11 minute read
SET IN STONE
A 19th-century sculptress created a marble statue of Virginia Dare that defied historical records – and took more than a century to find its place on Roanoke Island.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRITTON RICKETTS STORY BY AMELIA BOLDAJI
Advertisement
Virginia Dare is remembered as the fi rst English child born on New World soil, and a marble statue bearing her name in a quiet corner of Roanoke Island’s Elizabethan Gardens does nothing to dispel that account. But the oft-told story of Virginia most commonly begins and ends with her birth – shortly thereafter she vanished along with the Roanoke Island colony of 1587, fatefully immortalized by virtue of her infancy.
The statue in the gardens is not that Virginia Dare.
Wearing an expression of both confi dence and calm, this Dare is a full-grown woman. With arms lightly crossed and a bent knee, she’s simply adorned by a few strands of beads and a slight covering of fi shnet that drapes just above the bowed neck of a heron.
This Virginia is self-possessed with only the slightest suggestion of mystery. She’s also a radical reimagining of the stories that have long defi ned her history – a bold creation that was made possible by the imagination of a young woman with virtually no prior connection to Dare, the colonies, or even the island that this statue now calls home.
continued on page 20
Louisa Landers’ Virginia Dare sculpture in its permanent home amongst the oaks at The Elizabethan Gardens. Photo by Elizabeth Neal.
MARIA LOUISA LANDER – KNOWN BY MOST SIMPLY AS LOUISA – was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1826. One of eight children in a well-to-do family, Louisa demonstrated an early interest in anatomy when she began sculpting fi gures out of stone and wood with a penknife, and her family happily supported her artistic ambitions from the start.
The Landers were not unaccustomed to weathering accusations of unladylike behavior, after all. Only 20 years prior to Louisa’s birth, her grandmother, Elizabeth Derby West, notoriously paraded a series of prostitutes through the Salem courts in order to publicly prove her husband’s infi delity – making her one of the fi rst American women to retain her family fortune in a divorce suit.
Equipped with both the means and her open-minded family’s full blessing, Louisa had every reason for optimism when she sailed to Rome at the age of 29 to study under renowned sculptor, Thomas Crawford – who famously crafted the Statue of Freedom on the United States Capitol building. Under his tutelage, Louisa’s talent fl ourished until he passed away suddenly only two years later.
Faced with fi nding another teacher, Louisa decided instead to bet on her own abilities – and pursue an independent living by opening her own studio.
WHILE LOUISA WAS AHEAD OF THE CURVE IN MANY WAYS, she wasn’t the only sculptor attempting to establish a career in Rome at the time. A sizeable community of expatriate artists was already thriving there well before she arrived, including a number of professional female sculptors who valued Italy’s welcoming attitude toward the arts.
This was an era when local guidebooks commonly listed artist studios for wealthy visitors who wanted to return home with an original piece of artwork to demonstrate their good taste – a social convention that was still popular when novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne and his family arrived there in 1858.
Louisa quickly met and befriended the Hawthornes – especially Salem-born Nathaniel, who was reportedly taken by her talent and independence, leading him to commission her with a bust of himself, and, according to rumors, later base a character on her in his 1860 novel, The Marble Faun.
He also recorded his admiration of Louisa in his diaries – including the fact that he thought one of her recent works in particular was very beautiful. The piece he chose to single out was an intriguing marble statue of a then little-known woman called Virginia Dare.
AS ACCEPTED AS FEMALE SCULPTORS WERE IN ITALY DURING THE 1850S, the broader truth is that history hasn’t always been kind to women’s work – and for all her class and educational privileges, Louisa wasn’t excepted from that inequity. As a result, much of what we know about Louisa today is taken from a variety of outside accounts – the whereabouts of most of her artwork is still unknown, and the bulk of her fi rsthand writing and other correspondence has been lost.
Given these limitations, a few key events seem to hold up. At some point during Louisa’s travels abroad, she visited the British Museum in London, where she came across the 16th-century watercolors of John White – the English artist and explorer who drew the native people, plants and animals he encountered during an early expedition to Roanoke Island in 1585.
White was also appointed governor of the ill-fated English settlement attempt on Roanoke Island in 1587 – during which his daughter, Eleanor, gave birth to Virginia Dare. About a week after his granddaughter was born, White sailed to England for supplies, not knowing that a war with Spain would delay his return for three
long years – at which time he found the settlement abandoned, sparking the legend of a lost colony that would endure for centuries.
The story was immediately compelling to Louisa, who had long been drawn to the subject of strong female characters faced with adversity. Even though Virginia Dare was barely more than a footnote to White’s narrative, Louisa was inspired to imagine Dare as a mature female protagonist who had chosen to embrace a Native American upbringing in the southern wilderness.
It was a fresh, new reinvention of Dare that would go on to captivate Hawthorne and countless others over the next few decades.
THE LIFE LOUISA HAD CARVED OUT FOR HERSELF IN ITALY was soon brought to an abrupt end, however. The summer after she met the Hawthornes, Louisa briefl y left Rome and returned to fi nd that rumors had begun circulating about her supposed impropriety with an unidentifi ed man – and perhaps even more damning – the suggestion that she had posed in the nude for other artists.
That there was no evidence to substantiate these claims was beside the point. Nathaniel was one of the fi rst to sever all contact with her via a curt note, and despite her attempts to rise above the vicious gossip, her reputation was damaged beyond repair. The rumors persisted, and valuable commissions dwindled until Louisa made the diffi cult decision to return to Salem in 1860. This meant that her unsold sculpture Louisa was inspired of Virginia Dare was also poised to to imagine Dare as a mature female protagonist who had undertake its fi rst (of many) journeys – but like its creator, luck was not on its side. En route to Massachusetts, the ship carrying the statue promptly sank. chosen to embrace Sources say Dare’s statue spent a Native American about two years underwater off the upbringing in the coast of Spain before Louisa paid to southern wilderness. have it recovered and sold to a collector in New York City. This, too, didn’t last – before the sale could be fi nalized, a deadly fi re broke out in the collector’s studio, and the sculpture was one of the only things that escaped unharmed. When the collector’s heirs subsequently refused to honor the sale, Virginia was reunited with Louisa in Salem.
There was just one problem: Civil War was now raging across the nation.
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR USHERED IN A PERIOD OF TURBULENCE, but Louisa staged at least a couple of successful exhibits in Boston over the next few years – including a popular one featuring the Virginia Dare statue as a fundraising event to benefi t the Union soldiers.
In preparation for that exhibit, Louisa composed a four-page pamphlet that included a list of her recent sculptures, a short history of the 1587 colony on Roanoke Island, and a two-page essay in which Louisa declared Dare “The National Statue,” elevating Virginia as a patriotic symbol of a young woman living freely on American land.
By all accounts, critics unanimously praised Louisa’s talent during this period of her career, but for unknown reasons, no major works were attributed to her after the Civil War ended in 1865.
From a historical point of view, the trail of her life then went cold for almost three decades, until Louisa relocated in 1893 to Washington, D.C. – a city she called home, with Dare’s statue as a companion, until shortly before her death at the age of 98.
WHILE LITTLE INFORMATION IS AVAILABLE ABOUT LOUISA’S LATER YEARS, we do know that she almost sold the Virginia Dare sculpture at least one other time at the behest of a North Carolina woman named Sallie Southall Cotton.
In the early 1880s preparations were well underway for the much-anticipated Chicago World’s Fair of 1883, and Sallie had been tasked with forming an exhibit to represent the state of North Carolina. Though it was her fi rst foray in public service, she quickly proved herself an able organizer – and her interest was
piqued by the snippets of stories she heard about Virginia Dare during her promotional travels in the eastern part of the state.
Armed with the idea that North Carolina could be crowned the “Mother of the Colonies” through its link with Dare, Sallie approached Louisa about purchasing the statue for the fair – but due to the state’s meager budget, Louisa wasn’t ready to part with it quite yet. The two women reportedly struck up a friendship anyway, and Sallie ultimately convinced Louisa to will the sculpture to North Carolina.
Almost 30 years later – thanks to Sallie’s eff orts – Louisa’s statue arrived in the state where its subject was born.
THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE VIRGINIA DARE SCULPTURE was unquestionably its least celebrated one. A few years after Louisa’s death in 1923, the statue made its way to Raleigh where it was briefl y displayed in the state’s Hall of History. Vocal objections to the topless fi gure soon arose, however, and Dare was unceremoniously relegated to the dusty basement of the old Supreme Court building.
The statue languished in storage for about another decade (though some say pranksters occasionally dressed it up with lipstick) until Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Paul Green conceived of a new dramatic form – the symphonic drama – to depict the circumstances surrounding the 1587 English settlement attempt. The play was called The Lost Colony and it opened on Roanoke Island with great fanfare during When the statue arrived the summer of 1937 – almost at [Waterside Theatre], exactly 400 years after the its display was deemed inappropriate because no evidence existed to events it depicted took place. Government initiatives created to kickstart the suggest that Dare had economy during the Great survived childhood. Depression helped fund the venture, including the construction of an open-air venue called Waterside Theatre. Unoffi cial sources claim that someone in Raleigh took this as an opportunity to be rid of the Dare sculpture – but when the statue arrived at the theatre, its display was deemed inappropriate because no evidence existed to suggest that Dare had survived childhood.
Yet another important world event was on the horizon as well, and the now-controversial statue reportedly remained in its packing crate – fate undecided – for the duration of World War II.
IN ONE LAST TWIST, THE STATUE OF VIRGINIA DARE eventually wound up in Paul Green’s possession after WWII – though it wasn’t long before a small group of women attending a performance of The Lost Colony in 1950 broached the idea of establishing an Englishinspired garden as a permanent memorial to those early colonists. The Garden Club of North Carolina enthusiastically adopted the project, and by the time The Elizabethan Gardens formally opened a decade later (on the 373rd anniversary of Virginia Dare’s birth, no less), the playwright had added Dare to the gardens’ priceless collection of donated statuary.
At long last, Louisa’s Dare concluded its fi nal chapter with a satisfying coda. A little more than a century after its creation, the marble fi gure that traveled between continents, surviving the elements, several wars and a number of other trials, had – like any good mythical character – found the one place it truly belonged.
In the hush of the gardens and the shade of an ancient live oak, Virginia Dare had fi nally come home.
BUYING? SELLING? KW HAS YOU COVERED!
Company on the Beach for Sold Volume.*in 2020 #1 For sold volume in Corolla! #1 *in 2020 For sold units over $1,000,000 #1 *in 2020
*Stats per Outer Banks Multiple Listing Service from 1/1/2020 - 12/31/2020
#JUSTGETTINGSTARTED • #KWROCKSTARS
Ashley Contristan 252-256-0344 ashleysellsobx@gmail.com ashleysellsobx.com
Carleigh Hines 252-216-5395 Cmhines@kw.com carleigh-hines.kw.com Alex Miller-Saunders 252-207-7080 alexsellsobx@kw.com alexmillerobx.com
Liz J Holterhaus 252-202-2156 obx4sale@gmail.com obx4sale.com
Danielle Taylor 252-489-9185 danielle@sandbarliving.com sandbarliving.com
