The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  [111] Fletcher, History, 309.

  [112] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, chap. 3. Cf. chap. 47, wherein Miriam “described herself as springing from English parentage, on the mother’s side, but with a vein, likewise, of Jewish blood.”

  [113] Cf. Child, “The Quadroons,” in Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom (Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 1842), 115-141. Along with her essays against slavery, Child launched a popular fiction genre known as “the tragic mulatta” that fielded sentimental but lurid tales of forbidden romance, sudden slavery, and rape of young, light-skinned colored women.

  [114] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, chap. 12.

  [115] Ibid.

  [116] Ibid., chap. 6.

  [117] Whitney to Adeline M Manning, Jan. 27, 1865, Payne MSS, 541.

  [118] Rita K. Gollin, Annie Adams Fields, Woman of Letters (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 45. Chapman’s family stored Edmonia’s portrait of her in the attic of the Weston home in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Construction of the Tufts Free Library in 1965 resulted in its discovery. In nearly illegible pencil at the bottom of the base is the name, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [119] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

  [120] Image is used with permission of the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (DUU), an online resource of the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society. Web address: http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/

  [121] BL, Apr. 28, 1865. Hebbard had distinguished himself with lectures on physiology and health. He also published volumes of abolitionist poetry.

  [122] Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome;” Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress;” BDET, May 24, 1866.

  [123] BDET, Apr. 26, 1865, reprinted in BL.

  [124] Child to Harriet Sewall, June 24, 1868, Child MSS 69/1839.

  [125] Child to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870], Child MSS 74/1958:

  I want her to earn her living by moulding small decorations for architects, copying small statuettes, &c; reserving a third of her time, or more if she can, for the study of anatomy, of general literature, and careful working in clay on larger subjects, until she attains sufficient merit to have her works ordered, without extra efforts being made in their behalf. But she does not like this advice.

  NOTES FOR 15. THE MORNING OF LIBERTY

  [126] BL, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Apr. 28, 1865: “… has just completed a medallion likeness of President Lincoln. We have seen it and think she has met with a marked success. We hope that many will visit her room (Studio Building) to see it.” Lincoln was assassinated Apr. 14 and buried May 4.

  [127] Freedmen’s Record, “Edmonia Lewis,” Jan. 8, 1865.

  [128] BL, “We regret,” Aug. 25, 1865, attributed to the New York (NY) Anglo African. See also Massachusetts census, Boston, ward 5, house 539, May 1, 1865; “Edmonia M. Lewis,” mulatto, age 20, sculptor, under the same roof as “Addie T. Howard,” mulatto, age 20, teacher; U. S. census, 1860; U.S. Freedmen Bank Records, 1865-1874 (ancestry.com). Adeline Howard Turpin [sic Adeline Turpin Howard] (1845-?).

  [129] New-York (NY) Tribune, “A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865, was excerpted by NASS, NYT, BL, Stevens Point Wisconsin Lumberman, Petersburg (VA) Index, New York (NY) Christian Times, and Nonconformist (London, Engl.). All but the Index misstated the date of departure as “the 19th instant.”

  [130] Roscoe Simmons, “The Untold Story,” ChT, Apr. 10, 1949, n13.

  NOTES FOR 16. EXIT BOSTON

  [131] Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, Selected Letters, 446-447.

  [132] Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [133] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

  [134] Child to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870], Child MSS 74/1958. Cf. Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

  [135] New-York (NY) Tribune, “A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865.

  [136] “Subscription” referred to prepaid commissions and gifts.

  [137] Wendell Phillips to Mrs. John T. Sargent, 1875, quoted in William Carlos Martyn, Wendell Phillips, the Agitator. Rev. ed. (London: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1890), 417. The offices of the Boston (MA) Commonwealth were near the Studio Building.

  [138] note eliminated

  [139] NYT, Dec. 29, 1878.

  NOTES FOR BOOK TWO – The World. 1. STOPPING IN FLORENCE, 1865

  [140] HELBAA.

  [141] John H. Van Evrie, Subgenation: The Theory of the Normal Relation of the Races; An Answer to “Miscegenation” (New York, John Bradburn, 1864), 32. Van Evrie’s title aimed to exploit an anonymous pamphlet written as a hoax by fellow bigot David Goodman Croly: Miscegenation; the Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the American White Man and Negro (New York, NY: H. Dexter, Hamilton & co., 1864).

  [142] Ibid.

  [143] Petersburg, VA, held a large black population including the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (the first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for black Americans) located there.

  [144] Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [145] Child to James T. Fields, Oct. 13, 1865, Huntington Library; Boston (MA) Commonwealth, Artistic, “Miss Edmonia Lewis in Florence,” Oct. 21, 1865, quoted in Richardson, “Bust of Minnehaha;” Child to Mrs. Fields, Nov. 25, 1865, Child MSS 1695, Huntington Library; BL, “Correction,” Dec. 1, 1865. See also Rita K. Gollin, Annie Adams Fields, Woman of Letters (Amherst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 13, 28-29, 47. Annie Adams Fields and her husband, James T. Fields, were, in modern terms, the “power couple” of New England literary society. Annie’s sister, Lissie, spent years studying and painting in Florence and Paris before returning to Boston in mid-1866.

  [146] Child to James T. Fields, Oct. 13, 1865, Huntington Library. See also (Whitney? Waterston?), letter to the editor by “W,” BDET, Oct. 13, 1865; Boston (MA) Commonwealth, Artistic, “Miss Edmonia Lewis in Florence,” Oct. 21, 1865; Child, letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Apr. 5, 1866; HELBAA; SFC, Aug. 26, 1873; Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878.

  [147] Ball, My Threescore Years, 15.

  [148] Ibid., 179.

  [149] Jarves, Art Thoughts, 168; Allan Marquand, A Text-Book of the History of Sculpture (London: Longmans Green, 1896, 1911), 243-244.

  [150] Ball, My Threescore Years, 252-253; William Greenleaf Eliot, The Story of Archer Alexander, From Slavery to Freedom (Boston: Cupples, Upham, 1885), 13-14. Ball finished the work using photos of Archer Alexander, the last slave captured under the Fugitive Slave Act. Known as the Emancipation Memorial, copies can be found in the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, St. Louis (marble); Montclair Museum, Montclair, NJ (bronze); and in Lincoln Park, Washington DC (bronze), the last funded by African Americans.

  [151] Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717: “The new bust, to which she alluded, she says she did in Florence. Where is the one Mr. Garrison exhibited I know not. I can readily conceive how much such things must annoy you.”

  [152] Child to Mrs. Fields, Nov. 25, 1865, Huntington Library, Child MSS 1695.

  NOTES FOR 2. ROME – 1866

  [153] Story, Roba di Roma (1866), I, 35-41. A “Barmecide Carnival” is a feast where there is nothing to eat.

  [154] Hosmer’s new studio was located at 116 Via Margutta.

  [155] Edmonia Lewis, quoted in Child, letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Apr. 5, 1866.

  [156] R. B. Thurston, “Harriet G. Hosmer,” in Eminent Women of the Age, edited by James Parton (Hartford: S. M. Betts and co., 1868), 566-598.

  [157] Sherwood, Hosmer, 285. Hosmer, traveling with lifelong friend Cornelia Crow Carr and the Carr children, sailed to New York on the SS Ville de Paris arriving New York Aug. 11, 1868. The passenger manifest lists “Amelia” Carr, three Carr children – whose ages correspond to those of the Cornelia Carr family but whose first names do not. Carr’s oldest daughter, named Harriet after Hosmer, was entered as male. The list also shows “Julia” [probably Florence] Freeman, age 24, and “Florence” [i.e. Har
riet] Hosmer, sculptor, age 23. See also Sherwood, Hosmer, 260-261; Culkin, Hosmer, 95-96. Florence Freeman, who went to Italy with Cushman in 1861, would have been about 32 years old at the time, Hosmer, 38. Cf. Rubenstein, American Women Sculptors, 90-91.

  [158] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, chap. 13. See also Hosmer, Letters, 21; Hawthorne, Apr. 3, 1858, Passages; Child, “Harriet E. Hosmer,” described the studio Gibson shared with Hosmer in 1852 (to 1858) at 4 Via della Fontanella.

  [159] Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Life of John Gibson, R. A., Sculptor (London: Longmans Green and co., 1870), 34.

  [160] Jarves, Art Thoughts, 168.

  [161] Hawthorne, The Marble Faun, chap. 13.

  [162] Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake, Life of John Gibson, R. A., Sculptor (London: Longmans Green and co., 1870), 53. See also Whitney to Sarah Whitney, May 2, 1867, Whitney MSS. Cf. Mary Edmonia Lewis, will dated Nov. 2, 1905, proved Nov. 12, 1907, HM Courts Service, Manchester, GB, gives her past address as 7 Via Gregoriana, Rome. It is not clear whether that is the first or last place she lived there. See also Leach, Bright Particular Star, 326 (chap. 27); Sherwood, Hosmer, 238, 260.

  NOTES FOR 3. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

  [163] NYT, May 17, 1873.

  [164] Hawthorne, Apr. 3, 1858, Passages.

  [165] J. Hawthorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife, II, 182.

  [166] New-York (NY) Tribune, “A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865.

  [167] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Apr. 26, 1868, Whitney MSS; Thorp, The Literary Sculptors, 16.

  [168] Female American sculptors in Rome before Edmonia’s arrival included Sarah Fisher Ames (née Clampitt), Margaret F. Foley, Mrs. James E. Freeman (née Horatia Augusta Latilla), Florence Freeman, and Louisa Lander, as well as Hosmer and Stebbins. Ames and Lander returned to the United States before Edmonia’s arrival.

  [169] Cushman to Ann Stevenson Lemon, Jan. 13, 1866, quoted in Leach, Bright Particular Star, 333 (chap. 28). Cushman’s fiftieth birthday was July 23 that year.

  [170] H. W. [Henry Wreford], “A Negro Sculptress,” Athenæum 2001, Mar. 3, 1866, 302; Child, letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Apr. 5, 1866).

  [171] Story to J. R. Lowell, Feb. 11, 1853, quoted in James, William Wetmore Story, I, 253-264, Story meanly described Cushman as “markedly destitute of beauty or of the feminine-attractive.”

  [172] Lisa Merrill, When Romeo was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 8-10; Leach, Bright Particular Star, 113-114 (chap. 9), 126-127 (chap. 10), 133 (chap. 11). Cushman’s shipboard diary testifies to the sexual nature of her relationship with Rosalie Sully.

  [173] Leach, Bright Particular Star, 166-167 (Chap. 13).

  [174] Matilda Mary Hays had edited and translated the French female novelist George Sand.

  [175] Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her sister, Arabel, Oct. 22, 1852, quoted in Leach, Bright Particular Star, 210 (chap. 17).

  [176] Before moving to Via Gregoriana, Cushman lived at 28 Via del Corso, around the corner from the Via della Fontanella and Gibson’s studio.

  [177] Harriet Hosmer to Wayman Crow, Dec. 9, 1857, quoted in Sherwood, Hosmer, 161.

  NOTES FOR 4. STUDIO VISITORS

  [178] Cushman, Her Letters, 81.

  [179] For example, H. L. Robbins to Cushman, n. d., Papers of Charlotte Cushman, Letters vol. 12, no. 3654, Library of Congress: “I went to see Miss Lewis this morning and paid her the 300 scudi [about $100] with which she was much pleased & she very generously begged my acceptance of two of her little marble heads.”

  NOTES FOR 5. INDIAN THEMES

  [180] The eighteenth-century notion of the “noble savage” – a naturally good person who was content until corrupted by civilization – had found its way into popular culture.

  [181] Child to Harriet Sewall, July 10, 1868, Child MSS 69/1841. Pocahontas (ca. 1595–1617) was a Native American woman who married an English colonist after colonists captured her.

  [182] William H. Gerdts, “The Marble Savage,” Art in America 62 (1974): 64-70; Cynthia D. Nickerson, “Artistic Interpretations of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha,” American Art Journal 16 (1984): 49-77; Joe Lockard, “The Universal Hiawatha,” American Indian Quarterly 24 (2000): 110-125. By 1857, fifty thousand copies of The Song of Hiawatha were in print. By 1862, translations had appeared in German, Danish, French, Polish, Dutch, and Latin.

  [183] For example, Joseph Mozier carved seminudes Pocahontas (1848) and The Indian Maiden's Lament (1859). His Wept of Wish-ton-Wish (1859) [after James Fenimore Cooper’s 1829 historical novel] portrayed a fully clothed white woman who lived with the Narragansett.

  [184] Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome;” BDET, May 24, 1866; NYDG, July 10, 1873, quoted Edmonia, “While it was in clay I had an order for a copy in marble by Mrs. Mary Pell, of Flushing, Long Island. I received $400 for the group. Then I modeled the ‘Old Arrowmaker and his Daughter.’” Buick, Child of the Fire, 124-125, notes subtle differences between some copies of this work; Michael W. Panhorst, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Collection Spotlight, Hiawatha’s Marriage, accessed Aug. 21, 2012, http://mmfa.org/uploadedFiles/Collections/Collection_Spotlight/LewisHiawathaMarriage_web.pdf, compares the copy acquired by the Montgomery (AL) museum with five other copies.

  [185] Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome,” (calls it the “Wooing …”); BDET, May 24, 1866 (describes the “Old Arrow-maker”); Carleton, Mar. 1867 (refers to “the wooing and the marriage”). Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis,” offers a variant, perhaps confused, description: “‘Hiawatha’s wooing,’ represents Minnehaha seated making a pair of moccasins and Hiawatha by her side with a world of love and longing in his eyes.” See also Smithsonian American Art Museum. Old Arrow Maker (Alternate) – 2, accessed Nov. 1, 2009, http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/online/lewis/newarrow1.html.

  [186] note eliminated

  [187] Carleton, Mar. 1867 [dateline Jan. 5]:

  I have heard several gentlemen say that there is not anything in Rome, of modern art, surpassing them for beauty of design, or excellence of execution in bringing out the peculiarities of Indian character. I am not a connoisseur in art and I give the opinions of others, among whom is a gentleman from Washington who is so well pleased with them that he will give the artist a commission for the two groups. A copy of the ‘Marriage of Hiawatha’ has already gone to New York.

  [188] Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [189] SFEl, Sept. 6, 1873.

  [190] Edmonia Lewis (1844-1907), Hiawatha’s Marriage, 1874, white marble, 32.25 x 15 x 10.5 inches, Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas, 2009.3.1.

  [191] Buick, Child of the Fire, 238 n96. Correction: The image shown in the Bearden and Henderson, A History, 70, is likely the same copy shown here and should have been credited to the National Museum of American Art.

  NOTES FOR 6. A NEW PATRON, AN OLD FEAR

  [192] Helen Hunt Jackson, 1869, quoted in Ruth Odell, Helen Hunt Jackson (H. H.) (New York: Appleton, 1939), 98: “The comic little creature’s ability as a sculptor … could not atone for her servile flattery, which was most distressing.” She described Edmonia, 115, “[as] her devoted slave.” See also Helen Hunt Jackson to friends, Jan. 11, 1869, quoted in Kate Phillips, Helen Hunt Jackson, A Literary Life (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2003), 178: “I think she [Edmonia] can’t possibly help believing that my smile & shake of the hand mean a great deal more than they do—& I feel as if it were not honest to let her suppose I shouldn’t just the least bit in the world mind breakfasting with her!”

  [193] Cushman to Peabody, July 23, 1869, Massachusetts Historical Society Library.

  NOTES FOR 7. MEET THE PRESS

  [194] For example, Phillips Brooks, Mar. 24, 1866, in Letters of Travel (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1893), 99-101; Urbino, American Woman, 229.

  [195] Taft, History, 8.

  [196] Henry Wreford, who lived in Italy, wrote for the Athenæum and the Times, both published in London, England.

/>   [197] For example, Tuckerman, Book, 603-604; Peabody, ChReg (1869), quoted in Hanaford, Women of the Century, 264-266; Appletons' Annual Cyclopædia, s.v. “Lewis, Edmonia,” etc.

  [198] Wreford’s article also covered sculptors Harriet Hosmer, Mrs. James Freeman, Florence Freeman, Margaret Foley, Emma Stebbins, Isabel Cholmeley, and a number of female painters.

  [199] BDET, May 24, 1866.

  [200] ChRec, Mar. 31, 1866.

  [201] LCN, “A Colored Artist,” Mar. 28, 1866.

  [202] LCN, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Apr. 4, 1866.

  [203] Blodgett, “John Mercer Langston.” W. E. Bigglestone, Oberlin College archivist, Sept. 1981 visit, advised that fire destroyed records, 1846-1866.

  [204] Oberlin College, General Catalogue 1833-1908 (1909), 591, 752. Cf. Rush University Medical Center, Archives, David Jones Peck, accessed Oct. 22, 2009, http://www.lib.rush.edu/archives/DJP_pathfinders.html.

  [205] Fletcher, History, II, 533.

  [206] Langston, Virginia Plantation, 171-180. Langston shielded Edmonia’s name, speaking of her only as “the first artist of the negro race…. Her works of art as displayed in marble, tell how wisely and well her attorney labored in her case to vindicate justice and innocence!” The Oberlin News omitted any reference to the case in its obituary of Langston.

  [207] Frederick Douglass, editorial, “Miss Edmonia Lewis.”

  NOTES FOR 8. HER FIRST EMANCIPATION STATUE

  [208] Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) was an immediate bestseller.

  [209] BDET, May 24, 1866.

  [210] Freedmen’s Record, “Photographs,” Apr. 1866.

  [211] Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.”

  [212] Edmonia Lewis, quoted in Child, letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Apr. 5, 1866.

  NOTES FOR 9. THE WATERSTONS

  [213] Josiah Quincy III was elected judge, congressman, state senator, mayor of Boston, and president of Harvard University. His son, Josiah, also served as Boston’s mayor. Cousin John Quincy Adams was sixth president of the United States.