Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/216603
Fig. 8C. House of Representative doors, by Thomas Crawford, bronze, installed 1905. expressed a desire to see me. The diseased eye was covered with a shade; but the other eye and his face looked well. The fateful disease seems, however daily to assert its power, and has already touched the brain. I held his hand, and expressed my fervent good wishes, and then after a few minutes left. I was told that it would not do to stay long. . . . The whole visit moved me much. This beautiful genius seems to be drawing to its close."32 In April, Meigs wrote Crawford that the Statue of Freedom would be cast in America. He wanted the art of casting encouraged in America, and for a better price. Crawford still wanted it to be cast in Germany. It was not to be; seven months after Sumner's visit, Crawford died in London. He was buried in New York City. Both of his friends, Sumner and Greene, were pallbearers. On May 12, 1858, the day before Sumner departed for a visit to Rome he wrote his friend Longfellow, "I have been in Naples, visited Paestum, which I had never seen before, and the ancient cities and driving near the rolling, fiery lava. All this was interesting; but nothing touched me like Rome. Constantly I think of early days when I saw everything here with such fidelity, under the advantage of health I do not now possess, and of the boundless hope for the future which long ago closed on me. . . . Of course, in my wanderings I cannot forget the friends, one of whom is dead (Crawford), who initiated me in Rome; and that happiest summer of my life is revived in all that I now see and do, with longings that I could have it back, but not, I think, on the condition that I should live the intervening years over again."33 On this trip Sumner visited Crawford's Roman studio. He seemed unsure of the completion of the doors for the Capitol. He may not have understood the way Crawford worked and did not have confiALL ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL dence that they could be finished without Crawford's hand. He wrote Julia Ward Howe's husband Samuel, "Crawford's studio interested me much; but I was strongly of the opinion that it would be best to abandon all idea of continuing the Senate and House of Representative doors. His sketches seemed to be in a very crude