6. Change at Hand
The correspondence of a diplomat serving abroad is necessarily of two kinds, official and private. In the case of Richard Rush, his extensive correspondence, all in his own hand, is divided. The official communications with Washington are at the National Archives, his private or personal letters at the Library of Congress.
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179 How then can strangers: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 462.
179 “increased a hundred fold”: Willson, America’s Ambassadors to France (1777–1927), 218.
179 “daily fire”: Ibid.
179 In a long career in public service: Dictionary of American Biography, Vol. III, pt. 2, 231–33.
180 was still impressively handsome: See Sparks, “Political Portraits with Pen and Pencil: Richard Rush,” United States Magazine, Vol. VII (1840).
180 On the afternoon of July 31: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 303.
180 “sufficiently grand”: Richard Rush to his sons, September 20, 1847, Richard Rush Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
180 I am representing a great nation: Richard Rush to his son, October 6, 1847, Richard Rush Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
181 Last night we were at Mr. Walsh’s: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 336–37.
181 “the appearance of things”: Richard Rush to James Buchanan, September 24, 1847, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
182 “loose thoughts”: Ibid.
182 “They are thrown out”: Ibid.
182 “decamp”: Cooper, Letters and Journals of James Fenimore Cooper, Vol. V, 313.
182 “serious troubles”: Ibid., 240.
182 “profound and universal”: Galignani’s Messenger, January 6, 1848.
182 “Notwithstanding all the reform banquets”: Richard Rush to James Buchanan, January 22, 1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
182 “We are sleeping on a volcano”: Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution, 1814–1852, 397.
182 “formidable”: Richard Rush to his sons, February 20, 1848, Richard Rush Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
183 We were too near to be pleasant: Baker, Richard Morris Hunt, 41.
183 “I have seen enough blood”: Howarth, Citizen King: The Life of Louis-Philippe, 319.
183 The poor King and his government: Ibid., 334.
184 “general confusion[and]uncertainty”: Richard Rush to James Buchanan, February 24, 1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
184 “moderation and magnanimity”: Richard Rush to James Buchanan, March 4, 1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
184 “The responsibilities of my public station”: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 366.
184 “But the French people were themselves”: Ibid., 367.
185 “Was it for me to be backward when France”: Ibid., 368.
185 As representative of the United States: Galignani’s Messenger, March 1, 1848.
185 “full and unqualified approbation”: Message from the President of the United States, April 3, 1848, Executive No. 32, U.S. Senate, 30th Cong., 1st sess.
185 “wonderfully, miraculously tranquil”: Richard Rush to George Bancroft, March 24, 1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
186 “very civil and good tempered”: Emerson, The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Sealts, Vol. X, 270–71.
186 “criminal excesses”: Galignani’s New Paris Guide, 15th edition, 1827.
186 They did not and could not employ: Richard Rush to James Buchanan, July 3, 1848, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
187 “On his way he passed my door”: Ibid.
187 “So vast and horrible a desolation”: New York Daily Tribune, July 13, 1848.
187 “ beautifulrevolution”: Saul K. Padover, Karl Marx: An Intimate Biography (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1978), 252.
187 “battlefield”: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 449.
187 “Scattered wisps of hay”: Ibid., 450.
187 None can understand a country: Ibid., 461–62.
188 Of the more than seven million votes cast: Mansel, Paris Between Empires: Monarchy and Revolution, 1814–1852, 414.
188 “species”: Fuller, At Home and Abroad, 250.
188 He comes abroad: Ibid., 250–51.
189 “instinctively bustling”: Ibid.
189 “thinking American”: Ibid., 252.
189 [He]recognized the immense advantage: Ibid.
189 “passably pretty ladies with excessively”: Fuller, New York Tribune, May 12, 1847.
189 The air, half military, half dandy: Ibid.
190 I saw them and touched them: Ibid.
190 “takes rank in society like a man”: Fuller, The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Vol. IV, 256.
190 “brilliant shows”: Ibid., 259.
190 “It is too plain that you should conquer”: Ibid.
191 “If that is a painting”: See biographical sketch of “William Morris Hunt” in American National Biography, ed. Garraty and Carnes (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964), 397.
191 shared a bright, fifth-floor apartment: The building where the Hunt brothers lived at 1 rue Jacob still stands.
191 “Mr. William Hunt is our most”: Thomas Gold Appleton to his father, December 22, 1852, Massachusetts Historical Society.
191 “with a very slender purse”: Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, 2.
192 “either mad or bad”: See biographical sketch of Elizabeth Blackwell in Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. I, 320.
192 “not constituted”: Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women. See Introduction by Amy Sue Bix, 24.
192 “the aspect of a great moral”: Ibid., 76.
192 She was twenty-eight: Passport application, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
193 “sage-femme-in-chief”: Blackwell, Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, 161.
193 “So send a welcome greeting”: Ibid., 165.
193 Imagine a large square of old: Ibid.
193 “all pretty and pleasant”: Ibid., 163.
193 “eaten in haste”: Ibid., 167.
193 “a little deformed woman, elderly”: Ibid., 161.
194 “en service”: Ibid., 168.
194 “If they answer promptly and well”: Ibid.
194 Alternately satirical and furious: Ibid., 169.
194 “seeing all that was remarkable”: Ibid., 180.
194 “How kind everybody was!”: Ibid., 188.
194 “Yet the medical experience was”: Ibid., 186.
195 “I am a native of the state of Kentucky”: Farrison, William Wells Brown: Author and Reformer, 140.
195 “we shall break … in pieces every yoke”: Ibid., 150.
196 “freely”: Ibid.
196 Curious to know more about him: Ibid., 151.
196 “It is with great concern”: Alexis de Tocqueville to Richard Rush, Paris, June 27, 1849, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
197 “Liberty and Union, now and forever”: De Mare, G. P. A. Healy, American Artist, 169.
197 According to a pamphlet: Voss, “Webster Replying to Hayne: George Healy and the Economics of History Painting,” American Art, Vol. XV, no. 3 (Fall 2001), 40.
197 “my big picture”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 166.
198 Healy put the final touches: Webster’s Reply to Hayne still hangs in the place of honor at Faneuil Hall.
198 “It was a proud moment that”: Boston Transcript, September 22, 1851.
198 The countenance—an admirable likeness: New York Times, October 13, 1851.
198 “We must answer decidedly”: Voss, “Webster Replying to Hayne: George Healy and the Economics of History Painting,” 48.
199 “However onerous to an artist”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 166.
199 “a very castle of a man”: Memorial of James Fenimore Cooper, 7.
199 Irving was one of those notables: Ibid., 12.
199 “I never met with a more”: Ibid., 36.
7. A City Transformed
Often it is the secondary characters in events of the past, like secondary characters in the theater, who have the most pertinent or entertaining observations to contribute. This is certainly the case with the brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe and what he wrote about their time together in Paris. Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe, The Journal of Charles Beecher, is pure delight and certainly confirms that she was not the only one in the family with talent. Likewise, the chronicle of Napoleon III and his Empress would not be the same absent all that is unfolded by their American dentist Thomas W. Evans in his book The Second French Empire.
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201 At last I have come: Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Vol. II, 158.
201 “sleepwalker”: Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870–1871, 21.
201 Victor Hugo, on the other hand: Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, 225.
201 The British ambassador was “charmed”: Gooch, The Second Empire, 17.
201 Richard Rush found the president: Rush, Occasional Productions, Political, Diplomatic, and Miscellaneous, 514.
201 William C. Rives of Virginia: William Rives to Secretary of State Clayton, November 14, 1849, Library of Congress.
202 “He was very much better”: Gooch, The Second Empire, 305.
202 As a private person: Ibid., 305.
202 “His vulgar pleasures”: Ibid.
202 To Evans, the president: Evans, Memoirs of Dr. Thomas W. Evans: The Second French Empire, 3.
202 “extraordinary self-control”: Ibid., 7.
202 “My power is in an immortal name”: Gooch, The Second Empire, 12.
203 Like Louis-Philippe: Evans, Memoirs of Dr. Thomas W. Evans: The Second French Empire, 3, 7.
203 “Do you forget my years of study”: Gooch, The Second Empire, 11.
203 Then in 1846 he shaved off: Ibid., 71.
203 “It stands for order”: Ibid., 15.
204 The air was “soft and hazy”: New York Times, November 6, 1851.
204 They eat, drink: Ibid.
204 There were, however, Evans later wrote: Evans, Memoirs of Dr. Thomas W. Evans, 6.
204 At a formal reception: Ibid.
204 “Rubicon”: Ridley, Napoleon III and Eugénie, 295.
205 In a matter of hours: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress: The Adventures of Dr. Tom Evans in Gas-Lit Paris, 20–21.
205 The American minister, William Rives: Secretary of State Daniel Webster to William Rives, January 12, 1852, Webster, The Papers of Daniel Webster, Diplomatic Papers, Vol. 2, 1850–1852, 186.
205 “Napoleon the Little”: Gooch, The Second Empire, 2.
205 The author of this crime: Ibid., 284.
206 To a large part of the nation: Carmona, Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris, 179–80.
206 He put a new prefect of the Seine: Gooch, The Second Empire, 200.
206 “according to their degree of urgency”: Carmona, Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris, 9.
206 “demolition artist”: Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, 305.
207 “I could never forget”: Carmona, Haussmann, 298.
207 Haussmann was vigorous: Jordan, Transforming Paris: The Life and Labors of Baron Haussmann, 50.
207 With its population now more than a million: Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, 297.
207 The plan was to improve public health: Ibid., 301.
208 Streets and boulevards would be lined: Ibid., 313.
208 The emperor directed: Ibid.; Horne, The Fall of Paris, 23.
208 “At every step is visible”: Levenstein, Seductive Journey: American Tourists in France from Jefferson to the Jazz Age, 87.
208 Les Halles, a great new central market: Jones, Paris: The Biography of a City, 316.
209 “Is there not something”: Lytton, The Parisians, 107.
209 In the twists and curves: Ibid., 107.
209 By 1869 some 2.5 billion: Korn, History Builds the Town, 62.
209 “When building flourishes”: Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris: 1850–1902, 33.
209 Acting on “inside” information: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 69–75.
210 “floating palaces”: New York Times, October 12, 1854.
210 The Arctic: Shaw, The Sea Shall Embrace Them: The Tragic Story of the Steamship Arctic, 25.
210 “God grant the time”: New York Times, October 12, 1854.
211 Two years later, in the spring of 1853: Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, 233.
211 Over half a million British women: Ibid., 244.
212 “a saint”: Fields, Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 154.
212 They crossed on the steamship Canada: Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, 233.
212 “At last I have come into a dreamland”: Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Vol. II, 158.
212 “a little bit of a woman”: Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, 244.
212 Hatty was a natural “observer”: Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe: The Journal of Charles Beecher, 163.
213 “My spirits always rise”: Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Vol. II, 164.
213 Whole families come, locking up their door: Ibid., 153.
213 There were grayheaded old men: Ibid.
214 “All is vivacity”: Ibid., 147.
214 Seeing the emperor: Ibid., 182.
214 “talked away, right and left”: Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe, 155.
214 “Poor Hatty!”: Ibid., 156–57.
214 “very touching”: Ibid., 165.
214 Surely the “life artery”: Stowe, Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands, Vol. II, 149.
214 “And there is no scene”: Ibid.
215 As the instinct: Ibid.
215 “sublimity”: Ibid., 150.
215 “rules of painting”: Ibid., 157.
215 He chooses simple: Ibid., 161.
215 “the great, joyous”: Ibid.
215 Like Shakespeare: Ibid., 163.
216 “glorious enough”: Ibid., 160.
216 “painted with dry eyes”: Ibid.
216 “driest imitation”: Ibid., 165.
216 that passion for the outward: Ibid., 167.
217 I gazed until all surrounding: Ibid., 152.
217 “who had not seen human life”: Ibid., 166.
217 “With all New England’s earnestness”: Ibid., 392.
218 “One in whom”: Ibid.
218 “The splendor of Paris”: Hawthorne, The French and Italian Notebooks, ed. Woodson, 13.
218 The emperor deserved great credit: Ibid., 15.
219 “Perhaps never before”: New York Times, October 29, 1855.
219 When Queen Victoria: Ibid., September 14, 1855.
220 American visitors, however, were delighted: New York Tribune, August 23, 1855.
220 Of the 796 French artists: The Crayon, September 12, 1855.
220 Among them were William Morris Hunt: Ibid., November 5, 1855.
220 William B. Ogden: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 57.
220 I had often thought of returning: Ibid., 57–88.
221 He was small: Walker, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 24.
221 Much of his boyhood: Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography, 4–10.
221 At sixteen, like his father: Ibid., 16.
221 The only course: Ibid., 17, 19.
221 “Had silicon been a gas”: Ibid., 24.
221 Nor would his “peculiar” hat: Pennell and Pennell, Life of James McNeill Whistler, Vol. I, 5.
222 He did, however, take up with: Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography, 52.
222 “the universal harmonizer”: Walker, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 95.
222 “I don’t think he stayed long”: Pennell and Pennell, Life of James McNeill Whistler, Vol. I, 51.
222 “His genius, however”: Ibid., 52.
222 “Everything he enjoyed”: Ibid., 69.
222 He left owing Monsieur Lalouette: Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography, 58.
223 “For heaven’s sake”: Thomas Appleton to his father, October 31, 1846, Massachusetts Historical Society.
223 “I think slavery a sin”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 112.
223 The first news of the savage physical attack: Galignani’s Messenger, June 9, 1856.
223 The assault had taken place: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 292–97.
223 “The Crime against Kansas”: Ibid., 283.
223 Like Webster’s reply to Hayne: Ibid.
224 “harlot slavery”: Ibid., 285.
224 An incensed congressman: Ibid., 289–90.
224 He chose the cane: Ibid., 291.
224 “wrest”: Ibid.
224 It was early afternoon: Ibid., 291–97.
224 “Mr. Sumner”: Ibid., 294.
224 Sumner’s desk: Ibid., 294–95. The fact that the desk would have been screwed to the floor was verified by the Senate Curator’s Office in Washington, D.C.
225 “thirty first-rate”: Ibid., 295.
225 “I wore my cane out”: Ibid.
225 “an oppressive sense of weight”: White, “Was Charles Sumner Shamming, 1856–1869?” New England Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (September 1960), 307.
225 Sumner departed New York: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 520.
226 To look at Mr. Sumner now: New York Tribune, April 11 and 13, 1857.
226 “The sea air, or seasickness”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 530.
226 “Civilization seemed to abound”: Ibid., 530.
226 “sallied forth”: Ibid.
226 “The improvements are prodigious”: Ibid.
227 From his “beautiful apartment”: Ibid.
227 “He did not disguise”: Ibid., 531.
227 “With a people so changeable”: Ibid., 538.
227 “He speaks of the emperor”: Ibid., 535.
228 “they call it la grippe ”: Ibid., 525.
228 “very gay and beautiful”: Ibid., 526.
228 “I tremble for Kansas”: Ibid.
228 Young Henry James: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 347.
228 At one evening affair: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 539.
228 At two other gatherings: Ibid., 538–39.
228 He visited the Imperial Library: Ibid., 539.
228 He made a return visit: Ibid., 540.
228 “I dine out very often”: Thomas Appleton to his father, December 22, 1852, Massachusetts Historical Society.
229 One evening it was an American naval officer: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 540.
229 “although apparently functionally sound”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 275.
229 “vileness and vulgarity”: Ibid., 276.
230 When several doctors advised: Ibid., 561.
230 Charles Edward Brown-Séquard: Ibid., 336–37.
230 “a bold experimenter”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 563.
230 The cure the doctor recommended: Ibid., 338.
230 “The doctor is clear”: Ibid., 565.
231 “baseless theory”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 340.
231 From what is known: See ibid., 336–42.
231 “cruel treatment”: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 565.
231 When in August: Galignani’s Messenger, August 22, 1858.
231 “At this moment my system”: Prime, The Life of Samuel F. B. Morse, 600.
232 “the utmost enthusiasm”: New York Times, September 9, 1858.
232 Of the eighty gentlemen: Galignani’s Messenger, August 22, 1858.
232 “Every figure of rhetoric”: Silverman, Lightning Man, 376.
232 “benefactor of mankind”: Report on the Dinner Given by Americans in Paris, August 17th at the “Trois Frères” to Professor S. F. B. Morse in Honor of His Invention of the Telegraph and on the Occasion of Its Completion Under the Atlantic Ocean, 40.
232 He was to be awarded: Silverman, Lightning Man, 376.
233 I seize the moment: Sumner, Works of Charles Sumner, Vol. IV, 410.
233 “no great cause for despondency”: Galignani’s Messenger, September 11, 1858.
233 He was determined: Pierce, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner, Vol. III, 570.
233 “If anybody cares to know”: Ibid., 591.
233 In the last few days: Ibid., 592.
234 “dear old Sumner”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 288.
234 He walks on those great long legs: Ibid.
234 “sat to the artist”: Eliot, Abraham Lincoln: An Illustrated Biography, 99.
234 “She complains of my ugliness”: Healy, Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, 69.
234 “to hide my horrible”: Ibid., 70.
235 “a Northern man”: Ibid., 68.
235 “heart and soul”: Donald, Charles Sumner and the Coming of the Civil War, 323.
235 In Paris the April weather: Galignani’s Messenger, April 5, April 20, April 23, 1861.
235 Wagner’s Tannhäuser: Galignani’s Messenger, March 15 and 27, 1861.
235 Longfellow’s Hiawatha: New York Tribune, April 1, 1861.
236 With great military pageantry: Galignani’s Messenger, April 4, 1861.
236 “deep mourning”: Ibid.
236 Demolition for the “prolongation”: Ibid., April 16, 1861.
236 “telegraphic dispatches”: Ibid., April 27, 1862.
236 “The Civil War in the States”: Ibid., April 28, 1861.
236 “in a frantic state of excitement”: Ibid.
236 We who are residing: New York World, April 28, 1861.
8. Bound to Succeed
The most valuable account of the life of Augustus Saint-Gaudens is his own autobiography, his Reminiscences in two volumes, compiled in the last years of his life with the help of his son Homer. Virtually all that he had to relate was either dictated to Homer or recorded by phonograph. Much that he did not cover, or that needed editorial explanation, Homer supplied. There is admirable candor and absence of pretension throughout, as characteristic of the man, and much that is particularly appealing concerns his student years in New York and Paris, along with generous samplings from the reminiscences of such lifelong friends as Alfred Garnier and Paul Bion.
Two subsequent biographies are Saint-Gaudens and the Gilded Era by Louise Hall Tharp (1969) and Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus SaintGaudens by Burke Wilkinson (1985).
As an illustrated guide to the life and works, nothing surpasses August SaintGaudens, 1848–1907, A Master of American Sculpture, published by the Musée des Augustins, Toulouse, and the Musée National de la Coopération Franco-Américain, Château de Blérancourt. Its detailed chronology is a resource to be found nowhere else.
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239 I was chiefly impressed: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 87.
239 Augustus Saint-Gaudens came to Paris: Ibid., 52.
239 He was nineteen years old: Ibid., 61.
239 I walked with my heavy carpet bag: Ibid., 62.
240 His French father: Ibid., 37.
240 “sicker than a regiment”: Ibid., 61–62.
240 Gus, as he was known: Ibid., 9.
240 In New York, after a struggle: Ibid., 12.
240 The sign read french ladies’ boots: Ibid., 16.
240 At home the father addressed: Ibid.
240 “sweet Irish brogue”: Ibid., 18.
240 “picturesque personality”: Ibid., 16.
240 “typical long”: Ibid., 11.
241 “heroic charges”: Ibid., 20.
241 “through my fault”: Ibid.
241 “one long imprisonment”: Ibid., 22.
241 “the delights” of Robinson Crusoe: Ibid., 24.
241 His father apprenticed him: Ibid., 32, 38.
241 “a miserable slavery”: Ibid., 28–39.
241 “When he was not scolding me”: Ibid., 38.
241 “Sculptured heads”: Scientific American, November 6, 1847.
242 The success of a cameo: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 37.
242 The apprenticeship with Avet: Ibid., 43.
242 The boy refused: Ibid.
242 He later spoke: Ibid.
242 He went to work for another: Ibid., 44.
242 “I became a terrific worker”: Ibid., 45.
242 Indeed, I became so exhausted: Ibid., 45–46.
243 Once, from an open window: Ibid., 41.
243 “Grant himself”: Ibid., 42.
243 “entirely out of proportion”: Ibid.
243 One day during the Draft Riots: Ibid., 50.
243 Like many parents, Eakins’s father: Kirkpatrick, Revenge of Thomas Eakins, 49.
244 an “interminable” line: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 51.
244 “full sympathy with the Rebellion”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, Vol. II, 248.
244 That was well known: Ibid.
244 A Confederate mission: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress: The Adventures of Dr. Tom Evans in Gas-Lit Paris, 83.
244 The one time when the “excitement”: Galignani’s Messenger, June 21, 1864.
245 The painter Édouard Manet: See Sloane, “Manet and History,” Art Quarterly, Vol. XIV, no. 2 (Summer 1951), 93–95.
245 According to one journal: Galignani’s Messenger, June 23, 1864.
245 “In his spare but strong-knit”: Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 373.
245 “took long walks”: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 60–61.
246 “always the triste undertone”: Ibid., 129.
246 Before leaving for Paris: Ibid., 361.
246 He considered a pencil portrait: Ibid., 25.
246 “bad straits”: Ibid., 62.
246 “cheaper to cheaper”: Ibid., 63.
246 “miserably poor”: Ibid.
246 “dwell on the ugly side”: Ibid., 62.
246 We worked in a stuffy: Ibid., 69.
247 The theme was “objects for the improvement”: King, The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism, 194.
247 At the time of the official opening: Galignani’s Messenger, April 2, 1867.
247 People were calling it: New York Times, May 10, 1867.
247 “At the Grand Hôtel they were”: Ibid., June 17, 1867.
248 “Paris is now the great center”: Morse, Samuel F. B. Morse: His Letters and Journals, Vol. II, 454.
248 The favorite American import: Kirkpatrick, The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, 98.
248 Travel was a “wild novelty”: Twain, Innocents Abroad, 645.
248 They “deceive and defraud”: Ibid., 123.
248 “I knew by their looks”: Ibid., 151.
249 The idea of it is to dance: Ibid., 136.
249 “the beautiful city”: Ibid., 151.
249 The most admiring crowds: See Blake, ed., Report of the U.S. Commissioners to the Paris Exposition, 1867, Vol. I, 12; FitzWilliam Sargent to his mother, June 12, 1867, Archives of American Art.
249 “M. Homer ought not”: Simpson, Winslow Homer: Paintings of the Civil War, 258.
250 “I am working hard”: Cikovsky and Kelly, Winslow Homer, 191.
250 A painting by Homer: Adler, Americans in Paris, 1860–1900, 245.
250 It was a small bronze, a standing figure: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. II, 184.
251 Further, on July 2, word reached: Galignani’s Messenger, July 2, 1867.
251 The great majority: Ibid.
251 “The United States, having astonished”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, Vol. I, 35.
252 The famous couturier: Latour, Kings of Fashion, 83.
252 Bringing one lady: McCullough, The Great Bridge, 166.
252 “waiting for ladies’ dresses”: Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams, ed. J. C. Levenson, Vol. I, 546.
252 “hordes of low Germans”: Ibid., 547.
252 Dr. Thomas Evans regularly supplied: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 77.
252 One resident American in Paris: Ibid., 78–79.
253 I was obliged: De Hegermann-Lindencrone, In the Courts of Memory, 1858–1875, 96.
253 “The American flag is freely displayed”: FitzWilliam Sargent to his mother, June 12, 1867, Archives of American Art.
253 “Lincoln’s portrait”: Ibid.
253 “He sketches quite nicely”: Mary Sargent to her mother from Nice, October 20, 1867.
254 When a formal notification: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 73–74.
254 “the triumphant one”: Ibid., 74.
254 “with little, intelligent black eyes”: Ibid.
254 But Jouffroy’s compliments: Ibid., 77.
254 At a student party: Ibid., 77–78.
254 “I was finally admitted”: Ibid., 78.
254 “amorous adventure”: Ibid., 63.
254 “keep company”: Ibid.
255 But so “soaring”: Ibid., 79.
255 “Spartan-like superiority”: Ibid.
255 “possessing so strongly”: Ibid., 87.
255 “the most joyous creature”: Ibid.
255 “crazy about wrestling”: Ibid., 84.
255 “Five minutes after we reached”: Ibid., 88.
255 “Nobody got his money’s worth”: Ibid.
256 “singing and whistling”: Ibid., 61.
256 Conceive an idea: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. II, 19.
256 You can do anything you please: Ibid., Vol. I, 166–67.
256 “There was a real Egyptian sky”: McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914, 54.
257 “keeping up with the Joneses”: Singley, ed., Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth: A Casebook, 4.
257 “deepest scorn”: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 79.
257 “Then,” remembered Alfred Garnier: Ibid., 93.
257 The audience poured out: Ibid.; Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay: The Life and Works of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, 37.
258 “No language can measure”: Elihu Washburne to U. S. Grant, July 20 and 27, 1870, Grant, The Papers of U. S. Grant, ed. John Y. Simon, Vol. XX, 255.
259 “as fine as I ever saw”: Sheridan, The Personal Memoirs of Philip Henry Sheridan, General, United States, Vol. II, 450.
259 “No person not in Paris”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, Vol. I, 65.
259 “covered it all over”: Ibid., 58.
259 On September 2 came the ultimate: Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870–1871, 324; Elihu Washburne Diary, September 3, 1870, Library of Congress.
259 More than 104,000 of the emperor’s troops: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 52.
260 “Louis Napoleon Bonaparte and his dynasty”: Marzials, Life of Léon Gambetta, 67.
260 “I am rejoiced beyond expression”: Elihu Washburne to his brother William, September 7, 1870, Library of Congress.
260 “So perishes a harlequin”: Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi, 258.
260 France, or at least Paris: Ibid.
260 “I yield to force”: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 117.
261 She hurried down the long Grande Galerie: Ibid., 118.
261 “smiles everywhere, people dressed”: Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World, 289.
261 The house he and his wife, Agnes: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 73.
262 He wasted no time: Ibid., 107.
262 On a flat stretch of open land: Ibid., 108.
262 “We were thoroughly impressed”: Evans, Memoirs of Dr. Thomas W. Evans, 305.
263 At five o’clock he knocked: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 122.
263 Evans appealed to an English yachtsman: Ibid., 127.
263 “I am heart and soul”: Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Mrs. Whittlesey, September 17, 1870, Dartmouth College Special Collections, Hanover, N.H.
263 “in utter confusion and dust”: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Vol. I, 101.
263 “They seemed to me like so many”: Augustus Saint-Gaudens to Mrs. Whittlesey, September 17, 1870, Dartmouth College Special Collections, Hanover, N.H.
264 “in terrible grief”: Wilkinson, Uncommon Clay, 40.
264 “Je suis persuadé”: Saint-Gaudens, The Reminiscences of Augustus SaintGaudens, Vol. I, 94.
264 “But they are getting old”: Ibid., 99.
9. Under Siege
Elihu Washburne’s extraordinary Paris diary has until now been overlooked beyond the Washburne family for the reason that its daily entries were written on separate sheets of paper from which letterpress copies were made; and these were later mixed in among his regular correspondence in the bound volumes deposited in 1946 at the Library of Congress.
It was the discovery of these entries during work on this book, as well as locating the original handwritten entries, bound separately as a diary, among the Washburne family collection at Livermore, Maine, that have made possible the account given in Chapters 9 and 10.
It is only in the nearly 200 diary entries (68 pages in typescript) that the full drama and detail of what Washburne experienced on the scene are to be found.
In addition, his own two-volume Recollections of a Minister to France (1887) remains a major source.
Of great value also are the contemporary accounts by three other Americans in Wickham Hoffman’s Camp, Court, and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation During Two Wars (1877); Shut Up in Paris (1871) by Nathan Sheppard; and the experiences of the Moulton family in Lillie de Hegermann-Lindencrone’s In the Courts of Memory, 1858–1875 (1912).
Excellent historical studies are provided in The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871: A Political and Social History (1971) by Melvin Kranzberg; and From Appomattox to Montmartre by Philip Katz (1998).
267 I shall deem it my duty: Elihu Washburne to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, July 19, 1870, Washburne, Franco-German War and the Insurrection of the Commune, Correspondence of E. B. Washburne, 1.
267 There are no carriages: Elihu Washburne Diary, September 19, 1870, Library of Congress.
267 “Has the world ever witnessed”: Ibid.
268 The Tuileries Garden: Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871: A Political and Social History, 24.
268 “And it seems odd”: Elihu Washburne Diary, September 19, 1870, Library of Congress.
268 “It is in Paris”: Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871, 9–10.
268 “Paris, pushed to extremities”: Ibid.
268 A French tutor: Frank Moore to Mr. Ostermann, September 27, 1869, Papers of Frank Moore, NewYork Historical Society.
269 Daughter Marie would remember: Fowler, Reminiscences: My Mother and I, 28.
269 “most agreeable”: Elihu Washburne to Mr. Plummer, March 5, 1870, Library of Congress.
269 “Her tact, her grace”: Elihu Washburne to Edward Hempstead, July 14, 1870, Library of Congress.
269 At the start of summer: Elihu Washburne to C. C. Washburne, June 23, 1870, Library of Congress.
269 “picked up their hats”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 127.
269 All the rest “ran away”: Elihu Washburne Diary, September 23, 1870, Library of Congress.
269 “I thought it would be, on all accounts”: Washburne, A Biography of Elihu Benjamin Washburne: Congressman, Secretary of State, Envoy Extraordinary, Vol. IV, 379.
270 “However anxious I might be”: Elihu Washburne to Hamilton Fish, October 3, 1870, Washburne, Franco-German War and the Insurrection of the Commune, Correspondence of E. B. Washburne, 76.
270 Numbers of Germans were being arrested: Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871, 9–10.
271 “Employers discharged”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege: A Narrative of Personal Adventure and Observation During Two Wars: 1861–1865; 1870–1871, 153.
271 The suffering, both moral and physical: Ibid.
271 As an assistant secretary named Frank Moore: Frank Moore to his wife, Laura, September 7, 1870, Frank Moore Papers, NewYork Historical Society.
271 The American Legation: Washburne, A Biography of Elihu Benjamin Washburne, Vol. IV, 13.
271 One day a child: Elihu Washburne Diary, November 11, 1870, Library of Congress.
272 “I am depressed”: Elihu Washburne to Adele Washburne, September 2, 1870, Library of Congress.
272 Yesterday forenoon: Ibid.
272 “Everything that energy”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, 154.
272 “And here let me remark”: Ibid., 154–55.
273 Raised on a farm in Maine: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn: A Chapter in American Biography, 155.
273 A judgment expressed by The Nation: Hess, “An American in Paris,” American Heritage, February 1967, 18.
273 The New York World had called him: New York World, December 12, 1868.
274 “coarse, uncultivated”: Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, Vol. III, 551.
274 “enlarged views”: Ibid., 543.
274 “He may represent”: Ibid., 551.
274 “Our family was very, very poor”: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 158.
274 He had been born on September 23, 1816: Ibid., 155.
274 The family struggled to survive: Kelsey, Remarkable Americans: The Washburn Family, 8.
274 It would be said of the Washburn children: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 300.
275 her mind was “quick”: Ibid., 158.
275 “The foundation that is layed”: Martha Benjamin Washburn to Elihu Washburne from Livermore, Maine, March 21, 1846, Washburn-Norlands Living History Center, Livermore, Maine.
275 When I think of her labors: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 158.
275 As one of the founders of General Mills: Grossman and Jennings, Building a Business Through Good Times and Bad: Lessons From 15 Companies, Each with a Century of Dividends, 45.
275 “I dug up stumps”: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 159.
275 “more congenial”: Ibid., 160.
276 “There is no humbug”: Ibid., 163.
276 In 1839, after another two years: Ibid., 166.
276 He arrived by stern-wheeler: Elihu Washburne Diary, April 1, 1871, Library of Congress.
276 “knee deep”: Ibid.
276 “a litigious set”: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 172.
276 In less than a month: Ibid., 173.
276 In a rough, wide-open town: Ibid.
276 He liked the life: Ibid., 172.
277 In 1845, at twenty-nine: Ibid., 178.
277 “He was not under the influence”: Ibid., 179.
277 In little time: Ibid., 183.
277 He was praised: Ibid., 183, 193.
277 An Ohio newspaperman: Ibid., 192–93.
277 “blow off like a steam engine”: Ibid., 192.
277 As chairman of the Committee on Appropriations: Ibid., 183.
277 It was Israel Washburn: Ibid., 32–33.
277 It happened at about two in the morning: New York Herald, February 6, 1858; New York Times, February 8, 1858; New York Tribune, February 6, 8, 1858; Chicago Tribune, February 8, 1858.
277 “Mr. Washburne of Illinois”: New York Herald, February 6, 1858.
278 In 1860, when Lincoln ran for president: Hess, “An American in Paris,” 21.
278 On the day Lincoln stepped: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 229–30; Hess, “An American in Paris,” 21.
278 “Without doing any injustice”: Hunt, Israel, Elihu, and Cadwallader Washburn, 220.
278 The confidence Washburne placed in Grant: Ibid., 243.
279 “His life was despaired of”: Fowler, Reminiscences: My Mother and I, 23.
279 “quiet and repose”: Elihu Washburne to his sister, October 12, 1870, Library of Congress.
279 In its long history: Sibbet, Siege of Paris, 169.
279 “The weather is charming”: Elihu Washburne to Adele Washburne, September 28, 1870, Library of Congress.
279 The formal exchange: Undated news article in Elihu Washburne scrapbooks, Library of Congress.
280 On September 21, a daring balloonist: Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871, 38.
280 Eventually some sixty-five balloons: Ibid.
280 “I have never before so much”: Elihu Washburne to Adele Washburne, September 28, 1870, Library of Congress.
280 To his brother Israel in Maine: Elihu Washburne to Israel Washburn, October 21, 1870, Library of Congress.
281 “great courage and spirit”: Elihu Washburne Diary, September 30, 1870, Library of Congress.
281 In early October: Transcript of recollections by Charles William May of his balloon trip out of Paris, Manuscript Collection, Boston Athenaeum, 3.
281 But when, on the morning of October 7: Horne, The Fall of Paris: The Siege and the Commune, 1870–1871, 85.
281 It was another perfect day: Transcript of recollections by Charles William May of his balloon trip out of Paris, Manuscript Collection, Boston Athenaeum, 7.
281 The air was clear: Ibid., 7–8.
282 So we opened the sand bag: Ibid., 8.
282 “There was no sense of motion”: Ibid.
282 “The days go and”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 189.
282 “laid by” his own sufficient stock: Ibid., 133.
282 “Were it not for Mr. Washburne”: Labouchère, Diary of a Besieged Resident in Paris, 24.
282 “cheerily shaking everyone”: Ibid., 70.
283 “The world cannot fail to admire”: Chicago Journal, no date, Elihu Washburne scrapbooks, Library of Congress.
283 “suffering … so sore I can hardly move”: Elihu Washburne Diary, October 15, 1870, Library of Congress.
283 Many people called: Ibid., October 17, 1870, Library of Congress.
283 “But Washburne”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, 203.
283 “interminable gabble”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 201.
283 “a little depression”: Elihu Washburne to Israel Washburn, October 27, 1870, Library of Congress.
283 “We drove to the French”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, 204.
283 While we waited: Ibid., 205.
284 On October 31, Trochu’s army: Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871, 54–55.
284 That same day: Elihu Washburne Diary, October 31, 1870, Library of Congress.
284 “marched with gigantic strides”: Ibid.
284 “People, and people”: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 120.
284 Women with big feet: Ibid., 120.
285 A tall well-bred-looking: Ibid., 122–23.
285 “They all seemed to regard”: Elihu Washburne Diary, October 31, 1870, Library of Congress.
286 “What a city!”: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 211.
286 “One moment revolution”: Ibid.
286 “perfectly raving”: Ibid., 219.
286 But by this time Bismarck: Ibid., 219–20.
286 “a prodigy of strength”: Elihu Washburne Diary, November 7, 1870, Library of Congress.
286 “Indeed, the defenses all round the city”: Ibid.
286 “I do not see for the life of me”: Ibid., October 30, 1870, Library of Congress.
287 At the Louvre, where Trochu: Becker, ed., Paris Under Siege, 1870–1871: From the Goncourt Journal, 81.
287 Reportedly 50,000 horses: See estimates in Kranzberg, The Siege of Paris, 1870–1871, 46, and Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 153.
287 “The situation here is dreadful”: Elihu Washburne Diary, November 12, 1870, Library of Congress.
287 “The Prussians can’t get into”: Ibid.
287 “Nothing of interest today”: Ibid., November 22, 1870.
287 “too sober”: Ibid., November 23, 1870.
287 “Oh, for an opportunity”: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 140.
287 “One felt an intense”: Ibid., 3.
288 “furtive glances”: Ibid., 4.
288 It is the intolerable tension: Ibid., 133.
288 Anything more dreary: Labouchère, Diary of a Besieged Resident in Paris, 70.
288 An American physician: Sibbet, Siege of Paris, 262.
288 The worst of it: Ibid.
288 The American medical student Mary Putnam: Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, 79.
288 Nor had she any desire: Letter of Mary Putnam to Elihu Washburne, February 2, 1871, Library of Congress; Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi, 275.
289 Her chosen topic: Bittel, Mary Putnam Jacobi and the Politics of Medicine in Nineteenth-Century America, 83.
289 “It is not at all probable”: Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi, 271.
289 And what a class: Elihu Washburne Diary, November 18, 1870, Library of Congress.
289 “The sun was just warm enough”: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 154.
290 On the contrary: Ibid.
290 Shoes were polished: Ibid., 155.
290 “They are arriving”: Elihu Washburne Diary, November 20, 1870, Library of Congress.
290 “With an improvised”: Ibid., November 27, 1870, Library of Congress.
290 The American Ambulance: Carson, The Dentist and the Empress, 108–9.
291 “Here were order”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, 222.
291 “I have known”: Ibid., 225.
291 “Is it necessary”: Evans, History of the American Ambulance Corps: Established in Paris During the Siege of 1870–71, 44.
291 The surgeon general: Washburne, Recollections of a Minister to France, 1869–1877, Vol. I, 144.
291 Numbering the days of the siege: See daily notations in Elihu Washburne Diary, Library of Congress.
293 As he explained in a letter: Kelsey, Remarkable Americans: The Washburn Family, 218.
293 “Too much cannot be said”: New York Times, January 15, 1871.
293 Never did any population: Ibid.
293 “There is universal approbation”: Secretary of State Hamilton Fish to Elihu Washburne, December 8, 1870, Library of Congress.
294 Lines formed as early as four: Galignani’s Messenger, December 27, 1870.
294 As firewood began running out: Ibid.
294 “the climax of the forlorn”: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 203.
294 “Never has a sadder Christmas”: Elihu Washburne Diary, December 25, 1870, Library of Congress.
294 The government is seizing: Ibid.
294 The bill-of-fare: Elihu Washburne Diary, December 26, 1870, Library of Congress.
295 “The French knew nothing”: Hoffman, Camp, Court, and Siege, 208.
295 The large square: Elihu Washburne Diary, December 26, 1870, Library of Congress; Elihu Washburne to his brother, December 26, 1870, Library of Congress.
295 “These people cannot freeze”: Elihu Washburne Diary, December 26, 1870, Library of Congress.
295 “The situation becomes more and more critical”: Ibid., December 28, 1870.
296 I am unfitted: Ibid.
296 “sawdust, mud, and potato skins”: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 220.
296 “downright good eating”: Ibid., 219.
296 By the second half of December: Galignani’s Messenger, December 31, 1870.
296 A rat, Sheppard was surprised to find: Sheppard, Shut Up in Paris, 165.
296 “The worst of it is”: Ibid., 197.
296 With little or nothing to feed: Galignani’s Messenger, December 18, 1870.
297 “But bah!!!”: Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi, 277.
297 The death toll in the city: See Horne, The Fall of Paris, 221 for figure of 4,444 during the week of January 14–21.
297 “Great discontent”: Elihu Washburne to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, January 2, 1871, Washburne, Franco-German War and the Insurrection of the Commune, Correspondence of E. B. Washburne, 118.
297 With the ground frozen: Galignani’s Messenger had ceased publication on September 19, 1870, during the siege. They resumed publication on March 10, 1871, with a day-by-day news chronology of events from September 20, 1870, to date. The entry from the weather on this day was for December 23, 1870.
298 In fact, Bismarck: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 203.
298 “At 2 P.M. I walked”: Elihu Washburne Diary, January 5, 1871, Library of Congress.
298 “Sometimes they would strike”: Olin Warner to his parents, February 20, 1871. Archives of American Art.
298 An American student from Louisville, Kentucky: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 213.
298 They carry with them: Sibbet, Siege of Paris, 335.
298 “It was singularly dramatic”: Jacobi, Life and Letters of Mary Putnam Jacobi, 277.
299 “Nearly twelve days of furious bombardment”: Elihu Washburne Diary, January 16, 1871, Library of Congress.
299 “The bombardment so far”: Elihu Washburne to Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, January 16, 1871, Washburne, Franco-German War and the Insurrection of the Commune, Correspondence of E. B. Washburne, 123.
299 The total number of those killed: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 217.
299 “I am more and more convinced”: Elihu Washburne Diary, January 18, 1871, Library of Congress.
299 “The ambulances have all been notified”: Ibid.
299 The French novelist Edmond de Goncourt: Horne, The Fall of Paris, 230.
300 One hundred thousand men: Ibid.
300 They had brought in sixty-five: Elihu Washburne Diary, January 19, 1871, Library of Congress.
300 “whole country was literally covered”: Ibid.
300 “All Paris is on the qui-vive”: Ibid.
300 “trouble in the city”: Ibid., January 21, 1871.
300 “And then such a scatteration”: Ibid., January 23, 1871.
301 “‘Mischief afoot’”: Ibid., January 22, 1871.
301 “The city is on its last legs”: Ibid., January 24, 1871.
301 “‘Hail mighty day!’”: Ibid., January 27, 1871.