David McCullough: Americans in Paris

from the Library of Congress in Washington DC you welcome members and former members of Congress and members who are currently voting but will be here shortly and welcome all of you to the Library of Congress it's always a great pleasure to welcome David and Rosalie McCullough to the Library of Congress we are grateful grateful to America's trust and Doddy mavar Amanda's for joining with us to sponsor this program and make it possible to provide you all with signed copies of his latest book at the end of the proceedings we appreciate also the special contributions made by those working with America's trans tan and Canfield and associates of bipartisan center and the Communication Workers of America special thanks also to the Marshall coins foundation who supported this evening and the reception as they did earlier at an earlier talk at the library by mr. McCullough and we're glad that benediction and the grandson of the late Marshall coin can be with us tonight to keep that connection alive papers tend to adhere to one another David McCullough is of course a chronicler of people in America his biographies of John Adams and Harry Truman both won Pulitzer Prize and elevated these two presidents from prior modest respect to the foothills of Mount Rushmore he humanized these two exemplary but non charismatic leaders each of whose presidency had the misfortune to be sandwiched between two already fully recognized presidents Adams between Washington and Jefferson Truman between Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower David McCullough as much as anyone in our time has put story back into history his stories like all stories that we like to listen to are always about people individual people not the people as an abstraction active people choosing and doing something not just impersonal humanoids reflecting social forces outside them or glandular forces inside them he paints graphic word pictures about both people and the places the geographic places that affected them whether it's a flood in Pennsylvania a canal in Panama a bridge in New York and tonight he comes to speak to us about a series of Americans who are drawn to Paris the great magnetic city of the 19th century we are pleased that he's come again to the library here on Capitol Hill to speak he has said that the Library of Congress exposed him to and I quote the pull of history end of quote when he saw the pictures of the Johnstown Flood that helped inspire his first book he later used our maps for his book on the Panama Canal and recommended that we require a key collection of the Canal Zone library which we did when that institution closed he is two of our maps of Paris from 1831 1872 reconstruct spaces and places through which Americans in Paris moved in the story he tells in his latest work he has used the papers stored here of many Americans in Paris particularly the hitherto neglected ones of Eli who wash burned the US ambassador of France who dominates two fascinating chapters within this book with his firsthand narrative of one of the most important sequence of political events in the nineteenth century the Prussian defeat of France and subsequent rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1877 he won the popular if short lived in urban insurgency of the commune ARDS reminds us in some respects of more recent events but anything it inspired revolutionaries for Marx to Mao and convinced conservatives like Dostoevsky that the flower that the fires burning in Paris might be the beginning of the end of the world itself items from the many collections that David has used in this book will be on display in the case is outside of the Coolidge auditorium and our cures will be happy to talk to you about them on their way to the reception of the Great Hall which will follow the program is important to mention in conclusion the day that has been a writer of an advocate for not only American history but also libraries books and reading in America he was a star reader at the library's first National Book Festival in 2001 and came specially to see me two days later and one day before 9/11 to urge that we continued and expanded as we had and he volunteered his help he concluded the following National Book Festival in 2002 with certain unforgettable words that left a hush which is ultimate tribute you get before people versed into applause he concluded with the unforgettable words we face today a foe who believes in enforced ignorant we don't he will return to the Book Festival the wall to September's and enters its second decade and expands from one day to two I'm happy to present to you this man a great chronicler of our history an advocate of libraries and reading and a master craftsman not just the written but also of the spoken word he spoke memorably to about one president to another for an hour without notes in the White House he spoke to a joint session of Congress on the occasion of its Bicentennial ladies and gentlemen I give you our peoples chronicler of America David McCullough thank you thank you very much thank you James thank you everybody and thank you particularly the members of the Library of Congress staff who assembled the wonderful display of treasures upon which much of my current book have been drawn treasures here in the incomparable Library of Congress I feel as Jim suggested in his generous remarks that my own path in work began at the Library of Congress just just fifty years ago this year and I have been coming back ever since I am more indebted to this great institution than I can possibly say and as Jim knows I have been ready and willing to do almost anything if I can help to bring benefits and and due attention to its role in our life this is the Mother Church if you will for the whole library system in America which is one of the greatest of all American institutions and has a lot to do with why we are the way we are and why we believe what we believe in I have just finished the best four years of my life working on the current book I have had a wonderful chain of subjects for my books I have never not enjoyed any one of them and I've always learned from them I've always I've always been on a journey with each of them but this book was a book has been gathering growth and and solidity in my mind for years many years a book I've been waiting for the right time and the right spirit to it to undertake I am NOT an expert on Paris any more than I was an expert on the Brooklyn Bridge or Harry Truman if I were an expert on any one subject I wouldn't want to write a book about it because then the adventure of learning would not be part of the process and I want to learn in effect the way the reader will learn I do I don't really know want to know in advance exactly why it came out the way it did or exactly who was involved and to what degree and what their importance was at the moment rather than in retrospect I want to discover that as I go along I try to write the book that I would like to read the book that I would like to read on the subject doesn't exist then I get to work and write it and and it's been that way from the beginning with this book I felt I had to do something that would convey what has become a a principle premise for me and that is that history is more than just the military and political issues and social questions yes it is has a lot to do with politics and soldiers and social issues but that's not all of it because that doesn't include art music medicine love money failure adventure it doesn't include the whole realm of the human spirit trying in various media to express itself I have personally a long been interested in painting I thought for a long long time I wanted to be a painter I love music I love the theatre and I wanted to write about those sides of life and their role in the development of a culture of society and in the history of our country I contend quite from the heart that if you took away Mark Twain and Willa Cather and Gershwin or Winslow Homer or any of any one of a dozen major contributors to the art and music and architecture of our country you'd be taking away something as important to us as the rocky mountains of the Mississippi River they are who we are and very often as you know particularly with ancient civilizations what we know the most about those other times and other people is their art is their sculpture is their architecture now in the 1830s the United States there were no schools of architecture there were no schools of art there were virtually no theaters performing opera except for New Orleans there was no Museum anywhere to go and look at masterpieces old or recent masterpieces medicine was woefully behind medicine was primitive in our country well over half the doctors the United States had never been to medical school and they had trained under people who had never been to medical school and the greatest medical center of the world was Paris not just for the practice of medicine but for the teaching of medicine Nichola medicine in Paris was the great medical school in the world just as if you wanted to paint if you wanted to become a sculptor who want to become an architect particularly if they want to become an architect paris nicola bose arts was the place to go and a great many brave ambitious young americans with talent set off for Paris when I first told people about what it was I was going to be doing I said I'm going to be writing about Americans in Paris the natural perfectly natural response was Oh Jefferson and Franklin Adams no I felt that I had written about that in my Adams biography Oh Gertrude Stein and Hemingway in the 1920s no I feel that the lost generation has been done up and down back and forth and enough Sanath I also had come to the conclusion which I didn't say much about the lost generation was never lost they knew exactly where they were they were in Paris I am but I was fascinated by this big period between the 1830s 1829 1830 to 1900 and began looking at who went and looking at who went with certain criteria by which to decide who among them I wanted to write about first of all I was not interested in people who just went over because they were part of a mercantil concern where they went over because they wanted to make a social splash or they went over just to hope it up and have a good time I was interested in people who had a purpose and their purpose was ambition to excel now part of this idea came from my Adams book because in the very last year of Adams life young Ralph Waldo Emerson came to call on John Adams and if there is a moment in some of the scenes that I have written about that I would dearly love to have been a fly on the wall that was one of them here with these two quintessential brilliant New Englanders sitting there talking one an old man in his last year of life the other just out of Harvard and at one point Adams turned to Emerson said I went to God that there were more ambition in the country and then he paused for a minute he said by that I mean ambition of the laudable kind ambition to excel note it's not ambition to get rich not ambition to be powerful not ambition to be famous or to have lots of stuff it's ambition to excel and that is exactly what most all of the people that I've written about were going for some it would become very famous some would create works of art inventions come up with ideas that would change our lives change the world's lives and it happened because they went to Paris some went because they've been told they had talent but they weren't sure and they wanted to find out a little bit like a good baseball player in the small town going to try out for a big league team am i any good others went because they knew they had talent but they knew they hadn't a sufficient chance opportunity to get the training they needed they knew they would have to work I think one of the best examples of all this was written by a man that most of us have never heard of a painter many art historians haven't heard of but yet seven of his paintings hang in the White House 17 of them hang in the National Portrait Gallery one of his most famous and greatest paintings of all of Abraham Lincoln hangers in the Corcoran Gallery his name was George Healy George P F Healy he was a portrait painter but here's what he describes how he described his departure I knew no one in France I was utterly ignorant of the language I did not know what I should do when once there but I was not yet one in 20 and I had a great stock of courage and of inexperience which is sometimes a big help and a strong desire to be my very best none of them knew that he or she was going to succeed all of them at least those I've chosen to include succeeded extraordinarily and some of them again are people you may not have heard of now another reason I wanted to do this book is to show to what extent the history of France and the impact of French ideas French culture French attitude about life has affected our story has affected our history has affected us here we are in a capital city designed by a Frenchman Pierre la fama here we are in a nation which by a signing of his name the president of united states doubled the size of the country by the purchase of the Louisiana territory from Napoleon we get dressed up we put on French perfume we wear French cuffs we're going to gussied up our house we put in French windows we've made french fries a national part of the national diet and of course standing at our greatest harbor as the welcoming symbol to our nation and to what we like to think we firmly believe is the great Statue of Liberty a gift from France look at the map of the United States look at all the names of rivers and towns and cities and colleges and universities that are French we may not pronounce them very well but they are French names now to go to Paris in the 1830s 40s was a brave decision a month at best it took by sailing ship there were no passenger ships you you got aboard a freight boat a two-masted sailing vessel and you could get there in a month even get there in six weeks you can also get there with relatively smooth sailing but more likely you ran into storms you were violently ill you're in cramped quarters with dismal food and nothing whatever to do but they did it and once they had completed this great crossing of the sea this great journey on the salt sea then they started off toward Paris by giant stagecoaches which carried 15 passengers each huge lumbering contrivances called Gilly Jonas and they would stop halfway to Paris at Rouen and there they would see their first great gothic cathedral they're first-rate European masterpiece the rule and Cathedral and it was an experience that they wrote about again and again and again because they had never seen any building so monumental and they had never seen a building so hold now this is just a reinforce for us but also reinforced emphatically for them how young their country was because of old building an old historic building in the United States such as Independence Hall in Philadelphia was less than 100 years old and here was a structure a magnificent structure taller than anything in the United States by far that it be that had been started before Columbus ever set sail and these Americans just were they had an almost they spell cast over them Emma Willard one of the great pioneers of education for women in America could hardly speak and in her letter she describes this moment this feeling she had that she couldn't get over and most of these people had to keep in mind were Protestants too and the idea that they were being so affected by a work of art that was a Roman Catholic shrine was a surprise to them also but more than anything else he was this presence of age what Charles Sumner called the prestige of age that he felt being in Europe for the first time so the old world was the new world now some of the others who went besides it Emma Willard and Charles Sumner and George Healy where Oliver Wendell Holmes senior who we remember not just as the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes justice Oliver Wendell Holmes but as a great poet essayist and founder of the Atlantic Monthly Magazine but we've had to not know is that Oliver Wendell Holmes with a major figure in the science of Medicine in this country he tucked anatomy at Harvard for more than 36 years much beloved figure and he saw no incongruity or conflict in the idea of a man of science also writing poetry and writing essays and founding a literary magazine that's the kind of attitude as he himself said that he brought back from his time in Paris Oliver Wendell Holmes and Charles Sumner where Bostonians and as was Healey but Healey was a poor Irish kid from the streets of Boston who knew no one knew no French and by the way none of them knew French because French was not yet taught modern languages were not yet taught in most colleges and universities James Fenimore Cooper went over already famous the most famous living American author by far his books were in every window in Paris and he ran into a friend that he had made back home here named Samuel FB Morse who was a painter and many of you I'm sure know Morse is great painting of the House of Representatives in session that hangs in the court room Morris was to paint his greatest work of art in the Louvre in Paris in the year 1832 and Morse almost died creating that masterpiece Morse set up his easel in the Louvre decided which of the masterpieces he lot thought were most important then rehung in the salon carré a his choice of 30 some different masterpieces but in order to copy the originals he had to go way up high and he built his own crazy scaffold that he could wheel from place to place in the Louvre and you know how enormous the Louvre is and every single day that he painted his friend Cooper came to sit with him and encourage him and Cooper and Morse I would like to point out first met here in Washington DC at a reception at the Lighthouse at the White House for Lafayette so again you see if it's the French experience in the United States and in Paris both now what makes that story of Morse and Cooper everyday as friends in the Louvre together is what virtually no other account of that painting ever includes most of the accounts of the painting are by very good art historians and that's what they do but at the while he was painting it one of the most horrific cholera epidemics in history was raging in Paris everybody who could get out of the city was gone going or gone and particularly all the Americans Cooper couldn't go because his wife was very ill and couldn't be moved Morse wouldn't go because he thought his money was running out and he was determined to finish it before he left people were literally dying outside the walls of that museum every day in the streets 18,000 people died in Paris of cholera in less than six months it was thought it was a disease of the slums but people were dying everywhere including in the very best districts of the city which was where Cooper with his money his success was privileged to live this is a powerful story of friendship and powerful stories of friendship are part of my thesis because we make friends abroad we make friends with out of our country in a way that's different we all had that experience Mary Cassatt's friendship with mrs. Havemeyer mrs. Mary Cassatt being the first American to become an impressionist and be accepted by the Impressionists mrs. hammer Mayer her great friend and admirer who was married to the her husband was the great sugar fortune began buying impressionist paintings buying every impressionist painter who was at the moment at the peak and as a consequence we have her vast collection as part of America's art treasure the Metropolitan Museum the friendship between Gustus saint-gaudens and and John Singer Sargent and and Whistler again a real story and and very important to their work now Saint Gaudens is to me one of the most fascinating Americans I've ever studied or written about he is like Healy an extraordinary American story I think he's the greatest American sculptor ever and his pieces which are everywhere mostly all about the Civil War are as powerful reflections on representations of that titanic struggle as anything we have his masterpiece is the Shaw Memorial 54th Massachusetts regiment the first all-black regimen the United States which so many of which were killed in the attack on the fort at Charleston the Shaw Memorial is in Boston on Boston Common right beside the Statehouse but there is a magnificent duplicate of it in the National Gallery just as his famous monument to mrs. John Mrs Henry Adams clover Adams stands in the Rock Creek Cemetery it's all around us that's what they brought back two of two of saint-gaudens greatest works the Farragut statue of Admiral Farragut dam the port torpedos arrogant is it in Madison Square in New York and then his fantastic equestrian statue of General Sherman and the goddess of victory stands at the entrance to Central Park at 59th and Fifth Avenue made in Paris now other ideas that were made in Paris aren't quite so tangible one of them was the realization by young student at the at the Sorbonne Charles Sumner that the black students at the sivan had the same kinds of ambitions as he did same intellectual curiosity as he did talk just like everybody else were treated just like everybody else and he began to think as he wrote in his journal maybe maybe it's because of the way we're taught that we treat African Americans as we do maybe it's not in the natural order of things and it was a moment of Epiphany he came home determined to do something about it he became in very short order one of the most powerful voices for abolition in the United States and very soon when when he was elected to the United States Senate in his early forties became the most powerful voice for abolition in the United States Senate and very nearly paid for it with his life when he was attacked by a congressman from South Carolina and nearly beaten to death with a heavy walking stick an attack that he never excuse me never got over either physically or psychologically and of course that desk that room that whole moment scene is still right here over at the Capitol you can go and see the desk where it was then his desk and see where the attacker made his approach from the from behind as tangible of course as any single idea brought back was Morse's bringing bringing back an idea called the Telegraph which he got in Paris got in France so he not only came home with this magnificent painting which by the way is going to be on exhibition very soon at the National Gallery don't miss it and he brought back the idea for the Telegraph which was first demonstrated for a real audience here in the Capitol and and and we were on our way to two the rapid change change which combination of Steam Navigation on the Atlantic would change everything and furthermore on another trip to France Moore saw the work of de Guerre the great pioneer in photography the first photographs got to know de Guerre and with Daguerre's permission brought the brought photography back to the United States so we brought back three things from his time in Paris one of the most interesting Americans who ever lived I think that in many ways one of the most gratifying and thrilling experiences for me in this book and I just will say right away I have never ever had a better time writing a book than this one I have never felt more that I was writing from a heart but this one not just from the mind and that what I was saying about certain ideas and certain themes with what I wanted to strongly get across the way maybe a novelist or a poet or 'the playwright wants to get it across only I was going to do it in my kind of book one of the most thrilling aspects of the whole story was to unravel the mystery of a diary kept by an amazing congressman turned foreign diplomat Elihu Washburne from Illinois Elihu Washburne was one of the most important members of Congress during the Civil War he was originally from Maine a little town called Livermore in western Maine he came to Illinois as a young man with a enough training to serve as a lawyer and very quickly rose to prominence in Illinois and particularly in politics selected to Congress became a great friend of another Illinois politician named Abraham Lincoln and became a great friend of another kalenna resident named ulysses s grant and and Washburn was really the man that Lincoln counted on for the most support and the best advice in the House of Representatives and Washburn was the one who kept pressing the president to put grant in command because he knew grant he knew the kind of man he was when the war was over Washburn was exhausted and Grant when he became president decided he would appoint him Secretary of State but Washburn said no he accepted for a few days than he declined because he was very ill and his his family were worried about his life so after he recovered he accepted the minister's position in Paris thinking this would be a wonderful place to kind of calm myself and his wife was fluent in French they had raised their children speaking French at home and so he knew that they would be happy there and he looked forward to it and they arrived right on the eve of the horrendous franco-prussian war every other diplomat of every nation every major nation left all got out the Germans were advancing rapidly on Paris and nobody wanted to stay except Elihu Washburne because he felt it was his duty to stay he was told by the Secretary of State to do whatever he thought was right he had no orders to stay but that's the kind of man he wasn't he his answer was as long as they're Americans in this city is my duty to stay he stayed through the entire siege which went on nearly five months where the Germans were starving the city of death he also after a brief interlude when there was a kind of peace after the surrender of Paris to the Germans he also saved through the even more horrible commune one of the bloodiest episodes in the whole history of Europe in which Paris the great city of civilization and culture exploded to reveal all the most heart Savage bloody potential that's in we human beings thousands of people slaughtered thousands of men women and children executed on the streets unbelievably terrible and he stayed again for the same reason he also succeeded in getting some 20,000 Germans out of Paris but as that before the pols siege was the surrounding of Paris was shut down and he did this at the request of the German government and at the request of the French government who couldn't the two governments couldn't work with each other so they left this to the American diplomat now the Germans were working people they were poor illiterate working people who collected the garbage and where the laundresses they did all that that the lowest work and they had nothing to do with the war they had nothing they were not guilty of anything but they were seen as spies and the enemy and they were subject to being executed without trial without anything husband's has taken away from their families so that man washburn arranged for the trains went to this railroad station time and again every day to see that everything was be being handled correctly imagine the panic of it hundreds thousands of people at every one of the Paris stations still in operation trying to get these desperate people out to safety and he succeeded and on top of all that he tried his very best to save the life of Archbishop dar boy the Archbishop of Paris who had been captured by the community um you nards along with a lot of other priests hundreds of priests and was about to be executed and washburn a Protestant who did not know the archbishop but went to call on him to see him using his diplomatic position to get in to see him to go to the to the government and get him released go to the common arse and get him to release and he did this time and again and worried about it constantly he not succeed the archbishop was executed a terrible thing and but it was not for the not trying on the part of Elihu Washburne and on top of all that he kept a diary every single day and not just a little diary about I saw this or I did that or I got up and I wasn't feeling well in the afternoon but a major take out every night he'd come home having seen the most awful awful situations and tragic and heartbreaking surroundings dangerous shells exploding all it was war he's in the midst of battle every single night well he refers to the diary in his reminiscences and he quotes now and then from me from the diary but the question we had where's the diary now I have been blessed for 25 years with the Association the comradeship the help of I think one of the greatest maybe the best of all historical researchers in our country Mike Hill and Mike Hill was working on this project with me here at the Library of Congress Mike lives nearby Virginia and can come in and out and all of a sudden one day working with Jeff Flannery they were looking at the bound volumes of white of Washburn's letters and Mike noticed that in among the letters arranged pretty much chronologically but you illogically were pages that weren't letters they were dated but they had no greeting at the beginning oh dear Charlie or anything and he suddenly realized these aren't letters this is a diary now they were letterpress copies in bound volumes and one of them is on display and do not miss looking at it's a major a American treasure about a major American character who has been too long unknown if this was a letterpress copy where was original well we found the original up in Livermore Maine along with a great deal else relating to the Washburn family it was thrilling and I feel if I've done nothing else with this new book I brought this man to the fore and I couldn't have done it without Mike Hill one of the lessons of history one of the lessons surely of life is that very little is accomplished alone and surely that is especially true in writing a book when you look at the acknowledgments in the back of a book such as I write those names aren't just there by chance or in passing those are all people who helped enormous Lee but I just want you to meet Mike Hill Mike where are you please stand up and take a long deserved bow there you he'd be perfect if he only had a sense of humor Mike has been through the ups and downs of all kinds of adventures with me and he's walked the walk in all kinds of places and this book was no exception I want to show you some images very quickly to give you an idea of the visual aspect of this project because I do research with photographs and with paintings and portraits always have and maps and and again I've drawn on the Library of Congress collection for many years I'm not going to make this a slideshow I just want you to see some of it this is the Rue de Rivoli and I show you this because this came from our attic my mother went to Paris with her parents in 1970 was seven years old and they came home with a big album of postcards and this amazing photograph is a postcard from 19 to probably 19 1 and it is reproduced in on the inside front cover of the book and looks as if it were taken yesterday and could have been taken yesterday except there wouldn't be the carriages and horses but automobiles it looks exactly the same that's the part of the Louvre there on the right that's the fence around the garden of the Tuileries and and in the back of the book of the in the end sheets it's another image from my mother's photograph collection postcard collection of the Opera House and the view looking up the Avenue of the Opera from the Louvre Hotel the Hotel de louvre still there which was the place where Morse and his family stayed where Mark Twain stayed where Hawthorn stayed and so to stay there in those very puts to as it were is a great thrill this is Emma Willard that's the great cathedral at Rouen and what she wrote was in a letter and I must emphasize that part of the joy of this book was reading the letters that these people wrote many of whom were not writers nor did fancy themselves as writers but when you read how they use the English language their command of the language their use of their vocabulary it's humbling and and young people people in their 20s right out of college and young people like Healy like Saint Gaudens who never had much of an education but it was a time when when what writing letters was expected of you and using the English language correctly was expected of you it wasn't just a difference in education it was a difference of education at home this is the painting of Morse's of the louvre now all of the all of the paintings are keyed in his presentation so that you know exactly which is the Titian and which is the michelangiolo which is the Leonardo but the characters are not keyed and part of the what I've unraveled in this book is that is the Morse code if you will of this book of this painting dealing with the people who these people are very quickly this is Morse right here and importantly he's showing himself as a teacher with this art student not just as a painter and over here is Cooper with Cooper's daughter and Cooper's wife and there is some some evidence and about much belief at the time that Morse was much in love with Cooper's daughter this was Morse's roommate a painter from America this young woman we don't know who this is this is a ratio Greenough coming the American sculptor coming through the door so he's he's people that mainly with America's people that with what he considered to be have been his family his American family in Paris this is Healy self-portrait whenever he didn't have a commission in in-process he painted himself thank goodness this is this is the great painting of Webster's reply to hain this painting hangs in one of the most historic spots in America in the Great Hall at Daniel Hall in Boston right behind the podium this is where right for Jack Kennedy gave his famous speech in front of this painting and that was done by George PA Healy in Paris was painted in Paris this is Oliver Wendell Holmes this is the great dissecting lab at UM at the hospital and let me just make quickly a couple of points the reason the reasons why American medicine were so far behind was not just because we had inadequate medical schools medical training at the time it also had to do with social factors an American woman of that day of the 1830s on up through the Civil War would have preferred to have died than to have a man examine her body and since all doctors were men that meant a great many women died literally they would not allow it in Paris there was no such squeamishness about that so that a student could make the rounds with a doctor and examine a female patients there was also a big stigma about using cadavers and in fact in many states it was illegal as the consequence cadavers for dissecting for medical purposes were black-market and that meant they were rare and consequently expensive so very few students relatively speaking ever got to dissect a body an arm or a leg or a foot or a hand the first time they would ever tease American American doctors the first time they would ever do that would be a live person and when they got to Paris and realize they were cutting up dead people they realized better someone dead than alive and of course in those days when they were cutting people up not knowing anything about the anatomy they were digging into from experience that person had no anesthetic no either ether didn't come in until 1848 that was Holmes on the left and Holmes as Holmes is writing about all this is just well understandably predictably terrific he was wise he was witty I would give a lot to have lunch or dinner with Oliver Wendell Holmes senior this is Charles Sumner is about the way he looked when he went over young very handsome man 62 Holmes was very small he was five foot four and included heavy boots as he liked to say this is George Catlin the great painter of American Indians the Plains Indians with his Indians in Paris performing a dance for the king of King of France Louis Philippe no American artist ever took Paris by said storm as Catlin and his Indians which is a whole story unto itself there's Tom Thumb and PT Barnum again that who took Paris by storm Americans were now at this stage this is this is later on the 1850s are now becoming sensations this is Harriet Beecher Stowe who was simply swept off her feet by Paris and particularly by the paintings at the Louvre here you have the wonderful Elihu Washburne and there is Paris burning one may night when a Disney's Jim Billington just said earlier it did look as though the world might be consumed in flames a horrific horrible horrible sight to see and they went up onto they the minister to Paris and his Legation to the top floor of the legation a building and still stands just off the seans Alizee where they could see the whole panorama of the city this is Mary Cosette a self-portrait by her and John Singer Sargent with Madame X both these brilliant Americans geniuses creators of masterpieces who came from very similar backgrounds from Philadelphia both in Paris at exactly the same time living there and having almost no contact with each other because their worlds were so different and there was just enough difference in their age this is the Statue of Liberty rising over the city before it's going to be taken apart brought down and shipped to New York and there is Thomas Edison this is a portrait done by a friend Edison with such a sensation at the 1889 World's Fair the World's Fair Lee introduced the Eiffel Tower famous for the Eiffel Tower Edison was such a sensation he had to hide from the public he was a the paparazzi everybody were all after Edison so he hid out with a painter that he knew an American painter and to pass the time he posed for him and that's how we have that portrait and that's hanging in the National Portrait Gallery this is this is Augustus saint-gaudens a painting by Cox this is Gussie st. Gunz his wonderful interesting wife who's a whole story that I was very pleased to be able to tell in the book because of a whole body of letters that we found in the great collection at Dartmouth College over 200 of her letters describing what it was like to be a young bride in Paris married to a sculptor this is the beragon statue which was done there this is a painting she was an art student that's how they met and this is a painting she did of their apartment in Paris on the left bank which is still there here's the Sherman statue in the in New York and most people don't know I never knew that the young woman had he Anderson who posed for the goddess of victory was an African American and isn't it wonderful that the goddess of victory with Sherman is an African American that's a statue when you go to New York take a look at it look at his face it's the face of a mad man truly its gristle and grim and scary and of course he's the one that not only said War is hell he says all moonshine and she she is not gloriously happy that she's so victory victorious she looks like she's in a slight days and so Saint Gaudens work is very ambiguous and very you have to stop and really look at it and think I think about not just the statue in memoriam in in the Rock Creek Cemetery but this one particularly I think is the greatest equestrian statue in America and that is the cover of my book I'd like to just conclude with a couple of observations I think that we have a big job to do in sustaining the story of how we've become what we are and I think it's not just up to those of us who write about it or make documentary films or who are on the staff of our great libraries or archivists and not just not just the teachers I think it's up to all of us and I think the greatest single vehicle for communicating the story of those human beings is the book the written word the literature of history and to pass this on to pass on to your children or your grandchildren that book that you loved when you were their age or to take them to a Historic Site let them see how much it means to you that's what counts most of all a marvelous teacher of teachers one of the greatest of all time was a woman named Margaret McFarland and she said that attitudes aren't taught they're caught it's the attitude of the teacher the attitude of the parent the attitude of the the coach and particularly with young children grade school children that's all important if they see you love it they will come to love it show them what you love she said so if you have a favorite biography or if you have a favorite chapter in the American story like the Civil War or the rise of industrial America or the development of the West whatever it is pass that on to your children and grandchildren because so far we're not doing a very good job about this and I personally think that also in teaching history we need to bring the theater music art architecture all into the way it's taught if a child is asked to play a part in the little drama historic drama and gets to play dolly Madison or Daniel Boone or whomever they'll never forget that if a child is taken out to see a grave Historic Site walk the walk this is where that really happened never forget it we all know that we've experienced it ourselves and finally I'd like to say never ever forget how blessed we are to have libraries where we can go in and explore to our hearts content the whole realm of ideas one of the greatest most interesting teachers of the last 150 years my view was a woman named Charlotte Mason she said history ought to be seen and taught as an inexhaustible storehouse of ideas that's what a library is and free to the people free to the people and if you've ever lived abroad or try to do research abroad you know this is a part of the American Way of life that we should never ever take for granted so I say as I said at the beginning to me the Library of Congress is the Mother Church and to me this great institution is quite rightfully atop our American Acropolis thank you I want to just express on the part of everyone here our gratitude as you heard so eloquently stated he's not merely telling us about a book he's giving witness to a life that is enlightened inspired and lifted our hearts and minds to the better understanding of our country out of the world we live in where was the width will be he when he spoke for the joint session of Congress on the bicentennial of the Congress itself he made a contrast between the old clock if I remember correctly in Statuary Hall which tells you not only what time it is now but what time it was and what time it will be as distinguished from our little digital clocks that just tell us where we are now so I think we owe David McCullough before we proceed past some illustrations that you'll see in the hall on to reception in the Great Hall I think we owe him a special vote of thanks for taking us where we have been or our ancestors have been in the past here in the present which gives us so much hope and positive feelings about the future David look a lot we thank you once again this has been a presentation of the Library of Congress visit us at loc.gov

Channel: Library of Congress

Views: 87,422

Rating: 4.6036038 out of 5

Keywords: library, congress, paris, history

Id: hdyBdCTo_SQ

Length: 58min 43sec (3523 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 18 2011