David McCullough. The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 2011.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
“Not all pioneers went west.” Throughout the nineteenth century, many American citizens took the great and often hazardous journey across the Atlantic to Europe. Among those sojourners were America’s best and brightest young people—intellectual, talented, and industrious. They were artists, physicians, philosophers, authors, educators and politicians, all attempting a “greater journey” within Europe’s most exciting capital city, Paris. Historian David McCullough traces the adventures and accomplishments of these “foreigners” seeking education, training, and experience that could be offered only by this cultural center of Europe. They would “…learn more, and bring back more of infinite value to themselves and to their country than they yet knew.”
Beginning with the 1830’s, McCullough traces the Parisian experiences of a handful of Americans: popular novelist James Fenimore Cooper, accomplished painter (and later inventor) Samuel Morse, noted advocate for higher education for women Emma Willard, physician Oliver Wendell Holmes, and social reformer and budding politician Charles Sumner. Each came to love the city which had a population of 800,000—four times the size of New York City. “The glories of the art and architecture, of the arts on all sides, in and out of the door, the conviction of the French that the arts were indispensable to the enjoyment and meaning of life, affected the Americans more than anything else about Paris, and led many to conclude their own country had a long way to go. Something had awakened within them. Most would never again look upon life in the same way….”
A closer look at the experiences of each of these visitors reveals the scope of the author’s investigation. Morse was widely respected as a painter; his greatest accomplishment was a 6’x9’ depiction of a Louvre gallery, displaying a collection of miniature copies of several of Europe’s time-honored works. McCullough describes Morse’s acclaim from French critics, as opposed to his rejection in the U.S., when his application to paint a panel in the Capitol building was refused. This rejection caused him to abandon art and focus entirely upon his invention, the electromagnetic telegraph. Willard, the founder of an all-women’s school, defied the notion that women could not endure the sea voyage, much less the challenges afforded by a foreign culture; yet she knew that if women aspired for higher learning in their own country, they would first have to become pioneers in experiencing and embracing Europe’s society. Holmes and James Jackson, Jr both attended teaching hospitals in Paris where they were taught by some the world’s most respected physicians. They also experienced two great advantages denied them in medical education in the U.S.: male doctors could examine female patients; and h cadavers could be obtained easily for dissection. (Between 1830 and 1870, 700 Americans came to Paris to study medicine.) Sumner, an insatiable learner, had an epiphany that changed his focus on life in America. He observed that people of color could mix with and perform as well as their white counterparts at the Sorbonne. He concluded that “The distance between blacks and whites in America was due to education.” This realization led him to become an inveterate advocate of abolition.
In looking at Paris of the 1840’s, McCullough focuses upon another diverse set of representative characters. The first is a group he calls “the American Curiosities or Exotics.” These include showman P.T. Barnum and his feature attraction, “General” Tom Thumb; Louis Moreau Gottshalk, a 15-year-old piano virtuoso, who received highest praise from Chopin; and George Catlin, who introduced the French citizens to Native American Indians through an exhibit of more than 500 paintings of Plains Indians. He also brought a group of “painted and feathered real-life ‘Ioways.’” McCullough also examines the challenges faced by Richard Rush, the American Minister to France, who navigated diplomatically through the perils of political violence, a king’s abdication, and the establishment of both a provisional government and the First Republic. McCullough reveals the post-graduate experiences of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to become a doctor; she enriched her training in Paris in a school for midwives, eventually returning to the U.S., where she founded New York’s Infirmary and College for Women, a hospital run entirely by women.
In the 1850’s, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne praised Paris. Stowe felt that the city “…possessed a magically curative power to bring one’s sense of beauty back to life…Instead of scorning the light-hearted, beauty-loving French, Americans ought to recognize how much is to be learned from these.”
By the late 1870’s, 4,000 Americans were living in Paris. Among those was the student sculptor, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, whose productive career would span several decades. Dr. Thomas E. Evans aided France in the Franco-Prussian War, helping to establish a large, well-equipped field hospital, called “The American Ambulance.” The foreign minister, Elihu Washburne, heroically remained in Paris during a devastating 131-day siege. He helped many Germans who lived in Paris to leave the city safely. He negotiated for 79 German women to be released from prison and for 48 Americans to have safe conduct passage.
The last portion of McCullough’s study focuses on the achievements of three artists: Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, and Saint-Gaudens. Cassatt became the only American to be accepted as a peer by the French Impressionists. Her work, influenced by Degas, was greatly praised at the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition in 1879. Sargent’s portraits were considered to be exceptional in their treatments of their subjects,e.g., actress Ellen Terry, socialite Madame Gautreau, and the Boit daughters. Saint-Gaudens produced three of his most famous sculptures in Paris: the Farragut monument now located in Madison Square Park in New York; the Sherman and Victory monument located at 59th Street and 5th Avenue in NYC; and Boston’s Shaw Memorial—a frieze commemorating the heroic efforts of a Union African-American Regiment.
In this book, Paris’s magnetism for American is clearly documented through the first century of our country. Apparently Europe’s cultural capital had more to inspire than did the fledgling American Republic. Tracing the efforts and accomplishment of these “pioneers,” McCullough shows that the United States owes a great deal of its maturation to that great French city.
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 42 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.