CHAPTER ELEVEN

_STAMFORD AND POLITICS_

In 1909 John Gutzon Borglum married Mary Williams Montgomery, to nobody’s great surprise. Mary Montgomery was born in Turkey of missionary parents and had lived there twelve years. She was educated at Wellesley and received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Berlin. She could argue with Gutzon, sometimes successfully.

Their meeting, in a way, was accidental. On her way back to the United States after her Berlin studies, she had boarded a ship at Rotterdam. It turned out to be the same one that the sculptor barely caught at Cherbourg. He joined her party for shipboard games and poker, and they were quickly friends. He met her family and she became well acquainted with his sisters; and a family association went on for years.

Miss Montgomery taught French for a year in New Haven, then joined two other girls in a literary agency that did translations, research work and special articles until they married and broke up the partnership. She worked with Dr. Henry Smith Williams on _The Historians’ History of the World_ and there met Rupert Hughes, another friend of Gutzon’s. She also worked with Dr. Isidore Singer as manager in the preparation of _The Jewish Encyclopedia_. Much of her life was spent in the vicinity of Thirty-eighth Street. After leaving Dr. Williams she did secretarial work, some of it for Gutzon, and became acquainted with many more of the Borglum friends. She learned a great deal about the operations of the Thirty-eighth Street studio.

So, in 1909 they were married at Short Beach, Connecticut, with a New Haven divine, Dr. T. T. Munger, and Miss Montgomery’s two brothers officiating. The Borglums went for a honeymoon to some trout stream in Canada and thence to a place on the Gunnison River in Colorado. By that time Mrs. Borglum was certain that her life was going to be vastly different.

And so it was. In 1910 Gutzon announced that they would move to Stamford, Connecticut, where they would cultivate peace and associate with gentle, quiet people. Almost overnight he was making speeches for the common man and beating the drums for politics.

In Stamford he was promptly introduced to the famous Connecticut Town Meeting and was intensely interested because he had never heard of anything like it. He went home with staring eyes to write that he had just learned the part an individual could play, first in his home town, next in his state and finally in his native land. He rewrote a pair of sentiments from his diary: “A man’s first love is his mother; his second, his sweetheart; his third, art; his fourth, _all_.” And he underlined this warning: “No individual’s life is worth the immortality he seeks unless he articulates the voice of his tribe.”

You may take that as typical of Gutzon. He had been in Stamford one or two nights and he belonged to it as much as the oldest inhabitant.

The moving from the old duplex apartment in New York to the country was a momentous undertaking. The two horses, Smoke and Halool, were taken to New Rochelle for the night by the faithful Banks. The next day Gutzon and a friend, like knights of old, rode on horseback to the new domain. The feat wasn’t so startling to beholders as it might have been in New York. Horses in Stamford in 1910 were regularly in view and continuously in use. Gutzon himself became a familiar figure in the countryside as he drove Smoke back and forth between the railroad station and home. Wife and furniture arrived in Stamford on that first day by train and van.

Most of the stable equipment came from the old establishment of Colonel Whitman in Washington. Much of it accompanied the colonel, who arrived to spend the summer. The procession of visitors who came to luncheon, to dinner or to spend the week seems appalling from this distance of time, and emphasizes the contrast of that era when there was no difficulty about entertaining. Stamford grocery stores of the day were primitive. They made no delivery to the Borglum ménage six miles away; so hampers of foodstuffs were shipped by express twice a week from New York.

The old farmhouse was completely rebuilt, partitions pulled down and new rooms added. The house stood on a slope, and one large living room was dug out of the bank after the master bedroom, above, had been finished and was being lived in. The barn, which had been close to the house, was hauled a thousand feet and placed beside a brook. The brook was dammed to make a pond. Gutzon took an active part in all the digging, trimming of trees and laying out of roads.

Road building had always been one of Gutzon’s hobbies, and in later years he was to become associated with national highway-building projects. On his place in Stamford he built a road, cutting the arc on the Wire Mill Road, which until that time had passed close to the Marshall House, the new home. The town accepted the sculptor’s changed road and thirty-five years later it was still in use. After the passing of those years a local highway engineer located and unearthed an old drainpipe, placed there by Gutzon. “Well,” he said, “Borglum was known throughout the town as a good builder.”

Filled with the old Town Meeting spirit, the sculptor quickly organized the neighbors living along the main road leading into Stamford as an association to beautify and improve their grounds bordering on it. Next he managed to get lighting for the road from the town electric company and a similar gift for the Long Ridge Road, which was equally important.

By studying the town, county and state road-building and bonding regulations, he discovered that the town could borrow money against the stipulated return to it of the same amount from the state or county, thus securing funds for the building of improved roads at once. The matter was taken to the Town Meeting, of course, and it caused much debate. But eventually it passed, and both High Ridge and Long Ridge roads were benefited.

Then, presently, he had a new and interesting idea. He founded a bus company “so that,” as he said, “the farm women might have a chance to come to town when their husbands are using the horses in the fields.” He was very happy in the designing of bus bodies to be fitted onto Reo Truck chassis and in arranging a suitable pageant to celebrate the beginning of the service.

There is a lamentable lack of detail in available information about the bus company. One doesn’t know if the farm wives were able to ride into town on it more frequently, or if Gutzon was able to pasture his horse. He got out of it after a while and turned his attention to new and more stirring projects. The general belief is that he operated it until it needed rewinding.

One of the amazing things about him is that his art work always seemed to survive his other projects. Soon after moving up from New York he built a temporary studio out of glass cold-bed frames and there began a monument for North Carolina of the first soldier killed on the Southern side in the War between the States. He also started a creative “pipe dream” in marble called “Orpheus and Eurydice.” The boy who had been guiding the oxen for much of the heavy work on the place was asked to pose for Orpheus. His wife’s remarks, as repeated by Bill the husband, were striking. When she was informed of his new and startling occupation she demanded, “Did you have to stand in your underwear?” “No,” he said, “I just had to take everything off.” She prefaced her critique with a ladylike sniff. “Well,” she said knowingly, “you must have been a sight.... Just a perfect sight!”

At this time a location for the permanent studio was chosen across the Rippowam River, nearly half a mile from the house. The corner rock was christened in champagne, accompanied by a stirring speech from Colonel Whitman. For years the only way of reaching the studio by carriage or automobile was through a cement-based ford, devised by Gutzon. There was a swing bridge for pedestrians. At the very outset of the work Gutzon had brought out his architect friend William Price of Rosedale, near Philadelphia, who had helped him with the Newark Lincoln and other work.

On the river, at some distance below the ford, a group of campfire girls used to have a summer camp under the guidance of Mrs. Lanier, whose husband was the son of Sidney Lanier, the poet. On Sunday mornings the sculptor used to give the girls talks on art and life which are still remembered.

The studio was built entirely of stone from huge, pinkish granite boulders which Gutzon had located within a few hundred feet of his location half buried in the soil. These were dug out, cut and scraped by a crew of Italian stonecutters who came from a neighboring town the first of every week and returned on Saturday, camping out in the woods near the work. The fireplace was unique. It was made to accommodate six-to eight-foot logs and was open to a height of ten feet from the floor, where sandstone blocks formed the mantel. The size of the building was forty by sixty feet, and the style was Tudor Gothic.

When it was time to lay the sills of the studio doors, before the roof with its heavy steel was up, Gutzon invited the officers of the Masonic Grand Lodge of both Connecticut and New York, together with members of his own Howard Lodge, to take part in the dedication. It was a grand affair although something merely on the rim of the arts. Gutzon was gradually increasing his interest in other matters. For one thing, he was being inducted into a knowledge of the working of an elected group in a community, chosen to govern the finances and public interests of the electors. This was his conception of the meaning of politics.

Another matter to which he had given attention was the often debated question of consolidation of the town and city governments of Stamford. He worked out a scheme which he placed before the town selectmen in 1912, whereby, in successive steps, the selectmen would be placed in charge of departments as commissioners thereof, and eventually the city government would be abolished. The selectmen-commissioners would take over its powers. Thus a joint-commission form of government would be acquired for both town and city.

He wrote to Frank Butterworth, a prominent Progressive of Connecticut:

I enclose herewith a scheme that was put before the selectmen of Stamford.... We cannot get rid of the town form of government in Connecticut, so it has occurred to me and a great many before me that we had better take the principle of town government with selectmen, which from the very fact that it is primitive is good, and develop that. My plan here is to bring everything in town and city under one government.

In all these dealings Gutzon had come into close touch with the political situation. It was common gossip that both town and city, more particularly the latter, were boss-ridden and that it did not make much difference whether a Republican or Democratic administration was in control. The same machine went on and on, and expenditures for services rendered were out of all proportion to values received.

The time was the dawn of the Progressive movement which aimed to do away with bossed and machine-controlled government, demanding honesty and efficiency in high places. A new national election, that of 1912, was in the offing. Gutzon’s old friend, Theodore Roosevelt, was running for President on a third-party Progressive ticket. What was more natural than that the sculptor should enter this campaign with gusto. He became chairman of the Progressive Party of Stamford, and nearly wore himself out trying to arouse the progressive element in the citizenship of the whole state of Connecticut.

There was a strong element of drama in the campaign as waged in the city and town of Stamford. In the first place, the “Old Guard” was not going to allow a newcomer to meddle unchallenged with their ancient customs. One of the most respected members of the community wrote an indignant letter to the Stamford _Advocate_, the only local paper, protesting against the upstart sculptor who “had not been able to achieve fame in his own calling” and was trying to gain a little notoriety by attaching himself to Roosevelt’s kite.

Gutzon addressed mass meetings from the Town Hall steps. He spoke on street corners and in front of the huge Yale and Towne Lock factory where men and women were going home from work. He got to be a ready speaker and learned to think on his feet. One incident was memorable. Some heckler had asked why Roosevelt had suddenly changed his mind on a certain question. “Don’t you know,” Gutzon shot back at him, “that Saint Paul lived to be fifty-two before he suddenly changed his whole way of life and became a Christian?”

People in Stamford still remember the picturesque and effective fight carried on by the Progressives under the leadership of the imaginative Gutzon. On one occasion a torchlight procession was arranged in which the Borglum donkey, “Shamrock,” a large, gray, intelligent creature, appeared as a symbol of both the old parties, wearing on his rear end an elephant head, the trunk of which concealed his tail.

Two Stamford citizens, who were Gutzon’s chief lieutenants in the fray and remained his friends ever after, were featured in the press of the day as “Handsome Harry” Abbot and “Young” Arthur Crandall. The latter lived and worked with Borglum at one time and never got over his youthful reverence for Gutzon, which was not diminished by close contact. When he heard this book was being written he said: “Don’t forget to mention his real humility,” which was a side of the sculptor’s nature revealed only to those who knew him best.

Joseph Alsop was state chairman of the Progressive Party of Connecticut, and Gutzon developed a deep friendship with him. Mr. Whittaker, editor of the Stamford _Advocate_ for many years and a reactionary and autocratic individual, came to the Borglum farm one night about midnight to try to influence the sculptor to change his attitude. The mayor of the city, Charles P. Rowell, came out at dusk, wearing a big black hat and a long cape, like a villain in a play.

He would not come into the house, where someone might hear what he had to say, but asked Gutzon to come outside. They talked by the footbridge on the way to the studio. Mr. Rowell tried to make a deal, and when the sculptor refused he exclaimed with conscious drama, “Then it’s a fight--a fight to the finish!”

“Yes,” agreed Gutzon solemnly, “and a sword to the hilt!”

A few days after the election S. E. Vincent, the newly elected Progressive congressman, wrote to Gutzon.

With election over it is now time to figure up and take inventory of conditions. If I have a clear idea of how the Progressive party stands, that party has every reason to be proud of the results accomplished in a campaign of only ninety days, without funds or party machinery, with all the papers against our cause and some of them not overcareful about telling the whole truth.

Herbert Knox Smith, a Connecticut leader of the party, wrote on November 4: “I cannot let this fight close without sending you my heartfelt personal thanks for what you have done. It has certainly been fine, and I appreciate it more deeply than I can say. Best regards to you.”

And the colonel wrote from Oyster Bay, November 12, 1912:

My Dear Borglum: In this great fight for elementary justice and decency, for fair play in the industrial no less than in the political world, and for honesty everywhere, there are many men to whom I feel peculiarly grateful, not only personally but because of what they have done for the people as a whole. You come high among these men; and in this very inadequate but far from perfunctory manner, I wish to express my profound acknowledgment.

Faithfully yours,

Theodore Roosevelt.

In his records Gutzon somehow fails to note that the Progressives, despite Roosevelt’s defeat, did rather well in Connecticut. After all, what interested Gutzon was the fight.