Read The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris Online
Authors: David Mccullough
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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.
8. Bound to Succeed236
We who are residing: New York World
, April 28, 1861.
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.
PAGE
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.