Seward's Statue in Madison Square NYC

[Linda Anderson]

(07-05-2012 06:18 PM)HerbS Wrote:  His long legs?

That's correct, Herb. According to an article from the New York Herald dated 3/8/1896, "Seward's Head, Lincoln's Body: Did You Ever Notice a Peculiarity in the Statue in Madison Square?", the noted sculptor Randolf Rogers, who died in 1892, had twenty years earlier "Beheaded a Statue of the President and put on the Secretary's Head."

Wilson Macdonald, a close friend of Rogers said, "It is not a sculpture of Seward, excepting the head. Seward's head and Lincoln's heart is not a bad combination. The artistic effect is not bad, either, but the fact remains that the body is one of Lincoln, and it is a good one, too. No artist who ever saw Lincoln and Seward would mistake which one the long arms and legs of the statue belong. Seward was a short legged, long bodied man. I have the word of Randolph Rogers, who made the statue, that he combined Seward's head with Lincoln's body...I never learned...how Rogers happened to have a model of Lincoln in stock."

Two weeks later Rogers' son wrote a letter to the New York Herald saying that the story was "one of the many jokes of my father. Mr. Wilson Macdonald is very much mistaken as to the decapitation of Mr. Lincoln's statue and the grafting of Mr. Seward's head. But perhaps my father did tell Mr. Macdonald of the decapitation, and if he did Mr. Macdonald can rest assured he was the subject of a joke."

Mr. Macdonald in turn replied, "I have just been shown a letter from Randolph Rogers' son in which he says his father must have given me the story as a joke. Possibly, but it was so funny that I could not help remembering it. Rogers was a capital story teller, full of humor, besides being a great artist, and I am sure I never knew a man for whom I had more friendship than Randolph Rogers."