The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (85 page)
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Authors: David Mccullough
Tags: #Physicians, #Intellectuals - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Artists - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Physicians - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris, #Americans - France - Paris, #United States - Relations - France - Paris, #Americans - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #France, #Paris (France) - Intellectual Life - 19th Century, #Intellectuals, #Authors; American, #Americans, #19th Century, #Artists, #Authors; American - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris (France) - Relations - United States, #Paris (France), #Biography, #History
41
“that most chivalrous”:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 77.
41
The bridge immediately:
Ibid., 55, 77.
41
“very heart of Paris”:
Ibid., 53.
42
“with a throb”:
Pierce,
Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner
, Vol. I, 88.
42
“Holmes and I actually were at the Louvre”:
Appleton,
Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton
, 130.
42
Another day Appleton returned on his own:
Ibid., 132–33, 137–38.
42
“much esteemed and bear a high price”:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 247.
42
“little or no drapery”:
Cooper,
Gleanings in Europe: France
, Vol. I, 302.
42
No, my dear girls:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 62.
43
“running and hiding their faces”:
Cooper,
Gleanings in Europe: France
, Vol. I, 302.
43
“Who would live in this rank old Paris”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 98.
43
Garden of the Tuileries:
See, generally,
Galignani’s New Paris Guide
, 1827, 147–52.
44
“the most fashionable promenade”:
Ibid., 152.
44
“I have been there repeatedly”:
Willis,
Pencillings by the Way
, 78–79.
44
“I never venture”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 102.
44
“every inch of it”:
Ibid., 104.
45
Let us have gardens:
Ibid., 106.
45
“a library on the street”:
Ibid., 60.
46
“You can stop in on your way”:
Ibid., 164.
46
“nothing that did not belong”:
Hugo,
Notre-Dame of Paris
, 136.
47
“And it seemed to me”:
Willis,
Pencillings by the Way
, 74.
47
“In our own country”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 88.
48
“The evening need never hang”:
Emerson,
The Journals and Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson
, ed. Ferguson, Vol. IV, 202.
48
Faultlessly attired:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 37.
48
“genteel society”:
Ibid.
48
I never saw so many:
Ibid.
49
“We may make many valuable improvements”:
Ibid., 164.
49
Charles Sumner made a point:
Pierce,
Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner
, Vol. I, 236.
49
dazzling Marie Taglioni:
Willis,
Pencillings by the Way
, 48.
50
“No language can describe”:
Ibid., 50.
50
Her figure is small:
Ibid., 49–50.
50
“Mercy! How deficient”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 46.
50
“overwhelming tumult”:
Willis,
Pencillings by the Way
, 51.
50
“We shall never have”:
Ibid.
50
“And when they come upon stage”:
Ibid.
51
Indeed, while at the opera:
James Jackson, Jr., to his father, March 20, 1832, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
51
“James Jackson has just come up”:
Morse,
Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes
, Vol. I, 98.
51
“There is no need of cutting”:
Ibid., 120.
52
“Molière could not have”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. II, 129.
52
“Her voice is like a silver flute”:
Pierce,
Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner
, Vol. I, 234.
52
“Thousands in merry moods”:
Appleton,
Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton
, 129.
52
“the blaze of day”:
Ibid.
52
“Cafés
abound in Paris”: Galignani’s New Paris Guide
, 1827, li.
52
It is impossible to conceive:
Ibid.
52
“Alas, my poor roasting”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 84.
52
“Your best way”:
Ibid., 85.
53
the elegant Trois Frères Provençaux:
Les Trois Frères Provençaux no longer exists. Le Grand Véfour, in the Palais Royal, is the oldest restaurant in Paris still operating at its original site and one of the finest in the city.
53
As much as the food and the wine:
Holmes,
The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table
, 24.
53
“ladies of easy virtue”: Galignani’s New Paris Guide
, 1827, 176.
53
The Palais Royal, Holmes liked to say:
Morse,
Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes
, Vol. I, 99.
53
“haunts where the stranger”: Galignani’s New Paris Guide
, 1827, iii.
53
“Billiards, cards, faro”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 94.
54
“Young men are very fond of Paris”:
Emerson,
The Journals and Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson
, ed. Ferguson, Vol. IV, 201.
54
“arrangements”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 88.
54
“They are very pretty”:
Ibid., 199.
54
If a student is ill:
Ibid.
54
“out of order”:
Ibid., 203.
55
If you can preserve him:
Ibid., 204.
55
“My anxiety deprives me”:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 209.
55
Sumner hated seeing so many soldiers:
Pierce,
Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner
, Vol. I, 238.
55
Emma Willard was appalled to learn:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 235, 236.
56
An American or Englishman when he first:
Oliver Wendell Holmes to his parents, September 28, 1833, Holmes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
57
gathering places like the Café Procope:
The Café Procope continues in business, though much enhanced from what it was in Holmes’s day.
57
It had been started in 1670 by a Sicilian:
Barclay,
A Place in the World Called Paris
, 51.
57
“I am getting more and more a Frenchman”:
Morse,
Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes
, Vol. I, 109.
57
“Good Americans, when they die”:
Holmes,
The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table
, 121.
58
Some days, according to his wife, Susan:
Susan Cooper to her children, May 15, 1828, Cooper Family Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
58
“But manage he did”:
Bigot,
Life of George P. A. Healy
, 9.
58
“He lived like his comrades”:
Ibid., 13.
58
“the Boswell of Paris”:
Sanderson,
The American in Paris
, Vol. I, 43.
58
“It seems as if a spell”:
Willard,
Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain
, 241.
59
recruited a first teacher of French:
See copy of Madame Alphise de Courval’s contract dated March 19, 1831. Courtesy of Nancy Ianucci, Emma Willard School Archives.
3. Morse at the Louvre59
“the effect was speedily”:
Lord,
The Life of Emma Willard
, 134.
The six volumes of
Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper
are a treasure trove, not only for so much that Cooper writes, but for the thorough notes provided by editor James Franklin Beard. Cooper was a far more interesting man and the popularity of his work abroad far greater than generally appreciated in our time. Of considerable interest, too, are the letters of Susan Cooper, in the collection of the Beinecke Library at Yale. The main sources for Morse and his travails have been
Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals
, in two volumes;
The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse
by Samuel I. Prime;
The American Leonardo
by Carleton Mabee; and the more recent
Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse
by Kenneth Silverman.
PAGE
61
My country has the most: Morse,
Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals
, Vol. I, 33.
61
“hard at work”:
Cooper,
Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper
, 235.