Liberty's Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty (27 page)

The Art Exhibition group handed over fourteen thousand dollars to the fund.

Bartholdi, rarely aware of how much work others did on his behalf, rewarded Harrison for her weeks of organizing the exhibits, soliciting contributors to the “Portfolio” and writing the introduction to the official catalog, with a dainty gold-coated medallion made of the metal of the statue. He included his thanks and “hommages respectueux.” Harrison’s husband thought it laughably insufficient as a sign of gratitude.

That March, in 1884, the American Committee gathered at the house of banker Joseph Drexel to open the envelopes containing the contractor bids Stone had solicited to build Hunt’s pedestal, including the fine stonework. Bartholdi had already weighed in on the design: “I have recently written Hunt about the pedestal of which he has forwarded me a new design which I consider to be
far inferior
to the first. His first design I considered as very good, and advised him to keep as much as possible of its general character.”

The first bid was astronomical. The committee members cut the seal on the second. That bid matched the other in cost. One after the other, they read out a half dozen bids so absolutely beyond the resources of the committee that they refused to make them public. Stone would have to revise the parameters of the job and let the bidding start again.

“The prospect of ever raising the money needed to complete the pedestal for the Bartholdi Statue is more remote than ever,” wrote a reporter for the
Brooklyn Star
. “The alarming discovery has just been made that instead of $250,000 being a sufficient sum, the granite required will at least cost $240,000. . . . The committee in charge of the fund, after working more than a year, have succeeded by one device and another, in raising $140,000, but at the rate money is now coming—about $1,000 per week—it will take something like three years yet to give enough to complete the work. The fact is that the whole business has been woefully botched.”

The reporter described the debate within the committee about whether to encourage the rich to pay the full freight, or solicit small donations from the masses. “The two schemes were hopelessly mixed and muddled. The result is that the rich New Yorkers have got the idea that they are not called upon to ‘come down’ with generous contributions, while the people at large see no reason why they should be expected to hand over their dollars. So the fund languishes, and the country is placed in a most humiliating ‘attitude,’ which must be utterly incomprehensive to the French people.”

The committee members turned to the government for support. They were rewarded with the good news that the New York legislature had passed a bill granting fifty thousand dollars to the Bartholdi statue. This was extraordinarily encouraging but in June 1884, when the bill went before Governor Grover Cleveland, he refused to sign it. He saw the bill as violating section 11, article 8 of the state constitution, because it would put New York State in a position of indebtedness for federal purposes, not city purposes.

Hunt went back to his studio. A new modest design would need to be created. Unfortunately, D. H. King Jr., the builder, refused to accept less money for the smaller work, so his full original fee was paid. In fact the committee added on $19,500 more for a pedestal that would be twenty-five feet shorter than the original approved design.

Meanwhile, in Paris, the first part of the official handover of the statue took place on July 4, 1884, at the Gaget & Gauthier studio. It was a great ceremony attended by numerous dignitaries. Unfortunately, Laboulaye did not get to see the work he helped inspire, as he had died the previous year of apoplexy. De Lesseps had taken over the chairmanship of the Franco-American Union, so he presided at this ceremony. He praised Liberty’s creators and even managed to add a sentence promoting his struggling Panama Canal project, which was desperate for private support.

De Lesseps also touchingly honored Bartholdi’s loyal aide, Marie Simon: “that courageous sculptor, who, although a septuagenarian, has been the youngest and most indefatigable at work by several years; we all of us would have wished to see him honored, as he merits, by an official distinction.”

That summer, the American Committee began running a little steam launch to Bedloe’s Island so visitors might watch the masons work on the pedestal and take some of the cleaner air. The
Bartholdi
ran hourly, with the hope of accumulating enough twenty-five-cent fares to build a tidy fund. One reporter called the island “deliciously breezy,” with “enormous willow trees and countless cosey [
sic
] nooks about the angles of the fortifications.”

Even amid the litter of construction materials, it was possible to imagine a day when Bedloe’s Island would be thronged with pleasure seekers. That day was a long way off. General Stone had come to regret hiring F. Hopkinson Smith to complete the cement work. They quarreled regularly. One day they took their fight to the fort’s parapet, and the argument grew so heated Stone called one of his lackeys to serve as the “bearer of challenge” for him. The lackey, who had known Stone in Egypt, lectured him on the need to control his temper, until the general burst into laughter and told his lackey to “go to blazes.”

By midsummer the foundation was finally complete. Stone was determined to keep up appearances by holding a cornerstone ceremony for the pedestal on August 6 with a guest list packed with Freemasons and soldiers. Although Bartholdi would be in France at the time and unable to attend, he himself was a member of the brotherhood. He had joined the Masons of Alsace-Lorraine in 1875, formed in exile to reaffirm ties to that homeland. Freemasonry was an extremely strong fraternity at the time. For many intellectuals and elites, Freemasonry replaced the role of organized religion in offering a guiding philosophy. It emphasized the need for fulfillment in the life lived on earth, not a promise from the afterlife. One had to achieve immortality in the here and now.

Bad weather ruined Stone’s efforts. A storm blew in, chasing away all but the heartiest guests. Stone managed to ferry over five hundred people on a boat dressed in bedraggled American and French flags, including a man from the Leetes Island quarry in Connecticut, which supplied the stone; the president of the New York–New Haven railroad company; and the mayor of New Haven, Connecticut. Rather tactlessly, the American Committee charged a fifty-cent fare from every attendee requiring transport.

Accompanied by a soggy marching band, they trudged through the mud up toward the pedestal. Stone wore a silk hat and swallowtail jacket, which soon became drenched, as did the French officers’ ornate lace.

The 24,000 tons of foundation stood sixty-five feet tall. Two tunnels went through the foundation and joined in the center to a vertical ten-foot-wide shaft.

The guests climbed to the foundation’s top, their umbrellas looking like a field of black mushrooms. If it had been a fine day, the view they could take in from the top would have sparked enthusiasm for fundraising. One could see as far as Brooklyn, Jersey City, and, on a clear day, the mountains of Pennsylvania. On that day, the view was gray and overcast.

After a twenty-one-gun salute from the battery of Old Fort Wood, and addresses by Grand Master Mason William Brodie, two men moved to place a square copper box under the cover, shielding the cornerstone from the wet.

Inside the box, the committee had placed copies of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, a list of the Grand Lodge of Masons of the State, the daily New York papers, General Washington’s farewell address, nineteen bronze medals representing the presidents succeeding Washington, proofs of the United States coins of 1881, and a medal commemorating the Egyptian obelisk’s placement in Central Park.

Poems on Liberty by various authors were also included, as were an engraving and a description of the Washington Building at the corner of Broadway and Battery Park, which served as the committee’s office. Bartholdi’s picture also went inside. The people in attendance threw in their visiting cards.

The
World
noted the event in a few column inches and used the timing to complain about the terrible fundraising efforts thus far. “The committee which has the matter in charge cannot be said to have done anything to fire the popular heart. Nevertheless, unless the statue goes to the bottom of the ocean, it is safe to predict that it will eventually stand upon an American pedestal, and then be referred to for a very long time with more sentiment than we can now dream of.”

The fund had only $20,000 left, which could make three or four courses—that is layers—of masonry; $125,000 was still needed to complete the pedestal. In December 1884, the
World
published an account of the lackluster fundraising by committee members. Embarrassed, the committee started a more regular meeting schedule, pledged $25,000 of its own money to keep the quarrymen working through the winter, and promised a bill for an appropriation for $100,000 to go before Congress, soliciting federal dollars for what was deemed a national project.

Other fundraising attempts suffered quick deaths. In December, the New York school board quashed with stern language the idea of holding fundraising concerts performed by schoolchildren. The Society of the Sons of the Revolution, which the committee had entrusted to run the Dollar Campaign, asking only a dollar of each contributor, submitted a bill for $571 on $2,678 raised. The American Committee fired it for that avarice.

Public opinion didn’t favor government aid to the statue. A front-page “Washington Letter” in Nebraska’s
McCook Weekly Tribune
read: “These Bartholdi schemers are begging the school children and everybody else for contributions to this pedestal fund, while they are paying a lazy tramp of a secretary six thousand dollars a year for keeping the books, and a host of other hangers on who do nothing under Heaven but draw salaries from the fund.”

“Who and what is Mr. Bartholdi?” sniffed one William Howe Downes in the
Bay State Monthly
, a Massachusetts magazine, in December 1884. “It is admitted that he is a man of talent, but that he is not considered a great sculptor in his own country is equally beyond doubt.”

Bartholdi’s status in his own country was about to change. With only twenty-four hours’ advance notice, a carriage came down the street toward the Gaget & Gauthier workshop on rue Chazelles in the late afternoon chill and gray of Saturday, November 29, 1884. The horses clopped to a stop, blowing smoke in the chilly air. Out of that carriage came Mrs. Édouard Lockroy and her granddaughter, Jeanne, bundled against the cold. Then a man hobbled forward and held out a hand.

It was Victor Hugo.

At age eighty-two, the great writer cut a most recognizable figure, a ruffle of white beard framing his intense, beady gaze. His body, creaky when he walked, still looked solid at rest. Hugo wore the unbuttoned dark sack coat he called “his youth,” because he had worn it summer and winter since he was a young man. His head was uncovered. He had no gloves to warm his hands against the brittle cold.

Hugo followed Bartholdi into the covered warehouse, which was decorated with French and American flags. Bartholdi had issued invitations to other dignitaries who might need a bit of cheerleading to push the project on: the American chargé d’affaires, the secretary of the Franco-American Union, and the art critic Theodore Stanton, along with many donors to the cause. Most movingly the Gaget & Gauthier workers lined up, too, awaiting their audience with Hugo. The writer and director of the Théâtre Français, Jules Claretie, reported on the proceedings:

Bartholdi’s mother, who was now eighty-three years old, was also in attendance. She had asked Bartholdi ahead of time to introduce her to the great poet, but Bartholdi had tried to dissuade her. He told her he was worried that she might break down in emotion upon meeting such a hero. She dismissed his anxiety as silly.

Bartholdi dutifully introduced her. “Permit me to present Mme. Bartholdi, my mother, who was born a year before you,” he said to Hugo.

His mother, still agile even at her age, gave an old-fashioned curtsy.

Hugo bowed and brought her trembling hand to his lips for a kiss. It was classic Hugo, courtly, charming, and theatrical. Next Bartholdi presented his wife, Jeanne-Émilie, and the dignitaries. Finally it was time for Bartholdi to introduce Hugo to Lady Liberty. The
statuaire
must have figured that Hugo, more than any other fellow artist, would empathize with the grandiosity of his dream.

The two men passed the workers, visibly moved to see their hero so close. They had worked for years on this statue and now Victor Hugo would view the results of their labor. These men had greeted other famous visitors—dignitaries; important American and French businessmen; even the former president of the United States, Ulysses S. Grant—but never anyone like this.

Hugo and Bartholdi left the workshop’s shelter to walk out to the statue’s base in the courtyard. Two banners had been hung in front of Liberty with the names of Lafayette and Rochambeau. Hugo stood staring up into the copper folds, Liberty’s hips at the rooftops, her arm stretching into the gray sky. He contemplated her in silence, then said simply, “C’est superbe!”

Bartholdi must have been thrilled. He explained the technique of Liberty’s creation, how the workers had beaten the copper to the forms, and how only such a place as Gaget & Gauthier could produce such a work. That would surely help appease Gaget, who was eager to get his studio back and had become increasingly tense with Bartholdi of late.