The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis

by Harry Henderson

  Part of the excitement was unintended. On arriving, she had told the press she would sell all the pieces at private sale or auction. To sink-or-swim Californians, “auction” meant only a forced liquidation – not a race to pay the most money. Having sold nothing toward the end of the show, she realized buyers were waiting for bargains! She promptly posted the “lowest acceptable price” on each piece and went back to the Bulletin to clarify the situation.[534]

  Almost at once, she sold the Hiawatha group to the wife of a businessman.[535] Then she sold the Cupid. Three pieces still lacked homes.

  When she learned a group of African Americans planned to honor her with a gathering, she quickly told the Appeal she would prefer if they would “take the cost of the proposed reception and purchase the bust of President Lincoln.”[536] To her dismay, her fans were more disposed to party than to raise funds for a community purchase.

  Fortunately, San Jose, fifty miles to the south, was eagerly promoting a show of over one hundred framed oil paintings to the upwardly mobile residents. Her art, imported from Rome, nicely crowned proceedings that added glitter to horse races and displays of food, furniture, silk, wine, and tools.

  She accepted an invitation to take the unsold Lincoln, Asleep, and Awake to the stylish small city where she rushed to set up her display.[537] She dropped the price of the Lincoln by $50[538] as she showed at the City Market Hall and, the following week, at the Catholic Fair. In a prime location, a space she called her “wigwam,” she charged the same admission she asked in San Francisco ($.50 for adults, $.25 for children, and a $1.00 “season ticket”) and attracted more than 1,600 visitors.[539]

  Surely she would find buyers for Asleep and Awake, speculated San Francisco’s Evening Bulletin.[540] It continued with an earnest wish that the Lincoln be donated to the San Jose public library. San Francisco would have no public library until 1879.

  The editor of the San Jose Weekly Mercury had been instrumental in luring her away from the larger city. He found her charming as well as a signal of change. His all-out editorial chortled: “Had the star of this talented artist loomed above the horizon in the days ... of the manacle and lash ... the champions of the ‘divine institution’ would have died of conniption fits.”[541]

  The San Jose Patriot glowed with compliments, calling Asleep and Awake “very beautiful, perfect creations … extremely natural … wonderfully expressive.”[542]

  Finally, a wealthy suffragette purchased them at a sharply discounted price.[543] She credited her purchase to the enthusiasm of an African-American friend who had come from Kentucky as the playmate of a physician’s son.

  Edmonia, in turn, expressed unusual thanks by giving her buyer’s friend a plaster bust of her favorite hero, John Brown.

  Only the Lincoln remained unspoken for. Collective efforts on behalf of the library faltered. The Mercury prodded: “Only about $100 have been subscribed towards the purchase of Miss Lewis’ bust of Lincoln for the Public Library and the project is in a fair way to miscarry. If one-half the cost of the bust were raised – say $250 – Miss Lewis would, no doubt, consent to trust to the liberality of the public for the balance. It could then be placed in the library with a subscription paper attached, and the full amount would no doubt be realized in a few months by small contributions. We hope the trustees will move in the matter.”[544]

  Two months after her arrival in San Francisco, she returned to the International Hotel before heading east.[545]

  In San Jose, the Lincoln secured funding by December.[546] Biographical summaries cited it since the 1880s.[547] Some time after 1917, the library acquired Awake and Asleep. In 1889, an estate dealer in San Francisco advertised Hiawatha’s Marriage for sale.[548]

  Edmonia later told an interviewer that she had “many warm friends in San Francisco.”[549] We found no sign she ever went back.

  ***

  As a loner and an outsider most of her life, Edmonia could be defensively enigmatic. When she told the Chronicle she came west because she loved to travel and that she thought San Francisco “more liberal” than New York, she deflected. An interview three years later clarified her primary aim: “When she began [her Death of Cleopatra] she lacked means to finish it. She went to California, exhibited and sold the pieces, which enabled her to proceed with her labor.”[550]

  Her treatment by the press reflected how California differed from the rest of the world for Edmonia and how she engaged her market. Two months of interviews and news foster an impression that she found genuine interest and financial success without the taint of superior attitudes and mean opposition she endured elsewhere. The worst of it was a mixed review of her work by the Chronicle, confusion about the word “auction,” and a market of too few buyers in spite of legions of curious spectators (much like her experience in Chicago). She might have fared better with male critics and buyers if she offered female nudes. Adult nudity, essential for so many artists and buyers, was not in her repertoire.

  She made quite a risky investment, not for the first time. Perhaps she had learned the retail tactic of displaying finished goods for sale from her mother’s people, who made and sold souvenirs. Few of her contemporaries were as willing to buy and cut marble – or as confident – without commissions in hand. Conscious of her risk, she selected what marbles she thought she could sell for maximum profit.

  By all accounts, she left her religious themes and affordable plaster busts behind. We found no hint of her religious art, although she showed at a Catholic bazaar. Nor did she win commissions to sculpt portraits, altarpieces, or memorials in California as she did elsewhere – significant parts of her business. Undoubtedly, she tested the waters and found them shallow.

  Near two thousand dollars in sales plus perhaps as much in gallery admissions would have put profits in her purse, but tales of discounts indicate it was not as much as she had hoped.

  The progress of her sales suggests that local dreams of civic sophistication prevailed over interests in education, politics, and history. Women were her main buyers. The literary Marriage and the clever Cupid sold within a week in San Francisco. The two cherub groups took longer, perhaps because they cost more as a “set,” and a reminiscence of debatable reliability indicates she sold the two for the price of one.

  The large emigrant population of the remote West Coast did not fully embrace the post-war fascination with American heroes of the Civil War – the cornerstone of American public art. Civil War memorials were springing up across the nation. Congress purchased two marble Lincolns for the Capitol. New York and Brooklyn each had their own colossal bronze. On her way to California, Edmonia delivered a large, elaborate bust of him to New York’s Central Park.[551] She advertised she had collected $1,100 for it. Yet, she found no fan with $500 (discounted by $50[552]) ready to spend on Lincoln in California.

  The Bay Area turned out to be a tough market, not her first on the road. Like any good warrior, she adjusted her strategies and tactics. To find a home for Hagar three years earlier, she had resorted to making a raffle using a fine engraving as a premium. In 1869, she had offered plaster busts of Longfellow to spur fund-raising for her Harvard donation. Here, San Francisco buyers took a week to purchase only two of five marbles. The much smaller city of San Jose (1870 population was over 9,000 with racial distributions similar to San Francisco) was not in her original plan. Luckily, it provided customers for three more sales, but she endured another week of expenses. It appears she also brought or had access to an easily recast plaster John Brown bust that was not named as part of her public show.

  Edmonia’s interviewers relied in part on other sources for background, a common practice even today. Statements in the Chronicle take us back to an 1866 interview in the Athenaeum that was widely reprinted.[553] Mention of the Freed Woman by the Evening Bulletin could also be taken from reference books.[554] Repeated by the Call, this was the first (and last) mention of it in print for years.

  Note that every reference to her age discounted it by two to
four years, a quirk that would become more acute.

  The Afro-American press provided its own flair but did not dominate the coverage that quickly echoed across the country.[555]

  After 1873, we found few mentions of her in California newspapers.[556] The unusual interest shown by an editor in Placerville, a gold-mining hub near the Nevada border, suggests a link with her convivial brother. He cut hair less than ninety miles away, according to the 1860 census, and was known to brag about his sister.

  Comments on her biracial heritage appear in nearly all her interviews and tend to say more about the writers than about the artist. Where she could, she learned to meet or exceed the social norms of her customers. Her Indian references were honest enough and, as quoted in the Chronicle, complex. While proud of her blood, she also sought social acceptance, it seems, by rejecting the appearance of the Native Americans she saw on the prairie.

  Figure 39. Abraham Lincoln, 1871

  Edmonia’s Abraham Lincoln is one of the three works by Lewis in the San Jose library’s California Room where they were cleaned and repaired by a conservator some time after these photos were taken. Photo courtesy San Jose Public Library.

  Brother Sunrise

  While she explained her trip west in terms of paying for her Centennial entry, she also fulfilled, it seems to us, a childhood wish to be near her brother. The record tells us that when she was eight years old, he departed, within months setting up a barbershop on San Francisco’s Commercial Street.[557] Twelve years older than she was, he was a loving resource for her rather than a rival sibling. After their parents died, he cared for her, helped, and believed in her – for the most part at great distance. He paid for her education and subsidized the start of her career. Returning his love surely nurtured her spirit.

  Having tracked the Gold Rush into the mountains, he finally settled at a mud-scarred village in the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. John Bozeman established a trading center there in the summer of 1864, intending to serve prospectors. The Bozeman Trail, a path worn by natives and recently mapped by the army, brought thousands of hardy emigrants north from the rutted banks of the inches-deep, mile-wide Platte River. Many of them found gold and silver in the mountains. Others took to the fertile valley, where melting winter snows irrigated wheat, berries, and other crops during growing season.

  If the dangers of free-roaming Indians cut it off from the rest of the world, the town of Bozeman still held promise for its residents. Legend has it the Indians would not shed blood in the lush dale they called the “Valley of Flowers.”[558] An army outpost offered security from 1867. The Northern Pacific Railroad planned to pass through one day.

  Edmonia’s brother ran a barbershop and bathhouse. It was the hot-water delight of prospectors, miners, ranchers, and farmers. With his profits from barbering and investments in miners, he bought land and built stores. In 1870, he built a new and better shop for himself. As the town grew, he turned to building cottages. He also backed a vineyard, although he never drank or gambled.

  He entertained his customers with sleight-of-hand as well as chatter about local events, exotic places, and his globe-trotting artist sister. Eventually he presented an evening of conjuring magic, music, and a skit with a ventriloquist’s dummy. His modesty, his respectability, and his knowledge of the world impressed local people. Charming, successful, and committed to the city, he stood out as one of its leading citizens.

  Edmonia, traveling west on Union Pacific rails, passed hundreds of miles south of Bozeman. Meeting her brother on the road seems tactically difficult if not impossible. He banked in San Francisco, and he likely dropped in on her there, where they could visit at leisure. Helena and Bismarck newspapers cited him as they followed her career.[559] One provided unique details about her California show and listed it under “local news.” Undoubtedly, his barber shop could serve as an even better source of updates for Montanans.

  31. NEW YORK RECEPTION – 1874

  Edmonia’s West Coast triumphs excited her East Coast admirers. In January 1874, two weeks before she sailed for Europe, a colored women’s group honored her with a lavish reception at the mansion of Peter S. Porter in New York City.[560] Rev. Garnet, who years before had directed Edmonia to Boston, quipped it was the only “Porter house” in the city that he liked. A brass band played Strauss waltzes and other popular melodies. Untouched by the financial panic that had brought Wall Street to its knees, caterers loaded tables with delicacies. Edmonia wore her gold medal from Naples.

  A highlight of the evening was the reading of a letter from William Henry Johnson of Albany NY, who could not be present. Originally a barber, Johnson became the most persuasive colored leader in New York State and the first elected to public office. He wrote for Douglass’s Rochester North Star and then became editor of the Albany Capitol. Edmonia, he wrote, distinguished herself “[in] the cause of liberty.”[561]

  Before she sailed,[562] someone might have alerted her to the new book, The Rising Son, by reformer William Wells Brown, MD. His book commented on the race and briefly sketched dozens of Americans of distinction. She was one of them. So were Douglass, Langston, Bannister, Grimes, Garnet, and others she knew.

  Although Brown had addressed the Tremont Temple celebration of Forever Free in 1869, his book copied most of Bullard’s 1871 interview from the Revolution.[563] He discarded the musings about Edmonia’s blood, however, and inserted his equally studied turn at physical anthropology: “Her head is well balanced, exhibiting a large and well-developed brain.”[564]

  32. PRODUCING THE DEATH OF CLEOPATRA – 1872 to 1875

  Elements of Surprise

  According to an 1876 interview, Edmonia started her magnus opus around 1872.[565] Particularly intriguing is the four years of secrecy and deflection that followed. That year, the Art-Journal asked about the large draped work seen in her studio. If it were the life-size John Brown being readied for shipment to the Union League Club and already well publicized, would she not have promoted it as she had done before? Instead, she left the writer puzzling as she slyly described “a large monument which persons of her own race have ordered from her for New England.”[566] The following year, she teased the Daily Graphic with threats of an anonymous entry. Even the last press coverage as she left Rome spoke only of her “two sleeping children, who have been gathering flowers, until wearied out they have fallen asleep, clinging to each other and holding fast their floral treasures in their chubby, tiny hands, with an expression upon their faces as if God and the angels were whispering to them tales of Paradise.” Nothing was said of its prize-winning quality or of the other statuary Edmonia had shipped. All of two-feet-tall, the carving was charming but dated and in no way sensational or rivalrous.

  Edmonia often traveled six months out of twelve as she pursued marketing, missionary, and creative goals. The growing business required more time. She skipped her tour of America in 1874, perhaps to study Cleopatra in libraries and museums, possibly to concentrate on filling orders and accumulating cash. Massing her own clay, as described by Bullard in 1871, would have drained her energy and time. The next year, she employed nine assistants.[567] By the end of 1873, she claimed a work force of twenty.

  At some point, she must have realized she needed someone to look after things while she was busy. A mature artisan who knew carving and carvers could also fill orders and serve customers while she toured. The man she hired presumably organized the work, knowing how to obtain supplies and labor, how much time certain tasks should take, and how to close a sale, arrange delivery, and collect money.[568] In 1873, James Peck Thomas was able to connect with her while she was touring America, presumably with the aid of her trusted manager.

  If Edmonia confided her interest in Cleopatra, it would have been to Amelia Blandford Edwards, the English writer. She and Amelia had much in common. They were both never married, unrelentingly industrious, devotees of good music and art, highly competitive, and self-taught pioneers in occupations reserved for men. At some point,
they became friends.

  Amelia loved France and Italy. After writing about hiking the little-known valleys of the Italian Alps, she turned her full attention across the Mediterranean. At the time, she planned her classic guide to the Nile, which she illustrated and published in 1877. It is still in print today. She soon became a leading Egyptologist who thrived as she vied with men for recognition and control of resources.

  In 1873, Edmonia had coolly thrown Amelia’s words in the face of the blood-befuddled editor of the Graphic: “[Amelia Edwards] once said to me, ‘You dear Edmonia, I think it is such a beautiful thing for you to come right away from those Indians and make such as stand as you have done.’”[569]

  Edmonia needed to decide what her Egyptian queen would look like. At the time, artists emphasized authenticity. Based on Cleopatra’s Greek ancestry, Isabel Cholmeley had rejected an Egyptian look a few years before.[570] William Story, on the other hand, cared little that the fabled vamp lacked even a drop of African blood. He clearly considered his Cleopatra to be a product of Egypt.[571] Hawthorn, (as quoted above) for an image of his own imagination, used the word “Nubian” – often applied by others in the continuing confusion with Story’s statue.

  Amelia was in a position to help Edmonia distinguish her work from Story’s and the rest. She could have recommended antique sources. It was a tactic suggested by Hawthorne via his fictional sculptor (but not apparent in either Hawthorne’s or Story’s Cleopatra).[572]

  Used to working from photos, Edmonia now sketched from old coins and translations of Latin histories. Cleopatra had an eagle-like profile. Marc Antony, who adored his lady’s beak, had it stamped on the silver denarius and other coins. Seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal quipped, “had [her nose] been shorter, the whole aspect of the world would have been altered.”[573]