CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

_TRIBUTE TO WILSON_

The travelers never forgot Paderewski as he met them at the Morges station. He was standing on the runway, a little derby hat perched on the top of his head, with his wave of hair floating out from it like a cloud. He seemed serene and happy.

“Where are your trunks?” he asked in honest puzzlement.

And they told him that they carried no trunks, that they were staying with him only between trains. His surprise was genuine and his disappointment obvious.

“I expected you to stay a month,” he said. “So now you must stay for at least a week.” He picked up the bags, though his butler factotum hovered around anxious to help, and led the way to his old-fashioned touring car. And they stayed at his chalet, with its wide-spreading trees, its huge garden and its vineyard sloping down to the lake shore--they stayed a week.

Gutzon had little trouble making sketches of his new subject. He had known Wilson fairly well; they had traveled the Atlantic in the same ship. Wilson had given him a degree at Princeton. They had seen much of each other when Gutzon was working on the decorations for the dormitory built by the class of 1879. And they had been close, though hardly harmonious, during the Borglum investigation of the aircraft scandal. However, to amplify his own impressions of Wilson’s characteristics, the sculptor wrote to several men who had known the President: Professor John Grier Hibben, the new president of Princeton University; William Allen White; President Coolidge; and several senators. He asked them to say frankly what characteristics he should portray.

Wilson was then, as he still is, a subject of controversy. Gutzon got some amazing answers. President Coolidge thought he should be depicted as a kind of Abraham Lincoln. Senator William E. Borah thought that his features should express humanitarianism and said, “The Versailles Treaty was a cruel, destructive, brutal document. The only touches of humanity it contains were put there by Wilson.” And a senator who shall be nameless said, “I feel incapable of making a suggestion along this line. If I undertook to do so, I’m afraid I should bear in mind that a man who is untruthful, no matter how exalted his position, should not be deified in sculpture or otherwise.”

Gutzon decided to represent Wilson slipping out of his Academic robes and standing alongside a martial female figure of Poland on the capitol steps. Poland, helmeted, was defending herself with a sword. Forced back she stood at bay under the President’s extended arm. It was a composition of great charm and historic truth. But it required more simple sentiment to be popular in Poznan, Poland, where it was to stand.

Paderewski’s message of regret, contrived after he had looked at the photographs of the model, was a shock. He wired:

DEEPLY IMPRESSED. MAJESTIC GREATNESS OF YOUR COMPOSITION TRULY WONDERFUL. PRESIDENT’S FIGURE SPLENDID, SUPERB, INSPIRED. POLAND’S ENCHANTING IN VIGOR AND YOUTH. ENTIRE CONCEPTION EXTREMELY POETIC AND BEAUTIFUL. HOWEVER AM AFRAID PLACING POLAND’S FIGURE WOULD CREATE SERIOUS TROUBLE AND ADD TO EXISTING POLITICAL STRIFE. MANY MEMBERS OF PARTY NOW IN POWER, WHO HAVE BEEN FIGHTING ON WRONG SIDE, WOULD SURELY INTERPRET YOUR IDEA AS HOMAGE TO AND TRIUMPH OF THEIR DISASTROUS POLICY AND WOULD AROUSE INDIGNATION OF VAST BUT TEMPORARILY PARALYZED MAJORITY. CONSEQUENCES MAY BE FATAL. ARTIST MYSELF, KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO PART WITH CHERISHED IDEAS, TO MODIFY PLAN CONCEIVED IN LOVE AND MATURED BY LONG MEDITATION. AND YET AM FORCED, PRO BONO PUBLICO, TO ASK SACRIFICE IN ELIMINATING POLAND’S FIGURE ALTOGETHER. PRESIDENT’S FIGURE, NO MATTER HOW EARNEST, WILL PLEASE EVERYBODY AND HURT NOBODY. HIS NOBLE GESTURE WILL SEEM BENEDICTION GIVEN TO INVISIBLE SYMBOL OF REBORN COUNTRY FOR NEW, HISTORIC LIFE. THAT GESTURE COULD BUT ENHANCE, INTENSIFY DEEPLY RELIGIOUS, ALMOST APOSTOLIC CHARACTER OF HIS IDEOLOGY. PLEASE FORGIVE AND LET ME KNOW THAT I HAVE NOT OFFENDED YOU. SORRY TO SAY, CANNOT BE IN AMERICA BEFORE OCTOBER. MY BANK CABLING TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. AFFECTIONATE REGARDS TO YOUR DEAR WIFE AND BOY.

So here was another crushing blow to Gutzon. To him it was like asking Beethoven to eliminate one of the movements of the _Fifth Symphony_. But he accepted the verdict with grace. And so he cabled Paderewski.

From Morges Paderewski had sent to the sculptor a group of photographs of the ancient square of Poznan where the statue was to be placed. Gutzon studied them closely to estimate how much light would strike his figure. Later, after wearisome correspondence with a Mr. Rucinski of the Official Council of Building Department, it was decided to move the memorial to the newly created Wilson Park.

Off and on, all winter, the sculptor worked on the model in his San Antonio studio. When completed it was generally acclaimed as a great portrait of the President. It had in it the idealism and the spiritual quality that the sculptor could give it. But he was never reconciled to the loss of the figure of Poland. He felt that the monument lacked something beautiful and significant that he could have given it.

Gutzon took his whole family abroad for the unveiling of the monument in 1931. It was his first visit to Europe in thirty years. Because he had to attend to its erection and the preparation of the pediment, they were several weeks in Poznan. One of the most interesting, and rather tragic, denizens was an old countess who had recently returned to her ancestral home. The place was more than a thousand years old, several miles out of town, and was on exhibition certain days of the week because of its historic interest.

The countess had been in exile for many years, and told an exciting tale of escape when the Germans came to her home. According to the tradition, the family fortune had started with the levying of tribute on travelers at a near-by crossroads. But most of it had been taken away by a similar process of collection. Little was left to her now. One day she invited the Borglums to “high tea,” and as the family sat around the ancient table eating raspberries off priceless china, they could hear the voices and steps of sight-seers in an adjoining room. The exhibition fee undoubtedly eked out her scanty income.

Gutzon took a great liking for this aged lady in her rusty black gown and pathetic shoes. He hired a car and invited her to the opera. His attentions and the unusual experience gave her great delight, and she was sparkling.

During her exile she had cared for the Polish children in Paris. Now she was anxious to insure religious instruction for the large number of Polish orphans there. It hurt her to think, she said, that their bodies were well nourished and their souls were neglected.

As the day of the unveiling drew near, it became known that Paderewski would not be present. This seemed evidence enough that there was something rotten in Poland. The man who had been Premier; who, more than anyone else, had brought the world’s recognition to Poland after the World War; who had made possible the return of territory snatched fifty years before by Germany; the man who had given most of the money for the nation’s tribute to Wilson--this man alone wasn’t going to be permitted to see the honoring of an American president whom he loved.

Large numbers of Polish-Americans came to share the tribute to Wilson. Three hundred priests had come from the United States, every one carrying a wreath of artificial flowers representing his district at home. The flowers, piled about the base of the statue with the fresh wreaths of local patriots, made an impressive display.

On the morning of the unveiling day Mrs. Woodrow Wilson arrived with her niece and a group of men representing the United States. Among them were Robert Underwood Johnson, ambassador to Italy, and Bernard Baruch, who had taken the opportunity to visit the early home of his parents not far from Poznan. Mrs. Wilson went through the ordeal on the arm of General Mosciki, President of the Polish Republic, and she bore up well despite interminable speechmaking.

The crowning event of the program was a banquet at the old Royal Schloss, which at times had been occupied by Kaiser Wilhelm. After that there was a reception for a thousand or more, with General Mosciki presiding.

At dinner Mrs. Borglum was seated next to a delightful Pole whom she had met before. She asked him why there were so few at the table when she could hear the throng waiting for the reception in the next room. He seemed surprised that she shouldn’t know. “But Madam,” he said. “There are only twenty-four plates in the old Emperor’s dining service.” And he turned over a plate to show the label “W. Rex” stamped on the bottom.

Paderewski sent this telegram to Gutzon:

TODAY ON THE SOLEMN OCCASION OF THE UNVEILING OF YOUR NEW MASTERPIECE, MY HEARTFELT THANKS TO YOU, AND MY MOST AFFECTIONATE GREETINGS. YOUR PEERLESS ART HAS ENABLED MY COMPATRIOTS TO POSSESS AND PRESENT AN ENDURING PROOF OF THEIR EVERLASTING GRATITUDE FOR POLAND’S FREEDOM AND INTEGRITY TO AMERICA AND HER NOBLEST SYMBOL, PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.

And what happened to this noble Wilson monument? When Hitler’s troops came plowing through Poland at the beginning of the Second World War it was pulled down and, presumably, turned into ammunition.

* * * * *

The Borglums had several other chance encounters with Paderewski. On one occasion he was to give a concert in Abilene, Texas, and invited Gutzon and his family to see him. He was in a private car and the three met him for dinner after the concert. The evening was delightful--at any rate it was delightful to Paderewski and Gutzon. They talked all night until the car was coupled to an outbound train. And then Paderewski invited them to ride on to the next stop.

Gutzon had an immense faith in Paderewski. One day in Washington during the First World War, he stated his theory to Secretary of the Interior Franklin K. Lane. “One of these days,” he said, “you people will realize that imagination and disinterestedness are powerful factors in the building of a state. I believe Paderewski is capable of rebuilding Poland and of rebuilding Europe if the occasion demanded. He is capable of any sacrifice, and he has the mind and soul to keep him going.”

“You artists always talk in big terms,” said Lane. “So far I am with you. But there’s a great practical side to nation building.”

“Don’t you think Paderewski has that, too?”

“Yes,” said Lane, “and that’s why I’m interested. That’s why he’s succeeding. They tell me he’s abandoned music and set aside his entire fortune to arm Poland and place her on the side of the allies. Just as certainly as I’m sitting here, this great artist is going to be the liberator of modern Poland. This artist!”

“Yes,” commented Gutzon. “That’s what I’ve been telling you. He’s an artist.”

When the next great crisis came for Poland, there were no great artists to deal with it--only politicians.