Vinnie Ream, Part 1

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today we are going
to talk about a person that came up in a
recent episode and I was like, we gotta talk about this,

(00:22):
and that is Vinnie Reem. She came up in a
recent episode about Charles Francis Hall. She was not directly
involved in that story, but jealousy between two other men
over her attention may have been a factor in Charles
Francis Hall's death. That remains entirely a matter of speculation.
But even without that episode happening in her life, which

(00:45):
didn't really happen in her life, it's been elsewhere. Her
life was really full of drama and excitement and achievement.
Don't worry, we will touch on that possible love triangle
in the episode. She had so much that went on
before she was even you know, an adult, essentially like
in her very early adult years that like she's a lot.

(01:08):
She managed to reach a level with her art that
very few people manage. She did so at a very
early age. She became the first woman to be given
an art commission by the US government which she was
still very young, and she was also at the center
of a lot of controversy and scandal and so much
that we have to do her life in two parts.
That first part is going to cover Reem's early life

(01:31):
and her turbulent rise to fame in Washington, d c.
And then part two will cover the completion of her
first major work, that commission we just talked about, and
the rest of her life. And if that sounds a
little bit lopsided, as you'll see, it's because her first
big commission caused a lot of conflict, and then not
too much later in her life she kind of went

(01:51):
dark as an artist for a couple of decades. So
Lavinia Ellen Reim was born September twenty fifth, eighteen forty seven,
in Addison, Wisconsin. Her family was not especially wealthy. Her father,
Robert L. Reim, ran an inn at the time, and
she was named after her mother, also named Lavinia. The

(02:11):
younger Lavinia was nicknamed Vinnie, and that's the name that
she went by through her whole life. Vinnie had two siblings.
There was a brother named Robert Junior who went by Bob,
and a sister named Cynthia Ann who went by Mary. Yes,
she really went by Vinnie Lake looking at documents and
stuff that she prepares later in her life. She does
not sign anything Lavina. It's always Vinnie. And when Vinnie

(02:34):
was still just a baby, her father, Robert, who had
worked in a few roles in local politics, started a
series of jobs as a surveyor for various government offices.
He left in keeping behind. Because of this new job,
the family traveled around a lot, basically wherever Robert had
to go to perform his work and create maps of
the areas that he had surveyed. The whole family went.

(02:57):
In addition to Wisconsin as she grew up, Vinnie lived
in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Arkansas at various times,
and eventually they ended up in Washington, d c. Where
Robert Senior was hired by the War Department as a
cartographer during the Civil War. Bob, her older brother, who
at this point was an adult, had stayed in Arkansas,

(03:18):
but Mary and Vinnie had traveled with their parents to Washington,
and both of the girls got jobs to help the
family meet the expenses of living in the very costly capital.
Mary worked in the Land Office, and Vinnie worked for
the Post Office. By all accounts, Vinnie had been interested
in the arts from a very young age. They'd lived
in these various frontier areas while her father mapped them

(03:41):
out for development, and that had not offered a lot
of opportunity to really be able to engage with art
and education, especially not at the level she really craved.
She did for a little while attend the Art Academy
of the Christian College of Columbia, Missouri. She had also
started playing music when the family lived in Kansas and

(04:02):
her father bought a guitar. She taught herself how to
play from a songbook and soon started teaching other people
how to do that. So once they were in Washington,
d c. She used some of the money she made
to take language and music lessons, and eventually she got
an invite from Missouri Representative James S. Rollins, who was
a friend of the family from their time back in Missouri,

(04:24):
and that would really change her life. Rollins was sitting
for a bust with sculptor Clark Mills, and he invited
Vinnie to come with him to one of his sessions.
Mills was a self taught sculptor who had gained fame
for his work depicting Andrew Jackson riding a horse for
Lafayette Square in Washington, d C. That was unveiled in
eighteen fifty three. That sculpture is notable from an artistic

(04:47):
standpoint because when Mills created it he had never met
or even seen Andrew Jackson in person. He had also
never seen an equestrian statue, and his resulting work, which
features the horse rearing up slightly so that supported only
by its black legs, was considered pretty revolutionary at the time.
Later on people started to criticize it for being overly showy,

(05:07):
but at the time they were like wow. When that
statue was unveiled, Mills made this point of reaching up
and grabbing the four legs that were off the ground
and pulling himself up as a show of the work's
strength and its balance. If you have ever been to
Jackson Square in New Orleans, that statue that's there of
Andrew Jackson is the same one. It was cast a

(05:28):
second time by Mills, and all of this accomplishment on
his part as a sculptor sounds really grand, but we
have to note that it is not really the work
of Mills exclusively. It is very well known and very
well documented that a master craftsman named Philip Reid deserves
a lot of the credit. Red was an enslaved man
that Mills had purchased while living in South Carolina, and

(05:52):
Reid was highly skilled in metallurgical casting, and he very well.
Maybe a future episode, but I feel like not giving
him any credit here would be in eighteen sixty three,
when Reem found herself in Mills's studio, Mills was finishing
up his sculpture Liberty, that was in addition to the
busts he was making of various politicians. Reim was enthralled

(06:13):
with the work that he was doing, and Mills is
said to have given her a piece of clay to
work with while he tended to rollins in his sitting.
He also gave her a bust of a Native American
chief to use as her model. While these two men worked,
she produced a medallion that featured this chief and profile,
and Mills was apparently so impressed with this that he

(06:34):
wanted to take her on as an apprentice. She kept
working at the post office, but her new tutor and
her boss worked out a schedule so that she could
do both of them. Yeah, she definitely, As you'll see
as we go on, modeled her entire career on the
way Mills operated, where he would have like one big
commission going on and then taking a whole lot of
smaller ones at the same time. Because Mills had both

(06:56):
a sculpting studio and a foundry, re was able to
get a really full view of the process of creating
sculptures and monuments. She also, as a teenager approaching adulthood,
started to think about her future. Taking inspiration from the
small group of women's sculptors who had started to be
recognized as professional artists, including previous podcast subject at Monia Lewis.

(07:20):
Vinnie really started to see that as a path for herself,
and she seemed to understand that she would need the
help of a lot of people in power, specifically men,
to be able to live an independent life as an artist.
Being in Washington, d C. Reim turned her hand to
sculpting the politicians of the city, and she used a
lot of her connections to grow her network and curry

(07:42):
favor when she could using these connections. In eighteen sixty four,
Reim was given the honor of sculpting President Abraham Lincoln
from life. This took some work on her part. She's
said to have gotten several members of Congress to approach
the President with this request, and so he was initially reluctant.
He did agree. Some accounts suggest that Lincoln was swayed

(08:05):
by the fact that Reem was from a humble background
and had, like him, lived on the frontier. From eighteen
sixty four to eighteen sixty five, she created the Lincoln Bust.
Their sittings together were thirty minutes at a time. The
actual number is not entirely clear to me. I read
differing accounts, but it's about half a dozen and Reim

(08:26):
later reported that the President rarely spoke during these meetings.
He didn't sit still the way you might imagine someone
sitting for a painting, though he tended to walk around
the office and tend to his business. She also described
him as very sorrowful during these meetings. His son Will
had died two years prior, and that even sometimes he
would cry. And whether any of this is true, we

(08:48):
just don't know, because she gave these accounts after his death,
and he never commented on their meetings. What we do
now is that having Lincoln sit for her immediately put
Vinny Reim in very high demand. It seems like everyone
in Washington wanted to sit for this young artist who
had sculpted the President. Soon she had commissions from a
lot of the city's politicians. Just as Reim was nearing

(09:11):
completion of the Lincoln bust, the President was assassinated by
John Wilkes Booth, and while Vinnie Reim described reeling from
the news that Lincoln had been shot, she was also
pretty quick to turn to thoughts of what would happen next.
As various memorial committees formed, She knew that some sort
of memorial would be commissioned for the President, and she

(09:33):
wanted to be the one to receive that commission. She
campaigned hard for it, as hard as any politician ever
had for office. She wrote to the head of the
House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, John H. Rice,
stating that she knew there would be a call for
a life size marble of Lincoln in the Capitol, and
she stated her aim quite plainly, writing quote, I respectfully

(09:56):
solicit the influence of your committee in favoring me an
order for the same, and submit my model bust of
mister Lincoln as a specimen of my work. She also
pulled off a huge feet in the form of a petition.
She had, with help drafted the body of it herself,
and it stated in part quote to whom it may concern,

(10:16):
the undersigned members of the Senate and House of Representatives
of the Congress of the United States, and others being
personally acquainted with Miss Benny Reem, take great pleasure in
endorsing her claims upon public patronage, no less as a
most worthy and accomplished young lady than as possessing rare
genius in the beautiful art of sculpture. The document next

(10:40):
lists the various works she's completed, including of course, her
Lincoln bust, and then it concludes with quote, as Americans,
we should feel a national pride in Miss Reem and
desire to aid her in the development of her unquestionable genius,
fitly sustained. We feel every confidence that she will excel

(11:00):
her profession, and with age and experience, rank her name
with those who have already won high places in America's
Temple of Art. We're going to talk about this petition
some more, and the names on it and the effect
it had after we pause for a sponsor break. The

(11:26):
truly astonishing part of Vinny Rheim's petition to be considered
for the Lincoln Sculpture Commission was the list of people
who signed it. Thirty one senators in one hundred and
ten members of the House of Representatives put their names
to it, but more impressively, so did Skuylar Colfax, Speaker
of the House, Henry Stanberry, Attorney General O. H. Browning,

(11:48):
Secretary of the Interior Hugh McCullough, Secretary of the Treasury, J. W. Barnes,
the Surgeon General Ulysses S. Grant, General of the Union Army,
and Andrew Johnson, the President. Vinnie had made the rounds
of people she had connections with in DC, and she
had gotten them to sign, and then she worked with

(12:08):
Johnny Trace to craft a bill to be introduced into
the House suggesting reim as the sculptor to whom the
inevitable commission should go. She also sent gifts to congressmen,
things like small sculptures and flowers, and she asked the
politicians she had become closest to for their aid in
lobbying with their colleagues. Rice introduced the topic to the

(12:31):
House on July twenty sixth, eighteen sixty six, and although
there were criticisms, mainly that she was very young and
not up to the task, it passed a vote by
a landslide. California Senator John Conness had agreed to introduce
this bill to the Senate. It didn't go as well there.
In that instance, the arguments against Reim were led by

(12:52):
Charles Sumner of Massachusetts. He had turned down the request
to sign Reem's petition and he felt that she was
to and experienced. He also introduced the information that Mary
Todd Lincoln, who was very good friends with, agreed with him.
As Vinnie watched from the gallery, she saw this bill
argued and become a matter that was argued for its

(13:15):
merits of having even been introduced. The Senate was in
the midst of looking at issues like war widows and
veterans pensions, so this just did not seem as important,
and some people were angry it had even been brought
in to begin with. When a vote was called as
to whether or not the Senate should take up the resolution,
it did pass, though that meant that debate could begin

(13:36):
in earnest and as Vinnie looked on. A bunch of
senators argued about her merits. Sumner opened his arguments by
saying it was a gamble to give such a large
sum of money to an untested artist. He was known
for his taste and knowledge of art, and he spoke
at length about the many pieces of art that were
installed in federal buildings and where they'd come from, pointed

(13:59):
out all these established careers of the contributors. He also
compared the situation to giving Reim a position alongside General
Grant in combat. She just wasn't prepared for it. He
closed by noting that the politicians who wanted to support
her career could do so with gifts or grants, but

(14:19):
that it was not really a wise investment to put
so much faith and finance behind somebody with her experience
level for such an important project. This is a long speech,
and at several points he made it seem as though
he had been forced to say such unkind things, noting quote,
I am pained to be constrained to say what I do.

(14:41):
But when you press this to a vote, you leave
me no alternative. Admit that she may make a statue,
she cannot make one that you will be justified in
placing in this national capital promise is not performance, but
what she has done thus far comes under the first
head rather than the latter. Surely, this edifice, so beautiful

(15:02):
and interesting should not be opened to the experiments of
untried talent. Only the finished artists should be invited to
its ornamentation. But Riem had as that petition suggested a
lot of supporters, and they were ready to just as
vehemently defend her as Sumner had been to argue against her.

(15:23):
Senator James Nesmith noted that Sumner seemed to be constantly
pointing to European artists as being more appropriate for such
a commission rather than considering an artist from the US.
He once again reiterated how good the busts she had
already created were. James Dougal of California also spoke on
her behalf, specifically arguing that calling it charity to commission

(15:46):
her was absolutely inaccurate. Richard Yates of Illinois also stood
in support of her. It seemed for a moment like
Sumner was really the only Senator against the commission, But
then Michigan Senator Jake of Merit Howard spoke. He was
very conservative and was not at all in favor of
Reim getting ten thousand dollars to make a statue when

(16:09):
she had never done anything quite like it before. He stated, quote,
she has shown no lack of that particular talent known
as lobbying and pressing forward her enterprise. I have seen
her models of mister Lincoln. I have seen and examined
the one, especially to which references most frequently had And
although I do not pretend to be a connoisseur in

(16:32):
this kind of art, I am prepared to say that
I never was satisfied with that model. He goes on
to describe the Lincoln bust as quote monotonous and without
meaning and without spirit. But he then got really mean
and openly sexist about it, saying, quote, having in view

(16:52):
the youth and inexperience of miss Reem, and I will
go further and say, having in view her sex, I
shall expect to comply failure in the execution of this work.
I would as soon think of a lady writing the
Iliad of Homer, I should as soon think of placing
at the head of an army a woman for the
conduct of a great campaign. This started a side argument

(17:16):
with Pennsylvania Senator Edgar Cowan, who wasn't exactly a supporter
of Vinny, but he thought Howard had gone too far,
and he pointed out that history showed women doing exactly
the kinds of things that the Michigan senator just found unfathomable.
Senator McDougall also joined this argument, and, in a move

(17:36):
was sort of humorous to Holly in research, invoked Sappho
on the Senate floor as evidence of the capability of women.
This to be just it tickled me utterly, like have
you read Sapo like and then then arguing about Sappho.
They were just really really wanted up about this whole thing.

(17:56):
And as this argument continued, the idea of an amendment
to the bill was suggested as a sort of compromise, Like,
what if some senators thought they added a stipulation that
Reim only would receive the full payment if she delivered
the statue as promised. She would, per the terms of
this bill, be paid five thousand dollars up front, and
then the remainder when the work was delivered. So some

(18:18):
senators thought they should add a provision that the final
payment also had to be approved by the Secretary of
the Interior after the work was inspected for quality. This
set off another round of debate, with Vinny supporters pointing
out that if she did the work, she should get
paid full stop. It shouldn't be on this contingent that
like everybody approved it. After all the bickering, the bill

(18:39):
went to vote. When the vote happened late July twenty seventh,
eighteen sixty six, Congress commissioned a full size statue of
Lincoln from Reim. And there's an interesting aspect to the
way the vote split. Quite a few senators changed sides
before it was over. Edgar Cowen, for example, had not
initially been in favor of Reem for commission, but then stated, quote,

(19:02):
I have come to the conclusion to vote for this resolution,
and I have come to the conclusion that this young lady,
whoever she may be, is unquestionably a person of great genius.
It may not be exactly in the line of sculpture,
but certainly she is that in agitation, she is occupying
the talents of all the senators and has shaken this

(19:23):
chamber to its very center. Certainly it is no ordinary
girl who can do this, and some of her early supporters,
even some who had signed her petition then reconsidered and
voted against the bill after having been persuaded by Senator
Sumner's lengthy arguments on the matter. But it passed, and

(19:43):
this made her the first woman to receive a federal
art commission, but those things were settled in terms of
the Congressional resolution. This commission was also controversial in the
court of public opinion. Because Vinny Reem had been Clark
Mills's apprentice in his sty at the Capitol, she met
a lot of politicians and this was a very unique scenario.

(20:06):
She had also been working as a teenager alongside an
adult man, which was unusual and carried some stigma, and
this set of circumstances meant that she was able to
make the acquaintances of numerous men without a family chaperone involved.
She was also very pretty and lively and very well liked.
As the commission and the debate about it became news

(20:27):
in Washington and then hit the national papers, people started
to form opinions about how things played out that involved
a lot of speculation about Vinnie Reim and her behavior.
The Hartford Current and a lot of other papers ran
an article from a Washington correspondent on August seventh, eighteen
sixty six, and it read, quote, the discussion in the

(20:49):
Senate on the bill to give a young woman by
the name of Vinnie Reim a commission to make a
full length, life size statue of mister Lincoln for the
sum of ten thousand dollars was very interesting and is
a singular illustration of the way in which the public
money is wasted. But who is Vinny Reim? No one
that I have met knows much about her, and I

(21:10):
presume there is little to know. She has been here
all winter, working with a woman's persistent energy to enlist
in her favor everybody who seemed at all likely to
help her in getting this appropriation passed. While it's not
explicitly spelled out here, the implication was that Vinnie Reim
was doing something morally wrong. Because she was an attractive

(21:33):
young woman, Rumors started to swirl that she had used
her feminine charms in some way to gain the favor
of all these politicians who then supported her for the commission.
The Portland Daily Press ran a brief mention of Reem
on August fifteenth, eighteen sixty six, which simply read quote
Vinnie Reim, to whom Congress has voted ten thousand dollars

(21:53):
for a statue of Lincoln, is a rather handsome young
woman who has extraordinary powers of persuasion through life appliances.
So far as known, she has never accomplished a single
work of art which will stand criticism. For months, there
continued to be negative press about Reim, a lot of
it insinuating that she had done something inappropriate to gain

(22:16):
the favor of so many representatives and the Leavenworth Times
of Levenworth, Kansas a commentary piece ran on September sixth
under the headline A homely woman's opinion of a pretty
one that has its own problems right there, although it
was intended as an insult to the woman sharing her
opinion as follows, quote Miss swiss Elm says of Miss

(22:39):
Vinnie Reem, who received the ten thousand dollars order for
the Lincoln statue. She is a young girl about twenty,
has only been studying her art a few months. Never
made a statue, has made some plaster busts on exhibit
at the Capitol, including her own, minus clothing to the waist,
has a pretty face, long, dark curls and plenty of them,
where's a jockey and a good deal of jewelry, Sees

(23:02):
all the members at their lodgings or the reception room
in the Capitol, urges her claims fluently and confidently. Sits
in the galleries in a conspicuous position in her most
bewitching dress while those claims are being discussed on the floor,
and nods and smiles as a member rises and delivers
his opinion of the merits of the case with the

(23:24):
air of a man sitting for his picture. And so
she carries the day over Powers and Crawford and Homer
and who not. It is clear from this quote that
people were willing to minimize Vinnie's actual art experience and
accomplishment in favor of characterizing her as a woman who
beguiles men to get what she wants. And there was

(23:45):
a lot of gossip that during the Senate debate on
the commission, she was flirting from the gallery with various
senators below and winking and waving while wearing as this
right up mentioned some sort of alluring attire, but there's
no actual evidence of an any of that, and there's
really no way to know. Also that bare chested bust
that's referenced in the above quote was not a self portrait.

(24:08):
This is apparently something that really upset Vinie Reim. That
was a bust titled Violet, which features a woman that
doesn't look like her at all, in a very romantic style,
with flowers encircling her torso just below her bare breasts.
And it's very much if you look at it, in
line with a lot of classical art you would see
And just as Senator Sumner and others had worried, the

(24:29):
press also voiced concern that this project was just too
important to put in the hands of a relatively unknown artist.
The Chicago Tribune noted of Ream on October twenty first quote,
Who is miss Vinnie Reim? Was she ever heard of before?
What rank does she hold in the artist world? Has

(24:49):
she ever had experienced chiseling statues? In regard to the
first two questions, there seems to be a cloud of
mystery overhanging her. We have never yet met a person
of sufficient temerity to answer them. We regret, because she
is a lady, that she has manifested a spirit which
is utterly impossible in a true artist. We regret that

(25:12):
so important a work should have been carelessly entrusted to
inexperienced and unknown hands. No public man has ever been
so miserably caricatured by bunglers as mister Lincoln, and we
shudder at the possibility that the halls of Congress must
endure another. Perhaps the trickiest part in sorting all of

(25:35):
this out is that there definitely were politicians who were
interested in viny Reem romantically. It has been stated several
times that she was a charmer, but she seems to
be a little bit offhand about those interests. She was
still a teenager at this time, remember, moving in the
corridors of power, and while she's often characterized for her

(25:56):
savvy in dealing with men in power, we really don't
know if she was being calculating or maybe just overly
friendly for the mores of the time, and some men
took it the wrong way. She did, to be clear,
receive love letters from all kinds of men, including people
like General Custer and William to Cooms as Sherman, so

(26:17):
there's no way she was ignorant that she was very
appealing to men. But it's also impossible to know if
she was as she was often accused conniving in her
dealings with them, or to what degree. It's also possible
she was flirty and not a mastermind. We don't really
know how. If you want to hear more specifically about
the congressional debate about Reim, you can check out the

(26:40):
podcast Shaping History Women in Capital Art, which was produced
by the US Capital Visitors Center. The episode they did
on Reim delves into the expectations of women culturally during
this time and how Vinny Reim navigated that landscape. Now,
coming up, we're going to talk about how Mary Toddling
and felt about Vinnie Reem. Spoiler alert not great. We

(27:04):
will get into the details of it though, and who
it's a doozy after we hear from the sponsors that
keep the show going. Even as Vinnie signed her contract
and started her project, she came up against resistance, and

(27:26):
one particular roadblock to the project was Mary Todd Lincoln.
After Vinnie was introduced by letter to Missus Lincoln by
one of her supporters in the Senate, the artist wrote
her own letter to the former First Lady requesting her
assistance on direction of the statue. What she got in
return was a letter that is a masterclass in passive

(27:47):
aggressive politeness. Missus Lincoln wrote in part quote, I shall
be unable to comply with your request, and you will
allow me to say you are undertaking a very sacred work,
one of great responsibility, which artists of worldwide renowned would
shrink from as incapable of the great task. As every
friend my husband knew was familiar to me, and as

(28:08):
your name was not on the list, consequently, you could
not have become familiar with the expression of his face,
which was so variable. I cannot fix my distressed mind
on any particular look. Hence the difficulty of the task
for you, a stranger to this great, good and christ
like man, praying that you have success. I remain truly

(28:31):
Mary Todd Lincoln. I like that she's not truly yours,
truly kind, I just remain married Todd Lincoln. Missus Lincoln
also wrote to Senator Sumner that Vinnie's work was sure
to be a quote mortifying failure, and also to jump
back a bit to the last segment that miss swissel
mentioned in the newspaper write up that Tracy quoted. That

(28:53):
was Jane Gray Swisselm, and she was married Todd Lincoln's
bff from the time they were kids. Then, when Vennie
tried to find the President's suit from the day he
had died so that she could model it for the statue,
she ended up making a request to Alphonse Dunn, who
was the White House dorman. He had been given the

(29:15):
suit as a show of thanks for his service, and
Mary Todd Lincoln interceded with this request. She wrote to
Don that he should not let Vinni reem borrow the suit.
Missus Lincoln knew that she was being really petty in
all this, because she concluded this letter to Don pretty
frantically with quote, let me hear from you on this subject.

(29:36):
When you receive this letter and show this letter to
no one, only burn it. I feel, as I gave
them to you, I can dictate a little about them.
Write on receipt of this what you say will not
be mentioned. Use your own discretion about lending the clothes.
But as they are a gift from me, you are
under no obligation to yield them into other hands. All

(29:59):
this year will understand, I do not wish my name
mentioned in it. Write me all about it, Burn this
and mention contents to no one once again, Congressman got involved.
All of Reem's network was trying to just smooth all
of this over, and that seems to have worked because

(30:19):
Missus Lincoln then wrote to Don again three weeks later
and told him he could loan out the suit and
that she've really hoped that Vinnie Reem succeeded in her
endeavor up but she also got in another instance of
saying that she did not know Reem and thought she
was very inexperienced. Still, though at this point the matter
was resolved, and Vinnie got to use these clothes that

(30:43):
whole like burn this, burn this, She's horrible. I hate her.
Burn this. Don't tell anybody I said this, and also
burn it. Do not mention my name, but you got
to burn this letter, which he obviously did not because
the letter exists. Right As press commentary and speculation about
her continued, Realm got to work. She had been granted
a studio space in the Capitol, which required some updates

(31:05):
before she was pleased with it for working, and once
it was ready, she essentially had the studio open and
people could stop in almost any time and watch her work.
She worked very long hours, from early in the morning
to as late as eleven PM on a lot of days,
and as more and more people visited her studio, they
were actually pretty charmed and impressed by her, and this

(31:25):
resulted in a little bit more positive press than before
the project started, although there was still plenty of negative.
But the studio became like the it spot for visitors
to the Capitol. A lot of the things I read
suggested it became Washington, DC's biggest tourist destination. Everyone from
war veterans to Supreme Court justices to Lincoln's son, Robert

(31:48):
Todd Lincoln came to visit at one point or another,
and often they would linger and socialize while watching the
artist at work. Later, Vinnie described the studio's crowds this way,
quote friend and gathered with a common interest the success
of the work. Old feuds were forgotten and they were
met on neutral ground, some on friendly terms who had

(32:08):
not spoken to each other for years. I was generally
a silent listener as the men converse, but what they
said made deep impression forever on their lips was the
name of Lincoln. And throughout all of this, Vinnie wasn't
only working exclusively on the Lincoln model. She was also
as her mentor, Clark Mills, had done taking other commissions

(32:30):
to keep steady cash flow, so her studio was a very,
very busy place. Even as Raim's Lincoln model was nearing
completion in the summer of eighteen sixty eight, there was
yet more controversy. She'd made the head in clay and
then cast it in plaster, and then used the plaster
cast atop the body, which was sculpted in clay supported

(32:52):
by iron rods. This model would be recreated in marble
for the final statue. Because the model was being shown
for viewings. Before this marble version was made, paint was
used to match the clay in plasterer sections. A lack
of understanding about this process led people to accusing ream

(33:13):
of fakery, suggesting that this work was not her own.
This rumor persisted enough that rem had handbills printed for
distribution throughout the Capital that read quote, Sir, I understand
that my model for the Lincoln statue is being criticized
for the reason that the head is in plaster instead
of clay like the body of the model. It is

(33:33):
true that the head is in plaster, but it is
also true that the model was first made in clay,
as is the practice of sculptors usually, and it is
entirely the work of my own hands, upon which I
labored for many months. A plaster facsimile was then taken
and sense placed upon the clay model, for the reason

(33:54):
that in plaster it was much less liable to be
injured by the daily moist which the clay model requires.
It was painted its present color simply to make it
correspond with the balance of the figure. It should be
remembered that very many eminent sculptors often model in plaster
instead of clay, and even had I done so in

(34:17):
this instance, it would have been perfectly legitimate and should
not be made the ground of criticism against my work.
The head of this model is a perfect copy of
the one made by me, being selected by them as
the most truthful likeness of mister Lincoln they could procure
very respectfully, venny Reem. In January eighteen sixty nine, the

(34:42):
statue the model for the statue was formally displayed for viewing,
and papers ran stories that said that the work was
a perfect recreation of Lincoln, but also that it was
not great art. There was, of course, another debate in
the Senate about whether she should get her second five
thousand dollars. Once again, Senator Sumner spoke out against it,

(35:03):
but when he was questioned as to whether he had
even seen the model, Sumner confessed that he hadn't, saying, quote,
I criticize it on what I have heard and read
about it. Ultimately, the statue was approved, but even so,
the money would take some time to be dispersed, and
a lot of that money was actually going to go
towards the marble reproduction. It was not as though Reem

(35:25):
was rolling in money from this entire work. That ten
thousand dollars, which was a lot of money at the time,
was for a fully executed sculpture, but she had to
pay for all the materials and live off of what
was left, so she wasn't a starving artist by any means.
But though that price tag was very hefty at the time,
it didn't set the artist up for life. She was

(35:46):
going to have to contract someone to recreate it in marble.
The next step was for twenty two year old Vinnie
Reim to take her model to Italy so that it
could be made in marble. And we will get into
that and the rest of her life next time. And
if any of you know a lot about Vinnie Riem
and you're like, there's another scandal you haven't mentioned, it's

(36:06):
coming in part two. I just had to break up.
There's so many scandals and the next one is also
so juicy that it just wouldn't fit. I have listener
mail that has nothing to do with scandal or you know, drama,
unless you find bird things dramatic, all right, which some

(36:28):
people do. This is from our listener Kirsten, who's or
maybe she says Kirsten, I don't know, so apologies if
I got it wrong. Uh, And writes Hi Ally and Tracy.
I love your podcast and was excited about Holly's recent
request for Corvid photos. Here are a couple of beautiful
Australian magpies begging me at a cafe in Sydney's t

(36:49):
Arangazoo just yesterday. Unfortunately they could not have any of
my beer or chocolate ice cream. I am completing a
trip to my fifty ninth and sixtieth countries visited New Zealand, Ana, Australia.
I highly recommend visiting these countries for anyone who enjoys
seeing unique birds. Well, they just went higher on my list.
Fun fact, Australian magpies are actually not related to other

(37:11):
magpies and are technically not corvids, but after your request,
I felt they were too beautiful not to share. Thank
you for your wonderful work. It makes the world a
better place. This is Kirsten, who went on the Barcelona
trip with us, and I can't remember how she pronounced it,
and I feel bad, but I love some CorV some again,
these aren't technically corvids, but these magpies are beautiful because

(37:32):
they look almost like they have the piebald coloring that's
like chunks of white with chunks of black, which I love. Which,
by the way, some corvids do have that coloring. They
are not all black. But I'm here for it. I
want all of the all of the bird colors. I
want all the bird pictures. We saw some magpies in Barcelona.
M hmm. I'm imagining probably different birds than the ones

(37:54):
in these pictures, which I don't have pulled up because
a different place. But I had not ever made the
connection of what magpies actually looked like, and I had
kind of made a picture of them in my head
that looked like a crow or a raven or something similar.
And they don't look like that at all. I mean

(38:15):
insofar as they have two legs and two wings and
a beak. Yeah, but they're shaped and colored differently. Yes,
they are. Listen, there are always lots of discussions about
what birds are what, especially if you get into Corvid's right,
Like a lot of people think that crows are ravens
and ravens are crows. That's not true. Ravens are much bigger.

(38:37):
This got to be a big debate in my life
because we have I still believe in my heart. We
had last year one weird raven that was visiting us. Yes,
this is not normal territory for a raven, which is
why it was weird. And he was like, he looked
like a very old dude in his rough around his
neck was very gray, and he just had this great
grizzled look about him. And we used to call him

(38:59):
bearn afonas, which if you watch what we do in
the shadows you will understand. But that brain. But most
most of the time, the ones you see running around,
at least in our area of the country are indeed crows. Yeah,
Rosebary Moscow made like a how to tell a raven
from a crow, Yeah, webcomic and what like. Even with that,

(39:22):
they're still pretty similar. Yeah, it can be tricky. Ravens
are usually most people like. The joke is, if you're
not sure, it's probably a crow. If you're like, holy crap,
that's huge, it's a raven. Yeah. And that's of course
in the United States. Other places might different different differ

(39:42):
for sure. Yeah. The the rough is usually what I
look for. Like, ravens tend to have that fluffy bit
of feathering right under their head in a neck that
makes them look a little more distinctive. But sometimes those
sit closer to their bodies. Depend on the bird. Anyway,
you didn't come here for bird talk. You came here

(40:03):
for history. But here you got some bird talk as
a bonus. If you would like to write to us
about your bird theories, your bird pictures, whatever you wish,
you can do that at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
You can also find us on social media as missed
in History And if you have not subscribed yet but
you would like to, that is the easiest thing on

(40:23):
earth to do. You just do it on your iHeartRadio
app or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Stuff
you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Tracy V. Wilson

Holly Frey

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Vinnie Ream, Part 1