died on its semi-centennial anniversary—old John Adams. But the Virginia story had gotten there before him, and it was with difficulty he could persuade Mr. Adams to submit. But the old Spartan finally did submit, and on November 23, 1825, he wrote, "This certifies that John H. I. Browere Esq. of the City of New York has yesterday and to-day made two portrait bust moulds on my person and made a cast of the first which has been approved of by my family. John Adams." To this his son Judge Thomas B. Adams adds, "P. S. I am authorized by the Ex President to say that the moulds were made on his person without injury, pain or inconvenience."
The newspapers, however, were getting too rabid for Browere, and he published in the Boston "Daily Advertiser" of November 30, 1825, a two-column letter in which he says, concerning the libel in the Richmond "Enquirer," the most virulent of his assailants, "a libel false in almost all its parts and which I am now determined to prove so by laying before the public every circumstance relating to that operation on our revered ex-President Thomas Jefferson." A copy of this letter Browere sent to Jefferson under cover of May 20, 1826, apprising him of his intention to make "a full length statue of the author of the Declaration of American Independence which, if the ex-president be not in New York on the 4th of July next, I intend presenting on that day to the corporation of New York." These communications Jefferson acknowledged within a month of his decease in a letter of such great importance in this connection, as settling the question forever, that I copy it in full.
Sir:—The subject of your letter of May 20, has attracted more notice certainly than it merited. That the operé to which it refers was painful to a certain degree I admit. But it was short lived and there would have ended as to myself. My age and the state of my health at that time gave an alarm to my family which I neither felt nor expressed. What may have been said in newspapers I know not, reading only a single one and that giving little room to things of that kind. I thought no more of it until your letter brot. it again to mind, but can assure you it has left not a trace of dissatisfaction as to yourself and that with me it is placed among the thing's which have never happened. Accept this assurance with my friendly salutes.
How dare any man presume to write history and set down on his pages such statements as did Randall about Browere's cast of Jefferson, without first exhausting every channel of inquiry and every means of search and research to ascertain the truth? The material that I have drawn from was as accessible to him as to me. In fact, he claims to have used the Jefferson papers in his compilation. With what effect! It is indeed some gratification to have set wrong right even at this late day and done this bit of justice to Browere's reputation; but it is a far greater satisfaction to have rescued from oblivion and presented to the world his magnificent facsimile of the face and form of the immortal Jefferson.
In addition to the busts of Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Carroll, and Lafayette, here reproduced, there are, in the possession of the Browere family, busts of Henry Clay, Dolly Madison, John Quincy Adams, his son Charles Francis Adams (at the age of eighteen), Martin Van Buren, De Witt Clinton, Commodore David Porter, General Macomb, General Brown, Edwin Forrest; Paulding, Williams and Van Wart, the captors of André; and many others of more or less celebrity. The New York Historical Society owns Browere's busts of Dr. Hosack and Philip Hone, while the Redwood Library at Newport, R. I., has his bust of Gilbert Stuart.
Call Browere's work what one will—process, art, or mechanical—the result gives the most faithful portrait possible, down to the minutest detail, the very living features of the breathing man, a likeness of the greatest historical significance and importance. A single glance will show the marked difference between Browere's work and the ordinary life cast by the sculptor or modeler, no matter how skilful he may be. Browere's work is real, hu- man, lifelike, inspiring in its truthfulness, while other life masks, even the celebrated ones by Clark Mills, who made so many, are dead and heavy, almost repulsive in their lifelessness. It seems next to marvelous how he was able to preserve, in such a marked degree, the naturalness of expression. His busts are imbued with animation; the individual character is there, so simple and direct that, next to the living man, he has preserved for us the best that we can have—a perfect facsimile. One experiences a satisfaction in contemplating these busts similar to that afforded by the reflected image of the daguerreotype. Both may be "inartistic" in the sense that the artist's conception is wanting; but for historical human documents they outweigh all the portraits ever limned or modeled. Esto perpetua!
