Lives of Girls Who Became Famous by Sarah Knowles Bolton

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After "Hesper" was completed, she said to her father, "I am ready to
go to Rome."

"You shall go, my child, this very autumn," was the response.

He would, of course, miss the genial companionship of his only child,
but her welfare was to be consulted rather than his own. When autumn
came, she rode on horseback to Wayland to say good-bye to Mrs. Child.
"Shall you never be homesick for your museum-parlor in Watertown? Can
you be contented in a foreign land?"

"I can be happy anywhere," said Miss Hosmer, "with good health and a
bit of marble."

Late in the fall Dr. Hosmer and his daughter started for Europe,
reaching Rome Nov. 12, 1852. She had greatly desired to study under
John Gibson, the leading English sculptor, but he had taken young
women into his studio who in a short time became discouraged or showed
themselves afraid of hard work, and he feared Miss Hosmer might be of
the same useless type.

When the photographs of "Hesper" were placed before him by an artist
friend of the Hosmers, he looked at them carefully, and said, "Send
the young lady to me, and whatever I know, and can teach her, she
shall learn." He gave Miss Hosmer an upstairs room in his studio, and
here for seven years she worked with delight, honored and encouraged
by her noble teacher. She wrote to her friends: "The dearest wish of
my heart is gratified in that I am acknowledged by Gibson as a pupil.
He has been resident in Rome thirty-four years, and leads the van. I
am greatly in luck. He has just finished the model of the statue of
the queen; and as his room is vacant, he permits me to use it, and I
am now in his own studio. I have also a little room for work which was
formerly occupied by Canova, and perhaps inspiration may be drawn from
the walls."

The first work which she copied, to show Gibson whether she had
correctness of eye and proper knowledge, was the Venus of Milo. When
nearly finished, the iron which supported the clay snapped, and the
figure lay spoiled upon the floor. She did not shrink nor cry, but
immediately went to work cheerfully to shape it over again. This
conduct Mr. Gibson greatly admired, and made up his mind to assist her
all he could.

After this she copied the "Cupid" of Praxitiles and Tasso from the
British Museum. Her first original work was Daphne, the beautiful
girl whom Apollo loved, and who, rather than accept his addresses, was
changed into laurel by the gods. Apollo crowned his head with laurel,
and made the flower sacred to himself forever.

Next, Miss Hosmer produced "Medusa," famed for her beautiful hair,
which Minerva turned into serpents because Neptune loved her.
According to Grecian mythology, Perseus made himself immortal by
conquering Medusa, whose head he cut off, and the blood dripping from
it filled Africa with snakes. Miss Hosmer represents the beautiful
maiden, when she finds, with horror, that her hair is turning into
serpents.

Needing a real snake for her work, Miss Hosmer sent a man into the
suburbs to bring her one alive. When it was obtained, she chloroformed
it till she had made a cast, keeping it in plaster for three hours and
a half. Then, instead of killing it, like a true-hearted woman, as she
is, she sent it back into the country, glad to regain its liberty.

"Daphne" and "Medusa" were both exhibited in Boston the following
year, 1853, and were much praised. Mr. Gibson said: "The power of
imitating the roundness and softness of flesh, he had never
seen surpassed." Rauch, the great Prussian, whose mausoleum at
Charlottenburg of the beautiful queen Louise can never be forgotten,
gave Miss Hosmer high praise.

Two years later she completed "Oenone," made for Mr. Crow of St.
Louis. It is the full-length figure of the beautiful nymph of Mount
Ida. The story is a familiar one. Before the birth of Paris, the son
of Priam, it was foretold that he by his imprudence should cause
the destruction of Troy. His father gave orders for him to be put to
death, but possibly through the fondness of his mother, he was spared,
and carried to Mount Ida, where he was brought up by the shepherds,
and finally married Oenone. In time he became known to his family,
who forgot the prophecy and cordially received him. For a decision in
favor of Venus he was promised the most beautiful woman in the world
for his wife. Forgetting Oenone, he fell in love with the beautiful
Helen, already the wife of Menelaus, and persuaded her to fly with him
to Troy, to his father's court. War resulted. When he found himself
dying of his wounds, he fled to Oenone for help, but died just as
he came into her presence. She bathed the body with her tears, and
stabbed herself to the heart, a very foolish act for so faithless a
man. Miss Hosmer represents her as a beautiful shepherdess, bowed with
grief from her desertion.

This work was so much liked in America, that the St. Louis Mercantile
Library made a liberal offer for some other statue. Accordingly, two
years after, "Beatrice Cenci" was sent. The noble girl lies asleep,
the night before her execution, after the terrible torture. "It was,"
says Mrs. Child, "the sleep of a body worn out with the wretchedness
of the soul. On that innocent face suffering had left its traces. The
arm that had been tossing in the grief tempest, had fallen heavily,
too weary to change itself into a more easy position. Those large
eyes, now so closely veiled by their swollen lids, had evidently wept
till the fountain of tears was dry. That lovely mouth was still the
open portal of a sigh, which the mastery of sleep had left no time to
close."

To make this natural, the sculptor caused several models to go to
sleep in her studio, that she might study them. Gibson is said to have
remarked upon seeing this, "I can teach her nothing." This was also
exhibited in London and in several American cities.

For three years she had worked continuously, not leaving Rome even in
the hot, unhealthy summers. She had said, "I will not be an amateur; I
will work as if I had to earn my daily bread." However, as her health
seemed somewhat impaired, at her father's earnest wish, she had
decided to go to England for the season. Her trunks were packed, and
she was ready to start, when lo! a message came that Dr. Hosmer had
lost his property, that he could send her no more money, and suggested
that she return home at once.

At first she seemed overwhelmed; then she said firmly, "I cannot go
back, and give up my art." Her trunks were at once unpacked and a
cheap room rented. Her handsome horse and saddle were sold, and she
was now to work indeed "as if she earned her daily bread."

By a strange freak of human nature, by which we sometimes do our most
humorous work when we are saddest, Miss Hosmer produced now in her
sorrow her fun-loving "Puck." It represents a child about four years
old seated on a toadstool which breaks beneath him. The left hand
confines a lizard, while the right holds a beetle. The legs are
crossed, and the great toe of the right foot turns up. The whole
is full of merriment. The Crown Princess of Germany, on seeing it,
exclaimed, "Oh, Miss Hosmer, you have such a talent for toes!" Very
true, for this statue, with the several copies made from it, brought
her thirty thousand dollars! The Prince of Wales has a copy, the
Duke of Hamilton also, and it has gone even to Australia and the West
Indies. A companion piece is the "Will-o'-the-wisp."

About this time the lovely sixteen-year-old daughter of Madam
Falconnet died at Rome, and for her monument in the Catholic church
of San Andrea del Fratte, Miss Hosmer produced an exquisite figure
resting upon a sarcophagus. Layard, the explorer of Babylon and
Nineveh, wrote to Madam Falconnet: "I scarcely remember to have seen
a monument which more completely commanded my sympathy and more deeply
interested me. I really know of none, of modern days, which I would
rather have placed over the remains of one who had been dear to me."

Miss Hosmer also modeled a fountain from the story of Hylas. The
lower basin contains dolphins spouting jets, while in the upper basin,
supported by swans, the youth Hylas stands, surrounded by the nymphs
who admire his beauty, and who eventually draw him into the water,
where he is drowned.

Miss Hosmer returned to America in 1857, five years after her
departure. She was still young, twenty-seven, vivacious, hopeful, not
wearied from her hard work, and famous. While here she determined upon
a statue of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and read much concerning her
and her times. She had touched fiction and poetry; now she would
attempt history. She could scarcely have chosen a more heroic or
pathetic subject. The brave leader of a brave people, a skilful
warrior, marching at the head of her troops, now on foot, and now on
horseback, beautiful in face, and cultured in mind, acquainted with
Latin, Greek, Syriac, and Egyptian, finally captured by Aurelian, and
borne through the streets of Rome, adorning his triumphal procession.

After Miss Hosmer's return to Rome, she worked on "Zenobia" with
energy and enthusiasm, as she molded the clay, and then the plaster.
When brought to this country, it awakened the greatest interest;
crowds gathered to see it. In Chicago it was exhibited at the
Sanitary Fair in behalf of the soldiers. Whittier said: "It very fully
expresses my conception of what historical sculpture should be. It
tells its whole proud and melancholy story. In looking at it, I felt
that the artist had been as truly serving her country while working
out her magnificent design abroad, as our soldiers in the field, and
our public officers in their departments." From its exhibition Miss
Hosmer received five thousand dollars. It was purchased by Mr. A.W.
Griswold, of New York. So great a work was the statue considered in
London, that some of the papers declared Gibson to be its author. Miss
Hosmer at once began suits for libel, and retractions were speedily
made.

In 1860 Miss Hosmer again visited America, to see her father, who
was seriously ill. How proud Dr. Hosmer must have been of his gifted
daughter now that her fame was in two hemispheres! Surely he had not
"spoiled" her. She could now spend for him as he had spent for her in
her childhood. While here, she received a commission from St. Louis
for a bronze portrait-statue of Missouri's famous statesman, Thomas
Hart Benton. The world wondered if she could bring out of the marble a
man with all his strength and dignity, as she had a woman with all her
grace and nobility.

She visited St. Louis, to examine portraits and mementos of Colonel
Benton, and then hastened across the ocean to her work. The next year
a photograph of the model was sent to the friends, and the likeness
pronounced good. The statue was cast at the great royal foundry at
Munich, and in due time shipped to this country. May 27, 1868, it was
unveiled in Lafayette Park, in the presence of an immense concourse of
people, the daughter, Mrs. John C. Fremont, removing the covering. The
statue is ten feet high, and weighs three and one-half tons. It rests
on a granite pedestal, ten feet square, the whole being twenty-two
feet square. On the west side of the pedestal are the words from
Colonel Benton's famous speech on the Pacific Railroad, "There is the
East--there is India." Both press and people were heartily pleased
with this statue, for which Miss Hosmer received ten thousand dollars,
the whole costing thirty thousand.

She was now in the midst of busy and successful work. Orders crowded
upon her. Her "Sleeping Faun," which was exhibited at the Dublin
Exhibition in 1865, was sold on the day of opening for five thousand
dollars, to Sir Benjamin Guinness. Some discussion having arisen about
the sale, he offered ten thousand, saying, that if money could buy it,
he would possess it. Miss Hosmer, however, would receive only the five
thousand. The faun is represented reclining against the trunk of a
tree, partly draped in the spoils of a tiger. A little faun, with
mischievous look, is binding the faun to the tree with the tiger-skin.
The newspapers were enthusiastic about the work.

The _London Times_ said: "In the groups of statues are many works of
exquisite beauty, but there is one which at once arrests attention and
extorts admiration. It is a curious fact that amid all the statues in
this court, contributed by the natives of lands in which the fine arts
were naturalized thousands of years ago, one of the finest should be
the production of an American artist." The French _Galignani_ said,
"The gem of the classical school, in its nobler style of composition,
is due to an American lady, Miss Hosmer." The _London Art Journal_
said, "The works of Miss Hosmer, Hiram Powers, and others we might
name, have placed American on a level with the best modern sculptors
of Europe." This work was repeated for the Prince of Wales and for
Lady Ashburton, of England.

Not long ago I visited the studio of Miss Hosmer in the Via Margutta,
at Rome, and saw her numerous works, many of them still unfinished.
Here an arm seemed just reaching out from the rough block of marble;
here a sweet face seemed like Pygmalion's statue, coming into life. In
the centre of the studio was the "Siren Fountain," executed for Lady
Marion Alford. A siren sits in the upper basin and sings to the music
of her lute. Three little cupids sit on dolphins, and listen to her
music.

For some years Miss Hosmer has been preparing a golden gateway for an
art gallery at Ashridge Hall, England, ordered by Earl Brownlow. These
gates, seventeen feet high, are covered with bas-reliefs representing
the Air, Earth, and Sea. The twelve hours of the night show "Aeolus
subduing the Winds," the "Descent of the Zephyrs," "Iris descending
with the Dew," "Night rising with the Stars," "The Rising Moon," "The
Hour's Sleep," "The Dreams Descend," "The Falling Star," "Phosphor and
Hesper," "The Hours Wake," "Aurora Veils the Stars," and "Morning."
More than eighty figures are in the nineteen bas-reliefs. Miss Hosmer
has done other important works, among them a statue of the beautiful
Queen of Naples, who was a frequent visitor to the artist's studio,
and several well-known monuments. With her girlish fondness for
machinery, she has given much thought to mechanics in these later
years, striving to find, like many another, the secret of producing
perpetual motion. She spends much of her time now in England. She is
still passionately fond of riding, the Empress of Austria, who owns
more horses than any woman in the world, declaring "that there was
nothing she looked forward to with more interest in Rome, than to see
Miss Hosmer ride."

Many of the closing years of the sculptor's long life were spent in
Rome, where she had a wide circle of eminent American and English
friends, among whom were Hawthorne, Thackeray, George Eliot, and the
Brownings. She made several discoveries in her work, one of which was
a process of hardening limestone so that it resembled marble. She
also wrote both prose and poetry, and would have been successful as
an author, if she had not given the bulk of her time to her beloved
sculpture.

After her long sojourn in Rome she spent several years in England,
executing important commissions, and then turned her face toward
America. In Watertown, where she was born, she again made her home;
and here she breathed her last, February 21, 1908, after an illness of
three weeks. She was in her seventy-eighth year. By her long life of
earnest work and self-reliant purpose, coupled with her high gift, she
has made for herself an abiding place in the history of art.

MADAME DE STAEL.

[Illustration: MADAME DE STAEL.

From the painting by Mlle. Godefroy.]

It was the twentieth of September, 1881. The sun shone out mild and
beautiful upon Lake Geneva, as we sailed up to Coppet. The banks were
dotted with lovely homes, half hidden by the foliage, while brilliant
flower-beds came close to the water's edge. Snow-covered Mont Blanc
looked down upon the restful scene, which seemed as charming as
anything in Europe.

We alighted from the boat, and walked up from the landing, between
great rows of oaks, horsechestnuts, and sycamores, to the famous home
we had come to look upon,--that of Madame de Stael. It is a French
chateau, two stories high, drab, with green blinds, surrounding an
open square; vines clamber over the gate and the high walls, and
lovely flowers blossom everywhere. As you enter, you stand in a long
hall, with green curtains, with many busts, the finest of which is
that of Monsieur Necker. The next room is the large library, with
furniture of blue and white; and the next, hung with old Gobelin
tapestry, is the room where Madame Recamier used to sit with Madame de
Stael, and look out upon the exquisite scenery, restful even in their
troubled lives. Here is the work-table of her whom Macaulay called
"the greatest woman of her times," and of whom Byron said, "She is
a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them
together, intellectually; she ought to have been a man."

Next we enter the drawing-room, with carpet woven in a single piece;
the furniture red and white. We stop to look upon the picture of
Monsieur Necker, the father, a strong, noble-looking man; of the
mother, in white silk dress, with powdered hair, and very beautiful;
and De Stael herself, in a brownish yellow dress, with low neck and
short sleeves, holding in her hand the branch of flowers, which she
always carried, or a leaf, that thus her hands might be employed while
she engaged in the conversation that astonished Europe. Here also
are the pictures of the Baron, her husband, in white wig and military
dress; here her idolized son and daughter, the latter beautiful, with
mild, sad face, and dark hair and eyes.

What brings thousands to this quiet retreat every year? Because here
lived and wrote and suffered the only person whom the great Napoleon
feared, whom Galiffe, of Geneva, declared "the most remarkable woman
that Europe has produced"; learned, rich, the author of _Corinne_ and
_Allemagne_, whose "talents in conversation," says George Ticknor,
"were perhaps the most remarkable of any person that ever lived."

April 27, 1766, was the daughter of James Necker, Minister of Finance
under Louis XVI., a man of fine intellect, the author of fifteen
volumes; and Susanna, daughter of a Swiss pastor, beautiful, educated,
and devotedly Christian. Necker had become rich in early life through
banking, and had been made, by the republic of Geneva, her resident
minister at the Court of Versailles.

When the throne of Louis seemed crumbling, because the people were
tired of extravagance and heavy taxation, Necker was called to his
aid, with the hope that economy and retrenchment would save the
nation. He also loaned the government two million dollars. The home
of the Neckers, in Paris, naturally became a social centre, which the
mother of the family was well fitted to grace. Gibbon had been deeply
in love with her.

He says: "I found her learned without pedantry, lively in
conversation, pure in sentiment, and elegant in manners; and the first
sudden emotion was fortified by the habits and knowledge of a more
familiar acquaintance.... At Crassier and Lausanne I indulged my dream
of felicity; but on my return to England I soon discovered that my
father would not hear of this strange alliance, and that, without
his consent, I was myself destitute and helpless. After a painful
struggle, I yielded to my fate; I sighed as a lover; I obeyed as a
son." Gibbon never married, but retained his life-long friendship and
admiration for Madame Necker.

It was not strange, therefore, that Gibbon liked to be present in
her _salon_, where Buffon, Hume, Diderot, and D'Alembert were wont
to gather. The child of such parents could scarcely be other than
intellectual, surrounded by such gifted minds. Her mother, too, was a
most systematic teacher, and each day the girl was obliged to sit by
her side, erect, on a wooden stool, and learn difficult lessons.

"She stood in great awe of her mother," wrote Simond, the traveller,
"but was exceedingly familiar with and extravagantly fond of her
father. Madame Necker had no sooner left the room one day, after
dinner, than the young girl, till then timidly decorous, suddenly
seized her napkin, and threw it across the table at the head of her
father, and then flying round to him, hung upon his neck, suffocating
all his reproofs by her kisses." Whenever her mother returned to the
room, she at once became silent and restrained.

The child early began to show literary talent, writing dramas, and
making paper kings and queens to act her tragedies. This the mother
thought to be wrong, and it was discontinued. But when she was twelve,
the mother having somewhat relented, she wrote a play, which she and
her companions acted in the drawing-room. Grimm was so pleased with
her attempts, that he sent extracts to his correspondents throughout
Europe. At fifteen she wrote an essay on the _Revocation of the Edict
of Nantes_, and another upon Montesquieu's _Spirit of Laws_.

Overtaxing the brain with her continuous study, she became ill,
and the physician, greatly to her delight, prescribed fresh air and
sunshine. Here often she roamed from morning till night on their
estate at St. Ouen. Madame Necker felt deeply the thwarting of her
educational plans, and years after, when her daughter had acquired
distinction, said, "It is absolutely nothing compared to what I would
have made it."

Monsieur Necker's restriction of pensions and taxing of luxuries
soon aroused the opposition of the aristocracy, and the weak but
good-hearted King asked his minister to resign. Both wife and daughter
felt the blow keenly, for both idolized him, so much so that the
mother feared lest she be supplanted by her daughter. Madame de Stael
says of her father, "From the moment of their marriage to her death,
the thought of my mother dominated his life. He was not like other
men in power, attentive to her by occasional tokens of regard, but by
continual expressions of most tender and most delicate sentiment."
Of herself she wrote, "Our destinies would have united us forever, if
fate had only made us contemporaries." At his death she said, "If he
could be restored to me, I would give all my remaining years for six
months." To the last he was her idol.

For the next few years the family travelled most of the time, Necker
bringing out a book on the _Finances_, which had a sale at once of a
hundred thousand copies. A previous book, the _Compte Rendu au Roi_,
showing how for years the moneys of France had been wasted, had also a
large sale. For these books, and especially for other correspondence,
he was banished forty leagues from Paris. The daughter's heart seemed
well-nigh broken at this intelligence. Loving Paris, saying she would
rather live there on "one hundred francs a year, and lodge in the
fourth story," than anywhere else in the world, how could she bear for
years the isolation of the country? Joseph II., King of Poland, and
the King of Naples, offered Necker fine positions, but he declined.

Mademoiselle Necker had come to womanhood, not beautiful, but with
wonderful fascination and tact. She could compliment persons without
flattery, was cordial and generous, and while the most brilliant
talker, could draw to herself the thoughts and confidences of others.
She had also written a book on _Rousseau_, which was much talked
about. Pitt, of England, Count Fersen, of Sweden, and others, sought
her in marriage, but she loved no person as well as her father. Her
consent to marriage could be obtained only by the promise that she
should never be obliged to leave him.

Baron de Stael, a man of learning and fine social position, ambassador
from Sweden, and the warm friend of Gustavus, was ready to make
any promises for the rich daughter of the Minister Necker. He was
thirty-seven, she only a little more than half his age, twenty, but
she accepted him because her parents were pleased. Going to Paris, she
was, of course, received at Court, Marie Antoinette paying her much
attention. Necker was soon recalled from exile to his old position.

The funds rose thirty per cent, and he became the idol of the people.
Soon representative government was demanded, and then, though the King
granted it, the breach was widened. Necker, unpopular with the bad
advisers of the King, was again asked to leave Paris, and make no
noise about it; but the people, hearing of it, soon demanded his
recall, and he was hastily brought back from Brussels, riding through
the streets like "the sovereign of a nation," said his daughter. The
people were wild with delight.

But matters had gone too far to prevent a bloody Revolution. Soon a
mob was marching toward Versailles; thousands of men, women, and even
children armed with pikes. They reached the palace, killed the guards,
and penetrated to the queen's apartments, while some filled the
court-yard and demanded bread. The brave Marie Antoinette appeared
on the balcony leading her two children, while Lafayette knelt by her
side and kissed her hand. But the people could not be appeased.

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