a picture essay
In the middle of the nineteenth century, in the French town of Colmar in Alsace Lorraine, a highly respectable Protestant widow named Charlotte Bartholdi sat stone-faced in the parlor of her charming little house at 30, Rue de Marchands. Her eccentric, genealogy-loving elder son, Charles, had fallen in love with a beautiful young woman and wanted to marry her. The only problem, he explained, was that she was Jewish: but as he was convinced they would make each other happy and she would bring him the stability he so much needed, he was sure his mother would give her consent.
He was wrong. As the
daughter of a local mayor and staunch Christian the
Widow Bartholdi absolutely forbade the marriage – and
told her son to break off all associations with the
Jewess. With a heavy heart, Charles obeyed – and began
a gradual descent into madness which ended with his
death at the age of 32.
Charlotte’s second son, Frederic, a sculptor, did not even
dare raise the subject of marriage until he visited
America at the age of 42 and fell in love with a penniless
French emigrant girl named Jeanne-Emelie Baheux. But was
she reliably Protestant? Madame Bartholdi was not convinced
by the information given her. As Frederic would not make a
move without the Widow’s permission, the marriage was
delayed until it threatened to become a scandal which would
derail Frederic’s career. Only when an obliging minister
certified Jeanne-Emelie to be a Unitarian did the sculptor
obtain his mother’s written consent to the marriage.
What better way could a sculptor find to show how much he
appreciated a woman like his mother than by using her as
the model for the largest statue ever built?
As a result of her son’s devotion Madame Bartholdi’s
gigantic face sat for years in a yard in Paris as Frederic
traveled thousands of miles raising the money to complete
the rest of her.
He did not succeed
until he had enlisted not only the people of France,
but the people of America, the City of New York and
the U.S. Congress in his quest.
And as a result, when the sculpture was finally unveiled in
October 1886, it was the stern, unyielding features of
Bartholdi’s bigoted, anti-Semitic mother, standing 151 feet
tall, that greeted every emigrant arriving in America
through the port of New York.
In
the guise of the Statue of Liberty.
Never underestimate the power of mothers.
Gavin Scott,
Santa Monica,
June 12th 2002
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