The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  Charlotte’s Inner Circle

  Miss Cushman was as powerful and her life as complex as the Shakespearian roles she inhabited on stage. Her skill and spirit could bewitch whole rooms of people. In her day-to-day manner, there was nothing theatrical about her. She was clearly authoritative and intelligent. She was in great need of love – unalloyed, unquestioning approval. She had entertained seductive offers of marriage, but she had never formed an intimate relationship with a man.

  Giving and getting love off-stage, she entrusted herself only to women. Many years before, a distinguished Philadelphia portrait painter, Thomas Sully, had shown her as a smiling young woman, softening her features and making her look quite beautiful.[171] She developed an intense love affair with Sully’s daughter, Rosalie. Even after Charlotte’s career separated them, glowing letters sustained the relationship until Rosalie’s passing in 1847.[172]

  The provocative writer, Geraldine E. Jewsbury, met Charlotte in England. Her novel, Zoe, A History of Two Lives, had shocked many people because of its discussion of religious doubts and restrictions on women. She then based the main character of her 1848 novel, The Half Sisters, on Charlotte. The two artists found in one another understanding, passionate appreciation, and protective love.

  It was to Geraldine that Charlotte confided her near seductions. Separated by touring appearances, Geraldine accepted Charlotte’s need for constant intimacy. When Charlotte confessed to being troubled by her relationship with Eliza Cook, a beer-drinking young poet who dressed in ‘staring’ red and cut her hair in a mannish style, Geraldine counseled: “Now for what you darkly allude to, I know something of that worry too ... follow your own instincts. You need love to keep you up in your daily course more than other women …” Geraldine concluded: “Miss Cook would think me very good if she could believe that another person might love you as well as she does.”[173]

  More affairs followed. In 1849, tall, attractive Matilda Hays[174] asked to be her apprentice, playing Juliet to Charlotte’s Romeo. Matilda eventually gave up acting, but she continued as Charlotte’s constant companion for a decade. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote to her sister: “I understand that she and Miss Hays have made vows of celibacy and eternal attachment to each other – they live together, dress alike … It is a female marriage.”[175] A friend assured her the arrangement was “by no means uncommon.”

  Later in Boston, enchanted with the outgoing Hatty Hosmer, Charlotte convinced the budding sculptor’s father to let his daughter study in Rome. Hatty soon inhabited her own rooms at Charlotte’s Corso address.[176] A year or so later, Charlotte discovered that Hatty and Matilda had developed a relationship that excluded her. She rather desperately turned back to the theater and sought new relationships.

  By the time Edmonia appeared, Charlotte was a forgiving maternal figure – ‘Ma’ – to Hatty. She had formed the most stable relationship of her life with the adoring Emma Stebbins, a painter-turned-sculptor from a wealthy New York family. Reserved and a year older, Stebbins provided a perfect complement to the gregarious actress.

  Hatty once called Emma, who also studied with Gibson, “wife.”[177] But it was with Charlotte that Emma shared rooms when they moved to Via Gregoriana in 1858. Hatty became “single,” living separately at the same address for several years.

  Before Edmonia arrived in Rome, Charlotte and the headstrong Hatty were at odds. Hatty moved across the Piazza Barberini and next door to William Wetmore Story. Eventually, their resentments faded. They never regained their closeness.

  4. STUDIO VISITORS

  Charlotte did not share Mrs. Child’s view that prolonged training and credentials must underpin serious art. She once worked as a utility actress, taking any role, even men’s parts. She advised young actresses to study as they performed: “You must suffer, labor, and wait before you will be able to grasp the true and the beautiful,” she told one young woman.[178] “... only practice can tell you whether you are right.” With similar advice to Edmonia, Charlotte could encourage her efforts to sustain herself with small sales while developing her craft.

  Visitors soon brightened Edmonia’s day.[179] Keen to generate upbeat reports, eager for sales, and proud of her work, she would have welcomed them. Smart and cheerful in her own shop, Edmonia was ready to answer questions, even complying when people coyly asked to see her sculpt. They doubted that a woman could actually create something original. Hatty, who had suffered such taunts to the point of exasperation, was protective of her sister artists. She undoubtedly prepared Edmonia for such skepticism.

  Stimulated by the attention, needing something new to show, Edmonia must have modeled wet mud in her dreams. Each day, she headed past the Spanish Steps to her studio, anxious to work. She might periodically digress to clear her mind, walking about like a tourist, visiting Hatty’s studio, or casting medallions for ready sale. Plaster was easy and inexpensive – and she needed income. She hired local carvers, probably recommended by Hatty, to put her commissions into marble. After studying their techniques, she could help with polishing. One day she would take over chisel, rasp, and file.

  5. INDIAN THEMES

  Visionary chatter about the “noble savage,”[180] mythical and real, must have sparked great interest among Edmonia’s fans. Joseph Mozier, whose studio was near Hatty’s, had enjoyed success carving versions of a semi-nude Pocahontas. At Edmonia’s request, Mrs. Child sent her notes on the legendary princess, later commenting, “I thought it would be a good subject for her because she had been used to seeing young Indian girls, and could work from memory, and with her heart in it, for her mother’s sake.”[181]

  Edmonia found greater promise in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s Song of Hiawatha (1855). The epic poem was a huge best seller world-wide.[182] Its insistent pulse, exotic story, magical beings, and inspired images were so romantic, so exciting. Was it to advance his mission – or the cravings of youthful desire – that led Hiawatha to discard the advice of old Nokomis? Hiawatha swept the young Minnehaha off her maidenly feet while her father looked on with pride.

  Longfellow depended upon readers’ imaginations to conjure scenes of primal love in the wilderness. The tender union also settled an important conflict between their tribes, resonating with a national wish for harmony as North-South tensions grew. Then, like the lost Lenore of Poe’s Raven (1845), the beautiful young woman tragically died. Magnified by readers’ sympathy, the self-reliant Hiawatha fulfilled his task alone.

  The effect was charming and popular. People dwelled on tragedy and wished for simple solutions to modern troubles. Currier & Ives had recognized a ready market with a series of Hiawatha prints, two each illustrating his wooing and wedding.

  Edmonia roughed out scenes from the same passages in three dimensional clay. She again plunged into the problems of two-figure designs. She started Hiawatha’s Marriage[184] (Figure 9) while working on The Freed Woman. A wealthy matron, sister to an art collector, ordered a copy while it was still in clay. Soon a companion group, Hiawatha’s Wooing (later called The Old Arrow Maker)[185] caught buyers’ eyes. (Figure 10)

  Unlike sculptors for whom the “noble savage” excused bare flesh to pique the appetites of the mostly male market,[183] she used thrills of modest but exotic clothing and the mystique of love to elicit orders from women. Each statue was about two feet tall, a handy scale that accommodated her market, was not overly dear, and fit strong tables in well-appointed parlors. In size, they were well within the range used by John Rogers for his popular plaster illustrations.

  In no time at all, the public showered its approval.[187] One observer raved, “In both the Indian type of feature is carefully preserved and every detail of dress, &c. is true to nature: the sentiment is equal to the execution. They are charming hits, poetic, simple, and natural, and no happier illustrations of Longfellow’s most original poem were ever made than these….”[188] Another went further, “The pose of Hiawatha and Minnehaha is perfectly natural; there is an ease and gracefulness which is really ch
arming. The adjuncts are also in keeping: the wampum belt, the fringe on the robe, the quiver and arrows, the wild flowers on the ground; the whole tout ensemble carry out the idea and illustrate Indian life.”[189]

  Figure 9. Hiawatha’s Marriage, modeled 1866

  Except for exotic costumes, the figures in Edmonia’s illustrations of The Song of Hiawatha might be European. The above copy was carved in 1874. Photo courtesy: Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas.[190]

  Figure 10. The Old Arrow Maker, modeled 1866, carved 1872.

  From the first, this image was also called The Wooing of Hiawatha.[191] Photo courtesy: Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Joseph S. Sinclair.

  6. A NEW PATRON, AN OLD FEAR

  Hinting at benefits she might deliver, the celebrated actress danced a dance Edmonia had learned in Boston. Charlotte understood how to precipitate news and move buyers. She connected to important people and was wise from a lifetime in the arts. She was also more skilled as a mentor, more stable, more realistic about art, and unafraid of critics. She once promoted Hatty this way, when her retirement was fresh and she had few worries, then Emma Stebbins. Now older and less personally involved, she still enjoyed triumph by proxy.

  Unlike Charlotte’s close admirers, Edmonia never felt the actress’s dramatic powers until she attended her first ‘evening.’ She was also not schooled in writing the adoring ‘love-you’ notes the actress craved. Neither her stone-faced aunts nor her prim circle in Boston – and certainly not the Oberlin perfectionists – indulged in the personal superlatives that Charlotte eagerly consumed.

  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.

  7. MEET THE PRESS

  Ideal or Real?

  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.

  The Question of Style

  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.

  Recognition

  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.

  Reverberations

  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.