Sea-Bound Comet

by Francesca Lidia Viano

On October 28, 1886, President Grover Cleveland dedicated the Statue of Liberty as a gift from the people of France. The 151-foot statue was designated as a national monument in 1924. For most people, it serves as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. But the lofty ideals we associate with the statue today can obscure its turbulent origins and layers of meaning. In her book, Sentinel: The Unlikely Origins of the Statue of Liberty, Francesca Lidia Viano provides an illuminating and entertaining account of the statue we all know, but know little about. Here is a brief excerpt from the book detailing the day the statue was dedicated.

After making its way down Fifth Avenue, Stone’s parade turned left to reach Madison Square, marching past the U.S. president, the highest federal and municipal authorities, and French dignitaries alike. A wooden stand had been erected on one side of the square. “Do not look for anything resembling something one could find in Europe on a similar occasion,” advised one member of the French delegation, “everything in the States is made simply, cheaply, summarily.” The workers had nailed down some boards to form a dozen steps, without covering them with “a tissue or the least decoration,” and without even preparing a seat for the president. Finally, around ten o’clock, the “Lafayette guards” fetched the French guests from the luxurious Hoffmann Hotel, on Madison Square, opposite the stand. Behind them stood the statue’s sculptor, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, elegant in his dark suit, looking small and frail in comparison with the host of military men in full dress uniform, including General Pél- lisier; Admiral Jaures, “superb in his navy uniform, embroidered in gold, his breast heavy with shiny medals”; Colonel Bureau de Pusy; Lieutenant Villegente; and “captain Halphen, . . . with his panache of tricolor feathers on his képi.” The impression they gave was one of war heroes triumphantly returning from some patriotic expedition, ready to be celebrated with a great military feast. As we will see, this military spirit reflected some of the statue’s innermost meanings.

The square was “teeming with people and all black” when, around eleven o’clock, the Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, made his solemn entrance. French commentators described him as “a bit fat,” but “with a placid and serene figure.” His round face and “moustache drooping down the sides of his mouth” stood in stark contrast to the scene’s military pomposity. This might have disappointed some of the French, but their mood lifted when they saw the various army corps lining up, each with its own banner. The president “wore a bored but resigned look” while “regarding with a stone stare his surroundings and showing apparently little interest in the proceedings about to begin.” Yet all around, excitement reigned, and when the Seventh Regiment struck its first notes, the crowd was seized by an uncontrollable euphoria. In an instant, the measured beats of “La Marseillaise” flooded the streets, intermingling with the more fluid rhythm of “Yankee Doodle” and eliciting cries of joy from the public, who waved handkerchiefs and threw their hats in the air, warmly greeting soldiers and civilians on the march. Ladies, forgetful of hairstyles and hats, put their umbrellas aside and stood on the tips of their toes to get a better view. Even the French ladies, more restrained by habit, threw all composure to the wind at the sight of the Philadelphia police: “Ah, ce sont de beaux gens,” they cried; “c’est magnifique!” After the military show on Madison Square, the procession made its way again down Fifth Avenue. It continued straight on to Park Row and then made a complicated turn, during which it was difficult not to break ranks, to stop at the great arch outside the offices of the New York World, the newspaper owned by the Hungarian Joseph Pulitzer (who had played a crucial role in raising the money for the statue’s pedestal). Finally it returned to Broadway and crossed to the Battery. The rain had become heavier and had soaked the uniforms, the flags hanging from balconies, and the colorful festoons. It all made for a rather depressing sight, with banners and elegant decorations everywhere ruined by water. Wet tricolors and starred ribbons crowned a dripping papier-mâché statue of liberty at the entrance of the Vienna Café, while the famous tailors Rogers, Peet & Company complained about all the work they had wasted to combine the now-soaked French and American flags above their sign and to hang an enormous banner across their entire facade, bearing the words “Liberté, Egalité, Fra- ternité,” the French national motto. The banner was attached on one side to a colored portrait of Cleveland and on the other to one of the French president, Jules Grévy.

At Everett House, on Fourth Avenue, soaking wet red, white, and blue ribbons framed a life-size portrait of Lafayette, the young French general who had helped the Americans win independence from Great Britain during the Revolutionary War. Lafayette’s story was on everybody’s lips on that day of celebration. As a young aristo- crat with a far-from-aristocratic demeanor and features (his face too white, his hair too red), Lafayette, enflamed by the idea of joining the Continental Army in America, had been drawn to the New World by a mixture of ambition and personal difficulties in fitting in at the French court. He had sailed from Bordeaux in April 1777 on board a small ship, the Victoire, leaving behind his pregnant wife and a fuming father. In Philadelphia, Lafayette’s story became even more of an adventure. A Freemason himself, of the French lodge of the Candeur, he was brought to the military lodge of the American Union and there, among occult signs in darkened rooms, befriended Washington, to the point where the two became “deux frères bien unis.” The statue, as we shall see, bore evident signs of Masonic kinship with the American Union Lodge. But few noticed them among the more obvious clues to the statue’s meaning. All eyes were focused on the portraits of Lafayette and Washington, for example, which were to be seen everywhere at the statue’s unveiling, sometimes accompanied by those of the comte de Rochambeau, who had sailed to America in 1780 to become lieutenant general under Washington, and comte de Grasse, the naval hero of the Battle of the Chesapeake. Nobody seemed to remember that, behind these famous figures, lay the tireless work of anonymous American and French agents and spies on both sides of the Atlantic; even more importantly, nobody seemed to wonder how, or why, a transoceanic network of Freemasons originally orchestrated Lafayette’s encounter with Washington. Some additional investigation would have revealed that American and French businessmen and Freemasons (those of the Candeur, the Contrat Social, and the Société Olympique lodges) had collaborated for years before Lafayette’s voyage to train soldiers and send saltpeter, brass cannons, and textiles from Nantes and Bordeaux to the American colonies. The statue’s metallic skin evoked the foundries of Douai, Toulouse, and Strasbourg, which similarly had worked overtime to provide Americans with guns and cannons. But on the day of its unveiling the Statue of Liberty, along with its war-torn past, was still wrapped in fog, and nobody paid particular attention to its Masonic symbolism or to its armor.

Having marched along Broadway, the procession reached the esplanade at Battery Park, where a throng of people had been waiting for hours. From the early morning, small crowds had formed here and there of those who had not found room in Madison Square or along the streets of Broadway — spectators anxious to find a spot from which to watch the fireworks and lightshows scheduled for four o’clock, or families waiting to board a ferry bound for Bedloe’s Island or Governor’s Island to see the ceremony up close. Boats of all sizes bobbed around the docks, half shrouded in the mist. The clock had just struck one when all of a sudden the crack of cannon fire pierced the wall of fog; a second of absolute silence followed before the shot was echoed by a volley of another twenty or more shots. It was the salute, the feu de joie coming from the USS Gedney to signal the beginning of the naval parade on the Hudson, the second part of the celebration. The mist, however, was so thick that the Gedney was unable to lead the parade and had to fall back at least twice before something resembling a procession had formed behind it; many boats did not see the Gedney, while others had already sailed ahead to Bedloe’s Island, where they awaited its arrival like sea ghosts suspended in a great void.

The people assembled at Battery Park mistook the shots for a preview of the fireworks display announced for the afternoon and immediately poured onto the docks to see the statue light up. Others, attracted by the electric light that glowed dimly through the mist on the dome of the Washington Building, turned toward the Battery thinking that the time had come for the main show. Fireworks represented the high point of all public celebrations at the time, when authorities and police would stand aside and allow people to flood the streets to enjoy popular attractions like street acrobats and feast on sweets. But nothing of the kind happened that day, as both the fireworks display and the lighting of the statue were cancelled due to the inclement weather.

Those who persisted in waiting for the show at the Battery were dispersed by the police, who in their eagerness to clear the area and not leave a job half done, turned their truncheons against even the workers of the respectable Unexcelled Fireworks Company, who in their forced idleness were standing by watching the human spectacle unfold. Beaten and deprived of the most colorful part of the celebration, ordinary people forlornly watched the boats and steamers sail toward the statue, where the final part of the celebration — from which they were excluded — was to be held. The feminists would have had to remain ashore like everyone else, had it not been for their ever-present spirit of initiative; although the municipal authorities had refused them a boat, they managed to rent one and embark two hundred friends of their association, only twenty-five of whom were men, for the trip to the statue.

Around two o’clock, the fog lifted for about an hour and let the Statue of Liberty emerge in all its magnificence. All of its massive body was now visible, along with its raised hand holding the torch, but not its eyes, which were covered by a French flag hanging from her crown. At Bedloe’s Island, workers had been busy since seven in the morning when the steamer Firenze had left ashore “a large party of ladies and gentlemen,” among them David H. King Jr., the local contractor who had overseen construction of the statue and its pedestal. While daring Mrs. Clarence Carey, a belle of New York high society, “climbed to the outside of the torch on the statue” — the “first lady to accomplish this laborious feat” — her father and friends sat on the platform built against the seaward side of Liberty’s pedestal and patiently waited for the other guests to arrive.

The speakers’ stand was protected by a canopy draped with American and French flags. Underneath the canopy, behind the speakers, an enormous shield hung over the stage, bearing the red, white, and blue of the French flag on its right and the American stars and stripes on its left. In full view between the two were the fasces and axe, symbol of unity among the states, but also of the imperial authority of Ancient Rome, while the word “liberty” and an olive branch, a Greek symbol of peace, lay across a shield. These symbols unequivocally marked the end of the “carnivalesque” part of the celebration, in which the poor were allowed to venture near the homes of the rich to affirm their sense of “ownership” over the statue, and women to protest against men’s privileges. With authority and social concord reasserted, it was time for French and American diplomats to dispel the idea that the statue was a symbol of improvement and replace it with the rival conviction that it was a symbol of order and legality, of the establishment, so to speak.

The Twenty-Second Regiment band, conducted by Maestro Gilmore, entertained the audience by playing French and American national songs as the speakers kept everyone waiting. At a certain point, a gunshot signaled the beginning of the ceremony and the band fell silent. Reverend Storrs, pastor of the Congregational Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, took the stand first, the fasces and olive branch looming large behind him, to invoke a solemn prayer for the statue. “We pray,” he intoned, while the flags were whipped up by the wind and the sea roared at a distance,

that Thou who enablest man to mold the metal and make lightning his servants, wilt accept the dedication of this monument to Thee; and that here it may continue, undisturbed of tempest, its munition of rocks not shaken by earthquake, while waters encircle it, and the light of the morning returns to greet it . . . We pray that the Liberty which it represents may continue to enlighten with beneficent instruction, and to bless with majestic and wide benediction, the nations which have part in this work of renown; that it may stand a symbol of perpetual concord between [them].

Standing at the foot of the statue, like a Lilliputian straight out of Gulliver’s Travels, the reverend seemed to be asking God’s pardon for the hubris that had led man to create such a wonder, by “mold[ing] the metal” and making fire his servant. Storrs must have known that the statue’s main metal, copper, traditionally was used to make weapons, and that these very weapons had been the foundation of the Franco-American friendship that was being celebrated. Otherwise, why address the statue’s “munition of rocks,” as if the copper, still enclosed inside red rocks, was stored in the statue like in an armory?

But the reverend approached the matter from a more mythological angle. Indeed, since ancient times, fire had always evoked a kind of knowledge that was alternate, or even a rival, to the divine. In Works and Days and Theogony, Hesiod relates how the titan Prometheus incurred the perpetual wrath of the gods by stealing their fire (hidden in the hollow stalk of a giant fennel) and making a gift of it to men. For Hesiod, Prometheus was a symbol of humanity’s foolish curiosity, responsible for its fall and wretchedness. But by the late nineteenth century there was a long tradition of thought that had rehabilitated Prometheus, one that told how, together with fire, he had also given humans knowledge and wisdom.

By the end of the nineteenth century, America was crossed by railways, lit up more and more by electricity, and studded with steel-producing iron mills. Here the Promethean flame was blazing once more — this time with electric light — as a symbol of technological progress and of a knowledge that was entirely human, made up of mathematical formulas and technical wisdom. The Promethean radiance of the statue’s torch was too evident to be hidden, even when it remained unlit. Yet, skilled preacher that he was, Storrs covered the statue’s pagan appearance with a Christian cloak and, voilà, transformed a symbol of divine rage and military might into a token of “concord.” Such an interpretation may have been far-fetched, but the olive branches painted behind Reverend Storrs made it all a bit more plausible. Unfortunately for him though, the day would not go down in history for the harmony that reigned there.