Q&A: Historian David McCullough - Part I

[Music] this week on Q&A historian David McCullough his latest book will be released this week it's about the many Americans who went to Paris from 1830 to 1900 to further their vocation the book is called the greater journey Americans in Paris David McCullough where did you get the title for your new book the greater journey it happened on November 15th as a matter of fact I somehow rather know exactly when I suddenly thought that's the title the greater journey because I was trying to think what is this book about it's about a journey but a different kind of journey or it or a mission or an adventure or an odyssey and I kept working with these words the word journey kept coming back and then I was thinking about their the voyage of these Americans who ventured off to France at a time when they were all only able to go across the North Atlantic by sailing ship and it was rough and it was anything but traveling on a cruise liner and what a journey that was and then they got to they landed it Lahav almost all of them and they then went by land to Paris which was a two-day trip by the huge cumbersome stagecoach affair and they would stop at Rouen halfway and they would see for the first time a European masterpiece and the masterpiece was the Rouen Cathedral and many of them wrote at length and very much from the heart about the impact of this one building this one experience and that they knew that something Reiter had begun being in the old world the old world to them was the new world and I thought that's it the greater journey they know then that they are on a greater journey which will be their experience their spiritual mental professional journey in the city of Paris where they're trying to to to rise to the occasion to excel in a particular field whether it was writing or or music or or painting or sculpture or medicine because many of them in that day went to as medical students because Paris was in the medical capital of the world so there are they're ambitious to excel and they are going against the trend because to go off to Europe that was not fashionable yet and it wasn't part of one's broadening education yet many of them had no money many of them had no friends in Europe knew no one in Paris and spoke not a word of the language and yet they were brave enough to to go to embark on the greater journey this Renoir painting a you know I first sorry I thought this had cost him a lot of money to put that on there but I assume is it out of copyright or do you own the painting no no no that's the belonging to me Museum there is a Renoir of the Pont Neuf Pont Neuf the new bridge but in fact it's the oldest bridge in in the Paris still there looks just exactly like that you can walk out to that very spot by the bridge and except for the wagons and horses on the bridge and the painting would be automobiles and buses now and for many people that bridge is particularly in that day before the Eiffel Tower had been don't say that bridge was the essence of Paris and it still is it's one of the most magnificent spots anywhere in the world because you really feel you're there when you're out on the bridge you're looking up or down the river you see Notre Dame you see the Louvre you see the Institute National Institute on the other side of the Pont Neuf which the upon days art which is the next bridge up the river and one fellow John Sanderson from Philadelphia said I began to breathe when I got out of that bridge began to breathe this sort of free free air of Paris a person by the name of William B McCulloch took this picture yes sir what is this where is it and what year was this taken this was taken last year last fall October William B is my second son he is former cameraman and television and now has his own business as a builder in New England and he's a wonderful photographer he's a wonderful fellow to travel with and the picture was taken just outside the cirebon on the left bank which is where many of these young Americans went to study they could go to the Sorbonne for free they could go to the School of Medicine in Paris for free the French government had a policy that all the foreign students could attend their universities for nothing they had to pay for their room and board but once they got there there was no charge for attending the University it was the greatest university in the world imagine a country doing that and and that cirebon the experience of it changed several lives dramatically and consequently changed our story our history that's what interests me particularly is what did they bring home what did they bring back how were we affected how did our outlook our culture our politics our country change as a consequence of the American ease of a Paris experience of these Americans how many times have you been to Paris well Rosalie and I first went in 1961 I was then part of the Kennedy administration and very young and we were on our way to the Near East I was doing a magazine about the Arab world for the u.s. information agency how high outfi America and our first time we there were no jets as yet so we flew over without a prop plane took forever we landed at night it was February was cold and raining and it didn't matter the slides to us we were in Paris and we walked for hours that night just so thrilled to be there and we've been going back fairly often ever since I would I've never counted up the times that we've been to Paris probably 20 times maybe more but I've also done research there before because part of the john adams book took place in paris as you know and and of the Jefferson Adams Franklin the time in Paris is a very important part of the American story everybody also was there to do work on the my book about the Panama Canal because so much of that research material on the French attempt to build the canal is there and then I went back to France to follow Harry Truman's experiences in the Army in World War one most of my visits have been because of my work though we have had a few times when we went strictly for pleasure and always always with pleasure but there works the pleasure do up here on our screen is the gallery of the Louvre which you write a lot about in the book what is it that's a painting by Samuel FB Morse the same man amazingly the same man who invented the Telegraph one of the most important of new inventions of the 19th century and Morse felt obliged to bring European culture back to America he'd gone to Paris because as he said I need Paris for my for my profession my painting I will become a better painter if I spend time there if they all felt that those that went and hundreds went but he was one of the first and he decided that he was going to do a painting that would show Americans what the inside of a great art museum looked like and what great masterpieces looked like keep in mind there were no museums of art in the United States this was 1832 when it was painted no museums of art you couldn't go to the museum and look at paintings anywhere in the United States and very few paintings of any kind unless they've been copied for private ownership were of the great masters now most of these are Renaissance paintings Italian paintings some of which were already part of the Louvre you see the Mona Lisa right there in the lower right hand corner that had been purchased by Francis the first whose portrait by Titian hangs over the door up on the right hand side right at the corner how big was this painting the painting is six feet by nine feet is huge and it it was much bigger than anything of the kind ever attempted by an American no no American had ever attempted to paint anything like this until then now he did a earlier painting a famous painting which is at the Corcoran hiren in Washington of the of a Congress in session which had never been done before he was always trying to break new ground but there are thirty some paintings in this in this in this picture and he they they are not how they were actually hung in the Louvre he went through the entire collection over a thousand masterpieces picking out those paintings that he thought should know about or that he thought these are the paintings that I truly love that I care about and these are to me the treasures of the world and I want to share them with my fellow countrymen so he he arranged them as it were in his mind but he went and copied each of these paintings as they hung in the in the gallery at the time and many of them were hung very high up just as they are here so he had to build it his own special scaffolding to move from spot to spot to get up there to paint them now a lot he himself gave a key to this painting when it came back so that if you went to see it on exhibit you could see which paintings were which which was the Rembrandt which was the Titian so forth but what he didn't give was a key to the people in the painting and there is a in effect a code to this painting done by the man who virtually at the same time invented the Morse code because his he got the idea for the Morse code for the for the Telegraph and the code while he was in Paris while he was in France but the code every every painting is a is a collection of choices by the author by the painter and it's not just what's in the painting it's nothing is in a painting by accident it's always there because somebody's thought about it but they're also thinking about what's not in the painting what I'm leaving out just as wasn't when one's writing a book or composing a symphony leaving a lot out have to so in peopling this picture which he's done because he wants to give scale to the room into the painting the the main room the Grand Gallery which is at the center of the painting is is was the largest room in the world so that's sort of the vista in the painting and this is the South carry which is a smaller room all exactly the same today by the way paintings aren't there that way but he's showing you the expanse of this space the scale of this public cultural treasure open to the public but he's not showing you the public that really would have been there there are no French aristocrats in the painting there are no priests in the painting there are no soldiers in the painting all of whom would have been there every time the public was present and would have been huge crowds always this amazed Americans that not just how many pennies that were but how many people came and what all kinds of people now he does have a woman from Brittany who stands at the door to the left her back to you and her child and that's probably to show that people people of all walks of life and from and who don't live in Paris are welcome here and and come here you can tell that who she is by that peak of her hat her cap that white cap is a sort of the signature of people women from Brittany he himself stands down downstage front in the center he's the man bending over the pretty young student who's working making a copy of the Varanasi which is over on the left of the marriage at Cana and he is showing himself not just as a painter but as a teacher and he's very proud of that Samuel Morse was over in the left-hand corner is his best friend in Paris the right Eric and author James Fenimore Cooper with his wife and daughter who is also an art student coming through the door is is a sculptor named green Oh also a friend an American and there's another friend of his Harbach who is over on the Left who's an American artist in Paris now what this painting also doesn't show is that the tranquility of the setting the warmth of the red walls the warmth of the glow in the Grand Gallery conveys a sense that all's right with the world outside those very walls is one of the most horrific deadly scourges ever to hit Paris the great cholera epidemic of 1832 people were literally dying in the streets dropping dead 18,000 people died in less than six months just in the city of Paris both of these men were terrified that they were going to contract the disease and die to coop and everybody who could get out of Paris was leaving but Cooper who was very wealthy because his books last the Mohicans and others were so successful could have left but he had his family with him and his wife was very ill and couldn't be moved how old was he he was in his 40s they both were in their 40s Morris who had no money and was living very modestly was staying because he was determined to finish that painting before his money ran out and he had to leave Cooper out of friendship to Morris and to see him through this ordeal came to the blue every afternoon to be with his pal to sit with him talk with him while he worked it is a it is an amazing story of friendship of a friend in need and both of these men were similar in some ways they each had a distinguished father they each went to Yale University Yale College as it was then they reached talented the aged lived in New York but they were vastly different in more ways in more important ways and and yet this bond of friendship was like very little I've ever written about or known about it's a terrific story and I felt that not only is it an immensely important painting and interesting painting say the least but it's an amazing story I could have written the whole book just on this one painting how long did it take him he worked on just about a year started in the fall of 1831 and he finished in the late summer of 1832 I read it's coming to Washington this summer it's coming to the National Gallery it's just been to Yale which was a thrill for everybody there because both Morris and Cooper went to Yale and the Cooper and the Morris papers are at Yale but the fact that it's coming in the National Gallery is is thrilling it deserves much more attention than it's been getting for a long time it's been the storage for years who owns it the Terra foundation in Chicago used to have a museum not yes right when he finished he thought maybe he could get enough money to more than compensate him for all his work he thought he might get somewhere three four thousand dollars for it which was considerable amount of money then he couldn't sell it finally somebody from up in Cooperstown Cooper's hometown bought it for $2,000 in the 1980s it sold for over two million dollars which was the greatest amount of money ever paid for an American painting a painting by an American at that point no longer that way but it's a very important painting in your book you have acknowledgments acknowledged a lot of people including a man named Mike Hill and interesting thing that I read was that he unlocked the magic of the Eli hue Washburn diary we tell us who he was and what's the diary where was it found well first of all Mike Hill has worked with me for 25 years now as a research assistant he lives here outside of Washington and is within easy access to not just the great treasure houses of Diaries and letters here at the Library of Congress and the archives and Smithsonian but also collections at places like Charlottesville Virginia and he does research for lots of other people too he just doesn't just work with me who else does he work with well he works with the Nathaniel Philbrick he works with Evan Thomas he works with Michael Beschloss number of people I don't know all of his his clients but he he's the best and he was Elihu Washburne little background Ellie Washburn was a congressman from from Illinois who was a fellow congressman her fellow politician in Illinois with Abraham Lincoln and a great close friend of Abraham Lincoln's and when Lincoln became president it was Washburn as much as anybody else who kept telling Lincoln you've got to give this man grant full chance to show what he can do because Washburn came from Galena Illinois which is where grant was then living before civil war started but what also distinguished Washburn is he was one of four brothers who all served in Congress in the House or the Senate all four from different states all got reelected regularly all four had distinguished careers one was a general in the Civil War another was the as the mayor as the governor of Maine was it appears to have been the first person to refer to the new political party as the Republican Party and they grew up on a hardscrabble farm in western Maine in utter poverty and ten children and all of those children were exceptional and it is an amazing amazing story their mother could read but she felt very embarrassed because she that she might make it embarrassing for her children who became so distinguished if she were seen to be someone who wasn't as educated as she should have been but she was a very wise bright woman who insisted that to her children that education was everything and if they could get an education and keep learning and keep keep the love of learning there was nothing they couldn't do after the civil war was over and of course Grant had distinguished himself conspicuously Washburn was exhausted and when Grant became president he first offered him a position of Secretary of State but Washburn was quite ill and he declined it three days later he said I can't do it so he appointed Washburn the our minister or ambassador to to France to Paris Washburn went over thinking this is going to be just what I need to recover my strength and they have a little peace and quiet with my family he arrived on the eve of the franco-prussian war in a very short order the Germans were marching on Paris and very short or the Germans surrounded Paris and Paris was cut off from the world now all the other ambassadors for all the other powers left the city got out except Washburn and he says my duty to stay here and he stayed through the entire siege which lasted five months and he stayed through the horrific they got awful bloody commune that followed where French were killing each other by the thousands in the city of Paris he not only stayed and served admirably helping Americans who were there but also the Germans who were there who had been living there as as workers who were innocent of doing anything wrong to get them out of the city at on the request of the German government some 20,000 of them he organized arranged all that special trains and so forth and that magnificent humanitarian successful mission but through all that he also kept a diary every day and the diary wasn't just did this quick little notes did that lunch was so and so met was oh no they are long superbly written entries of real substance there's nothing like them in existence and they were unknown and we Mike Hill found them and he found him in a place no one would think to look in the Library of Congress now what had happened was that the family or somebody had taken his letters he also wrote letters during this time and copies of the diary the diary entries were written on separate sheets of paper and later bound in an original diary but he made letterpress copies as they were known than like a carbon copy and another group was bound in with the letters so that you couldn't tell that if it said April 9th if it was a letter it didn't say dear Fred I just said April 9th and these were all mixed in with these hundreds of letters Mike going through the letters thinking they're all that suddenly realize these aren't letters and he went to chef Flannery who runs the manuscript division there and said what is this what's going on and Jeff had never looked at it before either closely and they suddenly realized these are diary entries but of course they were letterpress where is the original well the original it turns out was up in Maine the family homestead up in Maine well in writing the book I was able to draw on this experience and his attempt to save the life of the Archbishop of Paris for example who was imprisoned and going to be executed by the common arts as they were known and he penned washburn Elihu Washburne was Protestant he was not a Catholic but he greatly admired the archbishop and he and you know that this was a terrible thing that was happening because they were killing priests executing them and he was unsuccessful in saving that man's life he wasn't executed but nobody tried harder to get him out and that whole story this is a man that again was quietly heroic and his his sense of duty was amazing and an admirable in the extreme but also I think he felt a strong sense of duty to keep that diary he would come in after a terrible day of seeing the most heartbreaking sometimes nauseating experiences and and acts of human savagery and sit down at one o'clock in the morning and write long entries in superb English the use of the command of the language it it's humbling and here was a man who never really had an education as we would call it today but this is true of the letters and diaries I worked with through the whole book people like Charles Sumner people like Emma Willard the great champion of higher education for women Elizabeth Blackwell the first woman doctor in America they were wonderful writers and they weren't writing writing they weren't writing to be published they're writing letters it was a time when people believed in writing letters and writing letters was part of life part of what you were expected to do some nurse some nurse story is to so arresting Massachusetts Massachusetts senator Senator Charles Sumner one of the most important figures of nineteenth-century America him that he was the most powerful voice for abolition in the United States Senate he's the one that was nearly beaten to death on the floor of the Senate with a heavy walking stick by a southern congressman who was offended by a speech that Sumner had given Sumner went over a summer graduated from Harvard went to Harvard Law School practice law for three years decided I don't know enough my education is not sufficient I want to know more I I want to learn more I'm gonna go to Paris so he borrowed three thousand dollars from friends closed up his law office and went to the Sorbonne attending lectures in everything geology classics everything in French language in French and he doesn't even speak French so he had to learn French took a cram course so that he organized himself with tutors and then about a month was able to do it but the the daunting undaunted courage of these people is inspiring he and he attended the lectures and he kept a journal and the journal is fabulous it's been published for four volumes and in the journal he writes about what he's listening to or who he's meeting and what he's learning and so forth but there's one entry where the speaker was sort of tedious and he found himself looking around the lecture hall mind-wandering and he noticed that the students other students in a several hundred nearly a thousand people in this lecture hall that the other students treated the black students who were there just as though they were like everybody else dressed the same acted the same what year this is in 1836 how old is he then he was young he was still in his 20s and he and he wrote in the diary maybe how we treat black people at home is the result of what we've been taught and not part of the natural order of things now that's almost exactly quote-unquote it was an epiphany for him he is if suddenly saw the light truly because we know that he'd been to Washington on a trip before he went to Paris and had seen slaves working in the field and in Maryland and thought they look like that's all they were good for had had no sympathy for for people in bodies no a sensible interest in in african-americans at all he came home with this new point of view got into politics was elected to the United States Senate in his 40s early 40s and he became the powerhouse voice for abolition changed by that experience in Paris so that that's bringing home something that's not tangible it's not a work of sculpture or a painting or a musical composition but he brought home an idea a Adam Anna and a new mission the beating left him very damaged both psychologically and physically and he went back to power several times to relieve himself of these anxieties that he felt and his inability to perform as a senator and it always helped him so he came home carried on I I think he's one of the most admirable figures in our story his statue stands in the public garden in Boston I doubt that one Bostonian in a thousand has any idea who he was we all should know your timeframe on this whole book is from window in 1832 1970 years and it's a period that hasn't been looked at much great deals been written and marvelous things have been written about Jefferson Adams and Franklin in Paris in the 18th century and an enormous amount as you know has been written about the 1920s and the 30s Gertrude Stein scott Fitzgerald and so forth but I felt that this period was just waiting and it sure appealed to me I think that I've been thinking a lot about this idea on this point of view I think that its history is as you know is much more than just politics and soldiers and social issues it's also medicine and science and art and music and theatre and poetry and ideas and we shouldn't lump things into categories it's all part of the same thing and one of the most interesting characters in in this study that I've done is Oliver Wendell Holmes senior who spent his whole life devoting his whole life working career to medical science was on the Harvard Medical School faculty for 35 years and a very prominent figure in American medicine but he saw that there was nothing there was no incongruity the also wrote dream and essays and help to start a magazine called the Atlantic Monthly it's all part of it and I think that's the way history ought to be taught and I think it's the way that I'll be written it's the way I I would like to think myself more about this time goes on I in my own life I've at one point thought I wanted to be a painter another point I thought I wanted to be an actor another point I thought I wanted to be an architect all along I thought I wanted to be a writer but it's all there it's all part of what we are about we human beings history is human and I was riding down Massachusetts Avenue one time this was number of years ago here in Washington yeah on my way to work driving and I got to have shared in circle I was driving it was rush hour and the traffic was terrific and it was a traffic jam at Sheridan Circle and there was old Phil Sheridan general Sheridan in the center of the of the circle with the wreck was a pigeon on his head and it's a wonderful statutes by Goodson Borglum it's beautiful statue he's the one that did the faces the presidents and the Black Hills and I wondered at the time as I wonder about Charles Sumner in the public gardens in Boston how many Americans have any idea who that man is how many people drive around this circle every day twice a day I have any idea who they're looking at her watch called Sheridan Circle at the same time Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue was playing on my car radio and I thought Gershwin is as alive at this minute for me anybody else stuck in this traffic jam has tuned in to the same station as he would as he was in the 1930s he's real he's with us he's part of us now who's the more important character in history Phil Sheridan or George Gershwin well the answer of course is they both are very important and I think it may be the thinking about Gershwin started me thinking about Americans in Paris and the whole part of Gershwin's repertoire and and the movie and Gene Kelly and all that and thinking about Paris Paris Americans in Paris I don't know where the idea first began and it may because back when I was high school I don't know one of the things that you read through the book it's over 500 pages lots of different characters you read about central Paris and today there's 11 million plus people in that whole Paris area we've got some photographs want to put on the screen so that you can describe where these are where this locations are we can just throw up anything that we've got of that area that we low regard and yes Shawn Sally's a the Palais Royale what of all that I mean which how much of an area did you write about well there right now we're looking at look it looks like the 12er gardens and the quillery gardens are very important in the story of all of the people that I have written about and they are they are right at the Louvre one end is the Louvre and they lead up toward the Sean's Elysee which goes up to the Arc de Triomphe you can see it in the distance there the the general neighborhood of this book is very much the same today as it was then this that of course is the IM Pei pyramid glass period in the center of the vast courtyard of the loo the the Louvre itself is his motive there you are on the sin lets looking at that looks like the pond days art which is the pedestrian bridge what a wonderful bridge just four people made of of iron as it was originally it's a favorite place to come together as is is to walk along the case by the river today still the Palais Royale there's that looks like the Plus Bond dome which is right no it's the bits I guess it is I it was hard for me to see I I think that if I were to walk with you Brian around that section of Paris I can show you an amazing number of places that are just the same as they were them where these particular people all were and stay Rose Lee and I stay in the hotel the Louvre which is at the foot of the Avenue of the Opera if you have a picture of the avenue of the Opera that was in the book it's in the back in sheet of the book it's taken from what's called the Pizarro room which is where Pizarro did a number of his paintings and looking straight up the Avenue toward the the Opera House that looks exactly the same today as it did then this of course is looking at the Eiffel Tower which was built in 1889 for the 1889 World's Fair the Hotel des Louvre which is still there is where Morris and his family stayed when they came back later on it's where Mark Twain stayed is where Nathaniel Hawthorne stayed history is everywhere in Paris and this that is one of the things that that's so impressed the people when they went over keep in mind that everything here was still relatively new Independence Hall wasn't even 100 years old we think it was historic old building wasn't even a hundred years old and when they got to to a Cathedral great Gothic cathedral it was built before Columbus ever sailed that to them was over an overwhelming experiences itself some they called it the prestige of age there's the Rue de Rivoli with the Louvre left and once you have your own painting in the book brutally no I don't have a painting it belongs to me it's a non painting it's a it's engraving that's part of a collection I have this one right here if you can bring up that picture that's in the very back page back into the end sheets of the book there to the opening end sheet is of the Rue de Rivoli and the in the back end sheet is of the of the Avenue of the opera looking up toward the know the end sheet oh here yes oh yeah then right open it there you go yeah now that picture if you took the wagons and horses out and put automobiles in that view from the hotel Louvre is exactly the same today over here by the fountain is now where you get taxi stand and Rosie and I stay in the hotels loo and this is very close to the view we have from the window of the room we've you've been getting now turn it to the canoe opposite end of the book the front end and that's the Rue de Rivoli and that's about 1900 and that looks exactly the same today too with the stores and in the colony and the colonnade on the on the left that's the oilerie garden fence by the Tillery garden on the right and the Louvre part of the Louvre on the right that's building rising up on the right now that picture and the one that's at the the end sheet of the book are postcards that my mother's parents brought back from Paris after a visit there about nineteen seven postcards the photographs are probably taken about 1900 and those postcards were up in our attic in a album they saved all the postcards and they're just as sharp as you can see just as sharp and clear is if they've been taken yesterday and they're over a hundred years old in the blood there was seven years old so she remembers some of it and so I heard some of these stories as a child but she didn't remember an awful lot in the book you all you bring your family in a lot Tim Lawson is your son-in-law all right - dorri yes it was your daughter who actually represents you yes she does it am i speaking schedules all right as it came as a painter very good painter but you what did he do well he went with me for example he went with me out to see this painting of the in the gallery of the Louvre when it was in storage in Chicago and he went with me to see the Saint Gaudens work oh that's in Saint Gaudens at the st. Gaudens home in Cornish New Hampshire he went with me to the Metropolitan he went with me often to museums particularly the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston to look at the sergeant's that are there and to look at the Mary Cassatt's that are there you said your daughter Mellisa read every yes and her eye Marshall the whole the whole team as it were and my son David jr. is a pieces English in high school and he went all over all my grammar and punctuation very carefully and Rosalie is my editor in chief you're why I read everything or she reads everything aloud to me i I want to hear it I write for the ear I try to write for the ear as well as the eye it's what all the great writers I've admired so much of my life did what what is this for you what number this is number nine are you gonna do another book I don't know the last time we talked about this business was 2005 up and knocks home and vain and you said you had 12 ideas for a book and this is the book that came here those 12 ideas you got another list of 12 that you're also up to 27 funny Sam well what did I what was this experience like writing this book compared to the others I thought it I've thought a good deal about that because it's been different and I've hugely enjoyed every subject I've ever undertaken except one when I stopped stopped the project after a couple of months I knew it wasn't right for me that was about Picasso oh yeah yeah there's a long time ago so I'm not in any way trying to say that the previous work has has been less than I would have wished it's been more than I would have wished in every case but I have had a better time writing this book than anything I've ever done I think in part because so much of it is about subjects that really matter to me that matter to me all my life it's what I love not that I don't love history and in the usual sense politics and American history of all kinds but to be able to write about people like like Augustus saint-gaudens the sculptor to write about Lois got shocked the New Orleans musician who was so brilliant as a pianist they all went to Paris all went to Paris I love architecture I think in some ways architecture may be our most important art form because it we live in it it shapes us and and Paris really is about architecture there's no there's no natural splendor there no snow-covered mountain range in the distance no a beautiful shoreline on the sea the rivers there but rivers are in lots of cities it's what people have built and what they put their heart and soul into it's not just what's in the museum's it's the museums themselves and and the idea there was no school of architecture in America none so these people who went over these young men that almost all at that time like Richard Morris hunt like Louis Sullivan Charles McKim HH Richardson who changed the look of our cities change the look of America all went there to study architecture at the bows arts came back different different from what they had been you go to Boston Copley Square Trinity Church on one side HH Richardson trained at the bows arts look across the square the Boston Public Library by Charles McKim trained at the bows arts and very similar in many ways to the ability of Texas on Genevieve which is in Paris and he said so they were taking you used the word earlier inspiration inspiration from Paris and and again and again Brian they all wrote they wanted to bring something home to make things better here they wanted they they were doing something they felt was a service to their country not just to their own ambitions you did not have not mentioned George Healy and I'm gonna put up here on our screen the painting that you write about Webster's reply to hain yes who was George Healy how long did he spend well George George Healy is to me a great American story George Healy was an Irish boy grew up in the streets of Boston no money no education but talent as a to paint and draw and he was told you're you're good you could go all the way with this talent but he knew he had to go train with somebody there was nobody to train with he no art school so without any money except what he'd been able save no knowledge of French knowing no one in Paris he went to Paris and he became the most sought-after and in many ways most accomplished portrait painter American portrait painter of the 19th century there's seven of his paintings at the White House there's 17 of his paintings in the National Portrait Gallery his paintings are in most every gallery major gallery in the United States he was phenomenal what if I he also this painting right here is the biggest single work he ever did by far I can't remember the dimensions but they're enormous its enormous and covers the whole back wall behind the stage at the FATF annual hall in Boston one of the most historic buildings in the United States and this is Webster's replied to Haines famous moment in the Congress and Daniel Webster is on the right and there are all these other characters that are portrayed there are actual from actual studies most all of them of faces that he did at the time so it is it is an accurate historic document he's also put a few people in there that were not present when Haines Webster delivered his great speech because he wanted to include them and it was painted in Paris it cost him almost two years of his work of his life his professional life he got much like Morris he got scarcely what he hoped he would be recompense for it I think was $2,000 he said didn't matter because he felt he'd recorded something and made a contribution not just to to the heart of portraiture but to his to the history of his country how long did it take you to write this for years where did you do most of the writing well I did a lot of the writing on Martha's Vineyard where we live and I did a lot of the writing in Maine where we also spend a good part of each year I did some of it when we were traveling and I I spent a great deal of time in Washington Boston New York looking at paintings looking at architecture and of course doing research with original documents original letters and diaries tour begins on May the 25th you've got Framingham Massachusetts Washington DC hey Adams top of the hey author series politics and prose here Kaufman concert hall New York City that's June 6 June 8th World's Fairs Council Dallas Museum of Art June 11th Heinz History Center that's in your hometown of Pittsburgh Chicago Public Library June 14th is it ways data why is that why is that a Minnesota why there it's outside of Minneapolis because of wonderful friend of mine bill water who was on a very active in the National Park Foundation has organized an event and wants me to come and do it Philadelphia then Harvard bookstore and the tour has listed is closed done later on June and Portsmouth New Hampshire yeah right are you how do you feel about this I love it why I like to meet the people that read my work I liked it too I like to see what's going on in these different places I enjoy I enjoy talking to audiences and particularly audiences that are a mixture of generations and I guess it's the Irish should be yeah I don't maybe I missed it but you didn't answer my question about whether you're gonna do another book no I didn't I didn't what you're thinking oh I'm thinking all the time about it it's something happens when one of these ideas just clicks and that that's that's it and I can't explain what that process is and I just know that's what I won't do and it'll happen it'll be different I've I've never undertaken the subject that I knew a lot about I didn't know much about John Adams I knew certain amount I wasn't an Adam scholar or a Truman scholar or Brooklyn Bridge scholar I and if I knew all about it I wouldn't want to write the part because to me that the pole is the adventure of it learning I think about I think about how much I'm gonna learn by taking on this subject and I don't want to I want to be surprised I want to make discoveries I want to not just make discoveries of some collection of letters in someplace you wouldn't expect to find them but I want to make the discovery that comes with suddenly youth it oh I get it that's how it worked or that's who did that that to me is the work is that is the reward the name of the book is the greater journey Americans in Paris and the 1800s our guest has been David McCullough and we thank you thanks Bryan I love to have a conversation with you and I might write another book just of the chance that I get to come back and we can talk about it's a deal [Music] for a DVD copy of this program call one eight seven seven six six to seven seven to six for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program visit us at QA or QA programs are also available as c-span podcasts [Music]

Channel: C-SPAN

Views: 39,017

Rating: 4.647059 out of 5

Keywords: qa, C-SPAN, cspan, mcullough, lamb, paris, emigres, cooper, morse, francophiles, culture, history

Id: DBl2EfToTCs

Length: 58min 12sec (3492 seconds)

Published: Mon May 23 2011