The Indomitable Spirit of Edmonia Lewis (53 page)

[57]
Under the pen name Horace Bender, Greenough wrote essays against abolition, supporting slave owners’ claims of happy slaves.

NOTES FOR 4. EDMONIA’S BROTHER

[58]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis;” Leeson,
History of Montana,
1141; Miller,
An Illustrated History,
374-376;
Bozeman (MT) Courier,
Apr. 6, 1896, Nicholas Francis Cooke,
Satan in Society, by a Physician
(Cincinnati: Vent, 1871): 354- 355. Leeson and Miller indicate her brother went to Europe after 1862, returning to San Francisco in 1864 in time to meet her in Boston.

[59]
BosD (1865) put Edmonia at studio no. 89, between Miss E. M. Carpenter, painter of flowers (in no. 88) and printer Wm. J. Gradon sharing with photographers Henry Thatcher and Augustus Marshall (in no. 90).

[60]
Leeson,
History of Montana,
1141. The phrase, “where she graduated,” is not included in
the later
Miller,
An Illustrated History,
374-376.

NOTES FOR 5. STUDYING ART

[61]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” See also Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864.

[62]
Bannister occupied 85 Studio Building according to BosD (1865). Cf. Bearden and Henderson,
A History,
40-51, 484-485; Juanita Marie Holland,
The Life and Work of Edward Mitchell Bannister
(New York: Kenkeleba House, 1992).

NOTES FOR 7. THE BLACK SUBJECTS OF JOHN ROGERS AND ANNE WHITNEY

[63]
Payne MSS, 571-2; Nelson,
The Color of Stone,
129.

[64]
Elizabeth Bartol posed for Whitney’s
Africa Awakening.

[65]
Whitney studied with Henry Kirke Brown.

NOTES FOR 8. A PRELUDE TO GLORY

[66]
Whittier is quoted in Child,
Letters,
240-241.

NOTES FOR 9. A SUMMER DEATH

[67]
Whittier, quoted in Child,
Letters,
240.

[68]
Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”
Cf. Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717: “Her medallion of John Brown … copied from a bust, is better than any of her medallions.”

[69]
BL, Nov. 20, 1863: “Miss L, a young and promising colored artist of this city, has just completed a very creditable medallion likeness of J[ohn] B[rown] copies of which may be obtained at the Anti-Slavery office, 221 Washington Street. Price $1
.
50 Give the artist what she deserves—patronage. Call as for room in the Studio Building. Tremont Street.”

NOTES FOR 10. THE TREMONT TEMPLE INTERVIEW – 1864

[70]
John Greenleaf
Whittier, introduction to
Letters,
by L. M. Child, xiv.

[71]
Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864; Child to William Lloyd Garrison, Feb. 27, 1864, Child MSS 58/1538; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” See also Child’s earlier letters that mention Edmonia: to William Lloyd Garrison, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1532; and to Eliza Scudder, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1533.

[72]
Child to Francis Shaw, Sept. 5, 1852, in
Selected Letters,
265. Karcher,
The First Woman,
412-413.

[73]
Child to Mrs. Mason, Dec. 17, 1859, in
Letters,
123-137. BL published the exchange; the American Anti-Slavery Society reprinted 300,000 copies in pamphlet form.

[74]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[75]
Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864.

[76]
BL, Ad, “Medallion of John Brown,” Jan. 29, Feb 12, 19, 26, Mar. 4, 11, 20, Apr. 28, 1864.

NOTES FOR 11. MRS. CHILD

[77]
Sherwood,
Hosmer,
160, 230; Child, letter to the editor, BDET, Feb. 2, 1865;
19
th
& 20
th
Century European Sculpture,
Nov. 13, 2007, lot 59, London: Sotheby’s. Zenobia was a warrior queen of what is modern day Syria. She had proclaimed herself ruler of most of Arabia and Egypt before falling to Roman armies around 270 AD.

[78]
Child, “Harriet E. Hosmer.”

[79]
Hosmer portrayed Zenobia dethroned and paraded through Rome, a slave in gold chains.

[80]
Culkin,
Hosmer,
62-63, 69-77, 83, 95, 103-4, 108-109, etc.

[81]
William Wetmore Story [hereafter “Story”] to J. R. Lowell, Dec. 30, 1855, quoted in James,
William Wetmore Story,
I, 297-308. cf. Jarves,
The Art Idea,
173-181.

[82]
Karcher,
The First Woman,
297, 314, 366, 412-413, 520, 596-598. See also 525-526 for an analysis
that
found
racial, sexual, and class paternalism in Child’s fictional African-American characters.

[83]
Child to Eliza Scudder, Feb. 8, 1864, Child MSS 57/1533.

[84]
Child to Robert Folger Wallcutt, Aug. 16, 1864, Child MSS 59/1502.

[85]
Child, “A Chat.” See also Child, letter to the editor, BL, Feb. 19, 1864: “Whether she will prove to have any portion of creative genius time will show.” See also Child, “Edmonia Lewis:” “Whether she has merely great imitative talent, or is endowed with that creative power, which we call genius, time alone can determine.”

[86]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
chap. 15.

[87]
Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
Poems
(1850), I, 354.

NOTES FOR 12. EDMONIA REVEALED

[88]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864,
Selected Letters,
446-447; to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866
Apr. 8, 1866
; to Sarah Shaw, [Aug.? 1870]
, Child MSS 74/1958
.

[89]
Whitney to Adeline M. Manning, Aug. 9, 1864, Payne MSS, 511-512.

NOTES FOR 13. ANIMUS AND ANIMA

[90]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[91]
Child, “A Chat.”

[92]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in
Selected Letters,
446-447; Child, “A Chat.”

[93]
Child, “A Chat.”

[94]
James,
William Wetmore Story,
II, 162-163. See also Kathryn Greenthal, “Augustus Saint-Gaudens and the Shaw Memorial,” in
Hope & Glory. Essays on the Legacy of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment,
edited by M. H. Blatt, et al. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 116-129.

[95]
Child to Sarah Shaw, 1876, in
Letters,
240-241.

[96]
BDET, Nov. 11, 1864.

[97]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717. Wreford, “A Negro Sculptress.” Robert G. Shaw’s sister, Susanna (Mrs. Robert Bowne Minturn), lived near her mother on Staten Island. Her father-in-law, Robert Minturn, was the first president of the Union League Club of New York.

[98]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in
Selected Letters,
446-447. See also Child, letter to the editor, NASS quoted in BL, Nov. 18, 1864.

[99]
Child, “Edmonia Lewis.” Flag bearer William Harvey Carney won the Medal of Honor for his bravery.

[100]
Nelson,
The Color of Stone,
170-171.

[101]
BDET, Nov. 11, 1864:

Among the thousand objects of interest at the Fair is one which we hope will not be overlooked. It is a bust of the hero Col. Robert G. Shaw by Miss Edmonia Lewis of the Studio Building. Miss Lewis is a young colored woman of African and Indian descent, who was educated at Oberlin College. She has been modeling for about a year in this city and undertook to make this likeness of one whom she had never seen, out of grateful feeling ‘for what he had done for her race.’ Col. Shaw’s family consider it an excellent likeness and have had it photographed by Mr. Marshall, allowing the artist to sell copies for her own benefit. We are sure that many will be thankful to possess a touching and beautiful memorial of one of the ablest in our long list of brave and truthful souls who have gone thus early to their reward.

Days later, BDET, Nov. 14, 1864
:
“The bust of Col. Shaw … is not exhibited at the National Fair, as stated in Friday’s Transcript. The moulds not being finished, from which the casts are to be taken, ordered by Col. Shaw’s family and others. On the 20th instant, it will be placed at the rooms of Messrs. Williams and Everett for public inspection;” Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in
Selected Letters,
446-447, noted she visited the fair the same afternoon she first saw the Shaw bust in Edmonia’s studio, in Mid-October.

[102]
John Greenleaf Whittier to Child, Nov. 15, 1864, quoted in
Letters
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), III, 81-82: “I saw the bust of Col. Shaw that thee spoke to me of at the colored fair. It struck me as very excellent. I am not perhaps a judge of such matters, but it seems to me that it is a success.”

[103]
Leeson,
History of Montana,
1141.

[104]
BL, Jan. 20, 1865.

[105]
Anna C. L. Q. Waterston,
Verses
(Boston: Printed by J. Wilson and Son, 1863), 193.

[106]
Anna C. L. Q. Waterston, “Edmonia Lewis,” by A. Q. W. (broadside, n. d., reprinted BL, Dec. 16, 1864, NASS, Dec. 24, 1864). Edmonia inspired other poets, including Eva Carter Buckner, “What Constitutes a Negro!” in
Negro Trail Blazers of California,
edited by Delilah Leontium Beasley (Los Angeles, CA, 1919), 269-270; Yusef Komunyakaa, “Hagar’s Daughter,” 1064-1067, in “Séance,”
Callaloo
24.4 (2001): 1061-1079; Vivian Shipley, “The Statue, ‘The Death of Cleopatra,’ Speaks to Me in The National Museum of American Art,” 71-79, in
All of Your Messages Have Been Erased
(Hammond, La.: Louisiana Literature Press, 2010); and plays for children, “Dark Cowgirls and Prairie Queens,” Written and directed by Linda Parris-Bailey; Cf. Anita Gates, Theater Review; “Untamable Spirits Wrangle With the Wild West,” NYT, Nov. 12, 1997. For a description of Eileen Tenney’s multimedia exploration of diversity using Edmonia’s story and her brother’s home in Bozeman MT, see also Priscilla Lund, “Children Understanding Diversity in Their Community: ‘Are We Home Yet?’”
Visual Arts Research
20, No. 2(40) (Fall 1994), 69-77.

[107]
Child, “A Chat.”

[108]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Nov. 3, 1864, in
Selected Letters,
446-447.

[109]
Child to Sarah Shaw, Apr. 8, 1866, Child MSS 64/1717.

NOTES FOR 14. CRISIS 1864 to 1865

[110]
Whitney to Adeline M Manning, Jan. 27, 1865, Payne MSS, 541; Child, “Edmonia Lewis.”

[111]
Fletcher,
History,
309.

[112]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
chap. 3. Cf. chap. 47, wherein Miriam “described herself as springing from English parentage, on the mother’s side, but with a vein, likewise, of Jewish blood.”

[113]
Cf. Child, “The Quadroons,” in
Liberty Bell, by Friends of Freedom
(Boston: Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Fair, 1842), 115-141. Along with her essays against slavery, Child launched a popular fiction genre known as “the tragic mulatta” that fielded sentimental but lurid tales of forbidden romance, sudden slavery, and rape of young, light-skinned colored women.

[114]
Hawthorne,
The Marble Faun,
chap. 12.

[115]
Ibid.

[116]
Ibid., chap. 6.

[117]
Whitney to Adeline M Manning, Jan. 27, 1865, Payne MSS, 541.

[118]
Rita K. Gollin,
Annie Adams Fields, Woman of Letters
(Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), 45. Chapman’s family stored Edmonia’s portrait of her in the attic of the Weston home in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Construction of the Tufts Free Library in 1965 resulted in its discovery. In nearly illegible pencil at the bottom of the base is the name, “Edmonia Lewis.”