The Statue of Three Lies

The ‘Statue of Three Lies’, as it is known, is possibly the most accurate representation of the ways in which memorial monuments complicate and shape contemporary perspectives on history and social memory.  

Figure 1: Statue of John Harvard.

Derived from the Latin words ‘monumentum’ and ‘mon ē re or admon ē re’, meaning ‘a memorial’ and ‘to remind, warn, or advise’, modern use of the term ‘monument’ has three different definitions with all monuments either memorialising a person or event, marking a place or position or venerating a collective experience, idea or belief.1 Memorialising monuments can be defined as structures that commemorate and, to a certain degree, immortalise the person or event it is in memory of without taking responsibility for it, and this is where John Harvard’s statue most obviously fits as it was constructed in his memory and aims to remember the effect he had on the early days of the University. Although, the statue’s ability to accurately memorialise John Harvard is hindered by the three lies that it tells, with the first lie being that it doesn't actually depict John Harvard as it claims.  

Despite being cast in his honour and his name being written on the statue’s base, the man it depicts is not John Harvard, but is actually then student Sherman Hoar who had his likeness used when the statue was cast in 1884, almost 250 years after John Harvard had died.2 Such a decision was made because no portrait, description or representation of what John Harvard looked like exists and while, to modern persons who are used to having their photo taken at birth along with any and all major or even minor life events, it might seem strange that a man who had profound effects on not only the institution of Harvard College but on American education as a whole, would somehow be forgotten in such a way, such predicaments were more than common at a time when documenting your exact facial features was reserved for the highest of classes. Although, for all that was forgotten about his likeness, an equal amount was forgotten about his actual life.  

Figure 2: Sherman Hoar who modelled for John Harvard's statue.

 In an address regarding the proposal of the statue, Dr. George E. Ellis, vice president of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Harvard alumni, noted that, along with his likeness, it was unknown where and when John Harvard was born, if he had siblings and how many, when or how he travelled from England to the newly established New England colony and when he arrived.3 Ellis even notes that his name may possibly have been misspelled as “If the name were Harward, instead of Harvard, we might find help in the fact that there is, and for more than three centuries has been, a family of the former name at Hayne, in the parish of Plympton, England” which is located less than 10 kilometres from the port town of Plymouth where many people travelled from.4 What is known, however, is that his name appeared as a student at Cambridge University in 1628 where he gained his bachelor’s degree in 1631 and later a master’s degree in 1635. All records of John Harvard end here until he is recognised as an inhabitant of Charlestown, Massachusetts in August of 1637 and later received grants of land in April of 1638 shortly before he died in September of the same year.5 Ellis recognised that there was “necessarily much that is unsatisfactory in a wholly idealized representation by art of an historical person of whose form, features, and lineaments there are no certifications” but stressed the importance of creating a social memory for “him who planted learning in the New England wilderness”.6  

Despite this, the lack of Harvard’s memory has resulted in his memorial being constructed almost entirely off guesswork and as such there is little connection between the statue of John Harvard and John Harvard the person and, given that the statue depicts Sherman Hoar, not John Harvard, the question of John Harvard’s memory is called into question but here intertwining with that of Sherman’s – did Sherman know the two of them would be forever linked in such a way when he agreed to have his likeness used for the statue? How much of his likeness was used, is it an exact match or was some creative agency taken to make the statue look ‘different’ to the sitter? What would John Harvard think of being remembered by someone else’s face? 

The second lie told by the statue is that John Harvard was the founder of the namesake Harvard University, although the founding of the University was actually the result of a vote by the ‘Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’.7 Instead, John Harvard was simply the man who became the University's first major donor when, at the time of his death in 1638, it was said that he had bequeathed the University a sum of money and a substantial number of books by a nuncupative will, of which there is no record or administration. “Such is the ambiguity of language,” Ellis stated regarding the will, “that it seems impossible to decide whether the whole or the half of his estate was 800 pounds. Nor do the accounts and receipts of the bursars of the college satisfactorily settle the doubt.”8 It is also unknown exactly how many books Harvard donated as, while several accounts state a minimum of 400 books were donated, only 302 books were noted on college records, and it is also unknown how many were remaining in the University's collection before the library and the entirety of its contents were destroyed in the Harvard Hall fire of 1764.9 Despite giving his name and donation to the institution, a possible reason for the insistence on creating a statue that depicts a man named John Harvard, regardless of whether or not the name and face match, could be that, just 50 years earlier at the University's 200th anniversary celebrations, only a single one of some 40 toasts were given in the name of John Harvard, the man to whom history had given “a deathless name”, and who had since become “an unknown stranger”.10 

Figure 3: Statue of John Harvard inscribed with 'John Harvard, Founder, 1638'.

The third and final lie inscribed on the statue’s base is that the University was founded in 1638, however, the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s vote that created the University was taken in 1636, a full year before John Harvard even stepped foot in the colony. Originally named ‘New College’, it wasn't until three years after the University began taking students, and six months after John Harvard’s death, that, on March 13, 1639, the name officially changed to ‘Harvard University’ in memory of its first benefactor.11 Such falsehoods in key information being intentionally given to those who take notice of the statue, or rub its foot for luck, begs the question of if the person there seen isn't the person it aims or claims to depict and memorialise, how is the way we remember them changed? Additionally, the 245 years between Harvard’s death in 1638 and the statues commissioning in 1883, easily leads one to question the sudden obsession with Harvard’s memory and the urge to immortalise him in such a way.  

Then President of the United States, Chester A. Arthur, responded to Ellis’ address and asked the all-important question - “how far encouragement should be given to the fabrication of statues of persons long dead, of whom there is no likeness, and of whose appearance there is no record or remembrance...It seems to me of very questionable expediency to get up a fictitious likeness of him and make up a figure according to our ideas of the man.”12 Although making changes to a subject’s likeness in order to better appeal to the beauty standards of the time is an agency that has always been taken by artists, doing so to such an extent to completely remove the likeness of one person and attach it to another creates a confusing and fabricated historical ‘truth’ which, Arthur states, “leaves posterity unable to decide what is authentic and what is mere invention”.13 So confused by the action of memorialising one man by depicting another, Arthur suggested that, alternatively, a statue be erected in the same place but instead be depicting Clio, the Muse of History, and further suggested that she be holding a tablet inscribed with John Harvard’s name and recognition of his munificent bequest, but distinctly stating that no authentic record of his likeness had been found. “Something of this kind” he stated, “would seem to me a thousand-fold better than attempting to conjure up a sort of likeness” and a statue depicting Clio in such a way would thus “give a new example of a sort of mythical statues” and would act as a memorial not just for John Harvard, but for all of the University’s ‘founding fathers’ who remain forgotten.14

German philosopher and cultural critic Friedrich Nietzsche, stated in his essay On the Use and Abuse of History, “To be sure, we need history. But ...we wish to use history only insofar as it serves the living” and further stating that there is a degree of historical obsession that is harmful, and ultimately fatal, to the living thing, whether that living thing be a man or a people or a culture.15 The fabricated history told by John Harvard’s statue is no exception to this and the lies it tells are in detriment to the memory of both John Harvard and Sherman Hoar, along with the entirety of Harvard University.

1 Michael J. Kolb, Making Sense of Monuments: Narratives of Time, Movement, and Scale (Milton: Taylor & Francis Group, 2019), pp.17-21, 64-120.

2 Harvard University, "The Three Lies of Harvard," Harvard Summer School, July 31, 2015, https://summer.harvard.edu/blog/the-3-lies-of-harvard/

3 Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1882-1883 (Boston: Published by the Society, 1834), 345-350.

4 Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 1882-1883.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 Harvard University, "The Three Lies of Harvard," Harvard Summer School, July 31, 2015, https://summer.harvard.edu/blog/the-3-lies-of-harvard/

8 Ibid.

9 Harvard University, Memorial of John Harvard The Gift to Harvard University of Samuel James Bridge: Ceremonies at the Unveiling of the Statue, October 15, 1884. With An Address by George Edward Ellis, (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1884).

10 Corydon Ireland, "Biography of a Bronze: John Harvard in detail, 375 years after his death," The Harvard Gazette, (Boston), October 2, 2013, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2013/10/biography-of-a-bronze/

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 Friedrich Nietzsche, "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life," in Untimely Meditations, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 57-124.

Images

Figure 1: Statue of John Harvard, via Harvard University, "The Three Lies of Harvard," Harvard Summer School, July 31, 2015, https://summer.harvard.edu/blog/the-3-lies-of-harvard/

Figure 2: Sherman Hoar, via Harvard University, "The Three Lies of Harvard," Harvard Summer School, July 31, 2015, https://summer.harvard.edu/blog/the-3-lies-of-harvard/

Figure 3: Statue of John Harvard, via open source comms.