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BILL SCHAMBRA: What attracts Lyon Hartwell to the portrait of his namesake? What is it
that draws him to that? What does he see in it?
DIANA SCHAUB: I think there are a couple of things. First there's a universal appeal.
Everyone who looks at the portrait is captivated by it. The portrait is said to convey this
energy and gallantry and joy and life. So it's just this very handsome young man that
anyone would respond to. But I think there's also a very specific appeal for Hartwell,
and we've already hinted at that by speaking about Hartwell's own father. His own father
had been an expatriate, but a very dissatisfied one. He's described as the most unhappy of
exiles. But in looking at this picture of his uncle, he sees the visage of his father,
but the visage of his father now transformed and glorified, and he very much wants to understand
the source of that.
AMY KASS: Yeah, that's very important. In a way the portrait gives him back the father
that he never knew. So the portrait is itself very attractive, but it's more than just a
portrait for him.
LEON KASS: It's also, in addition to these very good things, this is the only sign of
life or vitality that he finds on his trip home.
AMY KASS: Besides the gallantry and the joy of life in the portrait, the portrait leaves
him with a question. And he wants to know what it is that enables this young man to
give up everything in a moment, to sacrifice himself in the way in which he did. And so
when he goes and he finds Virgil's Aeneid in the back fly-leaf of which is this uncle's
drawing of the federal flag and above that the question asked by the Star Spangled Banner...it
is a moment that suddenly everything comes together for him: what it is that his uncle
was living for, what it is that he was willing to die for. It has everything to do with the
republic.
LEON KASS: The discovery in the attic comes after he's already been on a quest for his
uncle. His aunt is able to tell him that ' oh, yes, your uncle planted this one tree here
in the garden, his mother put a bench around it where she could sit. Yes he's buried in
the rose garden. He finds out from an old soldier, a comrade of his, how the uncle actually
died: tried to enlist at age 14, enlisted at age 15, in a charge against the breastworks
is carrying the flag, has it shot out from his arm, losing one arm, grabs the banner
in the other, and makes it to the top of his hill cheerfully laughing and is killed with
the other arm shot off and dies with the flag wrapped around him. And then he wants to find
out about the Civil War and he discovers it's a war fought by boys. And he couldn't somehow
understand what this was about. And is then looking for, as Amy said, what was it that
could've made these boys in the peak of life with all of this vivacity and energy give
it all up? Here he is....the date is 1862 when he scribbles in the book. It's the year
before he actually gets to enlist. And here he is studying Latin and the story of the
founding of Rome and doodling pictures of cannons and other things, muskets, and his
mind is elsewhere. And one can't help but think that either he's repelled by the Roman
example or in a way inspired by the patriotic sentiment there. How does it stand with our
republic, which is now absolutely in peril, and he can't wait to get out there and serve
her.
AMY KASS: That's very important. The Aeneid is about the hero Aeneas who founds Rome really
out of the ashes of Troy. So it's a kind of new life resurrected. And he wants to find
out, or his uncle wanted to find out, what's happening to our republic? What's going to
save our republic? How does it fare with us? Are we going to live?