Give the man room

Gutzon was a poet, but he seems also to have been an observing realist. He continued:

On the subject of art schools he wrote bitterly:

He urged reforms in art education—reforms that have since come about. On this subject he wrote:

The message seems important because so patently the truth. Gutzon Borglum was certainly a master craftsman, from the design of tools to the art that was his profession. It is significant that while he always preached a doctrine of change and modernity and was soundly berated by the academicians, he never produced anything cabalistic. Down deep in him was the understanding of what people were thinking about and what they could understand.

They understood him best, perhaps, when he was denouncing something. He had a keen eye, a vibrant voice, and, undoubtedly, a fine vocabulary with which to do the denouncing.

CHAPTER EIGHT

VARIETY OF LIFE IN A STUDIO

To enter the studio you passed through a green door opening from Thirty-eighth Street, along the old driveway bordered by geraniums to the proper entrance which led into a small anteroom. On the street door was a sign gruffly announcing that visitors were received “By appointment only.” But it was easy to get to the anteroom; and no matter how hard a secretary might try to carry out orders, Gutzon would certainly call out a welcome to anybody who owned a voice he recognized. His studio was only a step from Grand Central Station; so many of his friends dropped in just to watch him work. And because he had decided to love all mankind and knew that many of these people had come from a long distance, he would never let them be turned away.

There was always something going on in this place until the day he moved to Stamford—politics, social reform, park improvements, drama, and sometimes sculpture. And in the background was a phalanx of New York’s clever people, studio helpers, secretaries, models, friends and acquaintances. They flowed in and out at all hours of the day and night, and there seemed never to be any end to them.

Among his early helpers were Marian Bell, daughter of the inventor of the telephone, and her friend Alice Hill of Washington. Gutzon probably enjoyed making the pair of them sweep up the studio and mix clay. Once he made them dye untold yards of muslin until their hands were completely discolored. Art was difficult, he told them, because it was made up of so many different, disagreeable things. But, somehow, they liked his instructions, and they looked on the studio as a second home. Alice was married there to Frank Harris, a musician and inventor of an electronic pickup system to transmit music over the telephone. It was demonstrated successfully before an audience in the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Other helpers developed into sculptors with independent studios of their own. Among them were George Lober of New York; Merrill (“Bud”) Gage of Santa Monica, California; “Bob” Garrison of Denver and New York; M. F. Malin of Salt Lake City; and William Tolentino of the Philippine Islands. Tolentino had been recommended by Mrs. Woodrow Wilson.

Malvina Hoffman, though never a studio helper, was a familiar practitioner in it and often a guest of the Borglums. Gutzon gave her occasional technical advice, beginning with her first attempt at carving. She had modeled a head of her father on the end of a piece of lead pipe with no proper armature, and was copying it in marble. Another New York sculptress, Ethel Hood, whom he met later, impressed him so much that he invited her to work with him in the Black Hills, but by that time she was too busy in the East.

Perhaps the most indispensable worker and helper was Robert (“Bob”) A. Baillie of Closter, New Jersey. Gutzon repeatedly called him “the best marble carver in the United States.” He started in the Thirty-eighth Street studio to work on the carving of figures for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and remained there steadily for ten years. When Gutzon began to be called away more and more from New York on distant commissions Baillie’s work for other sculptors increased, and in time he was one of the most sought-after assistants in New York.

The models, too, were interesting, but only a few are remembered now. There was a man with a white beard who had posed for many sculptors, including Mr. Barnard. There was Lord Methuen’s former valet who had lost the weekly payroll while returning from the bank. Best of all was sweet, gentle Julia Percy, who posed for some of Gutzon’s best marbles.

She married a sculptor who had worked in the studio and went with him to California. Unfortunately the marriage was not happy and ended in divorce. Long afterward, in 1947, she wrote a few recollections of her life in the studio:

An entertaining character who worked in the studio and slept there was a Japanese called “Humbo” by the others; and there was another student from Japan, scholarly Takamura, who was admitted by an introduction from Daniel Chester French and a somewhat exceptional letter written by himself. This notice had begun:

Other models included young Lieutenant Phil Sheridan, who spent many hours posing for the equestrian statue of his father in Washington. Among the horses were Smoke, a Virginia hunter, and Halool, a thoroughbred Arab imported by Walter Davenport, the cartoonist. These horses wandered about the studio on the days they were needed, and were perfectly gentle. They were kept at a riding academy in the park where Gutzon occasionally rode bareback with a group of army men.

Edith Wynne Matthison, the actress and a dear friend, posed for the heroic-sized figure called “Rabboni” in Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington. That figure is in startling contrast to the beautiful, brooding figure of the Adams Memorial by Augustus Saint-Gaudens in the same place. The “Rabboni” expresses joy and hope, while the other is complete negation. Still others who came to pose were the Mortimer Schiff children of whom the sculptor made a portrait relief to accompany the portrait of the Jacob Schiff children made in the previous generation by Saint-Gaudens.

One of the sculptor’s most revered friends was John S. Clark, much older than himself, who came all too seldom from Boston. He was engaged in writing a life of John Fiske, the historian, and took a great interest in the sculptor’s work. He liked most of all the marble figures of “Conception,” “Motherhood” and “Martyr,” which he spoke of as a trilogy. In a letter written in 1907 Clark makes this interesting comparison of literary and sculptural work:

In those early days in New York, before Gutzon became involved in many big public memorials, he had more time to express his creative fancies or “pipe dreams” in marble. A larger than life-size nude figure of a woman which he called “Conception” or “Inspiration” caused some stir and was considered too daring in certain circles. To him it represented the holiness of creation, and his small marble called “Wonderment of Motherhood” was produced in the same reverent, humble spirit.

A second marble figure symbolic of motherhood represented a woman on her knees, holding up her infant child in her arms as if offering it on an altar. This was a step toward his marble “Atlas,” a female figure on her knees, about four feet high, holding a globe representing the world in her arms, lifting it up to God instead of balancing it on her back as in the old mythology. Of his “Conception,” which with other of his works was exhibited at Columbia University, George Luks, the painter, said:

The group called “I Have Piped and Ye Have Not Danced” was produced in the studio at about this time, but never during his life got out of the plaster stage because Gutzon could never afford a large enough piece of marble when he had the time to carve it. The thought of it had been in his mind a long time. The initial idea, he said, had come to him at a concert where Ysaye, the violinist, had been playing. The way the women stood up at the end of the concert, arranging their furs and chattering about where they were going next made him feel that the music had passed completely over them, leaving no impression. He exhibited the female figure alone as a pastel sketch in Boston in 1901, where it elicited the following description of the group from Lillian Whiting, poet and art critic:

Since Borglum’s death the figure has been carved in marble and is in California.

In the meantime a very large “pipe dream,” something made for his own pleasure, the sculptor said, was gradually taking shape in his New York studio. His love for horses and the exceptional opportunity for studying their movements at the Baldwin ranch in California were still bright in his mind. They always were. He said once that he never saw a horse anywhere that he didn’t study it and learn something new.

In his studies for the Grant competition he had become acquainted with army equipment, and he later began a group of artillery horses with their trappings. Because such externals were bothersome to his composition, he abandoned them and concentrated on horses alone, adding the figure of an Indian for interest. He was familiar with the ways of those expert riders—how a man could decoy horses out of a corral and by riding around and around them until they followed his mount could lead a dash into the open. That was the moment chosen by the sculptor for his group—five wild horses in full gallop.

The group was cast in bronze by the Gorham Company and exhibited in their window on Fifth Avenue. Not only because the action of those horses was very lifelike but because the plan was wholly American in both subject and design, it attracted instant attention and was purchased by James Stillman and presented to the Metropolitan Museum. It happened that Sir Purdon Clarke, an Englishman, was director of that institution at the time.

For a long time it stood in the entrance hall and was almost the first thing that caught the eye of the visitor. Near it was Rodin’s “Age of Bronze,” a slight figure which was one of Gutzon’s favorites. School children, who were taken on regular tours through the museum, used to vote the horses as their favorite exhibit. The name “Mares of Diomedes” was given to the group by some classical scholar who recalled the story of Hercules and the wild horses of King Diomedes. The sculptor never cared much for the name; it harked back too loudly to outworn mythology.

More and more Gutzon’s sense of the bigness of America, of her value to the world, of the importance of her heroes, was growing upon him. He had bought a large block of marble and one day began to carve the head of Abraham Lincoln—his first experiment in colossal sculpture. He worked on it for weeks until it became a perfect likeness of the man, but still he worked while watchers feared that one more stroke of the chisel might ruin the whole work. And then a miracle happened. Suddenly a real character seemed to look out from the carved features. The face became inhabited.

A colored woman, whose duty it was to sweep the studio and to whom that huge block of marble had always been a nuisance because she couldn’t push it around, at last raised her eyes from the floor and exclaimed in astonishment: “How’s Mista Bo’glum know ol’ Abe was in dat rock?”

The head was taken over to Gorham’s and exhibited in their window. Robert Lincoln, son of Abraham Lincoln, happened along and he also exclaimed in astonishment, “I never expected to see Father again.” Later he wrote that he considered it the best likeness of his father that he had ever seen. Truman Bartlett, who had made a study of all the known portraits of Lincoln, went farther, saying there had not yet been sculptured a head of Lincoln that could compare with it.

It was the centenary of Lincoln’s birth, and Gutzon, as a matter of sentiment, asked President Theodore Roosevelt if he would let the head stand in the President’s room at the White House during Lincoln’s birthday. Roosevelt welcomed it and after it had gone back to New York wrote to inquire what had become of it. He said he wished it could be kept in Washington permanently.

The letter was brought to the attention of Eugene Meyer, Jr., who bought the colossal head and presented it to the nation. Congress, in accepting the gift, specified that it should be placed in the rotunda of the Capitol, never to be removed. As a demand for replicas began to be heard, the superintendent of the Capitol grounds allowed the sculptor to make a copy of it in plaster. Bronze duplicates of it are now at Lincoln’s tomb in Springfield, Illinois, in the Hall of Fame in New York, in the University of Southern California and in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society. The sculptor made another head for himself, which is now at the Detroit Museum of Art.

The carving of this head in marble, done as a labor of love, had far-reaching consequences. It brought to Gutzon friends and admirers. It led, undoubtedly, to his making the seated figure of Lincoln in front of the courthouse in Newark and finally to the carvings at Stone Mountain and Mount Rushmore.

CHAPTER NINE

THE BIRTH OF A MYTH

It was in this pious undertaking that he laid the groundwork for the first of the stories about his alleged evil temper. He was profoundly disturbed by this development because, he argued, he didn’t have any evil temper at all. He could have admitted, however, that he was saltily vigorous in defense of what he decided was right. But anyway, the longevity of what he titled an unfounded legend frequently puzzled him.

He knew from the beginning that he had a large order. In addition to the topmost figures on the outside of the chapel there were larger, more detailed ones of the Virgin, the boy Christ, two saints and two angels. About the inside were any number of historic church dignitaries, bishops and saints. And there was a concourse of other symbolic figures in the King and St. Columbia chapels. Altogether there were twenty life-size statues outside and about seventy-five smaller ones inside. It has been pointed out by one shrewd observer that the chances for disagreement between the sculptor and the architects and committee members were virtually unlimited.

Heins and Lafarge, the original architects, had listened to discussions ten years before any of the building was started. They had listened to the reports of sundry committees who never came to them with anything but grief. And, if they were like other men, they must have become fairly callous and a little deaf to each new sound of woe.

G. L. Heins, State Architect and a member of the firm that had designed St. John’s, seemed to have some doubts about Borglum. It is not quite clear whether he thought the sculptor too headstrong or too argumentative. Gutzon wrote to him a singularly polite letter at the beginning of his commission, outlining the Borglum theories of ecclesiastical art. And by that nobody could have been offended.

“There it will stand to praise or damn us,” Gutzon said, “not so much concerned whether we have been wise or not, but whether we have been sincere or not.” Heins replied to that but, unfortunately, his letter has been mislaid. One gathers the purport from the sculptor’s answer. Gutzon wrote:

That seems to have ended the architect’s worries, although the sculptor appears to have had plenty left. Shortly thereafter a visiting English architect, E. W. Hudson, wrote this in the journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects:

This critique seems a little out of step in view of Gutzon’s declaration that the figures on the cathedral should be “made as archaic as possible.” But he never took notice of it. He went on for months with his work, vigorous and pleased with all that went on about him.

When he raised his voice, however, all of New York heard him. He had discovered that John Barr, the contractor, was sending his models to a Hoboken stoneyard to be finished by machinery under contract. This, of course, had not been written in the bond. The machine treatment may have made the pieces look more archaic, but it also made them look cheaper. Some of them looked less like saints than gargoyles, and Gutzon was angrily indignant.

For once the art committee gave him a quick hearing, and presently he was allowed to exercise general supervision over the contractor’s work and accept it or reject it as he saw fit. But that wasn’t the end of the controversy. The contractor, it seems, wasn’t so much interested in the shape of an angel as he was in the price of rock. He began to change the position of arms and legs and wings to suit the contours of his blocks of stone. Borglum declared that these revised figures were caricatures, and he condemned them. The contractor wouldn’t listen to him. The committee gave him no satisfaction; so this time he carried his complaint to the press.

Borglum seems to have been his own best public-relations agent. He demanded that the carving of the stone should be done on the cathedral grounds under his own eye. Inasmuch as this was strictly in keeping with the medieval tradition in church building, he had one faction of the cathedral’s congregation backing him to start off with. The art critics generally thought his point well taken, and thousands of people who knew nothing at all about sculpture wondered what was the use of models if they weren’t to be followed.

Borglum won his point. A working studio was established on the cathedral grounds, and there Gutzon supervised the carving. He shared honors with his assistant sculptors, Price and Gregory, who had come over from England. Their names are signed to the work they shared in. Only the contractor thought that the sculptor was hard to get along with.

Many of the statues which Gutzon had condemned were recut and properly placed. The seventy-odd interior figures were one of the largest collections of images of religious leaders ever gathered under one roof since the beginning of the Christian era. They were also the largest collection ever carved by one artist. And as revised, they began to look somewhat respectable. Every detail of miter, chasuble and coat of arms was perfect. There had been much correspondence to determine the finger on which the pontifical ring should be placed.

By this time Gutzon had worked amicably with the cathedral authorities for two years. His early arguments about machine-cut statues were forgotten. And then came an incident which made people conscious of him again. A bit of newspaper confusion gave him a reputation for bad temper that he carried for the rest of his life.

It began in the meditations of Dr. John Peters, canon of the cathedral, in a bourn far from newspapers and street-corner arguments. Dr. Peters, all of a sudden, had become a little uncertain about the sex of angels. He wasn’t at all controversial about the matter, but he thought that he should convey what he had learned to Gutzon Borglum. So, in an innocent way, he did. In a letter to Borglum he wrote:

There you have all the correspondence on one side of this important controversy. Gutzon’s reply is appended because it is all that was said on the other side. He wrote this to Dr. Peters:

One might have thought that Gutzon’s quick acquiescence would have ended the “controversy” over the angels. But things seem to have been different in the rarefied atmosphere of the cathedral grounds. Severe trouble was on its way the moment Dr. Peters dropped his letter into the mailbox.

Gutzon wasn’t much concerned with the sex of the angels. The model of the Angel Gabriel was still in soft clay. It was a simple matter to remove the offending face and model one with sterner features. Gutzon kept the original face, had it cast in silver and used a photograph of it as a Christmas card. It brought to the Borglum home a signed photograph of Bishop Potter. Everything was sweetness and light until a reporter noticed that Gabriel’s countenance had quit being pretty and amiable and was now a little hard ... and analytical and dour. The discovery pleased him and he made a quick departure for his office.

The next morning his story appeared under a headline that didn’t seem to fit it:

Other newspapers took up the cry and soon the subscribers were filling the press with their personal, and no doubt authoritative, opinions on the intriguing subject: Were angels men or women?

Gutzon wasn’t much concerned with this argument. He didn’t think it concerned him. And, save for the fact that the first story had pictured him smashing up things in a rage, he was probably right. It seemed good fun, but twenty years later, during the Stone Mountain disagreement, a reporter dug up the original story to prove that Gutzon’s temper was ungovernable and always had been. The Atlanta Constitution, trying to ferret out the truth, telegraphed the cathedral and got a reply from Dr. Peters: “Angels still stand serene in their places where Borglum put them,” he said. “We never had any trouble with the sculptor.”

The story of how Borglum smashed the inoffensive angels went on, however, for years and years—and it still goes on. The evil that men do, somehow, never lives as long as some of the evil that they never thought of doing. Borglum, however, did think that destruction might have been a good idea.

The last time he heard reports that he had gone berserk in his studio on the grounds of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, he sadly shook his head. “I didn’t think of it soon enough,” he said.

CHAPTER TEN

PUBLIC MEMORIALS

So they had a reunion at a hotel near the studio and a pleasant meal during which nothing at all was said about sculpture. Gutzon thought that Davis was going to ask him to write an article and had quickly decided to do it. Then suddenly Davis came to his subject:

“Borglum,” he said, “would you like to make a statue of John Mackay?”

“Of course,” Gutzon answered in astonishment. “Who wouldn’t make a statue of a citizen like that?”

“Well,” said Davis, “my brother Sam is in town. The state of Nevada has trusted him with a commission. The state has authorized and voted some money for the statue, but Clarence Mackay has taken over the responsibility of financing it. So if you will take the job——”

“Let us go and see Sam,” Gutzon suggested. The next day, after a meeting with Mackay, he got the commission.

Gutzon was more than ordinarily pleased. He was doing a lot of work but nothing spectacular. He had known of Mackay since boyhood and felt that a statue to him would attract national interest.

John W. Mackay, lest people of our war-tossed world forget it, was an international personality for several reasons. He was, among other things, one of the Big Four of the Comstock Lode, a silver king and a builder of the first cable laid across the Atlantic. He had been a consistent fighter with a tough constitution and no feeling, ever, that he could fail to win.

Gutzon told Clarence Mackay that he would need all the photographs that might be available of the man and also all the data, news and rumor about him that might still be extant. Mackay saw the point. He not only gathered up all the information that his agents could find, but he visited the studio every morning on his way from Long Island to Broadway and spent a half hour reminiscing with the sculptor. Gutzon presently began to feel that he knew John W. Mackay pretty well.

The statue, inasmuch as it had to stand in the open, was scheduled to be eight or nine feet tall. Because of the static nature of the material, Gutzon said, anything less than that would look smaller than human. He made careful sketches to determine position, expression and general composition, and all of this took several months.

“I want to show my father as he was,” Mackay said, “a workman in the mines out of which his wealth and his position in life came.”

Because of this the model showed the capitalist in the dress of a miner—top boots, loose shirt open at the throat and shapeless working trousers. The left hand was grasping a pick handle against which the body leaned. The right hand was upturned, holding a piece of quartz.

Clarence Mackay liked it. When it was done he asked Gutzon to take it to Nevada and find a place to put it. “It is very difficult work to make a statue,” he said. “I think it is more difficult to find the right spot to display it. And I think the man who is qualified for one job is best qualified for the other.”

Thus began a new and complicated adventure. Gutzon met Sam Davis and went to Carson City, Nevada, carrying letters of introduction to state officials. There they met Governor Sparks, who looked interested but extremely puzzled.

Carson City was without parks, city squares or, for that matter, any cultivated landscape. The governor scratched his head and said, “Doesn’t seem to be much place where you could put a statue around here ... unless you want to stick it out in the middle of the street.”

The local organizations—patriotic, political, business, social—all had something of the governor’s attitude but were guided, in public action, by good old Western individualism. Each one suggested where Gutzon could put his statue, but no two could reach an agreement. The sculptor labored with them for several weeks and got very annoyed. He began to think that there was no reason for locating the work in Carson City. The right place for it, he

thought, was Virginia City, where Mackay had operated. But Virginia City was in worse shape than Carson.

He came one night to the home of Sam Davis, after a weary day with a government committee, and asked if he would object to communicating with Mr. Mackay about where to put his father’s statue. Sam burst into laughter. “You’re growing up,” he said. “Go as far as you please.”

Gutzon picked up the telephone and called Joseph Stubbs, president of the University of Nevada at Reno. He never could explain why he picked President Stubbs except that he had met him and found him to be just the sort of man to develop a university in that sort of town. At any rate, he called and asked, “Would it interest you to have a statue of John W. Mackay on the campus of your university?” And Stubbs said, “Certainly ... or is this a joke?”

At Gutzon’s suggestion the president sent a telegram to Clarence Mackay asking him if he would consider having the statue in Reno on the university campus. Next morning the sculptor received a telegraphic order to call on President Stubbs. A place for the memorial was located at the upper end of the campus facing the sun. It was behind a corrugated-iron shack which bore the label “School of Mines.”

In a short time the statue was dedicated with proper ceremonies and a tremendous turnout of important people. Clarence Mackay, who brought his friends from New York in a private car, didn’t like the School of Mines structure as a background for his father. So he telegraphed architect Stanford White in New York to come out and lay plans for a new one. The result was a new building which cost, before Mackay equipped it, $475,000. After that came a second and a third building which, with Mackay’s endowments, cost somewhere over $1,500,000.

That, to all intents and purposes, was the beginning of a new life for the University of Nevada. The statue that led to it cost, complete and erected, $12,000.

And it led to other things, too. Clarence Mackay was obviously a satisfied customer. He wrote to Sam Davis that he was so pleased that he had tried to discharge some of his debt of gratitude by recommending the sculptor to the sponsors of the Sheridan Memorial to be erected in Washington. Gutzon was definitely gratified. His study of the Civil War in preparing the model for the Grant competition had made him familiar with its leaders. And he loved Sheridan’s saltiness, activity and audacious courage.

He respected the general’s reputed ability to swear and his genius for making his men understand tirades that must have sounded like jabberwocky.

“A great general!” declared Borglum. “And unusual!”

Unfortunately, the United States government had already placed the commission for this memorial and the field was now open to all because the original artist had not yet produced a model satisfactory to the committee. He had been at it thirteen years.

A second misfortune lay in the fact that this sculptor was J. Q. A. Ward, president of the National Sculpture Society, who had failed to see eye to eye with Gutzon on many subjects, chief of which was the controversy over reorganizing the society. In spite of this he and Gutzon had exchanged letters expressing sorrow that there had been any bad feeling. The last thing Borglum wanted to do was to give further offense to the distinguished leader of the New York sculptors ... but he did make the memorial. Art was art, and he got it done on schedule.

Gutzon found it easy to open correspondence with the committee in charge of the memorial. He had long been acquainted with President Theodore Roosevelt, and he had met some of his military aides through their common love for horses. It was arranged to have Mrs. Sheridan and her son visit the Thirty-eighth Street studio. They came and reported that they liked what they had seen—the model for the Grant monument with its three horses, the dashing horses of the “Mares of Diomedes” group, the marble head of Lincoln.

There was still some delay about the granting of a new contract. Gutzon was interviewed. He sent photographs of his work to the committee. Presently, however, he was contemplating his old annoyance. The committee suggested a competition. Gutzon Borglum refused.

“I shall be happy to make a sketch model for the committee’s consideration,” he said, “but only after I have received a contract.”

After much discussion the committee gave in. The contract was awarded, and Gutzon made the sketch model as he had agreed. The sketch was eventually cast in bronze and presented to the Officers’ Club of Rio de Janeiro as a gift from the Officers’ Club of Washington.

The uncovering of the general’s life brought contacts with many of his old comrades in arms, including a close friend, General George Forsyth. Colonel Royal E. Whitman, an old Indian fighter who had ridden with Sheridan in the Civil War, wrote Gutzon dozens of letters covering all sorts of details. He even declared he could produce the actual accouterments of Sheridan’s horse.

Sheridan’s horse, as is well known, is preserved stuffed and mounted on Governor’s Island. Borglum wasn’t much interested in it. It was unthinkable to him that a dead horse could pose for the one that carried Sheridan on his wild ride to Winchester. Through Colonel Whitman he had bought a Virginia hunter named “Smoke” who had the run of the studio and was a tractable pet. In due course “Smoke” qualified as Sheridan’s mount.

One remarkable thing about the memorial—an innovation that now has become almost commonplace in art—assured its success. Sheridan was presented not as the older man he lived to be, but in his prime and at a supreme moment in his career—the turn of the Federal retreat at Winchester. Gutzon pictured the moment when the general, returning from a conference with Lincoln, came galloping to meet his fleeing soldiers.

In the statue he has pulled up his horse and is waving the men back into the fight. There is fury in his eye and, as the sculptor felt, a historic phrase on his lips: “You will sleep in your tents tonight or you will sleep in hell!”

Gutzon modeled the horse and rider in clay, in the size that they would have in bronze, which was another important characteristic of his work. He never turned over a small model to others to have it enlarged by mechanical process, as was being done by some sculptors. He wanted his own modeling, the imprint of his thumb, to appear in the finished work. He wanted to get the spirit of the action and pose. If he were to expend creative effort on a sketch, he declared, he would have lost interest by the time he came to make an exact copy on a larger scale.

There has been considerable controversy over Sheridan’s ride to Winchester. Some writers, like Joseph Hergesheimer, have maintained that the wild gallop was only a mild trot. General Crosby and General Forsyth, brother officers of Sheridan, favored the accepted version. So would any cavalry officer. No matter how he might have been riding at the start, he was certainly riding as fast as the horse could take him when he came up with his defeated command. An eyewitness of the ride, Private Frederick Bullis of the New York State volunteers, reported: