A touch of the Gothic on this Texas Decoration Day: Elisabet Ney's monument to A.S. Johnston

Dear friends, don't fear; I am actually 75% done on a more substantial article. But allow me to briefly tell you about my experience this Memorial Day, especially my encounter with a pleasantly surprising touch of the Gothic revival where I least expected it.

 

The tomb of General Albert Sidney Johnston

Not long ago, I applied to join the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution by right of descent from eight ancestors who fought in the war of independence, both in the Continental Army and the militias. The first event I was invited to was a Memorial Day service (or Decoration Day, as it's known among old-fashioned southroners) at Texas State Cemetery in Austin, which is mere blocks from the state capitol building. Though it's a very short drive from where I live, I've never visited until today, and I must say, it actually rivals some of the great cemeteries I've visited in the northeast. Here rest Texas governors, U.S. senators, generals, Medal of Honor recipients, Texas Rangers, and fallen servicemen of many wars. Two that bear special mention are Lieutenant Robert Rankin and Sergeant Stephen Williams, who were both not only veterans of the Texan Revolution against Santa Anna, but also veterans of the American Revolutionary War! Both had descendants who were present to eulogize their ancestors today. Rankin was a Continental Army officer from Virginia, a friend of Sam Houston, and an original member of the Society of the Cincinnati. Williams fought at the 1781 Battle of Eutaw Springs, South Carolina (along with one of my own ancestors, Lieutenant Joseph Culpepper, who was wounded there), and later participated at the siege of Bexar with four of his grandsons at the ripe old age of 75!

 

Albert Sidney Johnston in U.S. Army uniform

One section of the cemetery is reserved for the Confederate war dead. Here stands the most splendid funerary monument of the entire grounds: the tomb of CSA General Albert Sidney Johnston. Before the Confederacy, Johnston served in the Texas Army during our little revolution here as a private, then an aide-de-camp to General Sam Houston. When the war was won, Houston named Johnston commander of the Texas Army, but another general, Felix Huston, felt slighted. Huston challenged Johnston to a duel, but Johnston refused to fire on him, and Huston shot his opponent in the hip and assumed command instead. Fortunately for Johnston, the following year, second President of Texas Mirabeau Lamar appointed him as Secretary of State.

 

By the time 1861 rolled around, Johnston had distinguished himself in the Mexican-American War and was commander of the Department of the Pacific. He opposed secession, but when Texas threw in with the Confederacy, resigned his commission and snuck from California back to Texas to assume a new command: the Western Department. At the Battle of Shiloh, Johnston was shot behind the right knee, probably (like Stonewall Jackson) by friendly fire. Perhaps due to his injury from the duel years before on the same leg, he didn't feel it or think it was a serious wound, and sent his personal physician to tend to some captured Union soldiers instead. Later in the day, he died from blood loss, making him, as a full four-star general, the highest-ranking officer on either side of the Civil War to die on the battlefield.

 

So, where does the Gothic monument come from? Johnston was reinterred from his original burial site in New Orleans to Austin in 1867, but the monument wasn't raised until many years later, in 1905. The work was executed by local legend Elisabet Ney, a German-born woman who became the first female sculptor at the Munich Academy of Art. When she was a child, she declared her life goal was "to know great persons". She got a head start in that her great-uncle was Michel Ney, Marshal of France during the Napoleonic Wars, who famously gave the orders to the firing squad at his own execution after the fall of the emperor.

 

Elisabet Ney with her bust of George V

After graduation, Elisabet moved to Berlin and became a very successful sculptress. She came to know many great persons, indeed, for her commissions at this era included busts of Jacob Grimm (yes, the mythologist), Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi, composer Richard Wagner, his wife (and daughter of Franz Liszt) Cosima von Bulow, Otto von Bismarck, King George V of Hanover, and "Mad King" Ludwig of Bavaria, who had created Neuschwanstein Castle. For whatever reason, she and her husband left it behind for a life in America, eventually settling in Texas. Her sculpting career continued to prosper, with her statues of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin on display at both the Texas State Capitol and the U.S. Capitol today, as well as a bust of Lady Macbeth now held by the Smithsonian. But the most remarkable for me is the tomb of Albert Sidney Johnston, finished two years before her death. It is the only place I can think of where you can see the Lone Star figuring into a Gothic framework. And here, whether you believe in the Gone with the Wind version of the antebellum south or not, Johnston lays, draped in the Confederate battle flag, like a knight of yore, resting from a life of battle.

 

 

Johnston's tomb overlooks nearly 2,000 other Confederate war dead

 

Johnston was married to an Eliza Griffin, though I'm not sure if she's a distant relation of mine or not.

 

 

 

Elisabet Ney's bust of Lady Macbeth

 

At the end of my trip, the sky began pouring as though all the angels in heaven were weeping for the fallen. It was like being on the set of a movie. Too bad about my suit, though.

 

Obelisk for Edmund Davis, the governor of Texas during Reconstruction. It was built atop a hill to tower over and annoy the graves of the Confederate war dead below. The hatred between Davis and ex-Confederates was mutual.

 

The tomb of Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas.

These two gentlemen were part of the Sons of the American Revolution's honor guard and rifle team, or musket team, in this case.

 

Memorial Day goes Gothic: the Washington Chapel

(This is technically a day late, but I started on it yesterday.)

Happy Memorial Day, medievalists. I have to confess that, despite being a former soldier, if I couldn't go to work today or go back to my university to do an errand, I would've forgotten Memorial Day even happened. This is probably the real reason why we have state-sanctioned holidays. 

Before I show you these photos I assembled (some from my own camera, but most from elsewhere on the Internet), I'll share with you something I learned from my southern history class last semester. Did you know that southerners didn't commonly celebrate the Fourth of July until after World War II? I didn't, and I'm from a centuries-long line of southerners. You see, it took two world wars, suffering and bonding with men from the North and the West in godforsaken trenches and foxholes, in order for us southerners to feel truly a part of this nation again. Before that, southerners observed Memorial Day. In those days, it was called Decoration Day because families would decorate the graves of loved ones who died for the ill-fated Confederacy. The tradition of honoring the fallen of the "lost cause" continued even after anyone who had personally known those soldiers had died. In every single county of the South, you'll see a monument of a young man in Confederate dress, perhaps looking away into the distance. What about these fallen soldiers was so potent, so powerful that it would cause 3rd and 4th generation southerners after the war to venerate men they had never known?

Because there is power in sacrifice. Whether the cause was actually righteous or not is irrelevant; the simple truth is that in the Civil War, as in most modern wars, those who died were chiefly the nation's youngest, ablest-bodied men. The monuments show young men looking away into a life they never had. Now imagine nearly a million men with entire lifespans, dreams, and ambitions ahead of them, all put into the meat grinder of politics at the behest of the wrinkled politicians who have already lived theirs, whose greatest discomfort is the sweat soaking their over-starched Victorian suits as they look over war briefs behind a desk. That, I believe, is the tragedy which made Decoration Day the surrogate national holiday of southerners for a century. Sadly, the situation is not much different today. You may have noticed the memorial pages on your favorite news websites: so-and-so killed in the line of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan sometime between 2001 and the present, age 20. 24. 19. Perhaps, as you read this, you realize you've lived twice or even three times longer. If it were up to me, I'd pass a constitutional amendment requiring the President and at least 10% of all the members of Congress at any given time to take to the field of battle in person, whenever a war must be waged. Since no president wants to spend his entire term in a bunker in some remote wasteland, fearful of a suicide bomber charging in at any given moment, wars would end a lot more quickly. Though that, of course, is a debate for another time. For now, let's look at a unique monument to soldiers from an even earlier war.

Upon the hills of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, where General George Washington's troops spent the winter of 1777, there stands a chapel in his memory, as well as those of the soldiers who died in the Independence War. Now, you may be well aware that our "national architecture" usually consists of classical knockoffs designed to make America look like the Roman Republic reborn. Abraham Lincoln looks over the National Mall, enthroned like Jupiter in a Greek temple. Thomas Jefferson stands proudly in a new Pantheon. But you may have never seen our national history (or "civic religion" as it called it in my previous post) given the Gothic treatment until now.

I had the pleasure of visiting the Washington Memorial Chapel, built between 1903 and 1917, last year. For a building that was raised, brick by brick, in the 20th century (and completed in the middle of World War I, no less) it is a magnificent edifice. It defies the modern man who says "we have forgotten how to build great temples" or "there is no money to build these wasteful things". 

The chapel itself has a modest seating capacity (about 200) but is quite well-furnished. The photo below is from the back of the nave in HDR so you can see all the little details. For example, the coats of arms of all the states studded amidst the wooden ceiling.

This one is in natural lighting.

I believe all the flags are of the original 13 colonies, and the one on the right, furthest from the camera, is George Washington's coat of arms. (For those curious, that design has been used by Washington's family ever since his ancestor, William de Wessyngton, took possession of Washington Old Hall in Durham in the 12th century! It appears on a 15th century window in Selby Abbey here.) I also seem to recall a tour guide saying that a flag of each of the 50 states is placed upon the altar every week so that prayers are made for the people of that state. The remaining two weeks are given to the territories and the District of Columbia. If that's not right, it's because I mixed it up with what a tour guide said when I visited the National Cathedral in DC, or because I just made it up. Moving on...

The details on the woodwork behind the choir stalls are especially remarkable. The choir is guarded by statuettes of soldiers in the uniforms that would have been seen in Valley Forge. I can't tell what's written below them, under the coats of arms.

"Idols" of Washington:

The chapel also sports a monk-less cloister:

Though a national shrine, there are many memorials for the foreign generals who trained the colonials at Valley Forge or otherwise fought in the war. This floor seal names Casimir Pulaski, a Polish noble who saved Washington's life and commanded one of only a few cavalry regiments in the entire Continental Army. He was mortally wounded in the Battle of Savannah and is one of only seven people to have ever been awarded "honorary American citizenship". Similar seals exist beside this one for the Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Rochambeau, and Baron von Steuben, among others (in case anyone forgot that the American Revolution was an international endeavor).

Detail of a stained-glass window in the "Patriot Tower".

 

The Washington Chapel is such a charming, Gothic edifice that it's no wonder it's a popular wedding destination. I'd get married there myself if it weren't Episcopal and wouldn't require an Episcopal's bank account to rent out. But as an experiment on conforming Americana to a romantic medieval aesthetic, I give it high marks. And for the skeptics out there, please be aware that the Gothic royal chapels of Europe (such as Saint George's Chapel at Windsor Castle) are no less works of propaganda to boost the egos of their kingly patrons. By contrast, the Washington Chapel was built entirely by donations from private citizens. It was built upon the romanticism of the American citizenry; the same which allows fallen servicemen and women to be revered in this country more than any other in the world, and which raised up a thousand monuments in a post-war South. The phenomenon is not really so different from that which created so many saints by popular acclaim in the early medieval world, and that which built the great shrines of Santiago de Compostela and Thomas Becket from the offerings of pilgrims. With due respect to American canonized saints like John Neumann and Kateri Ketakwitha, they just don't occupy the same space in even a pious American Catholic's heart, much less an average American who has certainly never heard of them. For good or ill, our soldiers and generals are the closest thing we in the United States have to saints. And if the cult of the American warrior is not an example of modern medievalism, I don't know what is.