He laid out the ambitious plan in a long letter to William H. Prescott in late March 1843, accompanied by a copy of his just-published Yucatán book.5 He had obviously given considerable thought to the idea for he calculated they would need 900 subscribers—libraries, learned societies, and wealthy individuals—each willing to pay $100 in advance to cover the expense of the oversize work. He told Prescott there would be up to 120 illustrations printed in large-scale “folio” in four quarterly volumes, which would be “creditable to the country as a work of art.” Accompanying the images would be monographs in English and French by four eminent authorities, including Alexander von Humboldt and Prescott himself if he would agree to it.6 Stephens added that he expected no gain for himself. “Nine hundred subscribers will save me from loss, which is all I care for,” he told Prescott. The historian replied four days later that he would be pleased to contribute to the “noble” project.7
Raising that large a sum in subscriptions, however, was a daunting mission. Yet Stephens was optimistic. With the publication of Yucatán, he and Catherwood were the shining lights of New York City. The high point came in the May meeting of the New-York Historical Society. As a member of the executive committee, Stephens arranged for an exhibit of twelve of Catherwood’s full-size illustrations, which drew lavish praise from society members.8 No money was solicited; Stephens asked only for approval of a resolution allowing him to publish the folio under the “auspices” of the society. Several members urged passage of the resolution, one noting that the project “will have important bearing upon the character and reputation of our country,” adding somewhat smugly that “Europeans have at present little access to anything coming from the Western hemisphere.” The resolution passed unanimously.9
When it came to actually raising the money, however, the subscription campaign began to falter. The Harper brothers stepped forward and offered to publish if only three hundred subscribers could be found. Catherwood, meanwhile, followed the lead of Audubon and took his small exhibition on the road, organizing showings to solicit subscribers in Boston in June and probably in Philadelphia as well.10 But Stephens and Catherwood had miscalculated. Due to the project’s grandiose ambition and cost—and no doubt because demand was tempered by so much of the material already appearing in their Yucatán and Central America books—the project failed to bring in a sufficient number of subscribers.11
Frustrated by the failure, Catherwood left for London in July to try his luck there. Prescott drafted a letter of introduction for him to his friend Edward Everett, the U.S. ambassador to England. “A literary project of some magnitude is set on foot here by Messrs. Stephens and Catherwood,” he said, referring Everett to the “magnificent drawings made by Mr. Catherwood.”12 Despite Everett’s endorsement, however, Catherwood failed soon after arriving to get an audience with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He also had little luck with London publishers. England was in the midst of an economic depression and reeling from a humiliating defeat of its army in Afghanistan. Catherwood wrote Prescott in August: “It would seem nowadays that nothing is successful here with the rich and aristocratic without the patronage and sanction of royalty which ill accords with my loco foco notions.” (The term loco foco refers to the radical working-class faction of the Democratic Party then active in New York.)13 Catherwood put his political inclinations aside, however, and a short time later “had the honor”—according to the Times of London—of submitting some of his drawings to Prince Albert and visiting French royalty.14 Whether they agreed to help him financially is not clear.
He was back at 21 Charles Square, which was still home to his brother Dr. Alfred Catherwood and their unmarried sister, Caroline. It was his first visit since his confrontation with his wife nearly two years earlier. There is no mention in his correspondence of his children, but they were apparently living in London with his family. Nor are there any surviving records concerning his wife, who presumably was still living with his cousin.
In December, he wrote Prescott that he had gotten hold of a copy of the historian’s just-published book, The Conquest of Mexico. “I devoured it as I have formerly done a new and interesting novel,” he wrote, “not leaving off until I had finished.” But it is clear from the letter that the grand project he and Stephens envisioned had again collapsed for lack of subscriptions. He explained that he now planned to publish on his own a limited set of large-scale tinted and colored illustrations. “I am grateful for the mention of my name in [Conquest],” he continued, “and I have taken the liberty of sending you a few proofs of my work through Mr. Stephens. Mr. Stephens has kindly offered to write an introduction and the descriptions, but I fear they will scarcely be in time, as I am endeavoring to get out by the beginning of March.”15 Unfortunately, none of his correspondence with Stephens has survived.
In February 1844, Catherwood met with colleagues at the Royal Institute of British Architects, where he exhibited his drawings and read a paper on the “antiquities of Central America.” It was a nuts-and-bolts session in which he talked about the ancient Mayans’ “perfect knowledge of stone cutting . . . various kinds of mortar, stuccoes, and cements.” He also went into detail also about the unusual “Mayan arch,” which he likened to that used by the Greeks, Egyptians, and ancient Etruscans, who had not yet developed the so-called Roman arch. “[Central American builders] were, in fact, so far as the mechanical part went, accomplished masons,” he said. “Large masses of excellent concrete are found in many of their buildings.” He explained also that he was greatly impressed with the painting he saw on the interior walls of some of the ruins, particularly in Chichén Itzá. “Their painting is indeed superior both to their architecture and sculpture and they went even beyond the Egyptians in the blending of colors, approaching more nearly to the paintings found at Pompeii and Herculaneum.”16
He did not make his March deadline, but he may have achieved a more polished result because of the delay. His “imperial folios” (21x14¼ inches) appeared in late April 1844 under the title Views of Ancient Monuments in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatán.17 The oversize books included a twenty-two-page introduction written by Catherwood and twenty-five extraordinary illustrations along with a map tracing all of the ruins he and Stephens had explored. He had hired the finest lithographers in England to engrave the work. In all, only three hundred were produced, at great cost, in London and New York. In 250 of the volumes the lithographs were tinted in browns, blues, and grays. Fifty were hand colored. Catherwood spared no expense in his pursuit of quality and perfection, hiring Owen Jones, a close friend and one of England’s foremost visual designers, to create an elaborate multicolored frontispiece. Jones also printed the London edition.18 Though the book contained only about a fifth of the illustrations proposed in the original plan, the project nonetheless cost a small fortune. How Catherwood was able to carry it off remains a mystery.19
Along with his introduction, Catherwood wrote descriptive text for each illustration. His introduction summarized much of the ground Stephens had covered but he included the list of prerequisites he believed had been necessary for the Maya civilization to develop. He expressed himself most eloquently with his art, however, and the illustrated plates in his folio are masterworks. Here he is unbound from the small black-and-white engravings of Stephens’s books. His use of lighting and contrast remains extraordinary but with the addition of color, the images spring to life. It is the work of a perfectionist yet one who has escaped the monk’s cell into the sunlight. He is not completely free of the Romantic period in which he lived, exaggerating some landscapes and the gloom of the jungle to create a sense of mystery and desolation. And he has filled his scenes with exotic Indians, dogs, snakes, and even a jaguar, in part employing the old artist’s trick to give proper scale to the ruins. Yet the monuments themselves, the idols, the hieroglyphs, ornaments, and temples, with only slight reconstructions, remain indisputably accurate. And, slyly, he also slips in his famously indistinct images of himself, Stephens, and
Cabot.
Freed from the dominance of Stephens and Robert Hay, the modest, self-effacing Catherwood had finally produced a book entirely his own. And yet as extraordinary as it turned out, he was still not satisfied. When Prescott asked for advice on choosing an illustrator for one of his books, Catherwood replied: “In such important undertaking I really do not feel myself equal to it. It was this feeling which made me feel glad when I had my work entirely to myself, for I am sure I should not have pleased Stephens, nor have I pleased myself, but this is of little consequence.”20
There is no record of how many copies Catherwood sold. The folios would have been prohibitively expensive for the average book buyer of the day. He set the price of the tinted editions at $30 and double that for his hand-colored ones.21 Though it is difficult to translate prices from Catherwood’s era to those of today, the tinted version might have cost the equivalent of as much as $750 in 2015 dollars and the colored edition $1,500. The original folios are now so rare they sell at book auctions for amounts ranging from $50,000 to $125,000, depending on their condition. If Catherwood had been able to sell all 300 books he would have earned more than $10,000, but how much he had paid the engravers and for the cost of printing is not known. Unlike the target audience for Stephens’s relatively inexpensive and popular books, the buyers of the folios would have been universities, learned societies, libraries, and, the very anathema to his “loco foco notions,” aristocrats and well-heeled collectors—the very subscribers Stephens had sought in the first place.
Catherwood reported to Prescott that the book was “doing very well” in London but was not sure how the New York edition would fare. Of the hand-colored volumes, he noted: “I have sold considerably more than I expected.” And as it turned out, he had achieved some luck with royalty after all. Many years later, it was reported in the English newspapers that Prince Albert had sent a copy of Catherwood’s book to Alexander von Humboldt in gratitude for a copy he had received of Humboldt’s book Kosmos.22
But what of Stephens? After publication of his book and his campaign on behalf of Catherwood, he had all but disappeared. The failure of his subscription effort was one sign something was wrong, as was his belated offer to write the introduction for Catherwood’s book. Around the time Catherwood’s book was published, the two men discussed another grand adventure. This time, according to Prescott, they were considering a trip to Peru to seek out remnants of the Inca civilization. “This is my ground,” Prescott wrote Catherwood in April, referring to the next book he was planning on the conquest of Peru. “But I suppose it will not be the worse for you mousing into architectural antiquities, and I wish I could see the fruits of such a voyage in your beautiful illustrations.”23
The expedition never happened, but the prospect of such a journey leaves a tantalizing question. Given the two men’s uncanny ability to sniff out pre-Columbian ruins, it is possible they would have found Machu Picchu, the now-famous “lost city” of the Inca. The ruins high in the Andes Mountains had never been found by the Spanish but were known to local Indians. Like the ruins of the Maya, no one had yet seriously explored the remnants of the Inca Empire, which had flourished in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before its conquest by the Spanish. Stephens decided against another long expedition, however, and the magical citadel of Machu Picchu would remain safely lost for another sixty-seven years, until it was “discovered” in 1911 by a Yale University lecturer named Hiram Bingham.
But why had Stephens declined to go while Catherwood appeared ready and willing? Was Stephens simply exhausted? Or had a breach opened between the two men? Not, apparently, on Catherwood’s part for he had written the dedication in his folio to “my good friend John L. Stephens.”
In the absence of any surviving correspondence between the two men during this period, the only clues we have of Stephens’s state of mind come from Prescott. But the Boston historian’s brief observations in several letters leave more questions than answers. In a comment on the proposed trip to Peru, for example, Prescott told Catherwood: “Stephens says he is not up to the enterprise and cannot leave his father. He is still labouring under depression from the heavy loss in the family circle. . . .”24 Who or what Prescott was referring to is a mystery. If a death had come to the Stephens clan, it was not within the author’s immediate family, according to available records. However, some illness may have befallen his father, based on further comments by Prescott. In July, in a second letter to Catherwood, he wrote:
Stephens I have not heard from lately, but Cabot saw him the other day in New York and said his spirits seemed pretty good. I thought him rather under a cloud when I saw him there in April last. He shows great depth of feeling certainly. I think while his father lives he will not much be disposed to ramble again, at least so he told me. And in the meantime he is taking care of his own and his father’s property and courting the law; but it is not easy to win much professional business when it is known that a man does not need it.25
Stephens would not “ramble” again for some time, until his restless spirit took him south again to face a new jungle with a very different purpose in mind. Over the next years, he nearly vanished from the record books while “courting the law.”
23
Steam
On a late summer morning in 1807, spectators packed the docks along the Hudson River to witness artist-engineer Robert Fulton maneuver a long, narrow craft with a comically tall black smokestack out into the river. No doubt the Stephens family, whose home was only a few blocks away, watched from the shore with two-year-old John Stephens in tow. The vessel had been dubbed “Fulton’s Folly” by skeptics who stood by waiting smugly for the contraption to explode. Described as “an ungainly craft looking precisely like a backwoods saw-mill mounted on a scow and set on fire,” the so-called “steamboat” traveled a short distance from its launch, then stopped and sat dead in the water.1 Jeers and catcalls floated out from the riverbank and the suspense grew palpable. Finally, an agitated Fulton disappeared belowdecks, made several mechanical adjustments, and the paddle wheels along the boat’s sides started to churn through the water once again. Spewing fiery cinders and billows of black smoke, the boat slowly turned north up the river and two days later arrived in triumph at the state capital, Albany.
While the Clermont was not the first steam-driven vessel ever built, the boat’s ensuing runs between New York and Albany became the world’s first successful use of steam power in transportation. In an instant, with people little realizing it, the world had changed and the industrial age had come to America. The great epoch of steamships and railroads had begun. Stephens and Catherwood would grow up with the revolution and over the course of their lives witness every technological advance. Now, four decades after the launch of “Fulton’s Folly,” the unstoppable steam juggernaut was about to roll over them.
Catherwood was the first to succumb. He never gave up his yearning for old ruins but after Stephens decided against Peru, it was as if a curtain had dropped around their past and the men rarely spoke of antiquities again. With his book finished, Catherwood decided on a new direction, another personal transformation. Within a year of its publication, the artist-architect formerly known as “Catherwood, archt.” added new initials to his name, “C.E.,” for civil engineer. Now, at the age of forty-six, with children still to feed and educate, he reemerged as a railroad man.
There is no record of his first move. For more than a year he dropped from sight, leaving us with another elusive hole in his life. He may have returned to the United States.2 According to credentials he submitted for a British railway job, he claimed to have worked on railroads in America.3 His latest makeover was well timed. Railroad engineers were in great demand in England. In 1845–46 a speculative craze in railroad stocks engulfed Britain in what came to be known simply as “the Railway Mania,” one of the great technological booms in history.4 Rails crisscrossed England as fast as steel for them could be manufactured. And the demand to invest in new railway projec
ts had grown so overwhelming it spilled over into Britain’s overseas colonies.
Riding the crest, Catherwood found a position as chief “practical” engineer of the Demerara Railway Company. Demerara was a jungle region studded with sugar plantations along the northeast coast of South America. The company seemed to know little about Catherwood’s past—his panoramas, his antiquarian proclivities, his artistic talents—or cared even less. “The (management) committee considers that they have been particularly fortunate,” reported company chairman Charles Cave to shareholders. “Mr. Catherwood, the gentleman they have engaged, resided for some years in North America, where he was employed upon railroads and extensive public works; and at the time his services were offered to the Company, he was professionally engaged upon a railway in this country.” No mention was made of his familiarity with tropical forests, though perhaps he had used that as a selling point. Catherwood signed a one-year contract and left for Demerara, located in British Guyana, on November 17, 1845.5
There are no letters or any other accounts to explain why he left his children once again for such an extended period when he could easily have found work in Britain. Money may have been a factor. He would later write Stephens more than once about how seriously he took the responsibility of providing for his children. The loss of his New York rotunda was a serious setback even if he could claim some financial success with the sale of his folios. The job in Guyana may have offered him more freedom, salary, and control than was available in England. But by now a clear pattern had also emerged. He had spent much of his life wandering the Mediterranean and Near East, gone twice with Stephens to Central America and Yucatán, and had been ready for another long expedition to Peru. Work for him seem to justify a habitual restlessness. And Gertrude, calamitous as their marriage turned out, was no longer there to provide any anchor.
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