The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  Skilled and sure, her fingers flew at the clay – maybe the last scrap at her disposal. Although the man was always fully clothed and wore a fine hat outside, she made him as hatless and bare-chested as the masters of Olympus.[376] It was the portrait look most often adopted by sculptors who followed the ancient Greeks. Longfellow was, after all, a member of the modern literary pantheon. In the ever-wishful idiom of the day, the depiction could show him as more god than mortal man.

  Still, she surely longed to meet him. He would leave Rome after Carnival like every other tourist.

  In the end, their introduction was by chance, as remarkable as it was humble. Longfellow’s youngest brother,[377] whose report Anne Whitney captured with scant detail, browsed into her studio. There was no mention of the damp rags that must have covered the soft clay. Nor was there much of their conversation.

  Edmonia likely recognized him as a member of the Longfellow party. She probably greeted him and asked if she could help. Did she invite him to view the bust and then remove the cloth? Or, was she wily, slipping the cloth away and then silently guiding her prey like a rabbit to a trap?

  No matter. To his utter surprise, the Longfellow brother suddenly came eye-to-eye with the poet’s stern visage. It stared back at him, seizing his attention, spurring his excitement. Thrilled, he dashed next door and fetched the family.

  As they admired her work, perhaps they discussed Evangeline,[378] the Civil War, the Fields, and the many other people they knew in common. No doubt, some conversation turned on the Longfellow-inspired array in her studio. It is likely she offered him his pick.[379]

  The only person dissatisfied with the image was Edmonia, according to Anne’s letter home. She begged the poet sit for a moment while she corrected his nose.

  Anne Whitney was finally impressed by Edmonia’s skill. She wrote to her sister that the family received the portrait as one of the best, praise confirmed by the Spectator.[380] That was also the consensus at the Art-Journal in London. Within a year, its critic enthusiastically called her work “the truest and finest likeness of the poet I have ever seen.”[381]

  Confidence and determination renewed, Edmonia resolved to brave her critics in Boston. She first sent photos, hoping to raise funds to copy it in marble. Someone, probably one of Longfellow’s family, had tipped her that Harvard lacked a good portrait and hoped for a donation. She also wished to soothe the soreness connected with the sudden arrival of Forever Free and to raise money to pay her costs.

  All she needed was money for passage. It was money she could only dream of having. She had stretched her credit tighter than the old arrow maker’s bowstring.

  Figure 27. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, marble

  Edmonia carved this copy to the order of a British collector. Modeled 1869, carved 1872. Photo courtesy: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool Museums.

  Edmonia’s portrayal in marble might reflect his demeanor on the streets of Rome but not his dress. Notice its balanced composition and the natural flow of gently waved hair into the near-curly beard.

  Neoclassical appreciation called for poetic inferences. One gets a strong whiff of this in Elizabeth Peabody’s comment, which hailed “the likeness of the creator of Hiawatha being embalmed in stone by a descendant of Minnehaha – a beautiful thought.”[382]

  22. BUTE

  April came slowly, months after Mr. Wood helped her move her debts, after Carnival and the departure of the Longfellow party. It came after Holy Week, when the most sacred rites of the Church combined with the seasons to promise great change, the magic of divine renewal, and new chances.

  It was April when a young convert to Catholicism, came to Edmonia’s rescue. He was in Rome to follow the Vatican council that would define doctrines that included papal infallibility. It seems word of her distress on the clerical grapevine drew him to her studio.[383] She often recalled their encounter, but she left us no detail. We can only imagine it.

  He likely followed a priest to her door. Well-dressed and slightly younger than she was, he introduced himself as Mr. Stuart. He edged around her shop, peering at various pieces and asking questions. He looked for a long time at Hagar and at the plaster bust of Col. Shaw, heard its history, then asked how she came to be an artist.

  Edmonia explained she and her brother were orphans raised in the wild forest by her Chippewa mother whose talent for design had passed to her.

  The visitor had also lost his parents. As a student of languages, he probably asked her to say something in Chippewa, just to hear the sound of it.

  She promptly did so.

  What does it mean? he asked.

  Perhaps she said, Ohnishe shin. It means, It is good.

  He repeated it, smiled and thanked her. Turning back to her display, he walked to a large piece, still in clay, from which Edmonia had removed wet burlap. It was an altarpiece centered on a beatific Madonna with the Infant Christ.[384]

  After a moment, he said, That is the one I should like to buy. And then he offered a sum large enough to solve all her financial woes.

  The priest smiled.

  The young man smiled and took Edmonia’s hand, repeating, Ohnishe shin, and laughed.

  The priest repeated, Ohnishe shin.

  They all laughed and said it again. With warm Goodbyes, smiles, and waves, they parted.

  Ohnishe shin, indeed. It had the sound of a blessing.

  She must have stared at the altarpiece as if seeing it for the first time.

  In the corner of her eye, Hagar greeted her divine visitor. Fear not. It was God’s will.

  Relieved and exhausted, tearing up, Edmonia prayed a thankful prayer.

  Mr. Stuart, she soon learned, was John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, the third Marquess (or Marquis) of Bute, heir to a Scottish title, and born in 1847 to enormous wealth. His father had made Cardiff, Wales, one of the world’s great coaling ports when the steamship and steel industries were beginning to boom. His income was estimated to be $1.5 million a day, but he knew a thing or two about debt.

  Bute, as he signed himself, was a brilliant linguist and medieval scholar. Raised Presbyterian, he had studied various religions and their origins. Cardinal Newman’s Oxford Movement brought about his conversion. Benjamin Disraeli[385] made it the theme of his novel Lothair. Ultimately, Lord Bute gained fame for reviving traditions, building Cardiff Castle in medieval style, redecorating many old churches and other buildings. Mount Stuart, on the Isle of Bute west of Glasgow, was his architectural masterpiece and home.

  He had been a Roman Catholic for only a few months, having waited until he reached his majority to join the Church. This was his first visit to Rome. He would later translate the extensive Roman Breviary [containing the all the hymns, offices, and prayers for the canonical hours] into English.

  Thanks to Lord Bute, Edmonia resolved her debts. Then she renewed her passport and sped to New York, traveling in steerage surrounded by humble emigrants.[386] Arriving early June in Boston, she wanted to make things right with her oldest mentors and patrons.

  23. BACK IN THE USA

  Resolving Forever Free

  Each summer, the Freedmen’s Aid Society teachers flocked north like songbirds. Gathering in Boston, they celebrated their successes and bucked up their morale. Edmonia joined them in 1869 and heard herself praised along with Garrison, Whittier, and others.[387] The Freedmen’s Record had reported her quick success in Rome, adding, “She has not forgotten her people and this early education, dedication of her genius to this cause is honorable to her feelings.”[388] Fellow teachers hailed her as the inspiring local girl who made good. This she was.

  Her presence made all the difference in finding a home for Forever Free. Mrs. Chapman and others had rejected the idea of presenting it to William Lloyd Garrison. As editor of the Liberator, he had never earned a living. They raised $30,000 to give him a pension instead.

  Then someone proposed to recognize Rev. Leonard Grimes with Edmonia’s work. Rev. Grimes was the heroic abolitionist pastor of Boston
’s leading colored congregation. As a Washington hack man, he had risked his life driving into Virginia and returning with runaway slaves. Even after going to jail, he did not stop. In 1854, he fought for the freedom of a fugitive slave with such public fury that bounty hunters no longer came around.

  Given the break with Mrs. Child and her clique, perhaps it was the only solution. Although Edmonia suffered for her breach of manners, many others lionized her.

  Edmonia also needed to raise seven hundred dollars to carve her Longfellow bust into marble for presentation to Harvard College. The poet had been a faculty member for nearly two decades. She could tell of his family’s praise.

  A leading publisher[389] readily put a photo of her portrait in its Tremont street window and collected donations. The New York Times and other papers spread the word – some repeatedly.[390] As a bonus, she offered a terra cotta bust (Figure 28) to any subscriber who contributed one hundred dollars.

  Figure 28. Longfellow, plaster

  This example, dated 1876 was painted to resemble terra cotta. It appears in contemporary dress, in contrast to the marble portrait (Figure 27). Photo courtesy: private collection.

  Niagara Falls

  Edmonia had not seen her aunt for a long time, according to Anne Whitney’s retelling.[391] Perhaps she had not seen her since her brother boarded her and put her in school around 1852.

  Edmonia decided mid-summer was a good time, and she headed for Niagara Falls. She suddenly glimpsed a familiar figure in the road, older than she remembered. They both stopped short. Her aunt said, Is that you, Wild Fire?

  She had not heard anyone call her Indian name for years. She dropped her bag as her heart pounded with delight. She leaped forward and flung her arms around the older woman. Yes, it’s me! She kissed her and grinned. She had missed her family.

  Her aunt pushed away and stepped back, coolly restoring decorum. She did not welcome the hugs and kisses common to Edmonia’s friends in Rome. To be so demonstrative was never the Indian way. She would not do otherwise.

  Edmonia quickly retreated, mirroring. She was home – but immediately out of place. She had changed. Her aunt had only grown older.

  For two weeks, she shared her aunt’s home and enjoyed the woodland luxuries she once described to Mrs. Child: “To catch a fish when you are hungry, cut the boughs of a tree, make fire to roast it, and eat it in the open air….”[392] She could have feasted on other game and wild rice flavored with maple syrup. Her memories refreshed by fireside aromas and working side by side, she might have mused about her mother. She credited her mother as the source of her spirit, her industry, and her perseverance.[393]

  In our mind’s eye, her hosts would have listened intently to the stories she could tell: rough sea crossings and ancient roads, the intense Mediterranean light and bright blue waters, huge cathedrals, and Italian customs like the siesta. She could tell of cities older and snowy Alpine passes higher than anything they imagined. She could discuss her clothing made in Rome, fashions they had not seen before. She could tell how vicious racism ground at Jews in Rome while she and the few other people of color enjoyed life without special notice – at least among Europeans.

  She could have shown photos and explained how she based her most popular creations on The Song of Hiawatha. What about her litany of successes? She could recite it as she had for interviews, digressing to explain this name or that place. She probably bragged of making her portrait of Longfellow on the fly and of then meeting him and his family. How surprised was all Rome to learn she caught his visage without long sittings. Not even the famous painter next door could do that. Now Harvard will have his graven image as well as his literary legacy. She could also have mentioned the money she got and listened for murmured admiration. Yes, some hunters always seem to get the game. It was an old saying.

  Although she had regular letters from her brother for years, she had not heard from him in months. Fears tormented her. She had heard too many accounts of frontier dangers and of violence against colored people. Her aunts might know where he was.

  Oh yes, they said, We know. He has taken a squaw.[394]

  It was not expected. She could not believe it. After the shock subsided, she likely brushed away a tear.

  Was her reaction not a surprise? What could her mother’s people think of the little niece, the famous artist and world traveler who so easily lost her composure? Perhaps they found it amusing that she acted more the child of her father, who died when she was three, than of her mother. (White interviewers usually saw more of Indian ways in her.) Memories of her outburst could warm them on winter nights for years to come. Someone might break a reflective silence by whispering, Don’t mention that squaw.

  Still trembling months later, Edmonia related her encounter to Anne Whitney in Rome. Anne shared the confidence with her sister with remorseless ease, adding her view that Edmonia was overly possessive of her brother.

  Edmonia did not elaborate to Anne on her new Catholic friends. With patrons like Lord Bute, the fund-raisings in America, and her new market, she had put financial problems behind her.

  American Unpleasantness

  After nearly four years in Europe, Edmonia must have forgotten how routinely Americans bullied people of color. She found reminders soon enough. A Cleveland hotel asked her to take her meals in her room rather than in its public restaurant where other guests “might find fault.”[395]

  She would soon appreciate that she got a room at all. In Syracuse, the hotels forced her to wander dark streets in search of shelter.[396] She finally found a clergyman willing to take her in. In other cities, her skin was insulted again.

  The bigotry reopened old wounds, as it had in Florence, where she penned angry letters, and at her studio in Rome, where she used rude curses and gestures. She became so incensed during her first return to America that the press took notice. Newspapers as far as Texas reported on it.

  She never let loose such complaints again, although observers noted more than one provocation. Our likely conclusion: Feedback from the stories must have horrified her. She chose her art and dignity over becoming famous for her rage. Angry protest was justified, but it was not part of her plan. She worked to appear friendly and serene, despite her natural temper, as she offered messages of pride and self-respect. She focused on her natural gifts. Obstacles based on race would not stop her from showing her art in America. She planned her travels with more care.

  Baltimore

  A word from Monsignor Silas Chatard,[397] who led the American College in Rome, could have prompted Lord Bute’s timely intervention. Msgr. Chatard would have been concerned with the papal interest in freed slaves and in helping colored American Catholics. His grandparents had fled the Haitian revolution. Raised in Baltimore, he knew about slaves, owners, and free colored people.

  According to Edmonia, she and Msgr. Chatard were “well acquainted.”[398]

  He probably told her about the first American parish officially established for Negroes. The community of colored Catholics in Baltimore dated to the arrival of one thousand French-speaking refugees from Haiti. After seventy years of worshipping in quarters shared by a seminary, the chapel of a convent, etc., the congregation purchased its own building and dedicated it as St. Francis Xavier church in 1864.

  She visited St. Francis Xavier where she offered a Madonna, asking only that the parish pay for the marble and its transportation to Baltimore. Its announcement book, Aug. 29, 1869, reads, “A first class artist, Miss Lewis, residing in the city of Rome, wishes to make a donation of a large marble statue to this church.”

  Edmonia spent two weeks at the convent / orphanage as the church took up a special collection. The Art-Journal reported a few months later, “Miss Lewis … is also executing a Madonna for the Church of St. Francis in Baltimore by order of the archbishop.”[399]

  In 1871, Baltimore’s convent of the Oblate Sisters of Providence moved to Chase and Forrest Streets where they exhibited Edmonia’s Virgin and Child (now lost)
in 1908. Assuming it is the same work promised to the St. Francis Xavier church, we quote the description carried in the Baltimore Sun: “Her skill in carving the statue, which stands on a pedestal in one of the rooms of the convent, is exquisite and shows a master hand. In the left arm of the Virgin is the infant Christ, and the right arm is pointing downward. It is said that the sculptor’s idea in having the arm pointing down was to show that the Virgin looks after the women of the world.”

  October Triumph

  Returning to Boston, she found its colored leaders had only admiration and praise for her. They offered no instructions, no injunctions, no caustic critiques. Expectations for her future ran high. The William Hathaway Forbes family hired her to make a portrait of their two-year old daughter, leaving us the charming anecdote we related earlier.

  On a Tuesday evening, a festive reunion presented Forever Free to Rev. Grimes at Tremont Temple.[400] George Lewis Ruffin presided. After years of barbering, he had become the first colored American to graduate from Harvard Law School. Other speakers included Mr. Garrison, Rev. Waterston, Rev. Grimes, William Wells Brown, MD, author of The Black Man His Antecedents, His Genius, and His Achievements (1863), Mr. William Craft, co-author of Running a Thousand Miles to Freedom (1860), and Mr. J. J. Smith, whose daughter Elizabeth became the first colored teacher in Boston’s mixed-race schools.

  Forever Free meant a great deal to all Americans for whom the fall of slavery was a life-affirming moment. Edmonia’s fans could not permit her to depart without taking her hand and thanking her. They presented her with a purse filled with money and a handsome mallet made of ivory – a symbol of “home,” as they called Africa – which reinforced Edmonia’s connection to them through her father. The enthusiasm washed away the challenges, the harsh criticism, and the cruel dismissals of Mrs. Child’s “sincere letter.”