With Americans of Past and Present Days - Jusserand Jean Jules - Страница 31

The family's fortune had been reduced, indeed, to a low ebb, his own lack of attention to his financial affairs making matters worse. His inability to properly attend to them is only too well evidenced by some letters from French relatives, showing that, while he was himself in absolute want, he neglected to receive the pension bestowed on him by the French Government, and which, in spite of the Revolution, had been maintained. He had also inherited from the old painter, his father, a small farm in Normandy, but had taken no steps about it, so that the farmer never ceased to pocket the revenues.[142]

One of these letters, which tells him of the death of his mother, who "died with the piety of an angel," shows what reports reached France as to the major's standing among his American friends: "All the persons whom I have seen and who know you, assured me that you enjoyed public esteem. This is everything in a country of which people praise the morals, the virtues, and the probity as worthy of our first ancestors."[143]

On two occasions, after many years, Congress voted modest sums for L'Enfant, but they were at once appropriated by his creditors. He was, moreover, appointed, in 1812, "professor of the art of military engineering in the Military Academy of the United States," a nomination which, in spite of the entreaties of James Monroe, then secretary of state, he declined. He is found in September, 1814, working at Fort Washington, when fifty men with spades and axes are sent him.

He survived eleven years, haunting the lobbies of the Capitol, pacing the newly marked avenues of "his" city, watching its growth, deploring the slightest deviation from his original design, for, as Washington had early noticed, he was "so tenacious of his plans as to conceive that they would be marred if they underwent any change or alteration,"[144] visiting the friends he had among the early settlers. "Mr. W.W. Corcoran, who lately departed this life in the city of Washington, full of years and honor ... had a very distinct recollection of the personal appearance of L'Enfant, the latter having been a frequent visitor at his father's house. He described him to me as a tall, erect man, fully six feet in height, finely proportioned, nose prominent, of military bearing, courtly air, and polite manners, his figure usually enveloped in a long overcoat and surmounted by a bell-crowned hat—a man who would attract attention in any assembly."[145]

He ended his days, the permanent guest of the Digges family, in their house near Washington. His death occurred there in 1825, and he was buried in their property at the foot of a tree. An inventory of his "personal goods and chattels" showed that they consisted in three watches, three compasses, some books, maps, and surveying instruments, the whole being valued at forty-six dollars.

The federal city, Washington had written in 1798 to Mrs. Sarah Fairfax, then in England, will be a great and beautiful one "a century hence, if this country keeps united, and it is surely its policy and interest to do it." It took, indeed, a great many years, and for a long time doubters could enjoy their doubts, and jokers their jokes. The Duke de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt visited the incipient town in 1797; he found that it possessed one hundred and fifty houses, scattered here and there; the house for the President was ready to be covered the same year, and the only wing of the Capitol yet begun was to receive its roof the year following, both being "handsome buildings, in white stones very well wrought." But the unredeemable fault, in his eyes, was the very magnitude and beauty of the plan. "The plan," he wrote, "is fine, cleverly and grandly designed, but it is its very grandeur, its magnificence, which causes it to be nothing but a dream." The distance, so heartily approved of by Washington, between the President's house and the Capitol, seemed to the traveller a serious objection; the raising of five hundred houses would be necessary to connect the two buildings; not one is in existence. "If this gap is not filled, communication will be impracticable in winter, for one can scarcely suppose that the United States would undergo the expense for pavement, footpaths, and lamps for such a long stretch of uninhabited ground."[146] This wonder has, however, been seen.

For a long time, for more than half the present duration of the city's life, deriders could deride to their heart's content. Few cities have ever been so abundantly nicknamed as Washington, the "wilderness city," the city "of magnificent distances," the "village monumental," the city, as reported by Jean-Jacques Ampere, the son of the great scientist, who visited it in 1851, of "streets without houses, and of houses without streets." He saw in its fate "a striking proof of this truth that one cannot create a great city at will." But this truth, as some others, has proved an untruth.

The growth was slow, indeed, but constant, and when the century was over, Washington's prophecy and L'Enfant's foresight were justified by the event. A city had risen, ample and beautiful, a proper capital for a wealthy and powerful nation, one quite apart, copied on no other, "not one of those cities," as was remarked, in our days, by one of Washington's successors, Mr. Roosevelt, "of which you can cut out a piece and transplant it into another, without any one perceiving that something has happened."

Then at last came L'Enfant's day. What he had always expected for "his" city took place; what he had never expected for himself took place also. In January, 1902, both the "Park Commission," composed of Daniel H. Burnham, Charles F. McKim, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and F.L. Olmsted, and the Senate committee presented their reports on the improvement and development of Washington; the conclusions were: "The original plan of the city of Washington, having stood the test of a century, has met universal approval. The departures from that plan are to be regretted, and wherever possible, remedied." It was thus resolved to revert, as much as circumstances allowed, and in spite of a heavy outlay, to several of L'Enfant's ideas, especially to one which he considered of greatest importance, and which had been kept so long in abeyance, the giving of its proper character to that "grand avenue" between the Capitol and the White House, meant to be "most magnificent and most convenient." It is now going to be both.

As for L'Enfant himself, one more appropriation, this time not to go to his creditors, was voted by Congress on account of the major, and it was resolved that his ashes, the place of which continued to be marked only by a tree, should be removed to Arlington National Cemetery, to lie in that ever-growing army of the dead, former members of the regiments of that Republic for which he had fought and bled. His remains were brought to what had been "Jenkins's Hill," and placed under the great dome of the Capitol. In the presence of the chief of the state, President Taft, of representatives of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Society of the Cincinnati, and other patriotic and artistic societies, and of a vast crowd, on the 28th of April, 1909, orations were delivered by the Vice-President of the United States, James Sherman, and by the Chief Commissioner of the District, Henry B. McFarland, the latter amply making up, by his friendly and eloquent address, for the long-forgotten troubles of his predecessors with L'Enfant. The Vice-President courteously concluded thus: "And turning to you, Mr. Ambassador ... I express the hope that the friendship between our nations, which has existed for more than a century, will be but intensified as time passes, and that we will in the future join hands in advancing every good cause which an all-wise Providence intrusts to our care." The hearse, wrapped in the three colors of France and America, was accompanied to Arlington by the French naval and military attaches, and an escort from one of those regiments of engineers to which the major himself had belonged.