Publication InformationBurlington May 20-1858

Page 1

My dear Powers

Your letter of Dec 31 '57 was received in due course of mail, but a three months' confinement to my bed by neuralgia, multiplied cares, and the feeling of mortification that I and my friends can do nothing to secure justice to you, have hitherto kept me from replying. I will not go over the grounds of complaint against the government & its officers, but I find it very difficult to reconcile the belief, that Capt Meigs was personally unfriendly to you, and President Peirce well inclined, with the impressions I derived as to their intentions and wishes from personal communications with both.

As to the proposed commission, I was at Washington when the bill containing the appropriation was passed, had repeated communications with members on the subject, and, as far as I could, promoted the object. I did not then know what your own wishes would be with respect to the , but I never heard a suggestion that a colossal repetition of the would be ordered for the decoration of the spire, and if I had been asked the question, I should have thought that you would have preferred to execute a work designed for a position more favorable for observation than the summit of a dome 300 feet high. In all this, I may have been influenced by my own dislike for colossal

figures, but if I had known your own views, I should most readily have seconded them. At the same time, I must say, that if a distinct proposal had been made for an appropriation of that sum for the execution of a work for that position, I am very sure it could not have been carried.

I think you are under some misapprehension with regard to the public appreciation of Mill's work, & the motives for his employment. Newspaper correspondents writing probably at his dictation, have magnified the difficulty and the merits of a two-legged equestrian group, but I never heard a single person of either influence, or to taste, praise the work on ground. Ignorant as Congressmen are on questions of art, they are not so bad as that. The has been a good deal complimented as a figure, which indeed it is, though, as I believe, and am told by persons much better acquainted than I am with equine anatomy, it is far from correct in form or action. The rider is abominable, & that, I think, is generally conceded. Mills's success in obtaining the commission was owing to the popularity of the subject, to the personal efforts of himself and friends, but above all, to the fact, that, he was a South Carolinian, which last circumstance would have turned the scale in his favor, if even Lysippus had been his competitor ----

Thus much for the past. As to the future, I know no way of reaching the

throne, but through the medium of party influence. Buchanan recognizes no duties to God or man, except as he finds them incarnate in pro-slavery democracy, and Cass would not act without the President's sanction. At the same time, if you were at Washington, I think your mere presence and the personal acquaintance of influential persons would, without any effort on your part, and without putting you in an attitude in the slightest degree humiliating or unworthy, bring the question at once to a favorable issue.

I have not been at Washington since 1856. The capital was not than so far advanced as to make its sculptural decorations a matter of much consideration, but I suppose it is now getting on rapidly, and so far as that particular building is concerned, there is not much time to lose. You have many friends, who would heartily welcome you, and none, I think, who would enjoy an evening with you more highly than I.

We, even in Vermont, are doing something to patronize art. The Legislature has ordered a wooden figure, to crown the dome of the new capital, & appropriated the munificent sum of $800. to cover the expense!! More than this. The same body appropriated $2000 for a monument to Ethan Allen, which is just ready for erection. It is a Tuscan column of granite

42 feet high, base, and all, & the Leg. authorized the placing of a statue of Allen on the top, the money could be raised by . A good deal of effort was made, to no purpose, but lately, Mr Mead, a young man from Brattleboro', who has spent some time with H. K. Browne, has undertaken to raise the means by personal solicitation, and in case of success is to have its commission. You see, therefore, that art is progressive in Vermont.

I take it for granted the order for the Webster will be renewed. I suppose the statue is lost, though I have never learned the particulars.

Mrs Marsh has been better than usual this spring, so much so that she has walked a quarter of a mile or more, and she is able to use her eyes a very little for reading & writing. George has been in Boston for some months, but intends to go into an office in the country soon. If you see the Brownings, please remember us most kindly to them. Mrs Marsh would be glad to know whether they are at Florence, as she wishes to write to Mrs Browning. Your project of going to England seems to us not a bad one, & I have no doubt you might there expect a more liberal patronage than in America. Mrs Marsh joins me in kind regard to you all.

Truly yoursG P Marsh

H. Powers Esq

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.

Lewis Cass (1782-1866), Brigadier General in the U.S. army and for eighteen years (1813-1831) governor of the Michigan Territory, was a U.S. Senator (1845-1857), Democratic candidate for president in 1848 (losing to Whig Zachary Taylor), and Secretary of State under James Buchanan (1857-1860).

Larkin Goldsmith Mead Jr.(1835-1910) was a sculptor from Brattleboro, Vermont. although he spent most of his life in Florence. He created the statue of Agriculture that crowns the Vermont State House in 1857, and the statue of Ethan Allen in the same building in 1861. He was also responsible for the statue of Allen in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol and for an elaborate memorial to Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois.

Hablot Knight Browne (1815-1882), known as Phiz, illustrated many of the novels of Charles Dickens and other English novelists.