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On the other hand, if Houdon's felicitous harmony of style and individual force are forgotten, there is hardly any recognized succession to the imaginative freedom, the verve, the triumphant personal fertility of Rude and Carpeaux. At least, such as there is has not preserved the dignity and in many instances scarcely the decorum of those splendid artists.
"The old watch," said he, a few years ago, "has ticked all my children into existence, and three of them out of this world. It still hangs at the head of my bed." About this time, in a chance visit to the Museum in Cincinnati, he saw a plaster cast of Houdon's "Washington." It was the first bust he had ever seen, and he says it moved him strangely.
Franklin, being on his departure, did not become a party to the instrument, though it has been concluded with his approbation. He was disposed to give two hundred and fifty guineas more, which would have split the difference between the actual terms and Mr Houdon's demand.
The Senate Chamber was crowded, and as the atmosphere grew oppressive while Dudley's gentleman held the floor, she rose and went out into the lobby where a noisy circle pulsed round Houdon's Washington.
Her voice seemed to break the spell which paralyzed him. He turned toward her with the look of one who nerves himself up to take a desperate resolution: "Yes: I have a story to relate to you, and one of more than common interest." "Really!" She yawned behind her fan. "Excuse me, but I was at Mrs. Houdon's ball last evening, and the 'German' was kept up till five o'clock this morning.
In the centre of the tesselated floor of the lobby, which was fitted out with rows of earthenware spittoons, stood Houdon's statue of Washington, and upon the railing surrounding it groups of men were leaning as they talked. Occasionally a speaker would pause to send a mouthful of tobacco juice in aimless pursuit of a spittoon, or to slice off a fresh quid from the plug he carried in his pocket.
But as yet, nothing certain can be said. I thank you for the trouble you have taken to obtain insurance on Houdon's life. I place the thirty-two pounds and eleven shillings to your credit, and not being able, as yet, to determine precisely how our accounts stand, I send a sum by Colonel Smith, which may draw the scales towards a balance.
What finer history than Titian's Paul III., Raphael's Leo X., Albert Dürer's head of himself? What finer than the Pericles, the Marcus Aurelius of the Capitol, the Demosthenes of the Vatican, Chantrey's Scott, Houdon's Voltaire, Powers's Jackson? Heroic? what more heroic than the Lateran Sophocles, the Venetian Colleoni, or Rauch's statue of Frederick the Great? Poetical?
To the House of Representatives of the United States: On the 18th of February, 1832, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution in the following words: Resolved, That the President of the United States be authorized to employ Horatio Greenough, of Massachusetts, to execute in marble a full-length pedestrian statue of Washington, to be placed in the center of the Rotunda of the Capitol; the head to be a copy of Houdon's Washington, and the accessories to be left to the judgment of the artist.
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