Jean Jules Jusserand (1855–1932). With Americans of Past and Present Days. 1916.
IIII. Major LEnfant and the Federal City
“Sensible,” wrote L’Enfant, in the creditable if not faultless English he then spoke, “of the situation of affairs, and well impregnated with the spirit of republican government, I am far from intimating the idea of following other nations in their way of securing themselves against insult or invasions, surrounded as they are with powerful neighbors, who, being the objects of reciprocal jealousy, are forced to secure not only their frontier,
The States must act differently; but not to act at all would be folly. “How and upon what foundations could it be supposed that America will have nothing to fear from a rupture between any of the European Powers? … A neutral Power, it will be said, receives the benefit of a universal trade, has his possessions respected, as well as his colors, by all the Powers at war. This may be said of a powerful nation, but this America is not to expect; a neutral Power must be ready for war, and his trade depends on the means of protecting and making his colors respected. America, neutral without [a] navy, without troops or fortified harbors could have nothing but calamity to expect.” She cannot live free and develop in safety without “power to resent, ability to protect.”
A noteworthy statement, to be sure, and which deserves to be remembered. L’Enfant draws, thereupon, a plan of defense, especially insisting, of course, on the importance of his own particular branch, namely engineering.
An unprinted letter of L’Enfant to the secretary of Congress, sitting then in New York, gives a number of details on Houdon’s stay in America. The Federal Congress had thought of ordering, in its turn, a statue of Washington, which would have been an equestrian one; but what would the cost be? A most important question in those days. On behalf of Houdon, who knew no English, L’Enfant wrote to Charles Thomson that Mr. Houdon could not “properly hazard to give him any answer relating [to] the cost of the general’s equestrian statue”; there are a great many ways of making such work, and Congress must say which it prefers. A book belonging to Mr. Houdon will shortly reach these shores, where particulars as to the “performance of the several statues which have been created in Europe are mentioned, together with their cost.” The book is on a vessel, soon expected, and which brings back Doctor Franklin’s “bagage.”
Such busts, L’Enfant wrote, are “generally paid in Europe five thousand French livres”; but as many duplicates will probably be ordered from him, Houdon will lower the price to one hundred guineas. “He begs leave, however, to observe that a bust of the size of nature only may be fit for a private and small room, but not for such a large one as that devoted for the assembly of a Congress, where it should be necessary to have a bust of a larger size to have it appear to advantage.”
The price had been asked, too, of duplicates in plaster of Paris, for private citizens. The answer was: four guineas, also in the thought that a goodly number would be wanted, “provided that there be a subscription for a large number, and that the gentlemen who will have any of these busts in their possession consider themselves as engaged to prevent any copy from being taken; this last condition he humbly insists upon.”
As for the original, Houdon is anxious to know what the compatriots of the general think of it; any criticism would be welcome: “Mr. Houdon hopes that Congress is satisfied with the bust he
He is just about to sail, and the bust has to be removed at once: “Mr. Houdon, being to embark to-morrow morning, begs leave to take out the general’s bust from the room of Congress this afternoon.”
L’Enfant’s chief work in New York consisted in the remodelling of the old, or rather older (but not oldest), City Hall, the one which preceded that now known, in its turn, as the old one. The undertaking was of importance, the question being of better accommodating Congress, which had left Philadelphia with a grudge toward that city, and was now sitting in New York. A large sum, for those days, had been advanced by patriotic citizens, which sum, however, L’Enfant’s habit to see things “en grand” caused to be insufficient by more than half. The city hoped that the devising of such a structure would be for it one more title to be selected as the federal capital, and it therefore did not protest, but on the contrary
The building won general admiration for its noble appearance, the tasteful brilliancy of its ornamentation, and its commodious internal arrangements. The only objections came from the Anti-Federalists, who called it the “Fools’ Trap,” in which appellation politics had, obviously, more to do than architecture.
L’Enfant, a man of ideas, had tried to make of the renovated hall something characteristically American, if not in the general style, which was classical, at least in many details. National resources had been turned into use; in the Senate chamber the chimneys were of American marble, which, “for beauties of shade and polish, is equal to any of its kind in Europe.” The capitals of the pilasters were “of a fanciful kind, the invention of Major L’Enfant, the architect.… Amidst their
Crowds came to visit what was then the most beautiful building in the country; but better than crowds came, and one visit was for the major more touching and flattering than all the others
The expensive and greatly admired monument was to experience the strange fate of being survived by its author. Becoming again City Hall when Congress, soon after, left New York to go back, reconciled, to Philadelphia, it was pulled down in 1812, the building itself being sold at auction for four hundred and twenty-five dollars: and thus disappeared, to the regret of all lovers of ancient souvenirs, the beautiful chimneys in American marble, the “truly august” eagle with its thirteen arrows, and the first really American capitals ever devised, and which, though in a new style, were yet “magnificent.”
One solitary souvenir of the building remains, however, that is, the middle part of the railing on which Washington must have leaned when taking the oath; a piece of wrought iron of a fine ornamental style, now preserved with so many other interesting relics of old New York on the ground floor of the New York Historical Society’s Museum. In the same room can be seen several
Shortly before the inauguration of the first President, L’Enfant had had to lend his help for the devising of a grand, artistic, historical, and especially political procession, a Federalist one, arranged in the hope of influencing public opinion and securing the vote of the Constitution by the State of New York. This now revered text was then the subject of ardent criticism; famous patriots like Patrick Henry had detected in it something royalistic, which has long ceased to be apparent, and were violent in their denunciation of this instrument of tyranny. New York was in doubt; its convention had met at Poughkeepsie in June, 1788, and it seemed as if an adverse vote were possible. The procession was then thought of.
It took place on Monday, the 23d of July, and was a grand affair, with artillery salute, trumpeters, foresters, Christopher Columbus on horseback, farmers, gardeners, the Society of the Cincinnati “in full military uniform,” brewers showing in their ranks, “mounted on a tun of ale, a beautiful boy of eight years, in close-fitting, flesh-colored
The chief object of wonder was the good ship Hamilton, presented by the ship-carpenters, mounted on wheels, a perfect frigate of thirty-two guns, with its crew, complete, firing salutes on its way. The confectioners surrounded an immense “Federal cake.” The judges and lawyers were followed by “John Lawrence, John Cozine, and Robert Troup, bearing the new Constitution elegantly engrossed on vellum, and ten students of law followed, bearing in order the ratification of the ten States.” The tin-plate workers exhibited “the Federal tin warehouse, raised on ten pillars, with the motto:
A grand banquet, at which, according to the New York Journal and Weekly Register, bullocks were roasted whole for the “regale” of the guests, was held at the extreme point reached by the procession, called by the same paper the “parade des fêtes champêtres.” The President and members of Congress sat under a dome devised by L’Enfant. It was “surmounted by a figure of Fame, with a trumpet proclaiming a new era, and holding a scroll emblematic of the three great epochs of the war: Independence—Alliance with France—Peace.”
This was greatly admired. “The committee,” we read in a note printed by their order in the Imperial Gazetteer, “would be insensible of the zeal and merit of Major L’Enfant were they to omit expressing the obligation which they are under to him for the elegance of the design and
The whole was a considerable success. “As it redounds much to the credit of the citizens, …” another paper observes, “it ought to be remarked that there was not the least outrage, or even indecency, notwithstanding 6,000 or 7,000 people (as supposed, spectators included) had collected, and that the whole company was dismissed at half after five o’clock.”
Three days after the procession the vote was taken at Poughkeepsie, and if any influence at all could be attributed to the effect on public opinion of the quasi-mediæval pageant, its organizers must have felt proud, for in an assembly of fifty-seven the Constitution was actually voted by a majority of two.