On September 9, 1825, Lafayette’s party sailed for France on the frigate Brandywine, but Lafayette never quite put the tour behind him. In the course of his thirteen-month stay he had made a host of new American acquaintances and initiated close friendships that lasted until his death. The artist and inventor Samuel F. B. Morse, who painted Lafayette’s portrait on commission from the Common Council of the City of New York, described feeling nearly overcome with admiration for his sitter. And the author James Fenimore Cooper, whom Lafayette met in New York, would become a long-term guest at La Grange. In 1828, acting at Lafayette’s behest, Cooper published a fictionalized account of Lafayette’s tour as Notions of the Americans: Picked Up by a Travelling Bachelor. In America, Lafayette had been enriched by a great deal more than money. He had gained a wealth of admiration and, perhaps most significantly, had solidified his place in American memory as states, municipalities, and institutions of all variety immortalized him by naming towns, counties, schools, and streets in his honor.
Lafayette returned to France with an enormous quantity of gifts that he cherished for the remainder of his life, ranging from a canoe, the American Star, which had won a race against an English boat on December 9, 1824, and would be kept in a specially built shed at La Grange, to smaller objects, including Native American ornaments, fragments of weapons collected on the Brandywine battlefield, and maps of various states of the union. Much of this material was kept in Lafayette’s library, the contents of which, in the words of Jules Cloquet, the doctor who attended Lafayette’s final illness, “could constitute a museum.” As the years went by, Lafayette’s American collections continued to grow, and a tour of these artifacts became part of the standard itinerary for the droves of Americans who flocked to La Grange to pay homage to their aging hero. Indeed, anyone who has the privilege of visiting La Grange today can still see a selection of objects displayed as they were in Lafayette’s time.
Although many details of Lafayette’s living quarters have been reconstructed according to Cloquet’s careful descriptions of daily routines at La Grange, modern-day visitors must use their imaginations to envision the American fauna that once roamed Lafayette’s lands. Throughout his years at La Grange, Lafayette maintained an active correspondence with members of America’s agricultural community and participated in exchanges of animals, plants, machinery, and ideas. Two cows, a bull, and a sow from Baltimore, a wild turkey and several chickens from Virginia, as well as American deer, tortoises, terrapins, and even a woodpecker were among the creatures that made the transatlantic journey to La Grange, some more successfully than others. American farming equipment was there too: a steaming machine for preparing animal feed, a threshing machine, a Virginia plow, and much else. Seen together as a collection, these varied creatures and objects helped Lafayette propagate the notion that the La Grange was essentially American. He said as much to Mrs. Caleb Cushing of Massachusetts, who visited in 1829. Describing the carriage ride from Paris to Lafayette’s estate, Mrs. Cushing recalled that “at length we approached the end of our journey, and as we entered the boundaries of La Grange,—‘Now,’ cried the General, ‘we are upon American ground.’ ”
One of the last known portraits of Lafayette emphasizes his attachment to those grounds. Seated in dappled shade on a mossy rock, Lafayette, dressed in business attire, has set aside his walking stick and top hat. The rolled-up newspaper jutting from the hat suggests that he has even set aside the outside world, if only for a moment, to enjoy the peace of La Grange. Behind him are an expanse of grass and a curtain of trees that opens just enough to reveal a bit of sky at the upper right, where the pointed top of a cypress tree rises like a church spire in the distance. Lafayette had never been a religious man, but he was known as an apostle of liberty, and La Grange had become a pilgrimage site.
In this portrait, Louise-Adéone Drölling (Madame Joubert) depicted Lafayette seated among the trees at La Grange. (illustration credit 19.6)
CHAPTER 20
PICPUS
In the late 1820s, as the French economy staggered, the government of Charles × veered sharply to the right. Supported by ultraconservative ministers, the king abolished the Chamber of Deputies and severely curtailed freedom of the press and voting rights. Calls for revolution rang out in July 1830, when government troops faced off against armed citizens at barricades made of paving stones ripped from the streets of Paris. Hoping to avoid the fate of his brother, the executed Louis XVI, Charles fled to England, leaving his nine-year-old grandson to take the throne of France. But the young Bourbon never ascended. Instead, Louis-Philippe, Duc d’Orléans—the son of the man who had been Lafayette’s nemesis during the French Revolution—put himself forward as a juste milieu, or middle-of-the-road, alternative to his cousins, and Lafayette traveled to Paris from La Grange to lend his support.
On July 29, Lafayette reprised his role as commander of the National Guard. Speaking to a group of former deputies gathered at a private home, Lafayette explained his motives: “an old name of ’89,” he said, “might be of some use in the grave circumstances in which we find ourselves.” Lest anyone deem him too old for the task at hand, he pledged that “my conduct at seventy-three will be what it was when I was thirty-two.” Then he left the meeting “to devote myself to the common defense.”
Lafayette understood that his was a symbolic role, but it was one that he was happy to play. On July 31, he threw the full weight of history behind Louis-Philippe when he publicly endorsed the pretender. Just as he had with Marie Antoinette some forty years earlier, Lafayette stood on a balcony beside his monarch. But instead of a deferential kiss, he bestowed a tricolor flag on the man who would soon govern France while fully beholden to a constitution.
Lafayette had triumphed, but once again, his triumph was short-lived. Louis-Philippe’s “July Monarchy” retained its open-minded bent for only a brief period of time. By 1834, with economic and social crises mounting, freedoms of speech and association were once again curtailed. In a crushing blow to his lifelong faith in constitutional monarchy, Lafayette lived just long enough to see abuses of power running rampant in Paris once more. On April 15, 1834, a workers’ demonstration went fatally awry. As military police clashed with protesters on the Rue Transnonain (part of today’s Rue Beaubourg), someone began throwing rocks from an apartment. Without taking the time to seek out the actual perpetrators, a band of soldiers retaliated. They entered the building and murdered everyone they found. Twelve people were killed—women, children, elderly men—all gunned down in their homes, as memorialized by Honoré Daumier’s famous lithograph of the tragedy.
The following month, Lafayette took to his bed, desperately sick, in the apartment he maintained on the Rue d’Anjou in Paris. His physician, Jules Cloquet, believed that “moral affections” had exerted a “baneful influence” on Lafayette’s health. The general had been unwell throughout the year, afflicted first with a urinary infection, then gout, bronchitis, stomach ailments, and more. Finally, in May, he had contracted a fever that could not be brought down despite the quantities of quinine he was imbibing. For weeks, friends and family had been gathering around him, but as the end drew near his doctors forbade visits from all but the closest relatives. At one o’clock in the morning of May 20, 1834, his respiration began to fail, “drowsiness, delirium, and prostration of strength, became more decidedly pronounced.” As Cloquet remembered it, “a few moments before he breathed his last, Lafayette opened his eyes, and fixed them with a look of affection on his children, who surrounded his bed, as if to bless them and bid them an eternal adieu.” The marquis pressed Cloquet’s hand, let out a final sigh, and expired at twenty minutes after four that morning.
Honoré Daumier. Rue Transnonain, April 15, 1834. Lithograph. (illustration credit 20.1)
Throughout that day, men and women filed in to pay their last respects to Lafayette, whose body was laid out on the bed where he’d died. Mourners did what they could to preserve their last memories: one took a plaster cast of h
is lifeless features, several were moved to sketch the scene before them, and the romantic painter Ary Scheffer, who had created one of the last portraits of the living Lafayette, put brush to canvas to memorialize the great man as he appeared in his final rest.
A large but muted crowd was in attendance for Lafayette’s funeral and burial. From the Rue d’Anjou to the Church of the Assumption, Lafayette’s casket was borne aloft by nine men selected to represent the Chamber of Deputies, the National Guard, the army, Poland, the electoral colleges of France, and, of course, the United States. Tricolor flags flew from every corner of the bier, while the sword and epaulets that Lafayette wore as commander of the National Guard were carried behind on a black velvet cushion. Two columns of soldiers in full dress—members of the National Guard and army alike—lined either side of the cortege, which made its way to the Picpus Cemetery, in eastern Paris, for the interment. The site had been chosen years earlier by Adrienne. During the Reign of Terror, Picpus had been a mass grave where victims of the guillotine were buried; Adrienne wished to rejoin her executed mother, sister, and grandmother. After George Washington Lafayette sprinkled the tomb with soil brought back from America, Lafayette would rest alongside his beloved wife. There would be no funeral orations at Lafayette’s graveside; the rules of the cemetery forbade it, and the authorities were grateful for the excuse to impose silence on the ceremony. Emotions run high at funerals of controversial figures, and Lafayette was nothing if not controversial.
In fact, on February 1 of that year, Lafayette himself had experienced an unsettling incident at Père-Lachaise Cemetery during the burial of François-Charles Dulong, a leftist deputy to the National Assembly who had been killed by a political rival in a duel. According to Isaiah Townsend, a visitor from Albany, thousands of agitated mourners were crammed into the cemetery that day—some standing atop monuments, others sitting on trees or fences, and their voices raised in an “uninterrupted thunder … like the cataract of Niagara.” With the services concluded, Lafayette had climbed into his carriage when, suddenly, “the horses were detached from the vehicle and the General drawn in triumph by a band of young students to the gates. It was evidently their intention to proceed with him in this manner through the streets of Paris.” Only a request from Lafayette put an end to the plan.
Louis-Philippe wanted no such dramatics at Lafayette’s funeral, but he apparently had little to fear. The people of France remained silent. In a June 6 letter to his mother in Albany, Isaiah Townsend described the mood with chagrin: “A month has scarcely elapsed since the death of the General, yet in Paris his memory would seem almost forgotten. The name of Lafayette is not heard.” Despite the indefatigable efforts Lafayette had exerted on behalf of the French people during nearly five decades of public life, his countrymen felt that they had few reasons to mourn his loss.
It was different in America, where news of Lafayette’s death reignited the outpouring of affection that had greeted the living man ten years earlier. President Jackson declared a national state of mourning, flags flew at half-mast, government buildings were draped with crepe, and legislatures around the country heard speeches in honor of Lafayette. Speaking to a joint session of Congress, former president John Quincy Adams delivered a funeral oration that lasted more than three hours. In a melancholy recapitulation of Lafayette’s triumphal tour, amateur troupes performed plays honoring the deceased hero, and souvenirs were once again sold, now with black ribbons obscuring the beloved face.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
On a brisk Sunday in October 2012, I emerged from the Métro station at the Place de la Nation in eastern Paris and walked into a sea of red. A political demonstration was in full swing. Red hot air balloons emblazoned with the logo of the French Communist Party floated above the crowd; rows of marchers chanted their opposition to proposed austerity measures while carrying white sheets painted with red lettering; and men wearing red scarves passed out leaflets that detailed policy positions in black and red ink. The mood was festive, but the color turned my thoughts grim.
From June 13 to July 28, 1794, the Place de la Nation—known at the time as the Place du Trône Renversé (Place of the Overturned Throne)—had run red with blood as a guillotine erected on the spot claimed 1,306 lives. On July 22, 1794, the mother, sister, and grandmother of Adrienne de Lafayette counted among its victims. I was on my way to their final resting place—Picpus Cemetery.
Some Parisian burial sites attract droves of tourists, but Picpus is not one of them. While mounds of flowers accumulate at Jim Morrison’s grave at Père-Lachaise and groups of schoolchildren file past the royal tombs at Saint Denis, only occasional visitors find their way to the low, stucco-covered building with an unmarked wooden door that leads to Picpus. The hours when the cemetery is open vary according to when the groundskeeper is at home. On the day of my visit, a notice on a nearby bulletin board announced that he was out, but I had come too far to give up. Ignoring the barking of a dog, I tried the door. It opened, and I entered.
I found myself standing in a cobblestoned courtyard surrounded by squat beige buildings: the groundskeeper’s house, a convent, a chapel, and, in the far left corner next to the chapel, a tall, narrow metal gate supported by two stone pillars. On each pillar was a plaque—one commemorating Lafayette, the other honoring General Pershing, and both indicating proudly that they had been donated by the Benjamin Franklin Chapter of the Paris Daughters of the American Revolution. Beyond the gate lay the cemetery, but the gate was locked.
Not knowing what to do, I climbed the steps to the chapel, opened the door, and took a seat in the front pew. As I sat in the darkness, I began thinking about the convent next door, about the nuns in my family, and about the communities of religious women who had always welcomed me warmly. Quietly, a side door opened and a woman in her seventies with short, white hair and a plain skirt and sweater—with a simple gold cross hanging from a fine chain around her neck—came in and began tending to the vases of flowers arranged on the floor around the sanctuary.
Mustering my most polite French, I rose and broke the silence: “Excuse me, Madame. Are you a sister?” She was—Sister Marie-Marthe of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary and of the Perpetual Adoration. “Please forgive me for bothering you,” I said, “but I wonder if there might possibly be any way for me to take a photograph of Lafayette’s grave? You see, I’m an American writing a book about Lafayette. This is my last day in Paris, and I came here just to take a picture.” She looked at me kindly but said that she was very sorry. She couldn’t allow me into the cemetery. The groundskeeper would be furious.
I understood, I said, but we continued talking. I told her about my aunt, a sister of Saint Joseph, whose order originated in France but was expelled during the revolution. I explained that I found it moving to be at Picpus, the final resting place of the sixteen nuns who sang as they walked to the guillotine in the summer of 1794, and whose stories were memorialized by Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues of the Carmelites. Sensing that this might be a long conversation, we both sat down, and after a while an idea came to me. Might she possibly be willing to go to the cemetery herself and take photos with my camera? Sister Marie-Marthe’s eyes lit up. “Yes! That I could do!” She took my camera, stood up, and walked back out the side door.
Alone again, I began to wander around the sanctuary, examining its walls. Carved into the stone were the names, ages, and occupations of every person guillotined at the Place de la Nation, numbered according to the order of their deaths. Adrienne’s grandmother, sister, and mother were numbers 1039, 1040, and 1041 respectively; the Duchesse d’Ayen had watched her mother and daughter beheaded before the blade fell on her own neck. Many of the inscribed names were aristocrats or people who’d traveled in royal circles: Alexandre de Beauharnais, who was the first husband of Napoleon’s empress Joséphine; the German Prince Frederick III; Marie Antoinette’s architect, Richard Mique. But others were commoners with no particular claim to fame or notoriety: a paint
er on porcelain, a domestic servant, a police administrator.
Sister Marie-Marthe returned to find me lost in thought. As we sat together on the wooden pew talking about the pictures she had taken, I posed the question that had been on my mind for three years. Would she agree, I asked, that Lafayette is not widely admired in France? Yes, she said. Only Americans visit his grave, and an American flag flies over it. I paused and asked if she had any idea why. She thought for a moment, then gestured to the names on the walls. “The French Revolution was a complicated time,” she said, “and Lafayette was a complicated man. People like simple stories; simple stories get remembered. Lafayette’s story isn’t simple.” I nodded. She was right.
As I gathered my belongings and thanked her for her help, I asked if I could make a donation to the sisters as a token of my gratitude. Again, she considered carefully. At length she answered: “No. Thank you, but no. Go back to the United States. Write your book. And tell Lafayette’s story.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has been more than seven years in the making and has been a collaborative endeavor at every step. It could not have been completed without the generosity and support of innumerable friends, family members, colleagues, mentors, and assistants. I name many of these people below, but I am indebted to many more.
The Marquis Page 38