Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to blame a truck recording and I'm fair Dowdy
Speaker 1: and listeners are always asking us to mention or recommend
Speaker 1: historical biographies and other books that they might enjoy, and
Speaker 1: in this episode, we're gonna do a little better than that.
Speaker 1: We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to talk
Speaker 1: to Pulitzer Prize wing author David McCullough recently about his
Speaker 1: new book, and we've included a portion of that discussion
Speaker 1: here in this podcast. Yeah, and we were obviously excited
Speaker 1: to get the chance to interview Mr McCullough, but we
Speaker 1: were especially excited when we found out his latest book,
Speaker 1: called The Greater Journey, is really a collection almost of
Speaker 1: miniature biographies that covers so many people through this large
Speaker 1: span of time eighteen thirty to nineteen hundred Americans going
Speaker 1: to Paris to perfect their trade. Really ambitious people not
Speaker 1: just going to travel, not just going to to see
Speaker 1: the world, but to become something new and make something
Speaker 1: of themselves. Yeah, and they held a variety of professions.
Speaker 1: They were doctors, artists, writers, politicians, and the book really
Speaker 1: covers their journey, their experiences in Paris, and also what
Speaker 1: they brought back to America with them, probably most importantly
Speaker 1: what they brought back how they shaped their own country.
Speaker 1: And even though it has those large overarching themes that
Speaker 1: I mentioned, it's also a personal book too. I really
Speaker 1: thought it as a visual book, partly because it is
Speaker 1: about so many writers and artists and architects. I kept
Speaker 1: on looking at pictures because we were working from from
Speaker 1: proofs that didn't have paintings and illustrations included yet. But
Speaker 1: it just very much came to life in front of
Speaker 1: my eyes. Yeah, and to me it seemed a lot
Speaker 1: like a travel narrative, and not just because of those
Speaker 1: visual aspects that you mentioned, but also just because of
Speaker 1: the feeling you get. You can feel what it's like
Speaker 1: to be one of these protagonists arriving in Paris for
Speaker 1: the first time and experience seen all of these things
Speaker 1: that anyone who's ever traveled, I think can really relate
Speaker 1: to that. Mr McCullough himself has described it as a
Speaker 1: literary historic guide book, and that's sort of a different
Speaker 1: way of thinking about history books. And it is unique
Speaker 1: in McCullough's own work. I'd say he's written several biographies,
Speaker 1: he's written books that focus precisely on a single building
Speaker 1: event or a single year, even with seventeen seventy six.
Speaker 1: Yet this book has such a broad focus. And so
Speaker 1: the first thing we wanted to talk to him about
Speaker 1: was how he picked a topic like this in the
Speaker 1: first place. And here's what he had to say. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been very interested for a long time in the
Speaker 1: part of the American story that has taken place in Paris,
Speaker 1: and particularly the period between the post Jefferson Adams Franklin
Speaker 1: time of the eighteenth century and the Gertrude Stein Scott
Speaker 1: fitzger Old Hemingway time in the nineteen twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: For one thing, it's been largely overlooked, and for another,
Speaker 1: the people who are part of that story are immensely
Speaker 1: important to American life, American history, and the way we are,
Speaker 1: and their time in Paris was instrumental in what they
Speaker 1: became and therefore instrumental in the way we are. And
Speaker 1: I also feel very strongly that history isn't just about
Speaker 1: politics and the military or social issues. The great deal
Speaker 1: of it, of course, is but it's also about art
Speaker 1: and music and medicine and philosophy and learning and poetry,
Speaker 1: and its history is human, and and the arts and
Speaker 1: the creative nature of a society are an immensely big
Speaker 1: part of the human experience. We found that point really interesting,
Speaker 1: especially how he says that history is human, because this
Speaker 1: is such a human book. There are, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: so many protagonists in it, and so we were curious
Speaker 1: to know how Mr McCullough picked who to include. Well.
Speaker 1: I could have could have included maybe a hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty people, but of course that wouldn't have been a book.
Speaker 1: That would have been a catalog, and I had no
Speaker 1: interest in writing a catalog. I also had no interest
Speaker 1: in writing about tourists or people who went to Paris
Speaker 1: for business purposes or because they were assigned to go
Speaker 1: there by our government, with one or two exceptions, because
Speaker 1: what happened to those one or two exceptions was truly exceptional,
Speaker 1: particularly Ellie Hugh Washburn, our minister to Paris at the
Speaker 1: time of the Franco Prussian War. But by and large,
Speaker 1: most of my characters are men and women of talent,
Speaker 1: in some cases exceptional talent, who were ambitious to excel
Speaker 1: in their chosen careers, not ambitious necessarily to become famous
Speaker 1: or rich or powerful, but to excel to be the
Speaker 1: best they could possibly be. And that's a wonderful pursuit.
Speaker 1: And in all cases they had very interesting lives, and
Speaker 1: in some cases are surprising if they spring out of
Speaker 1: seemingly seemingly nowhere, like Augustus St. Gauden's who was the sculptor,
Speaker 1: who was who was an immigrant shoemaker's son, or George
Speaker 1: Healy who was an Irish kid from Boston with no
Speaker 1: money and no contacts in France, no knowledge of French,
Speaker 1: who went off because he was determined he was going
Speaker 1: to become a painter. And we had no art schools
Speaker 1: at that time, we had no schools of architecture, We
Speaker 1: had no museums where one could go and look at paintings.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to to be tops in your field,
Speaker 1: in the field of art, architecture, sculpture, you almost had
Speaker 1: to go to Paris. And those are the people that
Speaker 1: interested me. And I should say too, very importantly that
Speaker 1: how much of what happened to them did they themselves
Speaker 1: record in letters and diaries? That was all important And
Speaker 1: in the case of all the major characters in this book,
Speaker 1: everything is drawn from their letters or diaries, or the
Speaker 1: letters or diaries of their friends, or their wife or
Speaker 1: others who were close to them, and so they in
Speaker 1: a sense have left this rich record that, as I
Speaker 1: said earlier, has been surprisingly overlooked. I have, I have
Speaker 1: worked with all kinds of rich materials in my historical
Speaker 1: research and research into the lives of some of the
Speaker 1: biographies that I've written, but I don't know as I've
Speaker 1: ever had such a wealth of richness of material too
Speaker 1: to work with as I have for this book, and
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed it immensely. That point that he makes about
Speaker 1: primary sources like letters and journals using sources that contain
Speaker 1: protagonists own words as research that comes across I think
Speaker 1: very clearly in the book, and it made us even
Speaker 1: more curious about his research process. We wanted to know
Speaker 1: what that process entailed, especially since this story happens on
Speaker 1: two different continents. We wanted to know what did the
Speaker 1: research in Paris involved, and and the state side research
Speaker 1: as well well. I just spend a good deal of
Speaker 1: time in Paris, but really it was more to soak
Speaker 1: up the place to to uh absorbed as well as
Speaker 1: I could everything about Paris and all seasons to know,
Speaker 1: to know that setting as thoroughly as one can. The
Speaker 1: real research, however, is all here in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's at university libraries. It's in the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: or Massachusetts Historical Society, the Virginia Historical Society. I think
Speaker 1: that some thirty six institutions altogether have been involved in
Speaker 1: in the total body of my research work. And in
Speaker 1: some cases they were documents or portions of documents that
Speaker 1: nobody literally had ever looked at. And and often the
Speaker 1: most revealing material is to be found in what might
Speaker 1: be called the secondary characters, not the major characters, but
Speaker 1: those who, much as in a play, deliver lines, deliver
Speaker 1: explanations or descriptions that bring to bring the the principle actors,
Speaker 1: the protagonists and what happened to light into vivid into
Speaker 1: vivid focus the way nobody else has. So those those
Speaker 1: people have been of huge importance to me also, and
Speaker 1: I researched newspapers, photographs, paintings. Paintings are very important source
Speaker 1: for one thing, because, unlike black and white photograph, they
Speaker 1: give you the color of someone's eyes or the or
Speaker 1: the tone of their complexion, of the color of their hair,
Speaker 1: and so forth. And since a number of these people
Speaker 1: were themselves painters, that's of considerable consequence as well. So
Speaker 1: we're always interested in the secondary characters in history. A
Speaker 1: lot of times they do write the most interesting stuff down,
Speaker 1: and Mr McCullough himself had noted that in the source
Speaker 1: notes for a Greater Journey. He wrote of Charles Beecher,
Speaker 1: who he was the one, even though he's the less
Speaker 1: famous brother of Harriet Beecher Stow, he was the one
Speaker 1: who wrote the detailed account of her time in Paris,
Speaker 1: something that makes her story really come to life. So
Speaker 1: I was curious if there were any of those secondary characters.
Speaker 1: Obviously it didn't quite happen for Charles Beecher, but any
Speaker 1: other secondary characters in the research process that really became
Speaker 1: primary characters in the book once who to Mr McCullough,
Speaker 1: just deserved their own mini biography. Yes, indeed, that's a
Speaker 1: very perceptive question. Gussie st Gunn's the wife of of
Speaker 1: Gus st He was Augusta Augustus and she was Augusta
Speaker 1: Gussie sat guns went to Paris with her new husband.
Speaker 1: She was a bride in Paris, which was unusual for
Speaker 1: American women, and she did not speak for him. She
Speaker 1: was a painter, so she was eager to be there
Speaker 1: for that reason as well. And she wrote over two
Speaker 1: letters back to her parents describing their life, their days,
Speaker 1: their problems, their shortages of this or that, and and
Speaker 1: and what she was struggling with and what she was
Speaker 1: worried about. She was quite deaf, and her deafness was
Speaker 1: a very serious handicap, and so she was dealing with
Speaker 1: that as well. But those letters are all at the
Speaker 1: at the library at Dartmouth College, and I thought they
Speaker 1: would be of use and that they would be interesting.
Speaker 1: But as I read into them, and as as she
Speaker 1: opened up herself to her parents and consequently therefore to us,
Speaker 1: she became more than a minor character. She became a
Speaker 1: very important character. And I found her to be an
Speaker 1: admirable character as well as extremely interesting. As he man
Speaker 1: being hearing him talk so admiringly about Gussie, and they
Speaker 1: just wonder if he had a favorite protagonist in this story.
Speaker 1: And he kind of turned it around on us and
Speaker 1: turned it into the old historical question, that classic question
Speaker 1: of who would you have lunch with? If you could,
Speaker 1: And this is what he had to say. I was
Speaker 1: fascinated by Emma Willard uh And and Elizabeth Blackwell, the
Speaker 1: first woman to become a doctor. If I could spend
Speaker 1: time with one of my characters or any length of time,
Speaker 1: I suppose it might be Oliver Wendell Holmes or Charles Sumner.
Speaker 1: Charles Sumners immensely important figure in American history. He was
Speaker 1: the great voice for abolition in the United States, and
Speaker 1: it's the most powerful voice for abolition really effectively in
Speaker 1: the country. And the idea that he went to Paris
Speaker 1: because you just simply he didn't know enough, and he
Speaker 1: went over there to attend lectures at the Sorbonne uh
Speaker 1: And it was then that he discovered that black people
Speaker 1: need not be treated any differently than anyone else and
Speaker 1: wondered why, as he recorded in his journal, that we
Speaker 1: did so in this country at that time. And they
Speaker 1: asked himself again in the journal, is it because of
Speaker 1: the way we've been taught? Or is it in the
Speaker 1: natural order of things to have no bias, to have
Speaker 1: no prejudice, Because he saw the black students at the
Speaker 1: surban Um had exactly the same kinds of ambitions for
Speaker 1: themselves as he did. They dressed no differently, they they
Speaker 1: were treated no differently, And it was an epiphany for him,
Speaker 1: and he came home determined to do something about it,
Speaker 1: and he certainly did. I'm very interested in what they
Speaker 1: brought home physically, literally or figuratively, and what he brought home,
Speaker 1: needless to say, was of immense value, just as the
Speaker 1: the training that the young American architects received it the
Speaker 1: cult of Bose arts in architecture had a huge impact
Speaker 1: on the look of American cities and and people like
Speaker 1: John Singer Sergeant and Mary Cassatt paintings. Their paintings now
Speaker 1: are our treasures and to be seen in most of
Speaker 1: the major museums of our country. They stand out as
Speaker 1: as geniuses, American geniuses, and they only achieved that not
Speaker 1: just because of their talent, but how hard they worked.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the one of the many
Speaker 1: things I learned from the four years I spent on
Speaker 1: the book, is how hard these brilliant people worked, and
Speaker 1: without exception. And John Singer Sergeant, who probably was the
Speaker 1: most naturally gifted of them all, he was a prodigy
Speaker 1: and painting, worked harder than anybody, never really never stopped
Speaker 1: working his whole life. So I made a note of
Speaker 1: the part where he mentioned Oliver Wendell Holmes, because one
Speaker 1: of the most striking scenes in the book was where
Speaker 1: Holmes returns to Paris as a much older man. He
Speaker 1: of course studied there as a youth, and he's just
Speaker 1: sort of struck by the fact that so much is
Speaker 1: the same, yet so much has changed, and he he
Speaker 1: considers that his own fountain of youth. So we were
Speaker 1: curious if Mr McCullough himself has been visiting Paris throughout
Speaker 1: his lifetime. It just seemed very personal in a way.
Speaker 1: Here's what he had to say. I have gone there
Speaker 1: for fifty years, and I went back just last fall,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you I am just about exactly
Speaker 1: the same age that Holmes was, and he went back.
Speaker 1: And when I wrote that scene, uh, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of empathy at work because I know exactly how
Speaker 1: he felt. And I particularly loved when when he went
Speaker 1: to the old cafe that he and his friends at
Speaker 1: all attended, which is still there, the procope Um, that
Speaker 1: he said, you don't have to go to Florida's to
Speaker 1: find the mountain of youth. It's right here. And I
Speaker 1: have felt that strongly in Paris. I think lots of
Speaker 1: people do. Um, there is something quite magic about it.
Speaker 1: And uh and they all they all said it one
Speaker 1: way or another without exception. And I think that's a
Speaker 1: way that I tried very hard in my work to
Speaker 1: get closer to these banished people, the imminent and if
Speaker 1: you will, and and one of the ways you do
Speaker 1: it is you go where they were. The setting of experience,
Speaker 1: of any human experiences of the utmost importance to understand
Speaker 1: not just what happened, but the mood or the the spell,
Speaker 1: or the or the challenge that a given setting presents.
Speaker 1: And I've always felt in my work that I had
Speaker 1: to go soak it up myself. When I was writing
Speaker 1: about Panama, I had to spend time in Panama, feel
Speaker 1: that heat, feel the humidity, wonder try to imagine as
Speaker 1: best I could what it would have been like to
Speaker 1: work in a climate like that. And when Sumner and
Speaker 1: others talk about the the bone cutting chill of a
Speaker 1: Paris winner, that damn chill air the huts right through
Speaker 1: to you, I knew I had to go there and
Speaker 1: experience it. I didn't realize that we experience it every
Speaker 1: single day, day after day for several weeks. I don't
Speaker 1: think the sun came up once and for more than
Speaker 1: about ten minutes. But when I read Sumner's account of
Speaker 1: how he was trying to get warm by the fireplace
Speaker 1: wearing his overcoat inside, I was very, very much more
Speaker 1: sympathetic than I would have been if I'd been just
Speaker 1: sitting at home trying to imagine it. And conversely, on
Speaker 1: a beautiful spring morning, to walk through the garden of
Speaker 1: the Tuileries and the Luxembourg Gardens, it's you could be
Speaker 1: transported in time in a matter of seconds. Hearing Mr
Speaker 1: McCulloch described Paris as a good indication of what you're
Speaker 1: in store for if you read the book, and Paris
Speaker 1: is so much at the center of the story. You
Speaker 1: learn so much about the city through the experiences of
Speaker 1: the Americans spending time there, and some of the histories
Speaker 1: of the French people in the story as well. But
Speaker 1: you also learn a lot about America too, So it
Speaker 1: made me wonder whether Mr McCullough really thought of this
Speaker 1: as more of a history of America or a history
Speaker 1: of Paris. Here's what he had to say. I see
Speaker 1: it as a book about the lifelong adventure of learning,
Speaker 1: and part of learning is to get out of our realm,
Speaker 1: out of our milieu, out of our of ourselves for
Speaker 1: a while. I also see it as a lesson, a
Speaker 1: reminder that so much of what we feel and proudly
Speaker 1: but not always correctly is strictly an American creation or
Speaker 1: invention or way of seeing things are thinking, isn't at all?
Speaker 1: People people past that magnificent statue of General Sherman at
Speaker 1: the corner ninth and Fifth Avenue, New York, they think, ah,
Speaker 1: there's a great American figure and done by a great
Speaker 1: American sculpture. Well, if if it were possible to pick
Speaker 1: it up and turn it over and look at the bottom,
Speaker 1: you see made in Paris, made in Paris, by an
Speaker 1: American in Paris. Vanuel Hall in Boston one of the
Speaker 1: most popular historic sites in all of our country, and
Speaker 1: rightly so. Up on the stage, filling the most the
Speaker 1: whole backdrop of the stage is a huge painting of
Speaker 1: Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne, Senator Haynes, done by the
Speaker 1: Boston painter George Healy in Paris. Enormous painting was painted
Speaker 1: by the while he was living in Paris. Paris was
Speaker 1: the cultural capital of the world, the way we might say,
Speaker 1: I think fairly that New York is the cultural capital
Speaker 1: of the world today in our time, has been since
Speaker 1: the end of World War two. And and also you
Speaker 1: have to remember how behind we were in medicine and
Speaker 1: in training, in art and music and and and in ideas. Uh.
Speaker 1: The Surbane was probably the greatest university of the world
Speaker 1: at that time, and of course it had France had
Speaker 1: the policy, which seems almost unimaginable, that if you're a
Speaker 1: foreign student, you could go there for nothing, as you
Speaker 1: could study at their medical their great medical college university.
Speaker 1: The occulta medicine for nothing if you were if you're
Speaker 1: a foreigner, and so many of these young Americans were
Speaker 1: taking advantage of that. So it was great getting to
Speaker 1: conduct that interview with the David McCullough and UH, a
Speaker 1: pleasure to read the book too. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: And you guys are in luck too, because our interview
Speaker 1: actually went on quite a bit longer than that, and
Speaker 1: we asked him some questions about his personal career and
Speaker 1: some insider tips on his research style. So there's gonna
Speaker 1: be a whole another podcast coming where he'll talk about
Speaker 1: all that, and we'll also discuss some more of our
Speaker 1: favorite parts about this book in the meantime. If you
Speaker 1: do have a chance to read the book, it's called
Speaker 1: The Greater Journey Americans in Paris and it just came
Speaker 1: out it did, Or if you have any opinions or
Speaker 1: things you want to say about some of the protagonists
Speaker 1: that are included we've named if you here, we've talked
Speaker 1: about a lot of them on this podcast before. We'd
Speaker 1: like to start a little book club discussion book club
Speaker 1: esque discussion about it, and you can contribute to that
Speaker 1: by visiting our Facebook page or hitting us up on Twitter.
Speaker 1: That wouldn't be much of a discussion, but you know,
Speaker 1: you could leave us a comments discussion or we should
Speaker 1: brief comment, or you can write us at history podcast
Speaker 1: at how Stuff Work Stoff Calm, or you can join
Speaker 1: us on the blogs and talking about it. I think
Speaker 1: probably the best place to do it. Yeah. I think
Speaker 1: we'll be contributing some thoughts there about it, and you
Speaker 1: can look up those blogs by visiting our homepage at
Speaker 1: www dot how Stuff works dot com. Be sure to
Speaker 1: check out our new video podcast, Stuff from the future.
Speaker 1: Join how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most
Speaker 1: promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: iPhone app has arrived. Download it today on iTunes