Publication InformationBurlington November 16' 1857

Page 1

Dear Powers

I received yours of Oct 22 on Saturday last. You need no assurance that Mrs Marsh & myself deeply sympathize with you in your domestic afflictions, as well as in your professionaltrials, and that we feel the strongest interest in your prosperity, and success both in yourhousehold circle and in the grave labors of your study. You are well aware that I thought you hadbeen long ago ill used by the government, and I am much grieved that the same ill-starredmismanagement at Washington should still continue to annoy you, but I cannot agree with you asto the who is chargeable with the wrong which has been done you. In my judgment, theblame and the blame rests on the head of the late incumbent of the Presidential chair, & Ibelieve his ill-will towards you has no better foundation than the pitiable reason, that your friendMr Atlee, who interested himself warmly in your behalf, was suspected of inclining to in politics.

I was at Washington when the original bill was passed, but though I knew that many ofyour friends expected the President to order your statue of America, I did not at the time suppose,nor do I now think, that such was the understanding of the members of Congress. I leftW. immediately after the passage of the bill, & did not see the President till next session, but I metCapt Meigs, whom I know very well, & had, more than one conversation with him

concerning you, your works and the order. Capt. Meigs is a cautious person in speaking ofmatters connected with his official duties, but I have always found him very far from being aninsincere man, and although he did not, in conversing with me, express any opinion with respectto the particular work to be selected I had not, nor have I now any doubt that his purpose was,so far as his influence extended, to have the provisions of the law fully, fairly, & promptly carriedout. I find it very difficult to believe that Capt. Meigs entertains any feelings or wishes towardsyou, which are not such as you would yourself approve, & I am convinced that you must lookelsewhere for the "enemy that hath done this.

When I saw the President more than a year after the bill was passed, & when your friendsbegan to grow anxious, I mentioned the subject to him, & was satisfied from his manner, that hedid not intend to execute the act. The nearest approach he made in that direction was to say thatnegotiations were going on on the subject. I communicated with Mr Atlee & learned from himwhat had passed, and also wrote to Mr Everett, who then, as on all other occasions, showed thewarmest interest in your behalf, & I have no doubt has done all in his power to promote theobject, but with so poor a creature as Pierce no man who deserved any influence could have thesmallest weight. In fact the stronger the reasons were for a particular course of action, the lesswould he follow it, and as one of his own near friends said to me ' to give him advice was

to pour water into a sieve.'

I must however tell you further, & you must pardon my frankness, that your declining thecommission for a pediment of the Capitol was not well received in this country, & I think it hasinjured you at Washington. I feared this from the first, & when I received your letter informing me[...] of this fact, I told Mrs Marsh, I thought that if I had been at Florence, I could have given yousatisfactory reasons for accepting it. That however has gone by for the present, & now let us lookat the future. It is an immense object for you to secure the patronage of the government. Weare decorating the Capitol & our other public buildings on a scale of great magnificence, & if thefirst step is well planted you are at once secure of the most profitable & honorable occupation forlife. With regard to the present order I don't think the statue the dome, whatever name is givenit, will interfere at all with the America. Crawford's statue is to be at a height of 300 feet from theground, & its only office will be to hold a lightning rod! Of course you don't want to execute astatue for such a & such a , no matter what its merits, a work of art might as well bein the Capitol, [as] well as on its highest pinnacle. Besides I hope will never make a colossalstatue. Heaven save us from Brobdignagianism in art, whether in bronze or in marble!

The heroic size is large enough, & I would have it short measure, at that. There is then nothing inthe way of your America, but at the same time, if those who have the power of selection don'twant that, then don't let your friends urge it, but suggest something else, a group if possible, andone successful hit establishes as the government sculptor at once!

How you are to reach the Head of the government, I can't say. He be reachedthrough any channel, by any body on side of the house, & I much doubt whether anydecent democrat will have access to his ear, but among your many democratic friends, there maybe some one who can operate upon him by means you would approve. I earnestly hope that ityour correspondence with Capt. Meigs nothing has occurred to excite any ill-feeling on his part,or any suspicion that you think has not dealt fairly by you. I do not know that he would havemuch influence with Mr. Buchanan, but his position would entitle him to some, & I should be verysorry to have him prejudiced against you, or irritated towards you. I say this because my ownimpressions of his character have been so favorable that I am loth to have you lose an influencewhich I should think so desirable.

Our delegation in Congress will willingly do all they can, but they are not Buchananites, & therefore will have little weight.

As for the sculpture

executed & executing for the Capitol, I know nothing of it except that it has been ,but I have seen some of Mr Rogers' works, & have been too long an observer of art to believethat even he can do as much in 40 days as Ghiberti in 40 years.

If you get the matter of the commission once arranged, there will be no difficulty abouttime, & in proposing a subject you need not bind yourself to any particular design.

Don't delay your inventions. Your file is a fortune of itself, & I hope you will lose no timein bringing it out.

If Mr & Mrs Browning are at Florence, please say when you see them, that we rememberthem with the liveliest interest, & have read their later works with the same great admiration withwhich their earlier poems had filled us. Mrs Marsh joins me in the kindest regards. George has justrecovered from a very severe attack of typhoid fever, & is about resuming his studies at the Lawschool at

Cambridge. He will be much grieved to hear of the loss of his little playmate, & will soon writeyou.

Very truly yoursGeorge P. Marsh

H. Powers Esq

P.S. When you write next, will you inform us whether Mr & Mrs Browning are still, at Florence.

Mrs Marsh remains in much the same state as when you saw her last, though she has occasionally been a little better, for a few weeks.

In looking over what I have written, I fear I may not have expressed myself distinctly enough on the first page. I did not mean to say, that I thought the members of Congress expected an entirely new design, but simply that they did not understand that [the]appropriation was particularly intended for the purchase of the America. Most of them had very vague ideas, if any, on the subject, but so far as any clear perceptions existed among the majority, I think they intended to leave the question entirely open, so that the President might either take the America, or commission you to execute an entirely new work. There can be no question however that he was to take that statue by the terms of the Act, & but for his incredible , he would have done so at last, to save the appropriation, if for no better reason.

[The following appears in the left margin of the page beginning "Burlington November 16' 1857"]

Douglas is a Vermonter and a man of generous impulses. His influence is very great atWashington. Can you not reach him through some democratic friend?

References in this letter:

Powers' heroic statue of a partially-clothed female figure representing the United States was modeled in plaster between August 1848 and September 1849. The marble replica made from it, completed in 1855, never found a buyer and was destroyed in a warehouse fire in Brooklyn, New York, in 1865.

Randolph Rogers (1825-1892), an American sculptor living in Rome, in 1855 received a commission for a pair of massive bronze doors for the Capitol depicting incidents in the life of Columbus. Modeled after Lorenzo Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" at the baptistry in Florence, the doors, for which Rogers was paid $8,000, were cast in Munich in 1860 and installed in 1863 between Statuary Hall and the new wing housing the House of Representatives. In 1871 the doors were moved to the entrance to the Rotunda.

Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), a Florentine painter and sculptor, was awarded a commission in 1403 to construct bronze doors for the baptistry of San Giovanni Battista in Florence; he completed the north portal in 1424 and the east portal in 1447 [or 1452].

Frances Austin Powers ("Fannie"), Hiram and Elizabeth Powers' seventh child, was born in Florence in 1849 and died there, apparently of rheumatic fever, in 1857.