The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  [311] William Wetmore Story, Roba di Roma (1866), I, 214. See also NYDG, July 10, 1873; NYT, Dec. 29, 1878.

  [312] Child to Harriet Sewall, July 10, 1868, Child MSS 69/1841; Pickle, On the Wing, “Edmonia Lewis—An Episode;” HELBAA; NYDG, July 10, 1873; SFC, Aug. 26, 1873; Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [313] Child to Harriet Sewall, July 10, 1868, Child MSS 69/1841.

  [314] Cortazzo, Recollections, 67.

  [315] Willard, Writing Out of My Heart, 328-329.

  [316] Cleveland, Story, 109-110.

  NOTES FOR 17. WHITNEY’S DISDAIN – 1868

  [317] NYDG, July 10, 1873; NYT, Sept. 25, 1879; Boston (MA) Daily Traveller, Nov. 17, 1880.

  [318] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Feb. 9, 1868, Whitney MSS.

  [319] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Feb. 9, 1868.

  NOTES FOR 18. FOREVER FREE

  [320] Leach, Bright Particular Star, 338 (chap. 28).

  [321] Peabody, “Miss Edmonia Lewis’ Works,” was reprinted by SFEl. Various guides mention the studios of Overbeck, Wolf, Steinhäuser, Fuerbach, and Platner nearby.

  [322] BrDE, Dec. 16, 1868; reprinted in LCN and Guardian; a Monthly Magazine for Young Men and Ladies (Philadelphia, Pa.).

  [323] Boston (MA) Commonwealth, All Sorts, June 26, 1869, attributed to NASS; American Phrenological Journal, Personal, Aug. 1869, 321 (“worthy of mention for fidelity of portraiture and artistic finish. Miss Lewis deserves encouragement.”). See also A-J, Visits to the Studios of Rome, June, 1871, 163; NYT, May 17, 1873.

  [324] Peabody, “Miss Edmonia Lewis’ Works.”

  [325] Ednah D. Cheney, “Jean Francois Millét,” Radical, A Monthly Magazine Devoted to Religion, July 1867, 667-671.

  [326] Child, “Illustrations of Human Progress.”

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

  [328] Cf. Child, letter to the editor, New York (NY) Independent, Apr. 5, 1866. At forty-one inches tall, the finished work is more than a third taller than the thirty-inch high Freed Woman.

  [329] Huidekoper, Glimpses, 184.

  [330] For example, John S. Crawford, “The Classical Tradition in American Sculpture: Structure and Surface,” American Art Journal 11, no. 3 (July 1979), 38-52:

  For her classical model [Edmonia] selected the Montosoli restoration of the Laocoön [ca. 150 BC, in the Vatican museum], an archetypal portrayal of the suffering hero. Although the Trojan priest is forever a captive, the male figure in Forever Free defiantly holds his broken chain aloft and places his foot confidently on the ball. The kneeling female figure may come from the pose of Doidalsas’s Crouching Aphrodite [ca. 250 BC, in the Vatican museum], but I am not certain. The freedom in altering the upper part of the figure, the clothes, and especially the unidealized proportions of the model makes it difficult to be sure.

  [331] Buick, “Sentimental Education,” 161-162, suggested that Edmonia also drew from Hosmer’s Temple of Fame model. Cf. A-J, “The Freedmen’s Memorial to Abraham Lincoln,” Jan. 1, 1868, 8, (illustration), Hosmer’s “negro … exposed for sale” on the right looks down with hands folded in front.

  [332] Preghiera is illustrated in Dabakis, “Ain’t I a Woman?” Figure 4-9. Cf. Dunning’s, Inc. Fine Art, Feb. 26, 1995, lot 1269.

  [333] Murray, Emancipation, 225-226, which included Story’s Libyan Sibyl among the prior “others,” may have been the first to publish on the artist’s racing of her figures: “Miss Lewis … dealt frankly enough, in that respect, with the man. My own opinion concerning this practice of ‘toning’ … [is] there may have been some justification for such a procedure at the time….” See also Bearden and Henderson, A History, 115-125, for a discussion of the “Black Renaissance.”

  [334] Cf. Revolution, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” June 4, 1868; Buick, “Ideal Works.”

  [335] Buick, Child of the Fire, 56-59.

  [336] Child to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870]; Child, “Illustrations of Human Progress;” Peabody, ChReg.

  [337] H. Honour, The Image of the Black in Western Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), IV, part I, 250-251.

  [338] Freedmen’s Record, Jan. 1867, quoted in James A Porter, “Versatile Interests of the Early Negro Artist: A Neglected Chapter of American Art History,” Art in America and Elsewhere 24, 1 (Jan. 1936): 16-27.

  [339] Peabody, ChReg [1869], quoted in Hanaford, Women of the Century, 264-266.

  [340] Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [341] The arrival was first noted by LRAU, Feb. 1868; three months later by BrDE and LCN.

  [342] LRAU, Feb. 1868.

  [343] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Apr. 3 and Apr. 26, 1868, Whitney MSS. Frances Rollins, diary, May 9, 1868, in Sterling, We Are Your Sisters, 459. We have not found any examples of these.

  [344] Edmonia to Maria Weston Chapman, May 3, 1868, MS.A.4.6a, vol. 2, no. 37, Boston Public Library.

  [345] Child, “Plea for the Indian.” The piece soon reappeared as An Appeal For the Indians (New York, William P. Tomlinson, 1868).

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

  [347] We found, for example, the following during this period: New Bedford (MA) Daily Mercury, “The Bust of Dio Lewis,” Feb. 20, 1868; Herald of Health and Journal of Physical Culture, “Bust of Dio Lewis,” Mar. 1868, 135; BrDE, Three Cents. Miscellaneous News Items, May 9, 1868; LCN, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” May 13, 1868; Revolution, Miss Edmonia Lewis,” June 4, 1868; SFEl, “Miss Lewis, the Colored Sculptor,” June 12, 1868.

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

  [349] Child to Harriet Sewall, July 10, 1868, Child MSS 69/1841. Karcher, The First Woman, 475, suggested Child projected anger at her husband’s spendthrift habits.

  [350] Maria Naylor, National Academy of Design Exhibition Record 1861-1900 (New York: Kennedy Galleries, 1973), 558.

  [351] Our earliest mention of Hagar appears in the Feb. 15, 1868, diary entry of Urbino, American Woman, 229: “Miss Lewis … was at work upon a Hagar.” See also Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761. This was also about the time Miss Peabody appeared and Edmonia became a Catholic.

  NOTES FOR 19. HAGAR

  [352] Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [353] Callahan, “‘Brother Saul.’”

  [354] Gen. 21:15-16, KJV.

  [355] Gal. 4:30-31.

  [356] Gen. 21:17-18.

  [357] A-J, Mar. 1870, which interviewed Edmonia: “She has represented the cast out bondswoman at the moment when she hears the voice of the angel, ‘What aileth thee, Hagar?’;” Chicago (IL) Evening Post, reprinted as “Edmonia Lewis—The Sculptor,” in Sacramento (CA) Daily Union, Sept. 13, 1870. The quoted phrase marked her source as the Protestant King James version (although we cannot say if the writer was faithful to Edmonia’s reference or tendered it according to the her own persuasion). The Catholic Douay-Rheims edition reads: “What art thou doing, Agar?”

  [358] Christopher Busta-Peck, “Hagar (detail),” accessed April 24, 2012, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/422656264/in/set-72157602074432914/

  [359] Callahan, “‘Brother Saul.’”

  [360] Urbino, American Woman, 229.

  NOTES FOR 20. TIMES DARK, OUTLOOK LONESOME – 1868 to 1869

  [361] For example, J. M. Hutchinson, “Letter from Italy,” Evangelical Repository and United Presbyterian Review (Philadelphia, PA), Mar., 1870, 576-581.

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

  [363] Boston (MA) Commonwealth, “Edmonia Lewis,” Apr. 24, 1869. The report reappeared in BrDE and Galveston (TX) Daily News.

  [364] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761, constitutes the most detailed report of Edmonia’s financial crisis of 1868-1869. The agent, Ificelo Ercole, appears in Murray’s Handbook as a translator as well as a banker at Freeborn and Co., an English company with offices near the Spanish Steps. See also Regina Soria, Elihu Vedder (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1970), 66, 69-70.

 
[365] NASS, Mar. 6, 1869, announced Forever Free would be auctioned on Mar. 11, minimum bid $400.

  [366] Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878.

  [367] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761.

  [368] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761. See also Sherwood, Hosmer, 117.

  NOTES FOR 21. CELEBRITY LOST AND FOUND – 1868 to 1869

  [369] Longfellow, Life, II, 446; III, 127.

  [370] Leach, Bright Particular Star, 340 (chap. 28), referred to the Selwyn Theatre opening.

  [371] Cushman to Peabody, July 23, 1869, Massachusetts Historical Society Library. Cf. Cushman, Her Letters, 229-231. Cushman would make her final voyage Oct. 23, 1870, from Liverpool on the SS Scotia accompanied by Stebbins – no occupation given by either – and Mercer, “servant.” She posted her age as two years older this trip while Stebbins cut hers by ten years.

  [372] Sources about Foley include Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761; Craven, Sculpture, 331; Tuckerman, Book, 603-604; BDET, quoted in BL, Nov. 10, 1865; Eleanor Tufts, “Margaret Foley’s Metamorphosis: A Merrimack ‘Female Operative’ in Neo-Classical Rome,” Arts Magazine, Jan. 1982, 91-95; National Museums Liverpool. Bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/collections/foreign/longfellow_edmonia_lewis.aspx, accessed May 31, 2010; Carleton, Mar. 1867; “A New York paper,” quoted in LRAU, Mar. 1866, 184; Cushman to Peabody, July 23, 1869, Massachusetts Historical Society Library.

  [373] Carleton, Mar. 1867. See also Tuckerman, Book, 603, covered Margaret Foley with a single paragraph after Emma Stebbins and before Edmonia.

  [374] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869. Cf. A-J, Mar. 1870; Louisianian, May 11, 1874; Willard, Writing Out My Heart, 328-329.

  [375] Longfellow, Life, 127.

  [376] Cf. Timothy Anglin Burgard, “Edmonia Lewis and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,” American Art Review 7 (1995): 114-117, who related it to an antique bust of Homer.

  [377] Rev. Samuel Longfellow

  [378] Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, A Tale of Arcadie (1847), tells the story of a young woman separated from her lover amid scenes of the forest primeval. See also Tuckerman, Book, 603-604.

  [379] Urbino, American Woman, 229: “Her Marriage of Hiawatha is small and handsome; she had sold several; wished she could afford to make Longfellow a present of one.”

  [380] Whitney to Home, Feb. 7, 1869, Payne MSS, 758-761; Malfas, “Art,” The Spectator, July 31, 1869, 901-902.

  [381] A-J, Mar. 1870. Not all critics agreed. For example, Jarves, “What American Women Are Doing in Sculpture:” “The bust of Longfellow, by [Edmonia Lewis] only serves to confirm the opinion already expressed, of the general inaptitude of women to succeed in this branch of art.”

  [382] Peabody, ChReg [1869], quoted in Hanaford, Women of the Century, 264-266.

  NOTES FOR 22. BUTE

  [383] Thomas Mozley, Apr. 20, 1869, in Letters from Rome on the Occasion of the Œcumenical Council, 1869-1870 (London: Longmans, Green, 1891), II, 378-379; first printed in Times (London, England), “Easter at Rome,” Apr. 26, 1870, excerpted by Manchester Times (Manchester, England), Bristol Mercury (Bristol, England); Henry Wreford, “Archæology and Art at Rome,” Athenæum, Apr. 23, 1870, 554-555. See also Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis,” NYDG, July 10, 1873, etc. Easter 1869 was March 28.

  [384] Catherine Armet, Bute archivist, telephone conversation with Harry Henderson, June 29, 1979, letter July 5, 1979; Lynsey Naim, Bute archivist, Feb. 11, 2011. The altarpiece purchased by Bute was reportedly placed in his home, Mount Stuart. It may have been destroyed in an 1877 fire that damaged part of this huge building. There is no surviving documentation of it or of any reference to Edmonia.

  [385] Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, was born of Sephardic Jewish parents but baptized in the Church of England. He finished writing Lothair in 1870.

  [386] Consular Relations between the United States and the Papal States. Instructions and Despatches, ed. by L. F. Stock. (Washington DC: American Catholic Historical Assn., 1945), 342: “Fees Received … 532. [Apr.] 30, [1869] “Miss Lewis, Passport. $5.” Posting her age as 23, she arrived New York June 1, 1869, aboard Cunard’s SS Tripoli from Liverpool.

  NOTES FOR 23. BACK IN THE USA

  [387] NASS, July 10, 1869.

  [388] Freedmen’s Record, Apr. 1866.

  [389] Fields, Osgood and Co. (successor to Ticknor and Fields). See also ChRec, Personal, July 31, 1869.

  [390] NYT, July 8, 1869, and New Bedford (MA) Daily Mercury, July 8, 1869; repeated in BrDE, ChRec, Boston (MA) Telegram. See also Boston (MA) Commonwealth quoted in NASS, July 17, 1869.

  [391] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Dec. 12, 1869, Whitney MSS. There is no account of other visits to her mother’s people, although many of her travels took her near Niagara Falls and Albany. Whitney’s letter refers to aunt in the singular, but the NYDG interview refers to “Indian aunts” and Indianapolis (IN) News refers to Indian aunts and uncles” of her childhood. Some excerpts of NYDG specify “two aunts.” The word “aunt” can be, of course, an honorific applied to family friends.

  [392] Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864.

  [393] Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878.

  [394] Whitney, Dec. 12, 1869. The term “squaw,” reported by Whitney, could have been intentionally scornful – or not. The U. S. census, 1870, confirms Edmonia’s brother shared quarters with a mulatto woman from Kentucky, Lizzie Williams, age 33, who kept a restaurant.

  [395] BrDE, Miscellaneous Items, Aug. 16, 1869. Two weeks later, Revolution attributed the story to the World. Baltimore (MD) Sun, News in Brief, Aug 11, 1869, noted her arrival in Cleveland.

  [396] Galveston (TX) Daily News, “Miss Lewis,” Sept. 17, 1869. NASS, Sept. 25, 1869, expanded the story.

  [397] Silas Francis Marean Chatard grew up in Baltimore and earned a medical degree at Mount St. Mary’s College. He became the rector of the North American College in Rome (which trains American priests) by 1868. In 1878, the Church ordained him a Bishop and sent him to Vincennes, Indiana.

  [398] Indianapolis (IN) News, Nov. 18, 1878.

  [399] Wreford, “Studios of Rome;” Baltimore (MD) Sun, “Statue by Colored Woman,” Apr. 23, 1908, 7. See also St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, Baltimore. A Short History, accessed June 25, 2010, http://www.josephite.com/parish/md/sfx/page2.html; Oblate Sisters of Providence. History, accessed June 25, 2010, http://www.oblatesisters.com/History.html.

  [400] BDET, Oct. 18, 1869; Oct. 19, 1869. Cf. Boston (MA) Advertiser, quoted in NASS, Nov. 20, 1869; and Peabody, ChReg [1869], quoted in Hanaford, Women of the Century, 264-266 (errs in the date).

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

  [402] Richmond (VA) Dispatch, “Has Able Speakers,” May 18, 1900: “In Coburn Hall … is a marble bust of Mr. Leonard Grimes, made by the famous negro sculptress, Edmonia Lewis, now of Rome.”

  [403] George Makepeace Towle, American Society (London: Chapman and Hall, 1870), II, 9.

  [404] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Dec. 12, 1869, Whitney MSS. Caroline Wells Healey Dall wrote College, the Market, and the Court; Or, Woman's Relation to Education, Labor, and Law (1867). The photo of Edmonia’s plaster bust of Col. Shaw (Figure 5) survives in the Dall-Healy Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

  [405] Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Jan. 20, 1870, Whitney MSS.

  [406] Payne MSS, 856.

  [407] Harriot Kezia Hunt, will dated Oct. 4, 1871, filed Jan. 6, 1875, Massachusetts Archives at Columbia Point, Boston, MA.

  [408] Bullard, “Edmonia Lewis.”

  [409] SFDEB, Aug. 28, 1873:

  the figures designed and executed by her for the Hunt monument in Mount Auburn, added much to her fame in this country. One is a female over a vase of flowers, as if engaged in botanical studies; the other a female with book in hand, the two typical of the thirst for knowledge of Dr. Harriet K. Hunt and her sister.

  See also SFDMC, Aug. 30, 1873. Meg L. Wi
nslow, curator, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Aug. 23, 2007, advises the “preservation staff gently wash the statue periodically and remove organic growth such as moss and lichen. Over the years, the statue has been pointed and maintained…. We are proposing to design a protective cover….” Meg L. Winslow, Nov. 19, 2007, indicates the reference describes “bas reliefs that were once located on the pedestal below the statue.” Only one relief, a seated woman reaching for a container, survives. For more photographic views, see also Bearden and Henderson, A History, 71, and Christopher Busta-Peck, Hygeia, accessed March 25, 2009, http://www.flickr.com/photos/cbustapeck/419300858/in/set-72157602074335938/.

  [410] Cushman, Hosmer, Longfellow, Sumner, Joseph Story, Whitney, and Manning are among those buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery.

  NOTES FOR 24. VINNIE REAM

  [411] Unless indicated otherwise, references to Vinnie Ream’s life come from Cooper, Vinnie Ream; Dabakis, “Sculpting Lincoln;” Sherwood, Labor of Love; Washington Star, quoted in “Vinnie Ream,” LRAU, Aug. 1867, 156-158.

  [412] Wreford, “Studios of Rome:” “The Americans will gain no small amount of credit if, of their superfluous wealth, they bestow a little in encouraging the two ladies just mentioned;” James, William Wetmore Story, I, 258: “One of the sisterhood … was a negress … another was a ‘gifted’ child … who shook saucy curls in the lobbies of the Capitol and extorted from susceptible senators commissions for national monuments. The world was good-natured to them—dropped them even good-naturedly, and it is not in our fond perspective that they must show of aught else than artless.” See also Court Journal (London, Engl.) quoted in Newark (NJ) Daily Advertiser, Oct. 12, 1871.

  [413] Rogers, Randolph Rogers, 114-116. Henry Kirke Brown made the first Lincoln memorial statue to be dedicated, a bronze unveiled in Brooklyn NY about the time Ream and her family arrived in Italy.

  [414] Mark Twain, letter to the editor, Chicago Republican, Feb. 19, 1868.

  [415] Pres. Johnson fired Secretary of War Edwin McMasters Stanton.

  [416] Edmund Gibson Ross, who was a subject of John F. Kennedy’s Profiles in Courage (1956), remains a controversial figure.