Читать книгу Ten Years in Washington: Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them - Mary Clemmer - Страница 14

Table of Contents

Arrival of a Solitary Lady—“The Pantheon of America”—Il Penserosa—Milton’s Ideal—Dirty Condition of the House of Representatives—The Goddess of Melancholy—Vinnie Ream’s Statue of Lincoln—Its Grand Defects—Necessary Qualifications for a Sculptor—The Bust of Lincoln by Mrs. Ames—General Greene and Roger Williams—Barbarous Garments of Modern Times—Statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman—Bust of KosciuskoKosciusko—Pulling His Nose—Alexander Hamilton—Fate of Senator Burr—Statue of Baker—His Last Speech Prophetic—The Glory of a Patriotic Example—The Lesson which Posterity Learns—Horatio Stone, the Sculptor—Washington’s Statue at Richmond—Neglected Condition of the Capitol Statuary—Curious Clock—Grotesque Plaster Image of Liberty—Webster—Clay—Adams—The Pantheon at Rome—The French Pantheon—Bar-Maid Goddess—Dirty Customs of M. C’s—Future Glory of America.

A solitary lady has arrived in the old Hall of the House of Representatives; or, as Senator Anthony eloquently calls it, “the Pantheon of America.” “Considering her age,” (as women sweetly say of each other,) “she looks quite young.” What her precise age may be, I am as unable to tell you as that of any other of my friends. The daughter of Saturn and Vesta, we may, at least, conclude that she has lived long enough to look older than she does. Her name is “Il Penserosa,” and, “to judge by appearances,” she seems to have flourished about twenty-five of our mortal years. Yet Milton sung of her in his youth, before an unruly wife and three disobedient daughters, (who perversely wished to understand the alphabet which they read to their blind father,) had made him crabbed and loftily sour towards women—Milton sung of this maid who has but lately arrived in Washington:

“Come, pensive nun, devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure,

All in a robe of darkest grain

Flowing with majestic train,

And sable stole of cypress lawn,

Over thy decent shoulders drawn;

Come, but keep thy wonted state

With even step and musing gait,

And looks commercing with the skies,

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes.”

Now, if this maiden can keep on holding her head up, with looks perpetually “commercing with the skies” so that it will be impossible for her to see all the tobacco-juice and apple-cores beneath and round about her, it will conduce greatly to her peace of mind. I am sorry that “the Pantheon of America” is not a cleaner looking place. It’s a pity, as we have a Pantheon, that its shabbiness and dirt should flourish to a degree that is absolutely melancholy. I am sure it was in obedience to the law of fitness that the committee of the Congressional Library or some other committee, brought the Goddess of Melancholy in here, to hold her eyes and nose aloft, and to stand supreme queen, regnant of dust and gloom and American “expectoration.” “Hail! divinest Melancholy.” I am glad, judging by your face, that you are of the lymphatic temperament, and that consequently, all this dirt will afflict you less than it does me. But the more I look at your impassive and soulless countenance the more I fear that, after all, you are but a feeble counterfeit of Milton’s goddess or of the divine maiden conceived and born in,

“Woody, Ida’s inmost grove.”

In speaking of this marble, my heart will not let me forget that it was wrought by a hand self-taught; yet no less, standing where it does, it must be measured—somewhat, at least—by the standards of art. The figure, diminutive even in its femininity, suffers to insignificance by being set almost directly behind the gaunt and elongated form of Miss Ream’s “Lincoln;” yet it is in the figure, in its posé and gentle curves, its chaste and graceful drapery, “the stole of cypress lawn, over the decent shoulders drawn” in the firm yet delicate hand which holds it in its place—in these only it is that the artist has caught and fastened in stone the aspect of the “goddess, sage and holy.” The face is meaningless. Not a line, not a curve, not an expression indicates a capacity for melancholy, contemplation or anything else emotional or intellectual. No mortal woman ever really meditated for a minute who did not get her hair pushed back further from her eyes than this, but these regulation locks run straight down the little, senseless Greek face in a mathematical angle, indissolubly banded by a little perked up helmet, embossed with seven stars. Why these stars? “Il Penserosa” was not nearly enough related to “that starred Ethiop queen” Cassiope, to have borrowed the helmet to wear even in the old Hall of the old House of Representatives “in the United States of America.”

As for the Ream statue of Lincoln, (like many people,) the first glance at it is the most satisfactory that you will ever have. It will never look as well again. Some declare this very palpable lack to be in the subject—Mr. Lincoln’s own face and form—but many others note it to be in this representation of them. Mr. Lincoln’s living face was one of the most interesting ever given to man. There was more than fascination in its rugged homeliness; there was in it the deeper attraction of suffering and sympathy. It outrayed from every line engraven there by human pain and love and longing. But no soul can put into a statue or painting more than it has in itself. In this statue of Mr. Lincoln we have his rude outward image, unilluminated by one mental or spiritual characteristic. It is mechanical, material, opaque. Mrs. Sarah Ames, in her bust of Lincoln, which stands just behind our friend, “Il Penserosa,” has transfixed more of the soul of Lincoln in the brow and eyes of his face than Miss Ream has in all the weary outline of her many feet of marble. In the bust the lower part of the face is idealized into weakness. Without his gauntness and ruggedness Lincoln is not Lincoln. But any one who ever saw and felt the deep, tender, sad outlook of his living humanity must thank Mrs. Ames for having reflected and transfixed it in the brows and eyes of this marble.

Just outside of its alcove, at the right hand of the door which enters the New House of Representatives, stand side by side, the two statues from Rhode Island—one of General Green, the other of Roger Williams. That of General Green is spirited and exquisitely fine in detail; while that of Roger Williams is the one ideal statue in our Pantheon. Both were executed in Rome—the first by Henry R. Brown, the second by Franklin Simmons, of Providence, Rhode Island. No portrait of Roger Williams being in existence, Mr. Simmons has evolved from imagination and his inner consciousness a quaint, poetic figure and a dreamlike face, above whose lifted eyelids seems to hover a seraphic smile. Then it is refreshing to turn from the stove-pipe hats, shingled heads and angular garments in which the men of our generation do penance, to the flowing locks, puckered knee-breeches, with their dainty tassels, and the ample ruffs in which the holy apostle of liberty represents his name and time. He holds a book in his hand, on whose cover is inscribed the words, “Soul Liberty,” and, with open, uplifted glance and free posé seems about to step forward into air, with lips just ready to open with words of inspiration.

Opposite, on the other side of the Hall, stand together Connecticut’s contribution—the statues of Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman. They are of heroic size and at first glance are most imposing. When you walk nearer, and soberly survey them, you see that Roger Sherman looks solid and stolid, and you see also (at least, I do,) that old Jonathan Trumbull, with his down-perked head and narrow-lidded eyes, looks like a meditative rooster—an immense human chanticleer, who had paused in his lording career for a minute’s meditation. Mind, I don’t say but this may be a grand statue, in its way, I only observe that it is a very repelling one to me.

Just round the angle of the alcove on a box set on end, covered with tattered black cambric, stands a bust of Kosciusko, by H. D. Saunders. Poor Kosciusko! His nose always needs wiping; and what a pedestal for a Pantheon! A candle or a soap box, probably, half covered with black tags; then on his nose celestial, the dust alights and lodges always. It is so provocative—the tip of it; every bumpkin who approaches it taps or pulls it. Thus, literally, Kosciusko’s nose is seldom clean. One day it was. Some pitying hand had washed the entire face. If you could have seen the difference between Kosciusko clean and Kosciusko exiled, dirty and forlorn! A few steps from this bust stands the statue of Alexander Hamilton, by Horatio Stone—a noble figure, spirited in posture and beautiful in countenance. No painted portrait can give so grand an idea of the great Federalist to posterity. It is eight feet high and represents Hamilton in the attitude of impassioned speech. It is persuasive rather than declamatory, for the lifted hands droop, the face presses slightly forward, the eyes look out from under their royal arches deep and steadfast, while the sunshine pouring down the dome lights up every lineament with the intensity of life. The execution of the statue is exquisite, while in posé and expression it is the embodiment of majesty and power. Burr—who presided over the Senate, who with the pride, subtlety and ambition of Lucifer, planned and executed to live in the future amid the most exalted names of his time—sleeps dishonored and accursed; while the great rival that he hated, whose success he could not bear, whose life he destroyed, comes back in this majestic semblance to abide in the Capitol. Thus we behold in this statue not only a “triumph of art” but also a triumph of that final retributive compensation of justice which sooner or later crushes every wrong. This image of Hamilton looks forth from an era which, across the gulf of our later revolution, seems already remote. It recalls Washington the friend, Jefferson the foe, the war of Colonist and Tory, the war of ideas between Federalist and Republican, the struggles and successes of a splendid career; yet how far removed seem all across the graves of the men of our own generation whom patriotism and death have made illustrious and immortal. Thus nearer and dearer to the hearts of to-day must be the image of “the noblest Roman of them all.” It is a statue of Baker, also executed by Horatio Stone, in Rome, in 1863. Hamilton stands forth in heroic size, while the statue of Baker is under that of life, and barely suggests the grand proportions of the man. Yet the dignity and grandeur of his mien are here, as he stands wrapped in his cloak, his arms folded, his head thrown back, his noble face lifted as if he saw the future—his future—and awaited it undaunted and with a joyful heart. At his side is the plumed hat of a soldier, and on the pedestal on which he stands are graven words from his last speech in the United States Senate, when he replied to Breckenridge, “There will be some graves reeking with blood, watered by the tears of affection. There will be some privation. There will be some loss of luxury; there will be somewhat more need of labor to procure the necessaries of life. When that is said, all is said. If we have the country, the whole country, the Union, the constitution, free government—with these will return all the blessings of a well ordered civilization. The path of the country will be a course of grandeur and glory such as our fathers in the olden time foresaw in the dim visions of years to come—such as would have been ours to-day, had it not been for the treason for which the senator too often seeks to apologize.”

Thus to the land he loved he gave his life—a life so rich in every quality that rounds and completes the highest manhood.

At sight of this mute marble, what memories are stirred! Again, in and around Union Square throbs the vast human mass. Banners wave, cannons boom, drums beat, men march. Every pulse of the air thrills with the cry, “To Arms!” Amid all the orators of that hour, whose voice uttered such burning words as Baker—he who left the seat of a senator for the grave of a soldier. Thank God for our dead who yet live. No land has a more priceless legacy. No soil was ever planted with richer blood. No freedom ever bought with a costlier victory. Let me tell you, public men, amid all your lavish expenditures of money wrung from the people, never begrudge the price you pay for the fit statue of a great character. Line the corridors of the Capitol with the images of the noble and the good, that, by suggestion and semblance, they may arouse to a purer purpose the emulation of the living. In these halls where lobbyists congregate, where money-changers stand with shameless faces offering their venal price for truth and honor, buying and selling the integrity of manhood, give to our eyes at least the memories of high example. If men in the rush of affairs and the absorption of their ambitions take no time to study them, thoughtful women will pause and ponder, and then teach the children who are to rule after us to love and remember.

I look on these statues and think of the man who wrought them—think of him as I saw him every day six years ago, a pale, dissatisfied, restless man, whose hands were busy with uncongenial tasks, but whose brain was haunted with noble ideals, to which he was powerless to give form or substance. Opportunity, the ultimate test of all power, came to him and at last Congress voted ten thousand dollars to Horatio Stone to execute the statue of Alexander Hamilton in Rome. And, lo! the intangible vision of the weary man is embodied in imperishable marble—the most majestic statue beneath the dome of the Capitol. A little way before it is a plaster cast, mounted high on a wooden block, of Houdin’s bronze figure of Washington, the original of which is in the State Capitol at Richmond, Virginia. Such a peaked-headed, idiotic-looking Washington I never saw elsewhere. If he looked like this, it is perfectly plain why he passed through life without ever once having done anything naughty. But if he did look like this he was a stupid mortal to live with. Most of the marbles of our Pantheon are poorly set. Even the seraphic apostle of “soul liberty” stands on a box covered with cinnamon-colored cambric, and his martial brother does likewise. Abraham Lincoln is ensconced within an unpainted wooden fence, and the great lawgivers of Connecticut stand in their big cloaks upon cotton covered boxes. Mrs. Ames’ bust of “Lincoln” is poised on a handsome pedestal of Scotch granite; but, with few exceptions, though not utterly barren of fine marbles, the present aspect of the American Pantheon is chiefly suggestive of crudeness, shabbiness, and—the exorbitant necessity of spittoons. Over the entrance is a clock, having for its dial the wheels of a winged car, resting on a globe. In this car sits a lady called History, with a scroll and pen in hand. Oh! the story she could tell if she could tell the truth. Opposite, twenty-four Corinthian columns of variegated Potomac marble shoot to the roof, and shadow what was once the gallery of the Old Hall of Representatives. In the centre stands a horrid-looking plaster image of Liberty, modeled by Cansici; and under it the American bird, modeled from life and cut in sandstone by Volaperti. Besides, scattered about are portraits of Henry Clay, a mosaic portrait of Lincoln, by Signor Salviato of Venice, of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, and of Joshua Giddings.

I have meant to pass nothing over that graces or disgraces our American Pantheon, that you, afar, may see it as it is. In itself it is the most majestic room in the Capitol. Set apart to enshrine the sculptured forms of illustrious dead, already its arches and alcoves are fraught with their living memoirs. Here Webster spoke, here Clay presided, here Adams died.

It is modeled from the Roman Pantheon, and its roof, at least, is like it. We have no proof that the Roman Pantheon was set apart for such a purpose as that to which our own is dedicated; indeed, in the beginning it was supposed to be connected with the Roman baths. To-day it is chiefly sacred to art as the burial-place of Raphael. The French Pantheon, also, was comparatively poor in statues, though boasting of immense compositions in painting, by David and Gros. Herein the great men who have illustrated France appear in the forms of Fenelon, Malesherbes, Mirabeau, Voltaire, Rousseau, Lafayette, and others; while at their feet, as befits their sex, sit History and Liberty, properly employed making wreaths for the heads of these masculine heroes. From the dome look down Clovis, Charlemagne, St. Louis, Louis XIV., XVI., XVII., Marie Antoinette, Madame Elizabeth, with a central glory to represent Deity. The dome of our own rotunda is a florid imitation of this. We have Franklin, Washington, and troops of goddesses, who look like bar-maids; but from the focal apex we have omitted God, whose eye is needed for such an assembly.

The magnificent facade which leads to the Houses of Parliament in Westminster Palace is nine hundred feet long, paneled with tracery and decorated with rows of majestic statues of the kings and queens of England, from the conquest to the present time. Let us hope that it will never be defiled from beginning to end, as our own magnificent legislative halls, with tobacco-juice from the mouths of demoralized men. The earth has never had but one absolutely perfect building, in itself the final consummate flower of art—the Parthenon—consecrated first to woman, the Virgin House, sacred to Athena. Beneath its pure and perfect dome there was nothing to divert the gazer’s contemplation from the simplicity and majesty of mass and outline. The whole building, without and within, was filled with the most exquisite pieces of sculpture, executed under the guidance of Phidias. The grand central figure was the colossal statue of the Virgin Goddess, wrought by the hand of Phidias himself. The weight of gold which she carried, says Thucydides, was forty talents. Could a wooden fence guard so much gold in our Christian Pantheon to-day? It was a happy thought which dedicated this old hall of the nation to national art, but it far outleaped its century. That which shall truly be the Pantheon of America is not for us. The children of later generations, a far-off procession, may come up hither to worship the diviner forms of the future, the majestic statues of the nation’s best—its sons grand in manhood, its daughters divine in womanhood; but, with here and there a rare exception, our eyes who live to-day will see them not.