by Kelly Pickerill
It wasn’t the language that impressed me as the most foreign thing about Paris, though knowing a bit of French from school helped with that; for many Americans it is the architecture, its decadence and age. A few years ago, my dad took me and my sisters to Paris. We were there only a few days, but that was enough time for Paris to enchant us. Standing in front of Notre Dame Cathedral I experienced an awe no building in the U.S. could ever hope to inspire.
In David McCullough’s new book, The Greater Journey, he writes about Americans who spent time in Paris from the 1830s to 1900. The tale he weaves is yes, about their experiences in Paris, about what they gained there and were inspired by, and the differences they returned to America to make.
Charles Sumner was inspired by his time at the Sorbonne, studying side by side with blacks, to be a major voice for the abolition of slavery.
Emma Willis, a schoolmistress, was so impressed with the freedom of the young ladies who studied painting at the Louvre, that she went back to revolutionize higher education for women in the States.
William and Henry James came to Paris as young boys, and it shaped their sense of “foreignness” early on, which would figure greatly in Henry’s novels. These stories and many more McCullough weaves together to present a grand history of Paris during the nineteenth century that is from a very different perspective — one that is distinctly American.
As I read, I couldn’t help but keep referring to maps of Paris, reminding myself of the experiences I had shared with my dad as Americans in Paris. Some of the places McCullough evokes, like the Palais des Tuileries, no longer exist, destroyed by fire in 1871.
When we walked down the Champs-Élysées to the Tuileries Garden, the open Louvre courtyard, with the imposing glass pyramid at its center, was our view. Some, though, like the Pont des Arts, the first metal bridge in Paris, constructed by Napoleon I in 1802 solely for pedestrians, still stands, though it was reconstructed in 1981. My dad and I walked that bridge from the Louvre to the left bank, gazing at the Île de la Cité and Notre Dame which was just visible upstream.
It is these experiences of Paris, brought to life through the eyes of the American characters McCullough highlights using their letters and journals, that work his magic for him, bringing Paris to life so vividly. This is Paris before it was a moveable feast, and it will appeal to the history lover / traveler (armchair or otherwise) dad in your life. For as Oliver Wendell Holmes was fond of saying, “Good Americans, when they die, go to Paris.”
Comments are closed.