Nora Gordon started a tradition, Spelman's richest heritage. Three other graduates followed her. Clara Howard was in course of time forced by the severe fevers to give up her work, and she now labors at home in the service of her Alma Mater. Ada Jackson became the second wife of Rev. S. C. Gordon and also died in service. Emma B. DeLany was commissioned in 1900 and still labors – in recent years with larger and larger success – in Liberia. Within two or three years of Nora Gordon's return in 1893, moreover, not less than five native African girls had come to Spelman. The spirit still abides, and if the way were just a little clearer doubtless many other graduates would go. Even as it is, however, the blessing to the school has been illimitable.
Such have been the workers, such the pioneers. To what end is the love, the labor – the loneliness, the yearning?
It is now nearly five hundred years since a prince of Portugal began the slave-trade on the west coast of Africa. Within two hundred years all of the leading countries of western Europe had joined in the iniquitous traffic, and when England in 1713 drew up with France the Peace of Utrecht she deemed the slave-trade of such importance that she insisted upon an article that gave her a practical monopoly of it. Before the end of the eighteenth century, however, the voice of conscience began to be heard in England, and science also began to be interested in the great undeveloped continent lying to the South. It remained for the work of David Livingstone, however, in the middle of the nineteenth century really to reveal Africa to the rest of the world. This intrepid explorer and missionary in a remarkable series of journeys not only traversed the continent from the extreme South to Loanda on the West Coast and Quilimane on the East Coast; he not only made known the great lake system of Central Africa; but he left behind him a memory that has blessed everyone who has followed in his steps. Largely as a result of his work and that of his successor, Stanley, a great congress met in Berlin in 1884 for the partition of Africa among the great nations of Europe. Unfortunately the diplomats at this meeting were not actuated by the noble impulses that had moved Livingstone, so that more and more there was evident a mad scramble for territory. France had already gained a firm foothold in the northwest, and England was not only firmly intrenched in the South but had also established a rather undefined protectorate over Egypt. Germany now in 1884 entered the field and in German East Africa, German Southwest Africa, Kamerun, and the smaller territory of Togoland in the West ultimately acquired a total of nearly a million square miles, or one-eleventh of the continent. All of this she lost in the course of the recent great war. Naturally she has desired to regain this land, but at the time of writing (November, 1918) there is no likelihood of her doing so, a distinguished Englishman, Mr. Balfour, the foreign secretary, having declared that under no circumstances can Germany's African colonies be returned to her, as such return would endanger the security of the British empire, and that is to say, the security of the world. This problem is but typical of the larger political questions that press for settlement in the new Africa. Whatever the solution may be, one or two facts stand out clearly. One is that Africa can no longer rest in undisturbed slumber. A terrible war, the most ruinous in the history of humanity, has strained to the utmost the resources of all the great powers of the world. Where so much has been spent it is not to be supposed that the richest, the most fertile, land in the world will indefinitely be allowed to remain undeveloped. Along with material development must go also the education and the spiritual culture of the natives on a scale undreamed of before. In this training such an enlightened country as England will naturally play a leading role, and America too will doubtless be called on to help in more ways than one. It must not be supposed, however, that the task is not one of enormous difficulties. As far as we have advanced in our missionary activities in America, we have hardly made a beginning in the great task of the proper development of Africa. Here are approximately 175,000,000 natives to be trained and Christianized. Let us not make the common mistake of supposing that they are all ignorant and degraded savages. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Many individuals have had the benefit of travel and study in Europe and more and more are themselves appreciating the great problems before their country. It is true, however, that the great mass of the population is yet to be reached. In the general development delicate questions of racial contact are to be answered. Unfortunately, in the attitude of the European colonist toward the native, South Africa has a race problem even more stern than that of our own Southern states. As for religion we not only find paganism and Mohammedanism, but we also see Catholicism arrayed against Protestantism, and perhaps most interesting of all, a definite movement toward the enhancement of a native Ethiopian church, with the motto "Africa for the Africans." Let us add to all this numerous social problems, such as polygamy, the widespread sale of rum, and all the train of African superstition, and we shall see that any one who works in Africa in the new day must not only be a person of keen intelligence and Christian character, but also one with some genuine vision and statesmanship. Workers of this quality, if they can be found, will be needed not by the scores or hundreds, but by the thousands and tens of thousands. No larger mission could come to a young Negro in America trained in Christian study than to make his or her life a part of the redemption of the great fatherland. The salvation of Africa is at once the most pressing problem before either the Negro race or the Kingdom of Christ. Such a worker as we have tried to portray was Nora Gordon. It is to be hoped that not one but thousands like her will arise. Even now we can see the beginning of the fulfilment of the prophecy, "Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God."
IV.
META WARRICK FULLER
2
2
For the further pursuit of this and related subjects the attention of the reader is invited to the author's "The Negro in Literature and Art" (Duffield & Co., New York, N. Y., 1918).
The state of Massachusetts has always been famous for its history and literature, and especially rich in tradition is the region around Boston. On one side is Charlestown, visited yearly by thousands who make a pilgrimage to the Bunker Hill Monument. Across the Charles River is Cambridge, the home of Harvard University, and Longfellow, and Lowell, and numerous other men whose work has become a part of the nation's heritage. If one will ride on through Cambridge and North Cambridge and Arlington, he will come to Lexington, where he will find in the little Lexington Common one of the most charming spots of ground in America. Overlooking this he will see the Harrington House, and all around other memorials of the Revolution. Taking the car again and riding about seven miles more he will come to Concord, and here he will catch still more of the flavor of the eighteenth century. Walking from the center of the town down Monument Street (he
must
walk now; there is no trolley, and a carriage or automobile does not permit one to linger by the wayside), he will come after a while to the Old Manse, once the home of Emerson and of Hawthorne, and then see just around the corner the Concord Bridge and the statue of the Minute Man. There is a new bridge now, one of concrete; the old wooden one, so long beloved, at length became unsafe and had to be replaced. In another direction from the center of the town runs Lexington Road, within about half a mile down which one will see the later homes of Emerson and Hawthorne as well as that of Louisa May Alcott. Near the Alcott House, back among the trees, is a quaint little structure much like a Southern country schoolhouse – the so-called Concord School of Philosophy, in which Emerson once spoke. It is all a beautiful country – beautiful most of all for its unseen glory. One gives himself up to reflection; he muses on Evangeline and the Great Stone Face and on the heroic dead who did not die in vain – until a lumbering truck-car on the road calls him back from it all to the workaday world of men.
It is in this state of Massachusetts, so rich in its tradition, that there resides the subject of the present sketch. About halfway between Boston and Worcester, in the quiet, homelike town of Framingham, on a winding road just off the main street, lives Meta Warrick Fuller, the foremost sculptor of the Negro race.
There are three little boys in the family. They keep their mother very busy; but they also make her very happy. Buttons have to be sewed on and dinners have to be prepared for the children of an artist just as well as for those of other people; and help is not always easy to get. But the father, Dr. S. C. Fuller, a distinguished physician, is also interested in the boys, so that he too helps, and the home is a happy one.
At the top of the house is a long roomy attic. This is an improvised studio – or, as the sculptor would doubtless say, the workshop. Hither, from the busy work of the morning, comes the artist for an hour or half an hour of modeling – for rest, and for the first effort to transfer to the plastic clay some fleeting transient dream.
Meta Warrick Fuller was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 9, 1877. For four years she attended the Pennsylvania School of Industrial Art, and it was at this institution that she first began to force serious recognition of her talent. Before very long she began to be known as a sculptor of the horrible, one of her first original pieces being a head of Medusa, with a hanging jaw, beads of gore, and eyes starting from their sockets. At her graduation in 1898 she won a prize for metal work by a crucifix upon which hung the figure of Christ in agony, and she also won honorable mention for her work in modeling. In a post-graduate year she won a much coveted prize in modeling. In 1899 Meta Warrick (then best known by her full name, Meta Vaux Warrick) went to Paris, where she worked and studied three years. Her work brought her in contact with many other artists, among them Augustus St. Gaudens, the sculptor of the Robert Gould Shaw Monument at the head of Boston Common. Then there came a day when by appointment the young woman went to see Auguste Rodin, who after years of struggle and dispraise had finally won recognition as the foremost sculptor in France if not in the world. The great man glanced one after another at the pieces that were presented to him, without very evident interest. At length, thrilled by the figure in "Silent Sorrow," sometimes referred to as "Man Eating His Heart Out," Rodin beamed upon the young woman and said, "Mademoiselle, you
are
a sculptor; you have the sense of form." With encouragement from such a source the young artist worked with renewed vigor, looking forward to the time when something that she had produced should win a place in the Salon, the great national gallery in Paris. "The Wretched," one of the artist's masterpieces, was exhibited here in 1903, and along with it went "The Impenitent Thief." This latter production was demolished in 1904, after meeting with various unhappy accidents. In the form as presented, however, the thief, heroic in size, hung on the cross torn by anguish. Hardened, unsympathetic, and even defiant, he still possessed some admirable qualities of strength, and he has remained one of the sculptor's most powerful conceptions. In "The Wretched" seven figures greet the eye. Each represents a different form of human anguish. An old man, worn by hunger and disease, waits for death. A mother yearns for the loved ones she has lost. A man bowed by shame fears to look upon his fellow-creatures. A sick child suffers from some hereditary taint. A youth is in despair, and a woman is crazed by sorrow. Over all is the Philosopher who suffers perhaps more keenly than the others as he views the misery around them, and who, powerless to relieve it, also sinks into despair.
Other early productions were similarly characterized by a strongly romantic quality. "Silent Sorrow" has already been remarked in passing. In this a man, worn and gaunt and in despair, is represented as leaning over and actually eating out his own heart. "Man Carrying Dead Body" is in similar vein. The sculptor is moved by the thought of one who will be spurred on by the impulse of duty to the performance of some task not only unpleasant but even loathsome. She shows a man bearing across his shoulder the body of a comrade that has evidently lain on the battlefield for days. The thing is horrible, and the man totters under the great weight; but he forces his way onward until he can give it decent burial. Another early production was based on the ancient Greek story of Oedipus. This story was somewhat as follows: Oedipus was the son of Laius and Jocasta, king and queen of Thebes. At his birth an oracle foretold that the father Laius would be killed by his son. The child was sent away to be killed by exposure, but in course of time was saved and afterwards adopted by the King of Corinth. When he was grown, being warned by an oracle that he would kill his father and marry his mother, he left home. On his journey he met Laius and slew him in the course of an altercation. Later, by solving the riddle of the sphinx, he freed Thebes from distress, was made king of the city, and married Jocasta. Eventually the terrible truth of the relationship became known to all. Jocasta hanged herself and Oedipus tore out his eyes. The sculptor portrays the hero of the old legend at the very moment that he is thus trying to punish himself for his crime. There is nothing delicate or pretty about all such work as this. It is grewsome in fact, and horrible; but it is also strong and intense and vital. Its merit was at once recognized by the French, and it gave Meta Warrick a recognized place among the sculptors of America.
On her return to America the artist resumed her studies at the School of Industrial Art, winning in 1904 the Battles first prize for pottery. In 1907 she produced a series of tableaux representing the advance of the Negro for the Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition, and in 1913 a group for the New York State Emancipation Proclamation Commission. In 1909 she became the wife of Dr. Solomon C. Fuller, of Framingham, Massachusetts. A fire in 1910 unfortunately destroyed some of her most valuable pieces while they were in storage in Philadelphia. Only a few examples of her early work, that happened to be elsewhere, were saved. The artist was undaunted, however, and by May, 1914, she had sufficiently recovered from the blow to be able to hold at her home a public exhibition of her work.
After this fire a new note crept into the work of Meta Warrick Fuller. This was doubtless due not so much to the fire itself as to the larger conception of life that now came to the sculptor with the new duties of marriage and motherhood. From this time forth it was not so much the romantic as the social note that was emphasized. Repres