Lafayette (82 page)

60.
Washington to L, Mount Vernon, December 8, 1784, Idzerda, V:279–280.

61.
Mémoires
, I:198.

1.
It is not clear what formal education Kayenlaha received in Paris. Upon his arrival, Lafayette said, he planned to make the boy “a favourite servant”—a status somewhat akin to a court jester, with freer rein than ordinary servants.

2.
A
pension
differed somewhat from the traditional boarding school in that it was an urban institution, and children routinely went home on Sundays and holidays, for family events, and when they were ill and needed special care.

3.
Jefferson’s house, the Hôtel de Langeac, stood at what is now the corner of the Champs-Elysées and the rue de Berri, then the rue Neuve de Berri. According to Jefferson biographer Dumas Malone, it was “capacious—it had a basement, ground floor, mezzanine and first floor . . . extensive grounds . . . separated by a dry moat from the Champs-Elysées.” It stood just inside the gate, on the Paris side, from Chaillot, then a village contiguous to Paris, stretching down through the heavily wooded slopes to the Seine River—across from where the Eiffel Tower now stands. The Champs-Elysées was a wide, graveled avenue, with trees on either side, running from the Chaillot gate to the place Louis XV (now the place de la Concorde). It was a popular holiday area for riding on horseback or in coaches. Behind the rows of trees stood magnificent mansions akin to Jefferson’s, with lovely garden expanses. Jefferson loved gardening, and the Indian corn he planted in his garden was the first in France. Dumas Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), 20.

4.
Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 162.

5.
There is no precise information about the two Indian boys who went to live with the Lafayettes in Paris. Peter Otisquette, the Oneida Indian boy, arrived in Paris at the end of 1785 and, according to the best estimates, remained for about three years—until late 1788, when he and Kayenlaha, the Onondaga boy, sailed home to America together.

6.
Xavier de Schonberg, January 14, 1787, in Charavay, 137.

7.
Adams to Jay, Paris, April 13, 1785, Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights
. . . , 21.

8.
L to Nathanael Greene, Paris, March 16, 1785, Idzerda, V:302–304.

9.
L to Elbridge Gerry, Paris, March 16, 1785. Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 158.

10.
L to Richard Henry Lee, Paris, March 16, 1785, Idzerda, V:306–308.

11.
New Plymouth Gazette
, September 19, 1786.

12.
Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 267. [Ledyard won international fame by traveling with Captain James Cook on the latter’s third voyage to the Pacific and publishing
A Journal of Captain Cook’s Last Voyage
, in 1783.]

13.
L to Washington, Paris, May 11, 1785, Idzerda, V:322–323.

14.
Ibid.

15.
Rabaut-St. Etienne to L, June 22, 1785, Anon., “Les promoteurs de l’édit de 1787 qui a restitué l’état civile aux Protestants de France: correspondence de Lafayette, Paul Rabaut, Rabaut-Saint-Etienne de Poitevin (1785–1788),”
Bulletin de la Societé de l’Histoire du Protestantisme français
, III (1855), 333, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 179.

16.
Lasteyrie, 209–210.

17.
Whitlock, I:299–300.

18.
L to Washington, Paris, February 8, 1786,
Mémoires
, I:203.

19.
L to Washington, Paris, February 8, 1786,
Mémoires
, I:203–207.

20.
Cornwallis to Alexander Ross, October 5, 1785, in Charles Ross, ed.,
Correspondence of Charles, first marquis Cornwallis
(London, 1859), I:212, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 186.

21.
Charavay, 122.

22.
L to Washington, Paris, February 8, 1786,
Mémoires
, I:203–207.

23.
Jefferson to Madison, January 30, 1787, Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 203.

24.
Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights
. . . , 46.

25.
George Washington Parke Custis,
Recollections
, 455–456, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 272.

26.
L to Henry Knox, Chavaniac, June 12, 1785, Idzerda, V:329.

27.
Lasteyrie, 207–208.

28.
Ibid.

29.
Washington to L, Mount Vernon, June 8, 1786,
Mémoires
, I:209–210.

30.
A Virginian, Short had studied law with James Monroe under Jefferson’s tutelage at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1780.

31.
Journal Encyclopédique
, 1787, II:82–83, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 252.

32.
L to Washington, Paris, May 5, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:225.

33.
Literally, the “pocket-money room,” the Salle des Menus Plaisirs was a large, all-purpose game and recreation room that could be used for any of a wide range of activities, according to the king’s wishes.

34.
Taillemite, 145.

35.
L to George Washington, Paris, February 7, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:224–225.

36.
Jefferson to Adams, August 30, 1787, Smith, II:720.

37.
Antoine Rivarol, dit le Comte de,
Mémoires
(Paris, 1824), 91.

38.
Unsigned, undated.
Dénonciation de l’agiotage au roi et à l’Assemblée des Notables
.

39.
Mémoires
, I:213–220.

40.
Adrienne Lafayette to comtesse de Chavaniac, Paris, March 17, 1878. Maurois, 137.

41.
L to George Washington, May 5, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:225–226.

42.
Mémoires
, I:213–220.

43.
Ibid.

44.
Ibid.

45.
Ibid., I:218.

46.
Whitlock, I:311.

1.
L to John Jay, Paris, May 3, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:226–227.

2.
L to Washington, Paris, August 3, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:227–228.

3.
Cloquet, 15.

4.
Maurois, 147.

5.
L to Washington, Paris, October 9, 1787,
Mémoires
, I:228–229.

6.
L to Mrs. Nathanael Greene, Paris, September 5, 1788, cited in Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 405.

7.
Except for Caldwell, the education Lafayette lavished on his various wards proved of little value. Although Lafayette found Greene “a very hopeful youth,” he drowned in a hunting accident shortly after his return home to America a year later. And while Otisquette “astonished those who met him” by the knowledge he had acquired of French, English, and music, he turned to drink and reverted to barbarism after his return
to his tribal home in America, and he died within a few years.—Gottschalk,
Lafayette Between
. . . , 405.

8.
L to Washington, Paris, January 1, 1788,
Mémoires
, I:232.

9.
Jefferson to Dr. Richard Price, January 8, 1789, in Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights
. . . , 194–195.

10.
L to Washington, Paris, May 25, 1788,
Mémoires
, I:235–236.

11.
Washington to L, June 19, 1788, Fitzpatrick,
Writings
, XXIX:524.

12.
Unidentified manuscript scrap, L to [?], [Versailles?].

13.
In 1780, Morris lost control of the horse pulling his carriage, and as the runaway animal dashed ahead wildly, with the carriage whipping from side to side and threatening to roll over, Morris jumped to safety and broke his leg—suffering a compound fracture that required immediate amputation.

14.
Washington to L, January 29, 1789,
Mémoires
, I:210.

15.
Beatrix Cary Davenport, ed.,
A Diary of the French Revolution By Gouverneur Morris (1752–1816), Minister to France during the Terror
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1939, 2 vols.), I:13.

16.
Ibid., I:xxiii.

17.
Morris to Washington, Paris, April 29, 1789, in Davenport, I:59–62.

18.
Ibid.

19.
Davenport, I:66.

20.
Emmanuel Sièyes,
Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?
, in Susan Dunn,
Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999), 61.

21.
Charavay, 170.

22.
Ibid.

23.
Although Lafayette’s original “Rights of Man” remains the heart of the current French Bill of Rights, subsequent drafts—including one by the notorious Robespierre— expanded the nine original provisions to seventeen and left the originals observed on paper more than in practice.

24.
Jean Tulard, Jean-François Fayard, Alfred Fierro,
Histoire et Dictionnaire de la Révolution Française, 1789–1799
(Paris: Editions Robert Laffont, S.A., 1987, 1998), 37.

25.
Ibid.

26.
Louis Gottschalk and Margaret Maddox,
Lafayette in the French Revolution
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969), 70.

27.
Morris to John Jay, Paris, July 1, 1789, Davenport, I:129–131.

28.
The Palais Royal in Paris was never the royal palace its name implies. Built by and for Cardinal Richelieu, it became the temporary residence of the young future king, Louis XIV, and his mother, Anne of Austria, during the regency of his uncle Philippe d’Orléans. Now the site of the Conseil Constitutionel, a French equivalent of the American Supreme Court, the Palais was acquired from Richelieu by the Orléans family, and, in the years preceding the French Revolution, the duc d’Orléans refurbished the palais itself, then built an enormous rectangular residential complex, three and four stories tall, stretching about one hundred meters to the north, with an arcade of shops, gambling dens, and houses of prostitution along its base—and a shaded, columned walkway around the central gardens. Burned and restored several times in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Palais Royal has seen chic boutiques and restaurants replace the gambling dens and brothels.

29.
Morris to John Jay, Paris, July 1, 1789, Davenport, I:129–131.

30.
Ibid.

31.
Taillemite, 173–174.

32.
Mémoires
, I:417.

33.
Jefferson to Monroe, August 9, 1788, Malone,
Jefferson and the Rights
. . . , 193.

34.
Morris to William Carmichael [Madrid], Paris, July 4, 1789, Davenport, I:134– 138.

35.
Washington to L, June 19, 1788, Fitzpatrick,
Writings
, XXIX:524.

36.
Now the Ministry of the Navy, the Gardemeuble du Roy is the huge, columned, neo-Grecian building that still stands on the northeast corner of the place de la Concorde where it meets the rue Royale. It was originally built as a warehouse for the king’s huge collection of furniture and furnishings, from which he could draw as needed to replace materials in one of his many palaces.

37.
Davenport, I:145–147.

38.
A medieval fortress on the east edge of Paris, the Bastille did not become a prison until the seventeenth century, when Louis XIV converted it into a place of detention for important persons charged with miscellaneous offenses. Surrounded by a moat more than eighty feet wide, its eight one-hundred-foot-high towers and walls became a symbol of oppression that was visible across the city and the nearby countryside. Charles V ordered its construction in 1370 as a fortified gate and added a fortification, or
bastide
(the name Bastille is a corruption of
bastide
), to protect approaches to the wall around Paris.

39.
Whitlock, I:329.

40.
[Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac],
Le Point du jour, ou résultat de ce qui s’est passé aux Etats-généraux
, 27 avril-17 juin 1789 (Paris, 1790), 210;
Gazette de Leide, supplément
, July 28, 1789.

41.
Mémoires
, I:274.

42.
Lasteyrie, 216.

43.
“John the White” or, figuratively, “the clean” or “the pure.”

44.
Mémoires
, I:274.

1.
Gottschalk and Maddox, 123.

2.
L to Washington, Paris, March 17, 1790,
Mémoires
, I:323.

3.
Henry IV (1553–1610), the first Bourbon king of France, reigned from 1589 to 1610 and restored stability after the religious wars in which Roman Catholics slaughtered tens of thousands of Protestants. As the Seine “ran red with blood” at the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day, Henry converted to Roman Catholicism to save his own life.

4.
Gottschalk and Maddox, 127.

5.
Jefferson to Madison, July 22, 1789, in Gottschalk and Maddox, 127.

6.
Gazette de Leide
, July 28, 1789.

7.
Mémoires
, 253, n3.

8.
Davenport, I:158–159.

9.
Mémoires
, I:238.

10.
Mémoires
, I:258.

11.
Matthieu Jouve Jourdan (1749–1794), better known as Jourdan Coupe-Tête (Jourdan the Head-Cutter), started out as a butcher, but, in the face of chronic meat
shortages, became a farrier before opening a cabaret at the outbreak of the Revolution. The sadistic horrors he perpetrated during the Revolution made him a French folk hero whose name parents cited to elicit obedience from recalcitrant children. He was born near Le Puy, not far from Lafayette’s own birthplace in the Auvergne, and he would die on the guillotine during the period known as the Terror, in 1794, just two months before Robespierre.—
Le Petit Robert des Noms Propres
(Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1994), 1088; Tulard et al., 903–904.