Give the man room

Coolidge, who sat knee to knee with him in serious and intimate conversation, became incensed. He slapped Gutzon on the shoulder and declared—as Barlow remembers it—“We won’t let those rebels put anything like that over on us.” Barlow does remember vividly that the President promised to put an end to the issuance of the coins. Gutzon slapped him on the knee and thanked him. Of course, nothing more came of this than conversation. Gutzon had hardly reached the Metropolitan Club after his conference when Bascom Slemp, Presidential secretary, called him on the phone. The President, it seems, had not understood. The promise to stop the coin must be considered unofficial.

Things were moving fast in Atlanta. Tucker was called in from Stone Mountain to meet with some of the men who were active in the Association. Tucker refused to talk with them as a group, and Randolph met him alone.

The conversation was what the engineer had expected. The directors were going to get rid of Borglum and were offering him $15,000 a year to carry on the building of the memorial. Tucker laughed. It was Borglum’s idea, he said. He wouldn’t consider taking the job even if he thought himself qualified.

Randolph seemed disappointed. “You could put something up there that would be satisfactory,” he said.

Tucker telephoned to Gutzon in Washington and begged him to come back. The sculptor said he would. The next day Hollins Randolph gave out a statement which at least one Atlanta newspaper printed under the heading: “Borglum’s Dismissal as Sculptor Is Imminent.”

Gutzon was back in Atlanta twenty-four hours after receiving Tucker’s message. A meeting of the executive committee of the Association had been called for the next day. But the sculptor fully believed that his contract would protect him, and he was not so worried as his friends. Virtually everybody else in Atlanta knew what the executive committee was going to do. A full copy of the proceedings of the scheduled meeting, to its climax in a resolution dismissing Gutzon Borglum, had been given in advance to the Atlanta Journal and was in type hours before the committeemen were called to order.

The sculptor was met at the station in Atlanta by Tucker, who drove him out to Stone Mountain. Sam Venable was waiting for him there with his sister Mrs. Mason; Mrs. Grace, of Macon, Georgia; and Mrs. Purdue, president of the Atlanta chapter of the U.D.C. The women went up on the scaffolding to view the progress of the work.

Word of what was happening in Atlanta took the sculptor completely by surprise. He listened, stunned, to the telephone message that the committee had voted to dismiss him. Quietly he broke the news to the little group about him, then considered the situation.

“I shall have to break up the models to protect my design,” he said.

The plaster model of Lee’s head had already served its purpose. There was a copy of the Jackson head in Stamford. He ordered these models to be dropped off the platform onto the rocks below. And, finally, he told his man Homer to break up the model in the studio, the one showing Davis on his horse. Mr. Venable said there were tears in his eyes as he took one last look at his work and turned his back.

He talked to the U.D.C. women in Mrs. Coribel Venable Orme’s house, urging them to carry on without him. Then suddenly Tucker came bounding in from the road and took him by the arm.

“Quick!” Tucker said. “Kiss your wife good-by.”

“But where to?” asked Gutzon.

“I’ll tell you that afterward,” said Tucker, pulling him toward the door.

Shortly they were gone and the people in the house heard a car roaring out the back way on a road from the city that was virtually impassable. The sound had died out and they were well on their way when the local constable arrived and sheepishly produced an order for Gutzon’s arrest on a charge of “malicious mischief.” The complaint declared that the sculptor had destroyed a model valued at $25.

Nobody has ever pointed out how the Association directors found out about the smashing of the models within two hours after it happened. The constable didn’t know. He had just been called on to serve it, and, well, if Mr. Borglum had gone away, he couldn’t do that. So he accepted a drink and sat down to enjoy it.

Not until long afterward did Mrs. Borglum discover that the head Gutzon was accused of having destroyed was the useless plaster image of Lee.

The morning after the Association meeting of February 25, 1925, the Atlanta newspapers gave roaring accounts of the affair, one of them announcing in letters three inches high: “Borglum Fugitive From Justice.” There were long lists of his crimes, misdemeanors and delinquencies for which he had been driven away from Stone Mountain. Chief of these were “loafing on the job,” “inordinate love of money,” “wasteful expenditures,” “ungovernable temper.” And there was the old story of the angels of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Clarke Howell, editor of the Atlanta Constitution and Francis Clark, the city editor, were Gutzon’s friends, and they sniffed at the angel story. They were the ones who telegraphed the cathedral to get the straight of it. But no matter. There was no end to such charges nor to the people who believed them. Mrs. Borglum, warned by her attorney, Albert Howell, to refrain from comment, nevertheless issued one statement: “The Greeks of old drove Phidias into exile, but his name has lived on while those who persecuted him are forgotten.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

AFTERMATH

The Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association eventually gave the job of finishing the mountain carving to a practitioner who was at Stone Mountain only briefly and with little success in furthering the art.

Gutzon stayed at Raleigh, North Carolina, seven or eight months preparing new models for the memorial, with the aid of Captain Tucker and Hugo Villa. One day came Homer. He had walked all the way from Stone Mountain, more than 600 miles. Tucker said that he had only to shout and they would all come “a-runnin’.” But there was little work, hardly any money, and no place for them to stay. Villa made and sold some violins. The others mostly had a hard time.

Gutzon’s family joined him in Raleigh in a home next to that of Josephus Daniels, and they were pleasantly received.

In Georgia, the Association removed from the project everyone originally connected with the memorial except Mrs. Helen Plane. But Mrs. Plane was old and ill when the notification reached her. She commented on what had happened to the great memorial and the men who had labored for it. Then she went to bed and died.

The Association prepared statements repeating and enlarging the original charges against Borglum. Gutzon saw enough of it to convince him that masses of this material were sent to every point where any sculpture was contemplated, across the country from Texas to the Dakotas. Why all this tireless effort to discredit him? His theory was that the Association was in debt to the Atlanta banks and had to stay alive long enough to sell its half dollars and pay its debts. It must maintain the theory of its integrity by picturing Borglum as a road-company villain.

In Atlanta an active member of the U.D.C. who had friends in both camps was disturbed because neither the sculptor nor Sam Venable would take legal steps against the Association. She declared the directors were destroying Gutzon’s business and would destroy him. “I cannot and will not add to this quarreling over a memorial to Lee,” he wrote her. “After I got Coolidge and Smoot and Lodge, and the Senate and Congress to authorize a coin, I was further bound by my own claims that the brotherhood of America must be strengthened and preserved.”

But the battle of words went on. And nobody called on Gutzon to produce his new models. The new sculptor had trouble. The granite firm of Weiblen Brothers, which had a lease from Sam Venable, refused to permit the importation of outside stoneworkers. Eventually they reached an agreement to do the stonecutting themselves on a basis of cost plus ten-per-cent profit.

The Association seized all of Gutzon’s papers and records as well as his personal possessions, including art works in his studio and the machinery on the mountain. When they refused to listen to the U.D.C.’s suggestion of arbitration, which was definitely provided for in Borglum’s contract, the sculptor took one step in his own defense. He sent to Georgia a certified public accountant who disproved the charge that $185,000 had been spent on his part of the project. The books showed that only $113,922.61 had gone to the mountain—and this included the sculptor’s salary and every other expense of the work. The office in Atlanta at the same time had spent more than $116,000.

There was a persistent rumor through the United States that Borglum’s real trouble had been a quarrel with the United Daughters of the Confederacy. That was not true if only for the fact that the political brothers in the Memorial Association’s directorate had taken away the voice of these women in 1924. It was thoroughly refuted in a pamphlet issued by the Atlanta chapter telling where the blame should be placed for the monument’s loss.

The pamphlet was in the precise form of the statement sent out by the Association and was distributed among U.D.C. organizations throughout the country. It never had so large a circulation as the Association’s statement for the reason that the women did not have so large a fund to draw on.

How so great a memorial could have been destroyed, how the matter of the sale of the coin could have been so confused that few could understand anything beyond the fact that the money was dissipated and lost, is a complicated story. It cannot be dismissed in a few words and in fairness to all, the story of the U.D.C. should be told. Here are some extracts from the Atlanta chapter’s pamphlet:

The document goes on at considerable length to discuss the policy of Atlanta banks in keeping the Association alive, and the piecemeal sale of coins to pay back loans that the banks advanced. The banks at the time of Borglum’s departure from Stone Mountain held the Association’s notes for $78,862.72. The marketable property owned by the Association including its bank balances was listed at $6,406.39. The banks in time were paid off by receipts from the coin sale. The statement closes:

And that isn’t all of the story of Stone Mountain. While Sam Venable and Gutzon were quietly waiting for the group then in control to take a false step and fall, the Association’s directors suddenly decided that something had to be done about Stone Mountain. Gutzon’s first intimation that something was wrong came with the publication of a news story in which the new sculptor said that Borglum had deliberately left large holes in the rock to interfere with further carving. Inasmuch as Gutzon had not known that he was to have a successor and had not been in Georgia since, the accusation seemed silly.

Next came Randolph’s announcement that Lee would never have worn his hat in the presence of ladies and that the Association was planning to remove the hat. Leading sculptors of the United States said that this could not be done without destroying the head. But the public had nothing to do with it anyway. There was little talk about it, and the work was done behind a canvas.

The book Famous Statues and Their Stories, published by Edwin Rayner in 1936, pictures Stone Mountain with a photograph of the second sculptor’s designs superimposed upon it. The horses’ legs are very prominent. The design is attributed to Gutzon Borglum, and there is no suggestion in the text that he had left the work.

Had Gutzon suspected what was about to be done to his head of Lee, it is probable he would have fought to retain it. It remained in his mind as one of the greatest things he had ever produced. And one close to him recalls that its destruction was caused by men who had boasted that until the end of time nothing could injure it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

BACKSIGHT

The unveiling in Washington in 1927 was a gala affair. A special trainload of Georgians had come to the capital with the governor of the state in the lead. The National Guard of Georgia, brilliantly uniformed, was on hand to lend color.

Most of these people were from Atlanta. Some were even members of the Stone Mountain executive committee. All seemed to ignore the tragic happenings of only two years before. It must be noted, however, that Gutzon was as good at that as they were. He was calm, pleasantly aloof and unconcerned.

In 1928 the time set for the finishing of the central group on Stone Mountain expired with only Lee’s head and part of his horse completed. An attempt was made by the donors to reclaim the property. They said that the work on Stone Mountain was at a standstill and that the operating Association was insolvent.

Sam Venable circulated an open letter in which he charged that he had added together all the sums spent by the Association on bank loans, etc., and had reached the stupendous figure of $1,421,665 which, he said, it had cost Gutzon’s successor to complete his model and change the bust of Lee. He added this comment:

The Association was in debt to the Founders’ Roll for the use of $260,800 paid for tablets, and to the Children’s Founders’ Roll for $35,019.91. Suits were being brought by contributors to the first of these funds. G. F. Willis succeeded Hollins Randolph as president. The Association begged for an extension of time, and the Venable family agreed to allow work to proceed until May 1931. However, nothing was done on the mountain during that period.

In 1930 the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, under the leadership of Park Committee Chairman L. Lawrence McCord, got interested in finishing the monument. Mayor-elect James L. Key, largely celebrated for his huge Sunday School Bible Class, sent a telegram to Gutzon who was then in the Black Hills. He wanted to have Mr. Borglum come to Atlanta as his guest, he said, for the purpose of conference on Stone Mountain Memorial. The telegram was sent in August 1930. It might be mentioned that on July 4 of that year the head of Washington had been unveiled on Mount Rushmore with a great deal of publicity.

The sculptor arrived in Atlanta on the first of September and was given a rousing welcome and reception by a capacity house at the Fox theater. It was the first chance public opinion had had to express itself, and the result was gratifying to a man who had had to suffer in silence for five years. He mentioned that if he had to do it over again, he would make the Stone Mountain figures twice the size. He had learned something of mountain carving. The crowd cheered him enthusiastically, and he came home. But little came of it.

In 1931 McCord got a bill through the Georgia state legislature, giving the state right of eminent domain to take over Stone Mountain and adjacent property for a park. On this basis talks went on for years and years.

In 1933 Sam Venable with Mrs. Frank Mason, to whom he gave his share of Stone Mountain, presented a deed to Mayor Key for the portion of the cliff required for carving, and an attempt was made to get W.P.A. funds to finance the undertaking. There was a vast amount of correspondence without result. In 1936 the governor made an investigation of possibilities. In 1937 W. R. Ulrich of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce met Borglum in Washington and they had a friendly conference.

In the winter of 1939-1940 there was another revival of interest, and once more Gutzon was called to Atlanta. The hotel men of Atlanta had suddenly become aware that tourists coming to see Mount Rushmore were dumping large amounts of cash into South Dakota. They were wondering why they had never foreseen this golden reward, and they could see that they needed Gutzon’s help. They were willing to put up enough money to pay for the labor week by week if he would donate his time and use his influence to get credit with the machinery and powder companies.

Gutzon was jubilant. Dr. Ashby Jones, popular clergyman, and Preston Arkright, president of the Georgia Power Company, gave him their blessing. Success seemed so near that the sculptor wrote a letter to John Kaufman, who had succeeded Cliff Davis as stand-by on Stone Mountain, to be ready for starting work next Monday, to lay out a program for a full week. And then that too joined the futile history of the mountain. The other half-owners of the mountain wanted a million dollars which they insisted must be paid to them before work could be resumed. So this chance failed. The matter of the carving on Stone Mountain remained unchanged a year later when the sculptor suddenly died.

Despite the course of ill luck, bickering and unexplained hatred that has accompanied it, the dream of Atlanta for a Confederate memorial—or the dream of Atlanta hotel men for a popular tourist attraction—is still showing signs of life. The state of Georgia has appropriated funds for the purchase of Stone Mountain and the establishment of a park at its base. An Atlanta sculptor has been appointed to take charge of any carving that may be done on the tremendous uplift of granite. The wording of the commission is a bit indefinite as, after all popular experience with the memorial, it should be. But, somehow, the emergence of the Confederate armies from the rock seems a bit nearer than it did yesterday.

There is no recognizable trace today of Gutzon Borglum’s magnificent head of Lee, or of anything else identifiable with the vision of Helen Plane. There is a disfiguring scar, the remnant of a head, part of a horse. But no matter. Some starry-eyed sculptor, somewhere, is figuring on a new supply of dynamite and drills, and some epochal work—it will start any day now, you may hear—to recover Borglum’s unfortunate plan. The mark of his hand is dim, perhaps, but it is still to be found there on the rock—the reminder of what was certainly a noble and, as it turns out, continuous experiment.

The Borglum family moved to Texas from North Carolina in 1925 because the Trail Drivers’ Association wanted a monument and because the Stone Mountain Confederate Memorial Association had definitely set its trail toward nothing. Texas would have been a remarkable spot for them in any case, and it was one place in the universe that they knew little about.

The romantic history of the state—its gracious women, tall men, Spanish warriors and grandees, American pioneers and land seekers, its Alamo, its victorious revolution, its statehood, Indians, rangers, ranchmen, cowboys, trail drivers—all appealed to Gutzon like a journey back to boyhood when he received the invitation of the Trail Drivers’ Association to their conference in 1925. These men, now grown old, wanted a memorial. They wanted to perpetuate the heroes of an epoch when cowboys braved heat and cold, drought and flood, hostile Indians and rustlers, as they drove herds of longhorns northward across hundreds of miles of continent to Kansas or Montana.

It was disappointing to some of the newcomers to discover that San Antonio was a highly civilized city with a cultural history antedating the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. As for their equipment, Mrs. Borglum’s sidesaddle stood for years in a saddle-shop window as an eye-opening evidence of an effete custom.

A studio was improvised in a shed previously used to house floats before the annual “Battle of Flowers” parade. There, while making the first model for the Trail Drivers’ monument, Gutzon was initiated into the lore of the trail. Old cowmen came in

numbers and sat at ease as they yarned about how cattle behaved; how cowboys talked, rode, ate and slept; how they dressed by putting their big hats on; how they soothed the bedded herd by singing a ballad of uncounted verses. When the time came for the sculptor to make scenes in bas-relief around the base of the monument talk rose to feverish heat over such moot questions as whether thirsty cattle lift their tails when they scent water, or whether cowboys squat on their heels around a campfire at night.

Gutzon tracked down the few remaining longhorn cattle in the state and took time to witness driving, riding, roping—all the details of the cattle business as exposed in numerous rodeos. A cowboy known as “Red” posed for one of the chief figures in the group. And when a question arose as to who should be pictured in the other, there was rivalry over the claims of George Saunders, president of the association, and another old cowman, Tom Russell, recently deceased. Russell’s widow was a prime mover in the memorial project, but she wasn’t looking for a personal monument. She and her committee worked tirelessly to raise money for this tribute to the unsung heroism of their menfolk.

As the model was finally developed to their satisfaction it showed two riders, one pointing with outstretched arm to indicate where water would be found, while behind them were three longhorn steers, their heads and tails raised as they scented the distant river. To cast that group in bronze, full size, called for more money than the women could raise at a time when drought and low prices for beef put the cattle business in a decline. Even before the clay model was completed, messages came from Atlanta warning the Trail Drivers to have nothing to do with Borglum. The women seemed unconcerned. When the model was exhibited in other cities there came lively bidding for its location. Mr. Goodnight, a famous old ranchman, offered to pay for the casting on condition that the monument be placed in Abilene, but the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce was determined to keep the work where the idea originated. Only enough money for a bronze about one-fourth life size could be raised, and the memorial was permanently placed outside Trail Drivers Hall, especially built for the purpose in Breckenridge Park. This was a great disappointment to the sculptor who had planned for an enlarged group more than forty feet long to stand under the open sky in front of San Antonio’s auditorium.

As long as there was any hope of completing his work at Stone Mountain, a hope that died hard, the sculptor wanted to remain in the South, where his chief need was a roomy studio. He secured lease of space in a machine shop near the railroad tracks to complete the model of the Trail Drivers’ memorial, and then began to scout around San Antonio for a more permanent location. He found it eventually in an old stone building on the edge of Breckenridge Park which had been abandoned by the local water company.

The genial park commissioner allowed him to remodel it. A new roof was built with its big skylight, an ell added, windows and doorways completely rebuilt and the interior decorated. When finished it was a delightful place for work or play, half hidden by pecan trees that shaded it from the Southern sun, with the sound of running water beneath. Here several new sculptural works were modeled, but only one was destined to stand in Texas. When it came about that Mount Rushmore demanded all his time the sculptor gave this San Antonio studio to the Witte Museum in the same park. Now known as the Borglum Memorial Studio, it is used for art classes and as a meeting place for art students.

In this city the sculptor became deeply involved in several projects promoted mostly by women, who often took the lead in civic improvements. There were women’s clubs all over the state which invited the sculptor to tell his ideas on the art and beautification of one’s surroundings. The Conservation Society of San Antonio interested him in their pet project of beautifying the banks of the San Antonio River, a lazy little stream that threaded its way through the city. Real-estate interests wanted to fill up the stream and use the space for more buildings, but the women wouldn’t hear of it. In this the sculptor joined heartily, but his ideas conflicted with theirs when it came to restoration of old Spanish ruins.

From his experience in preserving the California missions the sculptor was keenly interested in these San Antonio ruins, one of which, the San Jose Mission, is especially beautiful. A copy of its rose window was sent to the Chicago World’s Fair in 1933.

Before he arrived, its belfry tower had collapsed. Mrs. J. P. Drought, one of the most civic-minded leaders San Antonio ever had, had at her own expense hired workmen to collect the stones and wood blocks for the stairs and return them to their original places. The belfry stairs, triangular blocks of wood that unknown hands had carved out of big trees, had been carried away as relics by Mexican families, and the same Mrs. Drought had searched them out, one by one, and brought them back to the mission as a real work of restoration. Meanwhile the Conservation Society engaged a local architect to restore parts of the old church and a granary which had almost disappeared.

Seeing what was going on and knowing that such a restoration would only destroy the original character of the mission, Gutzon wrote an article in protest against what seemed to him vandalism, but never published it because he did not want to hurt the feelings of a friend who was most active in the undertaking. Instead, he sent her the typed article with this friendly warning: “I alone am honest enough to tell you that you cannot restore the lost lines of a great poem, the lost notes of a great opera, the lost parts of a great building, the lost parts of a great painting.”

And there were other projects. There were two large musical societies in the city, both run by women, with considerable rivalry between them. The leader of one club came to the sculptor begging his help in building an open-air theater in an old quarry in Breckenridge Park where she could have performances by her Civic Opera Company. “We have no money to pay an architect,” she said. “Won’t you design us a theater, just for the love of art and music?”

The project interested the sculptor and he went out to the quarry to study its possibilities. Mrs. Borglum vividly remembers one moonlight night when she and Gutzon were accompanied by Mrs. Drought and her guest, a professor from Dublin, Ireland, a man well acquainted with the new Irish Theater in Dublin, who had come to Texas on a lecture tour. He bubbled over with enthusiasm when Gutzon pointed out a little knoll overlooking the quarry which he had already selected as a stage. On each side of this he planned a group of columns with dressing rooms behind. For the curtain he designed something new—a barrage of water jets which could be turned on or off at will. When the curtain was down, colored lights would play on the water, creating an eerie effect and concealing the stage from the audience. All details were so carefully worked out that the only expense to the city would be for material and labor, with no fee for the designer, Gutzon, who would act also as superintendent of the work. To make sure that his architectural plans were correct, he summoned at his own expense Mr. Kimball, who had been president of the National Institute of Architects. This helpful friend not only made blueprints and drew up specifications but made a pretty water-color sketch to show how the theater would look when finished.

Naturally the members of the Civic Opera and the San Antonio Woman’s Club were delighted. In a mass they went to the City Hall when the plan was submitted to the council. Without a dissenting vote a resolution was passed accepting the open-air theater as the sculptor had planned it.

And that, one grieves to record, was the end of another Gutzon Borglum dream. After a long delay a conventional design by a local architect was “unanimously approved” by the same city fathers. The theater was built at city expense. And the lady who had begged the sculptor to design the theater because she had no money to pay an architect told him that the wife of one of her leading singers was the local architect’s sister. The lady accepted the tenor’s brother-in-law because it made her tenor happy. “And, dear Mr. Borglum, what else could I do?” wailed the lady.

Gutzon was much taken with the appearance of Corpus Christi, Texas; however, he felt the shore line was unsightly. So he hired an aviator to take pictures of the town showing the residential portion on a plateau high above the gulf and the crowded business district along the shore line. He took the mayor and some other citizens on a motor trip to Galveston and along the Gulf Coast to Florida to see how other cities had dealt with similar water-front problems.

He built a plaster model of Corpus Christi with a fine new—and artistic—concrete promenade along the sea front, with steps down to the water’s edge, and exhibited it in the rooms of the Chamber of Commerce. He designed approaches for a new bridge to replace the old drawbridge that frequently tied up traffic for half an hour at a time. And he got a Mr. Harrington of Kansas City, a reputable bridge builder, to design a bridge. The cost of this improvement, he felt, would speedily be paid by toll collected from the passing cars.

Everybody was interested in Borglum’s great enterprise. A loan project was placed before the R.F.C., which turned it over to the W.P.A., which started everything all over again. In the end the whole business got into the hands of the state W.P.A. at Fort Worth, and the water-front-bridge development was changed to a sewer project. Probably the sewer was needed and anyhow it had not been proposed by a stranger.

Texas, the sculptor learned, was a place where big things were done bigly; but, nevertheless, in the accustomed fashion.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

AND SO FORWARD

He worked hard for the beautification of roads in that part of Texas where the greenery gives way to the desert. He was appointed chairman of an advisory committee to supervise the spending of the W.P.A. and the Federal Highway Department funds. But local rivalries kept many a town out of funds, and the Federal Highway Department’s $5,000,000, allotted for road beautification in Texas, was demanded by an influential highway engineer who outweighed Gutzon. All road funds, he declared, must be under the State Highway Department’s control; and to this simple proposition the federal government would not agree. So Texas got little, and the beautification of Texas roads was left to Texas.

Looking back over the record of those years, one can’t but figure them the most disheartening in all of Borglum’s life. The sculptor himself hadn’t changed much—except for the better. He was still motivated by his love for the big things—for the projects that would give more joy, more comfort or more safety to humankind. But somehow none of the plans was working out well.

Stone Mountain, as he must have known in his heart, was finished. The head of Lee would presently be an outrageous blot on a tall cliff. He had had no part in the Texas Four-City Centennial celebration; he had been thrust out of any plans to beautify Texas highways. He had been thwarted in his effort to provide a sea-front development and bridge for Corpus Christi. He had lost the job of designing the San Antonio open-air theater, which he would have enjoyed doing. Five times in a row he had put out his best effort and finished nowhere.

He might have been saved a lot of trouble had he known that few outsiders ever succeed in getting anything out of the preserves of Texas politicians—especially those busy keeping happy a Texas tenor. But those who knew him in San Antonio say that he showed no consciousness of his reverses. He was gracious to the people he thought deserved his kind words. He blasted the louts that he thought needed blasting. And on the whole all went well. He continued to be Gutzon Borglum.

His art work was by no means neglected because of his apparent absorption in civic improvements and expositions and music festivals. Nor had ill repute deriving from the Stone Mountain Association’s adverse publicity given him any lack of employment. He had not quite finished the Trail Drivers’ memorial when he was given a commission for the memorial to Alexander Stephens. The armchair in which Stephens is seated was made in the San Antonio studio and cut out of marble at a local stoneyard. The marble was the gift of the Georgia Marble Company at Marietta.

The place of this model in the studio was immediately taken by a memorial to General John Greenway, of Rough Rider and earlier Yale football fame. He was a resident of Arizona, engaged in copper mining when the First World War broke out. Though past the age limit, he bought a uniform and, with the aid of Washington friends, got into the army.

His widow, Isabella Greenway, one of the most distinguished women in the country, came to the Stamford studio, bringing with her a request for the statue by the state of Arizona. Greenway had been honored as a favorite son and chosen for a place in Statuary Hall, Washington.

Unfortunately Gutzon Borglum was in Texas. Telegrams were exchanged, and he met Mrs. Greenway in 1928—at the Democratic National Convention in Houston. Mrs. Greenway brought to the San Antonio studio not only photographs of her husband but some of his clothes and favorite gear. She knew, the sculptor said, more about her husband’s appearance and characteristics than any person he had ever met who tried to tell him what he wanted to know of a departed hero—and must know if he were to complete a perfect likeness.

The bronze statue was unveiled in Washington in 1930, and Mrs. Greenway ordered a replica to be placed in Arizona. The friendship between her and the sculptor which began at first sight was without a flaw during their lifetime.

From the state of North Carolina, meanwhile, came a commission for a bronze group in memory of Carolina soldiers who led the immortal Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg, a dramatic climax that marked the high tide of the Confederacy and from which Lee’s army reeled back in defeat, never to attempt another invasion of the North. The sculptor had submitted a small-scale model of the group, made in his Breckenridge Park studio at San Antonio in 1928. This was accepted and he was busy with an improved large-scale model when the same wearisome correspondence began, caused by some misunderstanding of the artist’s habit of developing, that is, bettering, the original plan.

Here, for example, is a letter from Mr. Barringer, a member of the memorial committee, written to another member, Mr. Fuller, after seeing photographs of the large-scale model and noting with anxiety that changes had been made from the original. He said:

To the sculptor this same Mr. Barringer made the following interesting comment about facial expressions:

Gutzon was quick to welcome any suggestion for improving his work from any interested source. In answer he wrote: