The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough Read Free Book Online

sous just for the comic effect of an omnibus. Precipitate jolts against a neighbor one never saw, as the ponderous vehicle rolls over the stones, gives agitation to the blood and brains and sets one thinking.
     
    But walk they did more often than not, and were amazed by the thousands of Parisians doing the same, and how friendly they were.
Galignani’s Guide
made a point of the “uniform politeness which pervades all classes,” and it seemed true. “Indeed,” wrote Holmes, “the only very disagreeable people one meets are generally Englishmen.”
    Of the foreigners in the city, the Americans were but a tiny minority, probably less than a thousand during the 1830s, a mere fraction compared to the English in Paris, or the Germans and Italians.
    It was also disconcerting for the Americans to find how little Parisians knew about America, though over time this was to be remedied in good measure by Baron Alexis de Tocqueville’s
De la Démocratie en Amérique
, or
Democracy in America
, as it would be titled in English. After a nine-month visit to the United States, and more than a year at work in an attic room in Paris, de Tocqueville had produced as clear-eyed and valuable a study of America as any yet published, in which he wrote about the nature of American politics, the evils of slavery, the American love of money, and of how, from the beginning, “the originality of American civilization was most clearly apparent in the provisions made for public education.” Volume I appeared in 1835. A second volume followed in 1840.
    Increasingly, with every passing day, the Americans were struck by how entirely, unequivocally
French
Paris was. Every sign was in French, the money was French, every overheard conversation was in French. Hardly a soul spoke a word of English. All this they had been forewarned about, but the difference between what one had been told and what one came to understand firsthand was enormous.
    Facing necessity, they began to learn a few words—that left was
gauche;
right,
droite;
that a waiter was a
garçon;
a baker, a
boulanger;
and that some words, like “façade” and “rat,” were the same in both languages.Even the more hesitant were surprised to find themselves saying
bonjour
,
très bien
, and
merci
quite naturally, even venturing a whole sentence—
“Excusez-moi, je ne comprends pas.”
    To find that every noun had a gender—that a hand was feminine, while a foot was masculine—and that one was expected to know which was which, seemed to some of the newcomers too much to cope with, and often illogical or even unfair. Why were all four seasons—
hiver
,
printemps
,
été
, and
automne
—masculine, for instance. Could not spring perhaps be feminine? And how a word looked on a printed page or menu and how it was pronounced could be worlds apart.
    But then if one were clearly making an effort to learn the language, the French were nearly always ready to help. Indeed, so appealing was the attitude of nearly everyone the Americans encountered that there was seldom cause to complain. “You ask a man the way,” wrote Holmes’s friend Thomas Appleton, “and he will go to the end of the street to show you.” The Americans soon found themselves adopting the same kind of civility.
    The fashion for mustaches and beards among the French dandies, the Parisian “exquisites,” had little or no appeal, however. “Don’t you hate to see so many ninnies in mustaches?” wrote John Sanderson. Beards annoyed him still more. “One loves the women just because they have no beards on their faces.” If a man was born a fool, Sanderson concluded, he could be a greater fool in Paris than anywhere on earth, such were the opportunities.
    By the 1830s trousers had replaced britches as the fashion. Light tan trousers, a dark tight-fitting frock coat, a bright-colored vest coat, top hat, fine straw-colored or white kid gloves, laceless shoes or boots always highly polished, and a malacca cane or furled