French Travellers in the United States, 1765-1932

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN ILL HIST, SURVEY Univerfity of Illinois Library Friends itUrbana-Champaign Gift of Professor and Mrs George W. White Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/frenchtravellersOOmona THE MARQUIS DE LAFAYETTE From the portrait by S. F. B. Morse owned by The New York Public Library (Painted from sittings in Washington, D. C, in February, 1825) French Travellers IN THE UNITED STATES 1765 -1932 A Bibliography by FRANK MONAGHAN Department of History New York University with SUPPLEMENT by SAMUEL J. MARINO Head Librarian McNeese State College, La. ANTIQUARIAN PRESS LTD. NEW YORK 1961 First Published in Separate Form 1933 By The New York Public Library Reprinted 1961 with Supplement By Antiquarian Press Ltd., New York Through Special Arrangement with the G. K. Hall Co., Boston. Massachusetts Edition Limited to 750 Copies Printed in the U.S.A. New York Lithographing Corp. New York, N. Y. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations --------- v Introduction ---------- vii List of Abbreviations -------- xxi The List __________ 1 Addenda __________ 07 Corrigenda ---------- 106 Selected Chronological List of Travellers - 107 Index ----------- 109 Supplement ---------- 117 Index to Supplement --_-__-- 128 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 1. Lafayette. From the painting by S. F. B. Morse (1825). Frontispiece 2. Title-page of the Abbe Robin's Nouveau voyage. (1782). Facing fage 8 3. A criticism of the Abbe Robin from the Mercure de France (1783). Facing fage o 4. Portraits of two eighteenth-century travellers: La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt and Chateaubriand. Facing fage 16 5. Title-page of the Voyage de New fort . .by Chastellux (1781). Facing fage 24 6. Frontispiece and title-page of the journal of the first successful aerial flight in the United States (1793). Facing fage 32 7. Portraits of two eighteenth-century French travellers: Talleyrand-Perigord and Brissot de Warville. Facing fage 40 8. Title-page of Nouvelles du Scioto. ., an early account of land speculation in America, by one of its victims (1790). Facing fage 48 9. View of Chamf d'Asi/e, a settlement of refugee Bonapartist soldiers in Texas ( 1 8 1 8 ) . Facing fage 56 10. An impression of the French Jury at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia (1876). Facing fage 64 INTRODUCTION TRAVELLERS' tales, sober and fantastic, have always commanded the attention of a numerous reading public. Long after these accounts of travel have satisfied the immediate curiosity of the public they have yielded up to historians curious and precious information about new lands and peoples ; they have, under scholarly analysis, greatly contributed to our understanding of the evolution of ideas and the formation of public opinion. The accounts of French missionaries and explorers in America during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have for many years engaged the efforts of collectors and scholars. The labors of Reuben G. Thwaites, V. H. Paltsits, Gustave Lanson, Gilbert Chinard, and GeofFry Atkinson (to mention the most notable of the recent scholars in the field) have laid the foundations of numerous scientific studies and have made these materials accessible and familiar to the larger reading public. No similar amount of attention has yet been devoted to the French travellers in America during the second hal f of the eighteenth century. Bernard Fay and How- ard Mumford Jones have utilized, with brilliance and discernment, a part of these materials in their studies of Franco-American relations. 1 Charles H. Sherrill and Alexandre Capitaine have each devoted a volume to the French visitors of this period and their impressions. 2 None of these studies has been based upon the extensive collection of materials presented in this bibliography. For the period after 1800 there has been (with a few notable exceptions) a surprising neglect of many valuable materials. The writings of French travellers on the United States from 1765 to 1932 represent a rich and varied collection of materials, unknown to the general reader and largely unexploited by scholars, especially for the period of the nineteenth century. British travellers in the United States are already familiar to the world of scholarship and to the general reading public. The fact that their works have presented no difficulties of language has made them interesting and accessible to the ordinary reader. They have long attracted the attention of American scholars with the result that the field is largely explored and exploited. Jane Louise Mesick's The English Traveller in America, 1785-1835 is a competent survey of a half-century of English observations ; Allan Nevins has recently and very suc- cessfully surveyed a larger field in his American Social History as Recorded by British Travellers (New York, 1923) which presents selections, with copious introductions, from more than a score of the more important accounts. From many points of view the French travellers represent a more varied and richer source of materials. Coming from Latin rather than the familiar Anglo-Saxon backgrounds they brought a different point of view, a new approach, other biases 1 Howard Mumford Jones, America and French Culture, 1750-184S (Chapel Hill, N. C, 1927) ; Bernard Fay, The Revolutionary Spirit in France and America. (New York, 1927.) 2 Charles H. Sherrill, French Memories of Eighteenth Century America (New York, 1915); Alexandre Capitaine, La Situation economique et sociale des P.tats-Unis a la fin du XVIIIe Steele d'aprcs les voyageurs francais (Paris, 1926). Capitaine draws his materials from eleven of the better-known travellers ; these travellers represent merely a small part of the available materials. [vii] viii THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY and prejudices. The observations of many British travellers until the middle of the nineteenth century were colored by memories of the War of the American Revolution and the War of 1812. Fortunately this particular kind of asperity is gone, but it would not be impossible to find, in the twentieth century, British travellers who still regard the Americans as "colonials" and who observe them and lecture them with a marked degree of condescension. They have not, however, been able to maintain an undisputed monopoly of this point of view. It was enthusiasm rather than bitterness that prejudiced the minds of French travellers to America during the eighteenth century ; and during the early years of the nineteenth century many of the travellers were refugees who had found an asylum in the United States and whose writings were colored by this sentiment of gratitude. America was the object of the admiration, even veneration, of French liberals during the nineteenth century, as it was the recipient of the vituperative attacks of the French Royalists. On the whole, however, the French travellers maintained a more judicious, and often sympathetic, attitude toward the United States. It was this that caused Henry T. Tuckerman to make the following comment : "The social character, the more versatile experience of American life, assimilate it in a degree, and externally, with that of France, and the climate of America develops nervous sensibility; while the exigencies of life foster an adaptive facility, which brings the Anglo-American into more intelligent relations with the Gallic nature than is possible for a people so egotistic and stolid as the English to realize. But this partial sympathy does not altogether account for the French understanding America better : that is owing to a more liberal, a less prejudiced, a more chivalric spirit; to quicker sympathies, to more scientific proclivities, to greater candor and humanity among her thinkers. They are far enough removed in life and character to catch the true moral perspective ; and they have few, if any, wounds of self-love to impede their sense of justice to a country 3 wherewith their own history is often congenially and honorably associated." This was written by Tuckerman during the American Civil War and his opinion had been influenced by contemporary British criticisms of America as well as by the attitude of the French Liberals toward the Civil War. It is interesting to contrast this view with an opinion advanced by a reviewer in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1851 : "Frenchmen are very apt to ex- press great sympathy with, and admiration of, the people of the United States. This arises from various causes. Some are smitten with their democratic institu- tions ; some exult in American independence as a triumph over England ; others assume a share in that triumph, on account of the French auxiliaries in the American war; whilst others, again, suffer their imaginations to be captivated by the wonderfully rapid rise and prodigious development of American wealth and power. It does not require any great amount of sentiment and fancy to get up this kind of love-at-a-distance." The writer then proceeds to develop the thesis that there is "a sort of disenchantment in store for those Frenchmen who, after picturing to themselves the United States as a democratic Utopia, the very para- dise of the worshippers of Liberty, have occasion to visit the unseen land of their 3 Henry T. Tuckerman, America and Her Commentators (New York, 1864), p. 153-54. FRENCH TRAVELLERS IN THE UNITED STATES ix affections ... In fact, no two characters can be more antagonistic than those of Frenchman and American. However strong his predetermination, the former finds it impossible to be pleased in the country where he had fondly anticipated so much gratification." 4 These prejudices and preconceptions which Frenchmen have sometimes brought with them to the United States have been ably discussed by Gilbert Chinard in his study of "le mirage americain." 5 To some of these travellers the cruel deception of this "mirage" was at once apparent ; an excellent example of this sudden disillusionment is found in D'AUemagne, a Parisian who in 1790 was seduced by the eloquence of a group of Scioto land speculators and who came to America to settle the lands which he had bought.

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