HENRY DEXTER 
 
HENRY DEXTER 
 
 Sculptor 
 A MEMORIAL 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN ALBEE 
 
 PEIVATELY FEINTED 
 
 1898 
 
Copyright, 1898, 
 BY JOHN ALBEE. 
 
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 >*** 
 
 ' :'. .*::,: ; ..: /.' ._.: 
 
 SEntbmttg 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 BOYHOOD APPRENTICESHIP 11 
 
 THE PORTRAIT-PAINTER 45 
 
 THE SCULPTOR 51 
 
 His VIEWS OF ART 70 
 
 THE CLOSING YEARS 105 
 
 CATALOGUE OF WORKS ... Ill 
 
 135364 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 * 
 
 THERE are ample materials in my hands for illustrat- 
 ing the career of Henry Dexter from his childhood 
 to his death ; and as I propose to let him be his own biog- 
 rapher wherever possible, I will once for all enumerate 
 the sources from which this memorial is composed. For 
 the first thirty years of his life there is a full autobiography 
 of two hundred and five closely written quarto pages ; and 
 for the remainder of his life there is a variety of miscella- 
 neous information contained in his own letters and diaries, 
 in the public notices of the painter and sculptor (for he was 
 both), and in the recollections of his family and friends. 
 As I was myself one of the latter, and at the ever-memorable 
 period of impressionable youth when art and artists and 
 poetry were all the world that had any interest for me, I 
 shall have a twofold pleasure in writing of a man whom 
 I admired and loved, and at the same time recovering the 
 free and aspiring period of my intimacy with him. 
 
 But I have not completed the inventory of resources for 
 this memorial, those which made the closest bond between 
 us, but which unfortunately are for the most part in such 
 an unfinished state that I shall be unable to use them 
 directly. These are many hundred pages of metaphysical 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 speculations, observations on modern science and its 
 meaning, and a considerable volume of poetry, most of 
 which has never been printed. These precious pages con- 
 tain the record of his hidden life, of his deepest mind ; and 
 though I shall not be able to introduce them bodily into 
 this narrative, I trust their light will incidentally shine 
 through it, revealing, as mere outward events cannot, the 
 real and most inward spirit of the man. Artists are sel- 
 dom only artists; they are also philosophers, inventors, 
 writers, and nearly always poets. These are their holiday 
 guises between orders, or when the arm and the eye are 
 weary. Mr. Dexter wrote almost as much as he wrought 
 with chisel. But curiously enough in one who had been 
 an extraordinarily skilful artisan from his earliest years, 
 and before he was an artist, he lacked the constructive 
 literary faculty. Form, which he commanded out of a 
 block of marble, he could not so well command on paper 
 and with pen. 
 
 We had not been long acquainted when I discovered 
 that his portfolio was full of verses. He was so much my 
 senior that it was with great trepidation that I ventured 
 to confide to him my own attempts in the same kind. 
 Thereafter what shall I say? we inscribed poems to 
 each other, and some of them were printed in the local 
 Cambridge newspaper. What they meant was probably 
 an enigma to readers, if there were any ; but that mattered 
 not at all to us. We read them, and carried under our 
 cloaks the delightful and sacred mystery. Thus his inner 
 nature and aspiration became known to me ; and though, 
 as I have said, he was much my senior and had long before 
 made his place in the world, he was really much younger 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 in feeling than I, overburdened with youth's melancholy, 
 ambitions and hesitations. He had passed through the 
 same experiences, and was at the time in the serene and 
 confident period of his life, when he could look backward 
 with satisfaction and hopefully forward. He had con- 
 quered his way, every step of which had been a battle with 
 circumstances as untoward as ever fell to the lot of a New 
 England boy, yet there was throughout one propitious 
 omen : he had always been conscious of what he wanted to 
 do and to be ; never lost sight of it, never forfeited it by 
 trifling with fortune, was never much tempted to escape 
 into an easier path for the attainment of worldly comforts 
 and the soft bed that money makes. He wanted to be an 
 artist before he had ever seen a picture or a statue. Some 
 undefined and unaccountable impulse drew him that way, 
 and when for the first time he chanced to see a painting, his 
 whole nature and inclination were in a flash revealed and 
 explained to him. Thenceforth he had only to struggle 
 into the fulness of that light which had been shown to him; 
 a long, arduous way yet to go, but one from which he never 
 flinched. At the period when I knew him the struggle 
 was over, as nearly as may be with artists and poets. 
 Art and poetry are mansions of many rooms ; once admitted, 
 their votaries are still trying new doors, with longings not 
 exactly like their early struggles, yet never letting them 
 rest. At this time, also, Mr. Dexter, who was deeply inter- 
 ested in the current problems of science and religion, had 
 outlined certain theories in regard to the evolution of mat- 
 ter and spirit, their relation, their history and destiny, 
 which very well contented him. In short, he was then at 
 peace with himself, and thought that he had penetrated as far 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 into the mystery of creation as was permitted to man. He 
 was cheerful and even playful at this time, as many of his 
 letters and verses testify. 
 
 I thought, therefore, that it was best to begin the annals 
 of his life from this eminence where I first knew him inti- 
 mately and had the most distinct impressions of the man ; 
 and with this lamp recover the previous years, some fifty 
 in number, and by the same light the remaining twenty. 
 
 This narrative will begin at his birth and trace his 
 history, keeping close to his own manuscript, for thirty 
 years. I regret that the limits of this book will not 
 allow the printing of his autobiography in full; but it 
 must necessarily be condensed to make room for other 
 important periods of his life. I regret it the more because 
 his own narrative is his best piece of writing, flowing on in 
 a leisurely, natural manner, and because also it is one of 
 the most vivid and picturesque descriptions of the customs, 
 ideas and oddities of country communities in New York 
 and New England during the first part of the nineteenth 
 century with which I am acquainted. But I hope to be 
 able to introduce enough to show the flavor of his account, 
 and to illustrate out of what soil he grew, amid what seem- 
 ing obstructions and narrowest world this boy of genius 
 felt the intimations of his destiny and his life's work. 
 
MEMOIR 
 
 * 
 i 
 
 BOYHOOD APPRENTICESHIP 
 
 HENRY DEXTER was born, October 11, 1806, in the 
 town of Nelson, Madison County, New York, the 
 third of five children. His descent has been traced back 
 through eight generations to the Rev. Gregory Dexter, of 
 Olney, Northampton County, England, born 1610. This 
 Gregory Dexter was first a printer and stationer in London ; 
 an adherent and transatlantic correspondent of Roger Wil- 
 liams. He printed for Roger Williams, in 1643, a dictionary 
 of the Indian language as spoken in New England. In 
 1644 he accompanied Williams on one of his return trips to 
 Providence, where he became a regular preacher among the 
 Baptists, baptizing many people in the Providence Jordan, 
 otherwise called the Mooshassick. Let us think of him 
 rather as the first educated printer in the country, often 
 called to Boston and Cambridge to assist in setting up mat- 
 ter too difficult for the local journeymen, and as the printer 
 of the first Rhode Island almanac. He and all his descend- 
 ants lived in and around Providence up to the close of the 
 eighteenth century, when they began to disperse, some 
 going as far west as Connecticut and even New York; 
 others to the far south, to North Carolina and Alabama. 
 
12 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 The father of our Henry went to New York in 1805 to 
 better his fortune, in which attempt he failed after various 
 efforts at farming, shoemaking and tanning. From the 
 time of this removal to New York the family history is not 
 pleasant to read. It is a record of trials in which the 
 mother and her children appear to have been the chief 
 sufferers. Not a vestige remains of their humble home, 
 though twice built, and even the site of it is known only 
 through tradition. So I will not attempt its discovery 
 nor uncover its pathetic annals, but confine myself to such 
 memories of the child Henry as are most significant and 
 entertaining. These memories date from the time when 
 he was a child in arms, which I can well believe, for 
 he was one of the most sensitive men I ever knew. Noth- 
 ing escaped his acute senses, and his memory had not been 
 overlaid by book training. In his autobiography he thus 
 beautifully begins the story of his first conscious awaken- 
 ing to the objective world : " The commencement of life's 
 career is such an every-day occurrence that it seems nothing 
 to speak of ; but the train of associations that converge to 
 this little point are as the strings of the harp to the point 
 to which they are gathered, they are touched and they 
 sound. Circumstances play upon them, and we feel the 
 vibrations in the soul." 
 
 He even thought that he had an ante-natal memory of 
 one small household occurrence. But as his mother dis- 
 puted the possibility of such a thing, he does not insist 
 upon it. His father had found a quantity of wild honey 
 in the forest some little while before his birth, and Henry 
 thought he remembered seeing the five brass kitchen ket- 
 tles filled with it and tasting it. What an omen had he 
 
A MEMOIR 13 
 
 been born to be a poet ! At any rate, it is a poor child- 
 hood about which some mist or myth does not gather. 
 He did remember beyond dispute the cutting of the string 
 under his tongue, being born tongue-tied. This must 
 have been in the first or second year of his babyhood. 
 Such trifles as being carried in his father's arms to the 
 cornfield where crows were thieving the newly planted 
 kernels, or stepping on a hot shovel and being comforted 
 in somebody's arms, seeing his mother milk the cow in 
 winter and observing icicles hanging from the under lip 
 of the cow, sitting in his father's lap and noticing how 
 much larger his father's hand was than his own and won- 
 dering when he should have more ringers and thumbs, 
 supposing those made the difference in size, these and 
 numerous other insignificant incidents made up the gossa- 
 mer threads of his dawn of life, which later and more 
 eventful years never dissipated, but rather bound together 
 and made brighter and stronger. Even childhood's griefs 
 become tinged in the memory of them with something 
 akin to pleasure. We make poetry of past sufferings, and 
 write of them in the same chapter and with equal delight 
 as our past joys. Country life is full of events to chil- 
 dren, and the boy Henry was astonished by soldiers uni- 
 formed in red coats passing the house to the muster-field ; 
 excited to the highest pitch when the family moved into 
 a new house, and greatly confused by a funeral and the 
 sight of the dead neighbor, whose face he was lifted up 
 to see. It was not too late to see frequent parties of 
 painted Indians about that part of New York, and Henry's 
 father kept his gun loaded in fear of night attacks. 
 
 The date of his first schooling is not given, but he 
 
14 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 records that he learned three letters the first day and 
 received from his teacher " a ticket of merit." For the 
 remainder of that day at school he amused himself with 
 marking on white paper with a carpenter's plummet of 
 lead. This was before the day of the spirit-level, and the 
 lead plummet, in shape like a top, was in use for getting a 
 perpendicular or plumb line ; hence the name. It was also 
 before the day of lead-pencils, which were perfected in 
 this country in 1823 by the father of Henry D. Thoreau. 
 Having learned his letters, the mystery of words next con- 
 fronted him. He mentions one, "pews," which puzzled 
 him, never having been in a meeting-house. He was much 
 troubled when his sister told him it was wicked not to 
 stand up when one day an itinerant minister asked a 
 blessing at his father's table ; and in contrast he mentions 
 that nothing in all his life gave him such delight as when 
 he heard a negro play the fiddle; thereupon he set to 
 work to make a fiddle, and in three days he succeeded. 
 But to play upon it was thought to be sinful. At this 
 period of his childhood he saw his first apple, and told 
 his first lie, which cost him a whipping and cured him 
 forever, he avers. Poor boy ! he saw a knife lying about, 
 knew it was his father's, but somehow it got into his 
 pocket, and it seemed so good he kept it there several 
 days, except when he found some place where he could 
 whittle unobserved. When discovered, he had to invent 
 several good round whoppers to account for his possession 
 of the knife. Nobody but a New England country-bred 
 man knows the value of a jackknife to a boy. We had no 
 toys, no picture-books, no playthings save what we made, 
 no Christmas presents; and a new pair of boots once a 
 
A MEMOIR 15 
 
 year gave us more joy and more pride than Santa Glaus' 
 well-filled chariot now brings to the pampered modern 
 child. Consequently invention and observation were ever 
 on the alert to find something to play with. I well remem- 
 ber what comfort the red claw of a lobster and a piece 
 of shiny anthracite coal furnished me for seven weeks. 
 In his sister Ann, two years older than himself, Henry 
 had one playmate who kept his life from entire dreariness. 
 With her, he says, the happiest hours of his childhood were 
 spent. His next allusion to school days is at a time when 
 he had learned to read a little and when Webster's spell- 
 ing-book was the chief study. In this he read sentences 
 from the Bible printed at the top and bottom of the pages 
 of words which he could not understand, and remembered 
 simply because they were mysterious. At length he 
 learned to count as far as one hundred and could recite 
 the multiplication table. But school and books formed 
 only a minute item in the life of country children of that 
 time ; they began very early to bear the yoke of labor. In 
 his father's tanyard Henry drove the horse that turned 
 the stones for grinding bark. His chief early employ- 
 ments, however, were helping his mother spin and weave. 
 She had the large wheel for woollen yarns and the small 
 for flax, and Henry had to wind quills and spool yarn 
 for many a web and woof. His mother was expert in 
 all old-fashioned industries, and was ambitious to pos- 
 sess her own sheep and raise her own flax. Alas, the 
 husband said, "Nay; we will sell the farm, make shoes 
 and tan leather, and fill the bag with cash." Accordingly 
 the farm was sold, with remonstrances and tears and the 
 bribe of a new cap for the wife by the purchaser if she 
 
16 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 would sign the deed. The said cap remained an heirloom 
 in the family for a long time. Meanwhile the lad of 
 seven was his mother's assistant and confidant. He con- 
 tinued to wind spools, to do chores, to run on errands, 
 and to have little time for play. He had never seen a 
 book except his speller and reader, and perchance a cheap 
 Bible. At length he did become possessed of a picture- 
 book, and in some way a few volumes got into the house. 
 Among them was Chesterfield's Letters, which had at the 
 beginning of the chapters illuminated initial letters ; and 
 here at what age is not clear, but he must have been still 
 a child occurs the first sign of the talent with which he 
 had been born. With a pewter pencil he tried to imitate 
 these letters. For coloring he gathered pigeon berries, 
 green and red, and, expressing the juice, endeavored to 
 obtain effects upon his drawing. The next pictures he 
 chanced upon were in a great illustrated Bible belonging 
 to a neighbor. His delight, he records, knew no bounds ; 
 and he mentions those which particularly impressed him, 
 Adam and Eve, Samson lifting the gates of Gaza, and 
 others. But these were as nothing in comparison with 
 two portraits he saw hanging in the best room of this 
 neighbor's house. While looking at them the question 
 came to him how such things could be done, and the sigh 
 rose in his little heart, the sigh to do such things himself. 
 Then follows what he describes as an unhappy enthusi- 
 asm, hope that he might, fear and sorrow lest he could 
 not. Surely such feelings are a prophecy in a small boy. 
 He hastened home to his mother and told her all he had 
 felt. She listened; she explained to the child that 
 painters must have a natural gift and that he must not 
 
A MEMOIR 17 
 
 think of such things. The docile boy heard and obeyed, 
 and now found two ways he must not go, to the fiddle 
 and the picture. To wind quills, dig potatoes, wash dishes, 
 and go on errands was what he was made for. Soon 
 another forbidden way was discovered. The family horse 
 died, and he happened to be alone with it at the time. He 
 made a verse upon the occasion, imitating some phrase 
 of a hymn, the only poetry he had ever heard, and 
 confided it to his mother. She reprimanded him, tell- 
 ing him dumb beasts were not entitled to such solemn 
 words, and, moreover, that poets were always poor shift- 
 less fellows. Thus his childish efforts at self-expression 
 through music, drawing and poetry were discountenanced 
 by the only being in whom he wholly trusted. He was 
 seven years old when his dawning intelligence had mani- 
 fested itself in such unusual directions and had been pre- 
 maturely checked. There remained one other passion, not 
 so easily thwarted, and in fact oftener smiled upon by 
 mothers and all of her sex. It is boy love, that curious 
 and ineffectual development of boyhood which compels 
 it to a propensity for girls much older than itself. Henry 
 had that common experience, with its usual results. But, 
 alas, his first loved one, the daughter of a tavern-keeper, 
 soon moved away to another place called the Lake, mys- 
 terious word that he had heard, but whose equivalent he 
 did not yet know; "river" also he had heard, and he 
 knew that both designated water ; and as " river " was the 
 longer word, he supposed it the name of a larger sheet 
 of water, yet he cared less for it than Lake, as that was 
 where the loved one dwelt. He dreamed much of water 
 at this period, water with no bottom, and soon found 
 
 2 
 
18 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 that neither the Lake nor his love was bottomless. By 
 dint of much coaxing he got himself carried to the Lake, 
 where he saw not only that and a river for the first time, 
 as well as a painted house, but his love for the last time. 
 He found another maid on whom to bestow his heart ; and 
 again it was the daughter of a tavern-keeper, who in ear- 
 lier days was a superior being to the children of the 
 farmers. Henry's frequenting of taverns was a part of 
 the rustic education of his boyhood. There were not 
 only the daughters of the house, but assemblies of the 
 neighbors and travellers ; and all the balls and shows 
 were held in the building, which generally contained 
 a hall for such purposes. There the boy heard many 
 questions discussed while the disputants heated the flip 
 irons which made the cider boil and foam ; there he once 
 saw at some entertainment the representation of a Sleeping 
 Beauty that again awoke in him the same emotion as the 
 portraits on the wall. The speech which he heard at these 
 taverns was not that of his home, nor was it probably very 
 refined or guarded. It was strong, graphic, and perfectly 
 spontaneous ; moreover it was characteristic. Nobody 
 thought of being like another, and individuality was, and 
 continues to be, the chief charm of country taverns, stores, 
 and town meetings. The silent boy took note of all this, 
 and measured it by such lights as he had. 
 
 From an older brother he learned the secrets of trap- 
 ping, fishing, and shooting; or rather (for he was not 
 much inclined to these sports), he became familiar with 
 the brooks and forest ways of the region. Forests were 
 everywhere as yet uncleared, and when he found any spot 
 where he could see beyond them, it appeared to him that 
 
A MEMOIR 19 
 
 the world a word he heard often and that perplexed him 
 much must be there. From his mother he heard the 
 superstitions of the region. She herself believed in them ; 
 and even then days were fixed for the destruction of 
 the world. One of the anticipated methods of this de- 
 struction was a novelty among the prophets: the world 
 was to be sunk by hailstones on a certain day. All that 
 day Mrs. Dexter kept her family indoors. But Henry 
 stole out and hid himself in an empty hogshead to 
 witness the expected catastrophe. His mother was also 
 a great story-teller ; some of the stories she related, others 
 she sang. Henry liked best those that were told without 
 the music, and used to get her to recite the songs, so that 
 he could understand them better. This was an early 
 example of his life-long habit of seeking for an exact 
 understanding concerning whatever interested him. 
 
 There came a time when he earned his first quarter of a 
 dollar, with which the dutiful child bought a bowl for his 
 mother ; saw his first wedding, whose ceremonies did not 
 equal his imagination of them ; saw his father baptized, 
 and learned to walk on his head ! At nine years of age 
 he began to be a little vain, and wet his hair to make it 
 stand up straight from his forehead, after the fashion of 
 elder boys and men, who used pomatum and bear's grease 
 to produce this extraordinary effect. Water was an un- 
 satisfactory substitute for pomade, and one day at school 
 the master added to his chagrin by bringing his hand down 
 hard on the hair of the incipient fop. This custom among 
 young men of wearing the hair straight up from the fore- 
 head was given over on their marriage, when it was allowed 
 to lie flat. This was the sign of a married man, and the 
 wearing of a cap was the token of a married woman. 
 
20 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 In this, his ninth or tenth year, the family moved again. 
 Henry began to have an inquiring mind ; he was full of 
 questions. His schoolmistress had told him that Noah's 
 deluge had caused all the hills, and that before this event 
 the earth was level. He asked her many questions about 
 this ; among others, how large the windows of heaven were 
 to let out so much water. He was curious to know what 
 the earth was made of, and where the material came from. 
 He was told it was made from nothing. This troubled 
 him much, as he had never seen anything made out of 
 nothing. It is interesting to note here that these, among 
 other questions concerning the origin of matter, were the 
 same he wrote and speculated on through the later years 
 of his life. His mother, although so fond of telling 
 her children stories, and those too of the most fabulous 
 and improbable kind, never permitted them to read any 
 books not strictly true. Thus, when she discovered that 
 one of her older boys had somehow got possession of 
 " Gulliver's Travels," and that Henry was reading it 
 secretly, she ordered the book out of the house. Little 
 there was in those days of family discipline which does not 
 in these seem queer and mistaken. In following Henry's 
 account of his most grievous troubles I must often couple 
 the petty and the serious, as when the eating the crust of 
 pie was loathsome and when family jars " sunk," he says, 
 " his youthful soul into the very earth." His remedy for 
 one was an experiment made by himself, one day when the 
 family was absent, of a pie without any crust, into which 
 he put all the internal ingredients he had seen his mother 
 use, milk, sugar, water, vinegar, salt, pepper, butter, 
 ginger, and allspice. The result miserably failed of his 
 
A MEMOIR 21 
 
 anticipation, and thereafter he submitted to the crust for 
 the sake of the inside. His escape from wordy wrangles 
 was more successful, he put his fingers in his ears. He 
 could not, however, shut out the knowledge of the fact, and 
 it depressed his young life. I have already alluded to his 
 sensitiveness, which is often the token of the finest natures, 
 and which at once makes suffering more poignant, the 
 senses more acute, the mind more impressible, and joys 
 deeper. It is evident Henry's father was no common 
 man, and one to try a woman's patience, especially when 
 he spent his nights in the attempt to solve the problem of 
 perpetual motion. Henry was ten or eleven years old when 
 he began to be allowed to sit up in the evening. It was 
 in the autumn ; and there happened to be a bright full 
 moon whose light and the phantom-like shadows of the 
 great girdled trees in the wheatfield made an indelible 
 impression, and one remembered to his latest years. It 
 was the first time he had ever seen the moon, and it is 
 remarkable that he noticed the shadows as well as the 
 light, and the deep darkness at the edge of the forest. 
 An imitative period of boyhood came on, and Henry tried 
 to reproduce many of the common utensils in use by a 
 household that made most of its own clothing. He made 
 a pair of weaver's temples, which he exchanged for a pig. 
 Then he tried to produce a pair of pumps, an old name 
 for slippers ; but lasting them wrongly, when turned, they 
 were inside out, which ended shoemaking. The pig which 
 Henry had earned by his labor was a great comfort to him 
 for many weeks, until it was seized by a sheriff for his 
 father's debts. He was not the sole sufferer. In the 
 absence of his father, who had gone into the Eastern States 
 
22 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 to sell leather and shoes, and who never returned and of 
 whom we hear no more, his creditors had come on a certain 
 day and stripped the house of nearly everything in it, to 
 the knives and forks, beds, linen, pins and needles, and 
 "sister Ann's scissors, pin-cushion, and sampler." Each 
 creditor disputed with every other for the possession of 
 the scanty household goods. Each had his pile and a 
 wagon ready to carry it away. There was the "Benton 
 pile," the " Salisbury pile," and others more or less large. 
 This scene was the most distressing of his childhood ; poor 
 piggy was gone, his pet, on whose fattening he had 
 counted his first earthly riches. While the family troubles 
 continued, his natural pensiveness grew into a settled 
 melancholy. He could not laugh, he could not play ; he 
 thought that it was this sad experience which gave his 
 facial expression the sombre cast that it never outgrew. 
 Troubles thickened upon the destitute family. Two of the 
 children, Henry's playmate sister and a younger brother, 
 were taken to the home of their mother's father in Con- 
 necticut, and soon after an elder brother followed, and in 
 another year the mother and two remaining children. 
 The journey to Connecticut was through Albany, and for 
 the first time he saw buildings that joined each other, 
 shop windows, a wooden image of an Indian at the door 
 of a tobacconist, and he says that all he could utter 
 was one continual " Oh ! " At Albany they took ship, 
 otherwise the schooner " Sallie," Captain Spellman, which 
 including stops was seventeen days in making New York 
 City. The days were full of wonder and novelty to the 
 twelve-year-old boy who had never before seen a vessel, 
 a city, or any scenery comparable to that of the Hudson 
 
A MEMOIR 23 
 
 River. He observed and took note of everything, so 
 that fifty years afterward he could recall every incident 
 of the voyage. If his head was not turned, the skies 
 were, and the sun seemed then and for years afterward 
 to rise in the west. The schooner remained some time 
 at a wharf on the Battery, and Henry made several excur- 
 sions around the city and spent one shilling and sixpence 
 for a picture-book. Although he wanted many things that 
 he saw, good to have or to eat, pictures then as always were 
 the most coveted possession. In company with his mother 
 he visited St. Paul's churchyard, and for a purpose. His 
 mother, the stern woman who did not allow her children to 
 read " Gulliver's Travels," was in search of the grave of 
 Charlotte Temple, and, when found, wept over it ! Few 
 readers will probably recall the story of Charlotte Temple, 
 which was one of the most widely read books of that gen- 
 eration ; a sad tale of seduction, abandonment, profligacy, 
 and death. Whether the narrative was authentic or not, 
 I am unable to say ; but it is known as almost the first of 
 a long series of subsequent " true tales founded on fact," 
 and was very popular for many years. Sentimentality, 
 pathetic and moral reflections are its characteristics. A 
 woman with five children, from the backwoods of New 
 York, weeping over the grave of Charlotte Temple in 
 St. Paul's churchyard in the year 1818, strikes one as a 
 unique tribute, and throws a decided and unexpected light 
 on the real nature of Henry's mother. The boy was im- 
 pressed with a mighty awe on entering St. Paul's church, 
 and felt sure God dwelt there ; he dared not speak, nor 
 hardly step. He visited Fulton Market, then recently built 
 and the pride of the city. A boy sees what he has eyes 
 
24 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 to see, and Ms seemed to see everywhere chiefly pocket- 
 knives and picture-books. But what most delighted him 
 were the figure-heads on the vessels lying at the wharves. 
 After four days the " Sallie " spread her sails again, 
 headed for the East River, passed through Hell Gate, which, 
 having heard much about it, Henry thought he should 
 never come out of alive, and in twenty-eight hours reached 
 Newport and in a few hours more Providence, their port 
 of destination. From this place the journey was continued 
 by land to Killingly, Connecticut, the home of Mrs. 
 Dexter's parents. It was fifteen years since she had left 
 them, and the meeting was a scene of emotions of the 
 strange New England kind, expressed in few words, re- 
 pressed in the unspeakable. Of all this Henry took note, 
 himself entirely unheeded by his grandparents. He was 
 soon put to work, as it was planting-time, until some 
 permanent employment could be found for him. There 
 were several factories in and around Killingly, and in one 
 of these he found a place. At the end of the first week 
 he overheard the overseer say, " That boy is a fast learner ; 
 he will soon be able to earn a dollar a week." Henry went 
 home to his mother on Saturday night thinking his pros- 
 pects settled for life. His leaning toward certain trades, 
 and above this his aspiration to paint pictures, all had 
 ended in a cotton-mill. But his good genius was not far 
 off and rescued him. The cotton-mill did not start up 
 on Monday nor on Tuesday ; the owners had failed 
 most opportunely, and the little cotton-spinner's thread 
 was woven into other webs. 
 
 Mrs. Dexter did not remain long with her parents. She 
 hired a house on the borders of Killingly and Pomfret, 
 
A MEMOIR 25 
 
 where Henry, the oldest child at home, had plenty of 
 work in assisting his mother, chopping wood, and in the 
 care of a garden. He found in the neighborhood new 
 and agreeable companions. He began to go to school 
 again, and had for his teacher a prim, soft-voiced dea- 
 con's daughter of forty years. She brought flowers to 
 school, and had other unusual and original ways. Among 
 them, her punishments consisted in the recitation of appro- 
 priate hymns for different misdemeanors. Henry's lot was 
 to recite one of Watts', and this punishment was brought 
 upon him by the jealousy of one of the girls on account 
 of his attentions to another. This school seems to have 
 stimulated him for the first time to independent study, 
 which he undertook at home in leisure hours. He made 
 his own copy-book, and his mother made the ink. His 
 amusements were few and simple. He gathered nuts and 
 bartered them in Providence for molasses, tea, and other 
 household necessities. Meanwhile he worked out in the 
 neighborhood, when wanted, for a dollar a week. By a 
 singular and significant chance he came near being em- 
 ployed by a certain Captain Alexander. A neighbor had 
 told Mrs. Dexter that this Captain Alexander wanted a 
 boy. " It is a good place," said the neighbor, " and he has 
 a son Frank, who can teach Henry to paint likenesses." 
 "What!" exclaimed Mrs. Dexter, "paint folks' faces?" 
 u Yes," was the answer; "their boy Frank is a sort of 
 shiftless fellow. He would n't work, he would n't do any- 
 thing but just hang around the house and paint." This 
 was enough to decide Mrs. Dexter; she could not have 
 her boy in the same house with such a young man. It 
 was a bitter disappointment to Henry, but turned out only 
 
26 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 a postponement ; for, as we shall see later on, this Frank 
 Alexander, afterward a celebrated portrait-painter, had 
 much to do with putting Henry on his true path. For 
 this time, however, we must follow the boy to the farm of 
 Stephen Dana, in Pomfret, a bachelor farmer, whose house 
 was kept by his mother. Here is a very graphic descrip- 
 tion of her : " She was now old ; she wore a brown dress 
 with a trail fastened up in the back, a white kerchief over 
 her shoulders and pinned in front, and a cap with a full 
 flaunting border. Her hair was snow-white, her lips some- 
 what parted, and she stooped as she walked." Here is 
 another description of a boy's feelings when he leaves 
 home for the first time, and one, I dare say, thousands 
 of New England men, once poor boys with their own 
 living to get, will recognize : " Monday, March 27, 1820. 
 There was a poor woman up early in the morning prepar- 
 ing breakfast by candlelight for her little son, whom she 
 had just awakened, saying, ' Come, Henry, it 's time to get 
 up ; I 'm afraid you will be late at Mr. Dana's.' I could 
 not eat much breakfast ; there was a lump in my throat, 
 and my eyes felt watery. Mother said to me, 'Come, 
 come, be a man, and don't think anything about it.' I 
 rather thought she felt bad too, but she tried to hide it 
 from me. She had a little bundle of clothing done up 
 for me. All the way my hat felt strangely, my feet 
 dragged, and all the nut-trees with which I was familiar 
 seemed to say, 4 Good-by, Henry.' " 
 
 At Stephen Dana's Henry learned many new things. 
 The house was ancient and large. The- hearth burned 
 like a bonfire, with logs four feet long. There was a 
 quaint clock, the first Henry had ever seen, and he had 
 
A MEMOIR 27 
 
 to learn to tell the time of day. Then there were two 
 weekly newspapers, a secular and a religious, the latter 
 of which was the only one permitted to be read on the 
 Sabbath. Strict order was kept in the house, in the barn 
 and woodpile. Mrs. Dana was a pious Presbyterian; on 
 her little table could always be seen the Bible, with her 
 spectacles upon it, and by its side her knitting-work. 
 But Stephen had sundry suspicious-looking square bottles, 
 and a pair of meeting-boots whose upper soles had not 
 been worn thin in seven years. The best room held a 
 bed with copperplate prints, as they were called, (a 
 glazed and highly colored cotton fabric once in vogue 
 for draperies in New England bed-chambers), on which 
 were displayed pictures of Washington, Franklin, and 
 other heroes of the Revolution. These interested the boy 
 more than anything else in the house. By the end of the 
 first week he felt happy and grateful that he had found 
 so good a place, and on the first Sunday night he made a 
 prayer of thanks to his Maker for directing him to such 
 kind people. They were indeed kind, kind and queer 
 as the queerest Connecticut farmers in their generation. 
 Henry's first Sunday in a Pomfret church was ever a 
 memorable day. For the first time he heard a preacher 
 read a sermon, and had some doubts whether or not it 
 was preaching ; he heard the organ, and saw a foot-stove, 
 square pews and a sounding-board. He listened to a 
 prayer so long "he thought his legs would break in 
 two." Much comfort it was to him, on returning, to 
 have a few hours to himself, to polish up his only piece 
 of money, a ninepence ; and the very next day more com- 
 fort in an ewe lamb, which Mr. Dana gave him. Good 
 
28 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 times, indeed, and the happiness of small things, which, in 
 after years of greater, gave him pleasant memories, and an 
 insight of the true elements of human felicity. 
 
 Like his mother, Mrs. Dana was a great story-teller, but 
 not of ghosts, warnings, and rustic superstitions. Being 
 thirty years of age at the time of the Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, she was a storehouse of Revolutionary tales, and 
 remembered all the great battles and incidents of the war. 
 She was intensely patriotic, never would drink tea after 
 the Boston Tea Party, and still had in her buffet in the 
 best room a number of cracked cups and saucers as sou- 
 venirs of a tea-table the cloth of which, when surprised 
 by three country patriots, the women gathered up by the 
 four corners, and tossed the whole contents into a back 
 room. From her lips Henry heard much of his country's 
 history, and learned to love it. Some peculiarities in Mrs. 
 Dana he never could understand, why she fastened her 
 trail up in the back ; why she should sob and shed tears 
 when speaking of serious things; and above all, having 
 scrubbed the floor, why she should then sprinkle it with 
 sand. He was her attendant to church, and she soon had 
 him in a Sunday-school class, where the boys were paid 
 one cent for so many scriptural verses learned. Henry 
 selected the shortest verses he could find in order to get as 
 many cents as possible while following the path to good- 
 ness. The wise Mrs. Dana instructed him in higher 
 motives. And now he had the joy of a visit from his 
 mother, who brought him a pair of new pantaloons, with 
 a stiipe down the leg which made him very proud. His 
 mother's visit brought another pleasant result; she en- 
 gaged to let her daughter Ann help Mrs. Dana in her 
 
A MEMOIR 29 
 
 housework. Ann was Henry's favorite. She was six- 
 teen years old, a pretty girl, with a mass of long auburn 
 hair, not only long, but so strong she could suspend herself 
 by it for a whole minute, whereby she won a wager which 
 did not altogether please her little brother. The young 
 Puritan thought it was not proper. These small signs 
 indicate, as I think, his extreme sensitiveness to conduct. 
 Most boys would have seen only fun in his sister's perform- 
 ance. He accumulated several ninepences in the course 
 of the year, which he carefully hoarded in the till of his 
 chest; and he tried in vain to calculate how much they 
 would increase in eleven years at compound interest. 
 Eleven years more would make him twenty-four. Tre- 
 mendous thought! and so far away seemed twenty-four 
 years, he never expected to live to see them. Death was 
 one of old lady Dana's chief subjects of remark. The 
 close of the day reminded her of it, as did Saturday night, 
 and the passing bell. Henry and Stephen Dana stopped in 
 their work to count its strokes, and then waited through 
 the awful pause for the strokes which told the sex, one 
 for man, two for woman. On returning from the field, 
 nothing was talked of but the death and the funeral, and 
 Mrs. Dana would say, " Ah, Henry, the young may die, 
 and the old must." 
 
 In spite of this distressing atmosphere of a dying world 
 Henry thought much of his future and what he should do. 
 He was ashamed and too timid to speak of what he aspired 
 to be. He describes himself at this period as a young aris- 
 tocrat, by which he means that he felt himself superior to 
 his present employments and associations, and dimly fore- 
 saw another and more congenial sphere. Thus early he 
 
30 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 was a careful, frugal boy, and very observant of the physi- 
 cal and mental characteristics of men and women. He in- 
 creased his little hoard by the sale of his lamb for eight 
 shillings, and put them away with his ninepences. He 
 wanted a lock to his chest as Mr. Dana had to his desk, 
 the key of which he was always careful to turn and then 
 hang up in plain sight. In all ways Henry was very con- 
 siderately treated by this family. He was not allowed to 
 overwork, and was given many unusual privileges. His 
 hardships were trifling ; chiefly in boiled dinners, the bane 
 of all new England children, and everlasting brown bread. 
 Wheat bread was only for company. Mrs. Dana baked 
 once a fortnight, according to her ancient custom. But 
 Henry and Ann contrived occasionally to cook themselves 
 a custard, and nothing was said by the kind-hearted 
 mistress. It was a house of kindness, with no scolding 
 woman, or ugly, exacting man; and though there were 
 few pleasures, there were no irritations. Few were the 
 holidays, and seldom the interruptions to the even tenor of 
 the days. An elephant came to town, which Henry saw ; 
 but Stephen Dana would not, as he did not believe in ele- 
 phants, that is, he did not believe there were any such 
 animals. But though Stephen believed not in elephants, 
 he had some soft places in his heart rather affecting to 
 read of. He was, as has been said, an old bachelor, yet not 
 from his own choice. Once he had loved and expected to 
 marry, but, being rather slow in coming to the point, 
 another suitor had carried off the prize. This pair lived 
 near him, and their young children were Stephen's chief 
 pleasure in life. He never went near their house himself, 
 but often sent Henry to bring the children to his own, 
 
A MEMOIR 31 
 
 when he would play with them, carry them about, one 
 under each arm, and even let his hay get wet to be with 
 them. So the affections were kept alive in the house of 
 the old bachelor and the aged mother, while Henry and his 
 sister grew more fond and intimate. She was always doing 
 something to make life pleasanter for him; now it was 
 braiding him a new straw hat and again baking a custard. 
 They went about together among the neighbors, and their 
 intimacy and devotion to each other were much commented 
 upon. Life was not all work, as we sometimes think, on 
 those ancient farms. There were rainy days also, times of 
 leisure when Henry would be trying his hand at sundry 
 inventions which want of tools would at length abruptly 
 bring to an end. In his mind he had invented a mowing- 
 machine, another for threshing, and still another for flying. 
 The attic was a treasury of antiquated and cast-off articles. 
 There were a lot of shoe and knee buckles, cocked hats, 
 porridge pots, tin ovens, and tin lanterns, a great and little 
 spinning-wheel, old canes, hetchels and foot-stoves, a large 
 pile of Poor Richard's Almanacs, and a mysterious chest 
 which was never opened. Dried herbs, corn, and beans 
 hung all about from the rafters. There Henry could amuse 
 himself on stormy days. But neither the attic nor other 
 parts of the house contained any books. There was, 
 however, a small public library in the town, from which 
 Henry obtained permission to take books. The first one 
 he selected, and probably the first he had ever read, was 
 Silliman's Travels. He thought it must be the most 
 interesting book ever printed; so it seemed in his 
 ingenuous ignorance. 
 He was now in his sixteenth year and the third of service 
 
32 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 with the Dana family. He had been to school winters, and 
 had shown himself an apt pupil, standing at the head of 
 his classes. If he had work to do that permitted, he had 
 a book near by. In this manner, while threshing one fall, 
 he committed the whole of Lindley Murray's grammar to 
 memory, and then his arithmetic in the same way, going 
 round the threshing-floor with the nominative case, indica- 
 tive mood, and present tense, and when reaching his book 
 again, taking up some other of the rules of grammar or 
 arithmetic. 
 
 It began to be noised about that he was to be Stephen 
 Dana's heir, so well liked was the boy, and so intimate had 
 they become. His mother thought he was beginning to 
 look like Stephen and to have his form, even to the round 
 shoulders of his master. In this his sixteenth year he says 
 
 V */ 
 
 life began to assume a stern reality to him. He began to 
 revolve the problem of an occupation. The docile boy, 
 accepting his mother's opinion that fiddling, poetry, and 
 painting only prepared the bed of the shiftless and the 
 poor, had to turn his face away from those attractive direc- 
 tions. What was there, then, that he could do ? He thought 
 of teaching; but his mother thought of blacksmithing ; 
 and so one day he went prospecting to a blacksmith shop. 
 At Danielsonville, six miles from Pomfret, he found an 
 opening for apprenticeship to John Chollar. Mrs. Dana 
 gave him her blessing and a Bible, and Stephen drove him 
 and his little chest to his new home, on April 7, 1822. 
 
 On a floor of black earth, standing beside his anvil, with 
 one foot on the anvil block, and in one hand a hammer, 
 Mr. Chollar greeted him and said he was glad he had come. 
 Without further ceremonies Henry rolled up his sleeves and 
 
A MEMOIR 33 
 
 put on a leather apron, in which we must now see him for 
 the next eleven years. With a great effort he choked back 
 his tears. Once more all his hopes for a different career 
 were blighted. After a few weeks' trial Henry was regu- 
 larly indentured to Mr. Chollar for four years, to learn the 
 whole art and mystery of blacksmithing. His reflections 
 on the entrance to a new occupation are so nafve that I 
 quote a few sentences : " Was I always to be a blacksmith ? 
 I never saw a blacksmith able to be a blacksmith and ride 
 in a chaise. It was said Mr. Chollar was making money ; 
 he had married a fine wife, and all this I might perhaps 
 do ; but it all looked so dreary to me. It was not what I 
 had aspired to be and to do." 
 
 In those days a young apprentice had many other things 
 to do besides learning a trade. He must do the chores at 
 his master's house and the odd jobs at the shop. And 
 so Henry continued for some time longer to be a hewer 
 of wood and a drawer of water, to feed the pig, milk 
 the cow, and help his mistress on wash-days. These 
 things must usually be done before breakfast. After 
 breakfast the pious blacksmith read a chapter of the Bible, 
 made a prayer, and then the long day's work began, from 
 sun to sun, and in winter, by the light of the forge and 
 a candle suspended above the anvil. Holidays were few. 
 In the parlor of Mr. Chollar's house there hung his por- 
 trait, painted by Frank Alexander. When Henry saw it 
 for the first time, his old feelings revived and he could 
 think of nothing else. It was singular how this painter's 
 name and work seemed to follow Henry wherever he went, 
 and in the end, as we shall see, influenced his whole sub- 
 sequent career. But we must for a little while keep to 
 
 3 
 
34 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 the shop. There Henry's common duties were to take 
 horses, which were to be shod, out of the wagon, put them 
 in again, blow the bellows, bring in charcoal, fetch water, 
 and hoist the gate for the water-power of the trip-hammer. 
 When he found a chance, he learned, working by himself, 
 a little of his trade. The blacksmith's trade at that time 
 included the making by hand of all the tools in use on 
 the farm. To make a good hoe and axe was the ne plus 
 ultra of the forge and anvil and of an accomplished black- 
 smith. When left alone, Henry practised at everything 
 he saw done in the shop. In the first year he plated a 
 hoe, a difficult work, and mended the broken horn of the 
 anvil, which his master had told him never could be done. 
 His chief pleasure in his trade was undertaking difficult 
 jobs, and though he does not speak of it, he must soon 
 have been appreciated by his master. Praise for boys and 
 apprentices was thought impolitic ; censure and correction 
 good to make men of them. Henry's thoughts were not 
 in the shop; oftener they were in the parlor with Mr. 
 Chollar's portrait, or dreaming and planning some future 
 work more to his taste than horse-shoes and trip-hammers. 
 Eighteen months after his apprenticeship had begun, an 
 event happened which, seemingly unimportant, proved of 
 much consequence. A family by the name of Kelley moved 
 into a house next to his master's. Mrs. Kelley was a 
 sister of the painter Alexander. When Henry found this 
 out, he made up his mind to become acquainted with the 
 family, led by some dim presentiment that it would be of 
 use to him. After this the blacksmith's shop seemed less 
 depressing. At the same period he made the acquaintance 
 of the Tiffany family, one of whose sons, about Henry's 
 
A MEMOIR 35 
 
 age, was Charles, subsequently the head of the great 
 jewelry firm of New York. The lonely boy, working 
 thirteen and fourteen hours a day, occupied himself in 
 the short intervals between labor and sleep in making 
 rhymes and comforting himself with reading Zimmerman 
 on Solitude, the " Boston Recorder " and the Bible. These 
 were the only books in his master's house, this the only 
 newspaper. The limited outlook and opportunities of 
 the old New England towns and villages were as astonish- 
 ing as their general intelligence and sturdy maintenance 
 of their civil and religious rights. It requires a careful 
 study of details to understand the paradox. While at- 
 tempting to show the growth of a single human being in 
 such environments as I am describing, I hope somewhat 
 of the general characteristics of the time will appear and 
 indirectly explain what has made this country of ours 
 what it is. 
 
 In the second year of Henry's apprenticeship he worked 
 over time in the night, earning a little extra money. He 
 made horseshoe nails at ten cents a hundred and peg- 
 cutters for a dollar each. At the end of the second year 
 his menial labors were over; he was promoted, another 
 boy was apprenticed who wore ruffled shirts on Sundays 
 and who refused to do chores and mangle clothing. In his 
 third year Henry appears to have become a skilled work- 
 man. He made axes, hoes, shoe-knives with which a 
 man could shave himself, and pen-knives that would clip a 
 hair. As now the senior apprentice, he began to feel him- 
 self of some importance ; he grew more cheerful and could 
 keep his face cleaner; but he had not yet the courage 
 to go into the house where lived the sister of Francis 
 
36 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 Alexander, who all the time was his mysterious guiding 
 star. He had once seen this young artist at a distance, 
 and it made his heart beat as though it were the presence 
 of some sweetheart. The youth who has not had this 
 experience stands little chance of becoming its cause. 
 
 With his improving fortunes came the wish to have 
 what he found to admire in others, a finer nose, better 
 features, and handsomer hair ; in short, everything men 
 praise and honor, 
 
 " Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
 
 Featured like him, like him with friends possessed, 
 Desiring this man's art and that man's scope." 
 
 It took time and much reflection to accept himself just as 
 he was, and to discover that his hand was his own as long 
 as it injured none, and that his foot could be planted for- 
 ward as long as it did not tread on another's. His moral 
 nature grew with his growth, so that he easily escaped the 
 temptations of youth. His mother's teachings were always 
 present with him, and she had laid a special emphasis on 
 the idea that God could discern the secrets of the heart. 
 At the same time he became conscious of a certain con- 
 stitutional weakness the effect of an abnormal sensitive- 
 ness. He confesses that he felt himself inferior to every 
 one with whom he cared to associate, and he thought others 
 took the same measure of him. He suffered much from 
 this mistake, and it accompanied him to some extent 
 through life, and was the foundation of the modesty and 
 self-effacement so charming and noticeable when there 
 was no longer any occasion for them. He gave full credit 
 to all men, and was always more than generous in his 
 
A MEMOIR 37 
 
 judgments. A sensitive nature loves and is immensely 
 stimulated by approbation ; and censure is correspondingly 
 depressing and cruel. How much he suffered in his child- 
 hood and youth the pages of his autobiography plainly 
 show, and also how little it took to give him joy and exalt 
 his spirit. But repression was the fashion of the time ; 
 do what he would he could hardly ever extract a spark 
 of praise from the rocky and rigorous hearts of his masters 
 and employers. He fought out the hard battle by his 
 own thoughts, a home-made philosophy, and by the help 
 of his faith in God. 
 
 The outward incidents of his life during his apprentice- 
 ship are meagre. There was a Fourth of July celebration, 
 at which, by the explosion of a gun-barrel, he nearly lost 
 his right hand ; there was a hanging with fifteen thousand 
 spectators, all of whom, he says, went home declaring they 
 would never see another; his old and fast friend Mrs. 
 Dana died, and he went a sincere mourner to the funeral, 
 and could never bear to go into the house again. 
 
 All at once, during the year 1826, without indicating 
 he had fallen in love, he states in his autobiography that 
 he is engaged to Miss Kelley, the niece of Francis Alex- 
 ander, the artist. The steps which led to this acquaint- 
 ance and engagement are not given. But however it 
 happened, he was now in the family circle of an artist, 
 in a position to make his acquaintance, to see his works, 
 all of which soon occurred, and "I said to my inmost 
 soul, thou also art to be a painter." Yet not a word 
 escaped his lips at present as to his intentions and hopes, 
 hopes which sustained him through the remaining years 
 of blacksmithing. 
 
38 HENKY DEXTER 
 
 At the close of his apprenticeship he had become the 
 most skilled workman in the region. Whatever could be 
 done at the forge or bench, with anvil or hammer or file 
 or cold chisel, he could do. He felt even then, as he once 
 said to me, speaking of those days, that he could hammer 
 a statue out of iron. Difficult jobs were intrusted to 
 him, and he never failed of success. It was doubtless 
 the native art instinct which made him such an accom- 
 plished artisan in working his rough materials. His dex- 
 terity he inherited with his name ; and to this were added 
 a quick perception and rapidity of execution. These gifts 
 were noted when he began to cut marble into human like- 
 nesses. For the present he was making axes at the rate 
 of a dozen in a forenoon, when other workmen made the 
 same number in a day. He was earning a dollar a day 
 and his board. At length his " Freedom Day " came ; his 
 apprenticeship, with its heart and bone aches, its few 
 hours of pleasure, was at an end. He celebrated it by a 
 visit to his mother, who still lived in Pomfret, and by a 
 call on Miss Kelley, his affianced. But days meant dollars, 
 and none must be wasted. He still continued at his 
 labors, with the bitter thought that he was no nearer his 
 true vocation than four years before. However, circum- 
 stances, or that destiny which presides over the fortunes 
 of men who never forget their ideals, was, unseen and 
 unguessed, leading him on. 
 
 In the summer of 1826 or 1827 it was announced that 
 Francis Alexander would spend his vacation at his home 
 if half-a-dozen sitters could be obtained for him. By 
 the exertions of Henry, five were promised, and he 
 himself would be the sixth. It was not any wish to see 
 
A MEMOIR 39 
 
 himself on canvas that influenced him, but simply the 
 desire to discover how the work was done. This appears 
 to have been the absorbing thought of his life at this 
 period, "to see a painter commence a portrait and learn 
 the rudiments of the art." " My mother," he goes on to 
 say, " had told me there was a mystery about it, and that 
 no one could do it who was not born under a particular 
 star. I did not know what star ruled at my birth, but I 
 felt that I could paint a picture if I had the colors and 
 could see the way in which they were used." Hence his 
 determination to obtain the sitters and be one himself. 
 August came, and brought the painter. He was often 
 at Henry's shop, and was fond of observing how the 
 various jobs were done. One day he called and said he 
 was ready to begin on his portrait. Henry took off his 
 leather apron, washed his face and hands and put on his 
 best suit, and adjusted a large white handkerchief around 
 his neck, after the fashion of the day, and still had doubts 
 as to the proper dress for such an important occasion. 
 He entered the extemporized studio. Shawls and spreads 
 darkened the windows, except the upper part of one for the 
 high light. Henry took in all the outfit of the painter, 
 brushes, colors, and a curious thing which he later learned 
 was a palette. But a great disappointment awaited him, 
 for when the painter began to work he could not see the 
 canvas ; it was turned from him. However, he made some 
 important discoveries by asking questions. He found out 
 why the windows were darkened, and what the cup con- 
 tained into which the artist now and then dipped his 
 brushes. He also learned the cost of colors. He was 
 cautious in his questions, fearing to be questioned in 
 
40 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 return. At the second meeting Alexander would talk of 
 everything save his art; but his sitter surprised him by 
 some inquiries about ultramarine. At the third sitting 
 the portrait was completed, all too soon for the sitter, who 
 had hoped to learn the secrets of the art. Yet he had 
 divined more than his eyes saw. 
 
 In May, 1828, he was married to Miss Kelley. He was 
 twenty-one, she was twenty. This union lasted for 
 twenty-nine years and was always a happy one. To his 
 wife's excellent administration of his affairs was due in 
 large measure his endurance of the early struggles, and 
 in his later successes a good measure of freedom from 
 worldly cares. They had three children, a son who died 
 in infancy and two daughters ; one of the latter, Mrs. 
 Harriet D. Mason, is lately deceased; the other, Mrs. 
 Anna E. Douglass, still lives, and has devoted much time 
 and care to the preservation of her father's works and 
 memory. 
 
 The newly married pair went to housekeeping in an 
 outlying village of Killingly, where he had purchased 
 a blacksmith's stand and begun business for himself. 
 Now his own master, disposer of his own days and with 
 a house where he could do what he pleased without 
 observation, his mind dwelt much on painting, and he 
 resolved to try. He had no materials for the attempt, 
 and did not dare to go to Providence, the nearest city, 
 to find them, for fear one of the six persons whom he 
 knew in that city should discover him buying paints 
 instead of iron. Accordingly he decided to go to Hart- 
 ford, forty-five miles away, and where no one knew him. 
 Nor did he tell any one his errand, not even his wife, but 
 
A MEMOIR 41 
 
 went about it as darkly as if it were some dreadful crime. 
 After an all-day stage-ride, he arrived in Hartford. Early 
 the next morning he was about his business. He stum- 
 bled upon a sign-painter's shop, where he had a curious 
 interview with the proprietor, who he found had once 
 been assailed by an ambition to be a painter, and Henry 
 saw himself exactly reflected in the story of this man. 
 He was kindly and affable, told him all he knew of color, 
 and invited him to visit the State House to see an artist 
 who was copying Stuart's portrait of Washington. Here 
 Henry asked some questions about colors, but found the 
 artist disinclined to communicate the secrets of his art. 
 At length he found a shop where colors were sold, and 
 where he had an amusing time evading questions as to 
 what he wanted them for, to confess which he says would 
 have " rent him into a thousand fragments." He had 
 learned something of the relative proportions of color 
 needed in painting, and so he bought most of white, 
 then yellow, black, and enough prussian blue to last 
 forty years, and completed his purchases with oil and 
 brushes. On his way home he was attacked by a fit of 
 despondency which tempted him to throw his paints and 
 oils out of the coach window. But a little harder work 
 than usual to make up for lost time restored his cheerful- 
 ness and the resumption of his purposes. He stretched 
 a canvas ; but, knowing nothing of the necessary sizing of 
 it, the paints struck through and he was obliged to paint 
 it over several times. 
 
 His mother was his first subject. He worked at once 
 with the brush, without drawing, and in three sittings 
 had completed the portrait as far as his skill at that 
 
42 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 time would allow. It was a faithful likeness, good in 
 form and color, whatever technical faults it had. It is 
 still preserved in the family, and is a very remarkable 
 painting, considering that it was done by a young man of 
 twenty-two, without training, practice, or any previous 
 advantages whatever. After this the consciousness that 
 he could paint a portrait was most precious. He began 
 more clearly to divine what his future was to be. A 
 new life was revealed to him, freed from the hammer 
 and the horse-shoe, freed from everything that hitherto 
 had made the day but a hopeless and sordid round of 
 uncongenial labor. 
 
 Hast thou ever seen a country blacksmith's forge when 
 there was no work for it ? It looks black and fireless, but it 
 is not ; in its heart there is heat which a blast from the bel- 
 lows blows into a flame. It was thus in the soul of young 
 Dexter; the fire of his genius smouldered through long 
 intervals of obstruction and despair, yet never died out; a 
 favoring breath could awaken it, a chance word, any cir- 
 cumstance unapparent except to him who kept the sacred 
 spark. 
 
 He could now wait patiently the propitious hour of his 
 complete deliverance. He was willing to toil and sweat 
 at his anvil for a while longer, being sure of the future. 
 He had no suitable canvas, nor did he know very well 
 how to prepare his colors, and was constantly interrupted 
 by the calls of his business. That he might paint during 
 any moment of leisure, he kept one room in his house 
 which was so near to his shop that he could easily be called 
 when wanted. This room and its purpose were kept a 
 profound secret to all save his own family, among whom 
 
A MEMOIR 43 
 
 he found subjects sufficient for his frequently interrupted 
 sittings. He undertook a portrait of one of his sisters. In 
 this he was not so successful as with that of his mother. She 
 was young, and had none of those strongly marked lines 
 which are easier to fix on canvas. It became noised about 
 in the town that he was painting portraits. It reached 
 the ears of Alexander, who sent him word that he should 
 be at home shortly, and would call and examine his work. 
 He came ; the pictures were shown, and the humble black- 
 smith felt that his fate was in the hands of a man whom 
 he had every reason to believe his friend. He expected 
 merciful criticism. Instead of criticism, Alexander asked 
 him if he intended to become an artist, and, if so, what 
 was to become of his family ? One may be allowed to 
 think he had an eye to the interests of his niece, whom 
 Dexter had recently married. When Henry flinched at 
 this question, and "like a fool," as he says in the page 
 before me, " denied myself, and answered that I should 
 never be an artist," Alexander, apparently relieved from 
 any anxiety on account of his niece, or of having a rival 
 in his own demesne, began to speak in praise of the por- 
 traits, and suggested what was needed to improve them. 
 After this interview with Alexander he lost hope for a 
 time. His sensitive nature was crushed for want of en- 
 couragement and help from the only source within his 
 little world, and once more the forge blazed and the anvil 
 grew brighter. For seven years more he bowed to the 
 yoke and bore the burden of despair. Then at length he 
 broke all the bonds that had held him. He rented his busi- 
 ness, sold his house and began in earnest to paint portraits 
 of his family and friends until he felt sure enough to offer 
 
44 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 his brush to a larger public. By this time Alexander, who 
 had been his guiding star from boyhood, though sometimes 
 obscured, became very friendly to him ; and, by his advice, 
 Dexter went to Providence in the spring of 1836 and 
 opened a studio. 
 
A MEMOIR 45 
 
 n 
 
 THE PORTRAIT-PAINTER 
 
 MR. DEXTER was a prudent man, having been 
 inured to the economies of New England com- 
 munities from childhood, and did not abandon his business 
 until he had laid by some hundreds of dollars with which 
 to face the expenses of an experiment as a portrait-painter. 
 His friends and neighbors thought him little less than a 
 fool to give up a profitable trade, and at his age to think of 
 becoming an artist. Undismayed, he set out for Provi- 
 dence, leaving his family behind for the time. In going to 
 Providence he was still following in the track of Francis 
 Alexander, who had been in that city some time previously, 
 and had painted family portraits among the leading citi- 
 zens. In Providence he made friends and found some 
 patrons, probably through the recommendation of Alex- 
 ander. As later he was most successful in producing excel- 
 lent likenesses in portrait-busts, so in painting this seems 
 to have been his especial gift. Of their technical merits 
 I am not able to speak with positiveness. But a friendly 
 letter from Alexander at this time hints at some defects, 
 while praising his work as a whole. Omitting other per- 
 sonal matters, I extract from the letter what especially 
 concerns Dexter's efforts as a painter. " I have observed 
 your paintings particularly, and have compared your first 
 productions with your last. I must acknowledge that 
 
46 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 your last are painted in a better style than I thought you 
 had attained to. I give you joy, and I give you credit, too, 
 for the study and the industry it must have cost you to 
 make so great advancement in so short a time. The back- 
 grounds of the portraits are almost right ; the only fault is 
 they are too blotchy or too spotted. The transparent effect 
 is produced, however, and that is encouraging. I think, 
 instead of changing your style for the style of some one 
 else, you have only to improve and perfect your own. You 
 seem to be on the right track. Drawing is the foundation 
 of all excellence in painting. I think you draw the face 
 well now, and the figure better than you did. You ought 
 to define the folds, of the dress a little more, particularly 
 about the shoulders and neck of your portraits. 'T is well 
 to let the portrait sink into shade and obscurity at or near 
 the bottom of the picture. ... I advise you to stay in 
 Providence as long as you can have constant employment 
 at twenty dollars a portrait, and I advise the good Provi- 
 dence people to sit to you until they are all painted. They 
 will never get such perfect likenesses and so well painted 
 for that price from any other artist with whom I am ac- 
 quainted. But I advise you to paint for that price while 
 you have full employment ; not because your portraits are 
 not worth more, but because you must have a great deal of 
 practice, facility and finish in your painting before you can 
 ask fifty or a hundred dollars. You must not be in such 
 haste to get one hundred dollars for your portraits as to 
 deserve it. Always bear that in mind ; because if you once 
 deserve it, you will always get it ; but if you exact it before 
 you really deserve it, you may be put to the humiliation of 
 lowering your price." 
 
A MEMOIR 47 
 
 In a few weeks he returned to his family in Killingly, 
 and not with an empty purse. He had painted at least a 
 dozen successful portraits of prominent Providence people, 
 and had received more than his price for some of them. 
 His eyes were opened to what had already been done by 
 other artists, and to the serious nature of his newly chosen 
 profession. He realized how much was to be accom- 
 plished before he could deserve the name of artist. Fresh 
 trials awaited him; many heretofore had been met and 
 overcome, and now having brought himself over the 
 threshold of his aspirations, which in his sanguine outlook 
 he supposed would admit him to complete fulfilment, he 
 found greater impediments than before. These, however, 
 were of the kind whose conquest brings pleasure and 
 power. To work along one's chosen line and according 
 to one's genius, with or without the world's recognition, 
 is the truest happiness known to man. In Providence 
 the field was not large, and Dexter was only a gleaner 
 after several artists had canvassed the city. In those days 
 there were more patrons of portrait-painting than at pres- 
 ent, as well it might be, when you could have a successful 
 likeness taken for from twenty to fifty dollars. Many 
 such portraits are now of priceless value on account either 
 of the subject or the artist. Age has mellowed and dark- 
 ened the pigments, and hidden in the background technical 
 deficiencies. The drawing may be rude, but somehow the 
 earlier American painters, ere there was much thought of 
 pose or technique or idealization, had a way of bringing out 
 a likeness squarely and boldly. They had not yet been 
 troubled with theories, nor much divided by rivalries and 
 schools. There were no academies, no exhibitions except 
 
48 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 private ones, no hanging above or below the line. Most of 
 our early sculptors and painters had been mechanics in 
 their younger days, and were self-taught in their subse- 
 quent career as artists. Native talent led them into their 
 profession, or some chance developed it. John Frazee, 
 who appears to have been our first native-born sculptor, was 
 originally a stone-cutter. H. Augur was a grocer's clerk 
 and shoemaker. Horatio Greenough well-born and 
 offered the best education of his time left college behind 
 and devoted himself to art, and, though he died young, has 
 the distinction of being the precursor of sculpture in this 
 country. Hiram Powers was in early life a mechanic, or 
 rather a mechanician. Ball Hughes was by trade a stone- 
 cutter; so was Clevenger; and E. A. Brackett tried six 
 trades before finding his true one. H. K. Brown painted 
 signs, and cut silhouettes with scissors in his rough appren- 
 ticeship to art. These, and many other instances in this 
 and other countries in all times, show that neither oppor- 
 tunities nor special education are the school of the arts. 
 
 I consider Dexter fortunate in his early life, notwith- 
 standing its hardships and postponements. If he sometimes 
 almost lost his identity in the long years of uncongenial 
 labor, it was only to find it again with an ever-increasing 
 intensity of purpose and clearer insight of what he wished 
 to do and to be. I do not use the words to be to round 
 the sentence, but to mark the moral characteristics of the 
 man who, while so ambitious to follow the life of an artist, 
 neglected no common duty toward his family, his fellow- 
 men and the religion he professed. He never cast so much 
 as a sidelong glance into the risky realm of Bohemia, was 
 strictly temperate, economical, provided for his family 
 
A MEMOIR 49 
 
 when without food himself, and was wholly unpretentious 
 in all his habits of life and in his manners. For this I 
 honor and praise him. I admire, more than anything else 
 in our time and native land, the plebeian-born man who 
 maintains and cherishes his natural simplicity, and who, 
 distinguished or wealthy, declines to join the patrician 
 ranks of society. 
 
 After Dexter had exhausted the opportunities that 
 Providence offered, there came another short period of 
 uncertainty. He was conscious of being as yet only an 
 amateur. Practice was his great desire at this time ; he 
 returned to his family in Killingly, and painted everybody 
 who could be induced to sit to him. But this work could 
 not last; a larger field must be found. Once more he 
 made a bold leap into a dark uncertainty, although it was 
 into Boston, then the most promising resort of artists and 
 writers in the United States. He had only one acquaint- 
 ance there, Francis Alexander. He was friendly and help- 
 ful. It was in the autumn of 1836 that he arrived in 
 Boston and hired Bromfield Hall, on the street of the same 
 name, a room sixty by twenty feet. This he divided into 
 three portions ; one for a studio, another for a chamber, and 
 a third he rented. He boarded himself, after what manner 
 can be guessed when his food bill per month for some time 
 was three dollars and fifteen cents. The times were hard ; 
 money scarce ; coal was eleven dollars per ton, wood the 
 same per cord, and flour eleven dollars a barrel. If money 
 was scarce, sitters were scarcer. Artists of reputation were 
 out of work; what could a beginner without name and 
 friends expect? The lawyers were without clients, doctors 
 
 without fees. People, then as now, in times of business 
 
 4 
 
50 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 depression, starved artists or drove them into the prostitu- 
 tion of their gifts. Idleness was something Dexter never 
 could endure, and he had many unhappy, because un- 
 occupied days in Bromfield Hall. Alexander introduced 
 him to a few prominent men in Boston, among them Col. 
 Samuel Swett, his father-in-law, who became a friend and 
 encourager. He struggled on for some time, painting a 
 few portraits and copying a few, barely earning enough to 
 meet his expenses. 
 
 But suddenly a new turn came in his affairs; a new 
 path opened which he was to follow for the remainder 
 of his life. He was casually recommended to secure some 
 clay which the sculptor Greenough was leaving behind 
 him when about to go to Italy, and practise modelling 
 as a help toward obtaining a better knowledge of form 
 in portraits. He had the clay brought to his studio, 
 where it lay in a corner for some months, growing dry 
 and hard. In an idle hour he gathered up some of it, 
 softened it with water, placed it on the top of a barrel and 
 began to mould the head of a brother artist who happened 
 in, and to whom he playfully remarked, " Come, White, let 
 me put your head into this mud." He had no knowledge 
 of the manner of handling clay, and having no tools, he 
 used his fingers for forming the features. The clay became 
 an amorphous lump ; then the rude outline of a face such 
 as we fancy we see in clouds or mountain crag appeared ; 
 and at last the distinct lineaments and similitude of the 
 face before him, frightening himself and astonishing his 
 model. And this was the morning and the evening of the 
 first day when the sculptor was created in the soul of 
 Henry Dexter. 
 
A MEMOIR 51 
 
 III 
 
 THE SCULPTOR 
 
 FOR a time longer Dexter continued painting portraits 
 and modelling in clay, according as he had orders 
 for the one or leisure for the other. He had had no 
 regular instruction in either art, and devised his own 
 methods and made his own tools. At this period, with a 
 single exception, he had never even watched a painter at 
 his work, or clay in the hands of a sculptor ; least of all, 
 had he any notion how to handle a block of marble, for 
 it is doubtful if a portrait-bust in marble or any sort of 
 statuary had hitherto been attempted in this country. 
 Suitable marble was hard to obtain and very expensive. 
 It was understood that in Italy it was cheap, and journey- 
 men, half artists, could be hired to cut marble after models 
 with sufficient faithfulness. Hence, at the dawn of sculp- 
 ture in this country, the students of the art, who appear 
 to have sprung up almost simultaneously between 1830 
 and 1840, went to Italy as soon as they could, where most 
 of them succumbed to the climate and prematurely died. 
 This exodus continues to the present day, both among 
 sculptors and painters, and has proved in the highest 
 degree detrimental to any distinctive national character- 
 istic in art. But it is said this is just what we do not 
 want; art in its best estate is universal. Nevertheless, 
 
52 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 Dexter believed that it must first be particular, local, if 
 you please, expressive of a confined and individual civi- 
 lization, race, climate, institutions, beliefs, everything, in 
 short, which divides mankind and shuts it to its own 
 isolated development, before it can become a thing of 
 beauty for all the world to admire. Our runaway artists 
 bring us back only Greek imitations and French color, 
 which remind us here, in poor artless America, of the Afri- 
 can cannibal who has eaten his victim and is wearing his 
 silk hat and patent-leather shoes, all between he is naked. 
 The sturdy New England Yankee, for such was Dexter 
 by descent and breeding, would have none of this. He 
 had no longings for Europe, and thought that an American 
 artist if with genius, so much the more ought to stay 
 at home, develop himself in his own soil, and devote his 
 brush or his chisel to native subjects. I mention this 
 view of his here because it will explain once for all much 
 that was, and continues to be, unusual in this sculptor's 
 work and career. I may also add to what has been said, 
 his intense patriotism and interest in his country's progress 
 in every artistic and intellectual direction. He had spent 
 only a very small portion of his life in cities ; he was the 
 child of the inland country and of nature, and continued 
 throughout his life to have an unsophisticated heart. 
 
 He loved his art well, so well indeed that he could not 
 bear to forego or commit to others even the mere drudgery 
 of it. He liked to do every part of the work with his 
 own hands, and thought this practice, and the invention 
 and manufacture of his own tools, and all the appliances 
 of his profession, helped him to a fuller and more intimate 
 understanding of sculpture. Doubtless it was so, and was 
 
A MEMOIR 53 
 
 the secret of the rapidity and sureness with which clay 
 took form, and stone fell away from the imprisoned statue. 
 Much as he might regret his twelve years at the anvil, it 
 must have been due to his long exercise in the manual arts 
 of the blacksmith's shop, where, as I have said, all sorts of 
 work were brought for mending or making, that he was 
 able almost at once to cut marble into human effigies. 
 
 Bromfield Hall saw his first experiments in modelling 
 and reproduction in plaster casts. He was much encour- 
 aged in his earliest attempts by the approval of his good 
 genius, Alexander, who, happening to see the clay model 
 he had made of the artist White, procured him at once 
 another subject, a Cambridge student by the name of Lane. 
 These, so far as I have discovered, were his first and only 
 experiments before attempting the serious business of 
 modelling a bust to be preserved and exhibited. Col. 
 Samuel Swett, whose portrait he had already painted, sat 
 to him for a portrait-bust. Dexter put forth all his power 
 to make it a success, and it was. It brought him into 
 public notice; but he says this first essay in modelling 
 gave him no such inward satisfaction as when he painted 
 his first portrait. People praised and wondered, wondered 
 with that wonder which always attends the sudden out- 
 burst of power with no antecedent preparation or expec- 
 tation in the public mind. That which is phenomenal is 
 liable to brief and delusive applause. Unfortunately it 
 follows some precociously developed talent, or prodigy of 
 music, mathematics, or in letters or art, which after a 
 little the fatal mantle of oblivion covers. The rise is 
 instant and dazzling; the collapse more slow, but inevi- 
 table. It strikes the world with amazement and curiosity 
 
54 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 that a peasant should write verses, or a mechanic become 
 an artist. We rush to read and to view. A genius is 
 discovered, and it is well for him if the discovery be not 
 his ruin. Certain it is he needs the public notice ; and an 
 artist needs it rather more than a poet, unless, like Millet, 
 he is willing to lead the life of a peasant. The poet can 
 wait and starve without suffering quite so sharply as the 
 artist. The former can dig potatoes while meditating the 
 thankless muse. Writing is its own reward ; art must be 
 also, yet hungers more for a customer. 
 
 There were many years between 1830 and 1850 when 
 Boston, although commercially pinched, did not suffer 
 artists and the literary class to go altogether unrecognized 
 and unpaid. Its noble citizens were proud of their city 
 and its artists, poets, orators and statesmen, most of whom 
 it encouraged with honors and patronage. Any marked 
 talent was sure of appreciation and reward ; and the city 
 was not so big, or so divided in race and taste, but that 
 the interest in art and literature could be general in all 
 classes. In a small way it was the Augustan age of the 
 city. As was said once of Weimar, Boston, in 1840, had 
 ten thousand poets and philosophers, and a few inhabitants. 
 If it did not last long, its influence has been extensive and 
 is a proud memory. 
 
 Dexter was fortunate in coming to Boston when he did. 
 He was noticed as soon as he definitely took up sculpture, 
 and had as much work as he could do. He was known as 
 the " blacksmith artist " at first, and of course with no little 
 wonder; but then nearly every one of any importance in 
 the city had sprung from similar humble and obscure be- 
 ginnings. The surprise soon wore off, and Dexter held his 
 
A MEMOIR 55 
 
 rightful place as the maker of himself and his fortunes. 
 He was not overpowered by his successes, but labored 
 with increased ardor and the most patient industry to 
 make himself master of the sculptor's art. He took les- 
 sons in anatomy, and was constantly studying the human 
 figure. He made busts of the Rev. Hubbard Winslow, and 
 of Peter Harvey, Daniel Webster's great friend, for each 
 of which he received fifty dollars. This made him rich and 
 hopeful. Better things were in store and near. The Rev. 
 Mr. Winslow brought into his studio Boston's most hon- 
 ored citizen and its mayor, Samuel Eliot, to sit for his bust. 
 When it was completed and in plaster, Mr. Eliot was so 
 well satisfied that he said, " Mr. Dexter, you may put my 
 bust into marble." What ! the marble bust of the mayor 
 of Boston, its great man at the moment, most distinguished 
 among his fellow-men for culture, liberality, and all the 
 other Boston virtues, and he wishes to be made immortal 
 now in stone ! No wonder that the artist felt elated, and 
 that success seemed assured, fame and a livelihood almost 
 within his grasp. "I could not believe what I heard," 
 Dexter says in his own mention of the incident. He had 
 no marble, nor any of the tools of the sculptor; more- 
 over, he had never put mallet to chisel ; but the marble 
 could be bought, and, as to tools, he knew well how to 
 make them with his own hands. He set to work, having 
 to teach himself everything that pertains to the cutting of 
 marble. I believe neither then nor ever afterward had he 
 seen a sculptor at work. I would that we had some record 
 of his sensations in this his earliest attempt at sculpture. 
 I find none, and it must be left to conjecture. Every one 
 who uses even a pen has some notion how a portrait is 
 
56 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 produced ; how it is built up from outlines and color, and 
 expression brought out with the brush. Just the reverse 
 seems the procedure in sculpture ; it arrives at results by 
 elimination; and for every touch of the painter's brush, 
 the sculptor must cut away something; he cannot paint 
 out and paint in -, every blow must be decisive. Hence, 
 it seems to me, as I try to imagine Dexter's management 
 of his first block of marble, there must have been infinite 
 trepidation and misgivings in the preliminary reduction of 
 the mass to the rough lineaments of a face, and an equal 
 delight when he had succeeded in producing a likeness. 
 A likeness was the main thing to achieve, and all that was 
 required by the public or patrons. In the sculptured figure 
 or bust we cannot look for the reproduction of the inward 
 spirit, so often interpreted in painting, and there is left to 
 the spectator the task of supplying this from his knowledge 
 of the individual portrayed, his history, his achievements, 
 or whatever else distinguished him. Therefore only the 
 greatest men or the most ideal subjects should be honored 
 in marble, to which associations and imagination may lend 
 what the too rigid stone cannot convey. Form is the sculp- 
 tor's only means of accomplishing this. To his first marble 
 bust Dexter succeeded in giving an admirable likeness. 
 The features and character of Mr. Eliot, a well-fed, 
 rotund, prosperous man, were well enough expressed in 
 the rounded and polished marble. It was considered a 
 great achievement ; Mr. Eliot's personal worth and official 
 position added lustre to the work, and attracted attention 
 and commendation to the artist. Dexter's record of the 
 work is this: "I have this day, June 9, 1838, completed a 
 marble bust of Hon. Samuel A. Eliot, it being the first I 
 
A MEMOIR 57 
 
 ever made, the first time I ever struck marble with mallet 
 and chisel." 
 
 Meanwhile his circumstances had permitted him to 
 move his family from Connecticut. He took a house in 
 Cambridgeport, on Auburn Street, nearly opposite that 
 of Washington Allston. He soon found the rent too 
 much for his purse, and moved next to a smaller house 
 on Harvard Street, in the easterly part of Cambridgeport. 
 It may be as well to mention here his other removals. In 
 1844 he had saved money enough to purchase and partly 
 pay for a house on Broadway, building a studio and gallery 
 in connection with it, where he continued to abide until 
 1873, when he took up his residence on the same street, 
 Old Cambridge. To return for a moment to the Auburn 
 Street house; it was there he became acquainted with 
 Allston, whom he found friendly and helpful. He has 
 left an account of a call he once made on the painter, 
 which is worth preserving. 
 
 " To-day, August 22, 1838, I called upon Washington 
 Allston. I arrived at the door precisely at 12 M. I rapped, 
 but no answer ; the door, to all appearance, was locked, but 
 no key inside or out ; a handle to the door, but no thumb- 
 piece or latch, and the hole firmly plugged up. I left, 
 thinking I had mistaken the hour of the appointment, 
 and returned again about one o'clock; rapped as before, 
 was on the point of leaving again, as I had no reply, but 
 upon repeating my rap I heard a voice saying, 'Wait a 
 minute ; ' and precisely at one the door opened, and I was 
 received as cordially as I ever was by my most intimate 
 acquaintance. I stood doubting, and apologized and ex- 
 pressed my fears that I was intruding. As I passed from 
 
58 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 the hall into the painting-room, I noticed his care in lock- 
 ing both the doors and withdrawing the keys. But what 
 did I see on entering ? 
 
 "A large room, so large that it looked almost empty, 
 though it contained here and there boxes, canvases turned 
 towards the wall, easels, and in one corner a great number 
 of casts of heads, feet, knees, hands, all fragments from 
 the antique, with several figures originally whole, but 
 now much broken. Allston took from a closet a foot of 
 his own modelling, of colossal size, a splendid thing it 
 was. He made it for the purpose of copying in one of 
 his historical paintings. He then brought forth two small 
 figures that he had modelled for the same purpose. He 
 offered to loan me the Gladiator to copy. After he 
 had gone through with the casts, which gave me much 
 pleasure, I asked to be informed as to the manner he pre- 
 pared absorbent grounds, to which he readily consented; 
 he said, 'Anything I can tell you I shall do with great 
 pleasure. I have a formula for those grounds which I will 
 find and send to you. I will show you a canvas prepared 
 in that way ; ' then he turned around the canvas with a 
 sketch upon it which attracted my attention much more 
 than the canvas itself. Then he showed me sketch after 
 sketch ; one in particular attracted my attention ; it was 
 a scene from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 in outline, with perhaps two dozen figures, a landscape, 
 and river. Some of the figures were extremely graceful. 
 Then he showed me a sketch of 'Christ Healing the 
 Lame Man.'" 
 
 Mr. Allston died in July, 1843. Dexter was with him 
 the evening before his death, and was one of the few per- 
 
A MEMOIR 59 
 
 sons at his funeral service, which took place after dark, 
 the burial service at the grave being read by the light of 
 lanterns. 
 
 His next order was from Hon. Thomas H. Perkins, fore- 
 most among Boston's art patrons. It was for a bust of 
 Ellen Tree, the most celebrated English actress of her 
 day, and whom Dexter had already painted in one of her 
 stage characters. To this order Mr. Perkins also added a 
 replica of a hand which the artist had made as a study 
 from the hand of his little daughter Anna. There is a 
 pretty story connected with this hand : when it was done, 
 Mr. Perkins gave the sculptor a check for fifty dollars, 
 which he drew from the bank in one hundred silver half- 
 dollars. These he took home tied up in a handkerchief. 
 He emptied the shining heap into his little daughter's lap, 
 as the successful result of her own hand. The child had 
 a small wagon which the half-dollars filled heaping full. 
 She drew the wagon about in play, and upset it many 
 times to see the load of silver roll over the floor, and hear 
 its musical chink. 
 
 His next marble bust was of Judge Jackson. Then 
 followed the memorial marble of The Binviey Child, the 
 little Emily, which at once made him famous. This 
 pathetic figure in full length and recumbent its little 
 hands folded over the bosom, sleeping, nevermore to 
 awaken, nor would one wish to disturb so reposeful and 
 sweet a sleep drew throngs to Mount Auburn. It was 
 the principal attraction of that celebrated cemetery, and 
 largely helped to make its early fame. I can myself recall 
 the time when it was a common excursion, if one wished to 
 take a walk or entertain a friendly stranger, to go out to 
 
60 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 Mount Auburn to see The Binney Child. With some truth 
 it may be said visitors went there for that single purpose ; 
 and it continues to be a great attraction. Time and storms 
 have made sad records on the delicately chiselled features ; 
 and it became necessary, in order to save it from complete 
 destruction, to enclose it in glass, which has been done by 
 the filial daughter of the sculptor. 
 
 Memorial sculpture for private persons and families has 
 lately given place to extreme and unadorned simplicity. 
 A small plain stone, with name and date in briefest com- 
 pass, is just now the ruling taste ; or, for more distinguished 
 persons, a natural bowlder, with possibly a verse or sig- 
 nificant quotation. Such bowlders mark the graves of 
 Emerson and Agassiz, and of a lesser man, Levi Thaxter ; 
 on the sea-worn side of the latter's monument is inscribed 
 an epitaph of six lines expressly written for it by Robert 
 Browning. Forests of white marble memorials no longer 
 afflict the subdued tastes of the more cultivated classes, nor 
 mar the beauty of God's acres of green turf, their " mortal 
 hillocks," and their sheltering trees. Still one must often 
 note the touching exception in the case of young children 
 cut off before their time. The old and the distinguished 
 can take care of their posthumous memories ; but it is hard 
 to give up to nothingness and oblivion those infantile souls 
 who have not had time to cause themselves to be remem- 
 bered among men. They must have the tribute of art 
 and poetry to perpetuate their short and blessed years. 
 Nor can we regret this, since it has been the motif of 
 much of the finest statuary the world over, and made it 
 possible for alien eyes and hearts to pay respect to the 
 early dead, and share the pain of years that had lost their 
 
A MEMOIR 61 
 
 spring. No one can look upon The Binney Child with- 
 out some such emotions. As a work of art, it is fault- 
 less and shows great skill and ingenuity in details. It 
 is full length, and in high relief, and must have involved 
 great difficulties in the cutting, and the most delicate and 
 dexterous touches of the chisel. It is notable also as 
 the first piece of statuary made in this country by an 
 American sculptor. 
 
 It was the inspiration of several poems. Here there 
 is space but for one, written by Miss C. F. Orne. 
 
 " Yet pause we here, where, if the sculptor's art 
 May ever soothe the mourner's sorrowing heart, 
 It may console the friends who weep for thee, 
 Young, innocent, and gentle Emily. 
 We stand beside thy couch ; to hear thy breath 
 We almost pause ; and is it sleep or death 
 The cunning hand of art would seek to trace 
 On the sweet features of thy placid face ? 
 Through the oaks' purple leaves the radiant light 
 Cheats for a moment the bewildered sight ; 
 And bathed in rosy hues upon the snow 
 Of thy fair cheek there rests a crimson glow ; 
 So still, so gentle thy repose and deep, 
 We almost fear to wake thee from that sleep. 
 Alas ! thy slumber is too deep, too still ; 
 'T is Death that on thy brow hath wrought his will." 
 
 In Hawthorne's " Mosses from an Old Manse " there is 
 an allusion to The Binney Child. It occurs in the sketch 
 called The New Adam and Eve. " Such a child in whitest 
 marble they have found among the monuments of Mount 
 
62 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 Auburn. ' Sweetest Eve,' observes Adam, while hand in 
 hand they contemplate this beautiful object, ' yonder sun 
 has left us and the whole world is fading from our sight. 
 Let us sleep as this lovely little figure is sleeping.' " 
 
 In the year 1841 Dexter removed his studio to 
 Tremont Row. Tremont Row appears to have been at 
 that time the favorite rendezvous of artists. Besides 
 Dexter, there were the sculptors Greenough, Stevenson 
 and Brackett; and the painters Alexander, Ames, Green, 
 Holyoke, Hubbard, Ordway, Johnson, Alvan Clark and 
 Thomas Ball. 
 
 Dexter had occupied Bromfield Hall for three years. 
 There it was that he had wrought out his final art ten- 
 dency. He had painted unto starvation; there he had 
 experienced most of the trials of artists in their early 
 career. He had known the proud man's contumely, the 
 insolence of the rich even when sitting for their por- 
 traits. Men devoted to trade looked sharp lest they 
 should be cheated, and were not above taking advantage 
 of the poverty of the painter to dispute agreements, haggle 
 over payment, or delay it until the fire went out in the 
 studio and bread failed. These, however, were exceptional 
 incidents in those three years. As ever in the Boston of 
 that era, the helping hand was ready when merit or talent 
 in any field was discovered. This local characteristic con- 
 tinues to this day, despite the sneers and fleers of other 
 cities at Boston's provincialism and self-esteem. But in 
 the increase of its population, the multiplication of its 
 interests, it sometimes happens that an obscure and promis- 
 ing talent is neglected for the pursuit of a more general 
 and noisy philanthropy. The slums and hospitals are 
 
A MEMOIR 63 
 
 now, among the wealthy classes, the rivals of art and 
 literature. 
 
 Dexter's chief memory and associations with Bromfield 
 Hall were as the spot where his real genius first disclosed 
 itself and turned him from painting to sculpture. Had 
 he remained a painter, it might have been said that he 
 was such from an early incitement and emulation of his 
 friend Alexander. When he abandoned it for a profession 
 toward which he had never looked, it is evident there 
 was in him a genuine art-instinct and capacity for a 
 particular line of work for which painting was but a 
 preparation. I venture to think that in some respects 
 blacksmithing was the more profitable preliminary to 
 sculpture. 
 
 In memory of all its glad and unhappy days, Dexter 
 left on the wall of his first studio some verses expressive 
 of his feelings, which have been preserved and are here 
 printed : 
 
 Is this the place where once there came 
 
 Those strange imaginings, 
 Those mimic wreaths of crowning fame 
 
 Borne on delusive wings 
 Along thy dark and sombre wall, 
 
 Old Hall? 
 
 Thy cornice broad and ceiling high 
 
 Seem toned with melancholy ; 
 The aspiration and the sigh, 
 
 Though sometimes breathed in folly, 
 Ascending found thy place too small, 
 
 Old Hall. 
 
64 HENRY DEXTEE 
 
 Thy windows looking to the north 
 
 Always a lovely light 
 Forbade all powers to tempt me forth 
 
 By keeping far from sight 
 Those views that might the mind enthrall, 
 
 Old Hall. 
 
 Thy votary, art, tried here awhile 
 
 All forms to limn, to paint 
 (While nature sat with pleasing smile), 
 
 Of sinner and of saint ; 
 The effort hung against thy wall, 
 
 Old Hall. 
 
 Oh, who can tell what thou hast known, 
 
 The secrets thou art keeping ? 
 But must thou speak ? Then truly own, 
 
 When I am silent sleeping, 
 What thou hast seen or heard tell all, 
 
 Old Hall. 
 
 He had not been long in his new studio on Tremont 
 Row when Charles Dickens made his first visit to this 
 country, in 1842. He sat to Dexter for a bust. There was 
 a very interesting notice of this sitting in the " Atlantic 
 Monthly " for October, 1870, contributed by Dickens' pri- 
 vate secretary, G. P. Putnam, which is here reprinted. The 
 scene as described was on the first morning that Mr. Put- 
 nam began his duties as secretary, and took place at the 
 Tremont House, Boston's most frequented hotel about 
 1842. 
 
 " On Friday morning I was there at nine o'clock, the 
 time appointed. Mr. and Mrs. Dickens had their meals 
 
A MEMOIR 65 
 
 in their own rooms, and the table was spread for break- 
 fast. Soon they came in, and, after a cheerful greeting, 
 I took my place at a side-table, and wrote as he ate his 
 breakfast, and meanwhile conversed with Mrs. Dickens, 
 opened his letters, and dictated his answers to me. 
 
 " In one corner of the room Dexter, the sculptor, was 
 earnestly at work modelling a bust of Mr. Dickens. 
 Several others of the most eminent artists of our country 
 had urgently requested Mr. Dickens to sit to them for 
 his picture and bust, but having consented to do so to 
 Alexander and Dexter, he was obliged to refuse all others 
 for want of time. 
 
 " While Mr. Dickens ate his breakfast, read his letters, 
 and dictated the answers, Dexter was watching with the 
 utmost earnestness the play of every feature, and compar- 
 ing his model with the original. Often during the meal 
 he would come to Dickens with a solemn, business-like 
 air, stoop down and look at him sideways, pass round and 
 take a look at the other side of his face, and then go back 
 to his model and work away for a few minutes ; then 
 come again and take another look, and go back to his 
 model ; soon he would come again with his calipers and 
 measure Dickens' nose, and go and try it on the nose of 
 the model; then come again with the calipers and try 
 the width of the temples, or the distance from the nose 
 to the chin, and back again to his work, eagerly shaping 
 and correcting his model. The whole soul of the artist 
 was engaged in his task, and the result was a splendid 
 bust of the great author. Mr. Dickens was highly pleased 
 with it, and repeatedly alluded to it during his stay as a 
 very successful work of art. 
 
 6 
 
66 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 "Alexander's picture and Dexter's bust of Dickens 
 should be exhibited at this time, that those who never saw 
 him in his young days may know exactly how he looked. 
 The bust by Dexter has the rare merit of action, and in 
 every respect represents the features, attitude and look of 
 Charles Dickens." 
 
 How it impressed Mrs. Dickens may be seen from a 
 letter which she addressed to the artist soon after her 
 arrival in New York : 
 
 MY DEAR MB. DEXTER, I did not see you before I left 
 Boston, and had not an opportunity of expressing to you how 
 much I was delighted with your bust of my husband, which I 
 think is a beautiful likeness. I should much like our English 
 friends to see it, and hope for an early cast. 
 
 CATHERINE DICKENS. 
 
 I will also add here a confirmation of the good opinion 
 concerning this bust by Prof. C. C. Felton, one of Dickens' 
 most intimate friends in this country, in a little note to the 
 sculptor. 
 
 " Ever since I saw your admirable bust of Charles Dickens, 
 the best and most characteristic likeness that has ever been 
 made of him, I have considered you the best, or certainly one 
 of the best portrait-sculptors of our time." 
 
 Copies of this bust were on exhibition in all the prin- 
 cipal cities of the country, and many were sold, especially 
 in New York City and Philadelphia. Wherever Dickens 
 gave readings, there were agencies for the sale of it. 
 Dickens' presence advertised it, and that in turn adver- 
 tised Dickens. Dickens' strongly marked features made 
 
A MEMOIR 67 
 
 an unusually good subject to put into portrait-sculpture. 
 Here is the author with all his energy, fun and pathos 
 concentrated in the features. It was exhibited in London 
 and won applause from the art critics. But portrait-sculp- 
 ture has this sad impediment to an artist's permanent repu- 
 tation; namely, the great man of to-day is not the great 
 man of to-morrow, and too often they sink into obscurity 
 together. Marble nor bronze nor canvas can long delay 
 the extinction of the too fond estimates of our contempo- 
 raries. And yet it is the vanity and pride of men that 
 make possible the existence of the artist until he can free 
 himself from their trammels and give himself wholly to 
 ideals and beauty. It was toward these that Dexter con- 
 stantly worked, constantly longed to devote himself. 
 Simple man that he was, faithful to every duty and obliga- 
 tion, he had to do what his hand found to do, and wait as 
 he could for the coveted opportunity to choose his own 
 subjects. It was early recognized that he had a remark- 
 able felicity in obtaining a lifelike presentation of the living 
 face. As to pose there can hardly be such a thing in a 
 bust. Form is the chief object ; and through that must be 
 expressed whatever characteristics individualize the subject. 
 Wanting the light of the eyes, the presence of which in the 
 painted portrait gives the spectator some idea of the in- 
 ward spirit, marble must depend on such other accessories 
 as art can supply for producing effects. The chief differ- 
 ence between sculpture and painting is the advantage of 
 the round over the flat surface. On this account a statue 
 seems more real than a canvas. We can walk around it ; 
 we see behind the face. We see solids instead of surfaces, 
 and behold the highest of all beauty, the beauty of form. 
 
68 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 In his new studio Dexter continued making busts of 
 Boston's merchant princes and distinguished professional 
 men. Most of them were cut in marble, and are now in 
 private houses, or in the public rooms of various institutions 
 and libraries. They cannot be said to be entirely forgot- 
 ten men, for Boston cherishes the memory of her prominent 
 citizens beyond most cities, and ever and anon exhibits her 
 marbles and canvases with commendable pride. But this 
 generation has to be taught who and what they were. Let 
 us name some of them, bring them from their hiding-places 
 and remove the dust for their own sakes no less than for 
 that of the sculptor. I have already mentioned several. 
 There was Mayor Eliot, public-spirited and generous, chiefly 
 recalled now as the father of the present head of Harvard 
 University. As this was Dexter's first attempt at marble, 
 he did not well know how to fix the price of the work. 
 Mayor Eliot thought the price named too little, and made 
 a liberal addition. Samuel Appleton was another of his 
 generous patrons, one of the city's wealthiest men, founder 
 of a renowned family, and father of that Tom Appleton 
 who made Boston's bon mots for many a year ; the friend 
 of all writers and artists ; practical friend of the latter, 
 buying their pictures and sending them to Europe to 
 study ; a kind of Beacon Street Msecenas of his city and 
 time. Then there were the Lawrences, Amos and Abbott, 
 for both of whom Dexter made busts. Both were cotton 
 manufacturers, one, Amos, much given to philanthropy, 
 the other more devoted to public affairs. Edmund Dwight 
 was another cotton manufacturer, founder of towns and vil- 
 lages on the Connecticut River. Robert C. Winthrop's bust 
 should not be missing from the list, as he was accounted 
 
A MEMOIR 69 
 
 one of Boston's ablest scholars and statesmen. Dr. Warren, 
 Alvin Adams, Mr. Chickering, E. R. Mudge, and James L. 
 Little, men of eminence in various ways, all sat for portrait- 
 busts. His most distinguished patrons in Cambridge were 
 George and Isaac Livermore; the former a merchant in 
 wool and a great collector of the ancient documents of 
 American history, a man of many virtues, beloved by 
 everybody. Dexter made the busts of two Presidents of 
 Harvard College, Walker, the good, and Felton, the 
 jovial Greek. Felton had a picturesque head of curly 
 black hair ; he was of conspicuous height and solid frame, 
 and, barring his glasses, was a statuesque figure which 
 marble only needed to imitate. Walker, who immediately 
 preceded Felton as head of the college, not yet a univer- 
 sity, had a most placid face, and seemed without and within 
 a man "moulded in colossal calm." It is inconceivable 
 that he could ever have experienced a temptation, which 
 profited much to us young sinners of his reign. Perhaps 
 because he was what he looked to be, his bust, more than 
 most, conveys an excellent impression of his serene dignity 
 and his pious and benignant nature. 
 
70 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 IV 
 
 HIS VIEWS OF ART 
 
 DEXTER, as has been related, had an instinctive taste 
 for art from his earliest childhood. He thought 
 much ahout it before any knowledge or observation was 
 his. Wonder, admiration and imagination came first. 
 Long apprenticeship on a farm where everything was 
 home-made, and then many more years at the trade of 
 blacksmithing, had taught him the use of tools, had in- 
 creased his natural skill, and trained his eye in those 
 requirements of the forge which more than in almost any 
 other kind of craft demand a quick and exact perception 
 of shape. When the iron is hot, there is no time for 
 measurements with rule or dividers, but the blow that will 
 give the metal the required form must be delivered 
 instantly. Hence the training of eye and hand ; hence the 
 hand must obey the eye until they work as one. Can it 
 be doubted what a useful preparation this was when the 
 iron was exchanged for marble, the anvil and hammer for 
 mallet and chisel? But something more is needed to 
 make a sculptor. That something is genius, which, how- 
 ever much it may be discussed and defined, remains 
 incalculable. It is a mystery for which we should be 
 thankful in this age when man's soul is about to be dis- 
 sected and put in the crucible. Genius, however, has some 
 
A MEMOIR 71 
 
 outward tokens which cannot be mistaken. It does not 
 have to think about itself, nor plan nor study overmuch ; 
 it does the thing instinctively, and has seldom any self- 
 estimate or sense of the excellence of its own work. I am 
 aware this is the old Platonic theory, but as yet there is 
 none better. If it be abnormal, a disease, as some recent 
 psychologists claim, I would it were infectious. Modern 
 artists are given over to theories and schools ; they think 
 and reason ; and the crowd of amateurs keeps step with the 
 schools and the masters. In Dexter's time there were no 
 schools or masters in this country. He sculptured as he 
 had blacksmithed and painted, with little training, and 
 none of the modern aids. He had a native intelligence on 
 which he mainly relied, like the fish of the deeper waters 
 of the ocean that make the light by which they see. He 
 gave himself to the most assiduous practice ; and, reckoning 
 the years of his labors and their results, he was one of the 
 most industrious artists that ever lived. By nature a poet 
 as well as a painter and sculptor, he came to have a clear 
 conception of the relation of all the fine arts, and to know 
 how deep in the heart of man is the chord to which their 
 magic equally responds. In his own poetic attempts, how- 
 ever imperfect they are in form, there is the soul of the 
 true poet. A lover of nature, he looked to her for instruc- 
 tion as well as inspiration. He studied her forms and pro- 
 portions, forms in detail, and proportions in the masses 
 of forests and mountains as well as in the human figure. 
 "The first lesson," he says, "an art pupil receives is to 
 study nature. But how and where? Is it necessary to 
 go to Europe ? We have beauty of scenery and grandeur, 
 sufficient for a lifetime study, and far better than copy- 
 
72 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 ing the classic fragments which too often paralyze any 
 originality which might have been developed in the quiet 
 nakedness of a secluded studio. Go to Europe to become 
 an artist! As well might the son of Erin go to Connecticut 
 and expect there to become a Yankee. If that which he 
 wishes to be, be not in him, it is in vain to vary his lati- 
 tude. . . . Unless the sculptor has the image of beauty 
 within himself, and knows where in the marble he can 
 touch it with his magic chisel, he may chisel all the quarry 
 in vain. Purely ideal works of sculpture in this country 
 must go begging; for the present portrait-sculpture and 
 busts are the sculptor's sole dependence." 
 
 Yet withal he had an idea that statues and busts should 
 be something more than mere likenesses, something, if 
 possible, between the ideal and real, a likeness, but with 
 as much nobility as the subject's character would warrant, 
 not as the eyes see him, but what the artist and public 
 know him to be. As for the artist and poet, much is 
 spoilt when they find anything that actually resembles 
 their imaginings. For rich and free productivity, they 
 must dwell in an ideal world of their own creation. 
 This is in harmony with Greek ideas concerning art. The 
 Thebans enacted a law commanding artists to make their 
 copies more beautiful than the originals, if possible, and 
 never less so. In a portrait-statue there may be idealiza- 
 tion, but likeness should predominate. Judges in the 
 Olympic games allowed a statue to every conqueror, which 
 was intended to celebrate the event as much as the actor, 
 and a portrait-statue was only permitted to him who had 
 been thrice victorious. The Greeks, by strict laws, pro- 
 tected the principles of beauty, and thereby promoted its 
 
A MEMOIR 73 
 
 manifestation in the generation of the race. Accustomed 
 to see none but beautiful objects, their children were born 
 with beautiful minds in perfect bodies. 1 
 
 Dexter was ambitious also to adhere to national char- 
 acter. "But what," he asks, "represents our national 
 character? Have we a distinctive face, a peculiar cos- 
 tume ? " He would have all representative of our republi- 
 can institutions. The unadorned, the undraped marble 
 comes to be at length, in the mind of every great artist, 
 the highest conception of the aims and accomplishment of 
 sculpture. Not an ell must be covered. The excellence 
 of form must be shown in its purity. Herein it parts 
 company with painting, and ever more widely. The un- 
 draped human figure on canvas is generally wanting in 
 pudency; while in sculpture it is only the more chaste 
 because it represents not individual but abstract beauty. 
 Devoid of color, and of expression dependent upon color, 
 marble conveys no idea of fleshliness. Both its whiteness 
 and texture deprive it of any suggestion of warmth or 
 life. The painter requires all possible accessories, and 
 then does not always succeed in hiding an ugly or vacuous 
 nudity, nor in adding anything to intrinsic grace and 
 loveliness. 
 
 " The sinful painter drapes his goddess warm, 
 Because she still is naked, being dressed ; 
 The godlike sculptor will not so deform 
 Beauty, which limbs and flesh enough invest." 
 
 Dexter's efforts in sculpturing ideal or mythological 
 figures, when he had time and opportunity, gave him 
 
 1 See Lessing's Laocobn. 
 
74 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 unbounded delight. It was then he could rhapsodize and 
 completely satisfy the aspirations of his poetic nature. He 
 was not afraid to address poems to his own creations, feel- 
 ing, as all creative power must, that whatever is called 
 into life has then a separate existence quite apart from the 
 workman, and is entitled to be honored by him. There is 
 no egotism in this, but rather a recognition that the 
 sculptor himself is only a finer clay in the hands of a 
 diviner artist. His attitude is not that of a creator of his 
 own work, but merely the instrument used in its creation. 
 It is said that those who heard Tennyson read his own 
 poems, and comment on their beauty, are agreed that it was 
 such a natural, ingenuous manner in him that they felt in 
 it nothing strange or egotistical. It was consonant with 
 Dexter's simple, unsophisticated nature to enjoy the work 
 of his own hands as one does his own children, which are 
 his and not his. He has not given them life ; he has only 
 transmitted it ; and this is what the artist does. 
 
 Dexter's life as an artist was solitary ; as yet there were 
 few critics, no art journals, no schools, and few collections 
 of paintings and sculptures. The students of sculpture 
 went to Europe, and generally remained there. Painting 
 was mostly confined to portraits, and the painters, having 
 exhausted one city, betook themselves to another. I have 
 said there were no art critics. In all the notices of works of 
 art in Dexter's time which I have seen there is unstinted 
 and indiscriminate praise. There was a great desire to en- 
 courage art, and perhaps this was as good a way as any. 
 Its practical encouragement had to come from private 
 sources; neither the general government nor the States 
 afforded patronage to any of the arts, except an occasional 
 
A MEMOIR 75 
 
 order to architects. Dexter was a pioneer, and with his 
 views of the advantage of staying at home and building up 
 an American art, he was left to do the work, to carry out 
 and to illustrate his views pretty much alone. The time 
 is not yet for the appreciation of what he achieved in this 
 direction. It may be depressing to think of him toiling 
 in obscure studios in Boston and Cambridge with one 
 great idea, to show that America might be the home of 
 art, while his fellow-artists were flourishing in Rome and 
 Florence amid classic models and societies where art was 
 appreciated and honored ; but in the end it will be found 
 his way was right, and theirs mistaken. To make another 
 Apollo or Venus is superfluous. They were good in their 
 time, done once for all, representing the highest flight of 
 idealism of a given period, and had better be broken up 
 than breed ineffectual imitators. Stay at home, you who 
 think you can paint or sculpture, mould a farmer-soldier 
 at the Concord Bridge ; or, if you cannot do as much, or 
 find as stirring a subject, take an humbler one, as did J. 
 G. Brown, who has devoted his brush to the apotheosis of 
 the bootblack and newsboy of New York. If we have not 
 gods and goddesses, we have genre subjects, and a few 
 heroes and heroines, heroic scenes and events. 
 
 Having given Dexter's views sometimes in his own 
 words and sometimes in my own, I will now continue the 
 narrative of his life and works, briefly mentioning such of 
 the latter as mark the more important steps in his career. 
 
 In 1840 he made a bust of his mother; and one has to stop 
 a moment and try to think what must have been her reflec- 
 tions at seeing this son of hers, to whom she had forbidden 
 
76 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 all the arts, now a sculptor, modelling her face which he 
 had already painted. Further to invalidate her motherly 
 warnings, it only needed that he should celebrate her in 
 verse. But mothers are easily forgiven, and they forgive 
 still more readily. We know that the cause of their infre- 
 quent mistakes is excess of affection. They can be proud 
 of their disobedient sons when by contrary courses they 
 achieve distinction. 
 
 In the same year he made the bust of Marcus Morton, 
 Democratic governor of Massachusetts by one vote, Whig- 
 gery for some reason being out of usual favor. In the 
 next year he put in marble the sturdy head of John Davis 
 of Worcester, one of the most popular of Massachusetts 
 governors, as is shown from the fact that thirty duplicates 
 in plaster were ordered. He had not yet entirely given 
 up the brush, and this same year there was exhibited at 
 the Boston Athenaeum a painting of the artist's two young 
 daughters. From 1840 to 1845 I find that he made more 
 than twenty-five busts and statues of living subjects, and 
 one of the Magdalene, his first attempt in the ideal. In 
 the next year, 1846, he made a bust of another Massachu- 
 setts worthy, Governor Briggs, re-elected for seven years, 
 six other busts, and an elaborate mural monument in 
 marble, representing Grief. From the suggestions of a 
 Boston gentleman, George C. Shattuck, he undertook in 
 1847 to represent in marble a purely American subject, 
 The Backwoodsman. A sum sufficient to enable him to be- 
 gin the work was raised among his Boston patrons. When 
 completed it was exhibited at the Boston Athenaeum. After- 
 ward it was removed to the sculptor's studio, and further 
 labor was bestowed upon it. It is now at Wellesley 
 
A MEMOIR 77 
 
 College, having been presented to that institution by the 
 artist's daughter, Mrs. Anna E. Douglass. Dexter was 
 always most successful in modelling children, perhaps in 
 none more so than in those of J. P. Cushing's son and 
 daughter. Although portrait-statues, they have much 
 ideal grace and beauty. The girl is holding a book, and 
 the statue was called, when exhibited, The First Lesson ; 
 that of the little boy, who is watching a squirrel, was 
 called Observation. He next made in marble four busts of 
 other members of the Gushing family, in half size, which 
 were much commended for their classic beauty. 
 
 From 1850 to 1856 he executed twenty-one busts, besides 
 an ideal figure, The Yankee Boy, one mural monument, and 
 a dog in freestone. The busts were mostly of men and 
 women in and around Boston. In the list I observe one 
 of Miss C. F. Orne, a Cambridge poet, Anson Burlingame, 
 and several once celebrated persons. Many of these were 
 duplicated for friends, or for institutions with which they 
 happened to be connected. In this, the above period, 
 Dexter began his studies for the statue of General Joseph 
 Warren, the hero of Bunker Hill, which were completed 
 and the statue cut sometime before June, 1857. It was 
 set up and dedicated on the anniversary of the battle, June 
 17, 1857. Ten thousand people attended the dedication, 
 at which Edward Everett delivered the oration, in the 
 course of which he paid an eloquent tribute to the statue 
 and its maker. The statue is seven feet in height, and it 
 is dressed in the costume of the Revolutionary period, 
 modelled from a suit once worn by John Hancock. The 
 right hand rests on his sword, and the left is raised as 
 if addressing the patriot soldiers. In this work Dexter 
 
78 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 found what he had always longed for, a purely American 
 subject in the man and the event, a hero at his highest 
 moment and tragic death, and in every respect the most 
 memorable battle of the Revolution. 
 
 From the completion of the statue of Warren to 1859 
 he continued making portrait-busts, among which I notice 
 that of Henry Wilson, a famous anti-slavery agitator, and 
 United States Senator from Massachusetts for many terms, 
 and later Vice-President of the United States. 
 
 In 1857 his wife died; and, just before beginning a 
 tour through the United States, he married Mrs. Martha 
 Billings, of Millbury, Massachusetts. 
 
 In 1859 Dexter conceived the idea of making a com- 
 plete collection of busts of all the State governors and the 
 President, James Buchanan, forming, as it were, an official 
 gallery of the period. The Civil War was near at hand, 
 nearer indeed than anybody suspected, and thus the 
 undertaking was more hazardous than Dexter realized, 
 and at the same time more important than he could have 
 foreseen, as a record of that momentous convulsion. His 
 plan was to visit the home or official residence of State 
 governors and model them from life, cast them in plaster, 
 and, when desired, take orders for duplicates in plaster 
 or marble, and finally to secure some place and some 
 purchaser for the entire collection, so that it might be 
 shown and preserved as part of the personal history of the 
 country at that date. He also had hopes that the indi- 
 vidual States would desire to have a copy in marble of 
 their governors for that year, to be placed in their several 
 capitols. But he expected to bear, and indeed did bear, all 
 the preliminary expenses himself; and they were not light, 
 
A MEMOIR 79 
 
 considering that he had to travel twenty thousand miles 
 by rail, sea and stages, covering every State then in the 
 Union except Oregon and California, and pay his hotel bills 
 and transportation of materials for modelling and casting. 
 It was an immense and difficult enterprise, unique in plan, 
 and almost as uncertain in detail as a battle, which, how- 
 ever well ordered, is liable to unforeseen exigencies and 
 accidents. It was also fraught with some personal peril, 
 of which Dexter at the time seems to have been happily 
 unconscious. Northerners were looked upon with sus- 
 picion, and were exposed to insult and assault. 
 
 The South was ripe for rebellion, and the sculptor might 
 in some places be mistaken for a spy or an anti-slavery 
 agitator. But Dexter shared in the general blindness of 
 the time, and confided that the political party to which he 
 belonged would hold the Union peacefully together. So 
 he went forth with the trustfulness of a child, and the 
 enthusiasm which fifty years had not quenched, but only 
 made more effectual by the strengthening of his energy 
 and his will. As it turned out, his collection when com- 
 pleted had an unsuspected value of great historic interest. 
 Some of the governors who happened to be in office in 1859 
 and 1860 were remarkable men. The crisis in our civil 
 affairs gave them an opportunity to show their strength 
 or their weakness. A few of them, by foresight and 
 prudence, certainly saved the general government from 
 immediate overthrow at the outbreak of the Rebellion. 
 Several of the ablest became Lincoln's counsellors and 
 military leaders; and their general activity in furnishing 
 troops for the army, and in numerous other ways holding 
 up the hands of the hard-pressed government at Washing- 
 
80 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 ton, deserved statues of gold. But their place in history 
 was not yet won or even suspected when Dexter set out 
 on his travels to model the busts of these unconscious 
 worthies, men hitherto hardly known beyond the confines 
 of their several States, soon, however, to be distinguished 
 everywhere as the "War Governors" of the North and 
 South land. 
 
 He went forth armed with letters of general introduction 
 from Edward Everett and others, a few tools, and a barrel 
 of clay. These letters of introduction simply mentioned 
 his purpose, and commended him as a skilful artist. When 
 he had made the bust of one governor, he obtained from 
 him an introduction to the next he intended to visit. In 
 this way his path was usually made smooth, and on such 
 flattering errands courtesies were not wanting on the part 
 of State officials. Often he made his home in the families 
 of the governors while at work, and thus acquired friends, 
 and had uncommon opportunities of observing the manners, 
 customs and ideas of the better classes in different sections 
 of the country. In the progress of his work he had also 
 the advantage of the suggestions and criticisms by the 
 immediate friends of his subject, and was able to study 
 him at other times than when in the sitter's chair. He 
 seems to have endeared himself to these official families 
 wherever he went, as was to be expected in a man so 
 naturally modest, genial and intelligent. But, withal, 
 there were many trials incident to his undertaking. He 
 was never sure of finding his governor at home, or at 
 leisure to give him the necessary number of sittings. On 
 one occasion he found a governor just dead. Others were 
 rude, and had to be conciliated; and, strange as it may 
 
A MEMOIR 81 
 
 seem, some few did not think so well of themselves as to 
 wish to have perpetuated their gubernatorial heads. The 
 prevailing persuasion in such cases was that the governor 
 of an adjoining State had ordered a bust in plaster or 
 marble, or the State had ordered one for its capitol. There 
 were occasionally humorous experiences ; and besides the 
 opportunities for a close study of official personages and 
 their families and subordinates, his long journeys on the 
 rivers and lakes of the West and South and overland 
 stages furnished an ample and varied field for observation 
 of human nature in many new and strange guises. Every- 
 thing, in fact, was new and strange to him who had seldom 
 been out of New England: the scenery, the men and 
 women, their manner of life, their food, their characteris- 
 tics of speech, and their religious and political opinions. 
 In respect to the latter, he found perfect unanimity in 
 hatred of the North, and an ardent desire to be separated 
 from it. 
 
 In his home letters he exclaims much against the pre- 
 vailing diet of pork, and says that it was impossible to 
 escape in public or private houses the fumes of tobacco, 
 the tobacco chewers and whiskey drinkers. On the ques- 
 tion of slavery he was inclined to be reticent, and I gather 
 the impression he wished others to be. For the most part 
 he saw its better side, and shut his eyes upon its evils. 
 Like many other good and true men of his time, old enough 
 to have heard in their youth what our independence had 
 cost, he was willing to compromise for the sake of the 
 Union, and prepared to sacrifice almost everything for its 
 preservation. Thus his political principles and his natural 
 conciliatory spirit carried him easily through the enterprise 
 
82 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 he had undertaken. He felt the danger to art and to 
 civilization in the agitations which disturbed the country 
 during the ten years previous to the rebellion. As yet he 
 had no idea of the outcome, and little felt while travelling 
 from one Southern State to another that he was in the 
 enemy's country. He enjoyed the surprises of the scenery, 
 the novel habits of Southern and Western men, and found 
 time and opportunities for many acute philosophical 
 reflections. 
 
 I shall accompany him on his travels, condensing as 
 much as possible the record he has left in some two hun- 
 dred pages of letters and notes. I find one brief memo- 
 randum with which this part of the narrative may begin : 
 "One governor treated me like a barber come to shave 
 him, showing me no attention at all. One made a dinner 
 party for me, inviting all the distinguished men of the 
 State. Four were very generous. One declared he would 
 never sit for his bust; but he did, and proved the best 
 man I had. Nine were indifferent, but treated me with 
 respect. Sixteen did everything they could for me in 
 the way of attentions. Three were bachelors; six were 
 widowers; and two had been married three times." 
 
 In this epitome of the artist in the midst of the gover- 
 nors one has a glimpse of his difficulties and of their varied 
 dispositions. 
 
 The first bust in the group was that of James Buchanan, 
 President from 1856 to 1860; and we find Dexter in 
 Washington on a June morning in 1859, seeking for an 
 interview with the President. He was soon established 
 in a room in the White House, where he set up his clay, 
 and the President gave him daily sittings, punctually at 
 
A MEMOIR 83 
 
 eleven o'clock in the morning. No bust of him had ever 
 been made before, and he was surprised that an artist com- 
 ing from Massachusetts, where he was so unpopular, 
 should wish to make one. "We have some crazy heads," 
 Dexter remarked. "All are," said the President. He 
 describes his sitter as six feet and one inch in height, with 
 a double chin. He dined with the President on one occa- 
 sion, and appears to have been treated with great cordiality, 
 walking and talking with him; but there is no record of 
 what was said. The President talked, as great person- 
 ages are wont, on commonplaces, and he was never 
 credited with being a genius. He could not save the 
 country from secession, and did not try very hard. His 
 policy was for conciliation and compromise, for the " con- 
 quer your prejudices," as Webster had advised. 
 
 Governor Buckingham, of Connecticut, was his first sub- 
 ject among the State governors. His home was in Norwich, 
 and the artist's impressions were more of the beauty of 
 that ancient town than of the people he met. Here, as 
 elsewhere, I can only refer briefly and in their order to 
 the visits he made to the governors of the States. I am 
 taking my materials for this portion of Dexter's life from 
 diaries and family letters, in which he gives very particu- 
 lar descriptions of the situation and points of interest in 
 the towns, cities, and country through which he passed. 
 To give them in full would make a quite complete itinerary 
 of the United States. 
 
 He proceeded then to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to 
 the hospitable house of Gov. Ichabod Goodwin, the stanch 
 old Whig, owner of ships, himself long a sailor, the pride 
 of the little city by the sea. His figure was that of a solid 
 
84 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 square post; but the artist had to do only with a face 
 beaming with benevolence, firmness, and a quaint, old- 
 fashioned humor. With his honors thick upon him, and 
 driving the finest span of horses in the town, he was 
 through and through a sailor. 
 
 On arrival at his residence, the artist found the next 
 governor, Turner, of Rhode Island, absent at a clam-bake, 
 as was natural in the home of the Rhode Island clam. 
 Governor Turner was a merchant in moderate circum- 
 stances, and his house was so low studded the sculptor 
 could find no room in it suitable for modelling, so he 
 had to secure one in the hotel where he was stopping. 
 He describes his bed here as just wide enough for one 
 sleeper, but not long enough, and the room but three times 
 the width of the bed. He saw a great deal of Republi- 
 can simplicity in this town of Warren, notably in the 
 house and household of the governor. One thing inter- 
 ested him more than anything else, it was one of 
 Alexander's earliest pictures, a portrait of the governor's 
 wife. He takes his leave of this place, saying that he 
 had secured a piece of the rock on which Roger Williams 
 landed. 
 
 He is next in North Bennington, Vermont, about to 
 model the head of Governor Hall, who had a peculiar 
 face, but such as was easy to imitate. Here he finds 
 more republican simplicity in a one-storied house, and 
 two meals on the Sabbath. He already anticipates en- 
 larging his circle of acquaintance and field of obser- 
 vation in pursuing his design of making busts of all 
 the governors. At Bennington he was unusually active ; 
 besides his special work, he wrote a poem of thirty-six 
 
A MEMOIR 85 
 
 lines, and many letters, visited the Bennington battle-field, 
 and admired the mountains and the Vermont sheep. 
 
 October 11, 1859, he arrived in Albany, New York, to 
 model the bust of Gov. E. D. Morgan, " a man six feet 
 two and a Cromwell face." Mrs. Morgan was disappointed 
 in the appearance of the artist; "she expected to see him 
 in a long beard and uncombed hair, a slouch hat and 
 cloak." He was at once established in the governor's 
 mansion, and in a few days the bust was made, and was so 
 satisfactory that it was ordered in marble. From Albany 
 he journeyed to Augusta, Maine, where Governor Morrill 
 awaited him. Here he saw the new moon over his right 
 shoulder one evening, and it was followed by his usual 
 good luck, for the governor's family proved very kind 
 and agreeable; he enjoyed fine home music, and saw the 
 youngest daughter pirouette; and though the governor's 
 face was hard to take, he succeeded by keeping him read- 
 ing while he handled the clay. 
 
 Thus far he had been able to touch at the home port in 
 his travels in the nearer States. But now he starts on his 
 long journey West and South, into a new world of men and 
 manners, and is to suffer much by separation from his 
 family. In a word, he was often homesick. In Novem- 
 ber, 1859, he reaches Columbus, the capital of Ohio, where 
 he is to make the bust of Gov. Salmon P. Chase, subse- 
 quently Secretary of the Treasury in Lincoln's first Cabinet 
 and Chief-Justice of the United States. Governor Chase 
 was a tall, well-proportioned man, with a full, cheerful 
 face, and withal great dignity. He describes the domestic 
 head of the house, Miss Kate Chase, as a very remarkable 
 woman. She was then nineteen years old, accomplished, 
 
86 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 and, as she informed Dexter, unappreciated, a common 
 complaint among young men and women, but not incur- 
 able when one gets to Washington and is the daughter 
 of a high official. John Brown's body was not yet mould- 
 ering in the ground, but his gallows was erecting, and the 
 artist found all around him admirers and adherents of 
 the old hero. " Governor Chase's model men are Charles 
 Sumner, Wendell Phillips and Theodore Parker." The 
 bust was a great success; and, when finished, Dexter 
 remarked, "He will do to be President now." 
 
 From Columbus he travelled to Cincinnati, where he 
 had a bit of pleasant personal experience. Going into an 
 art store, he fell into talk with the proprietor, to whom he 
 introduced himself, found that he was known by reputa- 
 tion and that his interlocutor had seen and admired the 
 statue of General Warren; upon which Dexter makes the 
 comment that it was the "first genuine, honest praise I 
 ever received for that work." 
 
 At Frankfort, Kentucky, he modelled the bust of Gov- 
 ernor Magoffin. Here he entered for the first time the land 
 of slaves, fine stock and rich lands. The governor's house 
 was full of black servants and he had nine small children. 
 He made a dinner party for the artist, all the dignitaries 
 of the State attending. There were wonder and surprise 
 at the man who could make an image of their great 
 governor in a week, drink no wine, nor smoke, not even 
 swear. And so the clay head was ordered in marble as a 
 tribute to art and Puritanism. On leaving Frankfort, he 
 visited the Mammoth Cave, of which he wrote a very- 
 pretty description, and thought he found confirmation of his 
 theories as to how the world was made. In December 
 
A MEMOIR . 87 
 
 he arrived in Nashville, Tennessee, and began more and 
 more to note the contrasts in everything to what he had 
 left behind in New England. Here were unthrift and 
 untidiness, and lack of most comforts to which he was 
 accustomed. All menial service was performed by slaves, 
 "the happiest of human beings. If there is slavery, it 
 is the master who is in bondage." In a Nashville hotel 
 his bed had but one sheet, "the other gone to be 
 washed." Perhaps this is why he arose at five o'clock 
 in the morning and began setting up his clay. At the 
 hotel he was the chum of Governor Harris, except that 
 they slept on separate beds. But they used the same 
 washbowl and towel, the latter long and on a roller, the 
 same pair of tongs for their fires, and one candlestick for 
 both ; and when Dexter needed an extra one, he whittled 
 a candle-end to fit a bottle, and so got a light to write a 
 letter home. Everything in Tennessee at this date was in 
 a primitive condition. On Sunday he heard a preacher 
 who punctuated his brimstone sentences by squirting to- 
 bacco juice. On the morrow this same preacher was to be 
 installed as head of a college. 
 
 From Nashville, Dexter retraced his steps to Richmond, 
 Virginia, with the intention of making a bust of Governor 
 Wise. He was unfortunate enough to find him just tak- 
 ing leave of his military aids, and to hear him make a 
 bitter speech against the North. So the bust had to be 
 given up for that time, and he proceeded to Raleigh, 
 North Carolina, in search of Governor Ellis, whom he 
 describes as a gentleman, and his wife a lady, pious, 
 accomplished and saying grace at her own table. Gov- 
 ernor Ellis proved a good subject, and the artist thought 
 
88 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 his bust the best he had produced thus far. I note at 
 this point that, on leaving North Carolina, Governor Ellis 
 gave him an official letter as a protection against dangers 
 to which he might be exposed as a Northerner. This 
 was well, as he was about leaving for South Carolina 
 in search of Governor Gist. On the way he fell in with 
 two women, also going to see Governor Gist, to sue for 
 the pardon of a husband and brother. Dexter learned 
 all the particulars concerning their errand, and himself 
 introduced them, making a little plea for a pardon. 
 It was successful; and he says that having touched so 
 many governors' heads, he was glad at last to have the 
 opportunity to touch the heart of one. As a faithful 
 narrator, I must set down in a plain style these small 
 incidents, which show a man's nature as well as if told 
 more picturesquely. Art must wait on humanity. I will 
 here insert a sentence or two from one of his letters while 
 at the home of Governor Gist, as showing his method of 
 study for a bust. "I have now spent two days here; I 
 have studied the governor's features closely, the index of 
 the human heart, and fixed the impression on the clay. I 
 have already decided what the man is, and what the bust 
 will be." Perhaps it was this penetration of character 
 which enabled him to make such admirable likenesses. 
 South Carolina was for secession, and Madame Gist 
 remarked to the sculptor that the bust would be excellent 
 for Northerners to recognize her husband by when they 
 were ready to hang him. 
 
 One of the common dishes on her table was robins, 
 which Dexter could not relish, and of which he did not 
 partake, for thinking of those that were so dear and pleasant 
 
A MEMOIR 89 
 
 to him among the pear-trees in his own small garden at 
 home. One of the happy incidents of his "visit at Gover- 
 nor Gist's occurred while they were walking over the 
 plantation together. They came to a blacksmith's shop, 
 where two of the governor's slaves were making horse- 
 shoes and horseshoe nails. Dexter took the hammer and 
 rod, and showed how he used to do it ; and he also made a 
 shoe, for which Governor Gist did the striking. Finally 
 he took his departure, but not before he had read to the 
 governor and his family the whole of his diary which he 
 had kept while staying with them. He had not lately 
 received any letters from home, and began to fear they had 
 been intercepted, as by this time communications between 
 the North and South were matters of suspicion, and he 
 himself would have been in peril without passports from 
 one Southern governor to another. Nevertheless he 
 bravely registered himself from Boston whenever he 
 stopped at a hotel. 
 
 From South Carolina, Dexter journeyed on to Milledge- 
 ville, Georgia, by stages and cars, the later going at the 
 same pace as the former. At a way station he bought 
 two Northern apples, and wanted to talk with them, they 
 so reminded him of home. En route into Georgia, his 
 trunks went astray, so that when he arrived and found 
 Governor Brown ready to sit for his bust, he was obliged 
 to go first to a pit and dig his clay, and then mould the 
 bust with his fingers. Truly, as he says, he did not carry 
 his art in a trunk. His diary of the days in Georgia is 
 mostly filled with descriptions of the country, and praises 
 of Governor Brown and his pleasant family. He was 
 treated here as a gentleman by a gentleman, and went on 
 
90 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 his way to Florida rejoicing that the heart of man is not 
 changed by latitude and longitude. 
 
 At a station called Miconopy, in Florida, he was still 
 twelve miles from the residence of Governor Perry. This 
 was traversed by stage-coach, and it was night when he 
 arrived, and the family was in bed. The more em- 
 barrassing was the situation when he learned that the 
 governor had not received his letter, which, as usual, 
 he had sent on in advance. But Southern hospitality 
 could be trusted to make a bed and light a fire for an 
 unexpected guest. His experiences and observations in 
 Florida are interesting in themselves, but all the more as 
 showing how alert his mind and eye were ; and it would 
 be instructive to quote them had I the space at my dis- 
 posal. But I am reluctantly compelled to abridge much 
 that would be of interest to readers. 
 
 From Florida, he retraced his steps through South 
 Carolina to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, where 
 he made a bust of the State executive, Governor Moore. 
 Thence he steamed down the Alabama River, and up the 
 Mississippi, bound for Jackson, Mississippi, where he put 
 Governor Pettus into clay, and received an order from the 
 State for a marble copy. 
 
 Governor Wickliffe, of Louisiana, was his next subject, 
 in whose family of daughters, cousins and aunts he ap- 
 pears to have taken great delight, telling them about his 
 theories of creation, which they thought most interesting 
 and heterodox, and teaching them how to make a rice 
 pudding. Next he starts for Texas, to pay his respects to 
 Gov. Sam Houston. It was a long, tedious journey across 
 the Gulf to Galveston, and on the way the steamer en- 
 
A MEMOIR 91 
 
 countered a norther. They were steering due west by the 
 new moon and the evening star. Then followed a long 
 stage ride of one hundred and thirty-five miles to Austin, 
 through sand and scrub oak. Dexter thought Sam 
 Houston a great man, and such he was, great in his 
 place and time, and a giant in stature. It was probably 
 the first time any artist had penetrated Texas. While at 
 work on the bust of the governor, Dexter was constantly 
 surrounded by a crowd of curious spectators, talking, 
 smoking and wondering. He completed his model in two 
 or three days by working early and late, for he began to be 
 hungry for home, toward which, when he should leave 
 Texas, he would be approaching. Having now seen so 
 much land, and heard so much in praise of the peculiar 
 advantages of different places, and especially in Texas, of 
 its extent, he came to the conclusion that one place was 
 about as good as another; "that a man with a good farm 
 in New England is as well off as he would be with a good 
 farm anywhere else ; and a man with a poor farm, or none 
 at all, is better off! " 
 
 In Texas, he found no sweet milk, no meat but pork, 
 and Northern apples ten dollars a barrel. And yet there 
 were herds of cattle numberless, and sheep whitened the 
 wide plains. A dirk in the belt and a pipe in the mouth 
 were at this period the insignia of the true Texan. 
 
 In due time he arrived in New Orleans. It was March, 
 1860, and the Carnival season. He saw the processions 
 and masquerades, and enough to satisfy his taste for the 
 picturesque, and more than enough to disgust his sense of 
 the proprieties. His next objective point was Little Rock, 
 Arkansas, where he was to meet Gov. Elias N. Conway, 
 
92 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 whom lie discovered in bed ; in three days and twelve hours 
 he had him ready to stand up awake on his pedestal. 
 
 Leaving Little Rock, he once more reached the Missis- 
 sippi River, and this time put it in "lines." At Helena, 
 on a wharf -boat, he saw fastened to its side a long pole, and 
 on it a placard to this effect: "This is the rail on which 
 the people of Helena rode the Abolitionists." He was 
 now going up the Mississippi to St. Louis, for the purpose 
 of modelling the governor of Missouri, but, hearing of the 
 death of Governor Bissell, of Illinois, he changed his plan 
 and hurried on to Springfield. He found the Capitol and 
 everybody in mourning. He says of himself at this point: 
 " I have taken such an interest in these governors that it 
 almost seems as if no one could mourn the decease of any 
 one of them more than myself." He established himself 
 in the house of the late governor, worked on the bust in 
 his chamber, and thought that so he would be nearer to the 
 deceased man than elsewhere. This gives an unexpected 
 glimpse of Dexter's fine perceptions in his relying upon 
 them to gather from the intangible atmosphere of a man's 
 daily surroundings a knowledge of his inner being. But 
 there were difficulties in modelling a bust from daguerreo- 
 types, and those not of a recent date. Besides these, his 
 only other guide was the dead governor's hat. In the 
 end, after the three hardest days' labor he had ever done, 
 he succeeded in obtaining a likeness which pleased every 
 one except Mrs. Bissell. Nor was this an exceptional 
 instance of his sensitiveness, for he remarked to a friend 
 on one occasion that he was so keenly receptive to the 
 spiritual atmosphere of his sitters that if one chanced to 
 be mercenary or unprincipled he was unable to drive away 
 
A MEMOIR 93 
 
 the antagonistic and disagreeable impressions produced, 
 which proved a serious hindrance to his work; whereas, 
 if the sitter had a lofty, fine nature, he felt exalted and 
 seemed to catch visions of beauty hovering about the 
 head. 
 
 On April 2d he arrived in Jefferson City, Missouri, 
 and made a bust of Governor Stewart, which he thought 
 one of his best. Again he was on the Mississippi River, 
 and, by the time his journey ended, he had traversed 
 every navigable mile of it. He stopped at Keokuk, Iowa, 
 expecting to meet Governor Lowe there; but he was at 
 Davenport, to which place he journeyed on, and there 
 caught and modelled his governor. The Wisconsin gov- 
 ernor was in Washington, and the artist had to omit him 
 for the time being; and though he went to St. Paul, 
 Minnesota, there is no account of his doings there, nor in 
 Michigan, nor Indiana. 
 
 From April to June he was in pursuit of the governors 
 of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New 
 Jersey. National affairs were approaching a crisis, and the 
 State officials were moving about, holding consultations, 
 now at their own capitals and then at Washington; and 
 Dexter found it difficult to make them name or keep their 
 appointments. He had many amusing experiences, as, for 
 instance, in Milford, Delaware, where, although bearing a 
 letter of introduction from the governor to his wife, the 
 timid woman would not give him a room in which to 
 set up his clay until her husband should arrive. How- 
 ever, she cooked him a dinner of bacon and eggs with her 
 own hands. After a year and some months of a chiefly 
 pork diet, he came to the conclusion that the South and 
 
94: HENRY DEXTER 
 
 West would never flourish in strength or morals until they 
 gave up Mr. Pig, Mistress Tobacco, and Sir Bourbon. 
 
 By dint of much travelling, he succeeded in catching 
 Governor Packer of Pennsylvania, Governor Hicks of 
 Maryland, and Governor Newell of New Jersey. Gover- 
 nor Randall, of Wisconsin, he overtook in Washington, and 
 modelled him in four sittings. At the same time and 
 place he found Governor Wise, of Virginia, began his bust, 
 but found him so violent in temper that no clay could 
 stand it, and so he dismissed him. However, the bust 
 was afterwards completed. Governor Wise, who had but 
 lately hung John Brown, was in high feather, and " wished 
 now to hang all Northerners, especially their governors, 
 and make a St. Bartholomew's Day for their clergy." 
 Dexter describes him as a man who had chewed tobacco 
 4 since he was five years old, thin and angular, and some- 
 what resembling the knife and fork stuck up beside plates 
 at country hotels. 
 
 On June 24, 1860, we come to the close of his adventures, 
 travels and labors in the enterprise of securing the like- 
 nesses of the State governors just before the secession of 
 the Southern States. He sums up his reflections on this 
 undertaking in these words : " I have been reflecting upon 
 the remarkable exemption I have had from accidents dur- 
 ing all these thousand miles I have travelled, and from 
 perils seen and unseen, and feel that I have been protected 
 by Divine mercy. I have not carried pistol or dirk about 
 me, nor had them nearer than in the pockets of my fellow- 
 passengers in stage-coaches and steamers. I have never 
 hesitated to walk the streets in any Southern or Western 
 city at any hour of the night or day when business made 
 
A MEMOIR 95 
 
 it necessary for me to do so, and I have never been insulted 
 by look, word, or action, unless by Governor Wise; but, 
 on the contrary, I have been treated with kindness and 
 civility. I have not lost a single hour on account of 
 sickness." 
 
 He might have added that he had seen his own country 
 more thoroughly and under better auspices than any man 
 of his time, and though not wholly conscious of it, at a 
 period of great historical importance. His lips were sealed 
 on much that it would have been interesting to have 
 heard, as his letters were liable to be opened, and he had 
 to be cautious. He hints in more than one place that he 
 heard secrets not to be written; and these must have been 
 such as he gathered in confidential talks with State officials 
 in regard to the questions already violently agitating the 
 whole country. Whatever he gained in the practice of 
 portrait-sculpture, which generally had to be done under 
 the most unfavorable circumstances, in other matters 
 he had rare opportunities for the study of human nature 
 and observation of climate, productions, scenery, rivers, 
 geology, cities, and towns, and all that meets the eye in 
 new lands. To these he was awake, and was constantly 
 watchful how men lived, not only in governors' houses, 
 but in others; their employments, wages, food, rents, 
 prices of land and domestic animals, not less than their 
 habits and opinions. He always found somebody to talk 
 with on land or water, somebody who could tell him 
 something and answer questions. When alone, his pen 
 was busy in writing out in prose or verse descriptions of 
 what he saw. It was not always that he could find in 
 hotels or steamers a table to write upon; a washstand, 
 
96 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 window-ledge, or box sufficed. He never failed to attend 
 some church wherever the Sabbath found him, Baptist, 
 Methodist, or Episcopalian; he had respect for various 
 forms of religion, and in their places of worship he took 
 note of the special characteristics in different communities 
 in the Southern and Western States. I must record that he 
 preferred his native New England to any other part of the 
 country, and his own home to the royal houses of State 
 governors. His heart remained untravelled; his mind 
 became broadened, quickened and more philosophical. 
 
 What was to be the fruit of all this labor in making the 
 busts of thirty-one governors? His chief hope was to 
 have the complete collection gathered at Washington for 
 preservation as a historical marble record of the years 1859 
 and 1860. He had made the collection at his own expense, 
 and hoped for some return. The war came on, which 
 made the busts in some sense more valuable, especially at 
 the moment when there was a danger that these governors 
 would be the last of a united country. Not only are 
 laws silent inter arma, but art is in abeyance, and the 
 sculptor's hopes were extinguished. The collection was 
 exhibited for a short time in the Doric Hall of the Massa- 
 chusetts State House, until the busts of the governors of 
 the Southern States became obnoxious to the public and in 
 some danger of being destroyed, when they were removed 
 to the sculptor's own gallery. The collection is now at 
 the Smithsonian Institute at Washington. Those that 
 were transferred to marble are in private houses and in 
 various public buildings and institutions of the different 
 States. I ought to mention that, seeing no prospect of 
 purchase by the general government, he made some efforts 
 
A MEMOIR 97 
 
 to have the individual States order their governors in 
 marble. I find among his papers an appeal of this kind 
 to his own State, in which he refers to the value of the 
 remains of classic art, and rightly estimates the impor- 
 tance that future times may attach to the busts of public 
 men at the opening of the war. 
 
 In vain were appeals for appropriations of public money 
 while the loyal States were straining every resource to 
 equip and send to the front their quotas of troops. Dexter 
 gave up the attempt, and appears never again to have 
 renewed it. He retired to his studio and executed such 
 orders as were offered. During the next ten years he 
 made no less than thirty-three busts, cutting them all 
 in marble, and one ideal work, The Nymph of the Ocean. 
 Among the busts were those of Longfellow and Agassiz, 
 and they are as excellent as any he ever made. Both 
 these men in their maturity had striking heads, easy of 
 recognition in any assembly. The artist's hand, now at 
 the zenith of its power, rendered them with all their 
 natural strength and noble pose, and at the same time 
 caught somewhat of that inward spirit which made them 
 what they were. I find so just and acute a notice of the 
 Longfellow bust at the time when first exhibited, in 1868, 
 that I insert it here. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE, Nov. 6, 1868. 
 
 MY DEAR Sm, I want to express to you my very great ad- 
 miration for your bust of Mr. Longfellow. As a portrait-bust, 
 it could not be better. It not only satisfies one's memory of his 
 countenance, but it recalls details of feature and expression too 
 minute to be remembered distinctly, yet recognized the moment 
 they are seen. Yet more, it gives the history of his face. 
 
 7 
 
98 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 I first knew him when he was a slender young man, with 
 almost feminine grace and beauty of countenance, but with no 
 majesty or power. Before I saw your bust I should have said 
 that he had nothing of his early face in his present countenance. 
 But you have caught it lurking under those grand and massive 
 features, and have brought it into the light, so that his youth 
 came back to my remembrance while I was looking at your 
 marble more vividly than it had for all these years in which I 
 have been living with him at Cambridge. Now this, I think, is 
 a mark of a genuine art work. A mere copyist on canvas or in 
 the marble may represent in likeness the countenance as it is ; 
 but only the artist can penetrate to the half-buried traits of the 
 countenance that was. 
 
 For idealizing, Mr. Longfellow left you very little room. 
 But one who had never seen him might easily take your bust as 
 embodying an artist's ideal of an epic or tragic poet, and I am 
 sure that there could be no question of the grandeur of the idea 
 or of the consummate skill of its embodiment. 
 
 I heartily congratulate you on your eminent success and am, 
 my dear sir, 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 A. P. PEABODT. 
 
 HENRY DEXTER, Esq. 
 
 I find among his papers what was probably his last 
 appeal for an opportunity to devote himself to purely 
 ideal works. It is in a private letter to Hon. Samuel 
 Hooper, in 1871, at that time, if I mistake not, a member 
 of Congress from Boston. It was a confidential letter, and 
 in it he speaks from his heart. It is a confession of his 
 achievements, his aspirations, his disappointments. A 
 touch of sadness lingers in it, as if, after all his struggles 
 
A MEMOIR 99 
 
 and labors, his modelling of so many of the illustrious 
 obscure, little were left but a sigh of regret. 
 
 " After leaving you this morning, it occurred to me it might 
 be well and proper to say in a note a few things I might or 
 might not say at our next interview. 
 
 " Every man who undertakes anything must have some assur- 
 ance of his own ability to do it. You have this assurance. I 
 have it. When I came to Boston thirty-five years ago I had 
 the assurance I could make a bust and I made it. I had 
 that same feeling that I could make a statue and I made The 
 Binney Child at Mount Auburn. This was the first marble 
 statue in the United States made by a native American artist 
 who had not been to Europe. There were no resident sculptors 
 here then, and there never had been. I also had the assurance 
 that I could make a marble statue of a Backwoodsman, and I 
 made it, overcoming difficulties enough to discourage and dis- 
 hearten any man. It was the same with the statue of General 
 Warren at Bunker Hill. I have made two hundred busts. 
 Fearing the public would think I could make nothing else, I 
 produced The Ocean Nymph. I have had no assistance, no 
 foreign aid. You have not seen me in the streets idle. I have 
 now but a few years left at most. The work of my life I have 
 most desired to do I have not done. I know I could do it had 
 I the means to pay my expenses while at work. Could I sell 
 my Backwoodsman or my Nymph I could meet expenses, and 
 devote myself to ideal sculpture. My Governors were a total 
 loss financially, after eighteen months' time spent in the under- 
 taking and twenty thousand miles of travel. It impoverished 
 me for years. I did hope to be thought of in Washington, and 
 that some of the orders for public works of art would have been 
 awarded me. But no, not one. I feel now in a hurry, for the 
 day cometh with all men when labor must cease, the wearied 
 
100 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 hand must rest. But I cannot labor without pay, without 
 orders, at this tune of life. I feel strong now, and I wish to be 
 busy, that my decline of life may be free from want, or the fear 
 of want" 
 
 This is the old cry of artist and poet for the means and 
 the opportunity to do some work of noble note however 
 long deferred. 
 
 " Old age hath yet his honor and his toil ; 
 Death closes all; but something ere the end, 
 Some work of noble note may yet be done 
 Not unbecoming men that strove with gods." 
 
 In the above letter he makes allusion to The Nymph. 
 This was his last ideal work. It was exhibited in Boston 
 in 1870, and won much commendation from the newspaper 
 critics and correspondents. The Nymph is of the water, 
 a young Thetis, represented as reclining on the seashore. 
 She leans upon a shell, and there are other emblems of 
 the sea. The face and head are modelled on Greek lines. 
 The half human and half divine are blended in the expres- 
 sive mythological manner of the classic artists. Several 
 poems were addressed to The Nymph, one by the sculptor 
 himself, trying to convey in words what his chisel silently 
 proclaimed. There was another containing some fine lines, 
 a few of which are here given : 
 
 " The silver sands that press her white feet fondly, 
 The waves that linger with caressing touches, 
 Claim not her eye or thought or conscious presence. 
 Her lip is touched by tender, tremulous sadness, 
 Forecasting human love and human sorrow ; 
 Her far gaze searches o'er the mighty waters 
 
A MEMOIR 101 
 
 To where Fate's deeper mystery broods and shadows; 
 
 All lies before, but yet beyond her vision. 
 
 Hid is the will of Zeus, the craft of Cheiron, 
 
 The faith of Peleus ; and that mortal marriage, 
 
 With all its sorrowful, lamenting sequence, 
 
 And all the glory of the reconciler : 
 
 Veiled is the destiny that waits her coming." 
 
 Among Dexter's notes concerning The Nymph is an 
 account of interviews with Oliver Wendell Holmes and 
 Longfellow, who called to see the statue. Holmes under- 
 took to criticise it from an anatomical point of view, and 
 showed a bit of his irresistible humor in stating the exact 
 age of The Nymph in years and months. But here is the 
 note just as I find it : 
 
 "Dr. O. W. Holmes called. I showed him the busts first 
 He was very quick to recognize the likenesses. Then I un- 
 covered the statue ; he sat and looked in silence ; after some 
 five minutes he said, ' A girl ; a Yankee girl ; fourteen years old 
 and seven months ; the face is a portrait ; it is a nymph ; a girl 
 upon the beach ; it is not a Grecian nymph, for the face is not 
 Grecian.' 
 
 "I saw where he was; thus far I had said nothing, but 
 then I explained to him my idea and asked him to be free and 
 say anything that occurred to him in the way of criticism. He 
 drew my attention to the right breast of the figure, to the fold 
 between the breast and arm ; to the direction of the second toe 
 from the third; to the muscle of the right shoulder; and he 
 criticised these points a little, but would not say decidedly that 
 they were not right. The back he thought was very good ; the 
 vertebrae well marked, and the figure as a whole remarkably 
 chaste, beautiful and graceful. I felt convinced that he was 
 right in his criticism, and the next day changed the points on 
 
102 HENEY DEXTER 
 
 the figure that he had indicated, and by a few minutes' work the 
 face was altered to a Grecian type. 
 
 "The next day Longfellow called to see the statue. He 
 knew what he was to see, and so his visit was different from that 
 of Dr. Holmes. Longfellow thought the face was Grecian, suffi- 
 ciently so to answer to the name of Thetis. I was exceedingly 
 pleased with the changes I had made in the face, although I said 
 nothing to him in reference to them. He made some half-way 
 criticisms and then withdrew them; evidently tried to find 
 something that he could say was not right, but had to give it 
 up and fell into the mood of admiration. He said the figure 
 was graceful and remarkable for chasteness of attitude. 
 
 " Professor Sophocles called also to see the statue. He said 
 it was a Venus just come up out of the sea ; a young woman 
 about eighteen ; he thought the figure embodied perfect inno- 
 cence ; he did not suggest anything to change thought, if 
 attempted, it would be more liable to injure than improve." 
 
 It is pleasant to think Dexter was much appreciated, 
 while he lived, by the Boston and Cambridge public. 
 Self-made men have a certain advantage over those who 
 have gone through regular courses in the interest they 
 excite. Yet self-made is too often a brag, a cover for 
 essential mediocrity, as we observe sometimes in the career 
 of public men. But the true self-made is the only self of 
 real value. This consists, as in the case of Dexter, of an 
 early ideal and an industrious, unfaltering pursuit of it to 
 the end of life. He tried to perfect himself in his several 
 occupations from boyhood to old age. He broadened him- 
 self by study, by travel, by constant use of his pen in set- 
 ting down his observations and speculations ; and his higher 
 moods found frequent expression in verse. This was the 
 
A MEMOIR 103 
 
 self he made out of the being God had given him, and the 
 aids and, I may add, the hindrances of fortune and environ- 
 ment. His example is worth more than all the art in the 
 world. Knowing him as I did, and as I have tried to 
 picture him, I hold the man dearer and more illustrious 
 than any of his works. If the same be not confessed of 
 all the celebrated, their fame is of little worth. Let me 
 know the man behind his work, said Goethe. 
 
 Knowing him thus, one admires the farm boy, the black- 
 smith, as much as the sculptor. None of his talents was 
 cultivated at the expense of another, or at the sacrifice of 
 any of the common duties of home and citizenship. His 
 artistic temperament was well balanced by many conserva- 
 tive instincts and by saving common-sense. Very striking 
 in him was the absence of the current outbreaks of radical- 
 ism, and he had no taste for clubs, for wine or Vagabondia. 
 He went to the church of his choice regularly, and ac- 
 cepted most of its tenets. He was reverent toward all 
 forms of religion, and observant of good in men rather than 
 the evil. As he appealed to the best in human nature, he 
 found it. Consequently his usual mood was joyous and 
 hopeful. He loved conversation and congenial companion- 
 ship. You could express no sentiment or idea too elevated 
 for his sympathy. He listened to the outbursts of youth- 
 ful exuberance with admiration, and he 'could on occasion 
 outstrip us all in the far flights of fancy and speculation. 
 Glad was I, for one, to find him ignorant of most of the 
 things taught at Cambridge. He sometimes regretted this, 
 being unconscious of the charm of his own natural gen- 
 ius, so free from the incubus of collegiate learning, which 
 often makes men only the more narrow and unintelligent. 
 
104 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 There are many things it is better not to know. Nor can 
 there be much regret that the artist found few opportuni- 
 ties for ideal marbles, seeing that hitherto such works 
 have been but another name for imitation of classic models, 
 imitation of the inimitable and of divinities in whom we 
 no longer believe. Just what would be the results of an 
 endeavor to put into sculpture our American beliefs, our 
 costumes, our historic or romantic events, and whatever in 
 our national life is essentially characteristic, it will be time 
 to determine when it is attempted. But the portrait-busts 
 left by Dexter I foresee will be sometime of more value as 
 a record of the period in which he lived, and of contempo- 
 rary men, than any ideal statuary. And if ever the time 
 comes when the gulf between the so-called fine and useful 
 arts shall be abridged, beauty and utility become one and 
 the same, then it may be that Dexter's axes, so conscien- 
 tiously and proudly made, or his shoe-knives with a razor- 
 edge, will be remembered and seen to be as beautiful as 
 his best statue. 
 
A MEMOIR 105 
 
 V 
 
 THE CLOSING YEARS 
 
 " TN going from one room to another there is a point in 
 A the doorway where we are not conscious of either 
 room." This is a sentence from the artist's philosophical 
 speculations regarding the passage from life to death. I 
 use it to illustrate the continuity of his labors as he 
 descended from middle life to old age, where the long past 
 merged gently and unconsciously into the few remaining 
 years. He labored on, happy in memory, comfortable in 
 his outward life, and much pleased with a new home, 
 which in 1873 he had made in Cambridge, not far from 
 the University grounds. But he still kept his studio in 
 Cambridgeport, where he worked every day as usual. 
 The exertion of walking back and forth was perhaps too 
 much for his strength. It was hard for him to realize that 
 he was not as vigorous as ever. In his old studio old 
 voices communed with him, spirits of the past attended 
 him, and the forms he had wrought out in anguish or 
 joy looked down upon him from his gallery. There he 
 was at home ; its silence was soothing, its labor, from long 
 habit, necessary and grateful. He was fortunate in being 
 able to finish his very last order, a bust of a Mr. Taylor of 
 Boston. He was lately deceased, and Dexter worked from 
 photographs. 
 
106 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 When his day's work was done, he enjoyed receiving 
 and making calls ; and all who knew him delighted in his 
 society. In the Centennial year, 1876, he had applied for 
 space to exhibit specimens of his work at the Philadelphia 
 Exposition; but, his health beginning to fail, he found it 
 impossible to attend to the necessary details, and aban- 
 doned the project. His illness was long and at times pain- 
 ful, preventing him from his customary labors and duties 
 for many months ; but through it all he was cheered and 
 sustained by the sympathy of friends, and the faithful 
 attention of his wife, who survived him, and was untiring 
 in her devotion to him in his later years and through his 
 long illness. 
 
 His love of his country, which was one of his strongest 
 and steadiest traits, made him deeply interested in the 
 Centennial Celebration. He could not expatriate himself 
 at a time when other lovers of art thought it was the 
 price to be paid for opportunities and success. It was 
 therefore a great disappointment when he found himself 
 unable to exhibit at Philadelphia that which represented 
 the work of an American sculptor in his native land. For 
 some time before the Exposition, in the intervals when 
 released from the extreme sufferings of his disease, he 
 amused himself in writing a Centennial poem. It consists 
 of about twelve hundred lines descriptive of the gathering 
 of all the nations, Europe, Asia and Africa, with 
 their products, their animals, even to the smallest insects, 
 upon the coast of England, whence they sail for America. 
 Then follows an account of the assembling of the people, 
 and their several belongings, from every part of North and 
 South America, and their reception at Philadelphia. The 
 
A MEMOIR 107 
 
 poem is graphic in its word-painting, and really rather 
 more prefigures in its scope and variety the Chicago 
 Columbian Fair than the Centennial. This was his last 
 effort with his pen. Pen and chisel were laid aside, and 
 those hands which had never rested for sixty years were 
 folded in eternal peace. 
 
 He died June 23, 1876, being then within three months 
 of seventy years of age. He left no unfinished works in 
 marble. His metaphysical speculations, to which I have 
 alluded, were left incomplete, and not in a state to present 
 to the reader. Many of their conclusions are novel and 
 bold, and generally in conflict with the most modern scien- 
 tific researches. He theorized by the light of the imagina- 
 tion, which often traverses reason and fact; on the other 
 hand, it is as often prophetic of new ideas and discoveries. 
 His rigid conservatism in politics and religion allowed 
 itself compensation and freer play with pen and chisel. If 
 in any way a man attains complete inward freedom, it is 
 in the occasional hours when he feels inspired to express 
 himself through verse. The true muse hangs no badge of 
 sect or party on the doors she enters. She is playful, or 
 she is serious ; but her play is not wanton, nor her sobriety 
 gloom. Both are altogether wholesome and elevating, and 
 keep a man, as they did keep Dexter, always young and 
 ingenuous in spirit. This outlet through writing poetry 
 was his faithful companion and playmate throughout his 
 arduous and laborious life, giving him moments of true 
 pleasure and repose. 
 
 Look into his studio and observe the sculptor in his 
 dusty smock and paper cap, weary with hours of chiselling ; 
 he stops, puts his tools on the block, goes to his little 
 
108 HENRY DEXTER 
 
 table, where are always paper and pencil, and rests and 
 refreshes himself with a verse, or an added page to his 
 philosophy. At the end of the day go home with him; 
 there he is full of talk and geniality, is gay with the gay, 
 thinks with thinkers, is fond of children and his garden, 
 admires beautiful women and noble natures. This was 
 the man. 
 
 And here transcribing one of his later poems, which 
 seems to be the impassioned expression of a soul whose 
 view of the great Spirit of the universe becomes nearer 
 and clearer as it is about to take its farewell of earthly 
 things and endeavors to give utterance to an inexpressible 
 theme, I leave him to the contemplation of the reader. 
 
 God ! my spirit calleth to its cause ; 
 
 Soul ! as that is which in me 
 
 In its spirit seeketh thee ; 
 Yet not the word but conscious laws. 
 
 Word?' What word can e'er my spirit lead? 
 
 What the drop can ever show 
 
 Kindred drop by which to know 
 God, that source from which we all proceed? 
 
 That which God is, language ever veils ; 
 
 Line on line, fold over fold, 
 
 Ever telling, never told ; 
 In vain, in vain ; no tongue reveals. 
 
 God ! Then sounds deep the soul-struck lyre 
 Stringed with human nerve and heart ; 
 Yet then only can impart 
 
 Some spark from that celestial fire. 
 
A MEMOIR 109 
 
 Nay, touched of God his spirit speaks, 
 Grants us now responsive sound 
 Though all human tongues confound 
 
 Blest ! Supreme ! feels the thought it seeks. 
 
CATALOGUE OF THE WORKS 
 
 OP 
 
 HENRY DEXTER, SCULPTOR 
 
 Arranged in the order of their execution. When marked by an asterisk 
 it signifies that the works were carried into marble. 
 
 1. 1835. The first essay in clay, bust of F. W. Lane of Boston. 
 
 2. 1836. Bust of Col. Samuel Swett of Boston.* Library at New- 
 
 buryport, Mass. 
 
 3. 1836. Bust of Rev. Hubbard Winslow of Boston. 
 
 4. 1836. Bust of Peter Harvey, Esq. Boston. 
 
 5. 1836. Bust of Rev. Mr. Newell. Boston. 
 
 6. 1836. Bust of William Ward, Esq. Boston. 
 
 7. 1837. Bust of Rev. Dr. Rufus Anderson. 
 
 8. 1837. Bust of Hon. Samuel A. Eliot.* Boston. Family. 
 
 9. 1837. Bust of Dr. Winslow Lewis. Boston. 
 
 10. 1837. Bust of Mrs. Winslow Lewis. Boston. 
 
 11. 1837. Bust of Judge Jackson. Brookline. 
 
 12. 1838. Bust of Miss Rogers. Portland, Maine. 
 
 13. 1838. Bust of Dr. Solomon Keep. Boston. 
 
 14. 1838. Bust of Rev. E. M. Magoun. 
 
 1 5. 1838. Bust of Miss Ellen Tree.* Colonel Perkins. 
 
 16. 1839. Statue of Miss Emily Binney, known as "The Binney 
 
 Child." * Mount Auburn. 
 
 17. 1839. Bust of Miss Harriet J. Dexter, daughter of the sculptor. 
 
 18. 1840. Bust of Dr. Ingalls. Boston. 
 
 19. 1840. Bust of Miss Anna E. Dexter, youngest daughter of the 
 
 sculptor. 
 
112 CATALOGUE OF THE 
 
 20. 1840. Bust of Mrs. Alvan Clark. Cambridge. 
 
 21. 1840. Bust of the sculptor's mother. 
 
 22. 1840. Bust of Gov. Marcus Morton. 
 
 23. 1840. Bust of B. B. Thatcher. Boston. 
 
 24. 1840. Bust of William Andrews, actor. 
 
 25. 1840. Bust of Finn, actor. 
 
 26. 1841. Bust of Gov. John Davis.* Boston Athenaeum. 
 
 27. 1841. Bust of Thomas B. Curtis.* Boston. Family. 
 
 28. 1841. Painting. The Artist's Daughters. 
 
 29. 1841. Bust of William Loring.* Boston. Family. 
 
 30. 1841. Bust of Miss Caroline Dexter. 
 
 31. 1842. Bust of Charles Dickens. 
 
 32. 1842. Bust of Jonas Chickering.* Boston. Family. 
 
 33. 1842. Statue of Miss E. Winchester.* Family. 
 
 34. 1842. Bust of Francis C. Gray.* Boston. 
 
 35. 1842. Model of a hand of Miss Anna E. Dexter.* 
 
 36. 1842. Bust of Hon. Theodore Lyman.* Family. Also dupli- 
 
 cated for the Horticultural Society and the Farm School 
 at Westborough. 
 
 37. 1842. Bust of Gov. S. S. Armstrong.* Family. 
 
 38. 1843. Bust of Miss Eunice Richardson. Salem. 
 
 39. 1843. Study of a foot. 
 
 40. 1843. Bust of Mr. Charles Lincoln. Charlestown. Warden of 
 
 the State Prison. 
 
 41. 1843. Bust of Commodore Alexander Mackenzie.* New York. 
 
 Boston Athenaeum. 
 
 42. 1843. Bust of John D. Williams.* Boston. Duplicated in 
 
 marble four times. 
 
 43. 1843. Bust of a baby. Mrs. Eaton. Cambridge. 
 
 44. 1843. Bust of Miss Charlotte Nichols. Cambridge. 
 
 45. 1844. Bust of William Lawrence.* Family. 
 
 46. 1844. Bust of Jencks Dexter. Kansas. 
 
 47. 1844. Bust of Miss Mills. South Carolina. 
 
 48. 1844. Duplicate bust of Amos Lawrence.* 
 
 49. 1844. Bust of Samuel P. Allen.* Cambridge. Family. 
 
 50. 1844. Bust of Tasker Swett.* Boston. Family. 
 
 51. 1845. Bust of Miss Sophia Studley. Cambridge. 
 
WORKS OF HENRY DEXTER 113 
 
 52. 1845. Bust of a child.* Cambridge. S. P. Allen. 
 
 53. 1845. Statue. Mary Magdalene. 
 
 54. 1845. Model of a hand of Miss Harriet Dexter. 
 
 55. 1846. Statuette. A study. 
 
 56. 1846. Bust of Gov. Briggs.* Pittsfield, Mass. Family. 
 
 57. 1846. Bust of Hon. John Pickering.* American Academy of 
 
 Arts and Sciences. 
 
 58. 1846. Bust of a child. 
 
 59. 1846. Bust of a child of L. Stanwood.* 
 
 60. 1846. Bust of a child of N. A. Thompson.* 
 
 61. 1846. Mural monument with figure of Grief.* In church at 
 
 Portolago. South Carolina. 
 
 62. 1846. Painting. The Marys at the Sepulchre. 
 
 63. 1847. The Backwoodsman.* Marble statue, heroic size. 
 
 Wellesley College. 
 
 64. 1847. Bust of Edmund Dwight.* Mrs. Parkman. 
 
 65. 1847. Bust of Alexander Hamilton.* Boston. 
 
 66. 1847. Bust of John Chase.* Chicopee. 
 
 67. 1848. Statue. The First Lesson.* Portrait-statue of a daugh- 
 
 ter of John P. Gushing. Watertown. 
 
 68. 1848. Boy and Squirrel.* Portrait-statue of a son of John P. 
 
 Gushing. Watertown. 
 
 69. 1849. Bust of John G. Gushing.* 
 
 70. 1849. Bust of Robert M. Gushing.* 
 
 71. 1849. Bust of Thomas F. Gushing.* 
 
 72. 1849. Bust of Marie Louisa Gushing.* 
 
 73. 1850. Portrait of Charles Valentine. Cambridge. The last 
 
 painting executed by the sculptor. 
 
 74. 1850. Bust of William Hayward.* Charleston, S. C. 
 
 75. 1850. Bust of a child.* E. D. Goodrich. Cambridge. 
 
 76. 1850. Bust of Mrs. S. P. Allen.* Cambridge. 
 
 77. 1851. Statue of Frank Gardner.* Mount Auburn. 
 
 78. 1851. Bust of Hon. WiUiam Appleton.* Boston. 
 
 79. 1852. Bust of Dr. John C. Warren.* Boston. 
 
 80. 1852. Bust of Dr. John C. Warren.* Duplicated in marble. 
 
 81. 1852. Bust of Robert G. Shaw.* Boston. 
 
 82. 1852. Bust of Robert G. Shaw.* Duplicated in marble. 
 
 8 
 
114 CATALOGUE OF THE 
 
 83. 1852. Bust of Hon. John C. Gray.* Boston. 
 
 84. 1852. Bust of the late Hon. William Gray.* "Billy Gray" 
 
 taken from a portrait. 
 
 85. 1852. Bust of Mr. Crowninshield. 
 
 86. 1852. Bust of Miss Caroline F. Orne. Cambridge. 
 
 87. 1853. Bust of Charles M. Hovey.* Cambridge. 
 
 88. 1853. Bust of Mrs. Charles M. Hovey.* Cambridge. 
 
 89. 1853. Bust of Mr. Williams.* Boston. 
 
 90. 1853. The Mountfort Monument.* At Mount Auburn. 
 
 91. 1853. Statue. The Yankee Boy. 
 
 92. 1854. Bust of Frederic Tudor.* Historical Society. Boston. 
 
 93. 1854. Bust of Hon. Isaac Livermore.* Cambridge. 
 
 94. 1854. Bust of Rev. Dr. Walker.* President of Harvard College, 
 
 Cambridge. College Library. 
 
 95. 1854. Bust of Hon. Anson Burlingame. Cambridge. 
 
 96. 1854. Bust of George Livermore, Esq. Cambridge. 
 
 97. 1854. Statue of a dog. Cut in freestone. Forest Hills Ceme- 
 
 tery. 
 
 98. 1854. Bust of Miss Mountfort.* New Orleans. 
 
 99. 1854. Bust of a child.* Mr. Leeds. 
 
 100. 1854. Bust of a daughter of William Mason.* Taunton. 
 
 101. 1854. Bust of Hon. Robert C. Winthrop.* Boston Historical 
 
 Society. 
 
 102. 1855. Bust of Miss Folsom.* Cambridge. 
 
 103. 1855. Bust of Williston.* East Hampton. Amherst 
 
 College. 
 
 104. 1856. Bust of Dr. Jacob Bigelow.* Boston. Massachusetts 
 
 General Hospital. 
 
 105. 1856. Medallion Head of Samuel Appleton.* King's Chapel. 
 
 Boston. 
 
 106. 1857. Study for the statue of General Warren. 
 
 107. 1857. Study for the statue of General Warren. 
 
 108. 1857. Statue of Gen. Joseph Warren.* Bunker Hill. Charles- 
 
 town. 
 
 109. 1857. Bust of Francis Batchelder, Esq.* Cambridge. 
 
 110. 1857. Duplicate marble bust of Edward Everett.* After 
 
 Powers. 
 
WORKS OF HENRY DEXTER H5 
 
 111. 1858. Bust of Hon. Alexander H. Rice.* Boston. 
 
 112. 1858. Bust of Isaac F. Shepard. Boston. 
 
 113. 1858. Bust of Hon. Henry Wilson.* 
 
 114. 1858. Design for a Pediment for one of the public buildings at 
 
 Washington. Representing the Settlement of America. 
 
 115. 1859. Bust of James Buchanan.* President of the United 
 
 States. Family. Wheatland. 
 
 116. 1859. Duplicate of Buchanan.* 
 
 117. 1859. Bust of Governor Buckingham.* Connecticut. 
 
 118. " " " " Goodwin.* New Hampshire. 
 
 119. " " " " Turner. Rhode Island. 
 
 120. " " Hall. Vermont. 
 
 121. " " " Morgan.* New York. 
 
 122. " " " Morrill. Maine. 
 
 123. " " Chase. Ohio. 
 
 124. " " Magoffin.* Kentucky. 
 
 125. " " " " Harris. Tennessee. 
 
 126. " " " Ellis.* North Carolina. 
 
 127. ' " " " Gist. South Carolina. 
 
 128. " " " " Brown. Georgia. 
 
 129. " " " " Perry. Florida. 
 
 130. " " " Moor. Alabama. 
 
 131. " " " Pettus. Mississippi. 
 
 132. " " Wickliffe. Louisiana. 
 
 133. " " Houston. Texas. 
 
 134. " " " Conway. Arkansas. 
 
 135. 1860 " " " Stewart. Missouri. 
 
 136. " " Bissell. Illinois. 
 
 137. " " " Lowe. Iowa. 
 
 138. " Sibley. Minnesota. 
 
 139. " Randall. Wisconsin. 
 
 140. " Wisner. Michigan. 
 
 141. " Willard. Indiana. 
 
 142. " " Packer. Pennsylvania. 
 
 143. " Burton. Delaware. 
 
 144. " " Newell. New Jersey. 
 
 145. Hicks. Maryland. 
 
116 CATALOGUE OF THE 
 
 146. 1860. Bust of Governor Wise. Virginia. 
 
 147. " " " " Banks. Massachusetts. 
 
 148. 1861. Bust of a lady. 
 
 149. 1861. Bust of Alvdn Adams, Esq.* Watertown. 
 
 150. 1861. Bust of Judge Putnam.* Roxbury. 
 
 151. 1861. Duplicate of Judge Putnam.* 
 
 152. 1862. Bust of Prof. C. C. Felton.* Harvard University 
 
 Library. Cambridge. 
 
 153. 1862. Duplicate Prof. C. C. Felton,* for Samuel Felton. Phila- 
 
 delphia. 
 
 154. 1862. Duplicate bust of William Appleton.* 
 
 155. 1862. Bust of Hon. MarshaU P. Wilder.* Horticultural Hall. 
 
 Boston. 
 
 156. 1862. Duplicate bust of Hon. John Pickering.* 
 
 157. 1863. Duplicate bust of Hon. Edward Everett.* Philadelphia. 
 
 158. 1863. Bust of Josiah Stickney.* Watertown. Horticultural 
 
 Hall. Boskm. 
 
 159. 1863. Bust of Rev. Hubbard Winslow.* New York. 
 
 160. 1863. Bust of Mrs. Percival L. Everett.* Boston. 
 
 161. 1864. Bust of " Little Anna." * Mrs. James W. Mason. 
 
 162. 1865. Bust of E. K. Mudge, Esq.* St. Stephens Church, Lynn. 
 
 163. 1865. Bust of James L. Little.* Boston. 
 
 164. 1865. Bust of Mrs. James L. Little.* Boston. 
 
 165. 1865. Bust of Moses Williams.* Boston. 
 
 166. 1865. Bust of a child. 
 
 167. 1866. Bust of Hon. George C. Richardson.* Boston. 
 
 168. 1866. Bust of Mrs. George C. Richardson.* Boston. 
 
 169. 1866. Bust of Nathaniel Thayer.* Library, Lancaster, Mass. 
 
 170. 1866. Bust of Charles L. Harding.* Cambridge. 
 
 171. 1866. Bust of Mrs. Charles L. Harding.* Cambridge. 
 
 172. 1866. Bust of Edgar Harding.* Cambridge. 
 
 173. 1866. Bust of " Little Addie." * Mrs. Robert Douglass. Cam- 
 
 bridge. 
 
 174. 1867. Bust of Louis Agassiz.* Nathaniel Thayer. Boston. 
 
 175. 1867. Bust of Arthur Wilkinson.* Cambridge. 
 
 176. 1867. Bust of Aaron Williams.* Roxbury. Savings Bank. 
 
 Highland District. 
 
WOKKS OF HENRY DEXTER 117 
 
 177. 1867. Bust of Professor Beck.* Cambridge. 
 
 178. 1867. Bust of Master Charles Moring.* Cambridge. 
 
 179. 1868. Bust of Hon. Joel Parker.* Cambridge. 
 
 180. 1868. Bust of Henry W. Longfellow.* Cambridge. Library, 
 
 Lancaster, Mass. 
 
 181. 1868. Bust of Aaron B. Magoun.* Harvard Grammar School. 
 
 Cambridge. 
 
 182. 1868. Bust of Caleb Wood.* Cambridge. 
 
 183. 1869. Bust of Rev. Dr. C. W. Peabody.* Springfield, Mass. 
 
 184. 1869. Duplicate of H. W. Longfellow.* New York. 
 
 185. 1869. Bust of Rev. Dr. Lothrop.* Boston. 
 
 186. 1869. Bust of Hon. Samuel Hooper.* Boston. 
 
 187. 1869. Bust of Chief-Justice Chase.* Boston. 
 
 188. 1870. Duplicate bust of Nathaniel Thayer.* Boston. 
 
 14& 1870. Bust of General Thompson.* Warren Academy. 
 Woburn. 
 
 190. 1870. Study for head of the Nymph. 
 
 191. 1870. Statue of the Nymph of the Ocean. Wellesley College. 
 
 192. 1871. Medallion of head of Alvin Adams.* Watertown. Mrs. 
 
 Waldo Adams. Boston. 
 
 193. 1871. Bust of A. K. P. Welch.* Cambridge. 
 
 194. 1871. Duplicate bust of Gen. Theodore Lyman.* Lyman 
 
 School. Boston. 
 
 195. Bust of Rev. Dr. Blagden.* Boston. Old South 
 
 Church. 
 
 196. Bust of Rev. Dr. Kirk.* Boston. Mt. Vernon Church. 
 
 197. Bust of Dr. Andrew Peabody.* Cambridge. 
 
 198. Bust of A. A. Lawrence.* Longwood. 
 
 199. Bust of Mr. Taylor * of the firm of Hogg, Brown, and 
 
 Taylor, Boston. This was his last work. 
 
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