The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

  Except for his two years in Paris as a student, Holmes lived all his life in or near Boston, but the immense importance of his Paris years may be judged by the fact that half a century later, in 1886, on the eve of his retirement from Harvard Medical School, having reviewed in his mind so much that he had seen and learned in his long career, he chose to talk about the remarkable French physicians under whom he had once studied in Paris. And Pierre Louis figured foremost.

  “He had that quality which is the special gift of the man born for a teacher—the power in exciting an interest in that which he taught.”

  You young men [Holmes continued] … hardly know how much you are indebted to Louis … I say, as I look back on the long hours of the many days I spent in the wards and in the autopsy room of La Pitié. …

  Once, when Emerson referred to Pierre Louis in public as an example of French theatricality, Holmes wrote to him to say that while Louis had “assimilated to himself” many of the best and most industrious American students, there had been “nothing to keep them around him except his truthfulness, diligence and modesty in the presence of nature.” The “master key” to all Louis’s success, Holmes said, was “honesty.”

  Yet, with the passage of years, Holmes wondered whether he and the other American students had “addicted” themselves too closely to the teachings of the master. He felt, Holmes said, “that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and study.” As essential, as invaluable as was the study of specific diseases through close, scientific investigation, there had to be more to the physician’s comprehension and approach. There had to be concern for and some understanding of the patient. Medicine was a science to be sure, but also an art, “the noblest of arts.”

  He had been thinking about this duality for a long time. In an introductory lecture at the medical school some years earlier, recalling the strengths of his first great teacher, James Jackson, Sr., Holmes had talked of Jackson’s kindness as one of his greatest professional strengths. He had always applied “the best of all that he knew for the good of his patient. … I never saw the man so altogether admirable at the bedside of the sick as Dr. James Jackson.”

  Much that Holmes had come to value about his time in Paris had to do with what he had learned beyond Paris Médicale, by just being in Paris, living in Paris—so much of art, music, poetry, and of good conversation.

  The same could have been said of Warren and Bowditch. For as long as they lived, they would remember the feeling of walking into the Louvre and of beholding its treasures for the first time, the thrill of the Paris Opera, of seeing Molière performed onstage, seeing Taglioni. This, too, they knew, had made them better prepared to understand the human condition and thereby better able to serve in their profession.

  Bowditch’s son, Vincent, would write of his father, “He never allowed his interests in his patient’s case to hide the fact that he was dealing with a fellow human being.” When Vincent was himself about to leave for medical training abroad, Henry Bowditch told him:

  While medicine is your chief aim, remember that I want you to see all you can of art and music. I often think I have done more good to some poor, weary patients by sitting down and telling them of a delightful European experience than by all the drugs I have ever poured down their throats.

  Bowditch, Warren, and Holmes remained friends as well as colleagues for the rest of their lives, none ever forgetting they had Paris in common. After attending an address by Warren before the Massachusetts Medical Society, Holmes told him in a note that regrettably he had not been able to hear very well. “I suspect that my ear-drums may not be quite as tightly corded up as in the days when we saw our young faces in the Burgundy of the Trois Frères.”

  Each of them would return to Paris as time passed, and in some cases more than once. Sometimes it was for their health—in the hope that just being there would provide the needed lift of outlook—and sometimes that worked. Mason Warren, who struggled with poor health all of his life, with the exception of his student years in Paris, returned three times. Suffering from depression, he made his first trip in 1844 and came home sufficiently “refreshed” to work steadily another ten years. He had revisited all the old haunts, as would both Bowditch and Holmes.

  During his return in 1867, Bowditch discovered the same porter still on the job at his old lodgings in the Latin Quarter. “Found my old garçon, John, who remembered me well,” he wrote in amazement. He revisited the spot where he had first met Olivia Yardley and, as a highlight, dined with Pierre Louis, who was then eighty years old. Louis, Bowditch wrote, was “as beautiful in his old age as you can imagine a man to be.” Louis died five years later.

  Holmes returned just once, in 1886, for what he called a Rip Van Winkle experiment. Like the others, he walked the rue Monsieur-le-Prince, his head filled with memories.

  For all of them, to judge by so much that they wrote in later years, the life they had known as “medicals” in Paris had been what James Jackson, Jr., had said then—the happiest life.

  PART II

  CHAPTER FIVE

  AMERICAN SENSATIONS

  We were met on the steps by half a dozen huge and splendid looking porters, in flaming scarlet livery and powdered wigs, who conducted us in, and being met by one of the King’s aides-de-camp, we were conducted by him into His Majesty’s presence.…

  —George Catlin

  I

  “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”—“The more things change, the more they remain the same”—was the oft-quoted observation of a French writer, Alphonse Karr. But while much about life would assuredly go on as usual, very much was to be profoundly, irretrievably different.

  Change was coming—dramatic, unprecedented change: scheduled Atlantic crossings by steamship in half the time; communication between far-distant points at the speed of lightning; a surprise discovery by a Parisian artist named Louis Daguerre that Samuel Morse, seeing it for the first time, called “the most beautiful” of the age; centuries-old European monarchies brought down by tumultuous political upheaval that began in Paris; and Paris itself transformed on a scale no one could have imagined—and all within less than twenty years.

  The year 1838 marked the beginning, when in April the paddle steamer Sirius crossed from Cork to New York, followed closely by another steamship from Bristol, the Great Western. Although both ships had a full complement of sails, both had the “unceasing aid” of steam engines the entire way.

  Under steam a ship could now cut a straight furrow at sea, from point to point, with no more, or very little, tacking this way and that at the will of the winds. As never before, there could now be scheduled departures, no more waiting for wind when there was none, causing delays that could drag on for days.

  On Tuesday, May 1, the Sirius departed New York on her return voyage. It was the first time a steamship ever set off from America for Europe, and thousands of people crowded the wharf to witness the historic event. Among those on board was James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, who on reaching England would declare, “We are positively in the beginning of a new age.”

  It had been a rough crossing, with gale winds and heavy seas, still it had taken only seventeen days. Samuel Morse, who left New York by sailing ship shortly after, did not reach London until mid-June, a full month later.

  As they were to discover, Morse and Bennett were both on their way to Paris.

  Of those Americans who had braved the Atlantic to come to Paris earlier in the 1830s, only two would return for reasons other than a pleasurable or nostalgic visit, and Samuel Morse was one. The other, Charles Sumner, would not arrive until 1856, and as it was with Morse, Sumner’s purpose this time was entirely different from what it had been at first.

  There was, however, one of the original adventurers who had never gone home, nor diverged in the slightest from his original objective. George Peter Alexander Healy, “Little Healy” from Boston, was still happily, industriously pursuing what he had come
to Paris for in the first place, to make himself a master in the art of portraiture.

  Arriving in Paris at age twenty-one, knowing no one and speaking no French, he had gone to the Louvre for his first look at the works of the old masters, and, to his surprise, found himself thinking they were overrated. “Perhaps many a young and audacious ignoramus has thought and even said as much before and since,” he would later write. It was the experience of trying his hand at a copy of a Correggio that opened his eyes to the genius of the masters and to an appreciation of the long way he had still to go with his work.

  Yet the fact that he was accepted as a student at the atelier of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, to begin his first serious training, suggests his efforts at the Louvre were hardly lacking.

  He “went to work with a will,” trying all the while to catch up enough in French to make his way. The only American among the students, he was well received from the start, which was unusual. In the world of the Paris atelier, rigorous hazing was an established tradition for any newcomer, let alone an étranger.

  Proficiency in drawing came first and foremost. Drawing was the foundation of everything, it was preached, and most of every day was devoted to drawing a live model, the students packed at their easels elbow-to-elbow. Once, during an early session, while the model was taking a break and Healy concentrated on looking over his efforts, another student, short, rough-mannered, and older than the rest, suddenly stepped in and shoved him aside, saying “Donne-moi ta place, Petit.”

  He coolly turned over my sheet of grey paper [Healy would remember] and sketched the model, who resting, had fallen into a far better attitude than that which we had copied. The outline drawing was so strong, so full of life, so easily done, that I never had a better lesson.

  The rough-mannered student, Thomas Couture, was to become one of the celebrated French painters of the day, and as a teacher have great influence on many more Americans to follow. He and Healy became fast friends. “There was in Couture’s talent such vigor, such frankness, and so much of life and truth that my admiration for the artist equaled my liking for the man.”

  Genial by nature, always well-disposed to others, Healy made friends easily, a quality that was to serve him to great advantage in his career. He loved good conversation, and the more his French improved, the more he caught on with the others in the studio, one of whom, a particularly affable young man named Savinien Edme Dubourjal, who painted miniature portraits, became another favorite.

  Healy openly revered the master, Antoine Gros, who had studied under the great Jacques-Louis David and won acclaim for paintings glorifying Napoleon. Gros was still widely respected, but he had become, in his sixties, “a saddened and almost despairing man,” brooding constantly over the fact that he was no longer in fashion. In some quarters he was often the subject of outright dismissal. “Gros est un homme mort!” one critic had exclaimed. “He had outlived his popularity, and his heart was broken,” wrote Healy.

  On June 25, 1835, Antoine Gros drowned himself in the Seine. Shaken by the loss, his studies in the atelier at an end, Healy refused to despair.

  My life at this time was a life of extreme sobriety and very hard work. I was full of respect for the dollars I had brought with me, and my noonday meal often consisted of a small loaf with fruit, or cheese when there was no fruit. But I had good health, high spirits, and immense pleasure in the progress I felt I was making day by day.

  His physical appearance was also in his favor. He stood about five feet eight and had by this time, in the Paris mode, succeeded in growing a small mustache. He parted his full head of dark brown hair down the middle and the beginnings of a frown, a vertical crease between the eyebrows of the kind that comes from much close concentration with the eyes, gave what might have been simply a handsome face an appealing degree of intensity. All this he captured quite well in his early self-portraits. In time he would wear eyeglasses and add a small goatee. In self-portraits done some years afterward, he looks very much like Eugène Delacroix.

  His energy was phenomenal. He was seldom still. In 1837 he accepted an invitation to London to do portraits there. A year later, with two young French artists, he set off from Paris on a painting tour of France and Switzerland on foot, often covering twenty or thirty miles a day. Then he was back again in London filling more canvases with the faces of English gentry.

  Word of his talent spread. In Paris in 1838, the American minister to France, General Lewis Cass, asked Healy to paint his portrait, then another of Mrs. Cass, for which Healy would later win his first medal at the Paris Salon. The general was exceedingly proud of his gifted young countryman and spread the word further still.

  In June of 1838, Healy was back in London in time to witness the coronation of Queen Victoria, and later decided to introduce himself to John James Audubon, much as he had once gone to see the beautiful Mrs. Otis on Beacon Hill, knowing that Audubon, too, in his youth had made ends meet painting portraits. Audubon was in London to supervise production of the fourth and final volume of his monumental work The Birds of America and was living with his wife on Wimpole Street. After protesting he was too busy to take time to sit for a portrait, Audubon said yes. Lewis Cass had been Healy’s first chance to paint an American notable. Audubon was the second, but also a hero to Healy and considerably more picturesque than the buff, well-fed general. He painted Audubon in the garb of a backwoodsman with his bird gun in hand.

  Life for Healy was advancing rapidly, for by now he had met a shy young English woman, Louisa Phipps, one glimpse of whom, he said, was “enough to fix my destinies.” Fond of talking as he worked, Healy told Audubon he was in love. Audubon, who had been married for thirty years, immediately became more animated, assuring the young man the only real happiness in life was a good marriage.

  In the spring of 1839, Healy received word from General Cass of an important commission awaiting him in Paris. He at once proposed to Miss Phipps. They were married in a quiet ceremony at St. Pancras Parish Church in London. Louisa wore her traveling dress, and as soon as the ceremony was over, they started for Paris. Healy had a hundred dollars; Louisa, “not a penny.” Nor could she speak a word of French.

  General Cass, who was on excellent terms with King Louis-Philippe, had told His Majesty he wanted very much to have a portrait of the king for his Paris residence and that he wished to commission young Healy to do it. Cass, who had fought bravely in the War of 1812, and afterward served as the territorial governor of Michigan and as secretary of war under President Andrew Jackson, was a man of considerable charm, as well as ample means, and lived on the avenue Matignon in as grand a manner as any American in Paris. After being shown the large, assured portrait Healy had done of Cass, the king agreed to sit.

  The first session at the Tuileries Palace commenced with a moment of unanticipated drama.

  Before beginning the portrait [Healy wrote], I advanced toward the King, so as to take the measure of his face, using a compass for that purpose. One of the courtiers, seeing the gleam of steel in my hand, rushed upon me and pushed me aside. With a smile, Louis-Philippe said, “Mr. Healy is a republican, it is true, but he is an American. I am quite safe with him.”

  Like other Americans, Healy found Louis-Philippe easy to talk to and particularly happy to recall his own years in the United States. As the painting progressed, and the king grew increasingly interested in it, he recounted for Healy how once he had watched Gilbert Stuart at work on a full-length portrait of George Washington.

  Healy had never been happier. He was delighted with his work, blissful in his new married life. He and Louisa had moved into tiny quarters on the Left Bank, on the rue d’Assas near the Luxembourg Gardens. The larger of two rooms served as a studio, the other as their bedroom.

  The concierge kept the place clean, and we went out for our meals. It was not a complicated way of living, but it never struck us that we were not the happiest mortals under the sun.

  They began entertaining. To compensate for a complete lack
of silverware, their friend Dubourjal, the miniaturist, would arrive at the door with his coat pocket full of knives and forks, and bearing several bottles of wine, which he loved to uncork and pour with due ceremony. Thomas Couture came also, though his loud voice and idea of humor did not sit well with shy Louisa. Where Dubourjal offered silverware from his pocket, Couture would pull out a live lizard and delighted in provoking disgust by showing raw oysters still alive at the moment they were swallowed.

  King Louis-Philippe had chosen not to present himself in the portrait as the bourgeois gentleman frequently seen in the Garden of the Tuileries with his black suit and green umbrella. Instead he posed with his head held high by a stiff, gold-embroidered military collar, and wearing a chest full of decorations, heavy gold epaulettes, and a bright red sash over his right shoulder. Healy included the jowls, but the lift of the chin helped to compensate, and there was no suggestion that the head of black hair was a wig. In the completed work the overall look was of a vigorous man of military bearing clearly fit for his royal role. It was a long way from the pear-shaped Louis-Philippe of the political cartoons, yet a strong likeness nonetheless, and with life in it. All were pleased.

  Healy rose early every morning and worked all day. On the rare occasions when he took time off, it was usually to go to the Louvre to stand for an hour or more studying a Rembrandt or Titian.

  A larger, more commanding full-length portrait of Foreign Minister François Guizot followed that of Louis-Philippe. Guizot was the king’s chief advisor, and if not the real ruler of France, as many contended, he was possibly the greatest parliamentary manager of the age. A brilliant intellectual and former professor of history, he, like the king, spoke English fluently and preferred to converse in English while Healy worked. As a young man, he told Healy, he had translated Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and more recently had published a biography of George Washington. The conversation between painter and sitter never flagged, Healy would remember. He found Guizot courteous and “perfectly charming,” but beneath it all, “cold.”