's has paid me one hundred dollars for
the four little medallions I made, and I am now work-
ing for them. I am afraid I will not be able to get
through with the Jasper for the Centennial. I have
become quite intimate with Mrs. Farragut, and I think
my chances for that affair are still very bright, better
in fact than they have been so far, but I will expect

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

nothing. I have been so often and so much disap-
pointed that I calculate on nothing. . . .

Once more to my mother:

Thursday, May 11, 1876.

. . . I have been to Philadelphia where I placed
my bust of Evarts in a first rate position. . . . To-
night I must see the architect of Masonic Hall in re-
gard to the "Silence." I will call on Field again, and
on another gentleman in regard to exhibiting my
"Girl and Child." This afternoon I prepared that
sketch for the Exhibition. I 'm almost distracted with
the hundred different things in my head, and the plan-
ning, counter-planning, &c., &c. Yesterday I called
on Cisco. He also wanted everything done right off.
I called on Morgan. It 's useless and too long for me
to try and explain and tell all. I am doing my very
"level best" as they say.

Now to Mrs. Homers:

. . . I am also trying to hunt up something about
a monument to Jasper that is to be erected to him in
Charleston. It 's not the one I have already spoken
to you of, but another, and if things take a favorable
turn I shall go to Charleston. If the "Farragut"
should fail, I think of passing the remainder of the sea-
son at Washington where I think something might
arise. I am also working on my Jasper, but have
stopped working nights. I am racing around gener-

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ally hunting up people for the Farragut campaign, and
I have but very little time to myself. . . .

From these letters it is not hard to believe that my father's
life in New York was one turbulent battle. If he could have
dealt with his present difficulties untroubled by the past, how-
ever, he would have felt reasonably happy, confident in his
buoyant nature that his lot resembled that of many others.
But the past, which he had left hopelessly tangled in Italy,
continued to follow him without let, as is shown by two more
letters. The first is to his friend Dr. Shiff, the second to an-
other friend, Chevalier, a French genre painter, who escaped
from France after a condemnation by the French Govern-
ment, as a participant in the Parisian Commune insurrection
of 1871.

July 31st, '75.
Dear Shiff:

I write to you to ask further favors, as you have been
so kind as to take an interest in my troubles. . . .
Mr. Lowe tells me that he had a conversation with you
about my affairs and, I don't know with what author-
ity, added that he was in hopes that you would pay off
my creditors and emancipate the "Silence." If it is so
that you propose doing it, you know better than I can
ever express how deeply I would thank you. I have
already given you trouble enough, and my gratitude
will be even greater if you can only continue to pay
some attention to my affairs until I get out of this
strait, for I see I cannot depend on anybody else.
Louis will not write. Mr. Lowe does not answer all
my questions. And Blanco's silence is as great as my

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

brother's. Now, last but not least, on the 14th of July
I sent a draft through Duncan, Sherman & Company.
. . . Of course you know of their failure. I am
only waiting a few days to see if there is any chance
of those drafts being honored before taking steps to
telegraph more money over to cover the deficiencies
thus made. You see I am not in luck, but hard work
and courage will bring me out of it. . . .

I wrote to Chevalier last week, and I thank him sin-
cerely for the trouble he takes. I will not forget you
all. ... I understand thoroughly the need of my
presence in Rome now, but it would be sheer folly for
me to leave here and thus destroy whatever prospects
I have. It is for this reason that I give you all so
much trouble. If I pull through it will be all
"square." I '11 take care not to get in such a fix again.
I shall then have another and a "level" head to help,
and I think I 'm learning by experience. . . .

Your friend,

A. St.-G.

314 Fourth Avenue, New York, August 4, 1875.
My dear Chevalier:

. . . In case the landlord wants to make trouble,
try to calm him. But if, by chance, he wishes to hold
something as guaranty for the rent — though he has n't
the right if three months are paid in advance, and in a
few days I will send the money for that — let him keep
the "Indian" and all the rest of the things. . . .
Once the "Silence" is out and my busts on the way, I

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won't care for the rest. . . . Finally, I will ask
you to excuse me for the very brusque manner which
may possibly seem brutal, in which I ask these favors
of you. The fact is, that if I don't write down at once
what I wish to have done, my ideas would escape me.
So I will finish with a great big word of thanks which
will include all that I ought to say to you. You will
understand me, I hope, and on my return you will find
that I have no lack of appreciation of kindnesses. I do
not write you of other affairs, as my head is upside
down with all of these worries. But at some other
more quiet time, I will send you some secondary de-
tails. A hand grasp for all and one for you.

Here, for the time being, I may make an end to my account
of my father's anxious efforts, in order to turn to his share in
the founding of the Society of American Artists, which for
twenty-five years meant so much to the progress of art in this
land. For though the history of the inception of this body
is really the history of a vital change in American painting,
not only Saint-Gaudens but another sculptor, Olin Warner,
had much to do with the movement.

As I have explained, at the time Saint-Gaudens left for
Europe, the one dominant note in American painting was its
landscapes. Portraiture, while breaking away from the tra-
ditions of Reynolds or West, possessed no new sincere feel-
ings to take their place. Figure work led by Emanuel Leutze
and Loring Elliott, had assumed a self-consciousness that
bound it to a set of ponderous conventions, smooth, dull tech-
nique and commonplace moral qualities, rather than artistic
ones.

But fresh notions were gently maturing beneath this smug
surface. Eastman Johnson and T. W. Ward began to paint

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

figure and genre canvases in a manner that would elicit little
sympathy nowadays, yet gave the first indications of remon-
strance against things as they were. Soon after came others
fired with a desire for broader qualities in place of the old
minute handling. William Morris Hunt and John La Farge
each studied with Couture, and each selected what best fitted
his needs in Paris. Veder adapted Rome to his individuality,
rather than his individuality to Rome. Winslow Homer,
without leaving this land, struck away from old trifling pet-
tiness to develop his own note of strength. Then, seemingly
all in a moment, the new movement grew in volume and ve-
locity. The courage of ignorance that had sent forth the
elder generations no longer remained possible. The young
men began to discover about them the wish for sound tech-
nical training. The Academy, with its trivial inspirations
and laborious rendering, could not meet the demands for
firm, free draughtsmanship and color that was warm and
rich.

At once Munich and Paris began to replace Rome and
Diisseldorf in popularity ; for France, in especial, had long
possessed more sturdy traditions, more exacting training than
other lands, and such men as Shirlaw, Chase, and Duveneck
had begun to recognize it. Enthusiasm in hard, intelligent
study, with individuality as the keynote, Lowe and Beckwith
and Sargent were gaining from Carolus Duran. Unrelenting
drawing from the nude, Julien and Colorossi taught in the
Beaux Arts Academies to such young men as Bridgeman,
Eakins, Thayer, Weir, Eaton, Dewing and Vonnah.

But when this group of reformers, so justly convinced of
their rights, turned to their home country for their laurels,
a most unexpected though natural reception met them. They
had failed to realize that, while their efforts might prove strong
in drawing here or in the handling of color there, as yet they
lacked the unity that would come with age and experience.
Also they had not reckoned on the fact that the American

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taste, though dissatisfied with the old seasoning, would require
some time to become trained to the new.

The Academicians, though naturally they could not under-
stand, remained cordial as long as they had no need to enter-
tain the situation seriously. But when the men already men-
tioned began to appear, and beside them Brush, Maynard,
Lathrop, Francis Millet, and a quantity of others demanded
space, the resentment of the older body is easy to imagine.
They were certainly unwilling to relinquish the whip-hand to
a group, which, according to their viewpoint, had neither
technical nor literary excellence, and yet regarded the Acade-
micians as antiquated fogies and, what is more, said so in
print. Consequently, at one exhibition the new pictures were
hung in the darkest corners, and great was the uproar from
the fresh comers. Then the innovations were placed "on the
line," and deep was the wailing from the ousted "old timers."
So the split inevitably widened, and indignation waxed on both
sides, until on June 1, 1877, at Miss Helena deKay's Studio,
Saint-Gaudens, Eaton, and Shirlaw organized the Society of
American Artists. Let no one doubt the courage of that act,
for my father and his friends threw down the gauntlet to an
old and powerful organization with money and social pres-
tige and every apparent reason to resent the action of an un-
mannerly group of youngsters.

More intimately to set forth the creation of this new body,
let me quote from a letter written by Mr. Gilder to me on June
6, 1907.

"I have often said that the Society of American Artists
was founded on the wrath of Saint-Gaudens. You know Mrs.
Gilder was a student in those days, first at the Cooper Insti-
tute and then at the Academy school. Later she belonged to
the new Art Students' League, which was a revolt from the
Academy School. Just then the old Academicians were carry-
ing things with a pretty high hand, so I spoke to a few of the
younger men of our American renaissance about starting a

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

new organization. When I mentioned it to your father he
said that the time had not quite come. But one day, — just
thirty years ago last Saturday, June first, 1877, — he rang
the bell at the iron gate at 103 East Fifteenth Street. It
was noon, and I was at home for lunch. I ran down to the
gate, and I tell you there was a high wind blowing! Your
reverend father was as mad as hops. He declared that they
had just thrown out a piece of sculpture of his from the
Academy exhibit, and that he was ready to go into a new
movement. I told him to come round that very evening. We
sent, in addition, for Walter Shirlaw and Wyatt Eaton, and
the Society of American Artists was that night founded by
Walter Shirlaw, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Wyatt Eaton and
Helena deKay Gilder, your humble servant acting as secre-
tary, though Wyatt Eaton was the nominal secretary. Clar-
ence Cook, the critic, was present, but not as a member.

"I remember that Cook soon hauled off because a certain
artist was admitted. He said the movement was already
spoiled. I labored with him and told him that when a cause
took up physical arms by means of an association, in order
to gain the advantages of an association it was apt to come
down somewhat from the highest ideals ; that even among the
apostles there was one not up to the mark, and the Church
itself was not the ideal thing that the ideal of Christianity is.
I said that, if the association really ran down seriously, a new,
one would be started to do the work, and do so, ad infinitum."

As I have explained, the "movement" was not "spoiled."
On the contrary, the Tightness of their attitude received an
unusually prompt recognition, and Mr. Cook recovered from
his first disgust and resumed a just and friendly attitude, as
may be seen by this letter of his published in the New York
Tribune upon June 27, 1877:

". . . The dispute between the Academy and the party
of reform is essentially a dispute about principles. Persons
are brought into the discussion only as illustrations, and while

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

it would not be possible to carry on the argument without
these personal allusions, there is not, on my part at least, any
personal partizanship in the matter. Thus, it is not at all
because Mr. Maynard's 'Portrait of Secretary Evarts' was
rejected as not being a good likeness that I complain. It is,
simply and solely, because a 'portrait of somebody' by 'some-
body' was rejected for not being a good likeness — and not
alone for that either, but because one man took it upon him-
self to decide for himself that it was not a good likeness. I
have said, and I repeat it, that if Mr. LeClear's 'Portraits' or
Mr. O'Donovan's 'bust' had been rejected on the ground of
their not being good likenesses, even if not one man only, but
the whole body of academicians had decided that they were
bad likenesses, the wrong done to these artists would have been
the same as the wrong done to Mr. Maynard, and equally de-
serving a rebuke.

"So with the sending back of Mr. St.-Gaudens' 'Sketch in
Plaster' on the plea that there was not room for it. It was
not Mr. St.-Gaudens for whom I took up the cudgels ; it was
the principle. There is always room in the Academy, as
there is everywhere, for good work, and if there is not room,
room can always be made. Where there is a will there is a
way. We are to presume that Mr. St.-Gaudens' work was
good, since he was personally requested by a member of the
Hanging Committee to send it. It was sent in, and returned
on the express plea that there was not room. Yet it is well
known that there was plenty of room, and even a stand pro-
vided for it, so to speak, by Nature. And, as if to make
this ill treatment more marked, a bust by Mr. O'Donovan of
another member of the Hanging Committee was taken out of
the room usually given up to sculpture, and placed by itself
in a good light in another room. Meanwhile nine other busts,
the works of various hands, were huddled ignominiously to-
gether at one side of the sculpture room in such a way that
it was not possible for the spectator to do them justice. It

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

was not that Mr. St.-Gaudens, Mr. Plartley, Mr. Edmund
Palmer, and others were treated unjustly, nor that Mr.
O'Donovan was unjustly favored, that I complained. The es-
sence of my complaint was that flagrant injustice was done
to somebody, and that gross favoritism was shown to some-
body else. I do not like Mr. O'Donovan's bust, but suppos-
ing he had been treated as Mr. St.-Gaudens was, and Mr. St.-
Gaudens favored as he was, I hope I should have objected. I
certainly should have been bound to object, for the principle
would have been the same. . . ."

Finally, lest an impression be gained from some of the fore-
going letters that Saint-Gaudens during these years was
violently aggressive and self-conscious, let me quote Mrs. Dix's
words to my mother just after the wedding and before the de-
parture for Europe.

She said: "Mrs. Saint-Gaudens, do you know why I like your
husband? Because above all other things he is a modest man."

189

VII
WORK FOR LA FARGE

1877-1878

The French Salon in a Rut— The St. Thomas Reliefs— The Protes-
tant in Art — Details Across the Ocean — Will H. Low — Painting
the Reliefs — Time Presses — Appreciation and Criticism by La
Farge — A Contemporary Opinion — The King Tomb.

TO turn once more to Europe, my father's immediate
work upon establishing himself in Paris was to model
the St. Thomas reliefs. They were most important
for him at the time, and greatly added to his reputation at
home. Yet he speaks of them in his reminiscences only in two
brief sentences. "On my arrival in Paris I took a little stu-
dio in an attractive part of the city not far from the Arc de
Triomphe, and began at once on the St. Thomas reliefs. I
worked rapidly, as was necessary, and in a short time they
were dispatched to America." What made my father's task
difficult was that, since the work was to fit in with Mr. La
Farge's scheme, all the details had to be arranged by photo-
graphs and letters. Such a proceeding is bad enough at best
with ample time at one's disposal. When haste is demanded
into the bargain, the situation becomes nearly impossible.
Therefore the result was carried to a successful conclusion
only at the cost of much anxiety on the part of both men.
The portions of the first two letters which follow are typical
of the tone in which Mr. La Farge wrote.

My dear St.-Gaudens: ■*

. . . Do not take much stock in what Dr. Morgan thinks
suitable for the figures unless you yourself approve of what he

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

says. He has, as you remember, a fear that they will be too
Catholic. There is no danger. There is no such thing as the
Protestant in art. All you need do is not to make any aureoles
around their heads. Any medieval sculpture, or renaissance
(not a late one), or paintings of the early time (Italian),
give the type that will be needed to be neither high nor low
church. Depend upon this, and if necessary do the necessary
fibbing about it; I will take that on me afterwards. . . .

Newport, R. I. Sept. 15, 1877.
My dear Mr. St.-Gaudens:

. . . Only one thing keep in mind; make the projections
sufficient to cast a strong shadow and keep the darks as I have
them. For instance, the angels under them have shadows.
That gives them a real and at the same time an unreal appear-
ance as if they floated. No paint can do this. . . .

Here are some of my father's letters to La Farge:

233 Fbg. Saint Honore, July 17, 1877.
My dear Mr. La Farge:

. . . We had a very pleasant passage, but nat-
urally I was as sick as a dog till the last day. I found
England of much interest and regretted I could not
remain there longer. Their exhibition I thought, with
one or two exceptions, very weak and Leighton's
statue "tres pompier." There was an exquisite figure
by Dallou. In the French Salon I was a little disap-
pointed, particularly in the sculpture. Nevertheless I
was delighted to see it. There are a large number of
very strong paintings with the Americans by no means
behindhand. The sculpture, although there was some
very fine modeling, is all in a "rut." It seems as if

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

the artists were too poor to travel, and, as in New
York, the encouragement, distribution of medals, &c,
&c., lies in the hands of old "pompiers" of 1830. The
young fellows can't have any orders if they don't have
medals, and they can't get medals if they break from
these fellows. My friend Dammouse praised me
warmly in the coloring I have given to the Armstrong
medallion. He received the "medal of honor," and his
prize pictures were published in "1'Art." You may
come across them. If you do, let me know what you
think.

My wife joins me in kindest regards to yourself and
wife.

A. St.-G.

Paris, 233 Fbg. St. Honore, Aug. 29, 1877.
My dear Mr. La Forge:

. . . I have commenced on the sculpture and I
feel very sanguine about it. I will send you a photo-
graph of the first bas-relief day after to-morrow. I
am not fully satisfied with it, but I see my way through,
and I think the whole affair will be very effective.
There is a great deal more work in it than I ever
thought possible. But I am far from complaining.
On the contrary, I am delighted that I have the chance
to do this, and I only regret that instead of the time
I have I could not have a year. Probably the effect of
the whole, when finished, would not be very different
from what it will be now; but I could study up the re-
liefs "avec plus de soin." I have been to the Louvre

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

to see the pictures of the early Renaissance, and the
next relief will be more in that character. I doubt
though whether that will change the effect much; what
I think you wish, or at least what seems to me neces-
sary, and what you have indicated in your drawing, can
be obtained only by a good indication and disposition
of masses and of light and dark. I am trying for

LilclL. • • •

. . . I may have been very bold or I may have
taken great liberties. If I have done wrong, color can
change what is out of place. But I thought I would
enter more into your feeling by doing the following,
viz: I found that a bas-relief four feet six by three
feet six inches which is about the division necessary to
make them of about equal size, made a surface very
difficult to cover with two figures. So I have placed
on the outer edge of the bas-relief a kind of flat panel
with an ornament taken from an antique running up
and down and which may be made continuous and run
the whole length of the work on each side, in my opin-
ion making a better proportion, in fact keeping the
proportion of your photograph which I think good, but
which you say is too narrow, according to the scale,
by a foot and some inches. I mean I prefer the more
elongated proportions. If you do not like that you can
re'turn to your proportions by accentuating with
stronger color the intersection between the bas-reliefs
at the frieze. . . .

Another thing I have done or will do is this. Think-
ing that an equal division of the reliefs has the most

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

character, and thinking that to obtain that effect it
would be preferable to have more reliefs, and thus ob-
tain more horizontal lines, than to have fewer reliefs
and therefore have fewer horizontal lines, I concluded
to do the former, and have added at the top a small
relief, not so high as the others but treated in the same
way, at the same time forming a kind of a frieze, which
will have cherubs' heads and wings. I trust I have not
done anything very terrible. I have indicated the pro-
portions they will have on the other page. . . .

There is so much work that I have had to get a fel-
low to help me paint, and I have asked Lowe to do so.
You recollect his large picture, the woman, "Style Em-
pire," with the dog, at the Academy. He says Homer
Martin gave him a letter of introduction to you, and,
as he is an admirer of your work, I feel sure he will
help me well. . . .

Sept. 6, 1877.
Dear Mr. La Farge:

Your letter of August 24th I received yesterday. I
enclose a photograph of the second bas-relief.

I have colored the first one and feel very enthusiastic
about it. I am afraid though that Dr. Morgan, who
was so much pleased with the reliefs, "jettera des hauts
cris" when he sees the coloring; but I have tried to do
something good at the almost certain risk of displeasing
generally. However, if you are pleased, which I think
you will be, they being a great deal better colored and
having a great deal more character than as you see them

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in the photograph, I shall be happy. I shall trust that
you will stand by me firmly. I have tried to keep them
so as not to clash with your painting. They have been
painted at the height, or very nearly so, at which they
will be seen; and must not be judged before they are
in place, being very coarsely done when seen close to.
If possible, avoid Dr. Morgan's seeing them before
they are up. You must take into consideration the
time I have been obliged to do them in, viz. : an average
of two days and a half each. When you see their size
you will see that it was a terrible job for me. I am
certain, though, if ever I do any more work of that
kind and have plenty of time, that some excellent ef-
fects can be produced. So that you may know what
is going to come alongside of your color, I will tell you
that I have kept it very much like the Armstrong
medallion, lighter, but with some very dark accentua-
tions in the hollows. There are more colors and a kind
of a vague showing of different colors in the dresses,
very vague though, and you need have no fear of
banality. There will be a little gilt also. The orna-
ment at the side of the panel is sober in color, and the
whole far better than the clay. Two more reliefs will
be finished to-morrow. I have another modeler with
me and two boys beside Low, the painter. He follows
my directions, but nevertheless has found some very
subtle colors that I am sure you will like. I must
speak of him, as he is no doubt a real artist. You must
not judge him by what you saw in the Academy.
That was rushed off in no time. He is a great ad-

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

mirer of you. He is certainly in the right sentiment,
liking Millet, Dupres, Delacroix, .etc. You will
see a large portrait of Mile. Albani by him. That also
he is much dissatisfied with as it was rushed off, but it
will show you his power. . . .

233 Faubourg St.-Honore, Paris,
September 10, 1877.
My dear Mr, La Farge:

. . . It is an immense job, and from seven in the
morning till eight at night, six of us are at work, be-
sides the other men employed in drying the plaster so
that it may be painted on immediately. As to the sub-
stance they are in, I will guarantee that they will last
as long as any of the little Renaissance reliefs. . . .

Tell me very frankly what you think. I hope they
will go well with your work. You can glaze them
down if they do not satisfy you, and you can paint
them all in one tone if too ugly "pour le bourgeois."
As to my work, as I said before, in judging it you must
remember that two days and a half each is the time I
have had. My modelers could only help in putting on
the masses of clay and getting everything ready for
me. I tried to have them do some work, but it was
beastly. Miozzi and I had to do it all over. Every-
thing has been done by me. The frieze of cherubs'
heads I modeled in five hours. I write now as to-mor-
row I commence working at night. I am feeling first
rate and just like work, but I am anxious about the
impression it will produce and particularly your criti-

196

ADORATION OF THE CROSS BY ANGKLS," MODELED IN HKill RELIEF

AND PLACED IN TIIK CHANCEL OK ST. THOMAS'S CHURCH,

NEW YORK CITY. DESTROYED BY KIRK, AUGUSTS, 1905

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

cism of the color. As to the reliefs, I have done my
best for the time; perhaps some of them are better
than if I had "fussed" over them. . . .

I am keeping the bas-relief light as you suggested.
I am doing them in a dark place and I try also night
effects with a strong light. ... I am very anx-
ious to have you see the work, to know your opinion of
it and to know how it agrees with yours. I am sure
that as a whole it will be good in effect. Of course
the detail will not please the public, but as I said be-
fore I think the color takes all "banality" out of the
work. . . .

Finally the composition was sent to America, and with it
went a letter of which the following is a portion:

September 20, '77.
My dear Mr. La Forge:

I have just returned from the station, where I have
seen the work for the church sent off. I trust it will
reach you in safety. I have had a terrible time of it
to-day and I hope that all the earnestness, worry, and
care that I have devoted to it will be repaid by your
liking it.

. . . As I said in one of my previous letters,
while I do not complain in the least, I think it best to
inform you how much I had underestimated the work.
However, I shall be only too glad if this is successful
and opens the field for more work of that kind, in
which I take the deepest interest. I feel very sanguine
about it. And if it is not entirely as you wish, lay it

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

to the tremendous haste in which it was done. I make
no pretense of it as a piece of sculpture, that would be
ridiculous considering the time I had to do it, but my
aim has been to keep it grave, harmonious in tone, and
above all good in general effect, having your work in
my mind all the time. Do not judge them as they
come out of the box, they are in some cases hideous, but
wait till they are up and in proper position, with noth-
ing white around them. I think, and all my friends
do, that the effect was imposing in my studio. You
can change what color you wish, "but wait till it is up
first. If you have a photograph of the whole work
taken, please send me a copy. I will send you a photo-
graph of it taken as it was in the studio, the upper part
appearing badly on account of the rainy weather.
. . . I consider the figure nearest the cross as by
far the best in character and effect of color. . . .
I like least the prostrate angels. . . . The first fig-
ure farthest from the cross is more in the character of
what I would have done had I time. The other figure
furthest from the cross I consider the ugliest. . . .
As I said before, all like it here, even the architect
who said that as architecture it was "tres mauvais,"
explaining that it was absolutely necessary to have
some kind of frieze or definite line between each relief.
This you can easily have done for yourself. Have you
noticed how much like the proportions of the doors of
Ghiberti the work becomes by putting the molding in
between, and how, unconsciously, by putting the frieze

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

on the side and the cherubs' heads on top I am above
reproach.

Of course to all of this La Farge replied at length, as was
his habit; and from these answers one at least should be given
not only for its own merit but because it explains so well the
letter it drew from my father.

My dear Mr. St.-Gaudens:

. . . Your bas-relief is thought by others as well as by
myself to be a great success. In the light in which it is, its
shortcomings are hardly to be noticed ; they are of course the
result of the slight way in which some of the extremities are
modeled, owing to your shortness of time. But this on all
the groups that are the best in general movement is much less
apparent than you would believe. The whole appearance is
so successful that at a distance there is a breath of Italy in it
which takes hold of every one. Rest assured that the thing
is good, as far as it could be, with all the difficulties in your
way of hurry and unaccustomed work. So you have my
hearty congratulations and I only regret that you could not
have had perhaps two months more to make over things more
seriously. It is a living work of art.

And now that I have told you how pleased I was, I must also
mention a very good objection, which will explain itself. By
changing the proportions of the angels from my drawing,
you have in the first place done this, made the angels look
small compared to the stained glass and the pictures. You
will remember how carefully all the great examples avoid this
thing which is always to the disadvantage of the smaller look-
ing thing and to the destruction of the unity of design. Look
at Amiens or Notre Dame, or the Pantheon or any great Ital-
ian front. But even that is a small disadvantage. The band
of angels' heads above looks small and childlike and separates
the work from the crown, which now has no support and seems

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

to fall. All that I assure you was thought of by me when I
made my drawing and was the pivot of my entire work. So
that you not only destroyed all the effect of that part, but
also, by having then to fill in on the sides by putting there two
small angels instead of the big ones, which leave as you will
see a blank space, you prevented my getting my moldings
into the wall as I had designed, all very exactly. I had to
displace them and cut them and put them by trials to the wall
until they composed tolerably. The mass of the whole deco-
ration was therefore gone.

I did all I could and three weeks of work were spent ; it cost
me nearly what I paid you to make all this alteration. Be-
sides that I had to cut my picture, which as the principal
figure came within two inches of the edge, was very disagree-
able to my artistic feelings and to my personal feeling also.
As I had given you the principal place, it was a bore also to
have even my place injured. There is also a doorway look
produced by all those squares with angels in them which makes
it look as if the walls were a door and prevents solidity. But
this I have diminished a good deal by painting, and a little by
cutting. I regret it especially for you, however. It seems
to me that you have some poor advisers. I should mistrust
the French ambitions anyhow. It is by nobody's taste you
must go, unless you find a mind just at sympathy with yours,
and unless they can give you reasons, and the reasons should
always be big ones, to overset any arrangement already taken.
Believe me I know, as well as those boys, what makes unity,
and this I know, and they know too, only they have not the
courage to carry it out, that a "joli morceau" does not make
a whole and that the curse of modern art is this little "assem-
blage" of all sorts of pieces, the painter doing one thing,
without caring for the sculptor and the sculptor not caring
for the architect or painter, and the architect considering
them as enemies of his for whom he has to make little devices
and frames and niches to put them in.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

I hope you will agree with me on this general idea, and be-
lieve also that all who do not are enemies of any possibility of
return to the great art of the past. It is not the details that
make the great, it is the obedience to a few simple truths which
give unity.

I have taken to preaching, but I know that when an artist
with sentiment and a desire to do right, is in the hands of
the academicians, whether they are so called or not, he runs
the risk of losing gradually the greater things for the
smaller. . . .

Yours sincerely,

La Fabge.
To this my father answered: —

About December 1st, 1877.
My dear Mr, La Farge:

Your letter about the church caused me at the same
time more real pleasure and more annoyance than any
letter any artist could write me; first because I value
the compliments you paid me beyond any that I can
receive, and second because you are the last artist whose
feelings, both personal and artistic, I would wish in
any way to hurt. If anything in my work has done
that, believe me, it has arisen not from even the thought
of a disregard in any sense whatsoever of your desires,
but from oversight or misunderstanding.

I thank you sincerely for the praises you have judged
my work worthy of. They caused me the deepest
pleasure, for, aside from the pride I feel in having so
high a compliment from you, it is a gratification for me
to feel that the work entered so much in harmony with
your feelings. That was my sole aim. I feel as I have

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often said, that I owe in a great measure what is good
in my work to what companionship and influence I have
had bear on me through you.

As for faults in my work proper, I will make no at-
tempt at excuses. You understand that in trying to
get a good whole, I got a deal of bad in what was sec-
ondary in them.

Now as to the mistakes and what I did wrong in the
work as a whole. I changed the size of the reliefs at
the arms of the cross, putting in two angels instead of
one, adding the frieze of angels' heads on top and cut-
ting the lowest relief, as I understood from our con-
versation about the work that the drawing you made
was simply your idea of what would be a good division
and disposition of the reliefs and that I was at liberty
to change if in the execution of the work it seemed nec-
essary. I was certainly under the impression that you
did not consider your sketch as at all definite, and that
you were in doubt even as to whether you would have
the crown or not. I wrote you my reasons for making
the changes and did not think that I was trespassing on
any arrangements already made. The frieze of heads
I thought if you did not like you might leave out and
I wrote you to that effect. I did not know that I had
changed the proportion of the angels materially from
the drawing, but I fully understand and agree with
your criticism as to the lack of ensemble between the
figures in the windows and the relief, and if I had had
more time so as to communicate more with you and

204

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

think more myself, I would have avoided what I fully
appreciate is a great fault.

You speak of the difficulty of getting your moldings
into the wall, and of some like difficulty arising from
my having placed two angels instead of one, thereby
occupying the blank space, indicated in your drawing
on the reliefs where the arms of the cross are. I have
read the passage over and over and cannot understand.
You speak of this and of being obliged to cut your pic-
tures. I am sincerely pained if any misunderstanding
of mine was the cause of that. But I feel in the dark
about it. I made the reliefs of the width you said, ten
feet, and cannot understand where it is wrong. Is it
on account of the thickness of the reliefs that you had
the difficulty? And did your expense come from the
imbedding the relief in the wall? I am anxious to
know what has been the matter and trust you will let
me know. For, as I said in the beginning of my letter,
not for an instant would I have done anything in my
work that would have been to the detriment of your
work either as to space or anything else. I kept within
what I thought was the strictest fidelity to the dimen-
sions you sent me. As to the division between the an-
gels, I am delighted if you have done anything to them
which brings it more to what you wish. I certainly
think I would like it better if you destroy the doorway
look. That effect was the result of a misunderstanding,
so much so that when you telegraphed me to keep darks
under figures, I understood it to mean to accentuate

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the divisions even stronger than indicated in the first
photograph I sent you, to which I understood the tele-
gram was a reply. Consequently I did so. I am glad
if you have changed it. I fully understand, sympa-
thize and appreciate what you have said about it all.
I hope you will understand the spirit in which all this
is written and rest assured that I not only take all you
have said about my work and the principle generally
in the best spirit, but that I agree most heart-
ily. .. .

One more valuable letter remains, written during a short trip
to Italy. It is a final comment upon the composition which
had interested them both so much.

41 Piazza Barberini, Rome, Jan. 30, 1878.
My dear Mr, La Farge:

We have been here about three weeks and I have
only just got to work, having found great difficulty in
getting a studio. On our way down we stopped at
Pisa. I assure you that was enough to set my head
spinning. There are on the vault over the high altar
at the entrance to the chancel, angels by Cimabue,
greatly spoiled by restoration, that are very much in
the character of what we have done in the sculpture.
These angels, that are very fine, are in couples over one
another, and had I seen them before I did my work I
would have avoided much that is bad. Italy has a
greater charm to me than ever, and I should not be at
all surprised if I remained here all the time I am doing
my work. I wish I had to do the angels over again

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

and could do them here; for even here, where there is
comparatively little of the Renaissance, there is still
much to see. . . .

Before closing the account of the St. Thomas angels, I will
dwell for a moment more upon the public reception given this
work, since the enthusiasm aroused by it largely prepared the
way for the coming of the Shaw. The attitude of contempo-
rary artists is well expressed in this letter written to my father
by Wyatt Eaton :

"Two things are talked of in New York at present. The
American Artists' Association and the decorations of St.
Thomas' Church. I have been twice, the third time the
church was not open. I cannot tell you, St. Gaudens, how
much I am delighted. I am sure that you don't know, and I
question if your friends in Paris know how good your things
are. I say that you don't know, because you must have worked
too intently and steadily and probably boxed them as soon as,
or before you left off working upon them, and that your friends
in Paris do not know, for in your studio or in any light in
which you were able to show them, their full sentiment and
meaning could not be felt.

I have never seen any sculpture so well managed for similar
circumstances, light and distance. Seen from the nearest
point the work is complete and all that could be desired with-
out any sense of a lack of detail — the important forms are
simple and massive — which makes the expression by gesture
to be intensely felt. From the extreme end of the building
nothing is lost. On the contrary I believe that every quality
is still stronger. I feel that your figures have the purity and
sincerity of the early Italians and the force and effect of the
later and modern art. You will have something to see when
you return to America. I hope that you may also have op-
portunity in your other work.

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But one of La Farge's paintings is up. The effect and
color is beautiful. It might be an old piece of tapestry col-
ored by a Venetian master. But I feel that the composition is
neglected — and I am told that this is true. One of the figures
I don't like at all.

The whole effect — or the effect of the whole — is not yet
complete and I have not given it much attention. The win-
dows, although probably improved, are still out of harmony,
I think.

I will write more about the movement of the American Art-
ists' Association very soon. Sincerely,

Wyatt Eaton.

So much for the actual attempt at the time. Ultimately?
as is fairly well known, the reliefs and Mr. La Farge's paint-
ings were destroyed by fire when St. Thomas' Church was
burned in 1905. A cast of a cherub's head, owned by Mr.
Francis Allen of Boston, is now all that remains.

These angels then formed the center of the relations be-
tween my father and Mr. La Farge. Yet in his text my father
mentions one other commission they worked upon jointly, the
tomb for Mrs. Mary A. King to go over the grave of her hus-
band, Edward King, in Newport, Rhode Island. The com-
mission was wholly an architectural one, there being no figures
about the cross. Nevertheless, it was just such work as this
under La Farge that led Saint-Gaudens all his life thereafter,
in addition to his desire for unity and grace, to lay stress on
detailed craftsmanship and the decorative quality of surround-
ings. Only two letters which bear on this commission have
any vital interest. The first is from my father to Mr. La
Farge :

June 12th.
My dear Mr. La Farge:

. . . Armstrong, who is living with us, wrote
Mrs. King that he had seen the tomb and thought it

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

one of the most beautiful he had ever seen. I have not
put black in the letters. It cannot be got out well.
When I send the work I will give you informa-
tion as to how the column must be fastened to the
tomb. . . .

I took it from casts of some of the fine old columns
"life size" that there are in the school here. I have left
the material for the leaves on the four corners, but have
not decided on them yet. I guess I '11 have them done.
If you don't like it, have them taken off.

"I 'm going to remain in Paris until all my work is
done. My studio in the Rue Notre Dame des Champs
is No. 49. I had the fever in Rome and could n't re-
main. Your picture at the Exposition looks well and
a lot of artists beside myself think it one of the pictures
of the Exposition. You should have had some of your
flowers, your drawings for Trinity and perhaps a pho-
tograph of St. Thomas and I have no doubt you would
have had a medal. Millet is the American juryman
and from his talk I am sure he feels as we all do about
you. My regards to Mrs. La Farge.

Sincerely your friend,

Aug. St.-Gaudens.

To which La Farge replied finally:

My dear Mr. St.-Gaudens:

In general the thing looks like a success. Perhaps
more so in the open air and sunlight. The column is not yet
on the pedestal, but the little base of the column looks very
pretty, and the swell of the column looks very successful.

211

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Compared to the usual tombstone, this certainly looks not at
all of the same kind. I only regret that we did not have some-
thing more severe comme donnee.

When I get a photograph in the open air with sun I shall
send you one. Everybody so far is pleased except the stone-
cutters here who think that the work does not look finished.
They are evidently disguised New York Academicians — or
writers on the Evening Post — and we need not worry about
them.

212

VIII
PARIS ACTIVITIES

1878-1880

Paris Activities — Friendship with Stanford White — Bas-reliefs —
Bastien-Lepage — White's Letters — The Morgan Tomb — The Ran-
dall Monument — Struggles with the Farragut Monument.

THE rush of the completion of the St. Thomas' reliefs
being over, my father's Parisian life began to assume
coherence. As is often the case, his scanty reference
to his studio work needs elaboration. In three of the com-
missions of which he makes so brief a mention, the "Farra-
gut," the "Morgan Tomb" Angels, and the "Randall," Stan-
ford White proved of invaluable aid to the sculptor ; and it
is largely through the architect's intimate letters that I am
able to give so vivid a picture of my father's endeavors at
the time. The friendship between Saint-Gaudens and White
dated, according to the former's own account, from the day
they first met in the German Savings Bank Building. More
probably, however, what brought the two together was that
both served an apprenticeship under their respective mentors
simultaneously during the construction of Trinity Church in
Boston, Massachusetts. My father, as has been explained,
had obtained work under John La Farge, then in charge of
the decoration of this building, while White, who had entered
the employ of the architect, H. H. Richardson, in 1872, slaved
for him until 1878, being in especial Richardson's chief fac-
totum during the building of the church.

Whatever the fashion of their meeting, my father obviously
found White's high artistic ideals so thoroughly in keeping
with his own that the intimacy matured rapidly, until my

213

THE REMINISCENCES OF

father left for this three years' trip to Europe. Between his
departure and White's joining him came the first period when
the mutual interests of the two, so separated, prompted the
opening series of letters chiefly centering upon the architecture
which White designed for the Morgan Monument. Returning
from Europe White began work upon the Randall and Far-
ragut pedestals; so that, from then on until my father set
foot in America once more in 1880, there developed the second
group of letters that dealt for the most part with these two
commissions.

In the reminiscences my father writes:

I had hired an enormous studio in the Rue Notre
Dame des Champs, in order to begin the large statue
of Farragut, as well as the sketches for the figures that
were to go over a mausoleum Governor Morgan had
commissioned me to do for him in Hartford, Connecti-
cut. The studio had originally been a public ball-
room, and subsequently a printing establishment of one
of the big publishers of Paris. For my family I leased
an apartment in the Rue Herschel, where Mr. Arm-
strong lived with us during the period of the Exposi-
tion business. It was here that White came to us,
and in this studio he composed and made the studies
for the pedestal of the Farragut monument, which he
modified after his return to America. Not until the
"Farragut" was at last ready to go to the bronze
founder, did I leave this ball-room studio to take a less
ambitious one in the Impasse du Maine where I began
the model for the statue of Robert Richard Randall.

At this earlier time, in addition to my larger commis-
sions, I made medallions of Maynard, Millet, Picknell,

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Shiff, and Bunce, which I exhibited at the Paris Salon,
along with the statue of Farragut, in 1879. Then,
too, through a mutual friend I met Bastien-Lepage,
who was in the height of the renown he had achieved by
his painting of Joan of Arc. This picture Mr. Irwin
Davis subsequently purchased and, at my earnest
recommendation, gave to the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. Lepage was short, bullet-headed, athletic and in
comparison with the majority of my friends, dandified
in dress. I recall his having been at the Beaux Arts
during the period I studied there, and my disliking him
for this general cockiness. He asked if I would make
a medallion of him in exchange for a portrait of myself.
Of course I agreed to the proposal, and as his studio
was not far from mine, the medallion was modeled dur-
ing a period when he was unable to work on account
of a sprained ankle. He moved away shortly after-
ward, and I saw little of him except for the four hours
a day when I posed for the full-length sketch he made
of me. This painting was destroyed in the fire which
burned my studio in 1904.

Here I will invert my father's order, and refer to his smaller
work before I speak of the larger efforts and their connection
with Stanford White.

Of all the lesser commissions modeled at the time, the low re-
liefs, in especial were of importance, as they marked the real
commencement of the series of medallions which he developed
through his life until they became the one form of his art in
which he considered himself a master. He has already spoken
of the encouragement which La Farge gave him in the New

215

THE REMINISCENCES OF

York days. Therefore, in Paris, upon seeing the portrait of
"A Man with a Hat," by the French sculptor, Chapu, his in-
terest was so forcibly renewed that he promptly set out to
model bas-reliefs of the group of artists about him, almost all
being nearly half life-size, and treated much more freely than
those in later years. Mr. Gilder has written me a word con-
cerning this side of my father's endeavors.

My dear Homer:

. . . We were in Paris at the time your father was work-
ing on the Farragut. I remember I with others stood occa-
sionally for the legs. Also he was making the St. Thomas
angels (the suggestion for which he found La Farge had
traced, by the way) and the beginning of those exquisite low-
relief portraits. He did our little family. The separate head
of Rodman was a great hit. At that time he was asked to
make some portrait heads for some French concern. This he
could not undertake, but immediately afterwards a young
French sculptor glued his eyes on the Saint-Gaudens' low-re-
liefs and began producing that sort of thing himself, to suit
the market or the men who wanted Saint-Gaudens to do
it. . . .

In the combined portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Gilder and of
Rodman Gilder my father first completed a relief in which the
heads of two sitters faced one another. Such a task presents
unusual technical difficulties, as the conventional profile medal-
lion is modeled only to be seen with the light coming "over the
shoulder," while this more ambitious attempt had to be con-
structed so as to look well in any light. Nevertheless the
problem fascinated the sculptor, since he returned to it three
times later in life in the portraits of Miss Sarah Redwood Lee
and Mrs. Charles Carroll Lee, William Dean Howells and his
daughter, and Wayne MacVeagh and his wife.

Yet none of the medallions my father then modeled satisfied
him to the extent of that of Bastien-Lepage, both because he

216

BASTIKN-I.Kl'AGli

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

believed the relief was as near perfection as he ever came, and
because he was greatly interested in a rare combination of
talent and vanity in his sitter. His attitude towards Lepage's
art needs no other expression than his own. His memories
of the painter's conceits he left unrecorded. One in espe-
cial, however, remains by me: my father's amusement in Le-
page's often telling him not to draw the hands too large,
the painter giving, as an excuse for his attitude, the reason
that the hands were of small importance in comparison with
the rest of the figure.

The portrait which Lepage, in return, painted of my father,
hung upon the walls of our New York home in Washington
Place and Forty-fifth Street for many years. My father and
my family prized it greatly, for though it did not resemble
him distinctly in detail, it gave a clear feeling of his person-
ality.

In another way, too, the medallion nearly led to further
pleasures, as upon Lepage's showing his copy to the Prin-
cess of Wales, she immediately suggested that my father
make the portrait of the Prince of Wales, afterwards King
Edward VII. Here is a translation of the first of the letters
dealing with the subject:

My dear St.-Gaudens:

I have some news to tell you which will give you much pleas-
ure and which you can use when the occasion offers.

The other day at a reception in Grosvenor Gallery the Prin-
cess of Wales strongly admired your medallion and asked me
your name. She seemed to wish to know you and, I think, also
to possess some little work such as those you have exhibited.

I proposed to her to write to you immediately, but she told
me not to write you on her account. In any event I am warn-
ing you, and I will arrange matters in such a fashion that you
will be able to take advantage of this incident at a moment's
notice.

219

THE REMINISCENCES OF

I have no photograph of the "Jeanne d'Arc." As soon as I
obtain some I will send you one.

My best wishes, in haste, J. Bastien-Lepage.

Unfortunately, my father could remain only a little longer
in Europe, so the relief was never modeled.

From this lesser work I will turn again to the more impor-
tant commissions, with the elaborations by White, of which my
father has spoken. In taking up the matter of the Morgan
tomb, for the sake of continuity, I shall group the letters which
passed between the two men according to their subject rather
than their dates. Here first are four of White's:

118 East Tenth Street, New York.
My dear St.-Gaudens:

What ragged letters I have been writing you. Three to
one, I believe this is. But then yours, though I confess some-
what desultory, was a royal one and paid up for a dozen of
mine. ... I should n't wonder but that Morgan would
go the nine thousand dollars for the tomb, provided the other
sculptor estimates higher than you do. Which I feel sure he
will. Now I have no doubt you are cussing and swearing all
this while and saying, "Confound the man, the thing can't be
done for anywhere near the sum," etc. In that case, my dear
boy, all you have to do is to think up some brilliant idea that
can. And as for the hundred or two dollars, let them go.
By the way, how long will you take to do the work; I mean
finished in stone? I told Morgan eighteen months to two
years. How's that, me boy?

I hope you will let me help you on the Farragut pedestal.
Then I should go down to Fame, even if it was bad, reviled
for making a poor base to a good statue. . . .

Dear St.-Gaudens:

Enclosed you will find a very rough and very bad sketch
traced from a hasty-finished-up drawing of Morgan's tomb.

220

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

He has accepted it and wishes us to go right ahead, and you
to start work the minute you get in Paris. The commission
always charged in monumental work is from ten to twenty-
five percent, according to the size and cost of the work. He
said he would n't give more than five percent to any man, etc.,
etc. My first inclination was to pick up my hat and bid him
good-morning. But I remembered that I was poor, and
young, and had run in debt to get abroad, and that it might
interfere with you. So I told him I would think over the
matter, which I did, and swallowed my pride and principles
and accepted his five percent. Now, my dear boy, I am
afraid I have given you too much work for your shilling, but
in case I have not and you will be able to make a respectable
profit on it, I may ask you to give me a hundred or two dollars.
I do this because I shall have to superintend the putting up
of your work and because my first sketch included the whole
thing. But in case Morgan is as hard on you as he is on me,
why we will grin and bear it together. However, we will ar-
range that when we meet, though in no case will I listen to
your paying me anything unless you make a little pile your-
self. Morgan said he would limit me to twenty thousand dol-
lars. I allowed you eight thousand and my estimate barely
scrapes under the twelve thousand remaining. Now, old boy,
I am afraid I have not allowed you enough. Your work will
include the band of angels around the column, and four little
symbolic figures at angles of the superstructure. However, I
may get into a row with Morgan before I leave and the tomb
may go up too. But I will try not. I will write again next
mail, and close abruptly, with my respects to your wife and
love to you.

June 81, 1878.
Dear St.-Gaudens:

Yours just received this morning, and I thank the Lord for
getting it. I began to think you were disgusted with me,

221

THE REMINISCENCES OF

which would have been very wrong, or that you were again
attacked with the fever, which would have been worse; or,
which would be worst of all, that you had gone to Rome,
which I hope to heaven you will not do until after I have left
Paris.

It is just like you to offer me a bunk. Do you think I
would inflict myself upon you? We shall see. . . . Who
do you think is coming with me? Even McKim. I am tick-
led to death. He is coming over for but a six weeks' trip;
still it is perfectly jolly. We will land at Havre and take the
express train for Paris, and so will arrive there I suppose
about the fifteenth or sixteenth. I will pay my respects to
you immediately.

I have come to the conclusion, and I feel almost sure that
you will too, that eight figures will be too much for the monu-
ment. So my present idea is as follows: at the front put
four figures of angels, well in relief. . . . But on the
sides and back arrange some conventional foliage or flowers.
It would give it more dignity and, it seems to me, a center of
interest which the mere ring of angels would not have. How-
ever, all this is your work and for you and you only to decide,
and I am going to impress the same on Morgan. The above
scheme would only have five figures and would give both you
and the cutters less work, would it not? . . . However,
not considering any two or three hundred dollars to me, what
you want to do is to estimate on the work, giving a full and
fair profit to yourself. Then if Morgan refuses to accept,
let us cook up some scheme that will come within the fig-
ure. . .

Nov. 2, 1879.
Dear Gaudens:

I think the Morgan angels splendid. Look out you don't
get them too picturesque. I think the tree trunk should be
much thicker, especially at the base. . . .
The following is from my father to White:

222

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

November 6, 1879.

. . . I have made up my mind to the disposition
of the figures as you see them in the photograph. I Ve
tried putting two angels between the trees instead of
one. But it would n't work. What I want you to do
is to have the molding in the stone directly under the
figures left uncut because I think it would be better
straight up, with the lettering running around occupy-
ing the space the molding would take.

I have indicated the inscription a little and you can
see it in the photograph. Tell me what you think of
this and if it can be done, or what you can suggest in-
stead. Or is it absolutely necessary that that molding
should be there? Again tell me how you like the tree
^ind whether you would object to its coming over, and
consequently almost entirely concealing the molding
over the angels. Or must I make the leafage come
under the molding? About this your word is
law. . . .

I '11 finish the cross in a day or so, now that I have
leisure, and send it right on. I don't think I '11 write
Morgan until then, and when I do shall say but few
words and send you a copy of what I send him. . . .

Again from White to my father:

Saturday night.
Beloved:

. . . By all means I think you had better write Morgan
about his angels. I think they are busting and so do all of
us. But Morgan, and above all Mrs. Morgan, may have some
preconceived notions. So, if you write, she will know some-

223

THE REMINISCENCES OF

thing what to expect. The chief reason I say this is because
somebody was in the office and saw the photographs and asked
me if it was a musical party, and seemed somewhat shocked
when I told him it was over a tomb. Some people always
think of death as a gloomy performance instead of a resur-
rection. So I think I should write them a note about looking
at death as a resurrection, etc., etc. ; that you had placed three
angels in front, one praying, two playing on the harp and
lute, and all chanting the lines, Alleluia, etc., etc., which were
written underneath, and that from the back springs a symbol
of the tree of life, the leaves of which form a cover over the
heads of the angels. . . . You of course will write this a
big sight better, and I only bore you with it because two fel-
lows sometimes think more than one.

About the angels, I think they are perfectly lovely. Mc-
Kim said, "By golly, what a fellow St.-Gaudens is!" and bor-
rowed them to show Mrs. Butler. Bunch and Weir thought
they were gorgeous. And even Babb said "h-m-m h-m," which
is lots for him. . .

As for the angels in the front, I will get down on my knees
and say nothing. I think you should make the tree trunks
and limbs and foliage very architectural. I like, however,
the trunk and limb shown on the three-quarter view, very much.
I am sure I would make the angel behind with a scroll. I have
enclosed some tracings I made over the photographs. I would
not have the edge of the leafage so sharp and flat. You cer-
tainly want deep masses and dark shadows. But you must
take care to make your holes so the water will run off. Then
when it freezes it won't take off a head or a hand or a leaf.
I think some of the leaves should be well under cover. But in
no case let the light of heaven come through the canopy of
leaves. That is to say, don't have a hole in it.

Such is the story of the Morgan tomb, as the two young
men struggled with the commission during this stage of its

224

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

progress. The correspondence now takes up the Randall and
Farragut monuments. White writes: —

May 8th, 1880.
Bear old Boy:

. . . I suppose you will have to give up your visit to
Lille and the Low Countries. But do not miss a day at the
South Kensington and a day at the British Museum. Be sure
not to. It will fire you all up. Go to the Royal Academy,
too, and see the early fellows there. . . .

Sometime in January I received a letter from Thos. Green-
leaf, controller of Sailors' Snug Harbor, asking me to call on
him in reference to the Randall pedestal. ... So I pre-
pared for the committee a drawing from our first sketch that
I am sure would have come out well. The seat was about
forty feet across. In front of the pedestal was a long stone
on which I thought you could put a relief of a yawl-boat in a
storm or something of the kind, and around the back of the
seat there ran a bronze inscription. All this cost about seven
thousand five hundred dollars. Also, to make sure, I prepared
an alternative design, costing about four thousand five hun-
dred dollars.

I sent these two with a strong letter, insisting on your de-
sire to have a horizontal line to oppose your perpendicular
one, and strongly advocating blue stone. So far everything
had gone all right. . . . But I knew Babcock was on the
Committee, and so did not go off on any exultation war-whoops
to you. I knew him only too well. Six weeks passed. I re-
ceived a letter from Dr. Dix asking me to meet him, Dr. Pax-
ton and Mr. Babcock in reference to the pedestal. ... I
don't know whether you know Babcock. He is President of
the Board of Commerce, one of the sharpest business men in
New York. In the first place they (he) did not want the
seat, would not have it under any considerations. They (he)
wanted a single pedestal like those in the Park. The "Web-
ster" was the best. (It 's the worst thing in the city.) Had I

225

THE REMINISCENCES OF

seen the "Webster"? No, I had n't. Well I'd better see it, as
I could then form some idea of what they (he) wanted.

I thanked him and said I supposed that the reason they
consulted me was to have something that you wanted, and in
all cases that was what / proposed to make. Babcock got red
in the face, but Dix came to my support and said "Pre-
cisely." . . .

Then Babcock objected to blue stone and said the base must
be of granite. They asked me to prepare a new design
to be presented at next month's meeting of the board, and
Babcock made the enlightened proposition that I need only
make the sketch, as all "these granite men" had draughtsmen
in their employ who would make all the details, and save me a
lot of trouble.

I thereupon, in your name and mine, distinctly refused to
have anything to do with it, unless the work was to be carried
out properly, and Dix again came to my assistance with "Pre-
cisely. I suppose the work will be cut under your direction."

"Certainly," I replied, "or not at all." Then I cleared out.

The second design I made as severe and simple as possible,
one stone on top of another. I should have made it like your
sketch in the photograph but it had to be made in two stones
on account of the enormous expense of one — as it is, the ap-
proximate estimates came to four thousand six hundred dol-
lars. Since sending the sketches I have heard nothing from
them. Perhaps they are disgusted with the plainness of the
design. If so, I should say, as you have to furnish the design,
that that is a matter for you to settle. Perhaps Babcock is
having one of his "granite men who — etc." carry out the de-
sign. If he has I shall have the whole office of Evarts, South-
mayd & Choate down on him. But this is not at all likely.
They are probably, like most committees, inactive. I shall
stir Dix up and find out what has been settled on.

There, I 've written you a long letter. Believe me it is more
trouble to write than I 've been to in the whole affair. I en-

226

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

joyed making the first designs and have them for my pains.
Otherwise, save my contempt for Babcock, I have got along
well with everybody. If the committee so "graciously decide,"
I shall put the thing through, and if we can strike them for
anything well and good. But if you say anything more about
"bill" to me I '11 retaliate on you in a way you least expect.
I am writing this on the train between Newport and New York
which may account for its more than legible hand-writing.

I cannot tell you how driven I am with business on account
of McKim's absence from the office. For the last month I
have been nearly frantic, being often at my office till midnight.
Poor McKim is much better but still unable to work. He will
have to go abroad again. He will be devilish sorry to miss
you. . . .

Greater than in the "Morgan" and the "Randall" combined,
however, was my father's interest in the "Farragut." In-
deed, during the course of its development he grew terribly
anxious over the result. In the first place no assurance of
future work had yet reached him. He was poor as usual.
With a habit which continued through his life, he had vastly
underestimated the period of time he would require in which to
finish his task. And, to cap the climax, even after the statue
was carried to successful completion in the studio, and, with
the date of the unveiling urgently pressing, had gone to the
bronze foundry, more difficulties developed. For the molders,
when they came to the lower half of the figure, neglected, in
their haste, to attend to some technicality, with such disastrous
results that my father and mother were forced to hire another
apartment, and to wait abroad another six weeks in their pov-
erty.

It is with many such troubles surrounding this, the most
vital of my father's early commissions, that White's corre-
spondence largely deals. One especial source of irritation
grew from the desire of both my father and White to create
a new type of pedestal, in spite of the fact that it required

229

THE REMINISCENCES OF

more money than the contract provided. Their efforts to
obtain this additional appropriation were in vain. Conse-
quently, since to complete the work according to their ideals
they had dipped into their own scant funds in the hope of an
ultimate repayment, they were both out of pocket at the time
of the unveiling.

The first three letters are from White to my father:

Saturday, September 6, 1879.
'Hon board the 'Holympus.

. . . I did not answer your question about the height
of the figure. ... I ought to have my nose flattened.
But I was n't a responsible being, so "nuff said." My feeling
would be to lower it by all means. I think the figure would
be in better proportion to the pedestal. . . . But that is
a matter for you to decide, and you can settle it very easily
by having Louis make a Farragut eight feet two inches in
paper, and seeing the effect. With the paper pedestal al-
ready made that would be near enough to judge. . . .

One reason I did not answer the question was because I
thought I would wait until I could see the "Lafayette" in Union
Square and send you the measure. I don't care about the
"Lafayette" myself, but I will measure it immediately on my
arrival and write you what it is. . . .

57 Broadway, New York (Tuesday)
My Beloved Snooks: 9th SePt., 1879.

I made yesterday three unsuccessful attempts to measure
the "Lafayette" and get in the lock-up. To-day I came near
succeeding in both. Here is the result: It is impossible to
get an accurate measure without a step-ladder and a requisi-
tion on the city government. But I will swear that it is not
over eight feet five or under eight feet three. If it had not
come so near to our figure I should have telegraphed you. If
you still stick to eight feet six for the figure alone I do not

230

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

think you will go much wrong, but I myself should most cer-
tainly advise reducing the figure and base to eight feet
six. . . .

Feb. 24.
Beloved:

. . . There is another thing I wish to know about, viz.,
the inscription. I submitted to my Dad a draft of the one we
decided on in Paris, and then took it up and saw young Far-
ragut and Madame. They liked it very much. But the trou-
ble is, my Dad did not like it at all. He said it would be a
most difficult thing to do, and thinking, until lately, that you
were coming over in May and that you would have time to
settle its definite form then, I planned to invest in Farragut's
life and go over it with my Dad, and then let him make up
something of his own, which we could talk over when you ap-
peared. I will now attend to it at once, in order to be ready
for any contingency. Your idea, however, is to draw it on
the stone here, and perhaps have Louis and an assistant cut
it, is it not? .

. . . I have been to the site for the "Farragut" at least
fifty times ; sometimes I think it is a bully site and sometimes
I think a better one might be found. I have gone there with
lots of people, and their opinions differ as much as mine do.
There has been no need of hurrying about it, as we are sure of
the site and they won't begin laying the foundations before
April.

I have been on the point of writing the formal application
to the Park Commissioners twice, but both times have been
stopped, the last time by your letter saying there should be
twenty-five feet from the sidewalk to the figure. This upset
me, for in that site it can't be did. I went up with tape lines
and found that it brought the figure just in the worst place
and smack into the path. Your wife's letter, however, makes
it all right.

I am very glad, nevertheless, that I was stirred up in my

231

THE REMINISCENCES OF

mind, for I have come myself to the almost decided conclusion
that the Twenty-sixth Street corner of Madison Park and
Fifth Avenue is a better place. It is more removed from the
other statues and is altogether a more select, quiet, and dis-
tinguished place, if it is not quite so public. It is in a sweller
part of the Park, just where the aristocratic part of the Ave-
nue begins and right opposite both Delmonico's and the Hotel
Brunswick, and the stream of people walking down Fifth Ave-
nue would see it at once. It also would have a more northerly
light and you would n't have any white reflection to dread.

My dear Gaudens:

. . . Olmsted said he felt very sure you could have any
site you might choose. He still favored the one in front of
the Worth monument and did not at all like the one we think
of in Madison Square. He thought it a sort of shiftless place,
which would give the statue no prominence whatever. He
seemed to think it might be anywhere along the sidewalk, as
well as the place we proposed. He suggested the following
places: in the triangles formed by the intersection of Broad-
way and Sixth Avenue (in which way the whole of the little
park would be made to conform to the pedestal), or at a place
somewhere near the entrance to Central Park. He also sug-
gested just north of the fountain in Union Square.

I myself still favor the Madison Square site, its very quiet-
ness being a recommendation. Of the other sites the one
north of the fountain in Union Square seemed far the best.

The elevated railway, it' seems to me, knocks the others.
We could not take a place directly opposite the Fifth Ave-
nue Hotel. We could, of course, but just above it is by far
the best place. . . .

October 15th, 1879.
Dear (Saint-Gaudens* Caricature):

Sometime ago I took the two pedestals to La Farge. His

232

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

criticism was very quick and to the point. He liked them
both. But he liked the first sketch the better, for the reason
that he thought it simpler and more of a whole, and, of the
two designs, he liked the one that could fall back on precedent,
rather than the more original one, unless the original one was
so astonishingly good that it compensated for its strangeness.
Funny, coming from La Farge, was n't it?

I then asked him to sail into the last pedestal, and tell us
what to do, and how to better it. He said the curving, or
rising, of the line upward from the ends toward the pedestal
proper was an insuperable objection. He disliked it any way,
and gave as his chief reason that it was antagonistic with the
circular plan of the seat, and destroyed the perspective al-
most entirely. He liked the decorative treatment very much
and the dolphins very much.

Now the only thing that troubles me about his criticism is
his objection to the curved rising line of the back of the seat,
for the reason that it also bothered me considerably and had
lain on my conscience like flannel-cakes in Summer. I am sure
it will not look well, and I am almost equally sure that a
straight back or one very slightly and subtly rising will. Al-
most everybody (architects) have spoken about it. Still, if
you feel very strongly about it, why, let us keep it. I send
you some tracings with this, and you can see what I
mean. . . .

Also, you clay-daubing wretch, why did you not tell me
which site you wished? You wrote me that you thought them
all "good." I myself strongly like the Madison Square site
and "so do we all of us" but you must decide and, for God's
sake, do so, and then hire a hall forever afterward.

October 17th, 1879.
My dear old Boy:

. I am just as much interested in the success of the
pedestal as you are, nor, alas ! shall I see many such chances in

233

THE REMINISCENCES OF

my life to do work in so entirely an artistic spirit unhampered
by the — well, small Hells that encircle us on every side, women
who want closets, for instance. . . .

I had begun to be pretty worried and scared, for both
prices and labor had gone up nearly twenty-five percent, and
I was not at all surprised when Mr. Fordyce told me the lowest
bid he could make on the pedestal was $2700. We went all
over the plans carefully, but could see no way of cutting it
down. So I made up my mind that if we died we would die
hard. I sent Cisco your letter, and one for myself asking
for an appointment, and told Fordyce, if he could n't devise
some way of reducing the bid, never to darken the door of
McK. M. & W.'s offices again. Next morning I got a letter
from Cisco saying he would be in Saturday the "hull" day
long, and Fordyce appeared with a sort of a yaller green blue
stone in his hand which he said was the "grandest" (he is a
Scotchman) stone on the market, and that he would build
the pedestal three hundred and fifty dollars cheaper, that
is for two thousand, three hundred and fifty dollars. He
swore it was as strong as the blue stone and, to prove it,
picked up a piece of the blue stone, and hit the two together,
and smashed his own stone into a thousand splinters. Con-
vincing, was n't it ?

Nevertheless the stone turned out to be a very good stone,
and a very stunning color. I will send you a specimen
of it.

Saturday noon I sailed down to Cisco's office, with the photo-
graph in one hand and my stone in the other. He received me
very kindly, read over your letter again, and asked me what
he could do for me. I told him how long we had worked on
the pedestal, and how anxious we were to have it built, how the
bids had come over the amount in hand, and how we hoped
for the committee's assistance. He said "Ah ! Dear me !" two
or three times, thought pedestal number one would be very
grand and liked pedestal number two almost as well, liked the

234

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

stone, too. At the end he rose from his seat and said he was
very sorry that General Dix was not alive, that he would have
been the proper person to apply to, that as for himself he
really could do nothing about it, that the two thousand dol-
lars would always be at my disposal, and wished me "Good
morning."

"Then you do not think any more money could be raised?"
I said as I shook hands with him.

"Possibly — possibly," he replied, "you had better see Gov-
ernor Morgan, as he is Mr. St.-Gaudens' friend."

After seeing Cisco, I had spoken to my father and asked
his advice. Cisco, by the way, at first supposed I was the man
who was going to contract for the pedestal. So my Dad told
me he would give me a formal letter of introduction to him
which would make him at least listen courteously to what I
had to say again. What he did write was a letter of about
a dozen lines, expressing our cause strongly and putting the
point to Cisco. The plan I had formed was to get the list of
subscribers, and then make attacks on all of them, with my
Dad's assistance, until I came across some feller who took
enough interest in the thing to make the cause his own. I
sent my Dad's letter and my own to Cisco in the same en-
velope, and was asked to call on him next day.

He was as kind as before, told me he had computed the in-
terest and found there was two thousand four hundred and
fifty dollars, just the sum we want to build the plain shell,
above the nine thousand dollars. He said it would be next
to impossible to get a list of the subscribers and that it would
be very foolish for me to try to do anything about raising
any more money now, especially as the statue was behindhand.
But that when the statue and pedestal were put up, if they
were a success he thought there would be no doubt but that
the extra six hundred dollars or so could be raised amongst a
dozen or so of the subscribers. For instance, he would give
fifty dollars, perhaps Governor Morgan one hundred, and so

235

THE REMINISCENCES OF

on. He then bade me good morning, and told me to see
Governor Morgan and get his advice.

So I marched off with joy in my soul and had hard work
to stop myself writing you a high-cockalorum of a letter at
once. I did not write you before for the reason that so far
nothing was settled, and I saw no reason for disheartening
you, when possibly matters might turn out for the best, and
after seeing Cisco I thought it safest to see Morgan, rather
than write you a paean of victory and have to take it all back
by next post. Alas, I did only too wisely. ... I saw
Morgan three times after this, but on each occasion he was in a
bad humor and I did not venture upon the pedestal. Last
week I called to see i^im, called again about his old mausoleum,
and took the photographs of the pedestal with me in case the
opportunity was favorable. The Governor did not want to
see me about his monument, although he had told me to call,
but asked "what I had in my hands." I thought I had bet-
ter settle matters at once, and I showed him the pedestal and
told him as quietly and shortly as I could how we stood, and
what Cisco had said.

He immediately got up on a high horse, and acted in a most
outrageous manner, misunderstanding everything I said.
. . . In fact, his whole manner of acting was as if we were
trying to come some game over the committee, and that he
brushed us away, as beneath listening to. I was boiling mad,
and at first a little troubled what to do, and wisely slept over
it. The next morning I wrote Governor Morgan a letter and
went immediately down to see Cisco, told him what had hap-
pened, and showed him the letter I had sent the Governor. He
metaphorically patted me on the back, told me not to mind
the Governor, that, this is entre nous, his physicians had told
him that he could not live more than two or three years and
that in consequence he was in a constantly depressed and mor-
bid condition.

236

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

So I went away again highly elated, as I was afraid Cisco
would say, "Well, you had better drop the whole matter and
do what the contract calls for." He at least is our friend
and I am sure will gather others to us. This was four days
ago.

Now you know all about it, what has happened and exactly
how the matter stands. You must draw your own inferences,
and tell me what to do. There will be, above the contract for
the pedestal, about six hundred dollars to seven hundred dol-
lars extra for the cutting of the reliefs. Toward this, at a
pinch, the difference in the cost of casting a figure eight feet
three instead of nine feet might legitimately go, and I feel
almost sure that the balance can be raised amongst the sub-
scribers, when the time comes. But of course it is a risky
thing and one that you must decide for yourself.

I have told you everything, and at frightful length, and
now the pack is on your shoulders, and you can throw it off
which way you choose. You 're boss, and I await your orders.
If you so decide, we have plenty of time to design a new
"chaste and inexpensive" pedestal. If, however, you decide,
as I think you will, to go on with our last design, write me so
at once. I found out from the contractors that they could
cut the stone in the winter, and put up the pedestal, founda-
tion and all, within three weeks in the spring. So we are not
more than moderately pressed in that regard. But it is im-
portant that you should start immediately on your work mod-
eling the reliefs, etc. Therefore, if you choose, you can tele-
graph simply "Stanford, New York." I will leave word to
have any telegram so addressed sent to the office, and I will
understand that you mean to go ahead and I will contract
for the pedestal at once.

Assez! Assez! c'est fini. Look up! Hire a Hall! I have
spent two evenings writing this and hope it will go by this
week's White Star steamer.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

For you that have read it and the wealth of correspondence
accompanying it, all I can say is "God pity you," and be with
you, old boy, forever.

S. W.

Here is a portion of my father's reply to White's letters of
October seventeenth and October eighteenth:

Paris, Nov. 6th, '79.
Dear old Hoss:

Go ahead with the pedestal and do whatever you
please about lowering or heightening the wall. I 'm
willing and give you carte blanche with all my heart.
As soon as I receive the dimensions from you I will
commence on the bas-reliefs. ... I can reduce
the plinth, though, to any size you see fit. The statue
is more than half finished in the big, and of course can-
not be changed. So go ahead, sign the contract, cut
off all you please, put on all you please. I will pay
for the cutting the figures and take my chances for
the reimbursement by the committee. Furthermore, I
will also agree to pay whatever more than the sum the
committee have for the pedestal the cutting of the dol-
phins and lettering may come to. That matter is now
settled.

As to the site, I have a great deal more difficulty in
deciding, but now formally select the Madison Square
site. For a great many reasons I prefer the Union
Square site above the fountain, but stick to the Madison
Square, unless you should change your mind and vote
for the Union Square one too. The principal objec-

238

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

tion to Madison Square is the reflection from the Fifth
Avenue Hotel. And now, while I think of it, the
statue must be unveiled in the afternoon for that rea-
son. So go for Madison Square.

If I get my models for the "Loyalty" and "Courage"
done in time, and I think I can, I shall have them at
least commenced in the shop. The dolphins and let-
tering will be entirely cut and finished in the shop.
Send me the definite space for the "Loyalty" and
"Courage" and I '11 commence at once. So much for that.

The last bid you had for a blue stone pedestal of
course "squashes" the Scotchy with the yellow blue
stone that was going to knock spots out of the blue
stone. So I take it at any rate. I think I have a list
of the subscribers that have not paid for the Farragut,
and I know that there is nine hundred dollars' worth
of them. I may conclude to write to Montgomery, the
Consul General to Switzerland, who is the secretary
and did have that list. But you know we had a kind
of a diplomatic row, and I don't relish writing to him,
and I don't count on all this.

If convenient, but only if it 's convenient, I would n't
settle on the cutting of the letters as Louis might do
some of that. But, if it interferes with the arrange-
ments in any way whatever, don't mind. Of course I
wish to design the letters also if possible. Don't set-
tle about cutting the figures. I might be able to get
them cheaper, but as I said before that must not stand
in the way of the work. However, don't wait to write

239

THE REMINISCENCES OF

to me about it if it should, but go ahead and contract
for them. I '11 be satisfied. . . .

Two months later White wrote to my father:

Friday night, Dec. 17, 1899.
Dear old Fellow:

. . . The truth is I had things pretty well along when
one Sunday Babb came in, and said, in his usual way of spring-
ing a bomb-shell on you, "Well, if you take the rise out of
the back of the seat you '11 get the pedestal too heavy and make
the figure look thin." Then as usual, he shut up like a clam
and would n't say any more. Now, as I care much for Babb's
opinion, and my conscience would never forgive me if I got
the pedestal too heavy, I began floundering around trying to
improve matters until McKim came along and said, "You 've
got a good thing, why don't you stick to it ?" So I 've stuck to
it. . . .

The plan of the pedestal has a flatter curve and the whole
pedestal is broader and lower. Babb approves, everybody ap-
proves, and I am consequently happy. After a heavy con-
sultation, I have kept the rise in the back of the seat in a
modified and more subtle form so you 'd be satisfied.

All I have got to say is if any Greek Temple had any more
parabolic, bucolic, or any other olic kind of curves about it
than this has, or if the architect had to draw them out full
size, a lunatic asylum or a hospital must have been added to
an architect's office. I hope you will not go into a hospital
trying to understand them, old Boy.

. . About the models — the ones we want first of course
are the fish and the sea and the sword, as those are in the con-
tract. Everybody likes the fishes, so I would make them like
the little model "better as you can." As to the sea, do just
as you please, and it will be sure to be bully. You must make
it stormy though. As for conventionalism, fire away as you

240

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

choose; our difference of opinion is only one of words. By
the way, did you ever read the description of the horse in the
Book of Job?

"Hast thou given the horse strength? Hast thou clothed
his neck with thunder? Canst thou make him afraid as a
grasshopper? The glory of his nostrils is terrible. He paw-
eth in the valley, and rejoiceth in his strength."

Of course a horse's neck is not clothed with thunder. But
would a realistic description have gone to your guts
so? . . .

And again my father answered:

Sunday or Monday, March 14th or 15th, 1880.
Dear Bianco:

Just received your long telegram. I don't fully un-
derstand about the sea, but that 's of little importance.
I think you will be pleased with what I do.

I 'm working on the plaster of the "Farragut," and
think I 'm improving it seriously. I should n't be very
sorry if Fisher and Bird fell through with the marble
. . . as I have so much more advantageous an offer
for cutting the stone from fellows that are here. I
don't care so much about the advantage in a money way
as in an artistic, for the man I would have is an Amer-
ican, one of Palmer's best men. He would be de-
lighted, would do it in place, I could boss him as much
as I please, and the work I 'm sure would be well done
and rapidly. Great God, what a stew I keep you in!

. . . "Have you done rightly?" My dear boy,
you ought to be named Saint-Job- White. That is all

241

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

I can say. Nothing more. All I can do in return to
counter-balance faintly for the bother and worry I 'm
putting you to is to tell you I think your fish, sea, seat,
the whole thing, will look better than you ever dreamed
it would. I 'm sure of that, and also that, although
when I had finished Farragut in clay I was disgusted,
since I Ve worked the plaster I think better of it and
feel you will like it. If La Farge, Babb, and yourself
don't think it decadent I will be rewarded — I am all
nervous about the worry you must have been in with
this mess and at times I wish, for your sake, I had never
been born.

242

IX
PARISIAN AMUSEMENTS

1878-1880

White's Activities — White and the Bust at Lille — Down the Rhone
with White and McKim — Friendships — The Society of American
Artists in Paris — The Paris International Exposition — Life at the
Time.

AS White proved of unusual aid to Saint-Gaudens while
the architect was in the United States and the sculp-
tor in Paris, so he developed into the most sympa-
thetic of companions while he was with my father abroad.
Saint-Gaudens speaks of this; yet, further to show how at-
tuned were the two minds, I will preface the reminiscences of
this chapter by a letter to my father from White, characteris-
tic of his enthusiasm over the wealth of art about him.
White writes:

Dear St. Gaudens:

. . . Now, old boy, having been "werry" modest, the
real reason I am writing you is to tell you about an acquaint-
ance of yours. Perhaps you have seen her and I am wasting
my time and making a fool of myself; nevertheless, here goes.
I was at Lille yesterday and went to the Museum. I suppose
it is the best provincial collection anywhere; but I wandered
past pen and wash drawings by Michelangelo and Raphael,
by Fra Bartolommeo, Tintoretto, Francia, Signorelli, Peru-
gino, Masaccio, Ghirlandajo, pen and wash drawings by Ve-
rocchio and one even by Donatello, — drawings by these men,
and ink and wash drawings at that, — I wandered past them
with a listless sort of air. I was on a hunt for something

243

THE REMINISCENCES OF

else, even a wax head by Raphael. I couldn't find it and
was about to appeal to the guardian, when suddenly, etc.!
"Holy Moses! Gin and seltzer!" Everything, anything,
would be but as straws in the whirlpool. When you have made
up your mind that a thing should look one way and it looks
another, you are very apt to be disappointed. For a moment
I gasped for breath. The next, like a vessel changing tack,
my sails shook in the wind and I said, is this thing right?
And then the utter loveliness of it swept all other feelings
aside. Do you know that it is colored, and that all it needs is
eyelashes to be what people call a "wax figure," that the skin
is flesh color, the lips red, the eyes chestnut, the hair auburn,
the dress blue, and the pedestal gold? It is easy enough to
take exception to all this, and your reason will immediately
tell you it is wrong. But then, when you go and look at it,
you wish you may die or something. You no more question
its not being "high art" than you think of a yellow harvest
moon being but a mass of extinct volcanoes.

It is no use going on, I shall have to wait until I can dance
around your studio to express my enthusiasm. Get down on
your knees in front of your autotype which gives but a half
idea of it. Never was so sweet a face made by man in this
world and, I am sure, if they are all as lovely in the next, it
must be Heaven indeed. . . .

It is of the White of this letter that the reminiscences speak.
My father writes:

In the years I passed this time in Paris there was
little of the adventurous swing of life that pervaded my
previous struggles. The dominant difference, and one
that was certainly interesting, came upon the arrival of
Mr. Stanford White, who lived with us, together with
my brother Louis. Our home was White's headquar-

244

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ters, whence he darted off in extraordinarily vigorous
excursions to the towns surrounding Paris that con-
tain those marvels of Gothic architecture of which he
was an adorer.

His endless excursions kept up for about six months,
I believe, until he was joined by his great friend
McKim. Then the three of us, all red-heads, took a
trip down the Rhone, the idea coming from my experi-
ence years before in the French war, when, for econ-
omy's sake, I had proposed going to Marseilles in that
way. The towns along the river's bank were then full
of Gothic and particularly Roman architecture, and it
was with high anticipations that we boarded the long,
narrow boat one day at Lyons, to journey in it to
Avignon.

This was a great and diversified trip, diversified
both by the beauty and austere character of the coun-
try we went through and by comic experiences. The
steamer, of the same proportions as our canal-boats,
sailed down the rapid current of the yellow Rhone at
an extraordinary rate of speed. We passed under
stone bridges and by towns with churches with stone
spires, beneath a Southern sun tempered by the breeze
of the swiftly moving boat. The breeze was not
enough, however, to temper the smell of garlic which
pervaded our ship from the tip of her bow to the end
of her stern. She was thoroughly impregnated, in-
side and outside, upside and down, and in every direc-
tion, with that perfume. We were in the land of gar-
lic, and there was no doubt about it.

245

THE REMINISCENCES OF

The boat made but few stops, one of which was at
Saint Peray where we got off and bought a bottle of
delicious, sparkling white wine that made our souls
happy for an hour or so afterwards!

Later, as we rushed down the river, we saw on a lit-
tle trestle, immediately before some meadows below a
large stone bridge, a woman with a band-box await-
ing our approach. The trestle was so close to the
bridge, and so placed as regarded the angle of the arch
near it, that it was impossible for the boat to approach
it head on through the arch without destroying the
trestle and the lady and the bandbox at the same time.
So we took the arch near the center of the river, tore
past our feminine friend some distance down stream,
and then backed up, finally touching the boat to the
trestle. This was accompanied by infinite comment,
general jargon, and volumes of the smell of garlic, un-
til the woman and her bandbox were safely shipped.

The getting the boat to the good woman was all very
well. But getting the boat away from the pier with-
out running into the headland, which was farther down,
was another pair of cuffs, as they say in French. For
it necessitated backing up the river through the arch
we avoided first, and then steaming down again through
the second arch we had taken originally, and resulted
in the boat's running up on the bank supporting the
pier. In a moment there was the greatest danger of
our capsizing. The uproar was extraordinary. All
the crew came out from various doors and orifices and
all shouted, from the captain to the cook. Some

246

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

jumped off and pushed with poles. Those who were
not pushing swore at those who were, and the men with
poles swore back at the men who were not pushing.
To the confusion of this din was added the loud noise
of the river rushing under the arch. In the midst of
it all, a young fiend, evidently accustomed to this thing,
or delighting in danger, half reclined in a corner of
the boat made comfortable by the tilt, and elevated
some kind of a tin horn or cornet, upon which he gave
a diabolical intermezzo, with the greatest glee, during
the entire porformance.

Night had fallen when we arrived at Avignon, and
there, as we wandered through the city, I felt again the
delightful sense of the South and of the narrow thor-
oughfares of Italian towns. It was certainly pleasant
to hear the sound of a Beethoven sonata floating from
an open window into the warm summer night of the
silent streets.

In a short time our passion for ice-cream asserted
itself, though there seemed to be no public place or cafe
where we could find our beloved refreshment. Soon,
however, inquiry from a solitary passer-by led to a re-
ply that vividly recalled my father and the ardent
South.

"Is there a cafe in this town where we can get some
ices?"

"Most certainly."

"Would you be kind enough to tell us where
it is?"

"Why, yes, yes. Go down this street until you come

247

THE REMINISCENCES OF

to the third street on your left, follow that two blocks,
then take the first on your right, then keep straight
ahead, and you will come out on the public square.
There is the cafe, which you will have no difficulty in
finding, for," with a large, sweeping gesture, "it oc-
cupies the entire place."

With visions of the enormous cafes of Marseilles and
the Paris Boulevards, we followed his instructions.
But where we had been given an impression of a square
second only to the Place de la Concorde of Paris, we
found a little widening in the street, and in one corner
of it a diminutive cafe, dismal beyond description, and
lighted by what was dim enough to be a feeble candle-
light, even if it was not that. Our informer had stated
truly, however; it occupied "the entire place."

From Avignon we made a delightful tour going to
Aries, St. Gilles, Nimes, and swinging back northward
through Le Puy and Clermont; and especially was it
interesting, as traveling third-class we could learn much
of the people as well as of the architecture before we
returned to Paris.

At this time I met Samuel Clemens. He was then
a good deal of a dyspeptic, though he is evidently well
out of that, judging by his recent speech as well as his
looks and actions. He is as sound again as the tradi-
tional cricket I spoke of in relation to my friend Bunce.

He and I were the witnesses at M 's marriage at

Montmartre, where M had his studio. All mar-
riages in France, whether religious or not, must be per-
formed by the civil authorities. This was the only one

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

at which I ever assisted, and a singular impression it
produced on me.

At the appointed day we went to the municipal build-
ing of that part of the city, called the Mairie, and were
ushered into a large hall. Around the walls was a
simple wooden bench, and on that bench, at occasional
intervals, there were other marriage parties in groups of
half a dozen or so, all in their marriage costumes, as from
this affair they generally went to the religious ceremony.
Extending entirely across the other end of the room was
a high desk, back of which there were some high seats.
In the wall behind, and facing the room, were two doors,
one on the right and one on the left. Presently there
was a commotion and one of the ubiquitous gendarmes
called out, "Monsieur the Mayor." The door on the
left opened suddenly and in burst his Altissimo Excel-
lency, the Grand Panjandrum, the Mayor himself, while
every one arose as if in the presence of a divinity. He
was short, had a large stomach, and across his bosom he
wore a wide tricolored band showing his official dignity.
I am probably giving an unpleasant impression of a very
worthy gentleman, but such it was. He was followed
by a horde of aides, who trooped in after him in a very
businesslike manner and distributed themselves in the
seats on each side.

Presently a voice would shout, "Mr. So and So, Miss
So and So," and one of the groups who had reseated
themselves would rise and walk in a body over to the
long desk. Then there would come a mumbling for a
few moments, after which they would turn about and

249

THE REMINISCENCES OF

leave the hall. This operation was repeated several

times until Mr. M 's name was called, when we

marched up, as did the others. His Excellency, after
some preliminary performance by an underling, ad-
dressed Mr. M in a hurried and "Let-us-get-

through-with-this-thing-quick" tone. "Do you take
Miss X to be your wedded wife."

Then instantly turning to the young lady he asked

if she would take Mr. M to be her husband. On

her reply in the affirmative, he declared them wedded,
and turned his head about with a bored look very much
as if he was about to say, "Next!" Some more unim-
portant ceremony followed, and then we went out after
the wedded couples into the open air. Considering the
gravity of the occasion, this whole performance seemed
to me shameful in the entire absence of dignity or re-
spect for the participants.

By now I was also well acquainted with Will H.
Low, Carroll Beckwith, Kenyon Cox, Edwin H. Blash-
field, and John S. Sargent, the latter a tall, rather slim,
handsome fellow. He was already in the public eye
through his portrait of his master Carolus Duran, and
consequently his appearance at first sight remains in
my mind distinctly. Shortly after that, in exchange
for a copy of the medallion I had done of Bastien-
Lepage, he gave me a delightful water-color of a fe-
male figure, made at Capri. This went up in the
flames of my studio. Together with these friends I
engaged in the enthusiastic meetings incited by the bold
and admirably written articles of Clarence Cook, at-

250

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

tacking the conservatism of the Academy of Design,- — ■
articles which made a great commotion in the art circles
of New York at that period. We voted endless resolu-
tions and endorsements of what he said, after the usual
discussions and schisms that occur when a lot of young
men try to do something. But nothing came of it.

Upon the departure of the St. Thomas work for the
United States, which occurred in the midst of the
period, we packed up our belongings and started for
our beloved Rome. There I hired a studio on the Pi-
azza Barberini and immediately began my sketches for
the statue of Farragut. I had hardly been installed,
however, before I received word from Mr. D. Maitland
Armstrong, asking if I would be one of three to com-
prise the jury for the American Art Exhibit in the In-
ternational Exposition at Paris which was about to
take place. This was an honor which I immediately
accepted, so back we went to Paris. We did some
bold things on the jury, Mr. Armstrong, Mr. Detmold,
and I, and if my memory serves me rightly, probably
some unjust ones in the rashness and enthusiasm of
youth, and, as far as I was concerned, in my role of
"righter of wrongs," as my friend Bion once dubbed
me. I certainly now hold in great esteem the works
of men whom I can recall at that time as estimating be-
low the line of my high-reaching vision. These were
the members of what is known as the Hudson River
School. I can recall no specific injustice, but we would
have been divine if we had not fallen into some.
Nevertheless, Mr. Armstrong managed it with great

251

THE REMINISCENCES OF

tact, and the result was very much to the credit of
America.

The temper of this outstriking group of young American
artists in Paris was but little different from that of those at
home. The sculptors, so unfortunately few, were of the type
that sympathized heart and soul with my father's admira-
tion of such modern work as Rodin's "St. John Calling in the
Wilderness." The painters were breaking even French cir-
cumscribed conditions right and left. For the elder men of
that nation were still dissecting combinations of reflected lights,
laboriously working over detailed shadows in thick impasto,
while this younger group were seeking rather force of char-
acter, vital directness of style, fluent line and brilliant color,
and were followers of such as Carolas Duran, who could teach
them what they desired to learn concerning the underlying re-
lations of color and mass.

As Saint-Gaudens has explained, the one common stamp-
ing-ground of this group abroad, as well as at home, was the
new association. However, my father is over-modest when
he says, in speaking of their discussions concerning it, that
"nothing came of it." Much did come of those meetings, in
which he took so active a part, both in a general and a par-
ticular fashion. Consequently, to show how vitally they con-
tributed to the firm establishment of the Society of Ameri-
can Artists, I quote from an article which appeared October
30, 1878, in the New York Tribune:

"The movement among the younger and more progressive
American artists here and abroad, of which mention was made
last week, has come to maturity by the incorporation of a
new association. The most salient feature in the new scheme
is the control over admissions of their own pictures to the
exhibitions which are accorded to artists abroad. The Ameri-
can Art Association proposes to open an exhibition which in no
wise shall be in opposition or rivalry with the annual exhibition

252

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

of the Academy of Design. Academicians and associate aca-
demicians are among the founders of the new art show. The
liberalism of the American Art Association is attested at the
start by the fact that it opens its doors to members of the very
Academy against which the movement itself was a dignified pro-
test. But it goes farther. The distance between Paris and
New York is too great, and Americans abroad have had too dis-
agreeable an experience in sending pictures across the At-
lantic only to be refused admission to exhibitions. Artists
abroad have therefore lost confidence in home justice. To
remedy this, the American Art Association has resolved to ac-
cept all pictures which have been passed by a committee of
five in Paris, three of whom are to be elected by those who send
in contributions and two appointed by the association. The
officers for this year are Walter Shirlaw, President; Augustus
St.-Gaudens, Vice-President; Wyatt Eaton, Secretary; and
Louis C. Tiffany, Treasurer."

In a personal way also my father gained much from the
gatherings of the insurgent young American painters and
sculptors in Paris. For it was his vitality in these efforts that
to a large extent brought him his appointment on the Ameri-
can Art Jury for the Paris International Exposition, a posi-
tion of great value to so young a man. Here is a letter to
my father, from Mr. D. Maitland Armstrong, which shows the
spirit in which the whole affair was approached. Evidently
the Committee of five of the Tribune letter was later changed
to a Committee of three as mentioned by Armstrong and Saint-
Gaudens.

New York, 20 March, 1878.
Dear St. Gaudens:

I was very much relieved to hear from Commissioner-General
McCormick that you had accepted the appointment on the
committee of selection in Paris, and I write more particularly
now to let you know what you will have to do, or rather what
I hope you will avoid doing. You know that you and I and

253

THE REMINISCENCES OF

another are to select the remaining pictures for the Exposition
— i.e. when they are collected in Paris we three are to form a
jury and decide what pictures are to go in, the decision to be
by ballot, and a majority of votes to decide. So that you can
select as many as you like, to be submitted, but you cannot
promise space to any one. The space is limited, and I do not
think that more than forty pictures, at the outside, can be ad-
mitted in Paris. Eighty-four were sent from New York. I
shall have absolute control of the hanging.

I am extremely glad that you have accepted, and it is a
great relief to me to have you. As they heard nothing from
or of you, I had to fight hard to keep you on the committee.
If you have a great deal of trouble and very little thanks,
you will be indebted for it all to me, as I suggested you first
as one of the Committee in Paris.

B offered a picture here which was declined. He has

sent it to Paris and will try to get it in there. The Com-
mittee here, to head him off, passed a resolution that no pic-
ture offered here should be considered by the Committee in
Paris. Look out for him. He shall not get it in, but do not

let it be known, as we do not wish to make a martyr of B .

There is another horrible painter who offered a ghastly daub
which was rejected here. He says that he will get it in in Paris
through you, as he says that you are his friend, his name is

G . Look out for him. Do not make any promises to

artists. You have no right to do so and it might give you
trouble. Pardon me for speaking so plainly. I do it from
friendship.

Try and find all the pictures you can, to make up for some
of the bad ones from here. With kindest regards from Mrs.
A. I remain

Your sincere friend,

D. M. Armstrong.

I turn now from my father's public to his private life out-
side the studio, quoting two letters written by him, and an ac-

254

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

count sent by my Aunt, Mrs. Emerson. The first letter is to
Stanford White.

Piazza Barberini, March, 1878.
My dear White:

"I am more sorry than I can express, &c &c. The
fact is that I believe all of us architects, musicians,
painters, sculptors, even the meanest of us have a bit
of La Farge in them, viz., the wildest order in letter
writing. Of course I ought to be punched, knocked
against a wall, thrown off the New York Post Office
flagtsaff , or what 's worse, . made to remain in one of
the offices there trying to sustain one of Miller's parti-
tions. I know it. I know it all, I say, and you
need n't be so savage about it ! ! !

You would have received this love-song ten days
sooner if my friend Mr. Fever had not come and paid
me a two weeks' visit. He was very attentive, and al-
though I was not fond of him and made faces at him
and gave him foul things to swallow, still he stuck. I
tried to get rid of him by going up to the mountains;
still he followed. I guess he is tired now, for he only
comes in for a short spell every night. He 's as much of
a "bore" as I am in giving you so much of his news.
But all this will explain why I am going to pass six
months in Paris. If your love is deep and pure ad-
dress your letters in the future, care of Monroe et Co., 7
Rue Scribe, Paris. . . .

What a gorgeous place Italy is and how I hate to
leave it. But I must go, as I dare not stay here

255

THE REMINISCENCES OF

through the summer on account of the fever. It gives
me a curious mixture of a wish to do something good
and of the hopelessness of it, to see all these glories of
the "Renaissance." What artists they were! They
were n't anything else.

I Ve been pegging away at my "Farragut," but it 's a
hard "tug," with our infernal modern dress. I have
only the cap, sword, belt, and buttons, and the resource
of trying to strike away from the stuff we have in
America. When you come over I want to talk with
you about the pedestal. Perhaps something might be
done with that. . . .

. . . I have sent Richardson a photograph of a
sketch for the Dexter. The photograph does n't do
the sketch justice. I think I could do something good
out of it though. I certainly prefer such work to the
big things I am doing. I will send him a photograph
of another disposition for the same. I think I can make
something good with the letters in iron and some gilt
on it. . .

Have you seen the little bronze medallion of Arm-
strong I sent to the new Exhibition in New York?
I 'm rather pleased with the color of the bronze. I
wonder also did my Farragut get there in good condi-
tion, particularly the base. As to my angels, I pre-
ferred the one immediately under the cross on the left
hand side.

Yes, the St. Thomas engraving in Scribner's was
stunning, and on the whole I fear the work has been
made a great deal too much of. Oh, how I would like

256

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

to do it over again., and have time, after what I have
seen in Italy.

Cook has been very kind to me in his article. I
think though that he has evidently been misled in re-
gard to Cottier's part of the work. I don't think, or
at least I don't see, what La Farge would have done
without him in the mixing of colors, direction of men,
&c. &c, and all the practical part. But on the other
hand as regards art, I know there is n't a bit of Cot-
tier in the whole church. La Farge had every bit of
Cottier's work changed to suit himself, and to La
Farge, and La Farge only, the credit or blame of the
artistic side of the work in that church is to go. So I
feel about it, and for that reason think Cook has been
misled. I believe Cook is doing a good work though.
He is n't afraid to say what he thinks. He is thor-
oughly sincere, and he is far superior to all the others
we have had to write on Art in "Ameriky."

You don't know how I hate the idea of going back to
dark, sloppy Paris after this glorious place; such sun
and light as there is here. I 'm fairly in love with it.
The Sistine Chapel and the "Santa Maria del Popolo"
help in my enjoyment of it. . . .

The second letter is to Mr. Richard Watson Gilder.

December 29, '79.
M y dear Gilder:

. . . All my brain can conceive now is arms with

braid, legs, coats, eagles, caps, legs, arms, hands, caps,

eagles, eagles, caps, and so on; nothing, nothing but

257

THE REMINISCENCES OF

that statue. All I have done besides is to finish the
Woolsey myself. But I have n't got it off yet and I
mean to exhibit it at the A. A. A. By the way, have
you heard anything about their movements? Has
Mrs. Gilder made any studies and any of those excel-
lent sketch copies? There 's lots of good work in Lon-
don. I hope you are not going to do like so many
others, fasten on to London, remain there, and become
a Britisher. I have not touched your medallion. But
when you get back here I want some photographs of
you, to finish it as I wish. How 's Rod? What and
how are you all? We had a regular "shindy" Christ-
mas eve and we wanted you here. I have news occa-
sionally from WTiite, but it 's only business. . . .

Finally, here is Mrs. Emerson's description of the period:
"In the autumn of 1878 I joined your father and mother in
Paris, just before the closing of the Salon. They were keep-
ing house in an apartment on the fourth floor of 3 Rue Hers-
chel, a short street between the Boulevard St. Michel and the
Avenue de l'Observatoire, a park-like avenue running from the
Luxembourg gardens to the Observatory. Your father's stu-
dio was at 49 Rue Notre Dame des Champs, I think, and we
all enjoyed the walk to and from it, through the Luxembourg
gardens.

"We had many bright, amusing times in that little apart-
ment. From the two long French windows of the salon, or
from the iron balconies outside, we looked over to the towers
of St. Sulpice, often turning back from that vision in the cold
fog, to a bright fire in the grate, and to many of the familiar
furnishings that you later had in Washington Place, New
York. There was a small room somewhere into which your
Uncle Louis tucked himself. He had recently joined us and

258

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

was not very well and your father was anxious about him.
Your father had a great and loyal love for Louis, and the
charm of Louis' personality always kept an extraordinary hold
on him.

"On Sunday afternoons we often went to the Louvre ; many
hours have I spent with your father in the Salon Carre, and
it must have been he who helped me to feel the charm and
power of the old masters. I remember that, before I went to
Italy in the spring of 1879, White made for me a table of the
masters of the different schools and, half jokingly, put your
father's name in the list.

"Usually on Sunday afternoons, after a visit to the Louvre,
we all went to a Pasdeloup classical concert in the Cirque
d'Hiver. The Boccherini minuet was the great encore, and sent
us tripping home.

"At supper the important feature was 'puddin',' a delicious
and liberal concoction of rice, milk and raisins, always sol-
emnly announced by Louis and White. Berthe, the French
maid of all work of uncertain age, whose every hair was ex-
actly laid with, not pomatum but something stickier, and whose
starched cap-strings were tied in a bow at the back with geo-
metric precision, was a host in herself. Woe to him who dis-
turbed her when she was polishing the waxed floors, leaving no
seat or spot for the unwary loafer! Oh, the seven-course
company dinners she cooked on two charcoal holes in the dimin-
utive kitchen, and served with elegance!

"On Christmas Eve, after your father and White had made
their Christmas purchases and brought home greens for dress-
ing the salons, we all went out on the Boulevards to be a part
of the gaiety, and then at midnight to St. Sulpice to hear
Faure sing Noel. The studio often rang with your father's
repetition of it.

"Occasionally we would have a treat and go to the Comedie
Francaise, or to the Grand Opera, where we often sat in the
upper galleries. One part of the evening's entertainment was

259

THE REMINISCENCES OF

the stroll in the Foyer to look at the Baudry frescoes and the
gay crowd, or upon the grand balcony to get the effect of the
wonderful perspectives of the brilliantly lighted Avenue de
l'Opera, and the motionless mounted guards, under the great
street candelabra just outside the Opera House, armed cap-a-
pie like the Ghost of Hamlet's father.

"William Gedney Bunce was in Paris that winter and used a
corner of your father's studio for his easel. He was then mak-
ing a name for himself through his wonderfully brilliant paint-
ing of Venice; and of all his colors he loved yellow the best.
One evening, when your mother and I had waited almost beyond
endurance for them to come home to dinner, your father, Louis
and White appeared, weary, and well-coated with yellow.

" 'What has happened?' we exclaimed.

" 'Bunce had a yellow day,' they replied.

"'A yellow day?'

" 'A yellow day. He started to smear that color over one
of his Venetian sketches, so we got rid of him while we smeared
it off — over everything.'

"Joe Evans, too, was often with us in Paris. He was then
a student at the Beaux Arts and a favorite with all. Later
in life, when he became President of the Art Students' League
in New York, your father had often to confer with him, and
he would refer with admiration to Joe Evans' ability, and to
his wit and charm.

"One Sunday morning your father sent to the apartment
from the studio an enthusiastic letter from White at Rheims.
Your father must join him at once and see the wonderful
Gothic figures on the outside of the Cathedral. Your mother
looked me over and decided that, if I had a bonnet instead of
my hat and a plain gold ring on the third finger of my left
hand, I could go too. We worked away, and in the afternoon
your father and I took the train for Rheims and joined White.
We stayed at a little commercial hotel. In the evening, in our
tiny parlor, they roasted apples on strings before a big fire,

260

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

while I darned White's socks. We were off for the wonderful
cathedral early in the morning, spending our money lavishly
for photographs of details, and, with scarcely any left, we took
the third-class carriage for Laon in the afternoon. Another
wonder was this picturesque hill town, with its rare early
Gothic Cathedral surmounting all. Lighting our way with a
torch, the old verger took us through the galleries high up
among the arches. As we left the Cathedral, turning our
backs on the great doors and high towers, and passed back
towards and through the medieval gates of the town and on
down to the railroad station, the lights on the great misty
plain were like lights at sea. We counted our coins. White
took enough to carry him back third-class to Rheims, and
your father and I arrived in Paris with three or four sous
between us.

"Some time after, while I was in Italy in the Spring,
Berthe's reign came to an end. It was soon discovered that
the new incumbent was wont, at times, to imbibe too freely.
One day for dessert your father asked for some marmalade.
The bonne entered, bearing with uncertain steps a white pot
of molasses ; molassess and marmalade were sold by the
epiciers in the same kind of round white pots. 'No,' said
your mother, 'it is marmalade we want. This is molasses.'
Bewildered, the bonne turned on her heel as well as she could,
and after several minutes returned with a second white pot.
But the idea of putting the right one on the table was too
much for her, and finally she tottered out, bearing away both,
contemplating each in turn, murmuring in dulcet tones, 'Mar-
malade ! Melasse ! Melasse ! Marmalade ! Marmalade, Me — '
till out of hearing."

Indeed, the young artists that made the house in the Rue
Herschel their rendezvous must have been a healthy group, for
they had no morbid introspection of themselves or of their
work. One Christmas, for instance, White bought a mistletoe
and hung it in the center of the room while the rest played

261

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

"dumb crambo." Then Louis Saint-Gaudens became a horse
for some one else in an easy chair whom White, as footman,
tried to push under the mistletoe, — and did not succeed.
Again, their chief delight after meal hours was to watch the
number of black cigars which Samuel Clemens could consume,
until they hailed as the signal to go home the question, "What
is Art?" But more typical than anything else of their attitude
towards one another was my father's constant answer to a
query as to the personality of the latest stranger whom he was
to bring to supper, "Oh, another crank," he would say.

262

NEW YORK AND ITS FRIENDSHIPS

1880-1890

The Farragut Unveiling — Other Work in the Sherwood Studio — The
Randall — The Destruction of the Morgan Tomb — Friends — Louis
Saint-Gaudens — Joseph M. Wells — Stanford White — Thomas
Dewing — George Fletcher Babb — Richard Watson Gilder — Daily
Life — Western Trip with White.

THE Paris days over, the reminiscences once more take
up Saint-Gaudens' life in New York. His brief ac-
count commences with that all-important incident of
his return, the unveiling of the Farragut monument. In what
he says he gives expression, for the first time, to the under-
current of sentiment with which he regarded his work. Yet
the expression is most restrained, since, like Bernard Saint-
Gaudens, Augustus Saint-Gaudens suffered throughout his
days from a habit of suppressing his strong emotions. A
story illustrating the nature of this inheritance was told me
not long ago by Mr. W. W. Ellsworth, who writes :

"A few nights after the unveiling, your father and mother
and I came up Fifth Avenue from the Gilders'. It was about
midnight, and as we approached the statue we saw an old man
standing in front of it (I think his hat was off). Your father
said : 'Why, that 's father,' and going up to him, 'What are
you doing here at this hour?'

" 'Oh, you go about your business ! Have n't I a right
to be here?' the old man replied, and we left him standing
there in the moonlight."

Especially did this unveiling prove important to Augustus

263

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Saint-Gaudens, because at last it put a period to one allot-
ment of "the toughness that pervades a sculptor's life."
For this toughness steadily followed him through this com-
mission, as through most of his later ones, since his Farra-
gut difficulties did not end in Paris, but accompanied him
home. There they continued even with such apparently sim-
ple matters as the disposition of the paths about the monu-
ment, a chance for interference grasped by the Park Depart-
ment at every opportunity, even down to the time of one of
his last big commissions, the Sherman monument. Here is a
portion of a letter which explains the trend of these worries,
written by Saint-Gaudens to Mr. Charles H. Marshall, Sec-
retary of the Farragut Monument Association:

. . . The approach with pebbles will cost one
hundred dollars at the outside, more probably sixty
dollars, or eighty dollars, and if done in asphal-
tum twenty-five dollars less. To my objections,
as stated in the petition, I now add that, as
an artist, I feel satisfied that any stranger of
judgment in such matters, on seeing the monument
with the sod as it is now, could not but think it affected
and ridiculous, which it is; therefore making another
object of ridicule in New York monuments, besides be-
ing positively unfair to Mr. White, myself, and our
judgment as artists. The work on the pedestal, em-
bodying a great deal of the honor due to the Admiral,
is now lost, the monument incomplete, the inscription,
the most important part, not seen, and the figures not
understood, they having been modeled to be seen at the
distance at which the public would naturally approach
a work of that character.

264

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

With the unveiling, however, as I have said, my father's
faithfulness had its own reward, in the form of his first real
public recognition. To describe it I will quote a typical ex-
tract printed in the New York Times during the course of that
year.

"... Most striking are the articles on Farragut this
week in Scribner's, a worthy statue of whom has just been un-
veiled in New York. Mr. Gilder has to accompany the illus-
tration of the statue a few pages of descriptive and critical
matter in which he makes some wholesome observations on pub-
lic statues in this city. General sympathy will be expressed
with what he says of *a still increasing company of hideous
and imbecile monuments, some home-made and some imported,
the work in certain instances of well-known, but half-educated
and poorly endowed sculptors, and in others of nameless and
shameless adventurers.' He finds in St.-Gaudens' statue a work
of extraordinary artistic value and 'a sign of the increase of
the art spirit in America.' "

But even more to the point than this newspaper glory, as
showing the immediate appreciation of the world around him,
were the letters written him by his well-known friends. Here
is one from Mr. D. Maitland Armstrong, with whom he had
been intimate in Paris. At that time Mr. Armstrong was
such a power in the American art world that a word from him
meant the praise of many artists.

Dear Saint-G.:

When I went over to see your statue this morning, and saw
the whole thing there before me, it fairly took my breath away,
and brought my heart into my mouth. It is perfectly mag-
nificent. I have n't felt so about anything for years. The
sight of such a thing renews one's youth, and makes one think
that life is worth living after all. I felt as I have only done
about a few things in my life, some of the fine old things, or
as I did when I saw Bastien-Lepage's big picture in the Salon

265

THE REMINISCENCES OF

three years ago. Only more so, because here I love not only
the work but the worker. I thought, too, of all your manful
struggles through all these years, your fight against all odds,
with only your heart and brains and will to help you, and I said
to myself, "Well done!"

I think in a little while that it will begin to dawn upon you
that you have done more for the world than you thought,
that you have "builded better than you knew" — for I was sur-
prised to see how the rabble about the statue spoke of it, and
how they seemed to be touched by it. It is a revelation to
them, and what is more, I feel that they are ready and long-
ing for better art. It cheers one to think it. They seemed
to be touched a little as the crowds in old Florence were
touched, when some great fellow set up some stunning thing
in the market-place. And I felt like one of the great old fel-
low's dear friends, who knew how great he was, and felt happy
in the knowledge that at last the world knew it too, for I did
not discover Saint-Gaudens, as most men did, yesterday. They
all think that you are a great gun to-day, but I knew it before.

You have gone beyond art, and reached out and touched the
universal heart of man. You have preached a small sermon
on truth, honor, courage, and loyalty, that will do more good
than all the reasonings of philosophers. You have brought
great truths close to the hearts of men, truths that were, and
will be, the same "yesterday, to-day and forever."

It is a pleasant thing, my friend, to think of, that when
you have "gone into quiet silence," all through the coming
years, how many weary feet bearing weary hearts will gain
strength there, how many despairing souls pluck up strength
for the battle of life. . . .

I hope that you will not think that I am drunk, but my
heart is full and I write from the bottom of it. I congratu-
late you and White with all my heart. Don't think that I
want any answer to this, and forgive me for boring you.

Ever your friend, Maitland Armstrong.

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Saint-Gaudens' own feelings regarding his result did not, I
think, alter in any way because of even such laudatory ex-
pressions as these. They surely did not in after life, and I
have no reason to believe that they differed then. Therefore,
this portion of a letter to John La Farge, written while yet
in Paris, on December 29, 1879, may be accepted as true of
his attitude toward his work during the days that immedi-
ately followed the unveiling.

. . . I first wish to write you about your draw-
ing of "Christ and Nicodemus" that I saw in Harper's
sometime ago — I was really stirred by it, and as I had
just returned from Italy I was all the more impressed.
I am speaking sincerely. I had never felt that I have
done what I wanted to do until I have written to you
what I felt about it.

My Farragut will soon be finished and then, when
the bronze is cast, I return. I am completely abruti.
I have n't the faintest idea of the merit of what I Ve
produced. At times I think it's good, then in-
different, then bad. I will see what I can do
with the two low-reliefs. I am certainly very
anxious to get your opinion of the whole work.
I have been expecting you here but I hope, now that
I am going back, you are to remain, for I feel the neces-
sity of your influence more than anyone I know.

The reminiscences themselves are unfortunately far too brief,
not only in recording Saint-Gaudens* sensation at his first
large unveiling, but also in their mention of the other tasks
which surrounded and followed it. My father writes :

I had the Farragut cast in Paris by a man named

267

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Gruet, but the first attempt failed, so that it needed to
be done over. When it had been completed success-
fully we came back to New York, where I was destined
to remain for seventeen years before returning to Eu-
rope, a period virtually launched by the unveiling of
my statue in Madison Square upon the afternoon of a
beautiful day in May, 1881.

These formal unveilings of monuments are impres-
sive affairs and variations from the toughness that per-
vades a sculptor's life. For we constantly deal with
practical problems, with molders, contractors, der-
ricks, stone-men, ropes, builders, scaffoldings, marble
assistants, bronze-men, trucks, rubbish men, plasterers,
and what-not else, all the while trying to soar into the
blue. But if managed intelligently, there is a swing
to unveilings, and the moment when the veil drops
from the monument certainly makes up for many of
the woes that go toward the creating of the work. On
this special occasion, Mr. Joseph H. Choate delivered
the oration. The sailors who assisted added to the
picturesqueness of the procession. The artillery
placed in the park, back of the statue, was discharged.
And when the figure in the shadow stood revealed, and
the smoke rolled up into the sunlight upon the build-
ings behind it, the sight gave an impression of dignity
and beauty that it would take a rare pen to describe.

By this time I had leased a small studio in the Sher-
wood Building, on the corner of Fifty-seventh Street
and Sixth Avenue, where I had begun upon the study
of Robert Richard Randall from the model I had made

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in Paris. The work caused me endless worry, for
after I had completed it in this form and had sent it up
to 125th Street to be enlarged, I became discontented
and tore it down to commence again. This was fortu-
nate, since as it now stands it is certainly infinitely bet-
ter than the previous attempt. Meanwhile, I had other
occupations in which I completed my first commissions
for portrait medallions, — those of Mr. S. G. Ward, the
sons of Mr. Prescott Hall Butler, and Miss Sarah Red-
wood Lee.

During this period my son Homer was born in Rox-
bury, Massachusetts, and Mrs. Saint-Gaudens lived
with her father and mother while attending to the new
young man. So I slept in a chamber adjoining the
studio, with my brother Louis as my assistant. Louis
is a lover of sleep, and wise enough to indulge in it upon
every occasion, rising at times so late that I will say
nothing about the hour. One noon, on returning from
a several days' absence in Boston, I walked into the bed-
room where he was peacefully dreaming at about eleven
o'clock. Across the wall, directly opposite the foot of
the bed, he had fastened an immense piece of paper five
feet in height, extending the entire width of the room,
about twelve feet, and on this he had marked in
very large, black letters the words from Proverbs:
Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the
hands to sleep. So shall thy poverty come as one that
traveleih, and thy want as an armed man. This stared
down at him when he awoke o' mornings from his
blissful repose.

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

My father has no more to say about his efforts in the Sher-
wood Studio. Yet the period was not only as active as those
that preceded it, but it was the culmination of his struggle
to establish himself permanently in the ranks of mature artists.
Throughout this time, life contained rather more of both pain
and pleasure than he cared to admit, with his nature so re-
pressed upon the surface, yet beneath so sensitive to emotion.
Of the commissions he mentioned, the "Randall" left the
studio much to his relief, since, through the crochets of the
Committee he had become so disgusted that he never could find
himself on good terms with the work; and all his life this
feeling remained, even in his later years his most optimistic
remark concerning the commission being, "the less said about
the 'Randall' the better." The other tasks of which he has
written, on the contrary, gave him unalloyed pleasure. He
undoubtedly liked best of them the medallions of Mr. Ward
and Miss Lee. The "Ward" he modeled in the lowest-relief he
ever attempted. The medallion of Miss Lee he originally made
on a panel which also contained a profile of her mother. But
upon the completion of this double portrait, the attractions
of the astonishingly beautiful girl of sixteen held the sculptor
so entranced that he refused to leave his occupation, and cut-
ting his study of her head and neck from the original relief
of herself and her mother, he modeled a new composition in
the now popular form which shows her waist and hands.

In these days, as well, came other works of which my father
has not spoken, the completion of the Morgan Tomb, the Wool-
sey bust, and the bas-reliefs of William M. Chase and of my-
self. The last three need no further mention, but with the
Morgan figures it is another matter. These angels, which
next to the "Farragut" my father regarded as the most im-
portant commission of the time, he refrains from mentioning,
undoubtedly because of his dislike of dwelling upon the tragic.
The Morgan monument was doomed to furnish the first of the
series of fires which, from time to time, destroyed portions of

272

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

my father's work and which, in this case, brought to no pur-
pose all the schemes of the young sculptor and his architect.
From the beginning the actual creation of these nine-foot
figures progressed more favorably than their best desires. So
that, after their completion in the studio, they were sent to the
cemetery, with the highest expectations of success, to be cut
on the spot in an Italian marble imported at much pains.
There, in order to further the work during the winter, a shed
was built around them ; and this shed, when the task had drawn
to within three weeks of completion burned one night, leaving
the stone so badly chipped as to be useless. It was thought
that the calamity was due to an incendiary who bore my father
a grudge. The blow was brutally severe. Not only, in the
intense youthful effort which my father spent upon his task,
had he begged and borrowed money against the final pay-
ment, in order that the result should have all the artistic
strength he might impart to it, but also, through a series of
misunderstandings with the stone-cutters, he had neglected to
place any insurance on the monument. Consequently, in ad-
dition to his other troubles, he was faced with a financial
breakdown. Here is what he wrote to my mother concerning
the situation :

You have probably seen by the papers the calamity
that has happened. The shed around the Morgan
group was burned down and my whole work is an utter
and absolute ruin. What is going to become of the
matter I don't know, and I dread to think of it. None
of my lawyer friends are in town, and I could only find
a friend of George Morris' who tells me that, through a
peculiarity, I can make the executors responsible and
obtain the five thousand dollars still due me. But I
don't know what I 'm doing. I went to Hartford yes-

273

THE REMINISCENCES OF

terday, and none of the executors are in town. The
principal one I will see on Monday. I can't write.
You know all I do. Perhaps to-morrow I can be
clearer.

It 's a legal quibble — the executors might make me
responsible and want their three thousand dollars back.

Gus.

With such an unfortunate outlook immediately after the fire,
matters went from bad to worse, until Mr. C. C. Beaman, who
had grown interested in my father's sculpture, entered into the
case, with the result that the executors paid to my father three
thousand five hundred dollars, his bare expenses. This money
consideration was the very least of what troubled him, how-
ever. For money meant nothing to him but the power to
produce work. And the work that was gone was probably his
strongest effort of the time, a work that would have outranked
the "Farragut," a work that would have satisfied in a slight
measure his desire to create some purely imaginative compo-
sition as a relief from the succession of portraits that fate
thrust upon him. The only satisfaction to be gained is that
the thought and time devoted to these figures was to be of use
again in forming the foundation for the later Smith tomb
figure which he modeled in 1886 and the ultimate "Angel with
the Tablet," or "Amor Caritas" as it is most frequently called,
which he completed in 1898.

For the seventeen years following my father worked in his
studio at 148 West Thirty-Sixth Street, where he moved, feel-
ing that at last his position had become assured. It is proper
then to refer again to that group of men among whom he
maintained that position. As in Paris it was the Society of
American Artists, which remained the nucleus of those efforts to
which he subscribed. This was more than fortunate because
the Society was succeeding. Whereas in 1878 only twenty-

274

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

two men exhibited at the Kurtz Gallery, by 1881 the member-
ship had grown to fifty-two, including such academicians as
John La Farge, George Inness, Thomas Moran and Homer
Martin, while in 1888, despite a continued lack of funds and
proper galleries, over one hundred names stood on the list.
Such a happy set of prosperity was due, in a large measure, to
one quality so often absent in a young protesting group, a
generous attitude towards the body from which they had sep-
arated. Their reason for creating a distinct organization
from the Academy had been that the Academy hung work on
the basis of personal friendship and was restricted by a nar-
row taste in art. But at the same time they made no attempt
to fight the Academy. Rather they took the position that
they were simply a younger and broader institution, ready
to include on an equal footing both the old and the new, and
even went so far as to place no limit on the size of member-
ship, and to declare that no favors would be shown members
in the hanging.

The sole regrettable consequence of such an eclectic stand
was a lack of any unified aim. Especially did the organiza-
tion suffer from many who regarded it as a species of short
cut to distinction, in consequence of which studies and sketches
were mingled with Salon pictures, open air compositions, works
of minute realism, tonal schemes, and impressionism. Had the
nation at that time shown itself enthusiastic towards art there
is no telling into what exaggerations these branches might
have spread. Those early days, however, were ones of hard
traveling for budding genius. The old type of art had been
worn out, it is true, but the new was crude and the public
timid. So, fortunately, only after the young men had learned
discretion, did increasing wealth, ease of travel, and illus-
trated magazines begin to develop a proper market.

In the course of these trying experiences, the Munich paint-
ers first came to their own. Frank Duveneck, Walter Shirlaw
and William M. Chase were their leaders. Duveneck possessed

275

THE REMINISCENCES OF

a brilliancy and dash hitherto lacking in his school, and al-
though beginning with dark, rich backgrounds, developed
through the years a power of handling cool gray shadows.
Shirlaw, too, broke away from the rut of his fellow students
with an unusual width and sweep in his frank handling of his
decorative ability. But Chase, for ten years President of the
Society, exerted probably the greatest influence. From the
very first he became an aggressive fighter for his own canons.
In rapid succession he attempted every branch of his art,
and while through this process the dark Munich touches were
replaced by luminous color, he never lost his vital individu-
ality or delight in technique.

Of the French-taught group, who were rapidly succeeding
in power, Sargent stood obviously at the head, despite the
fact that he lived for a greater part of the time in England;
while near him in those days were Wyatt Eaton, who showed
his graceful sense for tone and color, whether in heads or
figure, J. Alden Weir, possessed of sympathetic understand-
ing of his subjects, coupled with marked strength and an im-
pressionistic kinship with Childe Hassam and painters of his
creed, Thomas W. Dewing, delicate before them all in his
charm of color and drawing, and Will H. Low, of whom my
father has spoken with such affection.

Outside of these two larger bodies followed also other figure
painters of power, Edwin A. Abbey, who left America in these
days to illustrate in England with such grace the conscious
affectations of Robert Herrick's poetry, and Francis Lathrop,
almost the only one to bring home an English training and
the influence of the Preraphaelite school, besides many land-
scapists like Willard L. Metcalf and John H. Twachtman.
While ever strong through them all rose those two markedly
individual masters, Winslow Homer and John La Farge.

It might seem as though those who were chiefly important in
Saint-Gaudens' development, his fellow sculptors, were being
ignored in this review. Rather, however, are they held to the

276

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

last for the sake of the emphasis, since the advance in sculp-
ture was even more marked than in painting. The Italian
school had nearly vanished, together with the smug neatness
or uncontrolled abandon of the amateur age. Instead the
Paris-trained men had arrived to govern American feeling with
a true sense of form and sculptural ideas. Three of these
artists in especial, J. Q. A. Ward, Olin Warner, and Daniel
Chester French, joined with my father in discovering the path
that led out from the forest of petrified heroes and galvanized
athletes of the early days. Ward had become unquestionably
the dean of sculptors. Shortly before this time, in 1878, he
had unveiled his "General Thomas," a statue which struck the
American note with special accuracy because of its lack of
ostentation and yet power of easy, unstinted modeling. Now
in 1885, followed his "Puritan," filled with an austere force and
conviction that showed an astonishing grasp of subject. Olin
Warner, about 1880, returned to his art from his life on a farm
to produce a bust of J. Alden Weir, and his "Dancing
Nymph." Then ensued a tour through the West with a series
of Indian portraits that developed his understanding of medal-
lion modeling until he was able to produce such reliefs as those
of Wyatt Eaton and W. C. Brownell. Few men in those days
so well understood the power of instilling a sense of internal
activity into a form outwardly serene through a marked sensi-
tiveness to the meaning and place of detail. Finally Daniel
Chester French also, though decidedly younger than these two,
with his bust of Ralph Waldo Emerson showed delicacy and the
force of his mind, and with his John Boyle O'Reilly group at
last attacked the hitherto untouched problem of using a bust
for monumental purposes and flanking it by subordinate deco-
rative figures.

These then were the artists with whom my father labored,
who, in turn, were most loyal to his interests. Let me show,
in a letter to Mr. Gilder, one of the chief causes of that loy-
alty, Saint-Gaudens' level independence of mind. He writes:

277

THE REMINISCENCES OF

February 21, 1881.
My dear Gilder:

There seems to be a current opinion that a thing to
be good must be unfinished, and I write this as I now
understand better a question you asked me in Paris.
Great work has been produced in both ways, cf. Mil-
let, and some of the Greeks were grand in the simple.
. . . The finish or lack of finish has nothing to do
in the classification of a work as good or bad — its char-
acter, regardless of that, is the thing. For sculpture
is simply one of the means of expressing oneself, ac-
cording to the temperament of the worker. Of course,
I am defending myself in writing you, as well as de-
fending the whole profession, but I thought you would
like to know what I thought of it. Perhaps I 've told
you all this before, but it keeps coming across me, and
the current criticism of art in the newspapers in that
direction irritates me so that I felt I had to let off steam
or explode.

So far I have spoken almost wholly of those who bore, in
a more or less general way, on Saint-Gaudens' development
through the eighties. Now, however, I may turn to mention
his more especial friends. At the outset those with whom my
father became intimate were men of the caliber of Joseph
Wells, Stanford White, Thomas W. Dewing, George Fletcher
Babb, Charles F. McKim, Will H. Low, Joseph Evans, and
Francis Lathrop. More than to any one else, however, my
father exhibited his devotion to his brother Louis. He gave
Louis his education as a sculptor, saw to it that he had work,
and clung to him in home and studio through every possible
hour of companionship. With Louis, as in younger days, my

278

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

father was happiest on rambling excursions when he could best
enjoy his brother's reposeful philosophy; trips to the seashore
where he might add to his own luxurious contentment and the
befrazzlement of his brother's nerves by swimming languidly
far out into the bay.

In unusual sympathy with Louis' outlook on the world came
Joseph Wells, whose early death my father felt through all
his life. When Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Wells met, Wells-
was the leading draftsman for McKim, Mead and White, with
whom he designed, among other buildings, the Villard residence
and the home of the Century Association on West Forty-
third Street. In his office they regarded him as a purist in
art and a man of such marked ability that, shortly before his
death, they had asked him to join the firm. He had a noble,
kindly, sensitive nature filled with a power of keen, telling sa-
tire and high, uncompromising criticism that drew upon him
the nickname of "Dean Swift." His strong taste for music
eventually led to the Sunday afternoon concerts in my father's
studio, of which more hereafter.

White also continued to maintain a strong influence in my
father's life during the next ten years, when often he could
be found in the vicinity of the studio. Undoubtedly the archi-
tect's criticism meant much to the sculptor. It held, indeed,
so important a place that once, when White scored a medallion
of himself which my father was modeling, the latter destroyed
the work and never attempted a new one. Still, for the most
part, Saint-Gaudens refused to be domineered over, for he soon
discovered his friend's idiosyncrasy of foisting his emphatic
assertions on every timorous soul around him. I think that
the first conscious reaction against this attitude came very
shortly after the incident I have mentioned, while the sculptor
was completing a relief of White's wife near the time of their
marriage. The architect, on discovering Saint-Gaudens at
work on this one afternoon, gazed upon the relief for some
moments and then cried out, "Oh, Gus, that 's rotten !"

281

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Whereupon, though first my father again smashed the medal-
lion into bits, later, after his passion was spent, he set pa-
tiently at reconstructing the relief. The waste of time seemed
unfortunate, yet Saint-Gaudens had learned his lesson, as
was soon proved in an encounter over the Ames monument in
which the two were interested. Among other things this
scheme included a wreath carved in relief on a flat stone. It
had been an endless subject for contention between them. So
at last one afternoon White decided to settle the matter, and
rushed into the studio with his usual effect of being shot from
a landslide.

"Is Gus in?" he yelled.

"N-no," was the shaky response.

Whereupon he dashed by the door-boy in search of the un-
fortunate decorations.

"Awful!" he exclaimed, discovering a couple of the experi-
mental wreaths upon the floor. "Which does Gus like?"

They pointed to the highest relief.

"Huh ! " he gurgled. "You might as well paint it green !"
and tore out again.

Then they hid the wreaths safe from any impatient and de-
stroying hand and warily brought the news to my father, and
silently waited the thunder-clap.

But it did not come. All my father said was, "Is n't it pe-
culiar how opinions differ?"

Yet despite such encounters, the two men cared deeply for
one another and were probably more intimate at this time
than in any of the later years. For each tolerated the
other's peculiarities humorously; my father, in his hearty ad-
miration for the architect's generosity of effort and high, ar-
tistic powers, hoping to modify his drastic nature, White, on
his part, most sincere in his respect for the sculptor's ability
and fondly anxious to make a "club man" of him.

Then there was Thomas Dewing, the heavy man who paints
delicate, ethereal pictures which my father regarded as by far

282

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

the most delightful of their sort in the land. Moreover, in
the currency of friendship, Dewing's highly-colored fashion
of expressing his thoughts kept Saint-Gaudens in a constant
chuckle. In especial was my father fond of repeating a re-
mark which the latter made one day, upon the sculptor's re-
fusing a drink of water after a long hot walk.

"Saint-Gaudens drink?" Dewing queried. "Why, don't you
know, Saint-Gaudens is like the Arabs. When you ask an
Arab if he will take a drink he replies, 'No, I thank you, I had
a drink ten days ago.' "

Another of these especial cronies, George Fletcher Babb,
the architect, had then but recently erected the De Vinne Press
Building, a building so clean-cut and essentially American as
to win him instant respect. And what counted for as much
among this group of friends was Babb's gift for quiet cyni-
cisms and deep-laid puns that kept his company ever on the
watch, especially when Dewing, also a cynic and a fighter, was
in the vicinity.

Aside from these intimates, my father had friendships with
many other men and women who possessed little in common
with one another, for he was unusually eclectic in his likes.
Their names and many of their personalities appear indirectly
throughout this book. Therefore I shall speak here of only
one among them, a man whose keen but gentle intelligence he
always deeply admired, Richard Watson Gilder. Here are
two letters to him which reflect the terms of their comrade-
ship:

58 West Fifty-seventh Street, Nov., 1880.
Scene —

Mulligan Guard Picnic Court Room — Assault and
Battery Case.
Personnel
Crowd.

283

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Judge.

Accused— Thomas Fagan— New York tough.

Victim— Mr. Swartzmuller— Trombone player in the
Mulligan Guards.

Judge: "Mr. Swartzmuller, who knocked you down?"

Mr. Swartzmuller: "That man, Mister Thomas Fa-
gan.

Mr. Fagan: "Don't call me Mister, call me Tommy
—Tommy Fagan, plain Tommy Fagan."

I have your note; why do you call me Mister? What
have I done to you? All right about the medallion.
Louis has already reduced it to two feet square, and in
a few days will have it finished.

I ought to go down to see Mrs. Gilder. But Sunday
is such a quiet working day that I hate to leave. What
is your Donatello ? I wish I could feel about my female
as Eaton does. To me it 's Bouguereau in sculpture
with a lot of soft soap and dough mixed in. I heard
the Heroic Symphony the other night. Great
Caesar! . . .

St.-G.

And again : —

My dear Gilder:

Your generous present I found when I got home,
yesterday afternoon. I don't think you can realize
what a pleasure it is to me to be given a book. No gift
is so welcome. The pleasure is all the stronger perhaps
for the faint vein of bitterness intertwined in it by the
thought that my education, early associations, and

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

strong habits of life, have made books to me a great,
faintly-opened life —

Thank you sincerely and earnestly.

Apart from an account of his work, however, and from a
knowledge of the men who were working about him, an under-
standing of what my father was doing at this time is best
gained from the following letters. The first, written to my
mother, illuminates his affection for his father, Bernard Saint-
Gaudens, which he shared deeply with his brothers Louis
and Andrew. I was too young to notice the extent of this
love during Bernard Saint-Gaudens' life-time, but I have a
most vivid recollection of the blow that fell upon Augustus
Saint-Gaudens when his father died. For he took me that
night to the barnlike Thirty-sixth Street studio and there,
lighting one feeble gas-jet, walked sobbing, back and forth,
in and out of the black shadows, telling to my young, uncom-
prehending ears all that his father had meant to him.

He writes:

. . . Father came in to see us day before yester-
day and we went there this morning. Although
stronger, poor old man, he looks very badly and it
sends a pang through me every time I see him. We
have decided to send him back to his village. He is al-
ways talking of it. William will gladly take charge of
him on the Bordeaux Line to Bordeaux, and we will
get a cousin to meet him there to take him to the village
where he will stay as long as he cares to, and a desire of
his life will be satisfied. He proposes paying his own
fare over, and they will probably go about the first of
September. . . .

On other occasions as well he wrote my mother:

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

... I heard the "Heroic Symphony" by Bee-
thoven yesterday evening at the Academy of Music.
Going to hear that music is as if there were no photo-
graphs or engravings or reproductions of Michelangelo
and I was making my first visit to the Sistine
Chapel. . . .

. . . Started to go to bed early but did n't put
out the light until very late as I got interested reading
one of Daudet's novels. . . .

. . . We sat in Babb's room with Wells and
George Lathrop, and we had a furious art discussion
until midnight. I was up at seven, and I am at work
on the Gray medallion while Foglio is working on the
Schiff. My mind is made up to go next Monday. I
will stop at Newport for long enough to stick up the
Timothy Brookes medallion, which is finished, and then
go right on. . . .

. . . Last night I went to see a darkey company
play Othello seriously and it was one of the funniest
performances I have ever seen. Every time Iago ap-
peared, disappeared, moved about, or uttered a word,
there was wild applause. When Othello kissed Des-
demona, "Oh don't," and kisses, and "Yum! Yum!" all
over the house. One fellow shouted, "Hurrah for
Blaine!" There was a constant uproar. During the
fencing the fencers were told not to hurt one another,
and so on. I nearly burst laughing. They were al-
most white negroes, and the Othello would have been a
good actor if he was well schooled. He was quite
dark. . . .

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AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

It is lonely to-day at the studio. William is off, and
Louis went to Stockbridge for a day or two by the eight
A. M. train to-day. He goes to work on the Butler
tablet, and is frightened out of his wits at the prospect
of meeting the Butler family and the consequent social
treatment of him. Last night, after supper, we went
back to the studio to get an address for Louis, and
walked home, eating an ice-cream on the way back.
They say the day was hot here, but I did not feel it or
know it, except when I went out to dinner at noon.

I expect that will be the experience to-day. The
studio has been very endurable up to yesterday after-
noon, when about five o'clock I commenced to feel un-
comfortably warm. I quit work at six and walked
down town, and it was very hot and unbearable. So I
ate a salad and some oseille at a French restaurant
where I tried to get Babb to go to the Battery with
me, but he declined. Then I took the cars and went
down most of the way and walked the rest right on to
the Battery. It was cool, but there were about 40,000,
000,000,000,000 people there trying to get air
too. . . .

Saint-Gaudens was far from being a facile writer. The task
of completing a long letter always remained a serious one, to
be entered into only on rare occasions. But he had such a
love for the charm of the style of two other of his friends,
Will H. Low's in English and Paul Bion's in French, that he
would make every effort, in the glad knowledge that the re-
turn of post would satisfy his labor most abundantly. For
about twenty-five years or more his correspondence continued

287

THE REMINISCENCES OF

with each of these men. At this time he was writing to Low
as follows:

Dear Low:

. . . Dewing has read your letter, as well as Ma-
dame Dewing. And Dewing says "Low would make
a sensation if he went into literature," or something to
that effect. Although we all agree with him, we think
you are good enough where you are and prefer you
should remain so too. . . .

I read part of your letter yesterday in which you
mention the plan of going to Italy. I am delighted.
And you will be too. Don't fail to get to Rome and
Naples if only for a few days. Venice, of course, goes
without saying. Take Baedeker's guide, follow its sug-
gestions, and I don't think you will regret it; I mean
the practical advice, hotels, &c. If you go to Italy and
don't see the Sistine Chapel you will be neglected by
your real friend here on your return.

Willie MacMonnies writes me in very complimen-
tary terms of your new book. And Gamier wrote in
remarkable praise of the "Lamia." I 'm glad to hear
that you feel your new work is better. Dewing and
Faxon are the only ones who have read your letter as
yet, but I will mail it to-morrow to the great Kenyon
Cox, who will give it to Eaton.

Cox has been quite sick but has pulled through all
right. I must confess that, although I think some of
the things in his work are very strong (in fact they are
all good, some remarkably so), there is a lack of unity

288

V f

KTKAIT IN HAS RELIKF OK A YOL'NO LADY

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in them that troubles me seriously. It gives the im-
pression of a jumbled-up work. One drawing recalls
Baudry in a manner not to be ashamed of, others like-
wise run the gamut of most of the good men, ancient
and modern. ... I have told him so and he says he
can't help it. . . . However, you know what a
cross-grained critic I can be at times, and that is prob-
ably the mood I am in now. I hope he will have great
success. . . .

You know, of course, how interested we all were in
your report of the Salon &c, &c, and what you say of
Rodin. Willie writes in the same enthusiastic praise,
and Bion, I think, too, all of which makes me fret at
my detention here this summer. I thank you for the
photographs and the cast you propose bringing over or
sending to me. . . .

Faxon is now with us. What an attractive fellow he
is! He will stay about a week, and then Wells, the
spitfire, will come on the scene, leave all his malicious-
ness off as he enters the house, as a turtle would its
shell, and become one of the most companionable of
men. . . .

Next I translate one of Saint-Gaudens' letters written in
French to Bion:

148 West Thirty-sixth Street, December 3, 1892.
My Old Fellow:

It is said that with perseverance and faith a man can
bore through a mountain with a boiled carrot. So with
the perseverance of your correspondence you have ac-

291

THE REMINISCENCES OF

complished a miracle in turning me into a correspond-
ent. The transformation happened sometime ago;
and from a task which I used to fear as the devil fears
holy water, you have made this an entertainment to
which I lend myself with pleasure.

The opportunity presents itself to-day, Sunday, be-
cause my negro model has given me the slip, and the
quiet of the studio, the bright and cold weather out-
doors, and the gentle warmth of the room, invited me
to gossip with you.

The weather is so exhilarating that I find it impos-
sible to believe or to realize what you write me about
Shiff. But the inevitable is there, whether drowned
in a flood of sunshine which intoxicates us, or recalled
to our minds by the gloom of bad weather. I am wait-
ing in anxious impatience for your next letter, in my
hope that he is not as sick as he seems to be to you.
We red-haired fellows make a big fuss over a small
hurt, and I am counting on that to hear better news
about my friend.

Life is a battle, bitter or friendly, but nevertheless a
battle, and to my mind a wholesome one. In this
struggle I have lost some good plays by showing my
hand, but on growing older, with perspicacity and my
forefinger alongside my nose, I have said to myself,
"Old man, hide your devices or else others more light-
fingered will carry off the fruits of Victory. You will
be forced to furl the fine banner which you had pre-
pared to fling to the breeze, and the pleasure of the
fight will be lost to you." I do not mean that my treas-

292

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ures have been stolen from me, only unconsciously
others have deprived me of their luster. Rest assured
I am not harboring any resentment, but this is one of
the reasons I have had for not showing my work to
X. . . . The other reason is that I have a very
clear idea of what I want to do, and a criticism from
him would distract me seriously. That is probably the
true basis of my behavior. You know the high opinion
I have of his genius. But he is young and a radical,
violent and battling. He would let escape him some
thoughtless word to which I would give an unmerited
importance, in spite of myself. And even though I
understood all that, I would find myself, against my
will, following some direction which he had indicated.
I know myself and I am afraid of myself, for which
reason my chosen ones are those to whom I wish to
lend my ear. And you, you species of Yankee, are
just the man to whom I give the most weight. Now
do you think it at all necessary for me to reply to your
letter in which you express some doubt as to the wis-
dom of your criticism of what I am trying to do? Once
for all, I say to you that your criticism is to me as the
apple of my eye. What you have to tell me is of the
greatest value to me. Your point of view, it seems to
me, resembles my own, that of a man ripe in thought
and reflection and not given to scattering fireworks of
words at random, at the risk of knocking out the above
mentioned apple of the eye.

Say not another word on that subject. Scold me
and criticize me when you will.

293

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Finally, in the following series of letters to my mother is
beyond doubt the most detailed picture my father ever drew
of his holiday frame of mind. They describe his eventful
pleasure- jaunt through the southwestern portion of the United
States, taken with Stanford White.

Friday, August 31st, '83.

. . . We arrived at Engle, New Mexico, at three
forty-five. White's brother met us at the train, and as
the coach which left for his region did not go before
seven A. M., we had four hours. White and his
brother were taken to one room. The proprietor, in a
gruff way, opened a door and introduced me into an-
other, a small chamber smelling of kerosene, with two
beds, on one of which lay two men, one inside the sheets,
one on the blankets. I lay on top of the other bed,
doing as my companion did, taking off only my coat,
pantaloons, and shoes.

I did n't sleep, as for two days I had seen nothing
but rough men with knives and revolvers around their
waists and I knew that this was an "irresponsible city"
— that 's what they call them here — with its four shant-
ies and hotel. Also the two men tossed a good deal,
and I heard various noises as I half-dozed. Gradually
a faint light on the window-sill showed dawn. Then I
dozed a little more, dimly conscious of some kind of a
shaking of chains. Then came another quiet spell, then
a slight rushing sound with a little feeling that some-
thing was going on in the yard. Then out of the still-
ness rose a female voice: "John, the store is on fire!"

A glance at the window showed a red reflection, and

294

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

suddenly the three of us were tearing on our clothes,
without saying a word, and rushing out to find the
store burning furiously within thirty feet of where we
were sleeping. It was a strange, weird sight, the quiet
night, the grand, solemn prairies, the faint dawn, the
bright stars, and this great piece of destruction going
on. In the midst of it, unexpectedly, crack, crack,
crack, went shots ; whereupon the owner called hoarsely
to the stage-driver who was approaching the fire, "Don't
go near it, there are cartridges and two kegs of gun-
powder in it!"

So away blazed the cartridges with occasionally
louder and smaller reports, while we few men in the
lurid light receded little by little until, with a loud re-
port, the gunpowder exploded. It was a fine entree
for me into the Western country. The giant powder
did not go off fortunately. It only burned. Other-
wise there would have been a terrific explosion.
Gradually the fire died down and we got some break-
fast, a pretty tough one. I saw a couple of captured
bears which explained the noise I heard of chains. At
seven in the morning we were off on the four-horse
stage.

Beside ourselves there were two Irish- Scotchmen, in-
terested in some mines in the same region, other miners,
and a boy. We went over the prairie into the most
God-forsaken country ever seen, past Fort MacRae,
the scene of Indian massacres which might have been
committed yesterday, so terrible looking was the place.
We crossed the Rio Grande by a ford, a dirty brown

295

THE REMINISCENCES OF

river, drank the muddy water, and changed horses at
a picturesque Mexican village, where we had dinner at
one o'clock. Then we abandoned the stage and got on
two horses and a mule that White's brother had led to
the place two days before, from his camp, twenty-five
miles away. Off we started in a broiling sun. And
in those twenty-five miles all we saw was one Mexican
boy, down in a gulch with two dogs and with his re-
volver. It was a splendid ride, such a one as I will
never forget! White showed us the bones of a horse
shot by the Indians two years ago. The owner and his
family were murdered a small distance farther down
the gulch, so you see it was sensational. Farther on
appeared the mountains. We went up and down gul-
leys and finally struck water at the foot of the gorge
where the mine is. We were late and we urged the
animals through the darkness, trusting to them for the
paths while toiling on.

"Hello, Dick?" called a voice from some spot we were
passing.
' "Yes?"

"There 's some mail for you!"

"I '11 come for it to-morrow," and on we plunged
again for another hour, till finally we brought up in
front of a log cabin, White's home. We lit a fire in
the stove, made some bread, some tea, some Liebig
soup, and, in a little while, I was rolled up in a blanket
in a kind of a bunk, with White likewise over me, and
Stan on the floor.

I slept like a rock. In the morning Dick White

296

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

made some breakfast, coffee, canned peas, flap- jacks,
regular camp way of serving. However, we relished
what there was. Some jerked venison, of a deer killed
a week before, tasted like a salt mine and felt like a
rawhide. We practised with a rifle from the cabin
door to the hill opposite, and after a while went to the
camp further up the gulch to see four fellows who are
working a mine together.

They had a log and mud cabin about ten feet square.
Two were at work in the mine from eight A. M. to four
P. M. Then they came back and the other two went
at it from four P. M. to midnight. They were typical
miners. We were taken to the hole they had dug about
one hundred feet into the rock, and it was very inter-
esting. Then we visited a cave where the Indians had
concealed themselves, and saw Dick White's mine, too,
the same as the others. A sanguine crowd they are,
hard-working, hairy-mouthed, and bony-handed.

At five o'clock, one of them, an old Tennessee Con-
federate Captain, good-natured, jolly, and whole-
souled, decided to come with us, — that is White, his
brother, and myself.

So we piled our camp necessities into a little wagon
to which was hitched a donkey and an old Indian horse,
and off we went over rocks and rills along what they
called a road, passing through the beautiful valley,
Paloma, which was a great Indian camping-ground,
where we were shown the bones of horses killed in the
last defeat of the Indians. Rotch, the Tennessean,
had taken a short-cut on his mule, and we agreed to

297

THE REMINISCENCES OF

meet him at the junction. Before getting there, in
the dark, we suddenly saw arise in the road a dark
form.

"A bear!"

Stan jumped off the back of the wagon, I seized the
shotgun and got off the front, and, at the moment, we
saw a big — mule — and heard Rotch shout, "Here I
am!" We went on a little further and camped under a
big pine tree, lit a fire, made batter-cakes, drank tea,
sat 'round, and finally rolled ourselves in blankets and
went to sleep. I did n't sleep much, for it was such a
novelty, and at first we were rained on, though we
did n't get much wet by the shower.

Dick got up before the others, after I had asked them
how much longer they proposed lying there, for it
wasn't soft, and in a little while we had breakfast.
The Tennessean went to shoot deer and I went down
after quail.

I saw none, but suddenly I heard two shots in quick
succession. Then, after a moment, up on the hill I saw
a deer rush through the bushes, and I changed my shot
to buckshot. The deer disappeared. Suddenly he ap-
peared again and Rotch shouted, "There he comes,
Saint-Gaudens !" I crouched. But, before I was satis-
fied with my deliberate aim, the deer saw me and rushed
off in another direction, across the valley and up the
hill on the other side. That 's the way I did n't shoot
a deer.

The next morning we started at seven from Chloride,
a regular mining-camp, on the same stage on which

298

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS MODELING A BAS-RELIEF OF MRS. CLEVELAND

In "The Studio" at Marion, Massachusetts, summer of 1887

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

we had come, and raced away through the country at
a rapid rate. At last, when we were going up hill, I
climbed on top of the stage, where I shortly found that
the handsome driver was tearing drunk. Then we
whirled down a hill, and several times we were within
an ace of being thrown over. At that I got mad and
told the driver that I wanted him to use more caution.
He mumbled something and quieted down a little. I
asked him several questions. But he could n't seem to
grasp my meaning and gave up trying to understand
after a few faint efforts. The farther we went on the
drunker he appeared to get, lapsing into the same con-
dition in regard to his brake that he was in in regard to
my questions. The idea of putting on the brake when
we went down a sudden hill, and letting it go so that
the four poor horses might get headway to rush up the
other side, was too much. His brain would arrive at
the point of the putting on brakes just as the necessity
for them was over. So he constantly applied the
brakes with a dull vigor as the horses went up the hill.
It finally mixed him up completely and he decided it
was too hard work thinking about it and the best way
to get over the difficulty was to keep the brake on all
of the time. Consequently he did that, until the jolt-
ing of the stage threw his foot off it. Then he be-
came reflective until we finally got to the plains, the
horses tearing along at full gallop. Suddenly he
turned to me saying, "I never was so sleepy in all my
life, would n't shu like to try?" and put the reins in
my hands. I took them, but returned them almost at

301

THE REMINISCENCES OF

once, as my fingers were almost torn off without the
gloves. Whereupon he gave me the gloves.

Finally we got to the relay, somehow. The fellows
inside said they never had had such a ride. They were
bounced all over the stage, all over one another, under
the seats, half out of the window; one moment hugging
one another frantically, the next disappearing in lumps
in the corners. I had my jouncing, too, on the out-
side, several times not knowing when I was thrown
from the box whether or not I was going to come down
on the driver's head, on the horse's back, or out on the
road. But I was comparatively fortunate, for I would
land within a foot of where I started from. Of course
there were iron bars and nails instead of the cushion
that should have been on the seat. But my twenty-
five-mile horseback-ride had prepared that portion of
my body for anything that might happen. We made
the first part of the trip in just half the schedule time,
so you can fancy what happened.

After the next relay had been made, and as soon as
we got out of sight of the village, the driver again
quietly handed me the reins and gloves, saying that he
"felt sick with the rheumatiz, fever, and ague," and sank
into the big box under the seat. So for the next twenty
miles White and two others discussed "eternity" in the
inside of the coach, — the driver was sound asleep, with
his head in a hole and his feet upon the mail-bags, —
while I drove on that hot afternoon across the plains
with the great mountains in the distance, and not a soul
or a sign of lif e within sight. . . .

302

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Palace Hotel, San Francisco, Sept. 3rd., 1883.
. . . I could extract nothing from the postmaster
at Los Angeles yesterday, although I was certain there
was something from you. I am having a good time,
although I have got a burnt nose, and sore lips, a black
and blue shoulder from the kicks of the shotgun trying
to shoot that deer, sore thighs from trying to hang on
to a ribby horse when he wanted to throw me off, a
tummy-ache from too much peaches, and other things
from too much medicine for the previous trouble.
. . . I carry Pond's Extract for my lips as well as
the rest of my person. Also that horseback ride was
the cause of my drinking water, beer, lemonade, ginger
ale, two bottles of soda water, one with brandy in it,
sarsaparilla, beer and finally champagne and Apol-
linaris, four quarts, then two pints of iced tea, a big
glass of water, and ice-cream, finishing the rest of the
day with water at intervals, and dreaming at
night. . . .

And on another day:

At half-past five the stage came along and we got
into the uncomfortable vehicle, and into uncomfortable
positions, at once. There was a fat Irish woman with
a birdcage on one side, an escaped murderer on the
other, and a man opposite with his mouth full of to-
bacco juice that he would squirt in quarts past our
faces out of the window! It soon got so cool that we
had to shut the awning, whereupon the stench was such

303

THE REMINISCENCES OF

that in fifteen minutes we were all asphyxiated and re-
mained so, rolling around like logs, all the night long.
At daybreak we recovered from the swoon. The fat
woman with the bird had disappeared in the night, and
in her place sat another assassin with more tobacco
juice. We had twenty minutes for breakfast and a
kind of wash, and then off till dinner-time, when we
reached a dirty Jew place. By then it had got very
warm. After dinner we went off again, until, about
an hour out, the stage broke down. Then the eleven
passengers all piled out, and immediately went to work
on the stage. We were more than five miles from any
house, so it was do or die, fix the old stage or miss the
train. After much profanity and heat it was mended
and off we jounced again. In another hour it broke
once more. Whereupon we repeated the piling out,
the profanity, and at last made a final definite advance
over a series of bumps, until at one o'clock at night we
arrived at the railroad, after having traveled one of
the gayest old corduroy roads ever experienced by
mortal man. This same stage and driver had been
robbed on this same road, making the same trip just
one month before. . . .

And last of all:

Tacoma, September 14, 1883.

• . . Before I close, I must not forget one little

incident that happened way back in my journey. The

night we crossed the plains of Kansas we went through

the gilt-edged edition of Hell. But I had one recom-

304

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

pense. The sleeping-car conductor, after hard spell-
ing, got my name. "Why, you 're the man who made
that great statue in New York? Well I declare! Al-
low me to congratulate you!"

Then a squeeze with his big fist. Such is
fame. . . .

305

BY-ROADS

1882-1889

The Sleight of Hand — The Sunday Concerts — Cornish, New Hamp-
shire— The First Summer — The Improvement of Home — Dewing,
Brush and Others— The "Single Tax"— A Trip to Europe.

THE Sunday afternoon concerts I have already men-
tioned in connection with Joseph Wells were first given
in Saint-Gaudens' Thirty-sixth Street studio during
the fall of 1882. Those who supported the Standard Quar-
tette at the outset, besides Wells and Lathrop of whom my
father speaks below, were Joseph Evans, Robert Blum, Stan-
ford White, Charles F. McKim, Thomas W. Dewing, George
Fletcher Babb, Charles O. Brewster, Richard Watson Gil-
der, Louis Saint-Gaudens, and others. Later, changes came
about and a keg of beer and pipes of tobacco were intro-
duced. The Philharmonic Quartet took up the perform-
ances, playing such favorites as Mozart's Quartet D. Minor,
Schubert's D. Minor Variations and Beethoven's Quartet
Op. No. 1. F. Major. It was then that these Sunday after-
noons reached their greatest success and that invitations to
come with a member were prized to such an extent that once,
indeed, even Ellen Terry dared to break the taboo and to re-
main until the smoke drove her away.

As time went by, however, the literary men and artists who
gathered in the early days gave way to a group of million-
aires. Besides, since the studio had to be cleared for the con-
cert, my father found that he spent his six days ordering his
workshop with a view to the seventh. So the weekly meetings
there were ultimately relinquished, though until my father's

306

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

departure for Europe in 1897 he continued to have performed
each year a memorial concert on the first of March, the date
of Wells' birthday, which was also his own.

While on this subject of music, before turning to my father's
text, let me make mention of the other type of this art that
he especially loved, the opera, to which he went whenever oc-
casion offered. Faust, Carmen, Cavalleria Rusticana, Pag-
liacci, Don Giovanni, French and Italian scores, held his ears.
Wagner and Wagner's school he failed to understand. He de-
manded melody in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

The reminiscences say:

A by-road significant in my New York life I en-
tered at this time in company with Mr. Joseph M.
Wells, of whom and of whose passion for music I have
spoken. He, Francis Lathrop, another lover of music,
and I were in the habit of going to a little beer saloon
opposite Washington Place on Broadway, a very nar-
row and very long and sad spot, where the habitues, no
matter how noisily and gaily they entered, would be
oppressed by the gloom and take their refreshment in
comparative silence. What enticed us was that, be-
sides the beer, there was played, as a rule, desultory
music on the violin by a bald-headed man who handled
his instrument with feeling, on the clarinet by his son
who blew without any, and on the piano by a third col-
orless banging performer; with the especial peculiarity
that every now and then the selections became of a
character distinctly above what could be appreciated
in such a place.

Besides the music, too, there was occasionally some
form of entertainment, and one evening we were put

307

THE REMINISCENCES OF

into a state of great expectation by the announcement
that Professor "So and So" would give a "Sleight-of-
Hand" performance at nine o'clock. At the hour ap-
pointed, from behind a screen placed anglewise in the
corner, appeared the prestidigitator. He first carried
out a light table, placed it on a little platform with
great affectation of daintiness of gesture, passed be-
hind the screen three or four times, and returned at last
with a birdcage containing a canary, as far as I could
make out, and some other bit of paraphernalia. Then,
stepping forward with a wand in his hand and with
security of his power shining in his face, he described
how at the word "Three," something would happen,
and the canary would fly away or — I forget what.
With great precision of enunciation he then raised his
hand and said, "Ein, — Zwei, — Drei — "

Nothing occurred, absolutely nothing. There was a
strange moment of hesitation. Then he grasped the
cage, disappeared behind the screen, remained for a
few moments, appeared again, replaced it all with the
the same dainty, light touch shown the first time.

"Ein— Zwei— Drei!"

Again there was no result whatever. The cage, bird,
table, and all remained immovable to his charm.
Whereupon with one headlong rush he seized the cage
and table, and ended his performance by vanishing him-
self behind the screen.

But the real value of the place lay in the music of
which I first spoke. For, as the result of it, we en-
gaged the bald-headed violinist to come and perform in

308

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

my studio on Sunday. At the outset things did not
work well. But through Wells' enthusiasm we soon
employed the Standard Quartet composed of Bergner,
Schwartz, Roebelin, and Brant, and organized a Club
or Society which would defray the twenty-five dollars
expense each Sunday. Thus we began the Smoking
Concerts which, held in my studio twenty-four years
ago, were kept up subsequently in Mr. Lathrop's
studio and now continue in Dr. Knight's. They were
delightful affairs. We had admirable programs, un-
der free and easy conditions, and excellent effects,
the result of the sounding-board qualities of the stu-
dio.

Now let me turn to other pleasures, and chief among
them to my coming in 1885 to Cornish, New Hamp-
shire, or Windsor, Vermont, as it is often called, since
that is the town in which we obtain our mail. For this
coming made the beginning of a new side of my exist-
ence. I had been a boy of the streets and sidewalks
all my life. So, hitherto, although no one could have
enjoyed the fields and woods more heartily than I
when I was in them for a few days, I soon tired, and
longed for my four walls and work. But during this
first summer in the country, I was thirty-seven at the
time, it dawned upon me seriously how much there was
outside of my little world.

We hit upon Cornish because, while casting about
for a summer residence, Mr. C. C. Beaman told me that
if I would go up there with him, he had an old house
which he would sell me for what he paid for it, five hun-

311

THE REMINISCENCES OF

dred dollars. However, all this side of life was so sec-
ondary to my work at that time that I refused to as-
sume any responsibility of the kind, insisting that I
was not wealthy enough to spend that amount. Es-
pecially was this feeling active when I first caught sight
of the building on a dark, rainy day in April, for then
it appeared so forbidding and relentless that one might
have imagined a skeleton half -hanging out of the win-
dow, shrieking and dangling in the gale, with the sound
of clanking bones. I was for fleeing at once and re-
turning to my beloved sidewalks of New York. But,
as Mrs. Saint-Gaudens saw the future of sunny days
that would follow, she detained me until Mr. Beaman
agreed to rent the house to me at a low price for as
long as I wished.

To persuade me to come, Mr. Beaman had said that
there were "plenty of Lincoln-shaped men up there."
He was right. So during the summer of my arrival,
and in the one-hundred-year-old barn of the house, I
made my sketch for the standing Lincoln, and for a
seated Lincoln which was my original idea, as well as
another sketch, the study for the mural monument to
Dr. Bellows in All Souls' Church, New York, and com-
pleted my relief of the children of Mr. Jacob H. Schiff.
I had several assistants with me, Mr. Frederick Mac-
Monnies and Mr. Philip Martiny, besides my brother
Mr. Louis Saint-Gaudens, and we worked on until
November.

I have just spoken of my "Schiff" commission.
Thereby hangs a tale of what almost became a tragedy.

312

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

There is a large Scotch deer-hound in the composition
of the medallion. I bought one in New York for a
model and brought him to Windsor to leave him there
while I went down to New York. At the foot of the
hill on which my house stands, Mr. Chester Pike had a
horse-breediiig farm, and every day at dusk his head
man, Mr. Barker, was in the habit of driving a great
stallion up our hill for exercise, seated in one of those
wagons where the legs of the driver stretch out on
each side of the horse's rump. As he drove by the
house one evening, Mr. Staghound, who was but a pup,
rushed out at the horse and, in one moment, horse, rider
and buggy were mixed up in indeterminable confu-
sion, the wagon a wreck, the horse rearing and plung-
ing, Barker on the ground, and the dog dancing around
in great joy and glee, leaping in the air in excitement
and delight, barking, "Hurrah! Hurrah! This is life!
What joy it is to come to the country!"

Mrs. Saint- Gaudens and my brother rushed out and
shouted to Barker to drop the reins he was grasping so
tightly. But this he would not do until at last some
blow made him release them. Then as he was being
carried in, covered with blood and dirt, in reply to the
inquiry as to why he held to the animal, he said, "I
was afraid if I let the horse go, he might kill somebody
on the road." Ever since I have touched my hat to
Barker, a man of the right stuff. He was a veteran of
the Civil War.

As for the stallion, he tore down the road for two
miles with the shafts burying themselves in his sides,

313

THE REMINISCENCES OF

until he came to the bridge which crosses the river.
There he halted, and was walking peacefully across
when some one caught him. The bridge bears a sign
which reads: "Walk your horses or pay two dollars
fine."

In these early days, too, I recall another impression of
a very different nature, made deeply upon me by the
pathetic sight of the abandoned farms, of which there
were so many in this part of the world. I can re-
member, too, a visit to Cornish Flat in order to see
about a large rock which Mr. Beaman and I, upon our
advice being asked, had recommended for use as a sol-
diers' monument in that village. This rock lay on the
top of a steep hill. So, with a group of gay men,
we climbed into a wagon one beautiful day and set
out to look at the stone. We formed a conglomerate
crew, garrulous and joyful during the five or six mile
drive to this place. We appeared all the more noisy
in contrast to the taciturn, swarthy driver who guided
the team. At the foot of the hill, we arrived at the
entrance to what we noticed was a deserted farm. We
climbed by it over gateways and fences and tramped
across a field filled with flowers. Thence we struck up
the hill to the summit, . where, in a kind of a hollow
in the ground, we found the great boulder.

There we sat and chatted and discussed how many
men's lives had been sacrificed from this part of the
country to the event which this stone was to commemo-
rate. One guessed a certain number, one another. At
the end, after we had exhausted all our conjectures, our

314

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

silent driver, who was perched on the top of the rock,
said,

"There were twenty-eight men died from this here
town."

"What do yea know about it?" we asked.

"I was one of the volunteers," he said.

We turned down the hill and entered the empty
house. The doors were all open, everything gone, a
picture of desolation in strange contrast with the glory
of the fields and sun and skies of the day. Over the
fireplace in what evidently had been the sitting-room,
some one had scratched with a piece of charcoal, "Good-
by, old home." We came out and went away.

So much for the first summer. But as the experi-
ment had proved so successful, I had done such a lot
of work, and I was so enchanted with the life and
scenery, I told Mr. Beaman that, if his offer was still
open, I would purchase the place under the conditions
he originally stated. He replied that he preferred not,
as it had developed in a way far beyond his expecta-
tions, and as he thought it his duty to reserve it for
his children. Instead he proposed that I rent it for
as long as I wished on the conditions first named,
which were most liberal. But the house and the life
attracted me until I soon found that I expended on
this place, which was not mine, every dollar I earned,
and many I had not yet earned, whereas all of my
friends who had followed had bought their homes and
surrounding land. So I explained to Mr. Beaman
that I could not continue in this way, and that he must

315

THE REMINISCENCES OF

sell to me, or I should look elsewhere for green fields
and pastures new. The result was that, for a certain
amount and a bronze portrait of Mr. Beaman, the
property came to me.

As I have said, despite its reputation, my dwelling
first looked more as if it had been abandoned for the
murders and other crimes therein committed than as a
home wherein to live, move, and have one's being. For
it stood out bleak, gaunt, austere, and forbidding, with-
out a trace of charm. And the longer I stayed in it,
the more its Puritanical austerity irritated me, until at
last I begged my friend Mr. George Fletcher Babb,
the architect: "For mercy's sake, make this house
smile, or I shall clear out and go elsewhere!"

This he did beautifully, to my great delight. In-
side he held to the ornament of one or two modest man-
tels, which seemed pathetic in their subdued and
gentle attempt at beauty in the grim surroundings,
while outside, as our idea was to lower and spread the
building, holding it down to the ground, so to speak,
I devised the wide terrace that I know was a serious
help for, before its construction, you stepped straight
from the barren field into the house. As it is now, my
friend, Mr. Edward Simmons, of multitudinous and
witty speeches, declares that it looks like an austere,
upright New England farmer with a new set of false
teeth, while a friend of his has said: "No, it strikes me
as being more like some austere and recalcitrant New
England old maid struggling in the arms of a Greek
faun."

316

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Later, to keep up this standard in the case of the old
barn, where I had made the sketch for the Lincoln, and
which had become so dilapidated that it threatened
some day to engulf my masterpieces and me in ruin, I
returned to Mr. Babb once more and he kindly de-
signed it over. Again he made me happy in the fashion
in which he held to the lines of the original barn with
the development of the pergola, which had grown from
supports of rustic pine poles, to more pretentious col-
umns of Portland cement.

In the serious light that things take as I grow older,
the pell-mell character of incidents of even ten or fif-
teen years ago strikes me as strange and bewildering.
It was not long after our coming up here that Mr.
George de Forest Brush, the painter, decided to pass
the summer near us. He lived with Mrs. Brush in an
Indian tepee he built on the edge of our woods, near a
ravine, about five hundred yards from the house; for
he had camped with the Indians for years and knew
their habits.

Also, the spring following my arrival, my friend,
Mr. T. W. Dewing, the painter, was casting about for
a place to pass the summer, when I told him of a cot-
tage that could be rented from Mr. Beaman about
twenty minutes' walk from my habitation. Mr. Dew-
ing came. He saw. He remained. And from that
event the colony developed, it being far more from
Mr. Dewing's statements of the surrounding beauty
than from mine that others joined us. The year after
Mr. Dewing's appearance, his intimate, Mr. Henry

317

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Oliver Walker, bought land; and the year after that
Mr. Walker's friend, Mr. Charles A. Piatt, joined
him. Mr. Piatt brought Mr. Stephen Parrish, and so
on, until now there are many families. The circle has
extended beyond the range even of my acquaintance,
to say nothing of friendship. The country still re-
tains its beauty, though its secluded charm is being
swept away before the rushing automobile, the uni-
formed flunky, the butler, and the accompanying dress-
coat.

But to return to this early time, one cause of ever-
recurring excitement to us was Henry George and his
single tax theories which had come so much to the
front; and in the group of artists and litterateurs to
whom I belonged, discussions were violent pro and con.
Mr. Brush stood as a strong Henry George man. Mr.
Dewing became violent in the other direction. Mr.
Brush was so fond of Mr. George he had a large elec-
tioneering portrait of him stuck up in his tent. Mr.
Dewing was so taken by the romantic quality of the
tent that he could not refrain from visiting Mr. Brush
and enjoying its strange mixture of coziness, indul-
gence, and wild charm, that love of the reversion back to
primitive things that we all seem to have. But the
devil of it, the thorn to the rose, so to speak, was that
Dewing could not enjoy the tepee without being forced
at the same time to face the infernal portrait of Henry
George, which poisoned what would otherwise have
been a halcyon summer.

The following year Brush did not come to Cornish,

318

ORIGINAL BARN USED AS FIRST STUDIO

HOUSE IN CORNISH. THE FIRST SUMMER

l.ouis Saint Onudeiia, Kredorirk MacMonnles. Homer Saint Gaudens,
Mrs. Saint Gaudens, Augustus Saint Gaudens

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

but the tepee still remained, as he had left it, for the
enjoyment of my son Homer. So it was arranged one
day by a group of seven or eight of us that we should
have a picnic at the tepee, cook our own meal in the
tent and eat, drink, and be merry to our hearts' con-
tent. It turned out to be dismal, gray weather, but,
nevertheless, we went down and lit the fire, whereupon
I believe Dewing's deep design showed itself. The
unhappiness of the previous summer had so embittered
his mind that the destruction of the object that caused
it was the only thing that could counterbalance the ex-
perience. As he could not in ordinary cold blood come
up and annihilate this place, he reasoned, unconsciously,
"If I can get all these chaps, as well as myself, full of
fire-water, nature will do the rest."

He was right, for after having eaten all that was
proper and drunk much more than was necessary, we
danced in glee around the tent in which blazed the
bivouac fire. Presently one demon threw some object
through the open flap on the fire, which increased the
conflagration inside. Then another fiend added a part
of the tent, and then the portrait of Henry George, and
the tepee went the way of all things. Dewing was satis-
fied, and we were all happy.

But the end was still to come. The following year
Mr. Babb, while visiting us, one day picked up among
the leaves a bit of the canvas which had escaped the
fire. He put it in his pocket in what we thought a
rather mysterious way, though we said nothing, as his
ways are dark nine- tenths of the time. That night

321

THE REMINISCENCES OF

he asked for a needle and thread, and for the next two
or three afternoons shut himself in his room, locking
the door so that we could make out nothing as to the
goings on behind it. The single-tax discussions mean-
while raged violently every time we met with Dewing.
Finally Babb appeared at lunch with several little
rosettes in his hand, most carefully fashioned about an
inch in diameter, with a solitary tack hanging by a
string from their centers.

"Shall we go see Dewing this afternoon?" he asked.

"Of course," we said, and the single-tax badges
were put on our lapels and we pranced over to Dew-
ing's, to his great consternation.

He attributed this deep-laid scheme to me, but I have
not the extraordinary ingenuity of my architect friend,
nor the patience to execute for three days such an elab-
orate piece of mechanism for a joke.

Elsewhere I have spoken of how Saint-Gaudens' point of
view regarding early days was occasionally glossed by time.
Here, however, the situation is quite different. Both in detail
and sentiment, his account of Cornish in the "eighties" re-
mains astonishingly accurate. And as I was able to show
where his memory was somewhat astray in earlier instances, at
this point I can confirm its accuracy with one of his char-
acteristic letters written at the time to his friend Low:

Windsor, Vermont, Sept. 16, /85.
Dear Low:

We are very cozy and happy here. I expect to re-
main until November first, and I am very contented to

322

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

do so. Wells will give you an incoherent idea of how
I am situated, and I wish others of you fellers could be
up here, not that I 'm lonely but that I think it would
be so bully for you. I 'm feeling as if I ought to have
a little pot belly, that I shall become interested in
horses and potatoes, and shall ratisse rnon petit navet
regulairement tout les mois content de moimeme et de
tout le nxonde, and have aspirations, if I was in France,
to be conseiller municipal ou maire. This is really a
very beautiful country and I certainly do not tire of it.
The only difficulty is that I don't enjoy it enough. I
stick to the studio too much. However, 'nuff said on
that score.

Dewing is doing very little up here. It 's amusing
to see him on the spot, though, for he is blood of the
blood and bone of the bone of the country. He falls
right into everything like a duck into water. Very
much as I fancy I would be in the South of France or
Ireland. . . . He has a charming little place, much
more cozy than mine, and he has bought it by making a
portrait of Mrs. Beaman in payment. . . .

In my father's text he writes of the brief trip which he
took to Paris in 1889. This was the only occasion on which
he left this country between the day he landed here in 1880
and his departure for his long stay in Europe in 1897.
Throughout all that time, however, he yearly talked of Paris,
of his desire to be there, of his deeply felt need of seeing what
was being done abroad and thereby widening his artistic hori-
zon. So nothing shows in a more striking manner the de-
mands of his work and his conscientious efforts to meet them

323

THE REMINISCENCES OF

than this fact, that in the period of seventeen years he could
only snatch these few weeks for his vacation. He says:

So much for the country, but since I have wandered
from my New York pavements, let me speak of another
experience that I had away from them before I return
to their limits; an experience I met with during my
1889 short visit to Paris.

I was there but two weeks and was desirous of re-
turning in what measure I could to my student life
and environment, and, for that reason, occupied a lit-
tle box of a room that MacMonnies offered to me,
fronting on a charming court where he had his studio.
The first day, on awakening, I turned to the tiny win-
dow overlooking the little garden in the cool gray of
the morning. Presently, from one of the studio doors
which opened on the court, an old chap appeared in
his dressing-gown, peacefully smoking a pipe. He
trudged along in among the paths over to one particu-
lar flower-bed which was evidently his little property,
and with great care watered the flowers with a diminu-
tive watering-pot. Soon another codger appeared
from another door, in trousers and slippers. He also
fussed and shuffled quietly in his little plot. And then
a third came from the other end of the garden, with a
skull-cap on. This one, with the greatest caution,
mounted a little step-ladder, tying here and cutting
away there, among his plants, while the others raked
away in the earth below among the flowers, and mur-
mured and chatted about this little plant, that little
flower, this bit of earth and so on, with apparently no

324

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

other thought than that of the Greek in "Candide" to
"Cultivate your garden," the blue smoke from their
pipes of peace rising philosophically among the green-
ery in harmony with it all. These were the Satanic
comrades of my youth at the Beaux Arts, the Devils
who made me bawl the Marseillaise for months, and it
was all so far away from the Hell's Kitchen of Thirty-
fourth Street and Broadway that it gave me much to
reflect on.

To my father's mention of his trip, let me add this illumi-
nating letter to Mrs. Van Rensselaer, which he wrote to her
soon after his return. The reader cannot help but notice
how strikingly similar is the picture which my father drew of
the simple withdrawn neighborliness of a certain type of
Frenchman to the description in the reminiscences, written
about twenty years later. The resemblance shows well the
consistent manner in which he enjoyed philosophizing upon
this point of view. For he had so vivid an understanding of
his own intense nervous energy that he enjoyed satirizing both
attitudes by comparing them with one another. He writes:

148 West Thirty-sixth Street,

Sept. 21, 1889.
Dear Mrs. Van Rensselaer:

. . . If I remember well, you are about leaving
Paris, and I 'm curious to know your impression. The
impressions of my trip abroad were the Homeric,
Greek character that there was in the way the steamer
first rose on the waves in the bright sun on leaving
Sandy Hook; my enjoyment of the ocean for the first
time; the glorious Cornwall Coast with the sun rising
* 325

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

on it; my discoveries of the charm of English scenery
between Southampton and London; the impression of
strength in London; the great City of Paris, its ex-
traordinary monumental largeness ; the Frenchman with
his little garden; the man of fifty who contents him-
self with shuffling in his slippers into his garden in the
morning, cutting off the dead leaves of the geranium
and showing to another bald-headed- philosophic artist
the gentil petit plant; the welcome of my friends; the
wonderful fete success of the exposition. About the
art, my impressions are too complex and result in so
much vanity that I '11 modestly refrain. . . .

326

XII
THE SHAW

1881-1897

Richardson's Respect for Saint-Gaudens — Richardson's Personality —
The Shaw Commission — Negro Models — Bohutinsky and the
Negro — Studio Rages — Technical Difficulties — Concentrated Work
— A Letter from Bion — A Letter to Gilder.

NOW from an attempt to picture my father's habits of
life during the long New York period, I turn to the
work which he produced at the time. It is strange
that the most important of all the commissions, the one to which
he clung until virtually the end of his stay in the city, came
to him almost at the outset. Also it would seem strange that
a man of the reputation of the architect, H. H. Richardson,
should suggest giving such a serious task as the Shaw to so
young a sculptor as Saint-Gaudens, were it not for the repu-
tation my father had already made with the Farragut as well
as for another reason well explained by the architect, Mr.
Daniel H. Burnham, who has written me:

"When H. H. Richardson, the architect, was designing the
Alleghany County Court House he had made a large number
of sketches of the great tower. Being uncertain which of
them would be best to adopt, he wired your father to come
to Brookline, Massachusetts, to give his opinion. This your
father did, and, as I remember, his decision was adopted by
the architect. Mr. Richardson related the incident to me, say-
ing that he had more confidence in your father's opinion re-
garding mass and outline than that of any other man. Your
father seemed to be able to pick out the best instinctively."

My father says of his meeting with Mr. Richardson and
of the Shaw:

327

THE REMINISCENCES OF

To go back to my work, after a short stay at the
Sherwood, 1 took the studio at 148 West Thirty-sixth
Street which I have already mentioned. This build-
ing I originally hired for five years, though I was des-
tined to remain there for fifteen. It was a low, paint-
er's supply-shed, which I virtually filled out and re-
built. Strangely enough, I had scarcely moved into
it when, during a visit to Boston, I renewed my ac-
quaintance with the man who was largely instrumental
in my obtaining the one piece of work which remained
in that studio through almost my whole stay. The
man was the architect, Mr. H. H. Richardson, the
work the Shaw relief.

Richardson was an extraordinary man, and it would
require a Rabelais to do justice to his unusual power
and character. He had an enormous girth, and a halt
in his speech, which made the Words that followed come
out like a series of explosions. The walls of his dining-
room he had painted blood-red. It had a low ceiling
and a magnificent oval, black-oak table. To dine with
him, with his round-faced, expectant children sitting
about the table, and charming Mrs. Richardson oppo-
site, furnished the guest with a picture and an honor
not to be forgotten. Richardson wore a brilliant yel-
low waistcoat, and his appetite was in full harmony
with his proportions. I have been told that, although
afflicted with a trouble for which he was absolutely pro-
hibited stimulants, he once drank a quart of black
coffee when on his way to Pittsburgh, in order to be
in good condition when he met the committee to ar-

328

VARIOUS SKETCHES I-'OR THE SHAW MEMORIAL

FACSIMILE OK A MAM SCRIPT SENTIMENT THAT AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS
SET AS HIS STANDARD

Thin wrap uf In.s writing was liiund turning utlu-r uaucr* ii|h>ii his .h«k nut long unYr liis death

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

range for the building of that masterpiece, the jail and
court house. At any rate, whenever I visited Brook-
line, where he lived, he would say before dinner:

"S-S-Saint-Gaudens, ordinarily I lead a life of a-ab-
stinence, but to-night I am going to break my rule to
celebrate your visit, you come so rarely."

He would thereupon order a magnum of champagne,
which, as none of the family drank it, had to be finished
by him and me. Unfortunately, I am very moderate
in such matters, and the result was the consumption of
virtually the whole magnum by my good friend. This
had to be accompanied by cheese, which was also pro-
scribed by the doctor, and of this he ate enormous quan-
tities. The proceeding doubtless occurred every night,
as he always arranged to bring home a guest.

Then, after a little, I began to see the architect from
time to time in my studio. For as he passed to and
fro in his Pittsburgh work he invariably stopped over
night in New York to talk with La Farge. He
was frequently accompanied by Phillips Brooks or Mr.
Edward Hooper, or both. So in this way I saw
Brooks on some eight or ten occasions, and subsequently
now and then during my visits to Boston, though at
that time never dreaming of the monument to him I
was to model so long after. I was told the other day
that he related with much enjoyment a story of a visit
he made to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where he
found me absorbed before the cast of a Greek seat in the
theater at Athens. He passed me by without my notic-
ing him, and after having been around the Museum he

331

THE REMINISCENCES OF

came back and found me in the same place and still as
oblivious to his passage as before. I was studying
material for the chair that is back of the figure of Lin-
coln.

Mr. Richardson was also a great friend of Messrs.
Atkinson, Lee and Higginson. Consequently it was at
his suggestion, if my memory serves me aright, that they
determined to see whether it was not possible to have
me execute the monument to Colonel Robert Gould
Shaw, which had been proposed but abandoned. They
had about fifteen thousand dollars, and I was engaged
to complete it for that sum, since I, like most sculptors
at the beginning of their careers, felt that by hook or
crook I must do an equestrian statue, and that here I
had found my opportunity. Therefore I proceeded
with this theory until the Shaw family objected on the
ground that, although Shaw was of a noble type, as
noble as any, still he had not been a great commander,
and only men of the highest rank should be so hon-
ored. In fact, it seemed pretentious. Accordingly,
in casting about for some manner of reconciling my de-
sire with their ideas, I fell upon a plan of associating
him directly with his troops in a bas-relief, and thereby
reducing his importance. I made a sketch showing this
scheme, which was consumed in the fire, and the monu-
ment as it now stands is virtually what I indicated. I
began work on it at once, and soon it took up the en-
tire width of the studio, as it stood about two-thirds of
the way back from the street, with behind it a plat-
form about eight feet high, on which I placed what-

332

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ever statue I had to do that would ultimately be on a
pedestal.

In justice to myself I must say here that from the
low-relief I proposed making when I undertook the
Shaw commission, a relief that reasonably could be fin-
ished for the limited sum at the command of the com-
mittee, I, through my extreme interest in it and its
opportunity, increased the conception until the rider
grew almost to a statue in the round and the negroes
assumed far more importance than I had originally in-
tended. Hence the monument, developing in this way
infinitely beyond what could be paid for, became a labor
of love, and lessened my hesitation in setting it aside
at times to make way for more lucrative commissions,
commissions that would reimburse me for the pleasure
and time I was devoting to this.

The models I used for my task, a horse and count-
less negroes, all furnished me with the greatest amuse-
ment. The horse was a gray animal which I bought
especially for this relief. I used to keep him in an ad-
joining stable and, at the end of the day, ride him in
the park for exercise, thereby accomplishing a double
purpose. He died ultimately of pneumonia contracted
from a cast I made of him, and I finished my work with
a beautiful sorrel I hired at the New York Riding
Club.

The darkeys were more exciting in the entertain-
ment they furnished. In the beginning, when I met a
colored man of whom I thought well, I would approach
him politely, with evident signs of embarrassment, and,

333

THE REMINISCENCES OF

after hemming and hawing, I would explain that I was
a picture-maker who wanted to take his picture and
that if he would come along with me I would do it for
nothing. Any one who knows the negro of that class
can readily understand what followed. They would
look at me suspiciously. Some would accompany me
part of the way and suddenly go off. Others would
refuse altogether. A few would follow me as far as
the door and then leave. One I remember saying as
we reached my threshold: "You don't kotch me in dat
place !" while those that I did succeed in trapping,
trembled and perspired in utter terror as I stood them
up with guns over their shoulders and caps on their
heads. At last an intelligent chap told me that no
doubt they feared I was a physician trying to lure them
to their death and to cut them up for anatomical pur-
poses, and that their terror was augmented by seeing
plaster heads, painted a brown color, lying about. So,
following his advice after that when I desired a man, I
obtained better results by simply saying: "Do you
want a job?" And upon his affirmative reply, by add-
ing: "Well, come along with me. I will give you one."
But I had little real success until I found a colored man
to whom I promised twenty-five cents for every negro
he would bring me that I could use. The following
day the place was packed with them, and I had not only
a great choice, but endless trouble in getting rid of
them and stopping their besieging the studio.

There were some amusing liars among them. Sev-
eral, born since the war, who did not know how to hold

334

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

a gun, described to me in detail the battle of Fort
Wagner and their part in it. They ranged in char-
acter from a gentle Bahama Islander to a drummer-boy
who, while posing for the figure in the foreground, told
me how he had just been released from prison, where
he had gone for cutting his brother with a razor. On
the whole, however, they are very likable, with their
soft voices and imaginative, though simple, minds. I
modeled about forty heads from them, of which I se-
lected the sixteen that are visible on the relief. Some
heads that were very good I rejected, because for one
reason or another they did not look well in the place.

My struggles with these models always brings inti-
mately to my mind a studio man I employed at the
time, a Pole, Bohutinsky by name. He was of flabby
construction, but came to me with a letter of recom-
mendation from Judge Tourgee, author of "A Fool's
Errand." He did the work fairly well, though troub-
ling me with his extraordinary diffidence. He must
have been most abominably treated while abroad, for
he never spoke to me without showing signs of terror,
as if the next moment might see his head cut off for
his presumption.

At that time the Shaw monument extended from
wall to wall across the center of the studio, so the only
means of communication with the scaffolding in the
rear of the building was by bending under the relief
and climbing up a step-ladder. One miserable day I
was working on the platform there at Mr. Henry
Adams' Rock Creek Cemetery figure, with Mr. T. W.

335

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Dewing seated quietly smoking beside the posing model
and chatting with me, when there developed the crisis
of all Bohutinsky's fears. Previously I had been so
much bothered by the interruptions of the door-bell that
I had warned him that under no condition was any-
body to be let in. Therefore, when, after one of the
rings, I heard a prolonged whispering at the other end
of the studio, and presently saw Bohutinsky duck down
under the "Shaw" and appear below, I was ready for
him.

"Did n't I explain to you that I was to see nobody?"
I shouted. "I will be left in peace! You go back and
tell that man I am not in, or anything you please, but
leave me alone!"

He ducked, disappeared, and after time enough for
him to go to the street door, one hundred feet away,
the muttering was repeated.

Then again he bobbed up and said: "Mr. S-S-Saint-
Gaudens, this p-person says he absolutely m-must see
you. That it is necessary and that he cannot leave
without doing so."

I shouted: "You tell that man to get out of here!
I will see no one! Go away from me! Don't return.
Can I have no peace in this blasted place?"

Once more, after the scarcely breathed conversation,
came the third appearance of Bohutinsky.

"Mr. S-S-Saint-Gaudens, he says — "

"Is he still there?" I roared.

"Y-Y-Yes, sir."

Bohutinsky was trembling like a leaf and ready to

336

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

fall, while I, my wrath growing as I swore, hurled pro-
fanity through the three-foot space over the top of the
Shaw at the intruder by the entrance.

"I '11 kick him out !" I cried, looking around for
something to annihilate him with. Dewing and the
model caught hold of me, begging me to stop and do
nothing rash. But I tore down, bobbed under the
Shaw monument, and rushed over to the corridor.

There I found a magnificent big black negro, who,
notwithstanding my blasphemy, was grinning from ear
to ear.

"What do you want?" I bellowed.

"Mr. Saint-Gaudens," he said in his soft negro ac-
cent, "you told me, sah, when I came here, if any-
body wanted to put me out, to just stick and say, sah,
that you wanted to see me, no matter what happened,
sah."

Let me add one other word to my father's account of his
adventures with his models. I take it from a letter he sent
at the time to his brother-in-law, Mr. Thomas J. Homer. It
shows with even more emphasis how combinedly earnest and
humorous was this search for men to pose.

148 West Thirty-sixth Street,
New York City, Jan. 1, /93.
Dear Tom:

At Young's Cafe, in your great City of Boston,
there are two gorgeous darkeys, so gorgeous that I
wish to put them in the Shaw monument. . . .
When they are here I shall select the one that best

337

THE REMINISCENCES OF

suits my purpose, send the other right back, and the
one that I keep will have from two weeks to a month's
work with me at three dollars a day. Their names are
John Lee and Riley Lee. In order that I may have
them, permission must be obtained from E. McDuffie,
the darkey headwaiter at that establishment, a most in-
telligent man, who does not imagine that I wish them
in order to cut their livers out as the average darkey
suspects. I 've already spoken to him. He knows it
all, and if you will step in there and get him to ship
me these two beauties at once you will be eternally
blessed. Don't let him ship me any others. I 've lots
of others here, lots, but none such busters. . . .

. . . It is possible that when I have them here in
the cold light of my studio, and without the enthusiasm
that the atmosphere of F Athene modeme always throws
me in, I may find that it was all in my eye, that they
are no better than hundreds of Seventh Avenue dark-
eys, and I may send 'em both back. That should be
understood. . . .

Also the Bohutinsky story, as my father gives it, suggests a
most emphatic memory of the period, that of my father's stu-
dio rages, bred by the nervousness which was engendered in
turn by his concentration upon his work. Ninety-nine per
cent, of these explosions were due to variations of the studio
temperature, for he was a cold-blooded man. I believe he could
detect a change of two degrees from his favorite amount of
heat, when woe betide the darkey who tended stoves.

Noise, next after cold, was the prime irritant, especially
noise of an unusual nature. Mr. Adolph Weinman, the sculp-
tor who also was at one time my father's pupil, has written

338

TWO EARLY SKETCHES FOR THE MONUMENT TO ROBERT GOULD SHAW

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

me of a case in this last category. It is most characteristic
of my father both in the manner in which his fury was aroused
and in the humor of his remedy. Mr. Weinman writes:

"Here is an anecdote told me by a friend, Herman Parker,
who worked for your father in the Thirty-sixth Street studio.
This young man was then courting a girl, and, as he wished
to appear at his best when he met her crossing on the ferry
each night, he took great care to brush up and put a gor-
geous polish on his shoes before leaving the studio. The
lengthy process of cleaning seemed to get on your father's
nerves. So one evening, when Herman dropped the shoe-
brush accidentally, making a great racket, your father, at the
time working on the elevated platform and standing on a lot
of piled up boxes, suddenly took box after box and threw or
kicked them to the floor below, shouting and swearing. Then
all was quiet. Herman, from the little office in front, ran back
with shaky knees, expecting to find the whole Shaw monument
on the floor in pieces. When he regained his speech and asked
what had happened, your father calmly replied, 'That was the
echo of the brush.' "

Yet though upset by such petty annoyances, my father
had, besides this half-jocose fashion of recovering himself, a
wholly generous and sweeping manner of remedying things at
the end of these storms ; so that the results, for the most part,
commanded respect rather than discontent. As a final illus-
tration, especially of the second quality, I remember how,
during the early days in Cornish, after the work had been
stopped for the thirty-fifth time while some one looked for
a lost hammer, my father in his excitement ordered a gross
of them. Then at last the implements were on hand when
wanted. Indeed the one hundred and forty-four were even
said to have dulled the lawnmowers.

I should dwell now upon the more serious aspects of the
Shaw as it emerged from one of my father's favorite low-re-
liefs to that extremely "high" development, which he felt sure

341

THE REMINISCENCES OF

would be more effective in the open air. During the process
he struggled with difficulty after difficulty, both technical and
artistic. In one direction, for example, the constant wetting of
the clay and the covering of the Shaw with damp rags became
such a nuisance that he began to look about for a substitute.
French plastoline in the quantities he needed was quite out
of the question because of its expense. So he talked the mat-
ter over with Mr. Philip Martiny, who had been working for
him, with the result that there was evolved the present Amer-
ican plastoline now in common use. A great to-do also arose
over such endless questions as those concerning the historical
accuracy of the dress. For instance, when it came to the
flag, he sent to have the original carefully sketched in the Bos-
ton State House.

For the larger issues, the negro troops, to begin with, gave
him an immense amount of trouble. For one thing the count-
less legs and feet of the infantry seemed to bewilder him, until
slowly from the chaos he learned his lesson of dealing with
repeated accents ; a lesson suggested to him by the effect of the
troops passing beneath his window in the days of his cameo-
cutting, by a French military funeral which he often spoke
of as impressing him a few years later, and by the use of the
spears and vertical lines in such compositions as Velasquez's
"Surrender of Breda." For another thing, the problem of
accoutrements, of the spotty effects made by the canteens,
developed in him a sensitive regard for the rounding-ofF of
mechanically hard lines, until the final and uninteresting be-
came always slightly hidden and suggestive. The process
took definite shape on a day when he complained to Frederick
MacMonnies, then pressing out these canteens, that he hated
them, as he did all things completely analyzed and shown.
Whereupon MacMonnies replied, "Hide part of them under
the drapery." At which my father tested his suggestion with
such relish at the resulting mystery and charm, that he not
only adopted it permanently, but instituted a system of what he

342

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

later called "fluing," a general terra including many devices,
from the breaking up of lines to the filling of those black
holes, which, if he placed logically in his desired folds of drap-
ery, he would model to unsightly depths.

In a different way also my father had a desperate time with
a "kink" in Shaw's trousers which he explained had caught a
"kink" in his brain, as well as with Shaw's right sleeve, since
he never could succeed in making the folds of the model's
coat fall correctly during two successive periods. Accord-
ingly one Sunday an assistant, Lyndon Smith, posed for him,
remaining in the saddle without a movement on his right side
from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon when they
lifted him from his seat. The trousers and sleeve were mod-
eled.

But, most of all, the flying figure drove my father nearly
frantic in his efforts to combine the ideal with the real. For
the face he tried first the beautiful head of Miss Annie Page.
But that, like the features of any model, always became much
too personal. So he relied wholly upon his imagination to
produce a result which his friends and pupils have said some-
what recalled his mother and somewhat an old model in Paris ;
though, for my part, I believe that every woman of beauty
who was near him impressed his work. For the body and the
legs of the figure, the drapery, the palms, laurels, and what-
ever else she carried in her right hand, he shifted the propor-
tions, varied the "color" of the relief and rearranged the folds,
until he became mentally blind to the result and to the aspect
of the composition.

Indeed, so great was his hesitation in this direction that he
returned to the charge even in later years, having by that time
come to the conclusion that the flying figure was not mysteri-
ous enough. Therefore he remodeled her once more during the
last part of his life, changing the position of the feet, and
covering up the "holes" so as to take the color from the drap-
ery and thus contrast it with the troops. The altered compo-

343

THE REMINISCENCES OF

sition was placed in the plaster cast of the entire bas-relief in
the Paris Salon of 1900, as well as in the relief now erected
in the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo. Had my father lived
a year or so longer, I am certain he would have asked permis-
sion to cut his old figure from the bronze and to insert that
made so much later.

Of course a variety of causes led to this hesitation. But
one reason in especial for this nervousness was because Bion,
upon whose judgment Saint-Gaudens placed such confidence,
insisted that the figure was as needless as "Simplicity" would
have been floating over Millet's "Gleaners." Here is a portion
of a letter Bion wrote upon the subject shortly before his
death : —

"I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu' allegory on the ceil-
ing. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel leading
them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she
tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action."

And here is what my father wrote concerning it to Miss
Rose Nichols, in his effort to maintain his own convictions:

. . . I am not disturbed by his dislike of my fig-
ure. It is because it does not look well in the photo-
graph. If the figure in itself looked well, he would
have liked it I know. And notwithstanding his ad-
mirable comparison with the Millet, I still think that a
figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the
scheme, is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans
did it finely in their sculpture. After all, it 's the way
the thing 's done that makes it right or wrong, that 's
about the only creed I have in art. However, his let-
ter is interesting, although very sad, dear old boy.

Through fourteen years of such endeavor, then, the Shaw
relief remained in the studio, while other commissions came and

344

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

went; fourteen years, during which my father returned to this
work winter and summer with an unflagging persistence.
Even the hottest of August days would find him high up on a
ladder under the baking skylight, as he developed and elimi-
nated these details of his task; for the details, as has been
seen, he changed and changed, though the original concep-
tion, according to his almost consistent practice, he never al-
tered. Early morning would grow to noon, scarcely marked
by more than a hasty munching of an apple. Noon would
fade to dusk without a falter in the steady toil. And then,
after the evening meal, he would take his place again beneath
the flaring gas jets when the special task was of a sort to per-
mit night work.

Naturally such intensity of application wore on my father's
nerves and permanently undermined his health, until his
friends became afraid the evil effects would show in his results,
and finally even Bion took up the cudgels from across the
Atlantic, calling him to account for the years he devoted to
his statues. To no purpose. My father would only reply
that the Greek and Renaissance sculptors spent even more time
on their commissions than did he. Here are portions of char-
acteristic letters that explain his thoughts on the subject.
The first two he sent at the time the work was in the studio to
a lady whom he deeply admired, Mrs. Van Rensselaer. The
third was written long after, yet, though dealing primarily
with another subject, shows indirectly how these same feel-
ings remained with my father throughout his life. The
fourth, also a comparatively recent letter, sent to Mr. Gilder,
presents better than anything else a hint of that intense af-
fection for his work which my father always possessed. He
writes first to Mrs. Van Rensselaer:

I will go to Marion on Saturday, the eighteenth, and
remain Sunday and Monday, leaving Monday evening
to return. Nothing would please me more than to re-

3i5

THE REMINISCENCES OF

main longer, but I 'm in the midst of my work, in the
best of spirits, and in the mood. Too much vacation
would demoralize me.

I have a "hossy" at the studio, and it is such a work
to break him in to posing and to keep him in trim that
I fear a long absence would demoralize him too.

Again to Mrs. Van Rensselaer: "

. . . I Ve done nothing but model, model, model
furiously for the last month. I Ve been putting ne-
groes of all types in the Shaw, and it 's been great fun.
I 'm as happy as a clam over it, and consequently beau-
tifully negligent of every friend, no matter how much
they may have passed before my vision as I was driv-
ing away at my darkeys.

Much later *

Dear Mr. W:

I am not supervising the monument to Mr. W.
that Miss Sherman is doing, and Miss Sherman assures
me that she has never said I was. Nevertheless I have
seen her work on several occasions and, although vir-
tually unnecessary, have gladly given my opinion as to
various ideas she had in mind. The result is admirable
and much farther along than any one not a sculptor
would suppose from the view of the models. Never-
theless too much time cannot be spent on a task that is
to endure for centuries, and it is a great mistake to
hurry or hamper any artist in the production of work
they have so much at heart. Time passed on it is cer-
tainly not money gained, and results from a conscien-

346

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

tious endeavor to avoid the execution of an unworthy
thing. You should consider yourself fortunate not to
have fallen into the hands of a sculptor who would
rush the commission through on time, regardless of the
future, in order to get and make quickly the most
money possible. A bad statue is an impertinence and
an offense. I should therefore bear with Miss Sher-
man. Your displeasure will be transient and turn to
pleasure in the thought that when the work is com-
pleted you have a worthy memorial. Two years is a
very short time for such a work. It could be done in
one year, but ten years would not be too much. Paul
Dubois, the great Frenchman, spent fifteen years on
his "Joan of Arc." I had the Shaw monument four-
teen years, the "Sherman" ten.

And last of all to Mr. Gilder :-

That anything I have done should have suggested
the inspired and inspiring ode of Moody's, as well as
what you say in your splendid address, makes all the
great strain and love gone to the making of the
"Shaw" worth while, and I have not lived entirely in
vain. . . .

347

XIII
EARLY THIRTY-SIXTH STREET WORK

1881-1892

Commissions out of Confusion — The Vanderbilt Work — The Smith
Tomb — The Lincoln — The Puritan — The Adams Monument.

THE last chapter dealt mostly with the Shaw monument.
Yet it must not be imagined that during the stay of
the relief in the studio it occupied my father's
thoughts to the exclusion of other work. Quite on the con-
trary, there were periods of months when he would refuse to
look at this task, in order that upon seeing it once more he
might have a fresh eye and unconsciously matured thoughts.
At such times many other commissions came and went, together
with the turmoil of new assistants and mechanics, tardy and
none too conscientious bronze-founders, obstinate landlords,
captious clients, dull pupils, evasive models, male, female, and
animal, negro, horse, and eagle — not to mention a mud-turtle
and some fish — clubs, committees, over-due and endless corre-
spondence, scanty funds, fat debts, and an incessantly jingling
doorbell. For besides the work mentioned here and in the fol-
lowing chapter, he completed, in the course of the first ten
years he occupied the Thirty-sixth Street studio, nearly forty
other works, which varied in importance from large plaques
like the Bellows tablet for All Souls' Church in New York to
such smaller portraits as that of Miss Violet Sargent, modeled
in exchange for John Sargent's painting of myself, or more
regular orders of the fashion of those for the Hollingsworth
Memorial or the Oakes "Ames." Let me turn then to a por-
tion of what my father says of all this. It is to be regretted
that he did not have opportunity to develop the theme to a fair
length. He writes :

348

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

The years that the Shaw remained with me were
filled with the multitudinous complexities of a large
number of tasks. In fact, the production of my work
was much confused, and dragged in most cases to
lengths which would have taxed the patience of angels.
Each new commission attracted me. And in the de-
sire to execute it, I hoped to be able to do it while
modeling those already on hand. Governor Morgan,
in complaining one day of the slow progress of his work
when I promised I would push something through,
said:

"Oh, no, you can't. You delay just as your father
did before you."

Soon after taking the Thirty-sixth Street studio,
Mr. George B. Post gave me an order to make all the
models for the great entrance-hall in the residence of
Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, which the architect was just
about to erect on the corner of Fifty-seventh Street
and Fifth Avenue. The undertaking required not
only the two caryatids for the monumental mantel-
piece and the mosaic that surmounted it, but as well the
superintendence of the models for all the wood-carving
in the hall, which was enormous, beside the creating of
medallion family-portraits to be introduced in certain
of the panels. For some reason these were not en-
tirely completed. Those that I did do were the por-
traits of young Cornelius and George Vanderbilt,
Gertrude Vanderbilt, now Mrs. Harry Payne Whit-
ney, William H. Vanderbilt, and Cornelius Vander-
bilt, the first of the family. Beside these, I, with my

349

THE REMINISCENCES OF

brother, Louis Saint-Gaudens, was associated with Mr.
La Farge in composing the models for the superb ceil-
ing that he designed for the main dining-room. Mr.
Post evidently had the same confidence in me that I
had in myself. Wherefore I undertook the task in
the belief that here again I was going to reform things
in matters of that kind in this country, and worked
with great earnestness at my commissions, particularly
at the two caryatids, despite the fact that the absolute
necessity for the completion of this work before a given
date, its extent and its complexity, added perhaps more
than anything else to the distressing confusion of my
affairs that prevailed during these years.

At about this time, 1886, I also began the figure for
the tomb of Mrs. Anna Maria Smith, to go in the
cemetery at Newport, Rhode Island. This, except
for minor modifications, was the original of the bronze
figure of "Amor Caritas" in the Museum of the Luxem-
bourg, in Paris.

Then, in the ensuing year, to add fat to the fire, a
committee in Chicago wrote me asking if I would com-
pete for a monument to Lincoln for that city, to be
erected from a fund provided under the will of Mr. Eli
Bates. I refused. Some time later they inquired if
I would not undertake the commission directly, as well
as a fountain. Of course I accepted, naming a day
for finishing it, which still further decreased the chance
of completing the "Shaw" in the time I hoped. I began
the statue on the platform behind the relief and these
works progressed together, though of course the Lin-

350

MISS VIOLET SARGENT

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

coin was set up long before the Shaw was finished.
Here again I asked Mr. White to design the surround-
ings. The monument was duly unveiled in 1887, but
unfortunately on a rainy day and without the cere-
monies that might have lent consequence to the occa-
sion.

After the "Lincoln," on the scaffolding behind the
"Shaw," came the statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, for
Mr. Chester W. Chapin, at that time President of the
Boston and Albany Railroad. The elder Mr. Chapin
was the father of my friend Chester Chapin, Jr., and
I assume that this work was intrusted to me at his sug-
gestion. It formed part of a scheme some gentlemen
of Springfield, Massachusetts, had in mind for erect-
ing three statues of the three founders of that city:
Pynchon, which was made by Mr. Jonathan Hartley,
Chapin which I modeled, and a third which has not yet
been carried out.

Although my statue is now placed close to the Public
Library, it was originally erected near the station
lower down in the city, at one end of a long square re-
arranged and laid out to harmonize with the statue.
This design, also one of Mr. White's was admirable in
every respect. At the opposite end of the little park
from the statue, and balancing it, stood a fountain, and
between the two, in the center, a stone bench. Along
each side of the open space we planted white birches,
and the whole we inclosed by a pine hedge. If this
could have remained, and the buildings around the
square have been carried out as Mr. Chapin expected,

353

THE REMINISCENCES OF

the result would have been unusually eif ective. At the
time we placed it there, however, the quarter of the
city was poor, and in a few weeks the boys had de-
stroyed everything in the way of vegetation.

The statue, as I have said, was to represent Deacon
Samuel Chapin, but I developed it into an embodiment,
such as it is, of the "Puritan." And so it came
about that, in 1903, the New England Society of
Pennsylvania commissioned me to make a replica of it.
This I did as far as the general figure and arrangement
went, though I made several changes in details. For
the head in the original statue, I used as a model the
head of Mr. Chapin himself, assuming that there would
be some family resemblance with the Deacon, who was
his direct ancestor. But Mr. Chapin's face is round
and Gaelic in character, so in the Philadelphia work I
changed the features completely, giving them the long,
New England type, beside altering the folds of the
cloak in many respects, the legs, the left hand, and the
Bible.

Following the "Chapin" on the scaffolding was the
figure in Rock Creek Cemetery which I modeled for
Mr. Henry Adams.

To speak at greater length of these commissions which my
father has mentioned, I will begin with the Smith tomb, which,
while a step on the way to the ultimate "Amor Caritas," in
turn emanated from the angels for the tomb of Governor Mor-
gan. That is, though the Morgan tomb figures stood almost
in the round, their drapery possessed much the same quality
that my father used in the Smith relief; a drapery perhaps

354

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

finding its suggestion in the English Burne-Jones School, which
he admired, though he developed their ideas to more consci-
entious limits. Also, at about this time, he made a number
of other changes in this theme. For instance, the Smith angel
held in her raised hands a tablet with a long inscription be-
ginning: "Blessed are the dead." So on another occasion, he
lowered her hands and reduced the size of the tablet, that it
might present only the words, "Gloria in Excelsis Deo," while
somewhat later he designed the two figures in the round for
the Hamilton Fish tomb, at Garrison-on-the-Hudson, with
much the same feeling, though adding thereto a slight senti-
ment of early Christian art of which he was an admirer.

The Lincoln that came next in order, while a monument of
great popularity, developed so consistently and so apart from
all the other influences that were seething around my father
that there is little to record concerning it. This portion of a
letter sent me by Mr. Gilder is of the greatest interest. He
writes :

"One night I saw at Wyatt Eaton's, who was living on
the south side of Washington Square, a life-mask of Lincoln
of which I had never heard. I got your father and one or
two others to form a committee, and we purchased the original
cast of that and of the two hands, from Douglas Volk, his
father having taken them and given them to him. And we
presented these originals, with bronze copies, to the National
Museum at Washington. For those who subscribed for the
bronze copies of the set, at seventy-five dollars, your father
had made in his studio inscriptions with the name of the sub-
scriber. This wonderful life-mask was, of course, of use to
him in the Lincoln. I afterwards found another one, taken
during his Presidency, and told Colonel Hay about it. He
bought the original."

It is also pertinent to add that, even late in life, my father
had no detailed changes which he would have cared to make
in the Lincoln other than to reduce the height of the statue

355

THE REMINISCENCES OF

by about two feet, as he always had a horror of over-large
monuments. Regarding the conception as a whole, he was
from the beginning in two minds as to whether or not to make
Lincoln seated, and this latter desire he satisfied in one of his
final commissions, when he completed his second Lincoln that
is to be erected in another part of Chicago; a Lincoln, the
Head of the State, in contrast with the Lincoln, the Man,
which now stands on the northern edge of the city.

The final commission my father alludes to in this chapter,
the one about which he makes his briefest mention, the Rock
Creek Cemetery figure, however, demands a larger share of at-
tention, since on the margin of his text concerning it he placed
the word "Amplify." This I know he would have done had
he lived. For he looked back with fondness to the time spent
upon this monument, curtained off in a studio corner. Here
was one of the few opportunities offered him to break from the
limitations of portraiture, limitations from which all his life
he longed to be free, in order to create imaginative compositions,
such as those which he began for the Boston Public Library.
Moreover, he constantly spoke to me and to others of his
pleasure in suggesting the half-concealed, and, because of this
pleasure, the veiled face of this figure gave him infinite delight
to dwell upon. But an even stronger need for amplification
arises from the fact that the monument has been the subject
of an endless amount of printed talk, for the most part ob-
viously inaccurate, but now and then having a false semblance
of truth.

At the date Mr. Adams gave Saint-Gaudens the commission
he felt in sympathy with the religious attitudes of the East.
Yet he did not cast his desires for the figure in any definite
mold. Rather, when he first discussed the matter, he explained
that Mr. La Farge understood his ideas on this subject and
that, accordingly, my father would do well, in his work, not to
seek in any books for inspiration, but to talk with the painter
and to have about him such objects as photographs of Michel-

356

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

angelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. As the result of this f
advice, in the beginning of his attempt to grasp Mr. Adams'
wishes, my father first sought to embody a philosophic calm,
a peaceful acceptance of death and whatever lay in the future.
Therefore he turned his attention to a number of large photo-
graphs and drawings of Buddhas. Of course he himself could
not model a Buddha. But from the conception of "Nirvana" ""
so produced, his thought broadened out in sympathy with Mr.
Adams', becoming more inclusive and universal, until he con-
ceived the present figure which he occasionally explained as both
sexless and passionless, a figure for which there posed some-
times a man, sometimes a woman.

Here are portions of letters from him to Mr. Adams which
explain his frame of mind during the work:

. . . Do you remember setting aside some photo-
graphs of Chinese statues, Buddha, etc., for me to take
away from Washington? I forgot them. I should
like to have them now. Is there any book not long
that you think might assist me in grasping the situa-
tion? If so, please let me know so that I might get it.
I propose soon to talk with La Farge on the subject,
although I dread it a little. . . .

. . . If you catch me in, I will show you the re-
sult of Michelangelo, Buddha, and St. Gaudens. I
think what I will do may not be quite as idiotic as if I
had not had all these months to "chew the cud."

. . . The question now with me is, rock or no
rock; which, when I have another sketch indicated, I
will show La Farge. White holds that the rock re-
quires a different treatment from the seat, and to prove
it has made a stunning scheme. I 'm half inclined

359

THE REMINISCENCES OF

to give in to him, but that also La Farge must
pass on.

If the figure is cast in bronze in several pieces it can
be set up in Washington about July first. This I con-
sider inadvisable, as the statue can be cast in virtually
one piece which is seldom done in these days; for this,
however, twelve weeks are necessary. Should this be
decided on and you be away when the figure is cast, I
propose to bronze the plaster cast and set it up at once
in the place that the bronze will occupy in the monu-
ment in Washington, so that you can judge of its ef-
fect in metal. In any event, I should like to have you
see the face of the figure in the clay. If it were not for
that part of the work I would not trouble you. But
the face is an instrument on which different strains can
be played, and I may have struck a key in a direction
quite different from your feeling in the matter. With
a word from you I could strike another tone with as
much interest and fervor as I have had in the present
one.

My relations with you in this matter have been so
unusually agreeable that you can appreciate how much
I am troubled at the prospect of not having the bronze
itself in place on July first. . . .

My dear Adams:

I meant that my first communication to you should
be a word asking you to come and see the figure.
However I have to give that up. You asked that, in
whatever was placed back of the figure, the architec-

360

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ture should have nothing to say, and above all that it
should not be classic. White and I have mulled over
this a great deal, with the enclosed results. I do not
object to the architecture or its classicism as indicated
in Number One, whereas Number Two would, we both
fear, be rather unpleasant. This matter must be set-
tled immediately, and I cannot do that without asking
you. I do not think the small classical cornice and
base can affect the figure and, to my thinking, the mon-
ument would be better as a whole.*

If, however, the plain stone at the back of Number
One, marked "front," is much preferable to you, we
will carry it out.

In about ten days you will hear from me, asking
you to run on. I 've demolished the figure several
times, and now it 's all going at once.

. . . The monument is finished and all that re-
mains to be done is the grading and the planting of
some trees in the rear of the seat. White's work ap-
pears to me to be very fine, sober, and strong. As to
my work, you must judge for yourself. The rock on
which the figure is seated needs to be rubbed in order
to get it darker. This will be done at once. I did not
do it before setting up the work as I was uncertain as
to the effect of the stone. That, however, is a small
matter. . . .

I am sure that in ultimate technique the figure expressed my
father's desires. For once, in the spring of 1903, he said to

* This was the design chosen.

361

THE REMINISCENCES OF

my mother and me, who were standing with him before the
monument, "I wish I could remodel that fold between the knees.
It makes too strong a line." Then, after a pause, he added,
"I believe that would be all I would do."

Also I am certain that my father never of his own volition
stamped the monument with that absolute definition so often
demanded. He meant to ask a question, not to give an answer.
Therefore, lest some foolish man or scholar hereafter shall
paste his label on the monument, falsely claiming authority for
so doing, I wish to quote the fashion in which both sculptor and
owner avoided the issue. The first extract I take from the
leaf of one of my father's scrap-books, which survived the
studio fire of 1904. It shows how the original thought ger-
minated in his mind. Here around a faint ink sketch of the
figure is written:

Adams.

Buddha.

Mental repose.

Calm reflection in contrast with the violence or force in
nature.

The second extract comes from a letter sent to me by Mrs.
Barrett Wendell.

". . . On Thursday, May 5, 1904, I was in the Rock
Creek Cemetery looking at the wonderful monument by Mr.
St.-Gaudens in memory of Mrs. Henry Adams, when Mr. St.-
Gaudens and Mr. John Hay entered the little enclosure. I
was deeply impressed and asked Mr. St.-Gaudens what he called
the figure. He hesitated and then said, 'I call it the Mystery
of the Hereafter.' Then I said, 'It is not happiness?' 'No,'
he said, 'it is beyond pain, and beyond joy.' Mr. Hay turned
to me and said, 'Thank you for asking. I have always wished
to know.' "

The third quotation is from a poem upon the figure by Hil-
degarde Hawthorne, which he greatly admired.

362

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

NIRVANA -

Yea, I have lived! Pass on

And trouble me with questions nevermore.

I suffered. I have won

A solemn peace — my peace forevermore.

Leave me in silence here.

I have no hope, no care,

I know no fear:

For I have borne — but now no longer bear.

Deep-hid Sorrow calls me kin,
But my calm she cannot break.
I know not good — I know not sin —
Nor love, nor hate can me awake.

Though I have sought, I care not now to find.

If I have asked, I wait for no reply.

My eyes, from too much seeing, are grown blind.

I am not dead, yet do not need to die.

Pass on. Ye cannot reach me any more.

Pass on — for all is past !

Hush — Silence settled ever more and more,

Silence and night at last !

Mr. Adams' attitude is similar to the sculptor's, naturally
enough, sirce he was the man who inspired the work. From
what he has said I have two quotations. The first I have
taken out of a letter he wrote to Mr. Gilder on October 14,
1896.

". . . The whole meaning and feeling of the figure is in
its universality and anonymity. My own name for it is 'The
Peace of God.' La Farge would call it 'Kwannon.' Petrarch
would say: 'Siccome eterna vita e veder Dio,' and a real artist
would be very careful to give it no name that the public could
turn into a limitation of its nature. With the understanding

363

THE REMINISCENCES OF

that there shall be no such attempt at making it intelligible
to the average mind, and no hint at ownership or personal re-
lation, I hand it over to St.-Gaudens."

The second extract comes from his autobiography, entitled
"The Education of Henry Adams," which Mr. Adams has had
privately printed. He says of the work, speaking of himself
in the third person:

". . . His first step, on returning to Washington, took
him out to the cemetery known as Rock Creek, to see the
bronze figure which St. Gaudens had made for him in his ab-
sence. Naturally every detail interested him, every line, every
touch of the artist, every change of light and shade, every
point of relation, every possible doubt of St.-Gaudens' cor-
rectness of taste or feeling ; so that, as the Spring approached,
he was apt to stop there often to see what the figure had to
tell him that was new, but, in all that it had to say, he never
once thought of questioning what it meant. He supposed its
meaning to be the one commonplace about it — the oldest idea
known to human thought. He knew that if he asked an Asi-
atic its meaning, not a man, woman, or child from Cairo to
Kamchatka would have needed more than a glance to reply.
From the Egyptian Sphinx to the Kamakura Diabuts, from
Prometheus to Christ, from Michelangelo to Shelley, art had
wrought on this eternal figure almost as though it had nothing
else to say. The interest of the figure was not in its meaning,
but in the response of the observer ! As Adams sat there, num-
bers of people came, for the figure seemed to have become a
tourist fashion, and all wanted to know its meaning. Most
took it for a portrait-statue, and the remnant were vacant-
minded in the absence of a personal guide. None felt what
would have been a nursery instinct to a Hindu baby or a Japa-
nese jinrikisha-runner. The only exceptions were the clergy,
who taught a lesson even deeper. One after another brought
companions there, and, apparently fascinated by their own re-
flection, broke out passionately against the expression they felt

364

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

in the figure of despair, of atheism, of denial. Like the others,
the priest saw only what he brought. Like all great artists,
St.-Gaudens held up the mirror and no more. The American
layman had lost sight of ideals, the American priest had lost
sight of faith. Both were more American than the old, half-
witted soldiers who denounced the wasting, on a mere grave, of
money which should have been given for drink."

For a last word in regard to the connection between my
father and Mr. Adams at the time, here is a most characteristic
anecdote : It is said that when Saint-Gaudens learned that Mr.
Adams and Mr. La Farge were soon to take a trip around the
world together, he worked hard to complete the figure in the
clay for Mr. Adams to see before his departure. Therefore
on sending word that it was ready, the sculptor naturally felt
surprised to receive an answer from Mr. Adams that he would
not look at it, since if he should not like it, he would carry
the disappointment through his trip, whereas otherwise he
would have only pleasure to anticipate.

All was well. From the South Seas, some months later, Mr.
Adams wrote to the sculptor the following letter with its quota-
tion :

Siwa, Fiji, June 23, 1891.
My dear St.-Gaudens:

. . . As far as the photographs go, they are satisfac-
tory, but I trust much more to the impression produced on
John Hay, who writes me that he has been to Rock Creek to
see the figure. "The work is indescribably noble and imposing.
It is to my mind St.-Gaudens' masterpiece. It is full of poetry
and suggestion, infinite wisdom, a past without beginning, and
a future without end, a repose after limitless experience, a
peace to which nothing matters — all are embodied in this aus-
tere and beautiful face and form."

Certainly I could not have expressed my own wishes so ex-
actly, and, if your work approaches Hay's description, you
cannot fear criticism from me.

365

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Let me close the chapter by inserting a translation of what
is probably one of the best estimates of the work; that writ-
ten in Paris, in 1899, by Gaston Migeon, and published in
Art et Decoration:

"A woman is seated upon a block of stone, with her back
against the monolith. She is covered from head to foot by an
ample cloak which falls about her in simple, dignified folds.
Her head alone is visible, a stern and forbidding profile. Her
chin is resting upon her hand ; her eyes are cast down. She is
not sleeping, she is musing; and that reverie will last as long
as the stone itself. Silent, dead as the world knows her, wholly
absorbed in her reverie, she is the image of Eternity and Medi-
tation. Profound assuagement emanates from her; upon this
earth of multiferous activities, and among that people of fran-
tic energy, she tells of the nothingness into which life is at last
resolved. I know of no analogous work so profound in senti-
ment, so exalted in its art, and executed by methods so simple
and broad, since the most telling sculpture of the Middle Ages.
In me personally it awakens a deeper emotion than any other
modern work of art."

366

XIV
STEVENSON AND OTHERS

1881-1892

McCosh in the Studio — Meeting with Stevenson — The Visit to Man-
asquan — The Sherman Bust — Soldier and Author — Variations in
the Relief — Letters from Stevenson — Love of Personality and
Literature — The Washington Medal — The Diana.

AT this point Saint-Gaudens takes up his narrative with
an anecdote of his father and Dr. McCosh. Let me
say in advance that, in accordance with his custom of
experimenting with many designs, the sculptor made thirty-
six two-foot sketches for the McCosh relief, before arriving at
the final form. After the mention of the "McCosh," he
dwells upon his other two most interesting efforts of the time,
the bas-relief of Robert Louis Stevenson and the bust of Wil-
liam Tecumseh Sherman. Neither of these was a commission.
Both he took up through his intense interest in the personalities
of his sitters. These two portraits were modeled at almost
the same time when, as will be seen, the sitters met one an-
other through Saint-Gaudens, and the study of their charac-
ters so strongly etched, so sympathetic to the sculptor, yet so
contrasted to each other, formed a memory in his life to which
he was ever fond of returning. On the one hand Stevenson in-
stilled into Saint-Gaudens his first real taste for literature.
On the other, though my father had a deep-rooted horror of
the futility of war, he always set so high a premium on virility
and nervous energy that the personification of this in the Gen-
eral stirred his enthusiasm as few things outside his art had
ever inspired it. He writes :

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THE REMINISCENCES OF

About this time I was commissioned to execute a
memorial tablet to the Rev. Dr. McCosh of Princeton,
in the development of which some amusing incidents
occurred. Father, then an invalid, was in the habit
of coming to the studio and lying upon a couch, where
he generally fell asleep while watching me work. He
was in the studio at the time Dr. McCosh first entered.
When I introduced them to each other the contrast
was striking between the short, sturdy physique of
father, and the tall, handsome, refined figure of Dr.
McCosh in the robe in which he posed as he stood upon
a high table a few feet from father.

Shortly after I had begun modeling, father asked in
his energetic way:

"How old are you?"

Dr. McCosh, with his Scotch accent, gently replied,
"Guess."

"Eighty-six?" was the query.

"Ah, not quite so old as that. Guess again."

Then after a moment, Dr. McCosh questioned father
about his native place. Father delightedly and
effusively told of the charm of the South, the blue sky,
the oranges, the figs, the sea, the gentle weather, and
all that was luscious in southern life. Dr. McCosh lis-
tened quietly, and after a pause, as if to show that he
fully grasped father's colored description, added
softly:

"Ah, well, well, well, that 's all verrry well, verrry
well, yourrr figs and yourrr grapes, and yourrr blue
sky, yourrr mountains, and all that. It's no doubt

368

SKETCH KOK Till-. HIGH KKI.IKK OK 1>K. McCOSIl
I'ivt- iHwitiiniM nl tin- It-ll hauil intlit-atct)

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

verrry delightful, verrry delightful. But I prefer the
gooseberry."

At that time I was working also on the Shaw, and
as the McCosh model stood directly in front of it, each
day I had to move the portrait away. This required
much bother of preparation. My appointments with
Dr. McCosh came in the morning. He wanted to pose
early, and I wanted him to pose late so that I could
have a good three or four hours on the Shaw before I
began with him. As a result there remained an un-
derlying conflict between us as to the time, until we
compromised and he agreed to arrive an hour or so
later than had been his habit.

On the first morning of the new order of things, there-
fore, without* making any preparations for Dr. Mc-
Cosh's coming, I proceeded with my work upon my
horse, the gray one referred to before. He stood on one
side, next to the wall, and as the studio re-echoed like
a sounding-board, keeping him there was much like
hitching him in your parlor, while the pawing and kick-
ing of the resentful animal, tied about with all kinds of
straps to hold him in position, resembled the violent
tumbling and hurling around of great rocks on the
floor. Besides, I had an arrangement of boxes on
which I climbed to my work, so that between the stamp-
ing of the horse, the shouting and curses of the man
who held him, and my own rushing up and down from
the horse to the model and the model to the horse, the
studio was far from a place of rest. Notwithstanding
the agreement, however, Dr. McCosh appeared an hour

371

THE REMINISCENCES OF

and a half earlier than the appointed time. I was ex-
cessively displeased at his coming and stopping my
work in this way. I said:

"Dr. McCosh, you are early and I am afraid I shall
have to keep on as I have made arrangements for the
horse."

"Go ahead, go ahead," he replied. "I '11 sit down
here and wait."

"Very well, Dr. McCosh."

Accordingly Dr. McCosh sat down in one corner
without seeing my father, who already slept in another.
Nor was it long before he fell asleep too, and the snores
of my father, vigorous and strong, contrasting with the
gentle, academic ones of Dr. McCosh, lent singularity to
the occasion. Nevertheless, I proceeded with my work
and they with their sleeping until, at the hour agreed
upon, I stepped from my scaffolding, the man removed
the boxes of which there were twenty or thirty, making
a great commotion, the horse was led out of the stall,
saddled, bridled — it can be fancied how peaceful this op-
eration was, with the restless animal stamping around in
impatience — the big double doors leading to the street
were unbolted and opened, the man mounted, and with a
final multitudinous pounding and standing on hind-legs
within two feet of Dr. McCosh, the anxious horse rum-
bled out of the studio, noisy enough to wake the dead,
leaped into the street, and rushed off to his oats. Yet
Dr. McCosh and my father slept on as peacefully as
children, while the studio fell into a great quiet, broken
only by the rhythmic sound of their slumbers, until pres-

372

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

ently, as I was afraid of losing too much of Dr. Mc-
Cosh's time for my sitting, I stood close by and made
noise loud enough to waken even him. As he opened
his eyes, I said gently and amiably:

"Dr. McCosh, you have been having a nap."
"Oh, no, not at all," he said. "Not at all, not at all.
I have been waiting for you."

It is singular how one will forget important things.
I was about to overlook my experience with Robert
Louis Stevenson, which took place in the autumn of
1887. Shortly before this time my friend, Mr. Wells,
a man of infinite taste and judgment, great learning
and delightful conversation, as well as a keen lover and
appreciator of music, drew my attention to the New
Arabian Nights, by a young author just making him-
self known. I am, unfortunately, very little of a
reader, but my introduction to these stories set me
aflame as have few things in literature. So when I
subsequently found that my friend, Mr. Low, knew
Stevenson quite well, I told him that, if Stevenson ever
crossed to this side of the water, I should consider it an
honor if he would allow me to make his portrait. It
was but a few weeks after this that Stevenson arrived
in America on his way to the Adirondacks. He ac-
cepted my offer at once, and I began the medallion at
his rooms in the Hotel Albert in Eleventh Street, not
far from where I lived in Washington Place. All I
had the time to do from him then was the head,
which I modeled in five sittings of two or three hours
each. These were given me in the morning, while he,

373

THE REMINISCENCES OF

as was his custom, lay in bed propped up with pillows,
and either read or was read to by Mrs. Stevenson.

I can remember some few things as to my personal
impressions of him. He said that he believed "Olala"
to be his best story, or that he fancied it the best, and
that George Meredith was the greatest English litter-
ateur of the time. Also he told me of his pet-liking for
his own study of Robert Burns. He gave me a com-
plete set of his own works, in some of which he placed
a line or two. In "Virginibus Puerisque," he wrote,
"Read the essay on Burns. I think it is a good thing.''
Thus the modest man !

Again at the end of one of the sittings, as I was
about to go out, he rose from his bed and we chatted
concerning some commercial arrangement he had his
mind on. He asked my advice. I gave it, such as it
was, parenthetically observing, "Oh, well, everything
is right and everything is wrong."

While I was speaking, he had entered a little closet
to wash his hands. He came out wiping them.

"Yes, yes, that is true, that is true," he said continu-
ing to rub his fingers. "Yes, everything is right and
everything is wrong."

I also recall his saying, "The man who has not seen
the dawn every day of his life has not lived." And
again, in speaking of crossing the ocean and traveling
by sea, he referred to its charm and danger and added,
"The man who has not taken his life in his hands at
some time or other, has not lived."

In connection with this vein in his personality, I re-

374

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

member visiting him one evening when he lay on his
bed in the half -gloom, the lamp being in another room.
I sat on the bed's edge, barely able to discern his fig-
ure in the dimness. He talked in the monotonous tone
one frequently assumes when in the twilight, speaking
of his keen admiration for Lawrence, Governor of
India. Then I first realized his reverence for men of
action, men of affairs, soldiers, and administrators.
Moreover, he said with great feeling that his chief de-
sire in the world was the power to knock down a man
who might insult him, and that perhaps the most try-
ing episode in his life was one in which he had a con-
versation with a man which, had it taken a certain di-
rection, would have left no alternative but one of per-
sonal altercation in which he himself could present but
a pitiable figure. This impressed me as being the most
feeling thing he ever said to me.

Shortly after that he went to Saranac, and the fol-
lowing Spring he came south and took a little house at
Manasquan, New Jersey, near his friend Mr. Low.

Here occurred a delightful episode. After having
modeled the head, I had determined to make Steven-
son's medallion large enough to include the hands, and
for that purpose, in order not to disturb him, I had be-
gun them from those of Mrs. Saint-Gaudens', whose
long, slender fingers I had noticed resembled his. But
the result would not come out successfully ; so, on his ar-
rival at Manasquan, I begged for a sitting, that I
might make a drawing and some casts. He assented
and a day was appointed. I took with me my son

375

THE REMINISCENCES OF

Homer, a child of eight, and on the way down on the
boat endeavored to impress on the boy the fact that he
was about to see a man whom he must remember all
his life. It was a lovely day, and as I entered the
room about eleven o'clock in the morning, Stevenson
lay as usual on rather a high monumental bed. I pre-
sented Homer to him with mock formality, as one does
with a child. But since my son's interest, notwith-
standing my injunctions, was, to say the least, far from
enthusiastic, I sent him out to play.

I then asked Stevenson to pose, but that was not
successful, all the gestures being forced and affected.
Therefore I suggested to him that if he would try to
write, some natural attitude might result. He as-
sented, and taking a sheet of paper, of which he always
had a lot lying around on the bed, pulled his knees up
and began. Immediately his attitude was such that I
was enabled to create something of use and to continue
drawing, while he wrote with an occasional smile.
Presently I finished, and told him there was no neces-
sity for his writing any more. He did not reply but
proceeded for quite a while. Then he folded the pa-
per with deliberation, placed it in an envelope, ad-
dressed it, and handed it to me. It was to "Master
Homer Saint-Gaudens."

"I asked him: 'Do you wish me to give this to the
boy?'

"Yes."

"When? Now?"

"Oh, no, in five or ten years, or when I am dead."

376

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

I put it in a safe and here it is!

Manasquan, New Jersey, 27th May, 1888.
Dear Homer St.-Gaudens :

Your father has brought you this day to see me,
and he tells me it is his hope you may remember
the occasion. I am going to do what I can to
carry out his wish; and it may amuse you, years
after, to see this little scrap of paper and to read
what I write. I must begin by testifying that you
yourself took no interest whatever in the introduc-
tion, and in the most proper spirit displayed a
single-minded ambition to get back to play, and
this I thought an excellent and admirable point in
your character. You were also, I use the past
tense, with a view to the time when you shall read,
rather than to that when I am writing, a very
pretty boy, and, to my European views, start-
lingly self-possessed. My time of observation
was so limited that you must pardon me if I can
say no more: what else I marked, what restless-
ness of foot and hand, what graceful clumsiness,
what experimental designs upon the furniture,
was but the common inheritance of human youth.
But you may perhaps like to know that the lean
flushed man in bed, who interested you so little,
was in a state of mind extremely mingled and un-
pleasant; harassed with work which he thought he
was not doing well, troubled with difficulties to
which you will in time succeed, and yet looking

377

THE REMINISCENCES OF

forward to no less a matter than a voyage to the
South Seas and the visitation of savage and desert
islands.

Your father's friend,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

I believe I made another visit to Manasquan, for, as
well as the drawing, I possessed casts of Stevenson's
hands which I used in modeling. But I cannot recol-
lect the trip. He shortly after went to Samoa, where
I had a little correspondence with him, as he was de-
sirous of putting on the walls of his home there in
bronze letters the names of his friends and visitors, and
so wished me to find out at how reasonable a rate they
could be cast and supplied to him. It was too expen-
sive, and as he wrote me: "Another gable of Abbots-
ford has gone down." I also had two or three letters
from him on the receipt of the medallion, which took
an unconscionable time in reaching him.* There, with
the exception of an episode which I shall presently
tell, my relations with him ended.

While modeling the relief of the Stevenson I had in
my studio another absorbing portrait, a bust of Gen-
eral Sherman, the chance to make which Whitelaw
Reid had been instrumental in obtaining for me. This
task was also a labor of love, for the General had re-
mained in my eye as the typical American soldier ever
since I had formed that idea of him during the Civil
War. The bust I made in about eighteen periods of

* See pages 385 ff. for these letters.

378

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, MODELED IN BAS-RELIEF IN 1887
DURING STEVENSON'S ILLNESS IN NEW YORK

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

two hours each. It was a memorable experience, and
I regret nothing more than that I did not write down a
daily record of his conversation, for he talked freely and
most delightfully of the war, men and things. I can
only recall the pride with which he spoke, the force of
his language and the clear picture he presented as he
described the appearance of his army in the great re-
view at Washington when the final campaign was over.
He explained how the other divisions, or armies,
cleaned themselves up, so to speak, for this grand event,
and of replying to some one who asked him if he was
not going to do the same : "By no means. Let them be
seen as they fought." The General was an excellent
sitter, except when I passed to his side to study the pro-
file. Then he seemed uneasy. His eyes followed me
alertly. And if I went too far around, his head turned
too, very much, some one observed, as if he was watch-
ing out for his "communications from the rear."

As I have said, at the same time that I was at work
upon Sherman I was modeling the relief of Steven-
son. The author admired the General intensely and
asked me if I could have them meet.

So one day I said to Sherman, "Robert Louis Ste-
venson, whose portrait I am making, is very desirous
of seeing you, and asked if you would grant an appoint-
ment for that purpose."

"Who is Robert Louis Stevenson?" questioned the
General. "Is he one of my boys?"

The fact was the General came into such constant
contact with his old soldiers that he supposed the av-

381

THE REMINISCENCES OF

erage man desirous of meeting him likely to be one of
his "boys," as he called them. I told him that Steven-
son was the writer of the New Arabian Nights and a
man of great distinction. He shook his head. He did
not know him. Recalling that the General loved the
theater, I explained that Stevenson was the author of
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," then creating a sensation
in New York.

He answered, "The man who wrote that is no fool,"
and said he would be glad to meet Stevenson.

Accordingly it was arranged that Mrs. Stevenson
should come in advance to break the way and to set a
definite appointment, as Stevenson's delicate health
made it difficult for him to arrange beforehand what
he could do. When she called the following day, the
General as usual sat on the platform from which I was
modeling him. She said,

"Mr. Stevenson is a great admirer of yours, Gen-
eral."

"Ah, is that so? Is he one of my boys?"

I must say here that we were approaching the end
of the General's life.

"No, but Mr. Saint-Gaudens has told you of the
play Mr. Stevenson wrote which interested you."

"Oh, yes, yes, yes."

Meanwhile Mrs. Stevenson had seated herself on the
corner of his platform, and soon Sherman began talk-
ing to her with his delightful freedom, until at last in
describing the much greater danger of the insignificant

382

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

looking wound of a musket-ball than that of the ugly
slash of a saber cut, he demonstrated the cut by a sweep
of his hand in the air, and the musket shot, by a thrust
of his forefinger in Mrs. Stevenson's side.

At last, however, it was agreed that Stevenson
should visit the General on a certain afternoon at the
Fifth Avenue Hotel. So at the time appointed I took
the author in a cab from his home to Twenty-third
Street where we were ushered into an ante-room of Sher-
man's apartment. There, probably through some mis-
understanding, we were kept waiting quite a while to
the evident irritation of Stevenson who began to pace up
and down the carpet. Presently, however, they asked us
into another room and the General entered. After
the usual introduction General Sherman repeated his
former question, asking if Stevenson was one of his
"boys," and upon being told that he was not, seemed to
lose interest in the interview. The conversation re-
mained conventional and perfunctory, and the meeting
looked like a failure until Stevenson questioned Sher-
man about some point in his campaigns. Immediately
the General brightened. He saw by the inquiry that
Stevenson knew what he was talking about, and it was
not many moments before they were both busily en-
gaged fighting his battles over, with a map stretched
out on the round table in the center of the room.
There my recollection ceases and I can only remember
driving back in the cab with Mr. Stevenson through
the mist, a real Scotch one.

383

THE REMINISCENCES OF

The medallion of Stevenson was probably one of the most
popular works my father created, and as the demand for it
continued without interruption, Saint-Gaudens remodeled it in
a number of forms, culminating in the large relief placed, in
memory of the author, on the wall of St. Giles Church, Edin-
burgh, Scotland. First my father made the original head,
slightly smaller than life-size. Then he designed an oblong
composition which showed Stevenson propped up in bed, his
manuscript before him, a cigarette in his hand, and which bore
some of his verses beginning, "Youth now flees on feathered
foot." Next followed a round variation, three feet in diam-
eter, representing the whole bed, with the poem composed in a
different form, and a winged Pegasus added. After that ap-
peared other small replicas of the round and the oblong forms,
with the drapery and verses once more altered. And finally
two arrangements of the big relief were created in which the
bed gave place to a couch, the blanket to a rug, and, in defer-
ence to the site in a church, the cigarette to a quill pen, and the
poem to a prayer.

Extensive popularity or the size of financial returns, how-
ever, had so little influence upon my father's attitude towards
any of his work that he never would have troubled to carry this
development so far had it not been for that tremendous admira-
tion for the author which he has mentioned. To further
emphasize this point here is an extract from a letter he wrote
concerning Stevenson to their mutual friend, Mr. Low : -

. . . My episode with Stevenson has been one of
the events of my life, and I now understand the condi-
tion of mind Gilder gets into about people. I 'm in
that beatific state. It makes me very happy, and as
the pursuit of happiness is an inalienable right, "God-
given," "one and indivisible," vide constitution of the
United States, I 'm damned if I don't think I Ve a
right to be so, provided I don't injure any one.

384

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

Indeed, at one time, my father went so far that he found
himself taking Stevenson's part rather critically against his
own friends. But such was his devotion to the author that
even this situation did not disturb him, for he said, "I don't
care, I am Irish and willing to pitch in and fight for any feller
I 'm fond of, no matter on what side. . . ."

It is pleasant to remember that my father's admiration for
Stevenson was reciprocated, and to insert four of Stevenson's
letters which I have been kindly permitted to use. The first
was written to Sidney Colvin in September, 1887, the last three
to my father.

My dear S. C:

Your delightful letter has just come, and finds me in a New
York hotel, waiting the arrival of a sculptor (St.-Gaudens),
who is making a medallion of yours truly, and who is (to boot),
one of the handsomest and nicest fellows I have seen.

Vailima, Samoa, May 29th, 1893.

My dear God-like Sculptor:

I wish in the most delicate manner in the world to insinuate
a few commissions:

No. 1. — Is for a couple of copies of my medallion, as gilt-
edged and high-toned as it is possible to make them. One is
for our house here, and should be addressed as above. The
other is for my friend, Sidney Colvin, and should be ad-
dressed— Sidney Colvin, Esq., Keeper of the Print Room, Brit-
ish Museum, London.

No. 2. — This is a rather large order, and demands some
explanation. Our house is lined with varnished wood of a dark
ruddy color, very beautiful to see ; at the same time, it calls
very much for gold; there is a limit to picture frames, and
really you know there has to be a limit to the pictures you put
inside of them. Accordingly, we have had an idea of a certain
kind of decoration, which, I think, you might help us to make

385

THE REMINISCENCES OF

practical. What we want is an alphabet of gilt letters (very
much such as people play with), and all mounted on spikes like
drawing-pins ; say two spikes to each letter, one at top, and one
at bottom. Say that they were this height, and that you
chose a model of some really exquisitely fine, clear type from
some Roman monument, and that they were made either of
metal or some composition gilt — the point is, could not you, in
your land of wooden houses, get a manufacturer to take the
idea and manufacture them at a venture, so that I could get
two or three hundred pieces or so at a moderate figure? You
see, suppose you entertain an honored guest, when he goes he
leaves his name in gilt letters on your walls ; an infinity of fun
and decoration can be got out of hospitable and festive mot-
toes ; and the doors of every room can be beautified by the leg-
end of their names. I really think there is something in the
idea, and you might be able to push it with the brutal and
licentious manufacturer, using my name if necessary, though I
should think the name of the god-like sculptor would be more
germane. In case you should get it started, I should tell you
that we should require commas in order to write the Samoan
language, which is full of words written thus: la'u, ti'e ti'e.
As the Samoan language uses but a very small proportion of
the consonants, we should require a double or treble stock of all
vowels and of F, G, L, U, N, P, S, T, and V.

The other day in Sydney, I think you might be interested

to hear, I was sculpt a second time by a man called X , as

well as I can remember and read. I must n't criticize a pres-
ent, and he had very little time to do it in. It is thought by
my family to be an excellent likeness of Mark Twain. This
poor fellow, by the bye, met with the devil of an accident. A
model of a statue which he had just finished with a desperate
effort was smashed to smithereens on its way to an exhibi-
tion.

Please be sure and let me know if anything is likely to come

386

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

of this letter business, and the exact cost of each letter, so that
I may count the cost before ordering. Yours sincerely,

Robert Louis Stevenson.

Again :•

Vailima, September, 1899.
My dear St.-Gaudens:

I had determined not to write to you till I had seen the me-
dallion, but it looks as if that might mean the Greek Kalends
or the day after to-morrow. Reassure yourself, your part is
done, it is ours that halts — the consideration of conveyance
over our sweet little road on boys' backs, for we cannot very
well apply the horses to this work ; there is only one ; you can-
not put it in a pannier; to put it on the horse's back we have
not the heart. Beneath the beauty of R. L. S., to say nothing
of his verses, which the publishers find heavy enough, and the
genius of the god-like sculptor, the spine would snap and the
well-knit limbs of the (ahem) cart-horse would be loosed by
death. So you are to conceive me, sitting in my house, dubi-
tative, and the medallion chuckling in the warehouse of the
German firm for some days longer; and hear me meanwhile on
the golden letters.

Alas ! they are all my fancy painted, but the price is prohibi-
tive. I cannot do it. It is another day-dream burst. An-
other gable of Abbotsford has gone down, fortunately before it
was builded, so there's nobody injured — except me. I had a
strong conviction that I was a great hand at writing inscrip-
tions, and meant to exhibit and test my genius on the walls of
my house; and now I see I can't. It is generally thus. The
Battle of the Golden Letters will never be delivered. On
making preparation to open the campaign, the King found him-
self face to face with invincible difficulties, in which the rapacity
of a mercenary soldiery and the complaints of an impoverished
treasury played an equal part. Ever yours.

Robert Louis Stevenson.
387

THE REMINISCENCES OF

I enclose a bill for the medallion; have been trying to find
your letter, quite in vain, and therefore must request you to
pay for the bronze letters yourself and let me know the dam-
age.

R. L. S.

And finally :■

Vailima, Samoa, July 8, 1894.

My dear St.-Gaudens:

This is to tell you that the medallion has been at last trium-
phantly transported up the hill and placed over my smoking-
room mantelpiece. It is considered by everybody a first-rate
but flattering portrait. We have it in a very good light, which
brings out the artistic merits of the god-like sculptor to great
advantage. As for my own opinion, I believe it to be a speak-
ing likeness and not flattering at all ; possibly a little the reverse.
The verses (curse the rhyme) look remarkably well.

Please do not longer delay, but send me an account for the
expense of the gilt letters. I was sorry indeed that they proved
beyond the means of a small farmer.

Yours very sincerely,

Robeet Louis Stevenson.

My father's reverence for the virility of Sherman and for the
charm of Stevenson was of great value in the pleasure it gave
him. Yet more than that, it brought to a focus in him two
new and vital developments to which I have already alluded,
his appreciation of character in those around him, and his ad-
miration of the art of letters.

Regarding his understanding of character, hitherto he had
shown little interest in men or women except as they bore upon
his work, and his sitters had never consciously been anything
but visible, tangible objects to interpret. With such an atti-
tude he had approached Stevenson. But after each visit there
grew in the sculptor a desire to comprehend the mental signif-

388

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

icance of the man before him and to bring it to light through his
physical expression and gesture, even if the process was made
at the sacrifice of "smart" modeling. So it came about that,
from the time of the Stevenson medallion and the Sherman
bust, Saint-Gaudens applied this attitude to every other work,
beginning each portrait by reading all possible biographies of
the subject, or, if the person he planned to model was alive,
keeping him in a constant state of conversation.

In a similar way, too, there was developed Saint-Gaudens*
deep regard for the English language. Before his meeting with
Stevenson he knew very little of modern writing. He had en-
joyed occasional novels by Anatole France and had read Mau-
passant, though finding him depressing. Now, however, caught
by Stevenson's charm, he followed that author from stories to
essays and departed thence to essays by other pens until he be-
came a steady and appreciative reader, with a strong liking for
what he called "aroma" or "perfume" in literary effort. Here
are some passages from letters he wrote me, reflecting in a
slight way his attitude:

. . . I have passed a most enjoyable hour read-
ing Bradford Torrey's paper on Anatole France in the
March Atlantic. Read it by all means if you can get
a moment. Then again get Maeterlinck's "The Life
of the Bee." There is a bully English translation by
Alfred Sutro, Dodd, Mead & Company. It is really a
great thing, wonderful, and easily read.

Again, in regard to some art criticism I had written >

I think it is quite "stylish," with almost an entire
disappearance of the jerkiness that troubled me. You
have also got away from the Henry James manner that
you seemed to be inclined to. But there is a bit of it,

389

THE REMINISCENCES OF

that I have marked, which is picked right out of Henry
James. You have to hold your hands and your feet,
stand upside down, take a bath, and everything, to un-
derstand it.

I do not think I should call it over-brilliant. I
think that the brilliant writers are very rare, men like
Shaw and so on. . . . But you have succeeded in
getting a certain charm, a certain perfume, which is
rare. It is something like that poem "Hey-Dey" of
Bynner's. It is a thing that Schubert has and that lies
in Mozart's songs, and I think that is more precious
than anything else. I would stick to that for all I was
worth, stick to it like grim death to a dead nigger.

And again, concerning an idea for a play: —

If you deal with the other fundamental emotions
of mankind as well as love you are doing wisely.
Perhaps with satire. I feel that the ambitions, artis-
tic, monetary, or any old thing, the jealousies, generos-
ities, are hopelessly mixed up with one another, and
are affected by vanity. Everything is vanity, compli-
cated with affairs of the heart. The good that goes
with the bad and makes us accept in life what we would
not otherwise dream of tolerating. And habit, habit
of every kind, dominates our lives. Patriotism, to my
thinking, is habit; it 's the habit of one's country. Of
course it 's all right as it 's our country, the country
we have the habit of; and that's vanity. Patriotism
is vanity. ... I am writing while in pain, and
this is the first I 've written in a week. I am in de-

390

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

spair and in one of those periods when I feel that the
truth is everything, but that when the truth is told
in any way there is such an absence of Charity in every
direction that often more harm than good is done.

The reminiscences now digress from work and sitters, and
when they return it is to quite a later portion of the period.
Therefore, before closing this chapter, I am anxious to speak
of two other important efforts that should be included in the
time now dwelt upon, the Washington Medal and the "Diana."
Of the medal Mr. William A. Coffin has written me this most
lucid account: —

"In 1899, when I was manager of 'The Loan Exhibition of
Historical Portraits and Relics' and a member of the committee
on Art for the celebration of the centennial anniversary of the
inauguration of George Washington as first president of the
United States, we issued a commemorative medal. Saint-Gau-
dens had told us that, while he had not time to execute the medal
himself, he would, without compensation, design it and super-
vise its actual modeling by his pupil, Philip Martiny, an excel-
lent young sculptor. The story of the making of that medal
might fill many pages, but I will relate only a small part of it,
because it illustrates Saint-Gaudens' tendency to change and
change in a work if he thought that bettered it, and his con-
scientiousness in striving to do the very best that was in him at
whatever task he had to accomplish.

"Martiny had a studio on Fourth Avenue at the corner of
one of the Twentieth Streets, and I went there from time to
time to see how the medal was coming on. I saw it in vari-
ous stages and then, on a later visit, found all the plaster
casts thrown aside and a new wax model 'in progress' on
the easel. Martiny explained that every time he went to show
his work (after Saint-Gaudens' design) to his master, Saint-
Gaudens made such radical changes that he had to begin all

391

THE REMINISCENCES OF

over again. This went on for weeks and months. Finally it
came to a time when Tiffany and Company were compelled
to have a model of the medal from which they were to make
medal badges in gold, silver, and bronze for the members of
the committees, certain distinguished guests invited to the
celebration, including President Harrison and others connected
with the great celebration. They must have it or there
would be no badges, at least no Saint-Gaudens medal badges. I
took a cab one afternoon and went to Martiny's studio. The
weather happened to be mild and a window on the side street
was open. When I came in and looked about I found that
nothing remained of the famous medal but a new wax model
(which I thought very good), while Martiny, who had just
brought the wax model back after he had carried it to Thirty-
sixth Street to show to Saint-Gaudens, was pacing up and
down 'mad all through.'

"Martiny was exasperated, and the more he talked the more
exasperated he became. Monsieur Saint-Gaudens became
Saint-Gaudens, and Saint-Gaudens became 'le sacre patron.'
The medal was to be changed again, and it would n't be
changed again, or if so it would be changed yet another time.
He was 'done out'; the medal would go 'out of the window.'
That was a fine prospect for the badges and the medal that
everybody was going to be so proud of.

"My sympathies were with Martiny. 'Voyons, mon ami,' said
I. *Will you smoke a cigar?' and I closed the window. 'Let
us think about it a little.' I was standing with my back close
to the easel. By and by I sat down and so did Martiny.

" *You must leave this to me for the present,' I said after a
while. 'This evening or to-morrow morning make a couple of
casts of the medal as it is, and I will call for them at noon.
From here I am going to see Saint-Gaudens, and every-
thing will be all right.' (Just how I didn't know,
but I was confident.) 'To-morrow at noon I will be here to
take away the two casts.'

392

AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

"I went down stairs and drove to Thirty-sixth Street. After
a long half hour with Saint-Gaudens I drove up town for
home and dinner but I was too worried to eat and too wor-
ried that night to sleep. The next day I went to Martiny's,
got the casts, and took them to Tiffany's. They made very
good small medal badges from them. Afterward some few
alterations were made in the medal, matters of detail. It
turned out very well and when the time came in the Spring
and the Celebration began, it was cast and ready."

My father's remaining task which I will mention, the Diana
for the Tower of the Madison Square Garden in New York,
was purely a labor of love. Stanford White originally sug-
gested to him that he consent to give his work upon it, pro-
vided White pay the expenses; and Saint-Gaudens eagerly
grasped the opportunity, since, as I have said, all his life he
was anxious to create ideal figures, with scarcely an occasion
to gratify his desires, this indeed being the only nude he ever
completed. Unwittingly, however, the two men drew upon
themselves a more expensive effort than they were prepared to
bear. The Diana was first modeled eighteen feet high, ac-
cording to White's estimate, and finished in hammered sheet
copper, only to be found too large when hoisted into place.
So, in order to replace her with the present figure, thirteen
feet high, both sculptor and architect were forced to empty
their pocket-books, calling heaven to witness all the while that
they would never undertake another commission without begin-
ning their task by erecting a dummy, a resolve which they
kept.

393

i MVIKMTV OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

WEEK BCWitUNIVERSITYLIBRARY

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