The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (30 page)

Four years later, in July of 1844, news reached Paris and the rest of Europe that Professor Morse had opened a telegraph line, built with Congressional appropriation, between Washington and Baltimore, and that the telegraph was in full operation between the two cities, a distance of thirty-four miles. From a committee room at the Capitol, Morse had tapped out a message from the Bible to his partner Alfred Vail in Baltimore: “What hath God wrought!” Afterward others were given a chance to send their own greetings.

A few days later, interest in Morse’s device became greater by far at
both ends when the Democratic National Convention being held at Baltimore became deadlocked and hundreds gathered about the telegraph in Washington for instantaneous news from the floor of the convention itself. Martin Van Buren was tied for the nomination with the former minister to France, Lewis Cass. Ultimately, on the eighth ballot, the convention chose a compromise candidate, a little-known senator from Tennessee, James K. Polk.

In Paris,
Galignani’s Messenger
reported that newspapers in Baltimore were now able to provide their readers with the latest information from Washington up to the very hour of going to press. “This is indeed the annihilation of space.”

The spring of 1845, just a year following Morse’s triumph at Washington, marked the appearance in Paris of a decidedly different variety of American, the first wave of American curiosities or exotics—“
les sensations américaines
”—who were the cause of great popular commotion.

It began with P. T. Barnum—Phineas Taylor Barnum—the flamboyant New York showman, and his tiny protégé Tom Thumb, and not even Barnum, for all his extravagant claims, foresaw the sensation they caused.

Almost immediately afterward came the American painter of Plains Indians, George Catlin, bringing an entire gallery of his pictures, more than five hundred in total, as well as a party of painted and feathered real-life “Ioways.” It was the most memorable visit of an American painter to Paris of all time.

Coinciding with all this excitement, a virtuoso American pianist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans, gave his first concert in Paris at the Salle Pleyel on the rue de Rochechouart, which appears to have been the first solo performance ever by an American on a Paris stage. What made it particularly notable was that Gottschalk was fifteen years old.

With a genius for publicity and humbug, P. T. Barnum had made himself famous a few years earlier when he opened his American Museum on
Broadway. In no time it became the most popular attraction in New York. “The people like to be humbugged,” he would explain. By chance, Barnum had also discovered a child from Bridgeport, Connecticut, named Charles Stratton, a midget who stood not quite two feet high and weighed sixteen pounds. The boy was five. Barnum renamed him Tom Thumb, or General Tom Thumb, fitted him out in a miniature uniform something like that of Napoleon, and said his age was eleven.

He was a perfectly formed, bright-eyed little fellow with light hair and ruddy cheeks [Barnum later wrote] and … I took the greatest pains to educate and train [him] … devoting many hours to the task by day and by night, and I was very successful, for he was an apt pupil. …

Barnum had opened his museum, he was frank to say, “for the opportunity it afforded for rapidly making money.” In the tiny “General” he had found a gold mine. He paid the boy’s parents $3 a week and put him on display in the museum, where he became such an instant favorite that Barnum raised the weekly salary to $20. Then “to test the curiosity of men and women on the other side of the Atlantic,” Barnum took Tom, his parents, a tutor, and three or four others on a trip to Europe, first to London, then Paris. Under a new agreement, Tom was to receive a weekly $50.

In London the Lilliputian Wonder was a “decided hit” on stage in Piccadilly and, later, resplendent in his uniform, at a command performance before Her Majesty Queen Victoria at Buckingham Palace. But London was not Paris. “The French are exceedingly impressionable,” wrote Barnum, “and what in London is only excitement, in Paris becomes a furor.”

He settled Tom and his entourage in the Hôtel Bedford on the rue de Rivoli and swung into action. He hired a brand-new auditorium with a seating capacity of 3,000, the Salle de Concert on the rue Vivienne, hired an orchestra, and made the rounds of the Paris newspapers to drum up publicity.

The winter in Paris had been unusually severe and signs of spring were late in coming. The branches of a well-known chestnut tree in the Garden of the Tuileries, normally mint-green by early March, were still as bare as
in the middle of winter. Then, suddenly, on the first official day of spring, March 21, the sun shone brilliantly and the boulevards were at once fully “animated” in the spirit of the season. Crowds thronged the ChampsÉlysées.
Tout Paris
paraded by in their elegant equipages, providing a first glimpse of the new spring fashions.

Yet Tom Thumb stole the show, sporting a top hat, riding in a no-less-fancy miniature carriage with four grey ponies and four tiny liveried coachmen. The crowd along the avenue broke into cheers for “General Tom Pouce.”

Because of the reception given “the General” at Buckingham Palace, Barnum had no trouble arranging for a comparable appearance before King Louis-Philippe and his royal court at the Tuileries Palace on the evening of March 23. Tom came attired this time as the perfect upper-bourgeois gentleman in a well-fitting black coat, white vest, and a glittering diamond shirt pin, and was at once the center of attention and delight. Barnum had coached his “apt pupil” well.

When a lady (who undoubtedly had also been coached) asked Tom in English if he planned to marry, he replied, “Certainly.”

“And how many have you engaged to marry?”

“Eight, all told.”

“But they tell me you are fickle and faithless.”

“It is true.”

“In England the ladies ran after you a great deal, and you let them kiss you.”

“That was to avoid hurting their feelings.”

“How many times have you been kissed?”

“A million.”

The king asked the General if he spoke French.

“A little,” he replied.

“What can you say in French?” asked the king.

“
Vive le Roi!
”

Tom performed an original dance, posed in imitation of such well-known statues as
David and Goliath, Samson
, and
Hercules
. Resuming his role as perfect gentleman, he consulted a tiny pocket watch and offered
a pinch of snuff from a tiny box sparkling with faux jewels. For his last act he danced a Highland fling in Scottish bonnet and kilts.

Reportedly the wardrobe he brought to Paris could be packed in a hat box, and while on tour he slept in a bureau drawer.

The following day the Paris papers announced drolly the public levees, “F
OR A
S
HORT
T
IME
O
NLY
,” for “The American Man in Miniature” at the Salle de Concert:

He is smaller than any infant that ever walked! He is lively, intelligent, and symmetrical in his proportions. He will relate his history, sing a variety of songs, DANCE …

Admission for the best seats in the hall was 3 francs; second-best, 2 francs.

As reported three days after the opening, the levees were “crowded to excess.”

The grace, readiness, and address of this wonderful little fellow are, in truth, scarcely less extraordinary than his miniature size, and have already rendered him the reigning favorite of the fashionable world, particularly among the ladies.

Shop windows were by now displaying miniature statues of Tom Pouce in plaster and chocolate. There were songs about him. One café even changed its name to Tom Pouce.

So great was the attendance at his two daily performances at the Salle de Concert as the weeks went on that Barnum had to hire a cab each night to haul his bag of silver back to the hotel.

The pale, slender young American who walked on stage at the Salle Pleyel and seated himself at the piano on the evening of Wednesday, April 2, 1845, knew how much was expected of him. Moreau, as he was called, had been studying music in Paris for four years, and in musical circles there was much talk about him. In the audience waited his mother and
five younger brothers and sisters, as well as his teacher, Camille Stamaty, who had studied under Mendelssohn. There, too, waiting attentively, were two of the most adored pianists of the time, Sigmund Thalberg and Frédéric Chopin, who had had his own first performance in Paris at the Salle Pleyel. Paris devotees of music had turned out in force, every seat was full, in response to a printed invitation to hear the debut of “Young Moreau Gottschalk of New Orleans.”

The boy had been born in 1829. His mother, Aimee Brusle Gottschalk, was a Roman Catholic Creole whose first language was French. Moreau was raised as a Catholic, but educated in English. His father, Edward Gottschalk, Jewish by birth, made his living trading in land and slaves. Moreau was said to have shown his first interest in the piano at age three and at age twelve, with strong encouragement from one of his piano teachers in New Orleans, he had been sent off on a sailing ship to France under the care of the captain.

With all its historic and old family ties with France, its French-speaking population, its French food, and French ways, New Orleans had a natural affinity with Paris. Many in New Orleans felt a far closer kinship to Paris than to any city other than their own. Well-to-do Creole families frequently sent their children to be educated there. Or they themselves took an extended turn at
la vie parisienne
. One immensely wealthy young woman from New Orleans, Micaela Almonaster y Rojas, had moved to Paris following her marriage to her cousin Celestin de Pontalba, and wound up at the center of a sensational incident that would be gossiped about in Paris and New Orleans for generations. In 1834 in Paris, her father-in-law had tried to kill her—apparently in the hope of inheriting her money—by shooting her point-blank with dueling pistols. Two balls lodged in her breast; another destroyed part of her left hand. When she managed to escape to another room, he turned and killed himself. Miraculously she survived, and not long afterward, to let there be no doubt about her financial position, or her intention to stay in Paris, she built one of the city’s most glorious mansions, on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, which would one day, in another era, become the official residence of American ambassadors to France.

Young Moreau was enrolled in a private boarding school run by a couple
named Dussert in their apartment. Already fluent in French and eager to learn, the boy did well in all the usual studies, but so excelled at the piano as to draw attention almost at once. The Dusserts arranged for him to meet Sigmund Thalberg, who, after hearing Moreau play, took him by the hand saying, “This child is surprising.” Meanwhile, Moreau’s father, who had endless troubles staying solvent, assured him he could meet all the expenses of Paris, which were not inconsiderable, given that the boy liked fine clothes and had already, at age thirteen, arranged to have his portrait painted. The work, by an artist named J. Berville, showed a long-haired youth with wide-set, wistful dark eyes, holding a quill pen and a sheet of music and looking lost in thought.

Moreau had been in Paris three years when, in the fall of 1844, his mother and her five younger children arrived for an extended stay. Aimee Gottschalk was all of thirty-one, fond of society and elegant comforts, and ready to make the most of Paris. In a way, the evening of April 2 was to be her debut as well.

For a piano prodigy especially, Paris just then was the ideal place and time to be heard. It had supplanted Vienna as the musical capital of Europe, and never had the piano, or any musical instrument, been so popular. According to one study there were as many as 60,000 pianos in the city and some 100,000 people who could play them. If this was so, then approximately a third of the youth in Paris were playing, or attempting to play, the piano. Virtuoso pianists and composers like Thalberg, Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Hector Berlioz were at the height of their popularity, as brilliant as any stars in the Paris firmament. Chopin in particular, with his music and his celebrated love affair with George Sand, had become the very embodiment of artistic genius and the romantic spirit. To young Moreau, Chopin outshone them all.

Musical prodigies were not uncommon in Paris—they were even something of a tradition—but Moreau was an
American
prodigy, and that was new.

His debut at the Salle Pleyel was with full orchestra and he opened the program with Chopin’s Concerto in E Minor. Then followed compositions by both Thalberg and Liszt, and the burst of applause at the end left no doubt that he had more than lived up to expectations.