The history of the Statue of Liberty case study

30
Those who have told the history of the Statue of Liberty have commonly criticized the United States for failing to see the monument’s
virtues immediately, for being reluctant to contribute to its expense,
and for delaying its construction for a decade. Such criticisms are
unfair.1 With hindsight, we know what an extraordinarily successful
piece of public statuary Liberty has been, but none of this was evident in June 1871, when the virtually unknown Auguste Bartholdi
arrived in New York. Rather than shake our heads over the imaginative failings of Americans in the Gilded Age, we should marvel at
the ability of Bartholdi and his allies to transform, in the space of
fi fteen years, a small clay model into the world’s largest statue and
place that statue in one of the most prominent locations in the
world. For comparison’s sake, it’s important to keep in mind that
the Washington Monument, designed by an American architect to
honor perhaps the most widely admired fi gure in U.S. history, took
thirty-six years (1848–85) to build. The Lincoln Memorial took
fi fty-fi ve years (1867–1922) from conception to realization, and the
Roosevelt Memorial twenty-three (1974–97).
When Bartholdi fi rst set foot on U.S. soil, he spoke almost no
two
Paying for It
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
31
English, knew essentially no one, possessed no knowledge of the
United States beyond what he had read in Laboulaye’s books, and
had no American intermediaries to help with his audacious quest.
He did have the money to live and travel comfortably here for many
months, and he came armed with letters of introduction from Laboulaye to important people in different walks of life. He thus enjoyed
advantages denied to most immigrants in search of fame and fortune. Laboulaye had corresponded with a great many Americans—
mainly people who shared his moderate liberal politics and abolitionist convictions. It was an impressive but relatively narrow group.
Before arranging to meet Laboulaye’s contacts, Bartholdi scouted
New York for a place to anchor the statue he had in mind. He
visited Central Park, the Battery at the southern tip of Manhattan,
and sailed around New York Harbor. He quickly eliminated the park,
which then seemed more a suburban green space than an urban
sanctuary, and decided that the Battery’s dense backdrop of buildings would not give his statue the prominence he desired. Bartholdi
turned to the harbor, whose vitality and activity amazed him. “The
fi rst thing that strikes the eye,” he wrote his mother, “is the immense steamers called ‘ferry boats.’ . . . They move this way and
that across the bay, full of people and covered with fl ags, emitting
deep-toned blasts from their whistles. [The waters] are covered
with shipping as far as the eye can reach.”2 If he were to place his
statue in the harbor, this limitless fl otilla would circle it every day.
Even better would be to build it just inside the bay from the narrows, the thin channel through which all ocean vessels coming into
New York must pass. On his second day in the city Bartholdi found
his spot: Bedloe’s Island, a tiny dot of land occupied only by a littleused military fort. From this perfectly situated island, Bartholdi’s
colossus would be visible from the city, from the harbor, and, perhaps most important, from every ship sailing from the Old World to
the New.
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
32
The Frenchman’s next task was to organize American support.
He was aware of the magnitude of his undertaking and told his
mother not to mention his project to anyone for fear he “would
appear eccentric, even a little crazy.”3 Understandably, he began
with American Francophiles likely to be interested in strengthening
Franco-American ties. On his third day in New York he met Mary
Louise Booth, whose grandfather was French and who spoke the
language perfectly. She had translated one of Laboulaye’s books
and, most important, edited the magazine Harper’s Bazaar. He then
saw several sculptors familiar with his work, the French consul general, and the editor of New York’s French-language newspaper, Le
Courrier des Etats-Unis. All of these people greeted Bartholdi warmly,
but none showed interest in his project. He quickly realized that he
lacked a clear rationale for building such a statue and thus couldn’t
explain why Americans might want it and contribute to its costs. It
was at this point that he decided to “speak of his project from a new
point of view,” and began to assert that his colossus would represent
“French society’s” gift of a “commemorative monument in 1876.”4
Only after arriving in New York—not at the famous 1865 dinner
chez Laboulaye—did Bartholdi conceive of the statue as a gift from
the French people commemorating the centennial of the American
revolution.
This idea evoked a measure of interest. It was less abstract than a
statue honoring “liberty,” which could mean almost anything, perhaps even the dangerous “license” associated with anarchism and
the bloody Paris Commune. Also, a French gift might help diffuse
tense Franco-American relations dating back to 1848. The French
revolution of that year had abolished slavery in French colonies, a
move that horrifi ed American slaveholders, who feared the French
emancipation might be contagious.5 Once the Civil War broke out,
it was Northerners’ turn to dislike the French, whose government
supported the Confederacy. And partly in retaliation, these same
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
33
Northerners sided with the Prussians against the French in 1870.
Almost no American, it seemed, remembered Lafayette and France’s
contribution to U.S. independence. To remedy this situation, Bartholdi began to see his statue as a kind of peace offering, as the
centerpiece of an effort to restore Franco-American ties. The monument would celebrate not just the American revolution, but also
France’s contribution to it. The sculptor hoped that Americans would
look at his Statue of Liberty and understand their essential, existential ties to his country.
But optimist that he was, even Bartholdi couldn’t sustain those
hopes. His initial meetings convinced him that gratitude eluded most
Americans; they were too focused on “business” (les affaires) and the
“God Dollar.” The American character, he added, “is largely closed
to the realm of imagination.”6 And having been schooled on Laboulaye’s idealized version of the United States, the sculptor found himself disappointed with the realities he observed. “American life,” he
wrote his mentor, “seems to allow little time to live—their customs,
their regimes are not my ideal. . . . Everything is practical, but in a
collective manner. The society marches like rail cars on tracks, but
the isolated vehicle is obliged to stay on the rails if it is to move
smoothly. The isolated individual cannot emerge; he is obliged to
live in this collective society.”7
A great many Americans, then as now, would have been surprised
by this assessment. But Bartholdi’s view of the United States as excessively practical, as governed by a railroad-like regimentation, allowed him to understand the Americans’ disinterest in his utterly
impractical “dream” of erecting a great statue in New York Harbor.
Still, he marveled over America’s technical advancement and industrial prowess, and once he began to explain his project as a great
modernist technical achievement, he would see more success. Until
he did so, all he had to show was a small model of a neoclassical
woman, which didn’t evoke any distinct American traditions, memBerenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
34
ories, or emotions. Bartholdi’s statue left most Americans cold, which,
logically enough, is the way he came to see them. (Later, after meeting with President Grant, the Frenchman described him as “a cold
man, like most Americans.”)8
Undaunted, Bartholdi decided to try his luck in Washington,
D.C., where a letter of introduction from Laboulaye earned him
an audience with Charles Sumner, the infl uential Republican senator and former abolitionist stalwart. This meeting went much better
than those he’d had in New York. Bartholdi found the senator “a
cultivated, intelligent man, who likes France.”9 Most important,
“He seems sympathetic to my project.” But most others in Washington didn’t share Sumner’s sentiments. Besides Sumner, the lone
bright spot there proved to be a Philadelphian, Colonel John W.
Forney, publisher of the Philadelphia Press. A committed abolitionist
like Sumner, Forney understood Bartholdi’s monument to liberty
as a symbol of emancipation and promised to help the Frenchman
advance his project.
In Forney, Bartholdi had found the American advocate he needed,
an infl uential journalist who could to explain to his compatriots why
the sculptor’s project was meaningful and important. Taking Bartholdi to Philadelphia, a city the Frenchman found “dirty,” Forney
introduced him to the Union League Club, a network of wealthy
liberal men with members in all the major East Coast cities. The club
had formed early in the Civil War to support the Union, advocate
emancipation, and achieve political reform through education and
appreciation of the arts. Members of the Union Club shared many
of Laboulaye’s views and held the French professor in high esteem.
They gave him an honorary membership in 1863 and praised him
for advocating abolition, the Union, and the idea—hardly evident
in the turbulent, war-torn 1860s—that the United States provided
a model for orderly, law-abiding republicanism. The Union League’s
belief that the arts could—and should—enlighten a backward citiBerenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
35
zenry drew them to Bartholdi’s patriotic work and to his project for
a goddess of liberty. Club members in Philadelphia, and especially
New York, would form the nucleus of Bartholdi’s U.S. backing and
play a major role in the 1880s in making the Statue of Liberty a
reality. Their elite status and infl uential connections helped Bartholdi enormously but hurt him as well. For too long, this relatively
small group of wealthy, cultivated, Europhilic liberals narrowed the
statue’s meaning and kept potential supporters at arm’s length. Conservative Americans found the Union League’s connections to French
republicanism suspicious, even dangerous, while left-wing Americans, who advocated women’s rights and the advancement of African Americans, took issue with the orderly and restrained vision of
liberty in which most club members believed.
In Philadelphia, the Union League overlapped with the Fairmount
Park Commission, which ultimately succeeded in preserving about
six thousand acres of open space for those who wanted to “escape
from the din of crowded city streets.”10 The commission wanted to
dot the park with sculpture and other works of art, and its leaders
offered Bartholdi a position as director of Philadelphia’s sculptural
programs. He declined but agreed to contribute a monument for
the 1876 centennial celebration of American independence to be held
in Fairmount Park. Bartholdi’s contribution was destined to play a
major role in the development of the Statue of Liberty and its acceptance by the American public.
But for the time being, Bartholdi received precious little encouragement. In many ways, Forney alone seemed to understand his vision. Frederic Law Olmsted, the co-architect of New York’s Central
Park, dismissed the idea, as did most other artists, businessmen, and
politicians the French sculptor met. Part of the problem was that
residents of Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston didn’t see what
was in it for them. How would they and their cities benefi t from a
monument erected in New York? Not until the twentieth century
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
36
would the Statue of Liberty come to represent the United States as
a whole.
After six weeks of mostly unsuccessful meetings up and down the
eastern seaboard, Bartholdi decided on a strategic retreat. He believed he had planted the seed of the Liberty idea, and though it
failed to germinate immediately, it might take root in the months
and years to come. President Grant, though noncommittal about
the project, suggested that the federal government might be willing
to give up Bedloe’s Island as a military installation, and in Boston,
America’s most famous poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, expressed a general enthusiasm for Bartholdi’s work, if not necessarily
for the goddess of liberty. While his project awaited better times,
Bartholdi resolved to travel from one end of the United States to
the other, learning fi rsthand about a country, he now realized, that
he knew and understood hardly at all.
His fi rst stop was Niagara Falls, where he seemed as interested
in John A. Roebling’s 822-foot, double-decked suspension bridge
as in the waterfall itself.11 He proceeded on to Detroit and Chicago,
where he marveled over the rapidity with which Americans transformed small villages into large, bustling cities. Boarding trains that
now spanned the entire continent, he chugged through the endless
Midwestern plains and over the Rocky Mountains, which he found
“diabolical.” They resembled the eerie peaks of mountains “encountered in fairy tales.” In Salt Lake City he met with Brigham
Young and expressed astonishment that Mormons apparently treated
women well while practicing polygamy.12 When Bartholdi fi nally
reached San Francisco, he found people there even less interested in
his liberty goddess than East Coasters had been. He attributed the
Californians’ indifference not to the vast continental expanse separating them from New York, but to the lingering effects of a gold
rush now more than two decades in the past. The sculptor termed
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
37
San Francisco a “Babel” of materialism and greed, a place so devoid
of moral education as to preclude any appreciation of art.
In an effort to see as much of the U.S. as possible, he traveled
back east along a path different from his earlier westerly one, so that
he could visit Cheyenne, Denver, Kansas, Saint Louis, Cincinnati,
and Pittsburgh. His fi ve-month-long foray through the United States
made him one of the best-traveled Frenchmen in America and acquainted him with a relatively broad cross section of the country
and its people. By comparison, Tocqueville’s infi nitely more famous
trip of 1831 seems superfi cial. Bartholdi returned to France at the
end of 1871 with a far better understanding of the U.S. than Laboulaye possessed. The sculptor had made himself known in the New
World, even if his liberty project had failed to take hold.
If Americans had shown indifference to Bartholdi’s republican
goddess, his own compatriots seemed even less keen. The Paris
Commune had left a bitter aftertaste for almost everyone and deprived moderate, Laboulaye-style liberty of what little support it
had once enjoyed. The massacre of the Commune’s supporters (and
innocent bystanders) during the “bloody week” of late May 1871
angered and alienated the French left, wedding it all the more to its
insurrectionary traditions. For conservatives, the Commune provided yet more evidence that France’s republics inevitably led to
violence, the destruction of property, and the effort to overturn the
social order itself. Their solution was the restoration of monarchy,
which might have occurred in the early 1870s had there not been
three competing pretenders to the throne—Bourbon (Count of
Cham bord), Orleanist (Count of Paris), and Bonapartist (Napoleon
III’s son, Eugène Louis). As for moderate republicans, they were
committed to creating a stable republic not through violence, as in
the past, but through an orderly constitutional process led by a stable
middle class and grounded in the people’s consent. In the early 1870s
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
38
these moderates, whose most cautious members included Laboulaye,
enjoyed neither the political strength nor the coherent political philosophy necessary to achieve their aims.
In January 1871, French voters elected a largely monarchist
parliament. Two years later a monarchist general, Patrice de MacMahon, who had led the suppression of the Commune, became
president of a regime that was republican in name only. Under these
circumstances, Bartholdi found precious little interest in a monument to republican liberty, however moderate its iconographic
roots. During this period he focused on the kinds of patriotic projects on which republicans and monarchists could agree: the Lion of
Belfort, Vercingétorix, and other commemorations of Alsatian heroism and the sacrifi ces of the Franco-Prussian War.
Meanwhile, in the United States the press’s detailed—though
often inaccurate—coverage of the Paris Commune had soured American conservatives and a fair number of liberals on the very idea of
French liberty and republicanism, which people on this side of the
Atlantic now commonly viewed as steeped in violence and blood.13
For them Bartholdi’s sculpture represented not the conservative republic of the post-Reconstruction era, but the radicalism of French
Jacobinism and the revolutionary tradition.
As they had done with earlier French revolutions, Americans used
the Commune as a means for representing and thinking through
their own political and social confl icts. In the aftermath of the Civil
War, when former slaves received the right to vote, a great many
Americans displaced onto the Commune newfound reservations
about democracy and popular government. The Commune was especially useful for certain northern Republicans whose ardor for
black suffrage had cooled but who, as former abolitionists, were reluctant to say so directly. As the radical editor of Leslie’s Illustrated
Weekly explained, criticism of the Commune had become “a pretext
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
39
for persecutions and violent and irresponsible repression of liberal
sentiments . . . here in the United States.”14
Before long, American writers would discover the Commune’s
“socialistic Democracy” within the borders of their own country.
Explaining the unprecedented strike wave of 1877, Congressman
James A. Garfi eld declared: “The red fool-fury of the Seine” has
been “transplanted here, taking root in our disasters and drawing its
life only from our misfortunes.”15 Once an inspiration for citizens
of the United States, French republican culture now took the blame
for social confl ict in the United States. Those Americans with leftleaning views continued to admire the French republican tradition,
but conservatives never regained their earlier enthusiasm for the
French Republic. What distanced them from the French Republic
also distanced them from their own.
In France, efforts to abolish the republic and re-create a monarchical regime foundered on the three pretenders’ competing claims.
No single would-be king drew widespread support or competed
successfully with leading republican politicians, who attracted a
growing number of votes, especially at the local level. Republicans
promised social stability, individual liberty, limits on the power of
the Catholic Church, and a government staffed not by people with
inherited wealth and power, but by individuals of modest background who had worked hard and earned the people’s confi dence.
By 1875 the French parliament leaned republican, and by 1877
Mac-Mahon had no choice but to invite genuine republicans to join
the cabinet. The marshal fi nally resigned in January 1879.
Now, in the second half of the 1870s, to Laboulaye and Bartholdi
France seemed ready for their monument to liberty, which the professor had baptized “Liberty Enlightening the World.” In 1875, with
Mac-Mahon still in offi ce, there was no chance of receiving any
government money for the project, so Laboulaye decided to raise
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
40
the needed funds through private donations. The task would not be
easy, as Bartholdi had developed truly colossal plans: his statue
would be the largest in the world, a work of engineering as much
as a work of art. It would be expensive—initial estimates valued its
cost at more than 400,000 French francs (more than $2 million
today), not including the pedestal, for which the Americans would
be asked to pay. (The ultimate cost was more than double the original estimate.)
The fi rst step in the fund-raising process was to form a committee, dubbed the Franco-American Union, to direct the effort.16 Its
members embodied the moderate republicanism of the new French
regime and included descendants of Frenchmen famous for their
ties to the United States: Oscar de Lafayette, Hippolyte de Tocqueville, Paul de Remusat, and Jules de Lasteyrie (the latter two related
to Lafayette). Laboulaye presided over the group, and the Philadelphian John Forney was an honorary member. These men, and
especially the lesser-known names on the committee, resembled
adherents of the American Union League Club as much as people
from two different countries possibly could. The Frenchmen and
Americans alike all were wealthy, moderately liberal, cultivated, and
emotionally and intellectually attached to the country on the opposite side of the Atlantic.
Laboulaye and Bartholdi thought it would take a year to raise the
money, and, starting as they did in 1875, the two men hoped to have
a statue ready in time to celebrate the centennial of American independence. Their timetable proved wildly optimistic; it took fi ve
long years to amass the money they needed. At fi rst glance, the slow
progress seems unsurprising. After all, the French people were being
asked to donate money for a gigantic, expensive statue to be given
to a foreign country whose leaders and opinion makers had mostly
favored France’s enemy in the recent Franco-Prussian War. Worse,
the campaign began just as the country fell into a long economic
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
41
depression and found itself eclipsed in world markets by Britain,
Germany, and the United States. Still, for a country as large as
France, 400,000 francs represented a relatively small sum. If every
family gave the equivalent of a dime, the Franco-American Union
would have collected more than enough money. And thanks to a
large, powerful, and expanding French press, the Union enjoyed extraordinary visibility. Laboulaye and Bartholdi had shrewdly thought
to enlist the country’s newspapers, writing personal letters asking
for their cooperation. Most editors seemed happy to advertise the
fund-raising effort and follow its progress. Ironically, it may be because the Union appeared to enjoy so much support and could boast
the endorsement of Lafayettes and Tocquevilles and other members
of the French elite that ordinary people, even relatively prosperous
ones, felt they didn’t need to contribute.
The Union’s announcement of its fund-raising drive took the
form of an elegantly printed two-page circular, with a triptych of
images at the top: a drawing of the statue on Bedloe’s Island fl anked
by portraits of Washington and Lafayette. The statue had seven rays
of light glowing outward from its crown. The appeal itself began by
proclaiming, “[American] independence . . . marked a turning point
in the history of humanity.” For the New World, it represented “the
founding of a great republic.” For France, it embodied one of the
“most honorable moments in our history.” The circular claimed,
against all evidence, “the United States likes to remember its ancient fraternity of arms, and people there honor the name of France.
The great event that they will commemorate on July 4, 1876, will
allow us to join with our brothers in America in celebrating the old
and great friendship that has long united these two peoples.”17 To
this wishful thinking Laboulaye, who wrote the text, added that “a
French artist had captured the ideas of 1776” so perfectly that everyone in the United States has endorsed his project and “prepared all
the means necessary to execute it.”
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
42
Nothing could be further from the truth, as Laboulaye well knew.
Nor was it true, as the circular claimed, that although the French
were taking the initiative, “it will be widely reciprocated on the
other side of the ocean,” or that “the monument will be executed in
common by the two peoples.” In 1875, this text represented Laboulaye and Bartholdi’s hopes and dreams rather any concrete commitments or prospects, and it revealed the fears underlying their project: that the United States would continue to distance itself from
France. A central purpose of the Liberty endeavor was to enable
France to “occupy the fi rst place in the memories and affections of
the United States.”
One of the fi rst French newspapers to publicize Laboulaye’s
appeal was Le Petit Journal, the country’s best-selling daily and perhaps the most successful paper in the world, with a circulation of
350,000 in 1875.
18 Its political orientation was moderately republican, but Le Petit Journal, Europe’s fi rst penny paper, was more a
commercial than a political venture. Its editors wanted to sell as
many copies as possible, and that meant avoiding political controversy and focusing on issues and events likely to enjoy, or evoke,
a broad consensus. Bartholdi’s Liberty seemed one of those issues,
which is why the paper’s editorial nom de plume, Thomas Grimm,
not only published the Franco-American Union’s fund-raising announcement, but framed it with a front-page opinion piece strongly
endorsing the venture. “The marquis de Rochambeau and the marquis de Lafayette were the generals who led the glorious phalanges
of French fi ghters who crossed the sea in quest of liberty. . . . Today
the grandsons of these illustrious men want to demonstrate to the
United States the enduring friendship of France.” They did so by
“offering America what the French genius can always provide: a
work of art.” The project’s political signifi cance for France was clear.
Napoleon III’s empire, Grimm wrote, “had cooled relations with
the United States by showing a barely disguised sympathy for the
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
43
secessionist states of the South. Today we have a perfect occasion to
make the Americans forget this dynastic intervention; we must not
squander this opportunity.” The editorial described the statue as if
it already existed and concluded, “All French people, regardless of
political affi liation, will support this international work.”19
There were commercial and diplomatic reasons for good relations with the U.S., but even more important, wrote the editors of
another moderately republican paper, Le Bien Public, was to turn
France away from its destructive fi xation on Germany and toward
peaceful cooperation with America. France had built so many memorials commemorating the Franco-Prussian War that the French
public and politicians had become too intent on exacting revenge
against Germany. Wouldn’t it be better, Le Bien Public asked, to take
a different kind of revenge, a pacifi c revenge that would rehabilitate
France not by nourishing old hatreds, but by “uniting more closely
with our natural allies, both old and new.” The U.S. is foremost
among these “natural allies,” thanks to “France’s cooperation in the
liberation of America—one of the greatest feats in our nation’s history.” Many Americans have forgotten this past, the editors said,
and the great accomplishment of the Franco-American Union is to
have “taken the initiative in building a monument that will perpetuate the memory” of France’s role in founding the United States.
The Statue of Liberty would be what the contemporary French historian Pierre Nora called a lieu de mémoire, a place of memory where
Americans would recall what France had done for them and be
moved to reciprocate by forging close bonds between the two states.
These and many other French newspapers faithfully covered
the subscription campaign, giving Laboulaye’s committee a huge
amount of free publicity. But the most pivotal coverage may have
come from France’s growing number of illustrated magazines—
many highly popular and increasingly within the fi nancial reach
of those with modest incomes. In early October 1875, Le Journal
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
44
Illustré published an engraving of the Statue of Liberty, representing how it might look once built on Bedloe’s Island.20 The widely
read pictorial weekly L’Illustration published the same image, as did
Harper’s Weekly in the United States about six weeks later (November 27). The actual monument would, of course, be quite different
in its details—the seven rays of light eventually gave way to a diadem with seven spokes; the torch became much more elaborate;
Liberty’s left hand took hold of tablet of laws; the pedestal changed
Engraving depicting how the Statue of Liberty would appear once installed on
Bedloe’s Island (Le Journal Illustré, October 10, 1875).
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
45
dramatically. But this drawing and others like it appeared in French
and American illustrated journals so often that the statue’s construction seemed to many a fait accompli long before the FrancoAmerican Union actually raised the funds required to build it. One
additional reason fund-raising proved so diffi cult might have turned
on the existence of all these drawings. They lent the statue such an
aura of reality and inevitability that a great many ordinary people
may not have understood why anyone needed their contributions.
In fact, most of the money ultimately came from a tiny elite of the
French public: leading politicians, bankers, businessmen, and municipal governments. But what they contributed wasn’t nearly enough,
even when one benefactor, Pierre-Eugène Secrétan, donated much
of the copper—64,000 francs worth—needed for the statue. The rest,
as we’ll see, had to come from the sale of trinkets and souvenirs and
a variety of other gimmicks.
If most republican papers supported the statue, conservative periodicals proved more skeptical. Le Figaro, a witty, stylish paper that
attracted artful writers and reported on high society, doubted that
Bartholdi’s project would make Americans friendlier to France.
“Had the initiators of this impressive project,” the editor declared,
“taken the trouble to scan the American newspapers . . . they would
have perceived the true sentiments of the Americans vis-à-vis the
French people, especially since [the recent war].” France’s would-be
friends in the New World, Le Figaro added, “very generally favor
Germany” over us.21 Despite such pessimism, Le Figaro was hostile
in principle not to the Statue of Liberty, but just to its utility in improving Franco-American relations. That a monarchist paper expressed such a benign attitude doubtless had to do with the way
Laboulaye now presented the monument—not as a republican gesture, but as a national one, as an act not of republican solidarity
with the United States but of a French patriotism designed to bring
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
46
French citizens together. In portraying the statue this way, Laboulaye hoped his compatriots would proudly unite over their country’s
contributions to world history and advancement of the arts. The
Statue of Liberty would be a sign of French greatness and not a
symbol of liberation, or republicanism, or anything that liberals and
leftists alone could accept.
The relative lack of controversy surrounding the statue, combined with its extensive journalistic support, made members of the
Franco-American Union confi dent—too confi dent—that contributions would come pouring in. To add yet more visibility to the effort, Laboulaye and his collaborators staged a series of gala events.
The fi rst took place in early November 1875 in a main gallery of the
Louvre. Its all-establishment and all-male guests (per custom, wives
were not invited) dined in the company of Liberty’s luminous image
ingeniously projected onto one of the great room’s distant walls. As
the statue shimmered above them, guests made toasts and heard
speeches dedicated to Franco-American friendship, but with French
national unity in mind. After the vicious, traumatic Paris Commune
and the disastrous Franco-Prussian War, it seemed crucial to moderates like Laboulaye to overcome France’s divisions of class, status, politics, and religion. In “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the
professor declared, “the old France no less than the new can fi nd
fulfi llment, whether your dreams be of Louis XVI or of the Republic.”22 The only people excluded were the radical leftists who supported the Commune.
As always, Laboulaye and Bartholdi paid considerable attention
to the press—including the Anglophone press—whose writers and
editors attended the banquet in large numbers. Guests sent a collective telegram to President Grant, and Colonel Forney offered an
after-dinner speech during which he advertised the centennial exhibition to be held in Philadelphia the following year. The Statue of
Liberty, or at least one part of it, would make its fi rst American apBerenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
47
pearance there. The Louvre event brought in 40,000 francs, about
a tenth of Liberty’s estimated cost, and its apparent success earned
the support of Elihu Washburne, the American ambassador to France
who up to now had been skeptical of the project. He urged the U.S.
Secretary of State to have Congress designate Bedloe’s Island as the
monument’s site.
The next great fund-raising event took place in Paris’s brand-new
opera house, the largest, if somewhat kitschy, theater in the world.
This soirée musicale, the organizers hoped, would secure the needed
sum. The well-known composer Charles Gounod had written a cantata, “La Liberté éclairant le monde,” to be sung by an all-male
amateur chorus more than six hundred strong and drawn from all
walks of life. The idea was to associate the Statue of Liberty with the
people at large. Such populist extravaganzas had attracted attention
in the past, but by 1875 they were out of fashion. Journalists roundly
condemned the performance, fi nding it undignifi ed and excruciatingly off-key. They were irritated enough by it to ungenerously point
to the large number of unsold seats in the vast opera house and
mock the stale speeches and the poor musical choices. The musical
evening was a fl op. Not only had the criticism been unkind, but the
fund-raiser netted only 8,000 francs, a mere fi fth of what the Louvre
banquet had brought in.
Meanwhile, Bartholdi had begun work on Liberty’s hand and
torch, which he intended to display at the Philadelphia centennial.
These fi rst efforts made him realize that he had radically underestimated Liberty’s overall costs, which he now believed amounted to
nearly a million francs. The new estimate was doubly troubling, because by mid-1876 the Union’s money had essentially run out. Bartholdi made plans for the liquidation of the project, agreeing to pay
any defi cits from his personal estate. When he left France in May to
attend the Philadelphia event, even the torch was behind schedule,
though Bartholdi hastened to fi nish it before the celebration’s end.
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
48
But it was possible, even likely, that the torch would be the only
part of the statue ever built. In an editorial laced with irony, the New
York Times emphasized this point: “Although the arrival of the arm
seemed to be a satisfactory pledge that the rest of the Statue would
soon follow it, there were a few profound thinkers who held an opposite theory. . . . Had the French sculptor honestly intended to
complete the Statue of ‘Liberty’ he would have begun at its foundation, modeling fi rst the boot, then the stocking, then the full leg in
the stocking.”23 In 1876, amid the centennial celebration for which
Bartholdi had intended his commemorative monument, the entire
project threatened to collapse.
What saved it—at least for the time being—was another of Bartholdi’s works, a statue of Lafayette sculpted for the city of New
York. This highly traditional piece portrayed the “Hero of Two
Worlds” standing in a static, unheroic pose. It didn’t represent Bartholdi’s most distinguished work. Offi cials had meant to bury the
sculpture in an obscure corner of Central Park, but the Frenchman
insisted on mounting it prominently in the vastly smaller and more
centrally located Union Square. When unveiled on Lafayette’s birthday in early September, the memorial evoked a hearty public response. Several thousand people watched as French and American
troops marched down Fifth Avenue toward the Square, where the
bronze Lafayette received a twenty-one-gun salute. Ships in the
harbor answered with salutes of their own, and suddenly Bartholdi
found himself a great American celebrity. Journalists extolled his
artistic prowess and associated him with Lafayette, whom they now
remembered as an honorary Founding Father. As it turned out, an
ordinary statue of a pedestrian Lafayette earned Bartholdi the artistic legitimacy from New Yorkers he had lacked until then. He could
now proceed with his extraordinary colossus in the harbor.
This turn in the Frenchman’s fortunes coincided with an enthusiastic popular response to the Statue of Liberty’s hand and torch
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3420851.
Created from snhu-ebooks on 2022-09-25 01:45:30. Copyright © 2012. Yale University Press. All rights reserved.
Paying for It
49
when it fi nally went up in the waning weeks of the Philadelphia
centennial. Visitors fl ocked to see it, and they were avid to climb to
the top, where they would stand on the platform surrounding the
torch and look out over Fairmount Park. Bartholdi didn’t hesitate to
exploit the exhibit commercially, establishing a souvenir stand where
Liberty’s elbow would have been. He sold everything from photographs and lithographs to pieces of scrap metal from the torch. A
picture of the torch proved to be the centennial’s most popular meLiberty’s arm and torch on exhibit at Philadelphia’s centennial celebration,
1876. This photograph was the event’s most popular memento.
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
50
mento, and it earned Bartholdi and his statue a huge amount of attention in the Philadelphia press.24
The money raised in Philadelphia enabled Bartholdi to replenish
the Statue of Liberty’s exhausted building fund and thus to open a
new chapter in the fund-raising process. After dismantling the arm
and torch in Philadelphia, Bartholdi had it moved to New York’s
Madison Square, where it generated additional revenue from souvenirs, photos, and fees for climbing to the top. Sending the torch
to New York allowed Bartholdi to profi t from the long-standing
rivalry between the two East Coast cities. Whenever the New York
fund-raising effort fl agged, as happened regularly in the decade from
1876 to 1886, Bartholdi and his Philly friends would threaten to
erect the statue in the city of brotherly love.
When Bartholdi returned to France in early 1877, fresh from his
successes in New York and Philadelphia, he resolved to rely less on
traditional fund-raising and more on the public’s interest in buying
souvenirs of the monument and desire to see parts—or facsimiles—
of it up close. Although the sculptor didn’t begin to build the statue
in Paris until the early 1880s, by 1877 it was already extraordinarily
well known. Magazines on both sides of the Atlantic had published
so many drawings of it, and its arm and torch had been photographed
so extensively, that it became a familiar part of the Paris and New
York landscape (or seascape). If ordinary people didn’t want to donate money to building a monument that for them already seemed
to exist, a great many eagerly invested francs and dollars in its manufactured artifacts and in visits to the torch and, later, the head.
Extremely popular as well was an elaborate diorama that gave the
illusion of viewing the statue as if from the deck of an approaching
ship. Erected inside the Palais de l’Industrie in the summer of 1877,
the diorama proved wildly successful. As a journalist explained, “By
some incredible feat of trompe-l’oeil,” those who enter the diorama
“are all of a sudden looking out over the stern of an American steamBerenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
51
boat on her way out of New York harbor. Very near you, on the
bridge, are life-sized people, dressed Yankee-fashion, smoking and
talking. . . . All around us, on the choppy waters . . . the traffi c is
unbelievable . . . and now, from her island, rises the gigantic Statue
of Liberty, illuminating the world with the rays of her electric
beacon. . . . All around is the beautiful harbor; beyond it, the huge
city.”25
Dioramas and panoramas were not new to the last decades of the
nineteenth century, but they traditionally had catered to a relatively
elite clientele. By the 1870s they had become part of a huge new
mass culture of spectacle made possible by the Paris redevelopment
of that time. In the early 1850s, Napoleon III and his prefect of
the Seine, Georges-Eugène Haussmann, resolved to transform the
French capital from a medieval casbah of narrow, constricted streets
to a modern metropolis of broad boulevards, monumental buildings, and tree-lined parks. The boulevards fostered movement and
circulation, while the broad sidewalks that fl anked them encouraged
fl ânerie—seeing and being seen. Walking about the city, the fl aneur
observed the spectacle of urban life, with its café tables, sidewalk
performers, barking newsboys, colorful newspaper kiosks, and endless passersby. The new penny papers reported on this spectacle,
amplifying it in the process and narrating the crime it partly fostered, as if crime, too, were a spectacle to watch. After reading about
murders in the papers, Parisians fl ocked to see the victims in the city
morgue, which became a top tourist attraction at the fi n de siècle.
If crime could attract tourists, so could celebrities and battle scenes
and the exploits of colonial heroes like Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza
—hence the popularity of the wax museum and the late-century
“O-rama Craze.”26 People couldn’t get enough of these visual illusions at a time when life had become cinematic but the cinema did
not yet exist. The O-ramas created the impression of seeing fi rsthand individuals and phenomena that existed in the past, or in some
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
52
distant place, or, in the Statue of Liberty’s case, in a future that visitors could magically glimpse in the here and now.
Bartholdi invested heavily in creating an especially compelling
diorama of the Statue of Liberty, and his investment paid handsome
dividends. At 1.5 francs during the week and half a franc on Sundays,
almost everyone could afford to go. The Liberty diorama proved a
huge fund-raising success and provided journalists with yet another
occasion to advertise Bartholdi’s American gift. Having seen the
illusion of the colossus in New York Harbor, tourists were all the
more eager to visit Liberty’s actual head at the Paris International
Exposition of 1878. In advance of the event, newspapers published
drawings of seemingly Lilliputian workers crafting the statue’s colossal skull. And journalists made a spectacle of its journey from the
Monduit workshops, where construction took place, to the Champs
de Mars, where the Eiffel Tower would go up a decade hence. “Suddenly, at about eight o’clock in the evening,” wrote one commentator, “a colossal head was discerned through the vault of the Arc de
Triomphe. . . . It was at once strange and moving to see that, at each
turn of the wheels, the head swayed slightly, as though acknowledging the cheers of the inquisitive crowds. . . . In spite of ourselves we
tipped our hats to return the courtesy.”27
As Bartholdi had learned from the torch’s display in Philadelphia,
the public would want to go inside. For a small fee, he let them
climb to the top. One of these tourists was the young Rudyard Kipling, whose Souvenirs of France narrated his visits to Liberty’s head.
“One ascended by a staircase to the dome of the skull and looked
out through vacant eyeballs at a bright colored world beneath. I
climbed up there often, and an elderly Frenchman said to me, ‘Now
you young Englisher, you can say you have looked through the eyes
of Liberty Herself.’”28
These visits paid off, but the statue’s costs continued to mount,
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
53
and fund-raising lagged behind; when the 1878 International Exposition ended, the Franco-American Union still lacked the funds to
build a body for Liberty’s head, arm, and torch. Again, the money
problems didn’t mean lack of French interest in the statue. A cartoon from the satirical weekly Le Charivari depicted a general affection for Bartholdi’s creation by showing the colossal head in tears as
she’s carted out of Paris.29 Le Charivari’s image also revealed the
beginning of the statue’s personifi cation, the inclination of artists
Drawing showing the construction of Liberty’s head.
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
54
and writers to bring the hulking metal sculpture to life. More than
most public monuments, Liberty would express human emotions
via her face and form, and she would even be made to talk.
Such personalization would endure, as would the commercial
usage to which Bartholdi unhesitatingly turned. He raised money
not only from souvenir photographs and drawings but from terracotta models of the statue itself. While photos sold democratically
for between 1 and 5 francs apiece depending on their size, the onemeter-tall models fetched $300 in the U.S. and 1,000 francs in
Climbing inside Liberty’s head (Le Monde Illustré, September 28, 1878).
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
55
France. These expensive terra-cotta reproductions, which closely
resembled the defi nitive model Bartholdi had made in 1875, anticipated the cheap souvenir Statues of Liberty later hawked to tourists
in New York. The sculptor also thought to sell businesses the right
to use his creation in their logos and advertisements. Although a
French champagne maker bought the rights early on, Liberty didn’t
become a staple of advertising until she fi nally took her place on
Bedloe’s Island in 1886.
What enabled Bartholdi fi nally to reach his fi nancial goal was a
Liberty crying (Le Charivari, November 18, 1878).
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
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Paying for It
56
huge national lottery, a sweepstakes in which ticket buyers could
win several of the sculptor’s original sketches, valuable pieces of Japanese art, and paintings by Gustave Doré and Alexandre Cabanel,
among six hundred other prizes. After fi ve long years of ceaseless
fund-raising involving souvenir selling, tourist fees, banquets, musical evenings, and even a national lottery—offi cially illegal except
for causes representing the “public good”—Bartholdi had fi nally
amassed the nearly one million francs he needed. Construction of
the Statue of Liberty could now commence. The colossus would
take four years to build.
Berenson, Edward. The Statue of Liberty : A Transatlantic Story, Yale University Press, 2012. ProQuest
Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/snhu-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3420851.
Created from snhu-ebooks on 2022-09-25 01:45:30. Copyright © 2012. Yale University Press. All rights reserved.