It hadn’t. Perhaps
the most astonishing detail I came up with was that sculptor Bartholdi
conceived the statue first to garnish the latest French engineering feat—the
Suez Canal. It was originally designed as a colossal lighthouse, to rival the
ancient Colossus at Rhodes, one of the seven wonders of the antique world.
Twice—in 1867 and 1869—the thirtyish sculptor plied the
ruler of Egypt, Ismail Pasha, with drawings. No sale. Frederic-Auguste
Bartholdi, however, never wasted a good idea.
When our Civil War ended in 1865, the French liberals of republican bent groaned under
the imperial rule of Napoleon III’s Second Empire. The most vocal critics of
the emperor recovered the American model of government, and their leader, one
Edouard Rene Lefebvre de Laboulaye, broached the subject of strengthening the
old Marquis de Lafayette connection at a dinner party. He argued that there
ought to be a monument built in America to symbolize Franco-American commitment
to the ideals of independence. He further argued that they ought to build it
together.
Because the U.S. had given tacit support to the Prussians
and Napoleon had angered the Lincoln administration by supporting the Confederacy,
the time was ripe for a monument to heal the split between America and
France—after Napoleon III was pushed out of power by the Commune. Leboulaye
advised Bartholdi in the spring of 1871: “Go to see that country. You will
study it, you will bring back to us your impressions. Propose to our friends
over there to make with us a monument.
Bartholdi spent three and a half months criss-crossing the country in search of his dream.
He was astonished at Bigness everywhere. Hotels were “immense bazaars” where
“even the petits pois” were humungous. He cast a covetous eye on Bedloe’s
Island in New York Harbor, the site of Fort Wood, as an ideal site for the
monument of his dreams. Unfortunately, he was finding it hard to come up with a
few people “who have a little enthusiasm for something other than themselves
and the Almighty Dollar.”
When he got back to France, his enthusiasm was soon
smothered by Laboulaye’s desperate efforts to get democratic governance in
France back on track. He dealt with his frustration by devising monuments to
French heroism in the recently concluded war and searching for emblems to
embody the old Franco-American liberal connection. One such was his bronze
“Lafayette Arriving in America” for Union Square, New York City, a French gift
to the city.
In 1875, the
French-American Union unleashed a nationwide newspaper appeal with the theme,
“Let us each bring his mite,” with the descendants of Lafayette, Rochambeau and
Tocqueville adding the clout of their celebrity to the appeal. The scheme was
to give the statue in honor of the American Centennial the next year, with the
American public coughing up the pedestal money.
Paris social life glittered with “Liberty” events. There was
a 14-course meal for 200 guests at the fancy Hotel de Louvre, with goodies such
as filet de boeuf Lafayette and croustades
a la Washington. Money started to roll in,
from all classes and all areas of the country. The momentum was such that the
American press began to take notice, but American donations lagged.
Bartholdi was not a man to give in easily. He decided to
bring Miss Liberty’s arm and torch to the Centennial Exposition in
Philadelphia. The New York Times, then
in its pre-gray lady, newspaper-of-record phase, made a risqué mock: Why start
with the arm? Rather one should begin “at its foundation, modeling first the
boot, then the stocking, then the full leg in the stocking.”
It wasn’t until early in 1877 that an American committee on the Statue of Liberty was formed in New
York. But it was to be “a” Hungarian immigrant, Civil War vet and innovative
newspaper publisher—Joseph Pulitzer of prize fame—who got the American public
involved in raising money for the pedestal.
He challenged his readers to put up the money the wealthy
had denied the project. He vowed to accept any amount toward the final $100,000
and to print the name of each and every donor “no matter how small the sum
given.”
It was inspired populist rhetoric—and not incidentally
damned good publicity for his newly acquired paper. The New York World. He pulled out all the stops of bathos: “I am a little
girl,” one donor wrote, “only six years old and have 25 cents in my savings
bank, which I send to help build the Pedestal.”
The last block in the pedestal was set in place on April 22,
1886, by the chief engineer of the project, Charles P. Stone. His workmen mixed
coins in the last mortar to symbolize the more than 120,000 donations, most
under a dollar, that gave the most important symbol in American history the
broadest democratic foundation. Pulitzer had appealed successfully to his
working class readers to do for the base what ordinary French citizens had done
for the statue itself. This was to be a gift from the plain Jeannes and Jacques
of one country to the Joes and Jills of another.
Alas, Liberty was not built in a day. A boatload of
suffragettes added to the jam around Bedloe’s Island, but no women, not even
Emma Lazarus, were allowed to attend the ceremony! Member of a prominent Jewish
family in New York, she had written “The New Colossus” in 1883 for a pedestal
fundraiser. She had been motivated both by anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia and
by the spectacle of people of promise reduced to Lower East Side lives of
“menial drudgery.”
Already, the statue was gaining a resonance that transcends the Franco-American
liberal connection. Her Miss Liberty was the “Mother of Exiles.” But it wasn’t
until 1903 that an admiring philanthropist got her poem inscribed in a plaque
on a wall inside the pedestal.
Eternal improvement is the subscription price of Liberty.
That should not be lost track of during this July 4th’s superhoopla
and hype. The torch is only as meaningful as our own extended arms.
From Welcomat: After Dark, June 1986
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