Chapter IV: Part 4

Leigh Hunt in his _Autobiography_ said that Franklin and Thomas Paine were frequently guests at the house of his maternal grandfather in Philadelphia when his mother was a girl. She remembered them both distinctly; and in her old age she told her son that while she had great affection and admiration for Franklin, Paine “had a countenance that inspired her with terror.” Hunt was inclined to attribute this in a great measure to Paine’s political and religious views, both of them naturally obnoxious and shocking to the daughter of a Pennsylvania Tory and rigid churchman. Concerning the physical as well as the moral traits of the author of the _Age of Reason_, there seems to have been great diversity of opinion. To paraphrase the speech of Griffith in _Henry VIII._ concerning Wolsey, He was uncleanly and sour to them that loved him not, but to those men that sought him, sweet and fragrant as summer. His friend and biographer, Clio Rickman, who considered him “a very superior character to Washington,” gave strong testimony to his personal attractions and tidiness of dress; while James Cheetham, his biographer and not his friend, told a very different and not a very pleasant story, in which soap and water—or their absence—play an important part. The former, according to Cheetham, was never employed externally by Paine, and the latter was very rarely, if ever, internally applied.

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None of his earlier biographers give any hint as to the taking of this death-mask, nor is it to be found in any contemporary printed account of the death-bed scene, although Mr. Moncure D. Conway, in his _Life of Paine_, published in 1892, accepts it as genuine, and ascribes it to Jarvis. All the experts agree that it is the face of Paine, and see in it a strong resemblance to the face in the Romney portrait, painted in 1792, seventeen years before Paine died. It was undoubtedly made after death, by John Wesley Jarvis, the painter, who was at one time an intimate of Paine. He studied modelling in clay, and made the bust of Paine which is now in the possession of the Historical Society of New York. Concerning this bust Dr. Francis, in his _Old New York_, wrote: “The plaster cast of the head and features of Paine, now preserved in the Gallery of Arts of the Historical Society, is remarkable for its fidelity to the original at the close of his life. Jarvis, the painter, then felt it his most successful work in that line of occupation, and I can confirm the opinion from my many opportunities of seeing Paine.” He added that Jarvis said, “I shall secure him to a nicety if I am so fortunate as to get plaster enough for his carbuncled nose,” which was not a very pretty speech to have made under any circumstances, particularly if the bust was executed after the subject’s death.

The death-mask of Aaron Burr was made by an agent of Messrs. Fowler & Wells, who still possess the original cast. The features are shortened in a marked degree by the absence of the teeth. Mr. Fowler said that “in Burr destructiveness, combativeness, firmness, and self-esteem were large, and amativeness excessive.” It is a curious fact, now generally forgotten, that Burr and Hamilton resembled each other in face and figure in a very marked degree, although Burr was a trifle the taller.

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A bust of Burr by Turnerelli, an Italian sculptor residing in London during the first decade of the century, was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1809; and Burr, in his _Diary and Letters_, spoke more than once of the cast of his face made by the sculptor at that time. He explained to Theodosia that he “submitted to the very unpleasant ceremony because Turnerelli said it was necessary,” and because Bentham and others had undergone a similar penance; and in his _Diary_ he wrote: “Casting my eyes in the mirror, I observed a great purple mark on my nose; went up and washed and rubbed it, all to no purpose. It was indelible. That cursed mask business has occasioned it. I believe the fellow used quicklime instead of plaster of Paris, for I felt a very unpleasant degree of heat during the operation.... I have been applying a dozen different applications to the nose, which have only inflamed it. How many curses have I heaped upon that Italian!... At eleven went to Turnerelli to sit. Relieved myself by abusing him for that nose disaster.... He will make a most hideous frightful thing [of the bust]; but much like the original.”

This mask, if it is still in existence—which is not probable—would be an invaluable addition to the portraiture of Burr.

Of Lincoln, as of Washington, two life-masks were made—one in Chicago in the spring of 1860, by Mr. Leonard W. Volk, and here reproduced; one in Washington, by Clark Mills, three or four years later. Mr. Volk, in the _Century Magazine_ for December, 1881, gave a pleasant account of the taking of the former. Lincoln sat naturally in the chair during the operation, watching in a mirror every move made by the sculptor, as the plaster was put on without interference with the eyesight or with the breathing of the subject. When, at the end of an hour, the mould was ready for removal—it was in one piece, and contained both ears—Lincoln himself bent his head forward and worked it off gradually and gently, without injury of any kind, notwithstanding the fact that it clung to the high cheek-bones, and that a few hairs on his eyebrows and temples were pulled out by the roots with the plaster.

This is, without question, the most perfect representation of Lincoln’s face in existence. I have watched many an eye fill while looking at it for the first time; to many minds it has been a revelation; and I turn to it myself more quickly and more often than to any of the others, when I want comfort and help. What Whittier wrote to James T. Fields of the Marshall engraving of Lincoln may be said of this life-cast. “It contains the informing spirit of the man within.... The old harsh lines and unmistakable mouth are there without flattery or compromise; but over all, and through all, the pathetic sadness, the wise simplicity, and tender humanity of the man are visible. It is the face of the speaker at Gettysburg, and the writer of the second Inaugural.”

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The Clark Mills mask, said Mr. John Hay, in a later number of the _Century Magazine_, is “so sad and peaceful in its infinite repose that the famous sculptor, Mr. St. Gaudens, insisted when he first saw it that it was a death-mask. The lines are set, as if the living face, like the copy, had been in bronze; the nose is thin, and lengthened by the emaciation of the cheeks; the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and care had done their worst, without hope of victory, is on all the features; the whole expression is of unspeakable sadness and all-sufficing strength. Yet the peace is not the dreadful peace of death; it is the peace that passeth understanding.”

Speaking of Webster, Mr. O. F. Fowler, in his _Practical Phrenology_, said: “A larger mass of brain, perhaps, never was found, and never will be found, in the upper and lateral portions of any man’s forehead. Both in height and in breadth his forehead is prodigiously great.” The head of Clay, according to the same authority, was also “unusually large. It measured seven and three-eighths inches in diameter, and it was very high in proportion to its breadth; the reasoning organs were large, and the perceptive and semi-perceptive organs still larger.” Mr. G. P. A. Healy, the painter, said that Mr. Clay’s mouth was very peculiar; that it was thin-lipped, and extended from ear to ear. This last is not particularly noticeable in the familiar portraits of Clay, not even in that painted by Mr. Healy himself. Both Mr. St. Gaudens and Mr. Hartley incline to the opinion that the mask of Clay in my collection is a cast from the actual face, and, notwithstanding the fact that the eyelids are open, that it is from life. Lewis Gaylord Clark, writing in 1852 in HARPER’S MAGAZINE of Clay’s funeral, said: “His countenance immediately after death looked like an antique cast. His features seemed to be perfectly classical, and the repose of all his muscles gave the lifeless body a quiet majesty seldom reached by living human beings.”

Comparing Calhoun with Webster, Mr. Fowler attributed to Calhoun the greater power of analysis and illustration; to Webster, the greater depth and profundity. In Calhoun he found, united to a very large head, an active temperament and sharp organs, the greatest peculiarity of his phrenology consisting in the fact that _all_ the intellectual faculties were very large. The casts of Webster and Calhoun were made in Washington by Clark Mills from the living faces—Calhoun’s in 1844, Webster’s in 1849; and they are, consequently, of no little interest and value.

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Sydney Smith, who once called Daniel Webster “a steam-engine in trousers,” thus disposed of a contemporary British statesman: “Lord Brougham’s great passions,” he said, “are vanity and ambition. He considers himself as one of the most wonderful works of Providence, is incessantly striving to display that superiority to his fellow-creatures, and to grasp a supreme dominion over all men and all things. His vanity is so preposterous that it has exposed him to ludicrous failures, and little that he has written will survive him. His ambition, and the falsehood and intrigue with which it works, have estranged all parties from him, and left him, in the midst of bodily and intellectual strength, an isolated individual, whom nobody will trust, and with whom nobody will act.”

The head of Brougham was of full size, but not unusual. A student of physiognomy, but not a student of the back numbers of the London _Punch_, who did not recognize the man in this cast, said of it that it was the head of a man more remarkable for vivacity and quickness of mind than for original and powerful thinking. George Combe, in the winter of 1838-39, exhibited in the United States a mask of Brougham, of course from life, for Brougham did not die until thirty years after that—and he was born in 1778—which is perhaps the mask here reproduced, as it is the face of a man in his prime, and his was a marvellous prime—not that of a nonogenarian. Brougham’s powers of activity and endurance were phenomenal. It is recorded of him that he went from the Law Courts to the House of Commons, from the House to his own chambers, where he wrote an article for the _Edinburgh Review_, then, without rest, to the Courts and the House again, sitting until the morning of the third day before he thought of his bed or his sleep; and that during all this time he showed no signs of mental or physical fatigue. Such continuous activity certainly did not shorten his days, even if it lengthened his nights.

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Probably no single facial organ in the world has been the subject of so much attention from the caricaturists as the nose of Lord Brougham. It is doubtful if any two consecutive numbers of any so-called comic or satirical journal appeared in England during Brougham’s time without some representation of Brougham’s nose. The author of _Notes on Noses_ thus spoke of it: “It is a most eccentric nose; it comes within no possible category; it is like no other man’s; it has good points and bad points and no point at all. When you think it is going right on for a Roman, it suddenly becomes a Greek; when you have written it down cogitative, it becomes as sharp as a knife.... It is a regular Proteus; when you have caught it in one shape it instantly becomes another. Turn it and twist it and view it how, when, and where you will, it is never to be seen twice in the same shape; and all you can say of it is that it’s a queer one. And such exactly,” he added, “is my Lord Brougham.... Verily my Lord Brougham and my Lord Brougham’s nose have not their likeness in heaven or earth.... And the button at the end is the cause of it all.”

An interesting tribute to this remarkable organ is to be found in the printed _Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley_. Concerning Commemoration Day at Oxford he wrote, in 1860, “Nothing could be more absurd than Lord Brougham’s figure, long and gaunt, with snow-white hair under the great black porringer, and his wonderful nose wagging lithely from side to side as he hitched up his red petticoats [Commemoration robes] and stalked through the mud.”

There is no button on the end of the nose of the specimen of humanity whose mask forms a tail-piece to this volume. Cowper, Combe, and others believed that the brain of the native African is inferior in its intellectual powers to the brain of the man of European birth and descent, while a certain body of naturalists contend that the negro owes his present inferiority entirely to bad treatment and to unfavorable circumstances. The black boy, the cast of whose face was made for this collection at St. Augustine, Florida, by Mr. Thomas Hastings, the architect, a year or two ago, has undoubtedly been for generations the victim of unfavorable circumstances, and perhaps of bad treatment as well. He is, at all events, one of the lowest examples of his race, and his life-mask is only interesting here as an object of comparison. Whatever the head of a Bonaparte, a Washington, a Webster, or a Brougham is, his head is not. But whether his Creator or the Caucasian is responsible for this, the naturalists and experts must decide.

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INDEX

AGASSIZ, LOUIS, 149.

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey, quoted, 37.

Atterbury, Bishop Francis, quoted, 81.

BARRETT, LAWRENCE, 28, 33, 34-37.

Barrett, Lawrence, quoted, 41.

“Barry Cornwall,” quoted, 27.

BEACONSFIELD, EARL OF, 177-182.

BEETHOVEN, LUDWIG VON, 61-68.

BENTHAM, JEREMY, 117-122.

Blacklock, Archibald, quoted, 191.

BONAPARTE, NAPOLEON, x., 4, 197-201.

BOOTH, EDWIN, x., 28, 38, 41, 42.

BOUCICAULT, DION, 28, 31-33.

Brontë, Charlotte, quoted, 86.

BROUGHAM, LORD, 261-265.

Brown, John, M.D., quoted, 92.

Browning, Mrs. Elizabeth Barrett, quoted, 146, 205.

BRUCE, KING ROBERT, 193.

BURKE, EDMUND, 168-171.

BURNS, ROBERT, 191-192.

BURR, AARON, xi., 246-249.

Burr, Aaron, quoted, 117.

Caine, Hall, quoted, 122.

CALHOUN, JOHN C., 254.

CANOVA, ANTONIO, 138, 150, 157, 158.

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, 58, 99, 100, 211, 212, 222.

CAUNT, BEN, x., 85, 86.

CAVOUR, COUNT, 125, 126.

Chadwick, John A., quoted, 34.

CHALMERS, THOMAS, x., 92-96.

Chantrey, Sir Francis, quoted, 13.

CHARLES XII., xiii., 218-221.

Cheetham, James, quoted, 242.

Cicognara, Count, quoted, 157.

Clark, Lewis Gaylord, quoted, 254.

Clarke, Asia Booth, quoted, 38-41.

Clarke, Charles Cowden, quoted, 96, 106, 109.

CLAY, HENRY, x., 253, 254.

Coleridge, Ernest Hartley, quoted, 100.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, xii., 96-100.

Coleridge, Sara, quoted, 99.

Collins, Wilkie, quoted, 145.

Combe, George, quoted, 121.

Cottinet, Edmund, quoted, 53-54.

Croker, John Wilson, quoted, 171-172.

CROMWELL, OLIVER, x., 4, 205-213.

Cumberland, Richard, quoted, 19.

Cunningham, Peter, quoted, 145.

CURRAN, JOHN PHILPOT, 171.

Curtis, George William, quoted, 41, 150.

DANTE, x., 5-9.

d’Arblay, Madame, quoted, 46.

Davies, Thomas, quoted, 46.

Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, quoted, 150.

Dickens, Charles, quoted, 91.

Diodorus Siculus, quoted, 3.

DISRAELI, BENJAMIN, 177-182.

EDWARDS, HENRY, 28, 33, 37, 38.

Evans, Mary Ann, quoted, 125.

Evelyn, John, quoted, 209.

Faucit, Helen, quoted, 27-28.

Fitzgerald, Percy, quoted, 46.

Fowler, O. F., quoted, 221, 222, 246, 253, 254.

Francis, John W., M.D., quoted, 245.

FRANKLIN, BENJAMIN, 241.

Fraser, Sir William, quoted, 177.

FREDERICK THE GREAT, xi., 4, 50, 221, 222.

Frith, W. P., quoted, 142, 181, 182.

Gallenza, A., quoted, 131.

GARRICK, DAVID, 19-23.

“George Eliot,” quoted, 125.

George IV., quoted, 141.

Gilder, R. W., quoted, 106.

GRANT, U. S., x., 4, 222, 225-230.

Greville, Charles C. F., quoted, 100, 103.

Griffin, Gerald, quoted, 164.

Hale, Philip, quoted, 62, 67.

Hall, S. C., quoted, 100.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, quoted, 146.

Hay, John, quoted, 250, 253.

HAYDON, BENJAMIN ROBERT, 113-117, 138.

Haydon, Benjamin Robert, quoted, 103, 104.

Hazlitt, William, quoted, 103.

Healey, G. P. A., quoted, 253.

HENRY IV., 213-218.

Howells, William D., quoted, 132.

Hunt, Leigh, quoted, 46, 49, 103, 109, 164, 241, 242.

Irving, Henry, quoted, 41.

Irving, Peter, quoted, 49.

Jefferson, Thomas, 237, 238.

Jerrold, Douglas, quoted, 91.

JOHNSON, SAMUEL, 110-113.

KEAN, EDMUND, 23-28.

Kearsley, George, quoted, 110, 113.

KEATS, JOHN, x., xv., 105-110.

Kemble, Fanny, quoted, 27.

Kinglake, Alexander W., quoted, 202.

Kirkup, Seymour, quoted, 5.

Lampadius, W. A., quoted, 71.

Lavater, Johann Kasper, quoted, xiv., 221.

LAWRENCE, SIR THOMAS, 138-142.

LEOPARDI, GIACOMO, x., 132.

Leslie, Charles Robert, quoted, 24.

LINCOLN, ABRAHAM, 249-253.

Lockhart, John Gibson, quoted, 187.

Longfellow, Henry W., quoted, 149.

Lorne, Marquis of, quoted, 172.

LOUISE OF PRUSSIA, xi., 50-53.

Macaulay, Thomas B., quoted, 114, 117.

Madden, R. R., quoted, 141, 142, 202.

MALIBRAN, MARIA F., 53, 54.

Manso, Giovanni Battista, quoted, 10.

MARAT, JEAN PAUL, 71, 72, 75, 76.

Martin, Lady, quoted, 27, 28.

MCCULLOUGH, JOHN, 28, 33.

MENDELSSOHN, FELIX, 68-71.

Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 117.

Mills, Clark, quoted, 237-238.

MIRABEAU, G. R., 71, 72, 76.

MOORE, THOMAS, 164-168.

Motley, John Lothrop, quoted, 86, 91, 265.

NAPOLEON I., x., 4, 197-201.

NAPOLEON III., xv., 201-205.

NEWTON, SIR ISAAC, x., 76, 81-82.

Newton, Sir Isaac, quoted, 5-6.

Niebuhr, Berthold George, quoted, 132.

Noble, Mark, quoted, 213.

Opie, John, quoted, 141.

O’REILLY, JOHN BOYLE, 132, 137, 138.

Osgood, Samuel, D.D., quoted, 146.

PAINE, THOMAS, x., 241, 246.

Palleske, E., quoted, 58.

PALMERSTON, LORD, 172, 177.

Parton, James, quoted, 117.

Payne, John Howard, quoted, 49.

Percy, Thomas, D.D., quoted, 113.

Pettigrew, Thomas J., quoted, 3.

Phillips, John, quoted, 181, 182.

PIUS IX., x., 131.

Poore, Ben Perley, quoted, 237, 238.

Porter, Horace, quoted, 229, 230, 233.

POWERS, HIRAM, 138, 146.

Procter, B. W., quoted, 27.

Procter, Mrs. B. W., quoted, 109.

Purrington, William A., quoted, 222, 225, 226, 229.

Redding, Cyrus, quoted, 209, 210.

Reid, T. Wemyss, quoted, 181.

Rickman, Clio, quoted, 242.

ROBESPIERRE, MAXIMILIAN, 76, 81.

Robinson, Henry Crabb, quoted, 27, 132.

Roche, James Jeffrey, quoted, 137.

ROSSETTI, DANTE G., 122-125.

Rossetti, William M., quoted, 122.

Ruskin, John, quoted, 157, 158.

Russell, Lord John, quoted, 167, 168.

SCHILLER, FREDERICK, xi., 54, 57, 58.

Schliemann, Heinrich, quoted, 2.

SCOTT, SIR WALTER, 187-191.

Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 182, 197, 198.

Seward, William H., quoted, 150.

SHAKSPERE, 10-19.

Sharp, William, quoted, 109, 110.

SHERIDAN, RICHARD BRINSLEY, xii., 158, 163, 164.

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, quoted, 19, 168.

SHERMAN, WILLIAM T., 4, 233.

Sherwood, Mrs. M. E. W., quoted, 42.

SIDDONS, SARAH, 42, 45-50.

Smith, Southwood, quoted, 118, 121.

Smith, Sydney, quoted, 261.

Speed, John Gilmer, quoted, 105.

Spencer, O. M., quoted, 125, 126.

Story, W. W., quoted, xiv., 234, 237.

SUMNER, CHARLES, 150.

SWIFT, JONATHAN, xiii., 182-186.

TASSO, TORQUATO, x., 9-10.

Taylor, Bayard, quoted, 68, 71.

Taylor, Sir Henry, quoted, 104.

THACKERAY, WILLIAM M., 86, 91, 92, 95.

Ticknor, George, quoted, 49.

TURNER, J. M. W., 142-145.

Volk, Leonard W., quoted, 237, 238.

Warville, Brissot de, quoted, 117.

WASHINGTON, xiv., 4, 233-237, 241, 249.

WEBSTER, DANIEL, 253, 254.

Weld, Charles Richard, quoted, 82, 85.

Whipple, E. P., quoted, 149.

Whittier, John G., quoted, 250.

Wikoff, Henry, quoted, 202, 205.

Wilde, Sir William, quoted, 182, 186.

Willis, Nathaniel P., quoted, 167, 177, 178, 181.

Winter, William, quoted, 34, 37, 38.

WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM, 100-105.

Young, Julian Charles, quoted, 95, 96.

THE END

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