Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (26 page)

That last element hinted at the terror that Pulitzer would become as a boss and husband, and the whisper of his persecution complex extended into other areas. He read every sentence of his newspaper, impelled by a crippling fear of being caught in a libel suit. He often wondered about potential dishonesty on the part of his employees, particularly the sales staff.

When it came time to share his opinions, either in person or in print, Pulitzer did not whisper his beliefs. “Pulitzer and Cockerill were the most profane men I have ever encountered,” remembered McDougall. “I learned much from them, for their joint vocabulary was extensive and, in some respects, unique. When J.P. was dictating an editorial upon some favorite topic . . . his speech was so interlarded with sulphurous and searing phrases that the whole staff shuddered. He was the first man I ever heard who split a word to insert an oath. He did it often. His favorite was ‘indegoddampendent.’ When the stenographer—a he-one—took down every word he uttered, his editorials had to be sifted, as it were, at the conclusion of the dictation.”

On his honeymoon with his wife, Kate, in July 1878, Pulitzer had toured the Paris Universal Exposition and seen the head of Bartholdi’s statue. He and Kate had congratulated the sculptor. Pulitzer was always hungry for another reason to criticize America’s milliongoddamaires. Liberty’s lack of funding was a perfect
World
story.

Eight days after his first issue, Pulitzer publicly threw support to the statue, or rather slammed the rich of New York for their failure to do so. “The Statue of Liberty, the gift of our sister republic, is ready for us,” the
World
remarked. “But the place to put it is lacking, owing to the poverty, to put it acidly, of the millionaires of the metropolis.”

That particular edition also took note of recent fundraising efforts, including $3,200 raised by amateur performances at the Madison Square Garden Theater, $20 from the New Jersey Volunteer Association, and $20 from a Poughkeepsie preacher, which had come into the offices of the New York
Sun
. “But as yet no distinguished millionaire has advanced to the front railing to put down his name for a solid sum,” the paper noted. “The pedestal for the Statue of Liberty will be furnished by the people who know how to appreciate the blessings of liberty.”

About a week later, Pulitzer changed the masthead logo of the
World
. Instead of two globes flanking a printing press, the two globes now surrounded the Bartholdi statue.

In that same issue, Nathan Appleton from Boston wrote to the
World,
suggesting that the American Committee place donation boxes in all post offices. The trustees of the Brooklyn Bridge should give all tolls from one day’s worth of foot passengers, he went on. All donors, of even one cent, could have their names inscribed in a book, which would later be reproduced by the newspapers.

The letter was a plant—Appleton, a banker and art connoisseur, was also on the American Committee. In any case, his ideas did not appear to catch on with the general public. Nor could Pulitzer gain momentum from fundraising appeals in his columns. The
World
reported that it had been “gathering shekels here and there” for Liberty. Indeed, the drive raised only $135.75 in the first two months.

Pulitzer was not accustomed to failing. By August he had doubled his newspaper’s circulation. By December he had tripled it. His competitors cut their newsstand prices to keep up, and in an astounding indicator of the power of Pulitzer’s paper, the
Herald,
his competitor, began taking out full-page advertisements in the
World.

This success gave Pulitzer a soapbox, and he was coming closer to truly utilizing that platform.

“Dear Sir,” Ulysses S. Grant, now out of office, wrote to John D. Rockefeller in January 1884, “You will no doubt deplore with us the marked indifference of the Citizens of New York to the munificent gift of the French People to the People of the United States—A colossal Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World. . . .

“Out of $250,000 needed to erect a suitable pedestal less than half has been raised, after many and strenuous exertions.” He noted the “threatened stoppage of work.” “It has therefore been suggested that twenty of the most prominent citizens give $5,000 each.”

That appeal, even from a former president, did virtually nothing.

“They are still trying to bolster up the Bartholdi statue pedestal fund, but it topples on all sides,” a reporter wrote. “Never in the history of civilization has there been such a struggle to raise so small an amount of money as that required for this purpose. Despite the most frantic efforts of the best people in New York; despite amateur operas, amateur plays, tableaux, balls, dinners and assemblies, despite everything in fact the best people do, the public refuse to direct its money towards the pedestal fund. . . . The people do not care a rap for the pedestal and they are determined not to pay for it.”

In the same month as the Rockefeller appeal, a reporter came across someone “deeply criminated in Bartholdi statue matters” in a train station and, catching him unawares, found out that Stone had been forced to switch from stone to concrete construction so the pedestal would be cheaper.

The committee members tried every idea to raise money. They had sent Honorable Mahlon D. Chance off for a national journey to organize Liberty fundraising clubs in every state. Nice engravings would be sold. Liberty children’s books would soon be published. Every governor would be tapped.

The results were dismal. Not one donation had come from Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, or Baltimore. Buffalo had given less than $100; Chicago bestowed $500. No other city had given a cent. Liberty was seen as a gift only to New York and thus the city’s bill to pay.

Butler suggested to Bartholdi that he add symbols of each state to the base so as to suggest more of a national character. Writing from Colmar in March 1884, Bartholdi agreed: “Your suggestion of the large Escutcheons (shields) in Bronze, I consider excellent, by this means you will be sure to have the cooperation of all States. At least morally speaking.”

By May, Chance had journeyed through Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Missouri, Kansas, the Dakotas, Utah, and Wyoming. “A few contributions have come in,” he reported dolefully, “not very large ones. But everywhere I was assured that we should have help.”

11
The Blessing

If one looked closely—very closely—at Bartholdi’s studio, one would find a rather curious addition: two models of the Gaget & Gauthier workshops rendered in miniature.

These tiny wooden rooms resembled architectural models. The screws, hammers, copper sheets, beams, ropes, pulleys, and ladders were all modeled, as well as the workmen hammering or sanding and Bartholdi ordering them about, inspecting the work.

The strangest aspect is that these models were crafted entirely by Bartholdi himself. Perhaps he meant them to be like the dioramas he had seen of the construction of the Suez Canal back at the Paris Universal Exposition of 1867. He could have spent hours getting the pulleys just right. Something in Bartholdi must have thrilled at these distortions of scale: working on a massive statue that he could never see as a whole while he labored on her, or here shaping a miniature form of himself with a godlike view of the entire scene. “I sometimes have the feeling that I am observing our globe hanging in the immensity of space,” he had written to his mother from America. “Human affairs seem so small.” He was an egotist in human affairs; a humble man in the scale of the cosmos.

Of course, Bartholdi needed to inspire the egos of other proud men to make Liberty a reality. In 1881, Richard Morris Hunt, creator of the first New York apartment building, fabricator of the luxury dwellings of the Gilded Age, became the architect of Liberty’s pedestal. Bartholdi, who had found Hunt “a little boastful and pleased with himself,” never hesitated to hire the most famous figure in a given field to assist him.

Viollet-le-Duc had long ago drafted a narrow but graceless initial concept for a pedestal. Bartholdi had provided his own sketches of a large four-sided staircase leading up to the statue, which seemed excessive. Clear plans needed to be drawn. Hunt seemed a perfect choice. He would be paid three thousand dollars.

Hunt’s first offering came in August 11, 1883, for a pedestal 152 feet high, according to the contractor who saw it on file at the American Committee office. Hunt would need to reduce the size so as not to overshadow Bartholdi’s statue. By November 1883, Hunt made a model, which the committee very much admired. The approval of that pedestal model seemed to ignite the enthusiasm of the committee as a whole to get back to work. A subcommittee, the Pedestal Fund, organized an Art Loan Exhibition at the Academy of Design for December 3, 1883. The subcommittee sent out 1,500 invitations, and requested an admission fee of fifty cents per ticket. It was considered one of the finest gatherings of artwork in New York up to that time.

Constance Cary Harrison, a writer and socialite, solicited contributions for a portfolio of poems and prose to be auctioned during the opening to raise more funds. To her request, Mark Twain wrote back: “You know my weakness for Adam [the consort of Eve], and you know how I have struggled to get him a monument and failed. Now it seems to me, here is my chance,” he wrote. “What do we care for a statue of liberty when we’ve got the thing itself in its wildest sublimity? What you want of a monument is to keep you in mind of something you haven’t got—something you’ve lost. Very well; we haven’t lost liberty; we’ve lost Adam. . . .

“Another thing: What has liberty done for us? Nothing in particular that I know of. What have we done for her? Everything. We’ve given her a home, and a good home, too. And if she knows anything, she knows it’s the first time she ever struck that novelty. She knows that when we took her in she had been a mere tramp for 6,000 years, Biblical measure. . . . And now that we’ve poured out these Atlantics of benefits upon this aged outcast, lo! and behold you, we are asked to come forward and set up a monument to her! Go to. Let her set up a monument to us if she wants to do the clean thing. . . .

“Is it but a question of finance? Behold the inclosed (paid bank) checks. Use them freely as they are freely contributed. Heaven knows I would there were a ton of them; I would send them all to you, for my heart is in this sublime work!”

Harrison happily accepted Twain’s unusual contribution along with his checks. She also reached out to Walt Whitman, Bret Harte, and other writers.

Her efforts to cajole her friend Emma Lazarus into contributing a poem were less welcomed. The intense young Jewish aristocrat approached nothing frivolously. A few years earlier, she had found her life changed when she visited refugees from the Russian pogroms on Ward’s Island. Their suffering and courage inspired her to write “The Banner of the Jews,” the work that had made her a well-known, admired activist.

When Harrison asked Lazarus if she would pen a piece for the portfolio, Lazarus brushed aside the request, saying she did not write “to order,” and added a few sarcastic remarks about the endeavor. Harrison suggested Lazarus think of those Ward’s Island refugees.

“At once her brow cleared, her eye lightened. She became gentle and tender in a moment, and, going away, soon after sent me ‘The New Colossus.’”

The people packing the galleries on opening night saw two hundred paintings by European and American artists, sculpture, stained glass, ivory carvings, lace, glass, jewelry, and “aboriginal art by American Indians.” The collection also included the original telegram sent by Samuel Morse that said, “What hath God wrought,” and the key to the city General Grant had received in London.

Shortly before nine o’clock, the Esperance and Helvetian Singing Societies arrayed themselves prettily on the main staircase to perform Gounod’s “Hymn to Liberty” with the accompaniment of an orchestra. The director of the exhibition, novelist, painter, and engineer F. Hopkinson Smith, got up on a small platform to speak. Not only had he organized this event; he had been contracted to do the cement work for the pedestal of Liberty itself.

Then he read out Lazarus’s poem:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame

With conquering limbs astride from land to land.

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman, with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips.

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore—

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:

I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

The next day, the press picked up the poem. Another contributor, James Russell Lowell, wrote to Lazarus from London in December 1883: “I must write again to say how much I like your sonnet about the statue—much better than I like the Statue itself. But your sonnet gives its subject a
raison d’être
which it wanted before much as it wanted a pedestal. You have set it on a noble one, saying admirably just the right word to be said, an achievement more arduous than that of the sculptor.”