33. Ben–Hur ... THE FARM EAST OF PINE VILLAGE

Robert had been selected as a delegate to the 1971 Rural Electric Membership Corporation Youth Tour of Washington, D.C. The bus taking the Indiana delegation first to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, was to leave Indianapolis at 2:00 in the morning, so as to arrive at the battlefield by 8:00. The evening before departure, Robert saw the 1959 movie Ben–Hur at the Devon Theater in Attica. He had never seen it before. Joe and Ida reluctantly turned down the opportunity to accompany Robert, as they felt they were too busy just then, so Robert drove himself to the theater.

Many years earlier, Joe and Ida had taken Charles and Robert to see Lew Wallace’s study in nearby Crawfordsville. Lew was the author of Ben–Hur: A Tale of the Christ, which was published on the 12th of November in 1880. Lewis was born in 1827 in Brookville. Lew’s father, David, a lawyer, moved his family to Covington. Lew’s mother, Esther French Test, died in 1834. In 1836, David married Zerelda Gray Sanders. By 1837, David had been elected Governor of Indiana, and he moved his family to Indianapolis. When Lew was thirteen, he was enrolled in a private academy in Centerville, where a teacher encouraged him to develop his talent for writing. While Lew did not see combat, he did serve in the Mexican–American War. In 1849, Lew was admitted to the bar and became engaged to Susan Arnold Elston, with the marriage taking place in 1852. He moved to Crawfordsville in 1853. At the outbreak of the Civil War, Governor Oliver P. Morton invited Lew to recruit volunteers for the army. Lew was soon promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He became something of a scapegoat when the victory at Shiloh came under heavy criticism for the high number of casualties. The injury to General Wallace’s military reputation was a topic he returned to repeatedly during the rest of his life. General Grant eventually modified his earlier criticism, thereby helping exonerate General Wallace. Meanwhile, Wallace distinguished himself by preventing the capture of Washington, D.C., by the Confederacy.

President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed Lew Wallace to the governorship of the New Mexico Territory, where Wallace spent three years. He completed the manuscript for Ben–Hur while living in Santa Fe; he had begun the work while living in Crawfordsville. President James A. Garfield then appointed Wallace U.S. Minister to the Ottoman Empire in Constantinople, Turkey, where Wallace lived for four years.

In 1900, Ben–Hur had outsold Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Between 1895 and 1898, Wallace built a study adjacent to his home in Crawfordsville. As Robert entered the Devon to see the movie Ben–Hur, he thought back to the park-like setting where the brick study with its Byzantine, Greek, and Romanesque influences stands. He remembered the tower and the domed copper roof with its skylight. He also remembered the chair in which Lew Wallace sat while writing Ben–Hur. Most of all, he remembered Wallace’s art, for he was an accomplished painter.

As Robert took his seat in the Devon, he was within a short distance of the location where another writer, Bernard Sobel, had been born in 1887, the same year that Robert’s grandmother Kosie was born. Sobel’s father, Nathan, manufactured cigars at the family home on the north side of Washington Street not far from the corner formed with McDonald. Robert could easily have walked there from the Devon. Nathan and wife, Hattie, moved their family to Ferry Street in Lafayette. Eventually, Bernard attended Purdue, where he played violin in the orchestra. He made his way to New York City, where he became a drama critic for the New York Daily Mirror. Bernard Sobel handled publicity for several Broadway producers. Among them were both A. L. Erlanger, who (with Marc Klaw) produced the 1899 stage version of Ben–Hur as dramatized by William W. Young, and Flo Ziegfield, who held an interest in the 1925 silent film of Ben–Hur. Sobel wrote numerous articles and a handful of plays. Between 1931 and 1961, Sobel published seven books.

In preparation for viewing the movie, Robert had read General Lew Wallace’s Ben–Hur: A Tale of the Christ. Robert even had made for his brother a plaster Nativity set that Robert had painted according to the colorful descriptions given by Wallace.

Robert marveled at the spectacular scenes and the breathtaking action. He particularly enjoyed the music of Miklós Rózsa. Robert exited the theater inspired by director William Wyler’s Ben-Hur, the MGM blockbuster based on a novel by a Hoosier author.

As the movie lasted nearly four hours, Robert had little time to sleep before his parents drove him to Indianapolis for the trip to Gettsyburg and Washington, D.C.