The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris (26 page)

Once, when Emerson referred to Pierre Louis in public as an example of French theatricality, Holmes wrote to him to say that while Louis had “assimilated to himself” many of the best and most industrious American students, there had been “nothing to keep them around him except his truthfulness, diligence and
modesty in the presence of nature.
” The “master key” to all Louis’s success, Holmes said, was “honesty.”

Yet, with the passage of years, Holmes wondered whether he and the other American students had “addicted” themselves too closely to the teachings of the master. He felt, Holmes said, “that I gave myself up too exclusively to his methods of thought and study.” As essential, as invaluable as was the study of specific diseases through close, scientific investigation, there had to be more to the physician’s comprehension and approach. There had to be concern for and some understanding of the patient. Medicine was a science to be sure, but also an art, “the noblest of arts.”

He had been thinking about this duality for a long time. In an introductory lecture at the medical school some years earlier, recalling the strengths of his first great teacher, James Jackson, Sr., Holmes had talked of Jackson’s kindness as one of his greatest professional strengths. He had always applied “the best of all that he knew for the good of his patient. … I never saw the man so altogether admirable at the bedside of the sick as Dr. James Jackson.”

Much that Holmes had come to value about his time in Paris had to do with what he had learned beyond Paris Médicale, by just being in Paris, living in Paris—so much of art, music, poetry, and of good conversation.

The same could have been said of Warren and Bowditch. For as long as they lived, they would remember the feeling of walking into the Louvre and of beholding its treasures for the first time, the thrill of the Paris Opera, of seeing Molière performed onstage, seeing Taglioni. This, too, they knew, had made them better prepared to understand the human condition and thereby better able to serve in their profession.

Bowditch’s son, Vincent, would write of his father, “He never allowed his interests in his patient’s case to hide the fact that he was dealing with a fellow human being.” When Vincent was himself about to leave for medical training abroad, Henry Bowditch told him:

While medicine is your chief aim, remember that I want you to see all you can of art and music. I often think I have done more good to some poor, weary patients by sitting down and telling them of a delightful European experience than by all the drugs I have ever poured down their throats.

Bowditch, Warren, and Holmes remained friends as well as colleagues for the rest of their lives, none ever forgetting they had Paris in common. After attending an address by Warren before the Massachusetts Medical Society, Holmes told him in a note that regrettably he had not been able to hear very well. “I suspect that my ear-drums may not be quite as tightly corded up as in the days when we saw our young faces in the Burgundy of the Trois Frères.”

Each of them would return to Paris as time passed, and in some cases more than once. Sometimes it was for their health—in the hope that just being there would provide the needed lift of outlook—and sometimes that worked. Mason Warren, who struggled with poor health all of his life, with the exception of his student years in Paris, returned three times. Suffering from depression, he made his first trip in 1844 and came home sufficiently “refreshed” to work steadily another ten years. He had revisited all the old haunts, as would both Bowditch and Holmes.

During his return in 1867, Bowditch discovered the same porter still on the job at his old lodgings in the Latin Quarter. “Found my old garçon, John, who remembered me well,” he wrote in amazement. He revisited the spot where he had first met Olivia Yardley and, as a highlight, dined with Pierre Louis, who was then eighty years old. Louis, Bowditch wrote, was “as beautiful in his old age as you can imagine a man to be.” Louis died five years later.

Holmes returned just once, in 1886, for what he called a Rip Van Winkle experiment. Like the others, he walked the rue Monsieur-le-Prince, his head filled with memories.

For all of them, to judge by so much that they wrote in later years, the life they had known as “medicals” in Paris had been what James Jackson, Jr., had said then—the happiest life.

We were met on the steps by half a dozen huge and splendid looking porters, in flaming scarlet livery and powdered wigs, who conducted us in, and being met by one of the King’s
aides-de-camp,
we were conducted by him into His Majesty’s presence.…

—George Catlin

“
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
”—“The more things change, the more they remain the same”—was the oft-quoted observation of a French writer, Alphonse Karr. But while much about life would assuredly go on as usual, very much was to be profoundly, irretrievably different.

Change was coming—dramatic, unprecedented change: scheduled Atlantic crossings by steamship in half the time; communication between far-distant points at the speed of lightning; a surprise discovery by a Parisian artist named Louis Daguerre that Samuel Morse, seeing it for the first time, called “the most beautiful” of the age; centuries-old European monarchies brought down by tumultuous political upheaval that began in Paris; and Paris itself transformed on a scale no one could have imagined—and all within less than twenty years.

The year 1838 marked the beginning, when in April the paddle steamer
Sirius
crossed from Cork to New York, followed closely by another steamship from Bristol, the
Great Western.
Although both ships had a full complement of sails, both had the “unceasing aid” of steam engines the entire way.

Under steam a ship could now cut a straight furrow at sea, from point to point, with no more, or very little, tacking this way and that at the will of the winds. As never before, there could now be scheduled departures, no more waiting for wind when there was none, causing delays that could drag on for days.

On Tuesday, May 1, the
Sirius
departed New York on her return voyage. It was the first time a steamship ever set off from America for Europe, and thousands of people crowded the wharf to witness the historic event. Among those on board was James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the
New York Herald
, who on reaching England would declare, “We are positively in the beginning of a new age.”

It had been a rough crossing, with gale winds and heavy seas, still it had taken only seventeen days. Samuel Morse, who left New York by sailing ship shortly after, did not reach London until mid-June, a full month later.

As they were to discover, Morse and Bennett were both on their way to Paris.

Of those Americans who had braved the Atlantic to come to Paris earlier in the 1830s, only two would return for reasons other than a pleasurable or nostalgic visit, and Samuel Morse was one. The other, Charles Sumner, would not arrive until 1856, and as it was with Morse, Sumner’s purpose this time was entirely different from what it had been at first.

There was, however, one of the original adventurers who had never gone home, nor diverged in the slightest from his original objective. George Peter Alexander Healy, “Little Healy” from Boston, was still happily, industriously pursuing what he had come to Paris for in the first place, to make himself a master in the art of portraiture.

Arriving in Paris at age twenty-one, knowing no one and speaking no French, he had gone to the Louvre for his first look at the works of the old
masters, and, to his surprise, found himself thinking they were overrated. “Perhaps many a young and audacious ignoramus has thought and even said as much before and since,” he would later write. It was the experience of trying his hand at a copy of a Correggio that opened his eyes to the genius of the masters and to an appreciation of the long way he had still to go with his work.

Yet the fact that he was accepted as a student at the atelier of Baron Antoine-Jean Gros, to begin his first serious training, suggests his efforts at the Louvre were hardly lacking.

He “went to work with a will,” trying all the while to catch up enough in French to make his way. The only American among the students, he was well received from the start, which was unusual. In the world of the Paris atelier, rigorous hazing was an established tradition for any newcomer, let alone an
étranger
.

Proficiency in drawing came first and foremost. Drawing was the foundation of everything, it was preached, and most of every day was devoted to drawing a live model, the students packed at their easels elbow-to-elbow. Once, during an early session, while the model was taking a break and Healy concentrated on looking over his efforts, another student, short, rough-mannered, and older than the rest, suddenly stepped in and shoved him aside, saying “
Donne-moi ta place, Petit
.”