The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris

  Thus with the raging element above, beneath, and around us; with nothing to divide us from it, but a bark whose masts were shaking, whose timbers were creaking and cracking, as they were about to divide; the feeling of the moment was, a ship was a vain thing for safety; that help was in God alone. Thoughts of ocean caverns—of what would be the consequence of one’s death, naturally rise in the mind at such a time.

  To Mrs. Willard’s amazement, she was never seasick. Rather, the violence of the weather, “the rocking and rolling and tossing,” the holding on for dear life to “some fixed object … to keep from being shot across the cabin, and grasping the side of my berth at night for fear of being rolled over the side,” seemed to benefit her health.

  All the same, she seriously contemplated whether, if she survived the voyage, it might be the better part of wisdom to remain in France.

  Reflecting on his experience aboard ship, John Sanderson wrote, “If any lady of your village has a disobedient husband, or a son who has beaten his mother, bid her send him to sea.”

  So wretchedly sick was Charles Sumner during his first days out he could not bear even the thought of food, let alone drag himself to the dining table. “Literally ‘cabined, cuffed and confined’ in my berth, I ate nothing, did nothing. …” Until the fourth day, he was too weak even to hold a book. (To be unable to read was for Sumner the ultimate measure of wretchedness.) Then, astonishingly, his appetite returned “like a Bay of Fundy tide,” and he was both back at the table and back to his books.

  On Christmas Day in the English Channel, the long voyage nearly over, Sumner expressed in the privacy of his journal what so many felt.

  In going abroad at my present age, and situated as I am, I feel that I take a bold, almost rash step. … But I go for purposes of education, and to gratify longings that prey upon my mind and time. … The temptations of Europe I have been warned against … I can only pray that I may be able to pass through them in safety. … May I return with an undiminished love for my friends and country, with a heart and mind untainted by the immoralities of the Old World, manners untouched by its affectations, and a willingness to resume my labors with an unabated determination to devote myself faithfully to the duties of an American!

  III

  They would stand by the hour on deck, watching the emerging shapes and details on land growing slowly, steadily larger and more distinct. At home it was known as the Old World. To them it was all new.

  Whether they arrived at Le Havre, the great port of Paris at the mouth of the Seine, or crossed from England to land at Calais or Boulogne-sur-Mer, the first hours ashore were such a mélange of feelings of relief and exhilaration, and inevitably, such confusion coping with so much that was new and unfamiliar, as to leave most of them extremely unsettled.

  No sooner were they ashore than their American passports were taken by French authorities to be sent on to Paris. Their passports, they were told, would be returned to them in Paris in exchange for a ticket that they had to ask for at a nearby police office. In the meantime, swarms of pushing, shouting, unintelligible porters, coachmen, and draymen vied for attention, while trunks and bags were carried off to the Custom House to be gone through. All personal effects, except clothing, were subject to duties and delays. Any sealed letters in their possession were subject to fine. They themselves could be subjected to examination, if thought suspicious-looking. Many had difficulty acquiescing to the “impertinence” of authorities searching their bags or, worse, having their own person inspected. Desperate to shut off his porter’s “cataract of French postulation,” Nathaniel Willis, like others, wound up paying the man three times what he should have.

  Even without the “impertinences,” the whole requirement of passports—the cost, the “vexatious ceremony” of it all—was repugnant to the Americans. In conversation with an English-speaking Frenchman, John Sanderson mentioned that no one carried a passport in America, not even foreign visitors. The man wondered how there could be any personal security that way. To Sanderson this seemed only to illustrate that when one was used to seeing things done in a certain way, one found it hard to conceive the possibility of their being done any other way.

  Having at last attended to all the requirements for entry into France, Sanderson went straightaway to the nearest church “to pay the Virgin Mary the pound of candles I owed for my preservation at sea.”

  Most of the travelers preferred to wait a day or more at Le Havre, to rest and look about before pushing on. Though nothing was like what they were accustomed to, what struck them most was how exceedingly old everything appeared. It was a look many did not like. Not at first. Charles Sumner was one of the exceptions. With his love of history, he responded immediately and enthusiastically to the sense of a long past all about him. “Everything was old. … Every building I passed seemed to have its history.” He saw only one street with a sidewalk. Most streets were slick with mud and uncomfortable to the feet. Men and women clattered by in wooden shoes, no different from what their grandparents had worn. It was of no matter, he thought. Here whatever was long established was best, while at home nothing was “beyond the reach of change and experiment.” At home there was “none of the prestige of age” about anything.

  From Le Havre to Paris was a southeast journey of 110 miles, traveled by diligence, an immense cumbersome-looking vehicle—the equivalent of two and a half stagecoaches in one—which, as said, sacrificed beauty for convenience. It had room for fifteen passengers in three “apart-ments”—three in the front in the coupe, six in the intérieur, and six more in the rotonde in the rear. Each of these sections was separate from the others, thereby dividing the rich, the middling, and the poor. “If you feel very aristocratic,” wrote John Sanderson, “you take the whole coupe to yourself, or yourself and lady, and you can be as private as you please.” There were places as well for three more passengers “aloft,” on top, where the baggage was piled and where the driver, the conducteur, maintained absolute command.

  The huge lumbering affair, capable of carrying three tons of passengers and baggage, was pulled by five horses, three abreast in front, two abreast just behind them. On one of the pair a mounted postillon in high black boots cracked the whip. Top speed under way was seven miles an hour, which meant the trip to Paris, with stops en route, took about twenty-four hours.

  Once under way, before dawn, the Americans found the roads unexpectedly good—wide, smooth, hard, free from stones—and their swaying conveyance surprisingly comfortable. With the onset of first light, most of them thoroughly enjoyed the passing scenery, as they rolled through level farm country along the valley of the Seine, the river in view much of the way, broad and winding—ever winding—and dotted with islands.

  Just to be heading away from the sea, to be immersed in a beautiful landscape again, to hear the sound of crows, was such a welcome change, and all to be seen so very appealing, a land of peace and plenty, every field perfectly cultivated, hillsides bordering the river highlighted by white limestone cliffs, every village and distant château so indisputably ancient and picturesque.

  I looked at the constantly occurring ruins of the old priories, and the magnificent and still used churches [wrote Nathaniel Willis], and my blood tingled in my veins, as I saw in the stepping stones at their doors, cavities that the sandals of monks, and the iron-shod feet of knights in armor a thousand years ago, had trodden and helped to wear and the stone cross over the threshold that hundreds of generations had gazed upon and passed under.

  Most memorable on the overland trip was a stop at Rouen, halfway to Paris, to see the great cathedral at the center of the town. The Americans had never beheld anything remotely comparable. It was their first encounter with a Gothic masterpiece, indeed with one of the glories of France, a structure built of limestone and far more monumental, not to say centuries older, than any they had ever seen.

  The largest building in the United States at the time was the Capitol in Washington. Even the most venerable houses and ch
urches at home, north or south, dated back only to the mid seventeenth century. So historic a landmark as Philadelphia’s Independence Hall was not yet a hundred years old.

  An iron spire added to the cathedral at Rouen in 1822 reached upward 440 feet, fully 300 feet higher than the Capitol in Washington, and the cathedral had its origins in the early thirteenth century—or more than two hundred years before Columbus set sail for America—and work on it had continued for three centuries.

  The decorative carvings and innumerable statues framing the outside of the main doorways were, in themselves, an unprecedented experience. In all America at the time there were no stone sculptures adorning the exteriors of buildings old or new. Then within, the long nave soared more than 90 feet above the stone floor.

  It was a first encounter with a great Catholic shrine, with its immense scale and elaborate evocations of sainthood and ancient sanctions, and for the Americans, virtually all of whom were Protestants, it was a surprisingly emotional experience. Filling pages of her journal, Emma Willard would struggle to find words equal to the “inexpressible magic,” the “sublimity” she felt.

  I had heard of fifty or a hundred years being spent in the erection of a building, and I had often wondered how it could be; but when I saw even the outside of this majestic and venerable temple, the doubt ceased. It was all of curious and elegantly carved stonework, now of a dark grey, like some ancient gravestone that you may see in our oldest graveyards. Thousands of saints and angels there stood in silence, with voiceless harps; or spread forever their moveless wings—half issuing in bold relief from mimic clouds of stone. But when I entered the interior, and saw by the yet dim and shadowy light, the long, long, aisles—the high raised vaults—the immense pillars which supported them … my mind was smitten with a feeling of sublimity almost too intense for mortality. I stood and gazed, and as the light increased, and my observation became more minute, a new creation seemed rising to my view—of saints and martyrs mimicked by the painter or sculptor—often clad in the solemn stole of the monk or nun, and sometimes in the habiliments of the grave. The infant Savior with his virgin mother—the crucified Redeemer—adoring angels, and martyred saints were all around—and unearthly lights gleaming from the many rainbow-colored windows, and brightening as the day advanced, gave a solemn inexpressible magic to the scene.

  Charles Sumner could hardly contain his rapture. Never had a work of architecture had such powerful effect on him. The cathedral was “the great lion of the north of France … transcending all that my imagination had pictured.” He had already read much of its history. Here, he knew, lay the remains of Rollon, the first Duke of Normandy, the bones of his son, William Longsword, of Henry II, the father of Cœur de Lion, even the heart of Lionheart himself.

  And here was I, an American, whose very hemisphere had been discovered long since the foundation of this church, whose country had been settled, in comparison with this foundation, but yesterday, introduced to these remains of past centuries, treading over the dust of archbishops and cardinals, and standing before the monuments of kings. …

  How often he had wondered whether such men in history had, in truth, ever lived and did what was said they had. Such fancy was now exploded.

  In an account of his own first stop at Rouen and the effect of the cathedral on him and the other Americans traveling with him, James Fenimore Cooper said the common feeling among them was that it had been worth crossing the Atlantic if only to see this.

  With eighty miles still to go, most travelers chose to stop over at Rouen. Others, like Nathaniel Willis, eager to be in Paris, climbed aboard a night diligence and headed on.

  Great as their journey had been by sea, a greater journey had begun, as they already sensed, and from it they were to learn more, and bring back more, of infinite value to themselves and to their country than they yet knew.

  French diligence (stagecoach).

  The cathedral at Rouen.

  Title page of Galignani’s New Paris Guide, indispensable companion for newly arrived Americans.

  View of the Flower Market by Giuseppe Canella, with the Pont Neuf in the background.

  The rue de Rivoli, with the Louvre on the left.

  Writer Nathaniel Willis loved Paris from the start, but conceded, “It is a queer feeling to find oneself a foreigner.”

  A typical high-fashion French couple of the 1830s.

  The Marquis de Lafayette by Samuel F. B. Morse, painted for the City of New York at the time of Lafayette’s triumphal return to America in 1825–26.

  Samuel F. B. Morse, a self-portrait painted at age twenty-seven.

  James Fenimore Cooper by John Wesley Jarvis, painted when Cooper was thirty-three.

  On the following pages: Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre, with Morse and student in the foreground, unidentified student to the right, Cooper with his wife and daughter in the left hand corner, Morse’s friend Richard Habersham painting at far left, and (it is believed) sculptor Horatio Greenough in the open doorway to the Grand Gallery.

  George P. A. Healy, self-portrait painted at age thirty-nine. Like nearly all American art students, Healy spent long hours at the Louvre making copies of works by the masters.

  Schoolmistress Emma Willard, champion of higher education for American women, was delighted by the number of women at work on copies at the Louvre.

  Four O’Clock: Closing Time at the Louvre by François-Auguste Biard. Americans were astonished by the spectacle of so many people of every kind taking an interest in art.

  Art-Students and Copyists in the Louvre Gallery, wood engraving by Winslow Homer.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes.

  Henry Bowditch.

  Jonathan Mason Warren.

  Student ticket to the hospital.

  Dr. Pierre-Charles-Alexandre Louis.

  Dr. Guillaume Dupuytren.

  The Amphithéâtre d’Anatomie (the dissecting room) on the rue d’Orléans.

  The main entrance to the Hôtel Dieu, the oldest and largest hospital in Paris.

  The church of the Sorbonne, the oldest part of the university.

  Charles Sumner by Eastman Johnson.

  Sumner’s Paris journal entry for Saturday, January 20, 1838, in which, after observing how “well-received” black students are at the Sorbonne, he writes, “It must be then, that the distance between free blacks and the whites among us [at home] is derived from education, and does not exist in the nature of things.”

  Thomas Gold Appleton by Robert Scott Lauder. It was Appleton who said, “Good Americans when they die go to Paris,” the line made famous when quoted by his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of all the Americans who came to Paris in his time, few so enjoyed the city as did Appleton — or returned so often.

  The luxurious garden and arcades of the Palais Royal. Oliver Wendell Holmes liked to say that the Palais Royal was to Paris what Paris was to Europe.

  Right: The Trois Frères Provençaux, one of the several elegant restaurants at the Palais Royal and a great favorite of the Americans.

  Marie Taglioni, considered the greatest dancer in the world and the sensation of Paris. “Have you seen Taglioni?” was often the first question a foreign visitor was asked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  VOILÀ PARIS!

  The origin of Paris and the character of its first inhabitants are necessarily involved in deep obscurity. According to historians whose opinions are generally received, an errant tribe obtained permission of the Senones, at a very remote period, to settle upon the banks of the Seine, near their territory. Upon the island now called Île de la Cité they constructed huts, which served as a fortress for them to retreat with their flocks and effects when an attack from any of the neighboring tribes was apprehended. To their fortress they gave the name of Lutèce, and themselves assumed that of Parisii, which most probably was derived from their contiguity to the country of the Senones, the word par and bar being synonymous, and signifying frontier. According to this derivation the Parisii would be dwellers
on the frontier.

  —GALIGNANI’S NEW PARIS GUIDE

  I

  The first impressions were often badly disappointing.

  Much of Paris in the 1830s was still a medieval city. So after rolling smoothly along the broad, tree-lined final approach on the main road from Rouen, the American adventurers suddenly found themselves plunged into a dark labyrinth of narrow, filthy, foul-smelling streets running off every which way. Ancient stone buildings, some black with centuries of smoke and soot, crowded on all sides. Wagons and drays and shouting vendors with pushcarts clogged the way. People could be seen living in the most wretched squalor. To picture what the rat population might be took no great stretch of imagination.

  “Voilà Paris!” the conductor would call from atop the diligence. “Voilà Paris!”

  “And with my mind full of the splendid views of squares, and columns, and bridges, as I had seen them in prints, I could scarce believe I was in Paris,” wrote Nathaniel Willis. “The streets run zig-zag and abut against each other as if they did not know which way to run,” wrote John Sanderson. “As for the noise of the streets, I need not attempt to describe it.