For Valentine's Day, I decided to take a close look at a dashing Frenchman. I had passed this monument to the Marquis de Lafayette countless times over the years, but barely glanced at it; entering Prospect Park through the Ninth Street entrance (a block from our newlywed apartment in Park Slope), we usually made a beeline for concerts at the bandshell or Long Meadow.
After reading this, from An Architectural Guidebook to Brooklyn by Francis Morrone, I was intrigued:
"(Daniel Chester) French, a consummately gifted sculptor, captures both the nobility and the foppishness of the French aristocrat. Behind Lafayette is his horse in profile, facing north, almost filling the frame of the stele. Behind the horse's head and holding its bridle is a black man, presumably a slave. Rising behind the horse's tail and arching over its back is a beautifully rendered leafy tree...It is much underrated, and shows French at his best."
All that, and more, glowed in the late afternoon sun. The tree is a chestnut, and a nifty bit of pine tree lies at the Marquis' feet. Until I reread this quote, I never noticed that the horse-handler was a black man; what did strike me was the spontaneity and vigor of his "Whoa, Nellie!" moment with the animal.
Funny thing about public sculptures; they are supposed to keep sacred memories alive, but I'll bet that these boys playing football nearby in the bracing chill, like most passers-by under age 50, would barely know who Lafayette was. The Memorial was unveiled in 1917, the same year that Lieut. Col. Charles Stanton declared "Lafayette, we are here!" before ecstatic French crowds at the tomb of the Marquis in Paris, acknowledging in a well-publicized flourish that the arrival of our doughboys in World War I served as payment for a historical debt stretching back to the American Revolution. (The quote is often misattributed to General John J. Pershing.) As the whole drama slips further out of the public's memory, it's apt that the playful hands of young Americans are still keeping Lafayette's elegant boots polished. 
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