Show lit ar st K ana M N k Z aft M WM 4 av 1 i AI A v e 4 3 v V by ELMO SCOTT WATSON T ALL ALI started when lewis gannett literary critic of the now york tribune in reviewing a recent book alic tile private life of sherlock holmes said when london gets around to honoring I 1 sherlock hannibal mo alo tile the home I 1 town of huck finn and hla his statue will lose its proud claim to being the home of tile the only statue ever erected to a character of fiction in the world whereupon carolyn marx Ilter nry critic of the new york world telegram reprinted sir mr can statement and added how about framp tons peter pan statue in kensington gardens and the statue of lewis Car carrolla rolls white rabbit unveiled only last month in wales but that was only a starter for ns its sir mr gannett cannett confessed in his column a day or two later let hannibal no bio boast a flood of correspondents spon spond dents deny its claim to the only statue of a fictional character most bloat of them recall only peter pan ilan in londona Lon dons kensington gardens B 1 1 I K X of the department of romance languages at columbia says there Is a statue of dartagnan in luch auch france carolyn marx in the world telegram mentions the wonderland white rabbit recently unveiled in wales and christopher morley thinks he recalls a little nell in philadelphia and sir walter scotts rob hob roy hoy somewhere else but chris they dont count if they are lii la private homes they must be public monuments to match cannibals Hanni bals huck finn and tom sawyer are there more there were more indeed I 1 several days later the herald tribune reviewer re lener printed this late additions to the lists of literary statues irani christian andersons Ander sona little mermaid near the royal yacht club in copenhagen paul and virginia in the jardan des plante Plant ci paris Long fellows evangeline Evangel lne in grand pro pre nova mistrals Mi All in les saintes marles amarles in provence puss in boots in the tuileries lull Tuil erles eries paris the roaring camp group on the bret ilarae statue in san francisco velleda voluptuous broton breton from cha les ies martyrs near boulevard saint oate cate of the luxembourg gardens paris which with peter pan and illma idima in london th the white in wales 7 little nell and tarn tam 0 in philadelphia I 1 in cooperstown Coopers town the circuit ilider in salero salem ore the barefoot boy in ashburnham Ashburn hani make more than a dozen rivals to hai flat al mos afo s luck and tom the only monument in the world to a flet fictional lonal character and even that list might be extended over in madrid spain four years ago there was unveiled in tile the plaza do de espana near the royal palace a huge memorial consisting of two monuments one of those these monuments standing ch 50 feet high was ans a atre stze size bronze group of doti don quixote on a horse and his man sancho panza on a donkey crowning crooning the main column was the figure of cervantes tile the man who ft ho gave to literature the famous fighter of windmills anil and at the base of the monument was wag an allegorical the fount of the castillian tongue although the memorial was mas prim primarily arlly to honor the genius of cervantes at tile lie sime same time it preserves imperishably those two famond fictitious characters don quixote and sancho panza but to return to america a n little investigation will wilI reveal the fact that the list of statues and memorials to fictitious characters la Is not limited to tile the compilation of the new york columnist be it remembered that tile genius of daniel chester french frenchi Fren cli the lean dean of american sculptors not only produced among others of his great pieces of work a bust of washington irving but he also made a full figure statue of the famous character which irving created isip van winkle and ppe heberts eberts If statue of evangeline at grand pre Is not tho the only one which reca recalls Hs Long fellows immortal heroine II If eberta eberts statue was erected more than a decade ago but it was only about three years ago that there was nas unveiled at st martinville la another statue of the maid of grand pre tills this was done in the presence of several thousand Loul louisiana sinna Acad lans and of two hundred Acad lans from moncton montreal and grand pre who vvhs made a pilgrimage to the bayou state for the ceremonies connected with the dedication of the statue which stands over the grave of emmeline Lab labiche lehe who was the original of evangeline go out to denver goto colo and visit washington park there in the center of a pool Is a fountain where you can see immortalized in stone eugene fields Wyn ken blinken and nod ned or go to lincoln park in chicago and look upon them as they are portrayed on the field memorial there As for the monument to huckleberry finn and tom sawyer which gives hannibal mo afo the right to make its proud claim it was made by frderick FrO erick C habbard a chicago sculptor and wr vl i k at 1 h hj p 14 e av X aall f IM iwo V M 4 X it 4 Q N f V 11 1 tho the lewis carroll memorial at llandudno t wales which features feature the white rabbit of alice in wonderland beside it stands david lloyd george former british pr premier emler who unveiled tho the statue 2 statue of evangeline which stands in st martinville la over the grave of emmatine Emm etine labiche the original of longfellow ts heroine 3 the captains well in amesbury mass made famous by the ballad by john greenleaf whittier 4 memorial to eve erected in fountain inn 8 C by robert quillen noted newspaper para grapher and editor who stands beside it 5 statue of huckleberry finn and tom sawyer which stands stand in hannibal mo mark twaina boyhood home town presented to tile the city of hannibal by mr air and mrs george A mahan hahnn it stands nt at the foot of cardiff hill where foregathered fore gathered tom and hack and toms immortal gang closely akin to the practice of immortalizing Immortal izing in stone characters in fiction has been mans practice of doing the same for mythical and legendary figures some of the greatest sculptors of ancient greece and rome found their inspiration in the gods and goddesses whom the greeks and romans honored similarly in modern lays days names in the bible have been translated into stone two of the finest pieces of work by the great french sculptor rodin are his figures of adam and eve and in america we have such statues as william henry alae harts rebecca with her pitcher at the well down in fountain inn S 0 la Is an unusual mer memorial norial not a statue but a simple white shaft erected to the memory of eve because robert Qu fulllen Ilich editor of the fountain inn tribune and a famous paragraph cr thought that insufficient honor boner has been paid to the mother of the human race do you remember that ballad by john greenleaf whittier which tells of the shipwrecked new england sailor who was cast away on the east bait arabian coast and as he tolled across the hot desert sands hungry and thirsty cursed the day of his birth and then suddenly overcome by a alner emotion prayed as he never before had prayed pity me god dodl I 1 for I 1 die of thirst take me out of tills this land accurse ac and it if ever I 1 reach my home again where earth has springs find and the sky has rain I 1 will dig n R well for the passersby passers by and none shall suffer from thirst as 1 I then do you remember how the shipwrecked in mariner arIner came back safely nt at last to his homeland and when morning came he called for his spade 1 I 1 must pay my debt to the lord lie he said so he tolled day after day adny out in the yard behind his house until at last tile the blessed water the wine of god gushed forth perhaps you thought that story was just a creation of tile the new england poets flu but I 1 it t wils was something more than that although whit t poem made the legend of tile the captains well familiar to all americans it Is a legend that had a very substantial basis of fact go to amesbury Anes bury mass and see for yourself the captains well there as it has been restored by former state senator and mrs james jamea IT II walker of amesbury and presented to the town improvement society you can drink from its pure waters and as you do so BO you will be reminded oded not only of the hero of Whit tiers ballad but of all the adventurous new england seamen who once carried the american flag to all corners of the globe for the restored captains well As s a memorial to them the hero of the ballad was valentine bagley a native of amesbury who at the age of eighteen went down to the sea in ships late in the eighteenth century and the story of his adventures can be found in nn an old book published in salem in 1791 the journal of the travels and sufferings of daniel saunders Sn a mariner on board the ship commerce of boston saml johnson commander which was cast away near cape ct on the const coast of arabia july 10 1702 1792 bagley was a carpenters mite mate on the commerce wh when en that ship sailed from the isle of france on january 27 1792 bound for madras there she exchanged her boston master john leach for a rhode islander samuel johnson and on april 28 set sail for bombay however the new captain being unacquainted with the coast steered too far to the west and the ship foundered off cape july 10 the crew thirty four souls in number twenty whites lascar sailors and one cne african black took to the boats and for three days made their any along the shore then they were driven ashore by a storm which drowned three of them starting up tip the coast the 17 white men tortured with thirst hunted everywhere for water becoming separated they wandered about la in small parties and one by one they laid their weakened companions under bushes and left them there to die on and on they plodded across the burning sands and bagley thinking no doubt of the damp fog swept town of his nativity forced to reed his parched throat threat to utter the promise to hla his god that it if ever he got back to that town he would dig a well where all who passed might drink at last the castaways casta ways fell in with a party of aral arab traders traveling on camels toward muscat who took them along on august 12 six air of tile the seventeen arrived at muscat where most of them took ship for home but valentine bagley evidently was in no such hurry still seeking adventure lie he shipped on nn an arabian vessel and followed the sea for more years before going back to massachusetts two years later bagley kept hla his vow by digging the well and for years from its cool depths bubbled the precious water which ho he had craved so much on the hot sands of arabia but after his death the well fell into disrepair and its waters were drained away by excavations for a deep p plc alc pe line in 1012 but the restoration four years yearn ago of the well and the erection of the memorial designed by leonnrd craske an english sculptor sivira in boston has guaranteed 1 perpetuation c of the story of valentine bagley a real character in a ballad of a famous american poet 0 by Wes westoria torra union |