My Franklin
Over at The Chalice Blog Chalice Chick shares a marvelous photo that she took on the sly of a copy of Jean-Antoine Houdon's bust of Benjamin Franklin at a museum in Toledo, Ohio.
I will see C.C. one Franklin and raise her one from my very own “collection.”
As you can tell, my bust owes a significant debt to Houdon. If more than 200 years had not elapsed, perhaps the artist might have a copyright claim. My Franklin began life as a Bi-Centennial Avon Deep Woods Aftershave bottle. Pop off Franklin’s head and smelly stuff once flowed. The old man himself probably would have approved with amusement. His image adorned all manner of things, including the bottoms of chamber pots, during the French popular mania for the good doctor.
Actually, Ben is part of a matched set. On the other end of this particular bookshelf in my study sits George Washington. I picked the both of them up a few years ago for a couple of dollars at one of those “antique stores” that are really junk collections in old garages.
They are both part of a minor collection of figures from American History that clutter and literally collect dust in my chaotic study, much to the dismay of my long suffering wife. My little Jefferson bust resembles those piano top composers awarded to diligent students in my youth. A barely recognizable bronze Franklin Roosevelt doubles as pencil sharpener. Lincoln in painted and chipped plaster is the largest of the sculptures. He sits on a corner niche shelf over my left shoulder as I type.
My crowed walls continue the theme. There is Jefferson again in a small picture as a youthful red head that once served as a table decoration at a political diner. There is also a nice calendar-like shot of his monument illuminated at dusk. Jefferson and Franklin are united with John Adams, Robert Livingston, and John Hancock on a low quality plate commemorating the presentation of the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress. FDR gets better treatment in a handsome poster brought home from his Memorial in Washington. A glance around the room will also reveal, in no particular order, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King, Joe Hill, nearly forgotten Illinois poet Vachel Lindsay, Eugene V. Debs, and a small poster of assorted portraits called Lincoln Through the Ages. Jesus makes an appearance in a woodcut standing with a bunch of shabby men in what appears to be a soup line. We’ll make him an honorary American given the context. Oh yeah, and there is a Senate campaign poster of a youthful Barack Obama and an Obama commemorative calendar I got as a Christmas present last year.
Scattered among them all are framed quotes from William Ellery Channing, Edwin Markham (the little poem from which this blog takes its name,) Mark Twain, Nelson Algren, John Adams, Walt Whitman, and Alfred E. Newman. There are also copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
All in all, it is a decorator’s nightmare.
But having these folks around me in the dead of night as I madly type away at this or that project is both comforting and challenging. They help keep me reasonably honest.