SOURCE NOTES
1. The Way Over
A great part of the source material for this book is, in addition to being of historic value, a pure joy to read because so many of the protagonists were superb writers. This is vividly clear from the very start, in what they wrote of their time outward bound for France. Such descriptions to be found in the letters and journals of even those who did not regard themselves as professional writers—like Emma Willard, Charles Sumner, or Thomas Appleton—amply qualify as American literature of the sea. Anyone wishing a sample of the professional virtuosity of a writer like Nathaniel Willis need only read his hilarious account of dining on board the brig Pacific in rough weather.
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3 The thought of going abroad: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 190.
4 “a little pleasure concealed”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 126.
4 “when standing in a pair of substantial boots”: Ibid., 56.
4 By contrast, his friend Charles Sumner: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 92.
4 Emma Willard, founder: Lutz, Emma Willard: Pioneer Educator of American Women, vii.
4 “My dear mother was rather alarmed”: Cooper, Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 52.
5 “got entirely out of trim”: Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, 395.
5 “How long do you mean to be absent?”: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 5.
5 “classic features”: Lutz, Emma Willard: Pioneer Educator of American Women, 87.
5 “She was a splendid looking woman”: Ibid., 45.
6 “Old Ironsides”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 81.
6 “tasted the intoxicating pleasure”: Ibid., 80.
6 tried law school for a year: Ibid., 78.
6 “anything better than a rural dispenser”: Ibid., 82.
6 “sameness”: Ibid., 74.
6 “We learned nominally”: Ibid., 38.
7 Mathematics utterly bewildered him: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 47.
7 “an indefatigable and omnivorous student”: Ibid., 106.
7 “The thought of going abroad”: Ibid., 190.
7 In 1822 he had undertaken: Morse’s House of Representatives hangs in the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington. His Marquis de Lafayette still hangs in New York’s City Hall.
8 Word came of the death of his wife: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 265.
8 “My education as a painter”: Ibid., 289.
8 “historical painter”: Morse passport, Samuel F. B. Morse Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
8 “right hand man”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 18.
8 “quite prettily”: Ibid., 17.
8 “terribly timid”: Ibid., 18.
8 When the friendly proprietor: Ibid., 22.
9 “Little Healy”: Ibid., 25.
9 “I told her that I was an artist”: Ibid., 31.
9 One small, especially lovely: The portrait of Fanny Appleton is on display at Longfellow House—Washington’s headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
9 I knew no one in France: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 35.
10 “anticipation of Oscar Wilde”: Holmes, A Mortal Antipathy, 4.
10 “dress them up one day”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, preface.
11 When news of the July Revolution: New York Evening Post, September 8, 1830.
11 He had worked for a while: Proud part of the Union Oyster House history, Boston, Mass.
11 Steamboats by this time: Allington and Greenhill, The First Atlantic Liners, 7.
12 a London packet fittingly named Crisis: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 9.
12 But a wide sea voyage: Washington Irving, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent (NY: Heritage Press, 1939), 8.
13 Fare to Le Havre: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 14.
13 Acquaintances who had made the trip: Susan Cooper to her sister, May 30, 1826, James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
13 “I am very glad, my dear”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 210.
13 “Follow, my dear boy”: Ibid., 212.
14 The written “Instructions”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 8.
14 “fond of theaters and dissipation”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 48.
14 “And a sad time”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 213.
14 “great depression”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 94.
14 “We have left the wharf”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, 211.
14 And as she came down the river: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 12.
15 “the fairest wind”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 300.
15 “inquire into everything”: Brogan, Alexis de Tocqueville, 145.
15 “In rough weather”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 19–20.
16 “It is a day”: Ibid., 13.
16 in contrast to Wendell Holmes: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 83.
16 “The accommodations”: New York Evening Post, February 28, 1833.
17 I felt nothing of that do-little: Appleton, Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton, 86.
17 “voice in the steerage”: Ibid., 87–88.
17 “the still-life of the day previous”: Ibid., 88.
17 “chattering in terror”: Ibid.
17 “deeply, darkly, beautifully blue”: Ibid., 89.
17 “A most delightful evening”: Ibid., 90.
17 What an odd, good-for-nothing: Ibid., 91–92.
18 “vast islands of ice”: Ibid., 92.
18 “Some of the older passengers”: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 11.
18 “Then the waters rise up”: Ibid., 10–11.
18 Thus with the raging element: Ibid.
18 “the rocking and rolling”: Ibid., 2.
19 “If any lady of your village”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 14.
19 “Literally ‘cabined’”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 45.
19 “Bay of Fundy tide”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 215.
19 In going abroad at my present age: Ibid., 214.
20 “cataract of French postulation”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 27.
20 “vexatious ceremony”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 25.
20 In conversation with an English-speaking: Ibid.
20 “to pay the Virgin Mary”: Ibid., 15.
21 “Everything was old”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 218.
21 “beyond the reach”: Ibid.
21 “none of the prestige”: Ibid.
21 “If you feel very aristocratic”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 26.
22 I looked at the constantly occurring ruins: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 32.
23 “inexpressible magic”: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 27.
23 I had heard of fifty: Ibid., 26–27.
23 “the great lion of the north”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 221.
24 And here was I: Ibid., 222.
24 In an account of his own first stop: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 76.
2. Voilà Paris!
Of the contemporary books about Paris drawn on for this chapter, Pencillings by the Way by Nathaniel Willis, John Sanderson’s two-volume The American in Paris, and James Fenimore Cooper’s Gleanings in Europe: France are outstanding. Sanderson’s first volume in particular is a jewel, one of the best books about Paris by an American ever written. Of the letters and journal entries, those by Charles Sumner and Oliver Wendell Holmes are invariably descriptive and revealing.
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25 The origin of Paris: Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 1827, 1.
26 “Voilà Paris!”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 31.
26 “And with my mind full”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 36.
26 “The streets run zig-zag”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 33.
26 “dirt and gilding”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 145.
26 “We were amidst”: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 30.
27 “quite pretty” rooms: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 37.
27 There are few things: Ibid., 37.
28 indispensable was Galignani’s New Paris Guide: See, for example, Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 1827, 182.
28 “the bread is fine”: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 32.
28 “Miss D”: Ibid., 33.
28 We took the rounds: Ibid., 34.
29 a few “wearable things”: Ibid.
29 “When I went in”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 316.
29 In her turn: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 39.
29 “His heart seemed to expand”: Ibid., 40.
29 “If he keeps near the wall”: Oliver Wendell Holmes to his parents, May 31, 1833, Holmes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
30 Holmes, like his fellow Bostonians: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 85; Dowling, Oliver Wendell Holmes in Paris, 184.
30 The cold continues intolerable: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 241.
30 “I freeze behind”: Ibid.
31 “My voyage has already been compensated”: Ibid., 234.
31 flâner: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 88.
31 “Ah! To wander”: Balzac, Works of Honoré de Balzac, Vol. II, 133.
31 Interestingly, “Home, Sweet Home”: Overmyer, America’s First Hamlet, 202.
31 “If you get into melancholy”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 128.
32 “uniform politeness”: Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 1827, 27.
32 “Indeed,” wrote Holmes: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 101.
32 “the originality of American civilization”: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 46.
33 “You ask a man the way”: Appleton, Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton, 135.
33 “Don’t you hate to see”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 57.
33 how he had “decorated” himself: Longfellow, Letters of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Vol. I, 173.
33 “the glory of a little French hat”: Ibid.
34 “You should remember that you are an American”: Calhoun, Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life, 44.
34 No matter what is the article of trade: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 38.
34 “caressing and caressing”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 67.
35 “The French dine to gratify”: Ibid., 87.
35 “in blending flavors”: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 124.
35 A dinner here: Ibid., 125.
35 “loud modern New York”: Emerson, The Journals and Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Ferguson, Vol. IV, 197.
35 “the most hospitable of cities”: Ibid.
36 Then a person who cut profiles: Ibid., 198.
36 Nathaniel Willis kept seeing: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 84.
36 “impatient of all levity”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 51.
37 Happy the nation: Sterne, A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy, 125.
37 John Sanderson hired a cabriolet: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 47.
37 “It is a queer feeling”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 43.
37 No sooner had Cooper settled in Paris: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 277.
37 “He calls the Tuileries”: Ibid., 281.
38 The captain commenced: Ibid., 278.
38 best “look-out”: Ibid., 88.
38 We were fortunate: Ibid., 89.
38 The domes sprung up: Ibid., 90.
39 “peculiarities”: Ibid.
39 “confused glittering”: Ibid.
39 Charles Sumner, for his part: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 276.
39 “streets without houses”: Ibid., 133.
39 “It only grows under”: Ibid.
39 “great design”: Ibid.
40 “We must, if it be possible”: Hugo, Notre-Dame of Paris, 28.
40 “That, its author”: Ibid.
40 “The atmosphere brightened”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 166.
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.
59 “the effect was speedily”: Lord, The Life of Emma Willard, 134.
3. Morse at the Louvre
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.
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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.
61 “has created a sensation”: Ibid., 172.
61 “He is painting”: Ibid., 239.
61 “just as good a fellow”: Ibid.
61 “friends are rare”: Cooper, The Prairie(Penguin), 29.
61 Cooper and Morse had met first: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 263.
62 “Crowds get round the picture”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 239.
62 “deliciously spring-like”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 107.
62 “wholly bent”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 109.
62 “wicked Morse”: Ibid.
62 “without a true love”: Ibid.
63 “amazingly improved”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 163.
63 Morse had no sooner unpacked: Ibid., 167, 172.
63 Bread and Cheese: Silverman, Lightning Man, 89.
63 “I saw nothing but Jefferson”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 96.
63 One stunning example of the genre: Tatham, “Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre: The Figures in the Foreground,” American Art Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4 (Autumn 1981), 41.
64 On a small piece of paper, Jefferson had drawn: The piece of paper with Jefferson’s floor plan and Trumbull’s sketch is one of the treasures of the Trumbull Collection at the Yale Art Gallery.
65 Cooper loved what he saw emerging: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 239.
66 I get up at eight: Ibid.
66 “Lay it on here, Samuel”: Ibid.
67 “the independent, self-possessed”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 43–44.
67 Morse with his kind: Ibid., 110.
67 “chameleon face”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 415.
68 Morse’s passport: Papers of Samuel F. B. Morse, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
68 “little pleasure concealed”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 126.
68 Cooper’s nephew William: Ibid., Vol. II, 144.
68 Cooper’s wife, Susan: Ibid., 168.
69 “They[the French]”: Ibid., 175.
69 “Of course, I believe them”: Ibid., 109.
69 “When he goes into crowded rooms”: Susan Cooper to her sisters, November 29, 1830, James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
69 “What are you to do”: James Jackson, Sr., to James Jackson, Jr., November 25, 1831, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
69 “a good deal of exaggeration”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 139.
69 Cooper had been reading aloud: Cooper, Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 38.
70 he was expelled at age sixteen: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 5.
70 Finding he liked the sailor’s life: Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, 109, 111.
70 “By persuasion of Mrs. Cooper”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 44, 43.
71 The house he had built burned: Ibid., 84.
71 Cooper had written The Last of the Mohicans: Franklin, The New World of James Fenimore Cooper, 240.
71 “I think Pioneers, Mohicans”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 168.
72 He was hailed as the American Walter Scott: Ibid., Vol. II, 84.
72 “the mere butterflies”: Ibid., Vol. I, 15.
72 “The fear of losing their butterfly distinctions”: Ibid., 16.
72 “It is a weary path, indeed”: Cooper, The Prairie (Penguin), 23.
72 “a point of honor”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 61.
72 “gaining ground daily”: Ibid., Vol. I, 165.
73 “more than anyone”: Ashbel Smith to W. Hall, February 25, 1832, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.
73 “a very distingué part of the town”: Susan Cooper to her sister Caroline, April 26, n.d. (probably 1833), James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
73 The salon is near thirty feet: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, 83. The building in which the Coopers lived at 59 rue Saint-Dominique is still there.
73 “adjoining Mr. Cooper’s library”: Susan Cooper to her sister Caroline, April 26, n.d. (probably 1833), James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
73 “prattle like natives”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 223.
73 “We [are] … very retired”: Susan Cooper to her sister Martha, January 26–27, 1831, James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
74 “Instead of seeking society”: Cooper, Gleanings in Europe: France, Vol. I, xx.
74 “The people seem to think”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 209.
74 Willis would describe: Ibid., Vol. II, 122.
74 “Some of the best hours”: Willard, Journal and Letters, from France and Great Britain, 90.
74 “our worthy friend, Mr. Morse”: Susan Cooper to her sister Caroline, January 26, 1832(?), James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
74 “an excellent man”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 113.
75 “daily … almost hourly”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 314.
75 “gentlemen in all republican simplicity”: Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years, 382.
75 “understood the look of a gentleman”: Dowling, Oliver Wendell Holmes in Paris, 119.
75 “genius in land speculation”: Cunningham, ed., James Fenimore Cooper: A ReAppraisal, 374.
75 “my noble-looking”: Cooper, Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 340.
76 “Geography” Morse: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 15; Silverman, Lightning Man, 10.
76 “very steady and good scholars”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 21.
76 “I was made for a painter”: Ibid.
76 “unsteady”: Ibid., 11.
76 “Attend to one thing at a time”: Ibid., 4.
76 “steady and undissipated”: Ibid., 5.
76 “one object”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 12.
76 “Your mama and I”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 22.
77 “no use of Segars”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 11.
77 “The main business of life”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 8.
77 study under Washington Allston: Ibid., 21, 32.
77 His parents had designed: Ibid., 31–32.
78 desire to “shine”: Ibid., 177.
78 “mortifying”: Ibid., 74–75.
78 “and that really to improve”: Ibid., 75.
78 “Oh, he is an angel”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 22.
79 Morse was amazed to learn: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 45.
79 “appeared very zealous”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 36.
79 “Paint large!”: Ibid., 103.
79 “Mr. West … told me”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 102.
79 “These are necessary to a painter”: Ibid.
79 “You mention being acquainted”: Ibid., 118.
79 “quarrelsome companions”: Ibid., 180.
80 “no nice dinners”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 27.
80 “mere portrait painter”: Ibid., 132.
80 I need not tell you: Ibid.
80 “I long to bury myself”: Ibid., 152.
81 “She is very beautiful”: Ibid., 204.
81 “Is she acquainted with domestic affairs”: Ibid., 207.
81 $2,000 to $3,000: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 209.
81 he developed a flexible (leather) piston: Ibid., 211.
81 machine for carving marble: Ibid., 245, 247.
81 Reverend Morse was asked to leave the pulpit: Ibid., 223–24.
82 “fully employed”: Ibid., 257.
82 “a nine days’ wonder”: Ibid., 258.
82 “You will rejoice with me”: Ibid., 259.
82 “My feelings were almost too powerful for me”: Ibid., 262.
82 “not good”: Ibid.
82 “noble” countenance: Ibid., 261.
82 “accordance between the face and the character”: Ibid., 262.
83 “There was a great crowd”: Ibid.
83 “I have but little room”: Ibid., 264.
83 “My affectionately beloved son”: Ibid., 265.
83 “My whole soul seemed wrapped”: Ibid., 269.
83 To my friends here: Ibid., 270.
84 “a life of severe and perpetual toil”: New York Evening Post, May 4, 1827.
84 Reverend Jedidiah Morse died: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 288.
84 In 1828 she, too, died: Ibid., 293.
85 The sun is just disappearing: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 112.
85 “exotic production”: Delaporte, Disease and Civilization, 17.
85 The first word of cholera in Paris: New York Evening Post, May 1, 1832.
85 “in the presence of thirty-eight medical men”: Ibid.
86 “Her eyes were started from their sockets”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 126.
86 Stomach contained a quart of reddish fluid: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., March 20, 1832, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
86 “Vast numbers of people”: New York Evening Post, May 7, 1832.
86 “a disease of the most frightful nature”: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., April 1, 1832, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
86 “It is almost like walking through an autopsy room”: Ibid.
86 The official bulletin of the morning: Journal of Ashbel Smith, April 3, 1832, Center for American History, University of Texas.
86 “But if, as I think it highly possible”: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., November 25, 1831, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
87 We are bound as men: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., April 1, 1832, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
87 The common understanding: See, generally, Delaporte, Disease and Civilization, 199–200.
87 Wild rumors spread: NewYork Mirror, May 19, 1832; New York Evening Post, May 18, 1832.
88 “We have had pestilence”: Susan Cooper to her sister, April 1832, James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
88 “in the doctor’s hands”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 242.
88 “bilious attack”: Ibid.
88 “It is spreading rapidly all over France”: Susan Cooper to her sister, April 1832, James Fenimore Cooper Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University.
88 “Samuel was nervous even unto flight”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. II, 245.
88 “The churches are all hung in black”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 120.
88 A young French woman, Amandine-Aurore-Lucie Dupin: Harlan, George Sand, 141.
89 There was a cholera-waltz: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 122.
89 I walk by the riverside: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., April 5, 1832, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
89 “bent on bringing some especial thing”: Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper, 18.
90 “My anxiety to finish my picture”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 422.
90 The thirty-eight pictures in his painting: See, generally, David Tatham, “Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre: The Figures in the Foreground,” American Art Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4 (Autumn 1981), 38–48.
92 “total want of all the usual courtesies”: Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans, 20.
92 “I do not like their principles”: Ibid., vii.
92 Nathaniel Willis had observed: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 110.
92 “He has a bold, original, independent mind”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 426–28.
93 “without feeling every day”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 164.
93 “Paris is a home to me”: Ibid., 165.
93 Even Alexander von Humboldt: Silverman, Lightning Man, 117.
93 “took pains to find me out”: Ibid.
94 Probably 12,000 people: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren,M.D., 54.
94 By summer’s end: Ibid.
94 In New York the epidemic: New York Times, April 15, 2008.
94 Fourth of July: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 423–25.
94 “like the buoys upon tide-water”: Ibid., 425.
95 “a splendid and valuable” work: Silverman, Lightning Man, 117.
95 In the completed painting: See, generally, Tatham, “Samuel F. B. Morse’s Gallery of the Louvre: The Figures in the Foreground,” American Art Journal, Vol. XIII, No. 4 (Autumn 1981), 38–48.
97 By rendering Sue Cooper as he did: Ibid., 41, 44–45.
97 “dissipating their time in gambling”: Mabee, American Leonardo, 129.
97 “disfiguring the landscape”: Ibid.
97 “numberless bowings”: Ibid.
97 “If it were a mere civility”: Ibid., 130.
97 Once, on a street in Rome: Silverman, Lightning Man, 105.
98 “He is with me”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 426.
98 more than 200 people a day were dying: New York Evening Post, September 3, 1832.
98 His work at the Louvre at an end: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 432.
99 “the manner, the place, and the moment”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 153–54.
99 “I confess I thought the notion”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. I, 419.
99 I recollect also: Ibid., 418.
100 “My picture, c’est fini”: Cooper, Correspondence of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 320.
100 It went on public view: New York Evening Post, October 14, 1833.
100 We do not know which most to admire: NewYork Mirror, November 2, 1833.
100 Eventually it was bought: Silverman, Lightning Man,129–30.
100 Morse had hoped to get: Ibid., 129.
101 That The Gallery: New York Times, July 30, 1982.
4. The Medicals
The wealth of material in the letters of the American medical students in Paris is extraordinary, and again one is struck by how extremely well written they are, even though the young men writing them (with the exception of Oliver Wendell Holmes) did not aspire to be writers or to write “writing.” Those by Mason Warren, for example, are exemplary in their thoroughness and clarity. But then it was a day and age when young people were expected to write letters to their families and to use the English language properly. Holmes’s letters are notable for their wit and his consistent, irrepressible love of learning.
Of books written at the time, Old Wine in New Bottles by Augustus Kinsley Gardener is particularly good on student life in Paris, and John Harley Warner’s excellent Against the Spirit of System: The French Impulse in Nineteenth-Century American Medicine (1998) has also been of great value in understanding the long-range effect of the Paris training.
103 It is no trifle: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 86.
104 Largest of the hospitals: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 13.
104 This one hospital: Ibid., 13–14.
104 Second in size: Ibid., 14.
104 The Hôpital des Enfants Malades: Ibid., 15.
105 In the single year of 1833: Ibid., 13.
105 In Boston, by comparison: Ibid.
105 Velpeau, as everyone knew: Ibid., 29.
106 Compared to the hospitals: Stewart, Eminent French Surgeons, 129.
106 Its central amphitheater for lectures: The École de Médecine’s central amphitheater is still much as it was and still in use.
106 Further, for foreign students: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 3.
106 There were still, in the 1830s: Jones, “American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World, 1830–1840,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, January–February 1973, 50.
106 [At about age eighteen]the lad: Cooper, The Pioneers, 72–73.
107 Enrollment was as high as: Jones, “American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World, 1830–1840,” 50.
107 The American students: Ibid., 47.
107 “attachment”: Ashbel Smith to Eugene Rousseau, January 1, 1832, Center for American History, University of Texas.
107 “I dislike to fix”: Ashbel Smith to Daniel Seymour, February 6, 1832, Center for American History, University of Texas.
108 “The glory of the week”: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., November 1, 1832, Jackson Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
108 “perfect ignoramus”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. II, 128.
108 “quite overwhelmed”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 158.
108 “very nice”: Oliver Wendell Holmes to his parents, May 31, 1833, Holmes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
108 A “little extra”: Ibid.
108 Holmes found he could make it: Though the house where Holmes lived is no longer there on the rue Monsieur-le-Prince, the walk to the École can still be made in under four minutes, even by one more than three times his age.
108 I commonly rise: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 100.
109 “No one ever heard”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 269.
109 he “never for a moment”: Ibid., 119.
109 In a pencil drawing: See Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 10.
109 “He was, in truth”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 171–72.
110 “in regard to the necessities”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 70.
110 “Observe operations”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 306.
110 “Send me without delay”: Ibid., 309.
111 “There is a face”: Jackson, Memoir of James Jackson,Jr., M.D., 212.
111 In the United States: Jones, “American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World, 1830–1840,” 50.
111 “a French head”: James Jackson, Jr., to James Jackson, Sr., July 27, 1831, Jackson Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
112 “shake them off from his broad shoulders”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 93.
112 Holmes had from the start: See ibid., 102.
112 Dupuytren, one of the medical giants: See ibid., 93.
112 “a lesser kind of deity”: Ibid.
112 “make a show”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 89.
112 “His operations are always brilliant”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 84.
112 “He is always endeavoring”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 108.
112 “very neat and rapid”: Ibid., 167.
113 “kind of off-hand way”: Ibid.
113 “a great drawer of blood”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 92.
113 “Without it he would probably”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 205.
114 If his orders: Ibid., 108.
114 “In his lectures”: Ibid., 116.
114 “le brigand”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 84.
115 “a good sound head”: Holmes, “Some of My Early Teachers,” in Medical Essays, 1842–1882, 429.
115 “The French woman”: Gardener, Old Wine in New Bottles, 161.
115 The second great difference: Truax, The Doctors Warren of Boston, 153.
116 In the South: Shafer, The American Medical Profession, 1783–1850, 62.
116 “living a kind of student’s life”: Sanderson, The American in Paris, Vol. I, 184.
116 “cut him into inch pieces”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 51.
116 Here the assiduous student: Gardener, Old Wine in New Bottles, 68–69.
117 I never was so busy: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 89.
117 By comparison, the library: Shafer, The American Medical Profession: 1783–1850, 73.
117 “What a feast”: Warner, Against the Spirit of System, 110.
118 “By the blessing of God”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 20.
118 “devotes himself”: Ibid., 28.
119 “The days are so much occupied”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 221.
119 “an entire new field”: Ibid., 191–92.
119 Madame Marie-Louise LaChapelle: Ibid.
119 Bowditch was to say: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 205 n.
119 To Wendell Holmes: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 186.
119 “I send you by ship”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 107.
120 Trois Frères: Ibid., 59.
120 “sad on finding himself”: Ibid., 111.
120 There is no doubt: Ibid.
121 “There is a notion”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 106.
121 The King is caricatured: Ibid.
121 “sober revolution”: Ibid.
121 “impulsive, ardent”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 84–85.
121 Olivia Yardley: Ibid.
121 “La Grisette”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 112.
122 “with his grisette”: Frazee, The Medical Student in Europe, 116.
122 In the 1840s young Philip Claiborne Gooch: Warner, Against the Spirit of System, 119. See also Gooch’s journal at the Virginia Historical Society, Richmond, Virginia.
122 I uncork the bottle: Ibid., 125.
123 “At 6 A.M. I go to the hospital”: Jones, “American Doctors and the Parisian Medical World, 1830–1840,” 76.
123 “the love of truth”: Holmes, “Some of My Early Teachers,” in Medical Essays, 1842–1882, 436.
124 “You are working, sir”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 107.
124 “almost a novelty”: Ibid., 183.
124 “The mind of this gentleman”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 37.
124 “serene and grave aspect”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 91.
125 “In very truth”: James Jackson to his father, January 16, 1833, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
126 “We are a business”: Jackson, Memoir of James Jackson, Jr., M.D., 80.
126 “In two hours”: James Jackson to his father, July 13, 1833, Jackson Family Papers, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School.
126 “Thrice happy”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 64.
126 because the young man: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 108–9.
127 “I am more and more attached”: Ibid., 89.
127 My aim has been to qualify: Oliver Wendell Holmes to his parents, April 30, 1834, Holmes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
127 “I tell you that it is not throwing away money”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 123.
127 “one poor fellow”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 195.
128 “Many of the dead”: Ibid., 196.
128 “No one could excite”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 122.
128 “I have seldom seen”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 178.
128 Our autumnal fever: Jackson, Memoir of James Jackson,Jr., M.D., 58.
128 “What shall I say of his ambition?”: Ibid., 65.
129 “They buried the old patriot”: Willis, Pencillings by the Way, 459.
130 “great crowd”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 243.
130 George Shattuck: See Warner, Against the Spirit of System, 76–77.
130 “every kind of hurt”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 249.
130 “Blessed be science”: Oliver Wendell Holmes to his parents, December 28, 1834, Holmes Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
131 “He had quite a large audience”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. I, 241.
131 They were standing in the midst: Ibid., 241.
131 “They appear to be nothing more”: Ibid., 113.
132 “a thousand things undone”: Ibid., 294.
132 “medical mecca”: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 2.
132 nearly seven hundred Americans: Ibid., 2.
132 “Apart from all other considerations”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 216.
132 “modern scientific medicine”: Warner, Against the Spirit of System, 363.
133 John Collins Warren, at age seventy: Warren, The Parisian Education of an American Surgeon, 64.
133 A month later, on November 12, 1846: Ibid.
134 “He was never tired”: Morse, Life and Letters of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Vol. I, 1, 77.
134 “He had that quality”: Holmes, “Some of My Early Teachers,” in Medical Essays, 1842–1882, 532–33.
135 “that I gave myself”: Ibid., 433.
135 “the best of all”: Holmes, “Scholastic and Bedside Teaching,” in Medical Essays, 1842–1882, 305.
135 “He never allowed his interests”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 262.
136 While medicine is your chief aim: Ibid., 262–63.
136 “I suspect that my ear-drums”: Arnold, Memoir of Jonathan Mason Warren, M.D., 254.
136 “Found my old garçon, John”: Bowditch, Life and Correspondence of Henry Ingersoll Bowditch, Vol. I, 318.
136 “as beautiful in his old age”: Ibid., 144.
5. American Sensations
The advantage of the English language newspaper Galignani’s Messenger as a window on American life in Paris can hardly be overstated. Founded in 1814, it became a daily paper that covered virtually all aspects of political, business, cultural, social, and international news and with a degree of objectivity rare for a Paris paper. For following events surrounding les sensations américaines, it has been of immense help.
S. Frederick Starr’s Louis Moreau Gottschalk is a superb biography of the brilliant pianist, and best by far on George Catlin and his show are Catlin’s own writings in The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians.
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139 We were met on the steps: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, Vol. II, 211.
139 “the most beautiful”: Gernsheim and Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, 89.
139 the paddle steamer Sirius: See New York Herald articles, May 2–June 21, 1838.
140 “Little Healy”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 25.
140 Arriving in Paris at age twenty-one: Ibid., 34–35.
141 “Perhaps many a young and audacious”: Ibid., 108.
141 “went to work with a will”: Ibid., 36.
141 He coolly turned over my sheet: Ibid., 78.
141 “There was in Couture’s”: Ibid., 80.
142 “a saddened and almost despairing”: Ibid., 37.
142 “Gros est un homme”: Ibid., 38.
142 “He had outlived his popularity”: Ibid., 39.
142 My life at this time was a life: Ibid.
142 His physical appearance: De Mare, G. P. A. Healy, American Artist, 28.
142 He was seldom still: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 109, 40.
143 General Lewis Cass, asked Healy: Ibid., 116, 52.
143 In June of 1838: Ibid., 204, 167.
143 Audubon was in London: Ibid., 205.
143 “enough to fix my destinies”: Ibid., 43.
143 In the spring of 1839: Ibid., 45.
143 “not a penny”: Ibid., 47.
143 General Cass, who was on excellent terms: Ibid., 116.
144 Before beginning the portrait: Ibid., 117–18.
144 Healy found Louis-Philippe easy to talk to: Ibid., 118.
144 The concierge kept the place clean: Ibid., 48.
144 They began entertaining: Ibid., 44–45.
145 “perfectly charming”: Ibid., 177.
145 “cold”: Ibid., 175, 179.
146 “Healy is an excellent fellow”: Appleton, Life and Letters of Thomas Gold Appleton, 243–44.
146 “a rather better place”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 50.
146 In 1842, at the request of the king: Ibid., 121.
146 When the king and others: De Mare, G. P. A. Healy, American Artist, 111.
146 “a magnificent-looking man”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 163.
146 In the spring of 1845: Ibid., 139.
147 “Can’t sit, sir”: Ibid.
147 The visitor from Paris: Ibid., 141, 144, 145.
147 From Tennessee: Ibid., 145.
147 It seemed odd: Ibid., 153–54.
147 “Brush them off on one side”: Ibid., 156.
148 “I was but a small boy then”: Ibid., 154.
148 “In those far-away days”: Ibid., 160.
148 “Having been delayed”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 358.
148 “The beauty of the Seine”: New York Herald, September 18, 1838.
148 Morse thought their hotel: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 359.
149 “You cannot know the depth”: Ibid., 361.
149 He welcomed the prospect: Silverman, Lightning Man, 129–32.
149 Moreover, to his extreme embarrassment: Ibid., 122.
149 A new position as professor: Ibid., 124.
149 carrying in his groceries after dark: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 43.
149 For a long time: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. I, 80, 143–44.
149 “historical edifice”: Ibid., 80.
149 Morse had joined in the Nativist movement: Silverman, Lightning Man, 139.
150 “The serpent has already commenced”: Ibid., 135.
150 Mr. Morse is a scholar and a gentleman: New York Commercial Advertiser, April 19, 1836.
150 But when word reached Morse: Silverman, Lightning Man, 144–45.
150 “Dismiss it then from your mind”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 290.
151 He “staggered under the blow”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 145.
151 “quite ill”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. III, 259.
151 “divine authorization”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 145.
151 “Painting has been a smiling mistress”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 31.
151 He must attend to one thing: Ibid., Vol. I, 3.
151 The apparatus he had devised: Ibid., Vol. II, 38–39.
151 “so rude”: Ibid., 42.
151 His chief problem: Ibid., 54–55.
151 By increasing the power: Silverman, Lightning Man, 160.
152 A physician from Boston: Ibid., 153, 156.
152 “mutual discovery”: Ibid., 156.
152 “I cannot conceive of”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 380.
152 And for this reason: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. VI, 43.
152 Morse sent a preliminary request: Silverman, Lightning Man, 159, 161, 163, 164.
152 In a larger space: Ibid., 165–66.
152 “write at a distance”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 337.
152 They set up their apparatus: Silverman, Lightning Man, 168, 169.
153 The wonder of Morse’s invention: Ibid., 169.
153 Yet Morse felt he must have government support: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 92.
153 “The ground of objection”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 358.
153 Paris was to treat him better: Ibid., 360.
153 For the sake of economy: Ibid., 362.
153 “great inventors who are generally permitted”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 107.
153 “levee day”: Ibid., 107.
154 “the grand exhibitor”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 362.
154 I explained the principles: Ibid., 362.
154 “So you want to be an artist?”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 34–35.
155 “wonderful discovery”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 188.
155 “He gave it a thorough examination”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 363.
155 “My present instrument”: Ibid., 363.
155 The savants of the Académie convened: Silverman, Lightning Man, 179.
155 “in the midst of the most celebrated”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 365.
155 There was not a familiar face: Ibid., 364–65.
155 “A buzz of admiration”: Ibid., 365.
155 The event was acclaimed in the Paris: Silverman, Lightning Man, 179.
155 Comptes Rendus: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 366.
156 “transcends all yet made known”: Ibid., 368.
156 “another revolution is at hand”: Ibid., 369.
156 I do not doubt: Ibid.
156 “In being abroad”: Ibid., 368.
156 “most flattering”: Ibid., 370.
156 “Everything moves at a snail’s pace”: Ibid., 371.
156 “Dilatoriness”: Ibid., 374.
157 “There is more of the ‘go-ahead’ ”: Ibid., 377.
157 By March: Silverman, Lightning Man, 189.
157 paid a visit to Monsieur Louis Daguerre: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 389–90.
157 “I am told every hour”: Ibid., 388.
157 Skilled in theatrical lighting: Ibid., 15–17.
157 “flocking”: Ibid., 18.
158 “We cannot sufficiently urge”: Ibid.
158 Years before: Silverman, Lightning Man, 189.
158 “one of the most beautiful discoveries”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 129.
158 They are produced on a metallic: Gernsheim and Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, 89.
158 Morse stayed: Ibid., 90.
159 Morse’s account of his visit: Ibid., 129.
159 Once Morse arrived back in New York: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 394.
159 “throughout the United States your name”: Gernsheim and Gernsheim, L. J. M. Daguerre: The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, 129.
159 With help from a professor of chemistry: Ibid., 132.
159 Four years later, in July of 1844: Galignani’s Messenger, July 12, 1844.
159 “What hath God wrought!”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 222.
160 Democratic National Convention: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 497.
160 “This is indeed the annihilation”: Galignani’s Messenger, July 12, 1844.
160 Coinciding with all this excitement: Starr, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 59.
160 With a genius for publicity: Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, 9.
161 “The people like to be humbugged”: New York Times, November 9, 2007.
161 a child from Bridgeport, Connecticut: Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, 123–24.
161 He was perfectly formed: Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs of Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum, 16.
161 “for the opportunity”: Ibid., 135.
161 He paid the boy’s parents: Ibid., 163.
161 “to test the curiosity”: Ibid., 165.
161 “decided hit”: Ibid., 173.
161 before Her Majesty Queen Victoria: Ibid., 176–77.
161 “The French are exceedingly impressionable”: Ibid., 192.
161 He settled Tom: Ibid., 188–89.
162 Yet Tom Thumb: Ibid., 193.
162 Tom came attired: New York Commercial Advertiser, April 26, 1845.
162 “apt pupil”: Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs of Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum, 164.
162 When a lady: New York Commercial Advertiser, April 26, 1845.
162 The king asked: Ibid., April 16, 1845.
162 Tom performed an original dance: Ibid., April 26, 1845.
163 Reportedly the wardrobe: Ibid.
163 “FOR A SHORT TIME ONLY”: Galignani’s Messenger, March 24, 1845.
163 The grace, readiness: Ibid., March 27, 1845.
163 Shop windows: Barnum, Struggles and Triumphs of Forty Years’ Recollections of P. T. Barnum, 193.
163 So great was the attendance: Ibid., 193.
163 The pale, slender: Starr, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 59–60.
164 The boy had been born: Ibid., 15, 24, 21, 29, 33, 45.
164 One immensely wealthy young woman: Ulrich Leben and Robert McDonald Parker, The American Ambassador’s Residence in Paris, Special Issue of Connaissance des Arts (Paris: SFPA, 2007), 10–11.
164 Young Moreau was enrolled: Starr, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, 46.
165 “This child is surprising”: Ibid., 48, 49.
165 Moreau had been in Paris three years: Ibid., 59.
165 According to one study: Ibid., 50.
165 Chopin outshone them all: Ibid., 55.
165 His debut at the Salle Pleyel: Ibid., 59.
166 “Good, my child”: Ibid., 60.
166 “the neatness and elegance of his playing”: Le Courrier de la Louisiane, May 17, 1845.
166 “chiefly to the upper ranks”: Ibid.
166 Midway into April: Galignani’s Messenger, April 17, 1845.
166 Besides the more than five hundred paintings: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, Vol. II, 211.
166 Catlin’s story: See generally, Obituary, New York Times, December 24, 1872, and William Dunlap, “Mr. Catlin’s Lectures,” NewYork Mirror, October 14, 1837.
166 “a whole lifetime of enthusiasm”: Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 30.
167 “a vast country of green fields”: Ibid., 40.
167 “the proud and heroic elegance”: Ibid., 28.
167 “rescue from oblivion”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, Vol. I, 217.
167 In 1839 he offered: Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 63.
167 The paintings went on display: Ibid., 65–66, 69.
168 The servants in the house: Ibid., 206.
168 “There was a great outcry”: Ibid., 207.
168 “My father”: Ibid., 208.
168 Others in the delegation included: Galignani’s Messenger, April 17, 1845.
168 “of fine stature”: Ibid.
169 While the Indians continued their sightseeing: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 205.
169 “No tragedian ever trod the stage”: Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 157.
170 all with their wampum: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, Vol. II, 211.
170 “in the most free and familiar manner”: Ibid.
170 “Tell these good fellows”: Ibid., 212.
170 In the winter of 1797–98: Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage, 120.
170 “This,” wrote Catlin: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 212.
171 With ceremony befitting a head of state: Ibid., 212–14.
171 “and sounding the frightful war-whoop”: Ibid., 215.
172 “the most magnificent place God ever prepared”: Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, 24.
172 “energy of character and skill”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 319.
172 In the midst of such reflections: Ibid., 320.
173 “crowds of savants”: Galignani’s Messenger, May 24, 1845.
173 “drawing full and fashionable”: Ibid., May 30, 1845.
173 “wild America” and “natural man”: Sand, “Relation d’un Voyage Chez les Sauvages de Paris,” Le Diable à Paris: Paris et Les Parisiens, 205–207.
173 Delacroix was among: Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 75.
173 At first, I felt: Sand, Le Diable à Paris: Paris et Les Parisiens, 205.
174 The carefree Parisian audience: Ibid.
174 “the proud, free character”: Gurney and Heyman, eds., George Catlin and His Indian Gallery, 235.
174 “one of the most curious collections”: Constitutionnel, June 22, 1845.
175 Seeing the collection: Observateur, October 9, 1845.
175 “remarkable power”: Moniteur Industriel, November 16, 1845.
175 Little Wolf, shattered, “heartbroken”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 272.
175 Chopin mentioned her in a letter: Chopin, Chopin’s Letters, 287.
175 “her feeble form wasted away”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 276.
175 In the midst of his grief: Ibid., 277–80.
176 Still more acclaim followed: Ibid., 285, 293.
176 Ever the showman: Saxon, P. T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, 143.
176 Moreau Gottschalk, who grew: Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. IV, 442.
176 “retired”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 311.
176 “I thus painted on”: Ibid., 312.
176 Catlin’s Indian exhibition: Dippie, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage, 125.
177 Before leaving Paris: Truettner, The Natural Man Observed: A Study of Catlin’s Indian Gallery, 53.
177 “My occupation was changed”: Catlin, The Adventures of the Ojibbeway and Ioway Indians, 323.
177 By the time Healy returned: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 165–66.