The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (37 page)

Ambition had moved her again to the verge, poised between striking success and numbing disaster. A year before the Centennial, she had everything in place except the money. She suddenly quit Rome and headed for America, sailing from Le Havre on the swift
Ville de Paris.

Senator Sumner had died a year earlier, pleading, “Take care of the civil rights bill.”
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(A lame duck Congress passed it at the end of its term.) Supporters, even rivals, grieved for him almost as deeply as they had for
Lincoln. For Edmonia, the tale of a cowardly southern Member of Congress
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beating Sumner near to death must have revived thoughts of her own awful night behind Father Keep’s.

She took plaster copies of her staid
Charles Sumner
bust with her. Arriving at Porter’s in New York, she lost no time. She sold one copy to a New York surgeon who then referred her to William Henry Johnson in Albany, NY. The year before, she had basked in Johnson’s praise, sent by letter to the reception in her honor. To her delight, he now bought a bust by mail.
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To deliver it, she took it to Albany where she unveiled it before a crowd at the Hamilton Street AME Church.
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Johnson was so proud of the bust that he arranged to show it twenty years later at the Atlanta World’s Fair. Then he donated it to the Frederick Douglass Hospital in Philadelphia.

Even if she got many more orders, selling copies at $200 would not meet her needs. From Albany, she headed 1,500 railroad miles west to St. Paul and the warm welcome of Rev. John Ireland, then an aide to the Bishop. Surely he had visited her studio in Rome. His newspaper, the Catholic
St. Paul (MN) Northwestern Chronicle,
trumpeted her arrival and praised her ambition and energy. Briefly noting her titled patrons, it reported her exhibit, and added, “We bespeak for her the hearty patronage of our citizens whose aesthetic tastes are already well recognized.”
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The show was not dimly like her presentations in Chicago, San Francisco, or San Jose. Even combined with Minneapolis, St. Paul’s population was not half that of San Francisco. Except for a front page ad and brief mention in the
St. Paul Pioneer Press,
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no further record remains. She neither gave interviews nor received reviews. Her work sat over a storefront. Possibly the main promotion was done from pulpits. For once, she did not appear with her work. Instead, she left tickets with Rev. Ireland, promising half the proceeds to benefit Catholic orphans. She then disappeared for two weeks.

What was she up to? One can only speculate. Certainly, the goal of her 4,500-mile trek could not have been this meek show up a flight of stairs while she vacationed in the autumn chill of what we now call the upper Midwest. The low-key display could neither explain nor justify the journey.

The most plausible explanation is that the show was a pretext for a secret mission: to discuss her money needs face to face with her brother. He lived on the frontier, one thousand miles west of St. Paul. Not the closest outpost of civilization to Bozeman, St. Paul offered a friend who would promote and look after her works while she was away. Ideally, the show defrayed her cost of travel and then some while raising money for the Church.

Had her brother answered her letters? Probably. Were there unanswered questions? Of course. Her passion for a marble queen and intense need for thousands of dollars would have been difficult to explain in writing.

There was another concern. Edmonia had panicked when learning of her brother’s “squaw” in 1869. Was some woman still distracting him? Was he hiding some illness or misfortune? The mails were unreliable – slower than slow and sometimes lost.

The Northern Pacific Railroad planned to pass through Bozeman on its way from Duluth to Puget Sound – but it would not do so for years. Four hundred and fifty miles of track terminated at the sandstone banks of the Missouri when the financial markets collapsed in 1873. Until rails pushed through, a stagecoach ran between Bismarck, Dakota Territory, and Bozeman.

Traveling six hundred miles by stage or horseback, her brother could have reached Bismarck in a week or two. Edmonia could reach it in a few days via rail. She could be back in St. Paul within two weeks as promised.

We found no mention of their meeting in Bozeman’s gossipy journal or in any other record. Yet it seems reasonable to picture their covert rendezvous.

As they shared meals and talked at some rough and ready frontier inn, their roles suddenly swapped. He was usually the talker, skills he honed as a barber and entertainer whose friends were reputedly legion. She was more the listener, more tuned to the inner dialogues of silent, solitary work. She was the isolated one, with no trusted friends or confidantes beyond a confessor priest.

This was her turn to talk. She needed him to listen. She needed to explain herself and to deliver the speeches she had turned over in her mind. She could expose the gritty edge of her passion to no one else. She could tell him her secret and trust it to go no further. She could show him her drawings, her gold medal, and her interviews crediting him with helping her. She could review her successes in Rome, Naples, Vienna, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and San Jose. She could tell of the harm her creditors and enemies could cause. Perhaps she even prodded him with her agonies at Oberlin.

Most important, she could say the bearded Commissioner came right to her studio and urged her to represent her race. She was poised to do something greater than she had done before. Perhaps it was madness. Only time and the public would tell. The chance would slip away if they did not pounce on it. He was the only one she could ask. This was the moment.

Good talks cannot be rushed. He was a good listener, but he needed answers. She asked for a lot of money with no hope of repayment. They had a day or more to open their hearts and speak their minds.

The two unlikely orphans shared a special bond of common adversity. They had both faced and overcome great disadvantages. Born twelve years apart of different mothers, living half-way around the world from each other, they had little in common except an uncommon spirit. They were linked by blood, a few shared memories, and some letters – but mostly by shared dreams.

Gifted and loving, they renewed their connection and combined their resources. Secretly meeting near where Lewis and Clark crossed the Missouri River (if we are correct), they planned to make their own special history.

What was it about their origins that inspired their dreams? From his brief essays and remarks in local newspapers, he placed little meaning on his childhood. But his abundant love for his sister is clear. As a colored American whose local community held him high as an important citizen, he must have embraced her mission as a citizen of a wider world. He had the means. He sent her back with one more secret. The excitement of her success would be payment enough for him.

On her return to Rome, she completed the marble work and set sail for Philadelphia, free and clear, with little fuss.

We found no further trace of the statues she brought to St. Paul.

Edmonia enjoyed a cabin on a three-year-old express steamship,
City of Chester,
from Liverpool. Arriving New York harbor May 2, she headed for Philadelphia. She surely prayed to dull the worries that required her to sidestep questions – even from fans and a friendly press in Rome and Republican precincts. She would have feared readers and rumors more than reporters. So much was beyond her control.

She usually discounted her age and proclaimed her profession as she sailed on the French Line. The vague status of “spinster” and advanced age of 34 (making her birth year 1841) that she reported to the English ship’s officers fooled no one. Soon after she landed in New York, the art column of the
Boston Transcript
noted her arrival
.
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A year earlier, a meeting of colored editors had called for the Centennial to exhibit one of her works “in the name of the colored women of America.”
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They wanted something they could install in Washington DC as a permanent exhibit.

A large statue like
The Death of Cleopatra
might have served their purpose. But wouldn’t a public, colored sponsorship bait the jackals that forced her from Oberlin? Could fund-raising newsmen ever keep a secret?

The City of Brotherly Love treated colored Americans harshly. Frederick Douglass considered it the most racist city in the north.
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The forceful rejection of colored faithful by white worshippers in Philadelphia had forced the founding of the AME Church in 1794. John Brown was cursed by the wealthy classes that settled there after fleeing the Haitian revolution. After his hanging, the city did not permit his body to remain overnight
en route
to his final resting place.

Colored leaders had sought to have the Centennial recognize their contributions in the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and in the development of cities, industries, and railroads. They asked for work for their many unemployed. They even offered to raise money.

Exposition managers said no to everything. Despite protests and editorials, they did not employ one black in raising two hundred buildings. They rejected proposals of colored sweepers, guards, and ticket-takers. The women’s committee insulted its colored members, driving them out. Policemen sponsoring a benefit simply refused admission, salting their remarks with insults about the taint of “nigger money.”
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The policy presumably meant to heal the deep wounds of the Civil War by appeasing Jim Crow. It aimed to unite the white majority while the power elite ditched gains in minority rights. Colored blood was not welcome.

Few blacks became exhibitors. One was Alexander P. Ashbourne, the inventor of a biscuit-cutter and coconut preparations for cookies, candy, and hair.
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These appeared under his company name in the agricultural section. A concession called “The South” portrayed “old-time plantation ‘darkies’” as happy and carefree, singing “their quaint melodies.”
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An idealized mirage born of shame, it attempted to pasteurize history for the naïve, the illiterate, the ignorant, and the unswerving Dixie chorus.

Program managers were not satisfied to salute the opening moment with national anthems and other music by Americans. They went abroad to hire the musical superstar and well-known demagogue of the master race, Richard Wagner. For five thousand dollars, he created a “Grand Festival March,” a forgettable mashup of Wagnerisms. It lacked a single American theme. At the top of the score, he inserted a motto that sneered at the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence. Quoting Goethe, it translates: “He only earns the right to freedom and to life / Who daily is compelled to conquer them.”
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Like a subtext chanted by a Greek chorus, it reflected the pond scum of elitism that tainted the event.

More could go wrong. It could happen to anyone. Harriet Hosmer sent a plaster model of the famous golden gates that she had created for Lord Brownlow. More than seventeen feet high, it was too tall to fit in the ship’s hold. Rethinking, she rushed a small plaster animal figure covered in gold leaf so fragile it would surely need repair.
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For unique reasons, it appeared among craft works in the Italian section of the Women’s Building, far from the main art exhibit. Even William Story’s
Medea
would suffer, needing repairs by some local artisan.

Edmonia must have agonized that a work crew could ‘accidentally’ break her
magnum opus,
lose it, or worse. Such was the fate of an important AME Church project that some historians have connected to her. Church leaders intended to mark their history at the Centennial with a bronze bust of and permanent monument to Bishop Richard Allen, the founder of their church.
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The Reconstruction Congress had authorized $3,000, making Allen, who died in 1831, the first colored American to be so honored. Members across the nation raised more money.

Politics reigned as the anti-blacks who prevailed locally considered the Allen tribute a stain on their perfect plan. In April, they denied it a permanent location, although they granted permanence to the Presbyterian and German tributes. The production contract went to Cincinnati architect Alfred White. White was English-born and likely a crony of some politician. He employed an English sculptor named John Rowe.
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Some modern historians theorized Edmonia created the marble bust and the marble bas-reliefs for the statue’s pedestal.
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Archives at the Schomburg Center in New York confirm White created the bust.
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The
Official Catalogue,
prepared in advance, promised the Allen Monument would be sixteen-feet high on a six by six-foot base.
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The marble then was delayed at sea. The AME Church postponed the scheduled celebration from Independence Day to September 22, the date Lincoln issued the initial Emancipation Proclamation.
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In September, a railroad accident that sent sixteen railroad cars into the Chemung River destroyed the monument proper.
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Near the November closing of the Centennial, the larger-than-life marble bust was finally unveiled atop a hastily prepared granite pyramid. As if to dramatize the disappointments that ground down years of anticipation, the sudden cancellation of its invited speaker, John Mercer Langston, and a cold rain marred the ceremony.
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The bust then disappeared for over one hundred thirty years, returning to public display in 2010.
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