Statue of John Harvard
John Harvard is an 1884 sculpture in bronze by Daniel Chester French at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It honors clergyman John Harvard, whose substantial deathbed
bequest to the
recently undertaken by the Massachusetts Bay Colony was so gratefully received that the Colony resolved
There being nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like, French took inspiration from a Harvard student collaterally descended from an early Harvard president.
The statue's inscriptionis the subject of an arch polemic
traditionally recited for visitors,
questioning whether John Harvard justly merits the honorific founder.
According to a Harvard official, the founding of the college was not the act of one but the work of many, and
John Harvard is therefore considered not the founder, but rather afounder, of the school, though the timeliness and generosity of his contribution have made him the most honored of these.
Tourists often rub the toe of John Harvards left shoe for luck in the mistaken belief that doing so is a Harvard student tradition.
Composition
The New York Times described the statue at its unveiling:John Harvard's gift to the school was £780 andperhaps more importantlyhis 400-volume scholar's library:
That he had died of tuberculosis, at about age thirty,
was one of the few things known about John Harvard at the time of the statue's composition; as dedication orator George Edward Ellis put it:
Historian Laurel Ulrich suggests that John Harvards general composition may have been inspired by Hendrik Goltzius' engraving of Clio, and that the figure's collar, buttons, tassel, and mustache may have been taken from a portrait of Plymouth Colony Governor Edward Winslow.
History
On June 27, 1883,at the Commencement Day dinner of Harvard alumni a letter was read
from "a generous benefactor, General Samuel James Bridge, an adopted alumnus of the college":
Bridge specified an "ideal" statue because there was then
nothing to indicate what John Harvard had looked like;
thus when French began work in September he used Harvard student Sherman Hoar as inspiration for the figure's face.
"In looking about for a type of the early comers to our shores," he wrote, "I chose a lineal descendant of them for my model in the general structure of the face. He has more of what I want than anybody I know."
The commission weighed heavily on French even as the figure neared completion. "I am sometimes scared by the importance of this work. It is a subject that one might not have in a lifetime," wrote the sculptorwho thirty years later would create the statue of Abraham Lincoln for the Lincoln Memorial"and a failure would be inexcusable. As a general thing, my model looks pretty well to me, but there are dark days."
French's final model was ready the following May and realized in bronze by the Henry-Bonnard Bronze Company over the next several months.
The cost was reportedly more than $20,000.
The statue was installed"looking wistfully into the western sky", said Harvard president
Charles W. Eliotat
the western end of Memorial Hall on the triangular city block then known as the Delta
At its October 15, 1884 unveiling Ellis gave
"a singularly felicitous address, telling the story of the life of John Harvard, who passes so mysteriously across the page of our early history."
In 1920 French wrote
to Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell desiring that the statue be relocated; in 1924
it was moved from Memorial Hall
to its current location on the west side of Harvard Yard's University Hall, facing Harvard Hall, Massachusetts Hall, and the Johnston Gate.
Later that year the Lampoon imagined the frustrations of the metallic, immobile John Harvard surrounded by Harvard undergraduates
though twelve years later David McCord portrayed the founder as satisfied in his stationarity:
A photograph of the statue appeared on the cover of the May 5, 1941 issue of Life magazine.
Sometime in the 1990s tour guides began encouraging visitors to emulate a "student tradition"nonexistentof rubbing the toe of John Harvards left shoe for luck, so that while the statue as a whole is darkly weathered the toe now "gleams almost throbbingly bright, as though from an excruciating inflammation of the bronze."
It is, however, traditional for seniors, as they process to graduation exercises on Commencement Day, to remove their caps as they pass.
The statue is depicted on the United States Postal Service's 1986 John Harvard stamp.
Seals and inscriptions
The monument's six-footgranite plinth is by Boston architect Charles Howard Walker.
On its southern side, in bronze, is the seal of John Harvard's alma mater, the University of Cambridge's Emmanuel College; on the northern side is what Ellis called "that most felicitously chosen of all like devices, the three open books and the veritas of Harvard. The pupil of the one institution was the founder of the other, transferring learning from its foreign home to this once wilderness scene."
On the rear are the words
The face of the plinth is inscribed
words "hardly read before some smartass guide breezily informs the unsuspecting visitor that this is, after all, the 'Statue of the Three Lies
because "the idea of the three lies is at best a fourth, and by far the greater falsehood,"
as detailed in a 1934 letter to the Harvard Crimson from the secretary of the Harvard Corporation and director of the school's then-upcoming Tercentenary Celebration:
Pranks
The statue became the target of pranks soon after its unveiling.1884 tarring
In 1884, The Harvard Crimson reported that,"Some ingenious persons covered the John Harvard statue last night with a coat of tar. The same persons presumably, marked a large '87 on the wall at the entrance of the chapel,"
and in 1886 the Crimson mentions a further incident: "A graduate contributor to the Advocate suggests that the editors of the college papers ferret out the authors of the small disturbances, such as the painting of the John Harvard statue."
1890 painting
Following a May 31, 1890 Harvard athletic victory, front-page headlines in the Boston Morning Globe declared:"Vandalism at Harvard; statue of John Harvard and college buildings daubed with red paint by drunken students; seniors and faculty indignant... Riotous Mob Ruled the Campus."
The next day the Globe further reported that a Harvard student observing graffiti-removal efforts "declared that no Harvard man ever daubed the impious phrase, 'To with Yale.' He was of the opinion that a Harvard man would at least soften the profanity by varnishing it with Latin or Greek... Two detectives who were requested to ferret out the perpetrators paid little heed to the discussion on swear words, but kept their eyes on several impressions that had been made on the paint when it was fresh. One thought they were made by a dog's paws, and as several students kept dogs the suspicion was magnified to the importance of a clue. A student, however, told the detectives that according to his view the impressions were made by barefoot boys walking on tip-toe."
Out-of-state newspapers reporting the outrage, and to a greater or lesser degree following the subsequent investigation, included :The World : "A Jocular Outrage Harvard Students Exceed Decency in Celebrating."Evening Gazette : "Harvard Students on an Outrageous Tear. Slathers of Red Paint Used. The Fine Statue of the College Founder Ruined by the Crazy Scapegraces."Fort Wayne Sentinel : "The faculty will expel the criminals and them if found."The Philadelphia Record: "Painted Harvard Red Disgraceful Antics of Rum-Crazed Students. Cambridge is Horrified. The Faculty Bent on Vengeance... Last night the whole college celebrated a wild... There were suppers, bonfires, fish-horns and a general pandemonium; but, save the insane acts of two of the students, who, overcome with enthusiasm, deliberately threw their dress coats into the bonfire while dancing around the blaze, no great overt act was then commit It was during the small hours that the vandals were face, hands, books, and shoes were bright crimson, and his clothes striped like a zebra."
Despite a mass meeting of outraged Harvard men, the hiring of detectives, and an apparently facetious report that Harvard President Charles W. Eliot was unavailable for comment because he had "gone out in the woods to cut switches", on June22 an anonymous contributor intimated that while "the faculty claim that they have not found out any of the men who did the 'fine art' work... I saw the ringleader on class day showing two very pretty girls around the 'yard'."
Other incidents
In March 1934 Harvard athletes were suspected in the disappearance of Yale's "ugly bulldog mascot", Handsome Dan.The dog was recovered a few days later, though not before the Harvard Lampoon had photographed him licking John Harvards boots,
which had been smeared with hamburger.
"Some years ago some students painted crimson and our cops caught them red-handed", Deputy Chief of the Harvard University Police Jack W. Morse told The Harvard Crimson in 1984, adding "I've been waiting a long time to use that."
As the statue's hundredth anniversary approached, Harvard Lampoon president Conan O'Brien predicted that "we'll probably stuff it with cottage cheese, maybe also with some chives."
"I think it’s creative but I wish students would direct their creative energies elsewhere," a Harvard maintenance official said in 2002.
"Idealization" dispute
The challenge of creating an idealized representation of John Harvard was discussed by Ellis at the October 1883 meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society:But Society president Robert Charles Winthrop harshly disapproved:
A year later, in his oration before the unveiling of what he called "a simulacrum... a conception of what Harvard might have been in body and lineament, from what we know that he was in mind and in soul", Ellis answered Winthrop's criticism:
Should there ever appear, however,