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''Not'' known was what John Harvard had looked like, so a Harvard student descended from an early New England family sat for the sculptor as inspiration.
''Not'' known was what John Harvard had looked like, so a Harvard student descended from an early New England family sat for the sculptor as inspiration.

Visitors traditionally receive a recitation of putative falsehoods in the statue's inscription, centering on whether John Harvard deserves the honorific ''founder''.
As explained by a Harvard official's 1934 letter, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many;
John Harvard is therefore considered not ''the'', but rather ''a'', founder of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution has made him the most honored of them.


== History ==
== History ==

Revision as of 16:12, 29 January 2013

John Harvard
A bronze sculpture, on a tall granite plinth, of a man sitting in a chair with an open book in his lap. The statue as a whole is darkly weathered, but the toe of the figure's left shoe is shiny as if from frequent rubbing.
"He gazes for a moment into the future, so dim, so uncer­tain, yet so full of promise, promise which has been more than real­ized." [A] Tour guides invite vis­i­tors to emu­late a non­ex­istent stu­dent "tradition" of rub­bing the statue's toe for luck.
ArtistDaniel Chester French
Year1884 (1884)
Typebronze
LocationHarvard Yard, Cambridge, Mass.
Harvard student Sher­man Hoar was the inspi­ra­tion for John Harvard's face.

John Harvard is a sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French in Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts honoring John Harvard (1607–1638), whose deathbed[1] bequest to the "schoale or Colledge" recently under­taken by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that it was consequently ordered "that the Colledge agreed upon formerly to bee built at Cambridg shalbee called Harvard Colledge." [2]

The young clergyman is represented sitting, holding an open [book] on his knee. The costume is the simple clerical garb of the seven­teenth century ... low shoes, long, silk hose, loose knee breeches, and a tunic belted at the waist, while a long cloak, thrown back, falls in broad, picturesque folds.[B]

John Harvard's gift to the school was £780 and—perhaps more importantly[5]—his 320-volume scholar's library:[6]

Partly under the chair, within easy reach, lie a pile of books.[B]

That he had died of tuberculosis, at about age thirty, was one of the few things known about John Harvard at the time of the statue's composition:[C]

Gently touched by the weakness which was wasting his imma­ture life,[C] he rests for a moment from his converse with wisdom on the printed page, and raises his contem­pla­tive eye to the spaces of all wisdom.[A]

Not known was what John Harvard had looked like, so a Harvard student descended from an early New England family sat for the sculptor as inspiration.

Visitors traditionally receive a recitation of putative falsehoods in the statue's inscription, centering on whether John Harvard deserves the honorific founder. As explained by a Harvard official's 1934 letter, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many; John Harvard is therefore considered not the, but rather a, founder of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution has made him the most honored of them.

History

On June 27, 1883, at the Commencement Day dinner of Harvard alumni a letter was read[3] from "a generous benefactor, General Samuel James Bridge, an adopted alumnus of the college":[4][D]

To the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Gentlemen, – I have the pleasure of offering you an ideal statue in bronze, repre­senting your founder, the Rev. John Harvard, to be designed by Daniel C. French of Concord .... I am assured that the same can be in place by June 1, 1884.[3]

Bridge specified an "ideal" statue[E] because there was then (as now)[1] nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like; thus when French began work in September he used Harvard student Sherman Hoar as inspiration for the figure's face.[C] "In looking about for a type of the early comers to our shores," the sculptor wrote, "I chose a lineal descendant of them for my model in the general structure of the face. He has more of what I want than anybody I know." [10] (Through his father Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar—chairman[3] of Harvard's Board of Overseers—Sherman Hoar was descended[F] from a brother of Harvard's fourth president Leonard Hoar.) "Of course I shall not make it a portrait of him." [10]

The commission weighed heavily on French even as the figure neared complet­ion. "I am some­times scared by the importance of this work. It is a subject that one might not have in a life­time," wrote the sculptor—who thirty years later would create the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial—"and a failure would be inexcusable. As a general thing, my model looks pretty well to me, but there are dark days." [11]

French's final model was ready the following May and realized in bronze by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company over the next several months. The cost was $20,000 or more.[12]

The statue was installed—"looking wistfully into the western sky", said Harvard president Charles W. Eliot[3]—at the western end of Memorial Hall[13] on the triangular city block known as the Delta.[G] It was unveiled October 15, 1884,[3] George Edward Ellis giving "a singu­lar­ly felic­i­tous address, telling the story of the life of John Harvard, who passes so myste­ri­ous­ly across the page of our early history." [14]

In 1920 French wrote[15] to Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell desiring that the statue be relocated; in 1924[8][12][13] it was moved from Memorial Hall (then the college dining hall—a Harvard Lampoon drawing showed John Harvard dismounting his plinth, chair in tow, and holding his nose because he "couldn't stand the smell of 'Mem' any longer")[citation needed] to its current location on the west side of Harvard Yard's University Hall, facing Harvard Hall, Massachusetts Hall, and the Johnston Gate.[H] Later that year the Lampoon imagined the frustrations of the metallic, immobile John Harvard surrounded by Harvard undergraduates:

Great men arise  /  Before my eyes  /  From yonder pile I founded
While I must sit   /  Quite out of it      /  My jealousy unbounded.[12]

Sometime in the 1990s tour guides began encouraging visitors to emulate a stu­dent "tradition"—nonexistent—of rubbing the toe of John Harvard's left shoe for luck, so that while the statue as a whole is darkly weathered the toe now remains shiny.[16]

The statue is depicted on the United States Postal Service's 1986 John Harvard stamp (part of its Great Americans series).[17] It is the frequent target of pranks, which began soon after its unveiling.[I]

Seals and inscriptions

The idea of the three lies is at best a fourth, and by far the great­er false­hood.[8] The facts as to John Har­vard's rela­tion to the found­ing of the Col­lege are entire­ly com­pat­i­ble with the inscrip­tion on John Har­vard's stat­ue. There is no myth to be destroyed.[J]

John Harvard guarding the Uni­ver­si­ty Hall offi­ces of the Dean of Harvard Col­lege (the loca­tion cal­cu­lat­ed, the Harvard Crimson has said, "ac­cord­ing to one theo­ry, in order to keep all light out of the Dean's office").[18] Note Harvard Col­lege seal on plinth.

The monument's six-foot[9] granite plinth is by Boston architect C. Howard Walker.[12] On its right side, in bronze, is the seal of John Harvard's alma mater, the University of Cambridge's Emmanuel College; on the left is what Ellis called "that most felic­i­tous­ly chosen of all like devices, the three open books and the veritas of Harvard. The pupil of the one institution was the founder of the other, transfer­ring learning from its foreign home to this once wilder­ness scene." [4][K] On the rear are the words given by • samuel james bridge • june 17, 1883.[3]

The face of the plinth is inscribed john harvard • founder • 1638—words "hardly read before some smartass guide breezily informs the unsus­pect­ing visitor that this is, after all, the 'Statue of the Three Lies'" [8] because (as is ritually related):[16]

  • the statue is not a likeness of john harvard;
  • it was the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony—not John Harvard—which first "agreed to give 400£ towards a schoale or Colledge, whearof 200£ to bee paid the next yeare, and 200£ when the worke is finished", preempting any claim for John Harvard as founder; and
  • the Court's vote came in 1636, not 1638—the latter being merely the year of John Harvard's bequest to the school.

However, "the idea of the three lies is at best a fourth, and by far the greater falsehood," [8] as detailed in a 1934 letter to the Harvard Crimson from the director of Harvard's then-upcoming Tercentenary Celebration:

The facts as to John Harvard's relat­ion to the founding of the College are not at all in dispute nor can it be said that the statue in front of University Hall does any violence to them. No likeness of John Harvard having been preserved, the statue [is an "ideal" representation].

If the founding of a university must be dated to a split second of time, then the founding of Harvard should perhaps be fixed by the [General Court's 1636 vote]. But if the founding is to be regarded as a process rather than as a single event [then by virtue of his bequest John Harvard] is clearly entitled to be considered a founder. The General Court ... acknowl­edged the fact by bestowing his name on the College.

These are all familiar facts and it is well that they should be under­stood by the sons of Harvard. They are entirely compatible with the inscription on John Harvard's statue. There is no myth to be destroyed.[J]

Notes

  1. ^ a b In somewhat discrepant reports of Ellis' oration, Memorial of John Harvard [3] has ...raises his contemplative eye..., while the Harvard Crimson [7] gives ...gazes for a moment into the future.... And while, per Memorial of John Harvard, Ellis spoke of "the weakness which was wasting [John Harvard's] immature life", according to the Crimson Ellis told his listeners that sickness had undermined Harvard's "miniature" life.
  2. ^ a b The John Harvard Statue. The New York Times. October 18, 1884. Retrieved October 2, 2012. In quoting this passage the word book has been substituted for Bible, per authoritative sources[3] which agree in referring to the volume held by the figure as a book or tome, but not specifically a bible. In the planning of the costume, "It was understood that Harvard was a clergyman educated at Cambridge, and, following as he did the fortunes of other clergymen who came to Massachusetts in the early period, he would be likely to be a Puritan of their stamp, — that is to say, not a Separatist. Pictures represent the Puritan minister of that day as wearing a somewhat closely fitting cloak, covering perhaps a cassock, with a broad linen collar and a skull-cap. The narrow bands and the wig came in later. No mistake could be made in the garment worn over the lower part of the body." [4]
  3. ^ a b c "If I remember aright," French was quoted in 1899 as saying, John Harvard "is described as being 'reverend, godly, and a lover of learning,' and it is known that he died at an early age (about thirty) of consumption, which gave a clue to his physique." (French's daughter wrote[8] of the figure's "beautiful, wasted hand ... the hands were thin and nervous"; Shand-Tucci[8] mentions the "scrawny calves.") French continued, "It may possibly be of interest that my regular model for the statue, except the face, was a young Englishman, a graduate of Oxford, who was temporarily embarrassed financially and took this means of earning his bread." [9]
  4. ^ Joseph Hodges Choate, presiding at the dinner, "referred to the giver as 'a pious worshipper at Harvard's shrine, turning his face towards Mecca;' and, when the letter was read, the applause of the company compelled Mr. Bridge to make a silent ackowledgement".[3]
  5. ^ The challenge of creating an idealized representation of John Harvard was discussed by Ellis at a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society:[4] "A very exacting demand is to be made upon the genius and skill of the artist ... The work must be wholly ideal, guided by a few suggestive hints, all of which are in harmony with grace, delicacy, dignity, and reverential regard. There is necessarily much that is unsatisfactory in a wholly idealized representation by art of an historical person of whose form, features, and lineaments there are no certifications. But the few facts [known with certainty] concerning Harvard are certainly helpful to the artist."

    But Society president Robert Charles Winthrop harshly disapproved: "It must be altogether a fancy sketch, "a counterfeit presentment," — to use Shakespeare's phrase, — and in more senses of the word than one .... [S]uch attempts to make portrait statues of those of whom there are not only no portraits, but no records or recollections, are of very doubtful desireableness .... Such a course tends to the confusing and confounding of historic truth and leaves posterity unable to decide what is authentic and what is mere invention .... It seems to me of very questionable expediency to get up a fictitious likeness of him and make up a figure according to our ideas of the man."

    A year later, in his oration[3] just before the unveiling of what he called "a simulacrum ... a conception of what Harvard might have been in body and lineament, from what we know that he was in mind and in soul", Ellis answered Wintrop's criticism: "This exquisite moulding in bronze serves a purpose for the eye, the thought, and sentiment, through the ideal, in lack of the real. It is by no means without allowed and approved precedent, that, in the lack of authentic portraitures of such as are to be commemorated, an ideal representation supplies the vacancy of a reality. It is one of the fair issues between poetry and prose. The wise, the honored, the fair, the noble, and the saintly, are never grudged some finer touches of the artist in tint or feature, which etherialize their beauty, or magnify their elevation, as expressed in the actual body, — the eye, the brow, the lip, the moulding of the mortal clay. To flatter is not always to falsify." Should there ever appear, however, "some authentic portraiture of John Harvard, the pledge may here and now be ventured, that some generous friend, such as, to the end, shall never fail our Alma Mater, notwithstanding her chronic poverty, will provide that this bronze shall be liquified again, and made to tell the whole known truth so as by fire."

  6. ^ Henry Stedman Nourse, The Hoar Family in America (1899). See family tree at end of transcription. "LEONARD HOAR, designated in his father's will to be the scholar of the family and a teacher in the church," became in 1672 the first Harvard president to have also been a Harvard graduate. "In Sewall's Diary, June 15, 1674, is an account of the flogging of an under­graduate before the assembled students in the Library, President Hoar prefacing and closing the exercises with prayer. But this was not a very unusual discipline in those days and Dr. Hoar is not charged with undue severity."
  7. ^ Hannah Winthrop Chapter, D.A.R. (1907). Historic Guide to Cambridge (Second ed.). Cambridge, Mass. p. 163. During the nineteenth century, Kirkland street went by the name of 'Professors' Row.' ... On the south side of the street was the college playground, the "Delta," so called from its shape being that of the Greek letter, bounded by Kirkland, Cambridge and Quincy streets. Here the football games took place. October 6, 1870, the corner stone of Memorial Hall, which now stands here, was laid. ... At the west end, in front of the building, is a seated statue of John Harvard ...{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Bainbridge Bunting, Harvard: An Architectural History, p.290 note 14: "The transfer of the statue from its original site on the Delta to a position on axis with Charles McKim's Johnston Gate was intended to give a sense of large-scale planning to the Yard and also to ameliorate the awkwardness of the central portion of Bulfinch's facade of University Hall."
  9. ^ After a May 31, 1890 Harvard athletic victory front-page headlines in the Boston Morning Globe for June 2 declared: "Vandalism at Harvard; statue of John Harvard and college buildings daubed with red paint by drunken students; seniors and faculty indignant. ... Riotous Mob Ruled the Campus."

    The next day the Globe (June 3, Morning, p.1) further reported that a Harvard student observing graffiti-removal efforts "declared that no Harvard man ever daubed the impious phrase, 'To h—l with Yale.' He was of the opinion that a Harvard man would at least soften the profanity by varnishing it with Latin or Greek. ... Two detectives who were requested to ferret out the perpetrators paid little heed to the discussion on swear words, but kept their eyes on several impressions that had been made on the paint when it was fresh. One thought they were made by a dog's paws, and as several students kept dogs the suspicion was magnified to the importance of a clue. A student, however, told the detectives that according to his view the impressions were made by barefoot boys walking on tip-toe."

    Out-of-state newspapers reporting the outrage, and to a greater or lesser degree following the subsequent investigation, included (among many others):

    • The World (New York, New York; June 2, p.2): "A JOCULAR OUTRAGE — Harvard Students Exceed Decency in Celebrating."
    • Evening Gazette (Sterling, Illinois; June 2, p. 4): "Harvard Students on an Outrageous Tear. — SLATHERS OF RED PAINT USED. — The Fine Statue of the College Founder Ruined by the Crazy Scapegraces."
    • Fort Wayne Sentinel (Fort Wayne, Indiana; June 2, p. 5): "The faculty will expel the criminals and persecute [sic] them if found."

    Despite a mass meeting of eloquently indignant Harvard men (who insisted the culprits must be outsiders or, failing that, freshmen), the hiring of detectives, and an apparently facetious report that Harvard's President Eliot was unavailable for comment because he had "gone out in the woods to cut switches" (all Globe, June 3), on June 22 an anonymous contributor intimated that while "the faculty claim that they have not found out any of the men who did the 'fine art' work ... I saw the ringleader on class day showing two very pretty girls around the 'yard'" (Globe, p.20).

    Police methods a century later seemed more effective. "'Some years ago some students painted [the statue] red and our cops caught them red-handed,' said Deputy Chief of [Harvard University] Police Jack W. Morse. 'I've been waiting a long time to use that,' he added." [12] See also Faryl Ury, John Harvard Statue Vandalized, The Harvard Crimson, October 2, 2002 (retrieved October 2, 2012).

  10. ^ a b Excerpted from Jerome Davis Greene, "Don't Quibble Sybil — The Mail" (Letter to the editor), Harvard Crimson, December 11, 1934 (retrieved Nov 21, 2012; "Don't quibble, Sybil" is a line from Noel Coward's 1930 Private Lives.[citation needed]). Greene's scold to "the sons of Harvard" opens, "The quibble over the question whether John Harvard was entitled to be called the Founder of Harvard College seems to me one of the least profitable. The destruction of myths is a legitimate sport, but its only justification is the establishment of truth in place of error." Greene was responding to a November 26 Crimson item iconoclastically entitled Memorial Society Honors Founder of College In the Name and Image of Two Other Men — College Founded By Grant of the Massachusetts General Court in the Year 1636: "When the members of the Memorial Society place a wreath on the statue of John Harvard today, expecting to honor the memory and the image of the founder of Harvard College, they will be honoring the likeness of another man and the name of a man who was not the legal founder of the college."
  11. ^ The modern design of the Harvard College seal features the syllables ve • ri • tas ("truth") superimposed on three books opened face up, with their pages to the viewer. The seal on the plinth, however, is an earlier design (the "Quincy seal", itself based on a long-forgotten 17th-century design rediscovered by president Josiah Quincy in the 1830s—see Harvard University. Corporation. Seals, 1650-[1926];. UAI 15.1310, Harvard University Archives) in which the third book is opened face down, with the letters tas over (respectively) the book's left cover, spine, and right cover.

    In his dedication oratory[3] Ellis mistakenly reverses the seals' left-right placement, but the description later in the same document agrees with other sources[13] in locating Emmanuel's seal on the right, Harvard's on the left.

References

  1. ^ a b Conrad Edick Wright, John Harvard: Brief life of a Puritan philanthropist Harvard Magazine. January–February, 2000. Retrieved October 20, 2012.
  2. ^ The Charter of the President and Fellows of Harvard College
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Memorial of John Harvard: The gift to Harvard University of Samuel James Bridge. Ceremonies at the Unveiling of the Statue
  4. ^ a b c d "Communication by George E. Ellis on the proposed Statue of John Harvard." Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. XX (1882–1883), pp 345–350.
  5. ^ Alfred C. Potter, "The College Library." Harvard Illustrated Magazine, vol. IV no. 6, March 1903, pp. 105–112.
  6. ^ "Harvard, John". Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1892. "He also left to the college a library of 320 volumes, which indicated the taste of a scholar."
  7. ^ "The Unveiling of the Harvard Statue", Harvard Crimson, October 16, 1884 (retrieved December 19, 2012).
  8. ^ a b c d e f Shand-Tucci, Douglas (2001). The Campus Guide: Harvard University. Princeton Architectural Press. pp. 46–51. ISBN 9781568982809.
  9. ^ a b Freeman. D. Bosworth, Jr., "The Statue of John Harvard", The Harvard Illustrated Magazine, vol. I, no. 2 (Nov. 1899), pp. 28–31.
  10. ^ a b Bethell, John T., Hunt, Richard M., Shenton, Robert. Harvard A to Z. Harvard University Press. 2004. Retrieved October 12, 2012.[better source needed]
  11. ^ Richman, Michael. Daniel Chester French, an American sculptor (1983), p. 58.
  12. ^ a b c d e Callan, Richard L. 100 Dears of Solitude: John Harvard Finishes His First Century. Harvard Crimson. April 28, 1984. Retrieved October 13, 2012.
  13. ^ a b c John Harvard to Move from Memorial Region: Will Take Up Position Before University Hall Some Time in May Harvard Crimson. March 22, 1924. Retrieved October 22, 2012.
  14. ^ Edwin M. Bacon, Bacon's Book of Boston (1886, with an introduction by George Edward Ellis), p. 185.
  15. ^ The John Harvard Monument[better source needed]
  16. ^ a b The College Pump: Toes Imperiled. Harvard Magazine May–June 1999. Retrieved October 17, 2012
  17. ^ usstampgallery.com: John Harvard
  18. ^ John Harvard's Fiftieth Anniversary Approaches — Statue First Erected in Front of Memorial Hall in 1884". Harvard Crimson, March 13, 1934.
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