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McCLURE'S MAGAZINE

FAMILIAR LETTERS OF AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS

EDITED BY ROSE STANDISH NICHOLS

ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS

These familiar letters from Augustus Saint-Gaudens show the artist as his intimate friends knew him. They were written at odd moments, often in haste, and never with a shadow of self-consciousness. They are interesting, not as literary productions, but as the simple record of a critical period in his career.

"Le Coeur au M?tier," the motto which he wished to place in his studio, will be seen to express the spirit of his life. Other keen interests he had, but they were never allowed to interfere with his work, and he seldom felt the need of any recreation apart from it. One of his friends used to complain that in the midst of their merrymaking an abstracted look would come into his eyes and his mind would hark back to sculpture. Although he was extremely modest and was given to underrating his powers in other directions, from his childhood he confidently expected to be a great artist. As a little school-boy, sent from his father's shop to do errands, he would sit in the omnibus and look about at his well-dressed fellow-passengers, and wonder what they would think if they realized what he was going to be some day. But even as a child he never dreamed of achieving his ambition without years of ceaseless struggle.

When the boy left school, at the age of thirteen, this struggle began. In 1848 his father, a Frenchman, had brought his Irish wife and his baby, Augustus, to New York, where he worked as a shoemaker. He was poor, and was anxious that his eldest son should become self-supporting as soon as possible; so at thirteen the boy was apprenticed to a cameo-cutter, whose trade he mastered with surprising readiness, at the same time studying drawing at the Cooper Institute in the evenings. In a little while he was not only earning his own living by cameo-cutting, but excelled all his fellow-pupils at the night-school in talent and perseverance.

Saint-Gaudens' artistic education was completed in Europe, where he went at the age of eighteen and stayed almost continuously for nearly fourteen years. His father sent him first to Paris. There his progress in the art schools was marked, although he continued to support himself by his trade, and could give only half his time to sculpture. At the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War he reluctantly refrained from enlisting in the French army and left for Italy. It was in Rome that he first found sculpture remunerative, and finally was able to drop cameo-cutting. The years from 1866 to 1880, which he spent in Rome and Paris, with only occasional visits to America, were singularly happy ones, characterized by a capacity for continuous work at a high pitch of excellence.

The letters from Saint-Gaudens printed here were written eighteen years later, when the sculptor had come into full possession of his genius. They cover a most critical period in his career, and record his greatest artistic triumph--his recognition in France as one of the foremost of modern sculptors. After he returned to the United States in 1880 he lived and worked in New York, and by 1897 had built up a national reputation. His work was progressing under the most favorable conditions, with the encouragement of an ever-increasing circle of friends and admirers. On the other hand, in France, his father's country, where he himself had been educated, his work was practically unknown. A few of his former comrades at the Beaux-Arts, judging his sculpture from photographs, did not hesitate to tell Saint-Gaudens that it had been over-praised in America and would obtain no such appreciation in France. The sculptor felt that, in order to learn his own deficiencies and to find out where he really stood among his contemporaries, he must return to Paris, exhibit at the Salon, and run the gauntlet of the best critics. All his friends on both sides of the water discouraged him from taking this step, and he himself dreaded it; but he believed that, in justice to himself and to his work, he must make this venture.

After his decision was made, however, his departure had to be postponed until various duties were fulfilled. The Shaw and Logan monuments had first to be completed and unveiled, and a number of smaller commissions had to be executed. From the beginning of his work upon the Shaw memorial there had been bitter opposition upon the part of his friends to the symbolical figure hovering above Colonel Shaw and his men, but the sculptor clung to his original conception with great tenacity. Saint-Gaudens' best friend, Bion, a Parisian sculptor and critic, whose opinion he valued highly, had never liked the idea of this figure. Just before Bion's death he received a photograph of the monument as finished in the clay, and he wrote a long letter to Saint-Gaudens, complaining that the angel was as superfluous as a figure of Simplicity would be, floating in the air above the bent figures in Millet's "Gleaners," and concluding: "I had no need of your 'nom de Dieu' allegory on the ceiling. Your negroes marching in step and your Colonel leading them told me enough. Your priestess merely bores me as she tries to impress upon me the beauty of their action."

Concerning this letter of Bion's, Saint-Gaudens wrote:

"The Players, New York, Jan. 26th, 1897

"I meant to write you at length tonight but I started with a letter to Bion which has kept me busy till now, 11 P.M. It is in reply to the one from him that I enclose, in which at the end he says a word of you.

"I am not disturbed by his dislike of my figure. It is because it does not look well in the photograph. If the figure in itself looked well, he would have liked it, I know, and notwithstanding his admirable comparison with the Millet I still think that a figure, if well done in that relation to the rest of the scheme, is a fine thing to do. The Greeks and Romans did it finely in their sculpture. After all it's the way the thing's done that makes it right or wrong, that's about the only creed I have in art. However his letter is interesting, although very sad, dear old boy.

"All of the Shaw is out of the studio. They cast the Logan on Monday and I am working like the devil on the Sherman. I've found precisely the model I wished, just his size, the same pose of the head and the same thinness; a Milanese peasant who poses like a rock. Next week I commence the nude of the Victory from a South Carolinian girl with a figure like a goddess.

"Affectionately yours A. ST.-G."

Bion died shortly after writing his objections to the allegorical figure, and if anything could have changed Saint-Gaudens' decision regarding his composition of the Shaw monument, his friend's letter would certainly have done so. Although Saint-Gaudens and Bion had studied sculpture together at the Beaux-Arts in their youth, it was not until years afterward that, through a constant interchange of letters, their relation became a close one. Bion gave up sculpture as a profession, and devoted himself to friendship and philosophy. He dropped into the studios of a few intimates every day, frequented art exhibitions, and attended lectures upon philosophy and psychology at the Sorbonne or the Coll?ge de France; but the long letters which he used to write Saint-Gaudens every week became more and more the chief business of his life. He kept his friend informed as to what was going on in Paris; of the doings of their little circle of acquaintances; and wrote him detailed descriptions of all important events in the world of art, besides giving him a great deal of disinterested advice upon every conceivable subject, including his work and the conduct of his life. Saint-Gaudens used to reply at great length, but his letters were destroyed, according to directions left in his friend's will. When the news of Bion's death reached Saint-Gaudens, he wrote:

"148 W. 36th St., Feb. 17th, 1897

"Of course the one thing on my mind, the terrible spectre that looms up, is poor Bion's death; night and day, at all moments, it comes over me like a wave that overwhelms me, and it takes away all heart that I may have in anything. Today, however, I have had a kind of sad feeling of companionship with him, that seems to bring him to me, in working over the head of the flying figure of the Shaw. The bronze founders are not ready for it yet. I have had a stamp made of the figure and have helped it a great deal, I am sure you will think. You know that Thayer told me he thought an idea I once had of turning the head more profile, was a better one than that I had evolved, and I've always wished to do it. It is done, and it's the feeling of death and mystery and love in the making of it that brought my friend back to me so much today.... But the young, thank Heaven, do not feel these blows so profoundly as do older people. In one of my blue fits the other day I felt the end of all things, and reasoning from one thing to the other and about the hopelessness of trying to fathom what it all means, I reached this: that we know nothing, but a deep conviction came over me like a flash that at the bottom of it all, whatever it is, the mystery must be beneficent. It does not seem as if the bottom of all were something malevolent; and the thought was a great comfort.

"I shall be all the week at the figure. I've made an olive branch instead of the palm,--it looks less 'Christian martyr'-like,--and I have lightened and simplified the drapery a great deal. I had not seen it for two or three months and I had a fresh impression.

"At 27th Street I've finished the nude of the Sherman and next week I begin to put his clothes on him. I had another day with the model for the Victory last Sunday, and that, too, is progressing rapidly. Zorn, the Swedish artist, was with me all day Sunday making an etching of me while the model rested; it is an admirable thing and I will send you a copy of it.

"The studio is once more in a fearful condition with the casting of the Logan, and the getting of the Puritan ready to photograph and cast for the Boston Museum and to send abroad to have the reductions made....

"Affectionately A. ST.-G."

"May 15th or 16th, 1897

"The Shaw goes to Boston on Thursday or Friday. I've done little else lately but run around about it until I am frantic. On the other hand, while waiting for some workmen yesterday, I had a great walk in the Babylonian East Side here. It was a beautiful day and one of great impressions.

"I have not commenced the Howells medallion yet, as I expected to be absent. I believe I told you I had a nice note from him.

A. ST.-G."

The Shaw memorial was unveiled in Boston, in the latter part of May, 1897. The erection of the monument had been so long delayed that Saint-Gaudens feared that the public had lost interest in the work, or would expect too much and be disappointed. On the contrary, its success was immediate, and made him very happy. Its appeal was to men of every condition, laymen as well as artists, and nothing ever pleased the sculptor more than the way it arrested the attention of almost every passer-by. In June, scarcely a month after the unveiling of the Shaw, another soldier's monument, the equestrian statue of General Logan, was unveiled at Chicago, and Saint-Gaudens went there to be present at the ceremony.

"1142 The Rookery, Chicago, June 23, 1897

"I am again at the top of this big building here, and I will give you some description of the last 24 hours. At one o'clock yesterday Mrs. Deering, Mrs. French, Mr. French and I were placed in one carriage, Mr. Deering, Mrs. St. G. and the editor of the 'Chicago Tribune' in another, and in the wake of a lot of other carriages and followed by a procession of them, we drove to the big stand. A great day; with a high wind and glorious sun. I was put in one of the seats in the Holy of Holies alongside of Mrs. Logan, if you please, and the president of the ceremonies. A lot of speeches, one of which was very good, and at the right moment the complicated arrangement of flags dropped, the cannon fired, the band played, Mrs. Logan wept, and I posed for a thousand snap photographs, 'a gleam of triumph passed over my face,' think of that! .

"However, the monument looks impressive as I see it this morning for the first time with much of the disfiguring scaffolding gone. I stay here until Sunday, when I take the 5.30 P.M. train and shall get to New York Monday at 6 or 7. Last night we went to a great golf place where high merriment prevailed. This afternoon to Fort Sheridan. Tonight a reception at the Art Institute; tomorrow a lawn party at Burnham's and Sunday a visit to the great dredging canal; on Monday the cars and rest."

After the sculptor's return from Chicago, he continued his preparations for departure in New York.

"The Players, August 7, 1897

"Brander Matthews has just come and interrupted this with a long and interesting talk on the conventional in art and an article he has written and sent to Scribner's on it. You have often wondered what I think about things--I wonder myself; I think anything and everything. This seeing a subject so that I can side with either side with equal sympathy and equal convictions I sometimes think a weakness. Then again I'm thinking it a strength.

Finally, in the autumn of 1897, after both the Shaw and Logan monuments had been unveiled, and various minor obstacles to his departure had been removed, Saint-Gaudens was ready to leave America. Opposition to his plan still came from every side. Many of his friends in New York seemed to feel that he was casting a certain reproach upon his country by his desire to profit by foreign criticism and to measure his work by European standards. They prophesied that his work would deteriorate under French influence. His few friends in Paris were equally discouraging. They did not hesitate to warn him that if he persisted in coming there he must be prepared to face indifference and failure. Even Bion, when Saint-Gaudens had asked him to get the opinions of a few French artists upon photographs of the Shaw memorial, had refused to do so, saying: "I shan't show your photographs to anyone. Shiff, MacMonnies, and Proctor have seen them, my poor old friend, and the others do not know you. They are quite indifferent about what goes on outside their own little show."

Saint-Gaudens himself feared that he might be making a serious mistake. The ocean voyage in itself was an ordeal to him, and before leaving he wrote: "I continue fencing and am preparing for the voyage as one prepares for a fight. I go to the theatre and that tides over the blue hours which lie between dinner and bed-time." But he felt that he must make the venture, whatever lay before him, and that he could never be satisfied until he had stood the test of a comparison with his chief contemporaries and until his work had been passed upon by the most sophisticated and penetrating critics of art. At the end of September, 1897, accompanied by his wife and his son, Homer, he sailed for England. After crossing to France, he thus described his first impressions:

"Hotel Normandy, Paris, Nov. 7th, 1897

"From London we came on the following day to Paris. The country between Calais and Dover seemed very grand; great rolling lands with immense fields being ploughed in the waning day. The peace, simplicity, and calm of it all was profoundly impressive. Just a ploughman and a boy, alone in the country on a hillside, following the horses and the plough along the deep, straight furrows; no fences, a clear sky with the half moon, and only a small clump or two of trees--all so orderly and grand."

For the first few weeks in Paris Saint-Gaudens was miserable. His studio, on the Rue de Bagneux, in the Latin Quarter, was large and cheerful, with comfortable quarters adjoining for his assistants, and he was extremely interested in his work upon the equestrian statue of General Sherman. But he missed his old friends and haunts in New York, the weather was gloomy and depressing, and he felt enervated and homesick. Almost none of the friends of his student days were there to welcome him back to Paris, and he was not in the mood to make new ones. Dr. Shiff, a retired physician with a philosophic turn of mind, and many years the sculptor's senior, was the only man he could count upon for regular companionship, though occasionally an old friend like Henry Adams, John Alexander, or Garnier would drop into the studio. John Sargent was another warm friend who helped to keep up his spirits and whom he admired intensely both as a man and as an artist. With Helleu, the etcher, they enjoyed spending a day or two at Chartres and Rheims. In the following letter he describes his first meeting with Whistler:

"Paris, Nov. 16th, 1897

"Mac and I made a short call on Whistler, whom I found much more human than I imagined him to be, and today I went to the Court of Appeals where a trial of his was to come off--it didn't,--but I had a delightful chat with him. He is a very attractive man with very queer clothes, a kind of 1830 coat with an enormous collar greater even than those of that period; a monocle, a strong jaw, very frizzly hair with a white mesh in it, and an extraordinary hat."

The brightest spot in Saint-Gaudens' winter was his visit to the south of France and to Italy, in the company of his friend Garnier, who, like Bion, had been a fellow-student of his at the ?cole des Beaux-Arts years before. They left Paris in December, and went almost directly to Aspet and Salies du Salat, Gascon villages where Saint-Gaudens' father was born and where he worked at his trade as a young man. This was the first time that Augustus Saint-Gaudens had visited that country on the Spanish frontier where his paternal ancestors had lived for centuries and where many of their name still survived.

"Aspet, December, 1897

"I write this in the village where my father was born and today has been one of the most delightful days of my life. I have invited my old friend Garnier to travel with me. We left Paris yesterday morning and slept at Toulouse last night. We left there this morning before dawn and saw the sun rise over the Pyrenees on our way to Salies du Salat, a most picturesque and dirty village at the foot of the beautiful mountains. I inquired at the station if any Saint-Gaudens lived there. 'Yes, opposite the mairie.' We walked up a narrow Spanish-looking street and there was a little shoe-store and on it the sign 'Saint-Gaudens.' I woke my cousin up. His is the very house where father passed his childhood. We three walked over the town up to the cradle of the 'Comminges' just back of father's house, and we went around on the sward and on the old moat where the children now play and where his father and my father played when children. I cannot describe to you how I was moved by it all.

"After a characteristic d?jeuner with the cousin, a typical French peasant, and his typical wife, we hired a wagon with two horses and drove three hours into the mountains through a wonderfully beautiful country, very Spanish in character, to this delightful village. Here father was born, and baptized in the little church right at hand from where I write. There are delightful fountains at every corner and an air of thrift, order, and cleanliness that you cannot imagine. We are in a nice hotel, a homelike place, and tomorrow, after seeing Market Day, we walk to Saint-Gaudens, about 12 miles from here. It is a most romantic spot; all the country and the people here have a good deal of the Spanish dignity. We are 30 miles from the frontier of Spain. I must stop now because my third cousin is coming. He is the postman of the village and the surrounding country, a handsome young fellow who carries the mail around on horseback, and who between times makes shoes."

Leaving this out-of-the-way corner of Gascony, under the shadow of the Pyrenees, Saint-Gaudens and Garnier traveled by Toulouse to Marseilles. From this port the sculptor had sailed twenty-seven or eight years before, when he first went to study in Rome. Now, with his old friend, he again climbed up to where the church of Notre-Dame de la Garde overlooks the Mediterranean, and was amused to remember the three days he had spent upon that hill-top, with little to eat but figs and chocolate, while awaiting the departure of his ship for Italy.

The two artists went by train from Marseilles to Nice and Ventimiglia, and then walked along the superb Cornice road to San Remo, conscious that every step brought them nearer to their beloved Italy. The hills, covered with palms and orange-trees, the sacred-looking groves of gray-green olives detached against the deep blue of the sea, recalled to Saint-Gaudens a story by Anatole France describing some early Christians in an olive grove overlooking the Mediterranean.

In Italy they stopped first at Pisa, and did not reach Rome much before midnight. Regardless of fatigue, Saint-Gaudens insisted upon starting out that night to revisit the favorite haunts of his student days, taking the reluctant Garnier with him. At a late hour they ended their excursion at the Caf? Greco, where the sculptor talked with a waiter who had served him with coffee in 1871. The next morning they spent in the gardens and the Bosco of the Villa Medici. Nothing seemed to them much changed, and their happiness was as great as if they had found their youth again in the land where they had left it. Saint-Gaudens afterward said that on the night of that arrival in Rome he felt as if he were slaking a great thirst. Before their return they also visited the Bay of Naples. Vivid memories of Italy were present with the sculptor until the end of his life, and during his last illness he said that one thing he wished to live for was to take again the drive from Salerno to Amalfi: the vineyards clinging to the hillsides, the cliffs with the blue waves breaking at their base, haunted him as a vision of exquisite beauty.

Late in the winter Saint-Gaudens returned to Paris, and when spring and the pleasant weather came on he was working again with great enthusiasm, preparing for the Salon. His exhibit at the Champs de Mars attracted much attention and elicited unexpected praise from the severest French critics.

"3, rue de Bagneux, Paris, May 16th, 1898

... "I must be brief today for Dr. Shiff is coming in to talk, and help me with his consoling philosophy as Bion did; and I must work, for the model leaves shortly, and I must use him every hour I can; so I will tell you briefly of what has happened.

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