With Americans of Past and Present Days - Jusserand Jean Jules - Страница 16

The future continued doubtful. In June Washington was still writing: "In vain is it to expect that our aim is to be accomplished by fond wishes for peace, and equally ungenerous and fruitless will it be for one State to depend upon another to bring this to pass."[57] French and American regiments remained, therefore, under arms and waited, but scarcely did anything on the continent but wait. For if George III was still for war, the mass of his people were not. Rochambeau availed himself of his leisure to visit the accessible parts of the country, give calls and dinners to his neighbors, study the manners and resources of the inhabitants, go fox-hunting "through the woods, accompanied by some twenty sportsmen. We have forced more than thirty foxes; the packs of hounds of the local gentlemen are perfect," states Closen. The different usages of the French and the Americans are for each other a cause of merriment. "On New Year's Day the custom of the French to embrace, even in the street, caused much American laughter," but, the young aide observes with some spite, "their shake hands, on the other side, those more or less prolonged and sometimes very hard-pressed twitchings of the hands are certainly on a par with European embracings."

Rochambeau had established himself at Williamsburg, the quiet and dignified capital of the then immense State of Virginia, noted for its "Bruton church," its old College of William and Mary, designed by Sir Christopher Wren, and the birthplace of the far-famed Phi Beta Kappa fraternity, its statue of the former English governor, Lord Botetourt,[58] in conspicuous marble wig and court mantle. "America, behold your friend," the inscription on the pedestal reads.

That other friend of America, Rochambeau, took up his quarters in the college, one of the buildings of which, used as a hospital for our troops, accidentally took fire, but was at once paid for by the French commander. Seeing more of the population, Rochambeau was noting a number of traits which were to be taken up again by Tocqueville, the diffusion of the ideas of religious tolerance, the absence of privileges, equality put into practise. "The husbandman in his habitation is neither a castellated lord nor a tenant, but a landowner." It takes him thirty to forty years to rise from "the house made of logs and posts," with the house "of well-joined boards" as an intermediary stage, to the "house in bricks, which is the acme of their architecture." Labor is expensive and is paid a dollar a day. The country has three million inhabitants, but will easily support a little more than thirty, which was not such a bad guess since the thirteen States of Rochambeau's day have now thirty-seven. Men are fond of English furniture, and women "have a great liking for French fashions." In every part where the ravages of the war have not been felt people live at their ease, "and the little negro is ever busy clearing and laying the table."

Faithful Closen, who had been proposed for promotion on account of his gallant conduct at the siege, accompanied the general everywhere, and also explored separately, on his own account, led sometimes by his fondness for animals, of which he was making "a small collection, some living and some stuffed ones, only too glad if they can please the persons for whom I destine them." He takes notes on raccoons, investigates opossums, and visits a marsh "full of subterranean habitations of beavers," and he sees them at work. He is also present at one of those cock-fights so popular then in the region, "but the sight is a little too cruel to allow one to derive enjoyment from it."

Sent to Portsmouth with letters for Mr. de Vaudreuil, in command of our fleet, Closen becomes acquainted "with a very curious animal which the people of the region call a musk-cat, but which I believe to be the puant" (the stinking one), and a careful description shows that, in any case, the name well fitted the animal. He also studies groundhogs on the same occasion. The charm and picturesqueness of wild life in American forests is a trait which French officers noted with amused curiosity in their journals. Describing his long journey on foot from the Chesapeake, where he had been shipwrecked, to Valley Forge, where he was to become aide to his Auvergnat compatriot, Lafayette, youthful Pontgibaud, with no luggage nor money left, sleeping in the open, writes of the beauty of birds, and the delightful liveliness of innumerable little squirrels, "who jumped from branch to branch, from tree to tree, around me. They seemed to accompany the triumphal march of a young warrior toward glory.... It is a fact that, with their jumps, their gambols, that quantity of little dancers, so nimble, so clever, retarded my walk.... Such is the way with people of eighteen; the present moment makes them forget all the rest."[59]

Rochambeau, his son, and two aides, one of whom was Closen, journey to visit at Monticello the already famous Jefferson; they take with them fourteen horses, sleep in the houses where they chance to be at nightfall, a surprise party which may, at times, have caused embarrassment, but this accorded with the customs of the day. The hospitality is, according to occasions, brilliant or wretched, "with a bed for the general, as ornamented as the canopy for a procession," and elsewhere "with rats which come and tickle our ears." They reach the handsome house of the "philosopher," adorned with a colonnade, "the platform of which is very prettily fitted with all sorts of mythological scenes."

The lord of the place dazzles his visitors by his encyclop?dic knowledge. Closen describes him as "very learned in belles-lettres, in history, in geography, etc., etc., being better versed than any in the statistics of America in general, and the interests of each particular province, trade, agriculture, soil, products, in a word, all that is of greatest use to know. The least detail of the wars here since the beginning of the troubles is familiar to him. He speaks all the chief languages to perfection, and his library is well chosen, and even rather large in spite of a visit paid to the place by a detachment of Tarleton's legion, which has proved costly and has greatly frightened his family."

Numerous addresses expressing fervent gratitude were received by Rochambeau, from Congress, from the legislatures of the various States, from the universities, from the mayor and inhabitants of Williamsburg, the latter offering their thanks not only for the services rendered by the general in his "military capacity," but, they said, "for your conduct in the more private walks of life, and the happiness we have derived from the social, polite, and very friendly intercourse we have been honored with by yourself and the officers of the French army in general, during the whole time of your residence among us." The favorable impression left by an army permeated with the growing humanitarian spirit, is especially mentioned in several of those addresses: "May Heaven," wrote "the Governor, council and representatives of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations in General Assembly convened," "reward your exertions in the cause of humanity and the particular regard you have paid to the rights of the citizens."

Writing at the moment when departure was imminent, the Maryland Assembly recalled in its address the extraordinary prejudices prevailing shortly before in America against all that was French: "To preserve in troops far removed from their own country the strictest discipline and to convert into esteem and affection deep and ancient prejudices was reserved for you.... We view with regret the departure of troops which have so conducted, so endeared, and so distinguished themselves, and we pray that the laurels they have gathered before Yorktown may never fade, and that victory, to whatever quarter of the globe they direct their arms, may follow their standard."