The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (96 page)

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Authors: David Mccullough

Tags: #Physicians, #Intellectuals - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Artists - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Physicians - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris, #Americans - France - Paris, #United States - Relations - France - Paris, #Americans - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #France, #Paris (France) - Intellectual Life - 19th Century, #Intellectuals, #Authors; American, #Americans, #19th Century, #Artists, #Authors; American - France - Paris - History - 19th Century, #Paris (France) - Relations - United States, #Paris (France), #Biography, #History

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).

PAGE

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.

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