The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (16 page)

The Edmonia that interested Charlotte was reserved but fresh, deserving, in need of friends, and sometimes extreme in her desire to please.
[192]
Her origins made her precious, even to the urbane society that backed her while fighting amongst themselves. She was a memorable
amuse-bouche
[French: a bite of pleasant food] for their elegant feminist table.

While welcomed at salons like Charlotte’s, Edmonia was not accepted to the degree enjoyed by Hatty, Emma, or most other foreign artists in Rome. Indeed, she could never expect to be widely welcome. There was little she could share with the bluebloods, the leisure set, the literati, and the merchant tourists who populated the endless soirées, teas, and dinners. Beyond the safe topics of her art, her blood, Rome, and her unusual childhood, she could risk little gossip, brag of no investments, deploy no
bon mots,
and drop but a few names she knew from Boston. Matching wits in elegant rejoinders, gay shrieks of laughter, and high jinks was fine for Hatty, not for Edmonia.

Color, caste, and gender formed three walls of an unseen cage that kept her apart. She knew some fumed at the attention she enjoyed. Thus, her secrets raised a defensive fourth wall. She must have feared whispered censure, hidden biases, and ambush agendas that would spin her past against her. A childish faith in others once led to betrayal, battery, and surely a dose of post-traumatic stress. Oberlin had proved that no matter how safe you felt, no one could be trusted. Even Mrs. Child’s embrace turned out to conceal perverse demons. Working until she ached, eating and sleeping in her humble space, she was class and color apart, a colony of one. She could savor real cheers from her brother and a few fans. She devoted herself to deserving them.

Charlotte recognized that Edmonia’s emotional baggage hardened her isolation. One day she wrote, “[Edmonia] has more than anybody else to fight, for she has to conquer something in herself, which I am afraid will prove a stumbling block for her.”
[193]
Thus, it seems Edmonia’s wary vulnerability stimulated Charlotte’s instincts. The actress took a noble role, a respite from her own depressive cycle, to raise her flag and steer attention toward Edmonia’s work. Time was running out. Only a few years remained for Edmonia to make her mark – and for Charlotte to help her.

The successes of Hosmer, Powers, Brackett, Story, and others must have tested Edmonia’s wits as she dreamed about her career and tried to plan her path. As role models, they provided only hints about the hows and whys of fame. Story was rich, well connected, and ever so literary. The flirty and modestly well-off Hatty Hosmer forged her own links to society at home and in private school.

In contrast, Edmonia had little beyond her talent, a distant brother’s generosity, and popular curiosity about the “colored sculptor.” But Powers, Brackett, and many others had less when they began. Before she left Boston, she must have realized that early recognition would be decisive.

She performed for studio visitors and social gatherings. Her name spiced the chatter of tourists and the local elite. Countless people, it seemed, wanted to say they met the “colored sculptor,” or that they saw her on the street. Such diversions gave zing to their days abroad, their journals, and letters home.
[194]

On cue, she told tales of her time with Indians in the wild and sparkled with innocent chatter. She could not exaggerate what she actually produced, however. She could copy classics, but skill without novelty is the mark of a mere artisan.

Lack of creativity was one more myth to overcome. As a woman, as a person of color, Edmonia knew she needed to excel, to be inventive and productive. Hosmer went so far as to sue to stop slanders that she did not do her own work. She needed to prove more than a sharp eye and a deft hand.

After ten years wandering through deserts of Yankee décor, she had plunged into the rich artscape of Italy. Boston’s sparse art had stirred a latent impulse, but Florence primed her creative core with Vulcan intensity. She was as close to the source of Western art as any American heretic might dare. In particular, the religious icons she encountered were lifelike, emotional, and fearsome. Some must have roused memories of the Jesuit missions of her childhood.

Centuries before, to connect with the illiterate faithful, the Roman Church had become the greatest patron of art, architecture, and music. It declared realistic imagery most effective to its ends, that no one should forget the glory of God in the absence of a priest. It revised crucifixion art to portray the Savior’s suffering in heartbreaking detail. The sting of death aimed to raise powerful emotions. Images from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries could draw you in before you knew the story they told, the symbols, or the theology. Who could approach the works of Michelangelo or Bernini – or their best contemporaries – and not sense some emotion?

The Greek revival of Edmonia’s time, in contrast, aspired to revive more ancient ideals and bask in a reflected glory of pagan culture. Artists often raised their subjects out of antique texts. They dressed frozen forms in togas – whether mythic heroes, modern idols, or wealthy merchants – topped by impassive faces. Lorado Taft, a leading critic, considered the style “alien and impersonal, expressing in no way the spirit of the people nor even the emotions of its authors.”
[195]

These were conflicts for a young artist to ponder. Informed by her own experience and desires, we see her look to varied concepts, evidence of which was plentiful. Should symbolic art be for the well-informed few, or should it reach out to everyone? Should it reflect only the restraint of staged contemplation? Or, should it revel in human flaws, outrageous action, and extreme expression? Dedicated to reform the social order, she strained against convention in art – while accepting her dependence upon a style-conscious marketplace.

Unplanned but surely refreshing, fame came like a sunbeam on a cloudy day. Attracted by her burst of creativity and perhaps tipped by her new friends, an English writer, Henry Wreford,
[196]
twice visited her new studio and twice wrote her up. He first told her story in London’s prestigious
Athenæum
magazine. His March 3 article focused on her as the latest excitement in Rome, “A Negro Sculptress.”

Noting the historic Canova studio, he briefly sketched her life as she told it. He mentioned two busts brought from America:
‘Dio’ Lewis
(who was well-known in England) and
Col. Shaw.
Of greater interest was her new work, a group,
The Freed Woman on First Hearing of Her Liberty.
He emphasized Edmonia’s hardship and quoted her, “Yes, so was my race treated in the market and elsewhere.” Trembling, he added, “It tells, with much eloquence, a painful story.” The phrase resonated with other writers for years.
[197]

With relatively little to show, she had fallen back on her sympathetic child-of-the-forest persona. Chattering blindly, she held the line taken in Tremont Temple, “I thought of returning to wild life again; but my love of sculpture forbade it.”

Just after the interview appeared, Wreford filed a broader article, this time with the
Art-Journal,
about several “Lady Artists of Rome.”
[198]
He lingered on Edmonia, noting her “extreme youth” and promise before praising her concern for her rare heritage. He stressed she struggled against prejudice and vied with great modern masters. He also mentioned new works-in-progress: two Longfellow groups. One had Hiawatha offering a deer to Minnehaha’s family and the other, leading Minnehaha away: “‘So hand in hand they went.’”
The Wooing
and
The Marriage of Hiawatha
eventually proved to be her most popular pieces.

The
Athenæum
article was an international scoop, widely noted and copied. It revealed a wellspring of talent where none was expected. The mainstream press – not just art journals, newspapers for the colored race, or abolitionist weeklies – carried the word. The
Boston Daily Evening Transcript,
which had followed her since 1864, brought its own update to readers in Boston.
[199]
The
Boston Every Saturday
and the
Boston American Traveller,
the English
Alden’s Illustrated Family Miscellany,
the
Illustrated Times,
Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper,
and the
Edinburgh Scotsman
(to name just a few) quickly reprinted the article in full, complete with typos, or published excerpts. A German periodical,
Das Ausland,
rendered a translation.

The
Philadelphia Christian Recorder,
a newspaper published by the AME Church, copied it with special gusto. Retitling it “Colored Genius at Rome,” it added mention of portrait busts made in Boston: “We saw last winter one of these, the exact likeness of Wendell Phillips. It is in the possession of … a colored student at Harvard College, and is highly prized as a work of art.”
[200]
Going all out, it predicted, “Miss Lewis will soon take rank among the greatest masters of the art, who transfer life’s glow to the pale marble.”

Other periodicals, including
Beadle’s Monthly,
the
Round Table,
and a feature column directed at colored readers in the
New York Evening Post,
all published in New York, summarized Wreford’s reporting. Out west,
Illinois Teacher
and the
West Eau Claire (WI) Argus
took note as did the staunchest skeptics in the British Empire. Feeling their upper class, the
Guardian
sniffed and the
Medical Times and Gazette
called the attention of anthropologists to the oddity in Rome. In the German-speaking world – Leipzig, Stuttgart, Regensburg, Vienna, Berlin, and Straubing, Bavaria – general news and art editors took note. (No doubt similar notices appeared in the rest of Europe – we just have not found them yet.)
A progressive-minded Christian philosophy book, took a more wary bow, not mentioning her name. Soon,
Appletons' Annual Cyclopædia and Register of Important Events
offered a digest.

Thousands of miles away, the report startled the dour editor of the
Oberlin Lorain County News.
He could hardly believe the “sensation in the Eternal City” was “none other than a Miss Mary E. Lewis who had her brief notoriety here – and for other than artistical efforts ...”
[201]
His punch line? “She is indeed enjoying a checkered career.” A week later, he reprinted the entire
Athenæum
piece, now using her preferred name but smirking, “The naïve reference to Miss Edmonia’s thought of returning to wild life again and her ‘much simplicity’ will amuse those who know her here.”
[202]

While the elite of Oberlin shored up their pride, the lowlife that nearly killed her must have barked at the moon. What was the reaction of Mrs. Dascomb? Of Father Keep, of her art teacher, of her attorney, and of the Oberlin gossips that meant to drive her out? Had a white student achieved such renown, Oberlin might have risked wallowing in self-congratulation. Comments could have been sought and printed for weeks.

Not for Edmonia. The Oberlin news issued nothing more at the time. At some point, nearly all College archives and all legal records relating to Edmonia disappeared. A College historian suggested, “[it was] as if the community had entered into a covenant of silence to shroud the facts.”
[203]
Only two Winter Term files, references in some student letters, some printed catalogue lists and news reports remain. In its seventy-fifth anniversary catalogue, Oberlin College claimed she had married – an obvious prank – and named as her husband a colored Oberlin graduate who had disappeared while she was still a child.
[204]
Further into the twentieth century, another historian blithely dismissed her as an “adventuress.”
[205]

Only Langston and Douglass recalled her at Oberlin with kindness. In his 1894 autobiography, Langston described an “interesting case.” It told more of his courtroom skill than of the client he declined to name.
[206]
Thinly disguised, Edmonia and her trial went unrecognized until 1968. Douglass, ten years after meeting her there, recalled advising her to leave town.
[207]

Certain events crystallize in a generation’s memory, shared references not forgotten. Across northern states and territories, Emancipation Day was one of those. It precipitated a spiritual union of organized gatherings, speeches, sermons, and celebrations. For slaves in the south, the Moment often turned on the arrival of Union troops. First impressions remained sharp, as important and fresh as man’s first steps on the Moon or 9/11 are for recent generations. They were as ripe for sharing.

Visualize Richmond as Edmonia arrived, only months after its surrender. Thousands of former slaves could each recall a personal tale and never tire of the telling. Many had learned of their liberation through the grapevine. Others were set free by their owners. Some, no doubt, acted out their dramas with great gestures. One fell to her knees in prayer. One danced and shouted, risking the whip of stunned masters. Another waved her arms, telling how she ran to family, friends, even strangers, announcing on the go. Some men joined the Union Army as it entered the city. Others had waited until they saw Lincoln, who soon arrived, to believe they were truly free. One recalled her first thought in tears, Oh where is my child, my child?

They all trumpeted joy and excitement. They all gave thanks. Some laughed about the flight of the rebels, their vandalism, and the elder freedman who burned Confederate money with Lincoln’s match. Each wondered about the future. Recalling further, some could show Edmonia the chains of bondage, heavy and cold, and the pens where slaves awaited the auction block. Some bore mutilations and scars. All cursed the traders. All grieved for the deaths, for the foiled escapes, for the rapes and the beatings, lamenting the misery of deprivation, sickness, lost families, and unholy burials, mourning the death of President Lincoln. Demoralized by the loss of order, those inclined to worry really worried.