Tag Archives: Lafayette

Lafayette, You are Here!

I’ll drive down to Newport, Rhode Island for any occasion, and Bastille Day seemed like a good one as French expeditionary forces landed there in 1780 as part of their formal and personal commitment to the American Revolution, a commitment that is honored today by the “French in Newport” festivities on the second weekend of July. From the Rhode Island perspective, the French “occupation” of Newport is the beginning of the end, the road to Yorktown and independence started there. A friend had lent me the Newport Historical Society’s Winter/Spring 2023 issue of its journal, Newport History, which is entirely focused on the French in Newport, so I was well prepared by articles on “The Washington Rochambeau Revolutional Route National Historic Trail,” (from Newport to Yorktown of course), “Forging the French Alliance in Newport,” and “A New Look at how Rochambeau Quartered his Army in Newport.” I arrived just in time for the comte de Rochambeaut’s proclamation, wandered about checking in on my favorite Newport houses and others in which the French were quartered, and then returned to Washington Square to hear the Marquis de Lafayette give an amazing little talk on how he was inspired to cross the Atlantic and join the American ranks. I was quite taken with the Marquis, and as he was speaking an extremely precocious boy yelled out of the window of a passing car “Lafayette, you are here!”

 Print depicting the arrivl of Rochaembeau’s troops in Newport in July 1780, Daniel Chodowiecki, The Society of the Cincinnati, Washington, DC.

Rochambeau and General Washington got on very well, and had lots of planning to do during that fateful year, so Washington was in Newport too for a bit, staying, I believe, at the Count’s headquarters at the William Vernon House. George Washington 2023 was not in Newport, but a replica of his field tent was, as part of the Museum of the American Revolution’s “First Oval Office” initiative. It was rather intimate to go in there—I’ve really got to go and see the real thing, the ultimate “relic” of the Revolution—in Philadelphia. While the French rank and file seemed to be on duty, the officers were relaxed and conversational, underneath their own tent on in the Colony House nearby, wearing light floral banyans when not in uniform. I had not been in the Colony House for a while and had forgotten how grand it is. Certainly worthy of Newport.

A cool (actually very hot) bakehouse on site with an enormous clay (???) oven in back from which you could buy a toasted slice of bread with salt pork butter………

The Colony House, a private home on Spring Street where Francois-Jean de Chastellux, the liasion officer between Washington’s and Rochambeau’s armies, lived while in Newport, one of my favorite Newport houses which must go into every Newport post, and the tricolore.


Lafayette Fangirls

I just love the idea and the historic reality of the “Farewell Tour” taken by the Marquis de Lafayette in 1824: the exuberant reception, and the deep appreciation expressed by both Americans and Lafayette again and again and again, everywhere he went. I also like all the things that were produced for this occasion: prints, plates, paintings, ribbons, all manner of print and material commemorative culture. In honor of its namesake, Lafayette College has amassed a large collection of Lafayette memorabilia but it is by no means the only repository of such items. Like every American town and city where Lafayette alighted, Salem greeted him with great enthusiasm, on this very day nearly 200 years ago, and Lafayette left his mark: the main southern thoroughfare to Marblehead was named after him, as well as one of my favorite rooms (the room with the bar!) in Hamilton Hall. The Hall was the site of the elaborate dinner (including 65 separate dishes) for the General/Marquis prepared by its increasingly-renown African-American caterer John Remond and his wife Nancy, with the ladies of Salem providing the decorations: the Salem Gazette reported that the “whole effect was beyond our powers of description” on the next day.

Lafayette in Salem Collage

Even more so than the Hall, it’s these ladies that I am interested in, as I bet they were all decked out. I love the Lafayette ladies’ accessories from this era: the ribbons, hats, gloves, and fans which were worn at the parades in his honor and then tucked away in some keepsake box, perhaps brought out at the time of his death in 1834, and then packed away again. They’re not difficult to find, as Lafayette’s tour was so extensive, and women who could afford to displayed their patriotism in a very exuberant and festive fashion: we have to remember that Lafayette was not only a valiant foreigner who answered America’s call at a crucial time, he was also the last living Revolutionary General in 1824. He was more than “the Nation’s Guest”, but he was also French, so deserving of a display.

Lafayette Gloves

Lafayette Bag Cooper Hewitt

Lafayette-Ribbon-Lafayette-CollegeGloves with Lafayette’s image from the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; a silk bag from the Smithsonian’s Cooper Hewitt Museum, and a ribbon from the collection at Lafayette College.

Fans are the most elaborate of Lafayette mementos, in my humble opinion, and several Salem ladies had fans for the farewell tour–whether they were domestically produced or French imports I do not know. There’s a lovely Lafayette fan featured in the Museum Collections of the Essex Institute which I assume is still in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, but I can’t find it, of course, because PEM. The Museum of Fine Arts has two fans which likely belonged to Elizabeth and Sarah Derby, if the initials are any indication. If they did in fact belong to the Derby girls, I don’t know if they had them in hand on that day, this day, in 1824: all of the newspaper accounts reported heavy rain in Salem. And after that he was gone, but the adoration continued: in a piece that was reprinted up and down the east coast the Salem Gazette observed that “Everything is Lafayette, whether it be on our heads or under our feet…..” in October.

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Lafayette Fan Elizabeth Derby MFA

Lafayette Fan Sarah Derby MFA

Lafayette-Salem-Oct-12-Gazette

Fans in the collections of the Essex Institute (Peabody Essex Museum?) and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Salem Gazette, October 12, 1824.


Lafayette, We are Here

Over this past weekend I caught many references to the storied phrase “Lafayette, we are here” on my twitter feed and the radio, so many that I woke up on Monday morning with it ringing in my ears! I can appreciate the American-Lafayette connection, after all I live right next to Hamilton Hall, where a “Lafayette Room” memorializes the Marquis’s visit to Salem in 1824 and walk to work on Lafayette Street every day, but I wasn’t quite sure about the complete context of the phrase. I think I always assumed that General John. J. Pershing uttered it when he arrived in France with the first American forces in the summer of 1917, but it was actually one of his aides, Colonel Charles E. Stanton, when both he and Pershing visited Lafayette’s tomb after a triumphant parade through the streets of Paris on July 4, 1917. Apparently the Colonel was much more eloquent than the General, and often called to come up with appropriate remarks, though he was very humble about this role during and well after the war. You can easily understand Stanton’s inspiration when you consider other contemporary American references to Lafayette: a Lafayette U.S. dollar minted in 1899, the work of the Lafayette Memorial Commission which was charged with raising funds for the installation of a Lafayette statue at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900, the Lafayette Fund established in 1914 to aid France once the war began, and of course the famous Lafayette Escadrille with its daring American volunteer flyers. With the predominant mood of isolationism in the U.S. prior (and even after) 1914, entry into this European war had to be justified by an American interest–and “paying back” Lafayette became one. Either Stanton’s words really struck a chord in 1917, or the government promoted this sentiment to increase popular support for the war. Maybe a bit of both?

Lafayette and Washington sheet music

Lafayette Stantion NYT Jan 18 1931 Framed

Lafayette-We-Are-Here

Lafayette Calling LC 1918

Lafayette We are Going Over LC 1917

Lafayette We are Here Sheet Museic

Lafayette We are Herd 1919 LC

Lafayette were here 1918 LC

Lafayette Rebuild LOC 1918

Lafayette Paid Debt LC 1919

Washington-Pershing song sheet, 1917, Cornell University; the story of Stanton’s phrase in the New York Times, January 18, 1931; “Lafayette, We are Here” poster, Lafayette University; the progress of the war from the American-Lafayette perspective in song sheets from the Library of Congress; below, post-war Washington-Lafayette-Handkerchief from the Boston Athenaeum exhibition: Over There: World War One Posters from Around the World.

Lafayette Handkerchief Boston Athenaeum


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