The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (54 page)

[119]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

[120]
Image is used with permission of the Dictionary of Unitarian and Universalist Biography (DUU), an online resource of the Unitarian Universalist History and Heritage Society. Web address: http://www25.uua.org/uuhs/duub/

[121]
BL, Apr. 28, 1865. Hebbard had distinguished himself with lectures on physiology and health. He also published volumes of abolitionist poetry.

[122]
Wreford, “Lady Artists in Rome;” Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress;” BDET, May 24, 1866.

[123]
BDET, Apr. 26, 1865, reprinted in BL.

[124]
Child to Harriet Sewall, June 24, 1868, Child MSS 69/1839.

[125]
Child to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870], Child MSS 74/1958:

I want her to earn her living by moulding small decorations for architects, copying small statuettes, &c; reserving a third of her time, or more if she can, for the study of anatomy, of general literature, and careful working in clay on larger subjects, until she attains sufficient merit to have her works ordered, without extra efforts being made in their behalf. But she does not like this advice.

NOTES FOR 15. THE MORNING OF LIBERTY

[126]
BL, “Miss Edmonia Lewis,” Apr. 28, 1865: “… has just completed a medallion likeness of President Lincoln. We have seen it and think she has met with a marked success. We hope that many will visit her room (Studio Building) to see it.” Lincoln was assassinated Apr. 14 and buried May 4.

[127]
Freedmen’s Record,
“Edmonia Lewis,” Jan. 8, 1865.

[128]
BL, “We regret,” Aug. 25, 1865, attributed to the
New York (NY) Anglo African.
See also Massachusetts census, Boston, ward 5, house 539, May 1, 1865; “Edmonia M. Lewis,” mulatto, age 20, sculptor, under the same roof as “Addie T. Howard,” mulatto, age 20, teacher;
U. S. census, 1860; U.S. Freedmen Bank Records, 1865-1874 (ancestry.com). Adeline Howard Turpin [
sic
Adeline Turpin Howard] (1845-?).

[129]
New-York (NY) Tribune,
“A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865, was excerpted by NASS, NYT, BL,
Stevens Point Wisconsin Lumberman, Petersburg (VA) Index, New York (NY) Christian Times,
and
Nonconformist
(London, Engl.). All but the
Index
misstated the date of departure as “the 19th instant.”

[130]
Roscoe Simmons, “The Untold Story,” ChT, Apr. 10, 1949, n13.

NOTES FOR 16. EXIT BOSTON

[131]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864,
Selected Letters,
446-447.

[132]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[133]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

[134]
Child to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870], Child MSS 74/1958. Cf. Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

[135]
New-York (NY) Tribune,
“A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865.

[136]
“Subscription” referred to prepaid commissions and gifts.

[137]
Wendell Phillips to Mrs. John T. Sargent, 1875, quoted in William Carlos Martyn,
Wendell Phillips, the Agitator.
Rev. ed. (London: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1890), 417. The offices of the
Boston (MA) Commonwealth
were near the Studio Building.

[138] note eliminated

[139]
NYT, Dec. 29, 1878.

NOTES FOR BOOK TWO – The World. 1. STOPPING IN FLORENCE, 1865

[140]
HELBAA.

[141]
John H. Van Evrie,
Subgenation: The Theory of the Normal Relation of the Races; An Answer to “Miscegenation”
(New York, John Bradburn, 1864), 32. Van Evrie’s title aimed to exploit an anonymous pamphlet written as a hoax by fellow bigot David Goodman Croly:
Miscegenation; the Theory of the Blending of the Races, applied to the American White Man and Negro
(New York, NY: H. Dexter, Hamilton & co., 1864).

[142]
Ibid.

[143]
Petersburg, VA, held a large black population including the Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute (the first fully state-supported four-year institution of higher learning for black Americans) located there.

[144]
Gay, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[145]
Child to James T. Fields, Oct. 13, 1865, Huntington Library;
Boston (MA) Commonwealth,
Artistic, “Miss Edmonia Lewis in Florence,” Oct. 21, 1865, quoted in Richardson, “Bust of Minnehaha;” Child to Mrs. Fields, Nov. 25, 1865, Child MSS 1695, Huntington Library; BL, “Correction,” Dec. 1, 1865. See also Rita K. Gollin,
Annie Adams Fields, Woman of Letters
(Amherst, MA: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 13, 28-29, 47. Annie Adams Fields and her husband, James T. Fields, were, in modern terms, the “power couple” of New England literary society. Annie’s sister, Lissie, spent years studying and painting in Florence and Paris before returning to Boston in mid-1866.

[146]
Child to James T. Fields, Oct. 13, 1865, Huntington Library. See also (Whitney? Waterston?), letter to the editor by “W,” BDET, Oct. 13, 1865;
Boston (MA) Commonwealth,
Artistic, “Miss Edmonia Lewis in Florence,” Oct. 21, 1865; Child, letter to the editor,
New York (NY) Independent,
Apr. 5, 1866; HELBAA; SFC, Aug. 26, 1873;
Indianapolis (IN) News,
Nov. 18, 1878.

[147]
Ball,
My Threescore Years,
15.

[148]
Ibid.,
179.

[149]
Jarves,
Art Thoughts,
168; Allan Marquand,
A Text-Book of the History of Sculpture
(London: Longmans Green, 1896, 1911), 243-244.

[150]
Ball,
My Threescore Years,
252-253; William Greenleaf Eliot,
The Story of Archer Alexander, From Slavery to Freedom
(Boston: Cupples, Upham, 1885), 13-14. Ball finished the work using photos of Archer Alexander, the last slave captured under the Fugitive Slave Act. Known as the
Emancipation Memorial,
copies can be found in the Kemper Art Museum at Washington University, St. Louis (marble); Montclair Museum, Montclair, NJ (bronze); and in Lincoln Park, Washington DC (bronze), the last funded by African Americans.

[151]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717: “The new bust, to which she alluded, she says she did in Florence. Where is the one Mr. Garrison exhibited I know not. I can readily conceive how much such things must annoy you.”

[152]
Child to Mrs. Fields, Nov. 25, 1865, Huntington Library, Child MSS 1695.

NOTES FOR 2. ROME – 1866

[153]
Story,
Roba di Roma
(1866), I, 35-41.
A “Barmecide Carnival” is a feast where there is nothing to eat.

[154]
Hosmer’s new studio was located at 116 Via Margutta.

[155]
Edmonia Lewis, quoted in Child, letter to the editor,
New York (NY) Independent,
Apr. 5, 1866.

[156]
R. B. Thurston, “Harriet G. Hosmer,” in
Eminent Women of the Age,
edited by James Parton (Hartford: S. M. Betts and co., 1868), 566-598.

[157]
Sherwood,
Hosmer,
285. Hosmer, traveling with lifelong friend Cornelia Crow Carr and the Carr children, sailed to New York on the
SS Ville de Paris
arriving New York Aug. 11, 1868. The passenger manifest lists “Amelia” Carr, three Carr children – whose ages correspond to those of the Cornelia Carr family but whose first names do not. Carr’s oldest daughter, named Harriet after Hosmer, was entered as male. The list also shows “Julia” [probably Florence] Freeman, age 24, and “Florence” [i.e. Harriet] Hosmer, sculptor, age 23. See also Sherwood,
Hosmer,
260-261; Culkin,
Hosmer,
95-96. Florence Freeman, who went to Italy with Cushman in 1861, would have been about 32 years old at the time, Hosmer, 38. Cf. Rubenstein,
American Women Sculptors,
90-91.

[158]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
chap. 13. See also Hosmer,
Letters,
21; Hawthorne, Apr. 3, 1858,
Passages;
Child, “Harriet E. Hosmer,” described the studio Gibson shared with Hosmer in 1852 (to 1858) at 4 Via della Fontanella.

[159]
Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake,
Life of John Gibson, R. A., Sculptor
(London: Longmans Green and co., 1870), 34.

[160]
Jarves,
Art Thoughts,
168.

[161]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
chap. 13.

[162]
Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake,
Life of John Gibson, R. A., Sculptor
(London: Longmans Green and co., 1870), 53. See also Whitney to Sarah Whitney, May 2, 1867, Whitney MSS. Cf. Mary Edmonia Lewis, will dated Nov. 2, 1905, proved Nov. 12, 1907, HM Courts Service, Manchester, GB, gives her past address as 7 Via Gregoriana, Rome. It is not clear whether that is the first or last place she lived there. See also Leach,
Bright Particular Star,
326 (chap. 27); Sherwood,
Hosmer,
238, 260.

NOTES FOR 3. CHARLOTTE CUSHMAN

[163]
NYT, May 17, 1873.

[164]
Hawthorne, Apr. 3, 1858,
Passages.

[165]
J. Hawthorne,
Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife,
II, 182.

[166]
New-York (NY) Tribune,
“A Colored Sculptor,” Aug. 8, 1865.

[167]
Whitney to Sarah Whitney, Apr. 26, 1868, Whitney MSS; Thorp,
The Literary Sculptors,
16.

[168]
Female American sculptors in Rome before Edmonia’s arrival included Sarah Fisher Ames (née Clampitt), Margaret F. Foley, Mrs. James E. Freeman (née Horatia Augusta Latilla), Florence Freeman, and Louisa Lander, as well as Hosmer and Stebbins. Ames and Lander returned to the United States before Edmonia’s arrival.

[169]
Cushman to Ann Stevenson Lemon, Jan. 13, 1866, quoted in Leach,
Bright Particular Star,
333 (chap. 28). Cushman’s fiftieth birthday was July 23 that year.

[170]
H. W. [Henry Wreford], “A Negro Sculptress,”
Athenæum
2001, Mar. 3, 1866, 302; Child, letter to the editor,
New York (NY) Independent,
Apr. 5, 1866).

[171]
Story to J. R. Lowell, Feb. 11, 1853, quoted in James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 253-264, Story meanly described Cushman as “markedly destitute of beauty or of the feminine-attractive.”

[172]
Lisa Merrill,
When Romeo was a Woman: Charlotte Cushman and Her Circle of Female Spectators
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 8-10; Leach,
Bright Particular Star,
113-114 (chap. 9), 126-127 (chap. 10), 133 (chap. 11). Cushman’s shipboard diary testifies to
the
sexual nature of her relationship with Rosalie Sully.

[173]
Leach,
Bright Particular Star,
166-167 (Chap. 13).

[174]
Matilda Mary Hays had edited and translated the French female novelist George Sand.

[175]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning to her sister, Arabel, Oct. 22, 1852, quoted in Leach,
Bright Particular Star,
210 (chap. 17).

[176]
Before moving to Via Gregoriana, Cushman lived at 28 Via del Corso, around the corner from the Via della Fontanella and Gibson’s studio.

[177]
Harriet Hosmer to Wayman Crow, Dec. 9, 1857, quoted in Sherwood,
Hosmer,
161.

NOTES FOR 4. STUDIO VISITORS

[178]
Cushman,
Her Letters,
81.

[179]
For example, H. L. Robbins to Cushman, n. d., Papers of Charlotte Cushman
,
Letters vol. 12, no. 3654, Library of Congress: “I went to see Miss Lewis this morning and paid her the 300 scudi [about $100] with which she was much pleased & she very generously begged my acceptance of two of her little marble heads.”