Read more about General Lew Wallace in Ben-Hur: “The Book that Shook the World”

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BY AMY LIFSON

A larger-than-life limestone frieze of the face of Judah Ben-Hur—a wholly imagined visage—hovers over the entrance to the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Finished in 1898, after Wallace’s return from Turkey, the Periclean Greek/Byzantine/
Romanesque-style building is more castle than study. Set in the middle of a typical Midwestern small-town neighborhood of Queen Anne and Stick residences, it lords over its enclosed park like a feudal earl surveying his kingdom. The grounds once included a moat stocked with fish, until Wallace realized the hazard it posed to neighborhood children and had it filled in. The reflecting pool is also gone, the copper roof leaks, and the basement transforms into a small river during rainstorms, but the structure retains the image of an exotic retreat that Wallace long dreamed of. “I want a study, a pleasure-house for my soul, where no one could hear me make speeches to myself, and play the violin at midnight if I chose,” he wrote to his wife, Susan, in 1879. “A detached room away from the world and its worries. A place for my old age to rest in and grow reminiscent, fighting the battles of youth over again.”

Tokens from Wallace’s eclectic life are packed into the twenty-five by twenty-five-foot main room of the study. His unfinished painting The Conspirators marks his service as one of the judges for the assassins of Abraham Lincoln. A painting of a young girl—a gift from Sultan Abdul Hamid II—and a tiny embroidered child’s slipper are reminders of his time in Turkey. A box full of violin parts rests under a photograph of Wallace playing to his grandson. A hidden full-length mirror that pulls out from a door jam was used by Wallace to practice speaking; it was also used for an inside joke between Lew and Susan to see which guests would primp in front of it when they held social gatherings in the study.

—From the collections of the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, IN

There is the rocking-chair desk that Wallace fashioned so he could write comfortably outdoors. From his life as a soldier there is a uniform from his 11th Regiment (also known as the Indiana Zouaves), his battle sword, and his lucky buckeye trimmed in silver. Objects from Wallace’s travels, interests, and exploits crowd every available space from floor to ceiling, making this visitor somewhat chagrined by her own lack of industriousness. But the most striking features are the white oak, glass-enclosed bookcases spreading across three sides of the room, still holding Wallace’s personal library. The shelves offer a glimpse into how Wallace spent his free time, from reading the fifty-three volumes of The War of the Rebellion to Sir Edward Creasy’s History of the Ottoman Turks to Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.

The back room is all Ben-Hur all the time, showcasing costumes, movie stills, and other items from the films that Wallace never saw. He had been adamantly against the dramatization of his book until stage producer Abraham L. Erlanger convinced him that Jesus would not be played by any actor—Christ would be acknowledged only as a beam of light on stage. Even in the films, the audience never sees his face. Wallace died in 1905 at the age of seventy-seven. Later that same year, his study was opened to the public. Two years later, the first fifteen-minute, unauthorized film version was released and Wallace’s son took up the cause, suing the filmmaker for using the plot and title of Ben-Hur without permission of the author’s estate. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court and firmly established the copyright infringement laws for the movie industry that are still in use today. A synopsis of the ruling hangs on the wall of the Study next to the only extant image from that film, showing the chariot race: All the other prints were destroyed by law. Next to the 1907 print hangs a publicity still of Ramon Novarro playing Ben-Hur in the 1925 movie.

—From the collections of the General Lew Wallace Study and Museum, Crawfordsville, IN

William Wyler was an assistant director for that chariot race. Thirty-four years later, he would direct the talking version starring Charlton Heston—although Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, and Paul Newman were first approached to play the lead (Newman declined, saying he didn’t have the legs for it). Heston would be so closely identified with Judah Ben-Hur for the rest of his life that he kept up decades of correspondence with the staff of the Lew Wallace Study, exchanging Christmas and birthday cards. He finally visited the Study in 1983, without pomp or press. The Study proudly displays a photo taken during his visit; it rests opposite the glorious costume Heston wore in the chariot race, in which he famously did his own driving, and according to the script, won handily.