The dictionary sums up what most of us know about Bartholdi and his Statue of Liberty. This brief description of a statue by a man we’ve never heard of conveys nothing of the quest and the ideas that produced this phenomenal work of art.

The Statue of Liberty:

a statue at the entrance to New York Harbor, a symbol of welcome to immigrants, representing a draped female figure carrying a book of laws in her left hand and holding aloft a torch in her right. Dedicated in 1886, it was designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi and was the gift of the French, commemorating the alliance of France and the US during the American Revolution.

The Statue of Liberty was not a gift from the French government. It was not intended to be a monument welcoming immigrants to the United States. The statue was built in Paris, disassembled, and shipped to the US using contributions of many small donors in France. It was reassembled in the US on a pedestal built by Americans and funded by American small donors. The island on which it was erected, formerly the site of the Army’s Fort Wood, was ceded for that purpose by the US government.

It was a messy process, as many never-before-tried things are.

At the time of its construction, it was by far the tallest statue in the world, taller than any building in Paris or New York. It was primarily the idea and design of one man, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who spent much of his career in a quest to build the world’s largest statue. His quest was far more important to building the Statue of Liberty than any national spirit of friendship and camaraderie between France and the United States.

Bartholdi’s Early Life

Bartholdi was from Colmar, France, part of today’s region known as Alsace. His father died when he was young, leaving his mother Charlotte to raise him and his older brother Charles. In 1843 she moved the family to Paris to properly educate her boys. August wasn’t a very good student, but outside of school he studied art with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who would later lead the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris.

Bartholdi decided to become a maker of statues, rather than a sculptor. At age 19 he won a third place award for his statue of Napoléon’s General Rapp at the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition. His statue at the entrance to the Palais des Beaux-Arts was too large to fit inside.

The Egyptian Lighthouse

In 1855 Bartholdi traveled to Egypt to collect photographic evidence of historical monuments. Egypt’s art and its people had a deep impact on him. Thus Egypt became his first idea for a monumental work of art.

At the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, Bartholdi offered the khedive (leader of Egypt), Ismail Pasha, his idea for a monumental Egyptian statue at the port for the Suez Canal, which was then under construction, led by French engineers. His lighthouse statue, portraying a fellah, an indigenous North African slave woman, would have been the tallest statue in the world. Bartholdi’s proposal was never accepted.

Bartholdi’s Decides to go to the United States

After Egypt, Bartholdi needed to find a new theme and a new location for his colossal work of art.

First he was called home to Colmar to fight in the militia in the Franco Prussian War of 1870-71, which France lost. Part of the treaty ending the war called for Alsace to become part of Prussia, so Bartholdi had to decide whether to stay or leave. He ruled out staying in Colmar.

Following the war, there was a civil uprising in Paris by a group called the Paris Commune. Thousands were killed or put in jail to restore order. The government of France owed Prussia billions of francs in war reparations. Bartholdi saw little opportunity so he ruled out going back to Paris.

Thus he decided to go to the United States, and he had a French friend who could help him. In 1865 he created a bust of Edouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye, a French jurist and writer. Laboulaye adored America and its ideals, laws, and history, and all the more so after slavery had been abolished. So in 1871 Bartholdi visited Laboulaye again and revealed his hope to build a great work in America. Laboulaye gave him the names of some contacts and suggested that he propose a joint venture between France and the United States. He no doubt also influenced the title and purpose of the work as being “Liberty Enlightening the World”.

Laboulaye would organize the Franco-American Union in 1872, a committee to raise funds for the statue in France. In their first dinner at the Louvre, they raised about 10% of the estimated 400,000 francs needed to build the statue.

Bartholdi’s First Visit to America

When he arrived in New York, Bartholdi wasn’t optimistic about his chance of success. He wrote his mother that he didn’t think the American character was open to things of the imagination. 

His sales pitch to those he visited in New York was that in exchange for the Americans providing land and hopefully the base for a statue, he would provide a monument for the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution, 1876. This offer underplayed the American responsibility and oversold France’s knowledge of the project. He also visited Washington, DC and Boston, afterwards taking a tour of American west.

Along his way, Bartholdi met Americans Richard Butler, John LaFarge, and lawyer William M Evarts, who would form a committee to raise funds. He also met the President, Ulysses S Grant, who indicated that a suitable site could be arranged by the government. Bartholdi liked the site at Bedloe’s Island in New York harbor since it stood apart from the tall buildings. He wanted his statue to be in such a prominent location and of such size that it could not be ignored by the public and would become an icon for the city. He thought Americans were too concerned with money, but he liked that they dreamed big.

Design and Construction of the Statue

Bartholdi turned to Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who had completed the Notre Dame restoration, for help in construction of La Liberté. They chose the forge of Emile Gaget and JB Gautier in Paris for their iron works. Viollet-le-Duc proposed copper for the statue, with iron bracings for the interior. They began work with a team of about 50 men.

Bartholdi worked on a simple design for the statue, a woman in a stola, the traditional garment for Roman women. For her crown he settled on a rayed diadem. Because the centenary of the Declaration of Independence was only five years away, he put a tablet in one of her hands with July 4, 1776 inscribed on it.

The arduous, never-before-tried process of creating the statue started with creating a maquette – a small display version. Bartholdi then created a plaster statue about 7 feet tall. Using careful measurements from this plaster statue, he created a plaster model of 37.75 feet. Workers marked this model with dots to divide it into pieces, then measured carefully, scaling up from the 37 foot model using some 90,000 measurements to create wooden slatted frame slices four times as large. They covered each wood frame with smooth plaster on which they could hammer into shape each piece of the copper skin for the full-sized statue.

Fundraising in France

In the centennial year of 1876, Bartholdi first arranged a giant banner with the image of his statue in New York’s Madison Square during their 4th of July Parade. The French team shipped the completed Hand of Liberty with Torch from France for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition at the end of September. Bartholdi raised funds by selling souvenirs and tickets that allowed people to climb up the hand to view out. He realized that people would make donations for the chance to interact with the project.

Bartholdi met with Butler and Evarts to form of a group of businessmen to raise funds in the US for the pedestal. The committee grew to become 400 prominent men, eventually including Teddy Roosevelt. Their hope was that the pedestal would be funded by many small donors.

Army General William Tecumseh Sherman made the decision on behalf of Congress that the statue would be erected on Bedloe’s Island.

Back in Paris in 1877, Bartholdi arranged for Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype, and Jean Baptiste Lavastre, decorator of the Paris Opera, to create a scene in the Palais de l’Industrie where viewers could climb a balustrade and gaze at a panorama of New York harbor. Over top of the harbor rose a gigantic Statue of Liberty with her beacon. Thousands came to pay to see this view. After its run at the Palais, they moved it to the Tuileries, where it would play for two more years.

At the 1878 Paris exposition on the Champ de Mars, Bartholdi revealed the head of the Statue of Liberty. He raised money by charging for photos of New York harbor to those who wanted to climb up inside the head.

Fundraising in France slowed down after that, and finally the Franco-American Union convinced the government to allow a national lottery to raise funds, providing another boost in funding.

Gustav Eiffel Joins the Project

At this critical point, Viollet-le-Duc died unexpectedly. Bartholdi realized that he still had no plan to get Liberty to her feet. He needed an engineering genius to save him and his 151 foot sculpture, so he went to the world’s foremost maker of bridges, Gustav Eiffel.

Eiffel was taciturn about his commitment to the project, but he was intrigued by the technical difficulties. The huge surface area would be buffeted by high winds that could topple the statue into the sea. It had to withstand the extreme temperature changes, so there must be a way for parts to slide to adapt. Lastly, the copper skin would react with sea spray and the iron interior to cause galvanic corrosion. He agreed to complete the construction of the statue, but not the installation on the pedestal.

The Statue is done but the Americans Need Funds

The Americans were making almost no progress in fundraising for the base of the statue. Finally in November, 1881, the American Committee agreed to a campaign soliciting funds from all of the states and setting up a fundraising network in all the major cities.

Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi opened his Paris workshop for visitors. He turned curiosity seekers into subscribers by selling tickets to view the progress of the construction of the statue.

Eiffel conceived of an assembly plan. The rivets would be slightly loose to accommodate the wide temperature variations. Bolts would be hidden on the inside, so they would not show. In the workshop courtyard, workers erected a giant iron skeleton to be inside of the statue. This skeleton would bear all the of weight and provide all of the strength. Eiffel devised an intricate anti-corrosion scheme. Workers wrapped copper pieces in cloth between each pair of joints and rivets.

By January of 1883, the Americans had raised only $70,000 of the estimated $250,000 needed for the base. That summer, Bartholdi wrote the American Committee, informing them that he would temporarily transfer all royalties from his copyright, so that they might raise funds by selling reproductions of his statue. The American committee, which had begun as 400 men, was now whittled down to just three.

In Paris near Parc Monceau one could hear the hammering from blocks away and see a giant statue towering above the 6 story buildings in the neighborhood. You could buy a ticket to visit the statue, entering through the back foot and climbing a staircase up to see the view from the head, or for the daring, continue the climb up the arm to see out of the torch, from where there was a spectacular view of all of Paris. People came in droves. It was enough to finance the statue’s completion.

Liberty was now ready for her passage to America.

America’s Struggle to Complete the Pedestal

General Sherman appointed Charles P Stone to oversee the effort of getting the statue safely in place on Bedloe’s Island. He began his work as Engineer in Chief on April 3, 1883. Stone’s own calculations were that he would have to pour the largest block of cement ever fashioned in order to secure the statue. With 100 workmen, they started in on the task, which required extensive excavation.

Joseph Pulitzer was a newspaperman from St Louis who wanted to move into the New York market. He negotiated to purchase the seedy New York World from Jay Gould, one of the richest men in America. Pulitzer was an advocate for the underdog. He had visited the Paris exposition in 1878 and seen Liberty’s head, met Bartholdi, and found a perfect story to criticize the American rich, since the base was in desperate need of funding and no millionaire was stepping forward. Pulitzer put the statue on the masthead of his newspaper.

President Grant solicited John D Rockefeller to fund the work, but to no avail. By early 1884 the funding situation of the base had become critical.

Richard Morris Hunt, who created the first New York apartment building, became the architect for the pedestal. By November 1883, he had designed a model.

The Link to Immigration

The American Committee organized an art exhibition fundraiser for December 3, 1883. Constance Cary Harrison, a New York socialite, solicited contributions of poems and prose for auction during the exhibition. She asked Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Bret Harte. She also asked her friend Emma Lazarus, a Jewish aristocrat and activist who had previously taken to the plight of the Russian Jewish refugees on Ward’s Island. After first brushing aside the request, Lazarus addressed it, sending her sonnet , The New Colossus, which includes these lines known to many Americans:

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This poem would be one of several factors that turned the meaning of the statue from “liberty enlightening the world” into a symbol of freedom and opportunity for immigrants.

Sealed bids for the pedestal construction came out uniformly astronomical in cost. Materials alone would cost nearly the previously estimated amount for the entire project, $250,000, of which the Americans had raised only $140,000. The New York legislature authorized funds, but Governor Grover Cleveland vetoed them.

On July 4, 1884, the process for handing over the statue started. Laboulaye unfortunately had passed away the year before. Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, had taken over as chairman of the Franco-American Union.

Pulitzer’s Fundraising Campaign

This lack of American civic pride enraged Joseph Pulitzer, who after some consideration penned an article stating the World would raise funds for the completion of the statue. He offered to print the name of every donor in his paper. It was a savvy plan. There were businesses that would donate every day just to keep their name in the paper for the almost free advertising. After 2 months, the fund for the base still needed $70,000.

The statue arrived in New York on July 17 housed in 220 crates for the passage to America. The captain of the French cargo ship transferred ownership of the statue to General Stone, who still lacked funds to finish the pedestal. As the ship headed towards the Battery at the tip of Manhattan, thousands lined the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn, as well as the docks in Manhattan, to celebrate the arrival.

At this point, Pulitzer created the first professional fundraising corps in the United States. He discovered that the immigrants were far more appreciative in their donations than the native born. Each day his team of fundraisers would fan out in New York, soliciting funds. Each man was allowed to keep 20% of what he raised. On August 11, 1885, Pulitzer announced that he had raised the required $100,000 to complete the pedestal. There were 120,000 contributors. The target for completion of the statue was July 4, 1886.

Finishing the Pedestal

More funds were needed. Construction estimates were off. By mid-August an informant had accused Stone of incompetence and overspending. Others chimed in to confirm the accusations. On October 20, the American Committee informed Stone that they no longer needed his services after January 1. A French engineer would direct installation of the statue. Despite the loss of his position, Stone stayed on as a volunteer to coordinate non-construction activities of the project.

In November 1885, the work on the pedestal was still not finished. At this point Bartholdi realized that he would need to delay the unveiling until September, to coincide with the anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles (which was the treaty that formally ended the Revolutionary War).

Though the Americans were still short of funds, on April 22, 1886, workers finally put the last stone of the pedestal in place. After much political infighting, the US House of Representatives voted down a bill to complete funding of the statue. There were accusations of scandal and lies. In the end, the Senate slipped in $56,500 in funding, and the President signed the bill. There would be an unveiling after all.

Unveiling the Statue of Liberty

The statue was complete, but almost every preparation for the unveiling was behind schedule. On October 28, it poured rain. Stone stood in uniform, ready to lead a parade of 30,000 in Manhattan. At 10 am President Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas Bayard arrived to join the festivities, and the group started down 5th Avenue, passing buildings draped in flags and decorations with stars and stripes. There were soldiers, firefighters, flower girls, students, and bricklayers. Pulitzer stood outside his office with a masthead decoration that included the statue in the center. French dignitaries arrived as well. On Wall Street they threw ticker tape out the windows, the first-ever ticker tape parade.

After the parade the visitors headed to boats to go to the unveiling. Two hundred steamers cruised near the island after delivering 2500 guests ashore. When the President arrived, the ceremony began. Ship’s whistles and crowd noise drowned out the prayer. Then de Lesseps spoke and everything quieted down, as if by magic. He said that France and America had only a rivalry of progress. Bartholdi made no remarks. Evarts commenced his speech leading to unveiling the monument while Bartholdi climbed to the statue’s highest point.

Thinking he heard Evart’s signal, Bartholdi released the veil prematurely. Evarts was still in the middle of his speech, pausing as the crowd started cheering. Then the ships offshore rendered the 500 gun salute. Next the crowd sang the national anthems of France and the United States. People wondered what was happening when Evarts continued his speech and addressed the President, finally turning over the statue to the United States. The President accepted the statue, and then Chauncey Depew, a railroad magnate, concluded the ceremony with a speech about Lafayette. All goes well that ends well.

Epilogue

During the project and for some time after, people knew it as Bartholdi’s statue, but over time they would forget the sculptor’s name. People judged Charles P Stone a success because he organized the best parade New York had ever seen. Three years after Liberty’s unveiling, Gustav Eiffel would build his tower in Paris and lay claim to the tallest structure in the world. He would not build anything after that. Both Eiffel and de Lesseps were convicted of crimes (later overturned) in the scandal following the French failure to build the Panama Canal.

Ultimately the Statue of Liberty has become iconic. It represents us, Americans, rather than our bond with France, though we should be mindful from whence it came. Bartholdi acted very much like an American in his quest. He dared, he innovated, he solved many problems, and with the help of other similarly-minded French and Americans, he succeeded. It’s not your typical European story, but it’s very American.

Several copies of the Statue of Liberty, each with a pedigree from the original statue, are on display in Paris. See this slide show for photos and more information, as well as other Bartholdi related statues.

---

Much of the material for this article comes from this book: Mitchell, Elizabeth. Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, 2015.

Both in France and in the United States, we seem to be in the worst of the COVID-19 problem now. There are shortages of equipment, rising numbers of deaths and infected, new outbreaks, and no quick fix on the horizon. We continue to be inundated with non-stop news, most of it bad. I’ve discovered that when you need help with sleep, read Balzac!

In France we are hunkered down, except to go outside by ourselves for exercise or to buy food. Still, I don’t sleep so well with all the things beyond my control. It’s not because there is too much noise in the neighborhood. I have dreams about situations that make no sense, problems that can’t be solved. I wake up when it gets too difficult.

Scientists don’t really know why we dream, but one interpretation is that, unlike focused activity like hammering a nail, dreams represent a supremely unfocused state in which our brains make broad, unfocused connections guided by our emotions. If there’s only one strong emotion, the dream is more straightforward, but if there are several conflicting emotions, dreams can be complicated. Dreams are thought to be a way that new material can be woven into our conscious thinking, providing compensation for our waking, perhaps unconscious, problems. I think there is a coronavirus restlessness that comes to bed with me every night. There have been other times like these.

From 1348 to 1665 the Black Plague struck London every 20 years or so. Bubonic plague was a disease spread by the bites of fleas from black rats. One of these epidemics struck London in 1604, and they ordered social distancing. Houses with infected people had to hang a bale of straw on a pole for 40 days to warn others. They had a special bell to ring when transporting the dead through the streets to mass graves. There was much suffering with poor treatment options and no known cures, but also there was unexpected good. All the London theaters were closed, and William Shakespeare used his time in lockdown to write Macbeth and King Lear. No wonder that Shakespeare turned to writing tragedies while he was in isolation. Here’s a little background on King Lear.

King Lear

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the King announces to his three daughters that he’s giving up his kingdom and will award it to the one who loves him the most. The first two daughters praise him effusively, and are each awarded a share. The third daughter states that she loves him and that the award of his kingdom will make her love neither more nor less. She is disinherited. A complex story follows, but let it suffice to say that the first two daughters consider the king a fool. Each with her husband sets about trying to take all the power and money for herself. Only the third daughter has true love for her father. The first daughter kills the second, then commits suicide when her betrayal is discovered. The third daughter dies trying to save her father. The King dies of his heartbreak because he loses everything he values.

Le Père Goriot

When I can’t sleep I’ve been reading Le Père Goriot, a novel by Honoré de Balzac, one of France’s greatest writers. Le Père Goriot is similar in many ways to King Lear. Two daughters take advantage of their father’s love and drive him to financial ruin, all to keep up appearances and improve their social status in the post-Napoleonic Paris of two hundred years ago, when King Louis XVIII (whose brother Louis XVI was beheaded in the Revolution) was brought back to the throne in a constitutional monarchy. It was the first time in France that lower classes had a chance to gain wealth and power and move up in social status.

Our protagonist, a young student named Rastignac, is trying to figure out how to get ahead in his life. He lives with a number of other characters in the run-down pension Vauquer near today’s Pantheon on rue Neuve Saint Genevieve. Today rue Neuve Saint Genevieve is known as rue Tournefort. The steeply sloping part where the house would have been has become rue Lhomond. Balzac’s descriptions of the shoddiness of the pension are legendary. There Rastignac meets Le Père Goriot, a retired vermicellier (pasta maker) whom everyone thinks is a dolt, and also a gregarious man named Vautrin, who seems to know everything about everyone. The ladies boarding at the pension all seem to like him. He pays the servants to let him come and go furtively in the night.

At first the women in the pension try to attract Le Père Goriot, since he seems to have lots of money, but he ignores them. They think he pays for two beautiful women who stop by his room from time to time. It turns out these are his daughters, who only come to visit him when they need money. As he runs out of money, he keeps moving into cheaper and cheaper rooms in the pension. Everyone at the pension makes fun of him, but he seems not to notice.

Rastignac has a distant cousin, Madame de Beauséant, who lives in the district Faubourg Saint Germain (the neighborhood on the other side of Invalides from ours). She is wealthy and belongs to that part of society that Rastignac wants to enter. She arranges an invitation for him to attend a ball, and there he meets a beautiful young woman, Madame de Restaud, whom he vows to see again. When he comes home that night, full of hope for his future, he hears his neighbor, Le Père Goriot, working away in his room. Peering through the keyhole, Rastignac sees Goriot winding silver around a sculpted piece with great skill, all the time muttering about his poor child. Rastignac is impressed and realizes that he and others have greatly underestimated Le Père Goriot.

Rastignac goes to visit Madame de Restaud (Anastasie, a countess) at her house on Rue du Helder, east of the Paris Opera. He walks, muddying his boots along the way. The countess isn’t expecting him, and she makes him wait. While waiting he unexpectedly sees Le Père Goriot departing via the servant’s entrance. He meets another young man, beautifully attired, named Maxime de Trailles. He turns out to be Madame de Restaud’s lover. Then he meets Count de Restaud, her husband. They exchange pleasantries. When Rastignac mentions that he knows Le Père Goriot, the others become angry. He is shown the door. The Count informs the servants to never again present him at their home.

Rastignac realizes he needs to up his game. He visits his cousin Madame de Beauséant for advice. She says that to succeed he will need to have a hard heart, to never show his emotions, to guard against ever letting a woman know he loves her. The way to get the attention of Anastasie is to become companion to her sister, Delphine, wife of Baron de Nucingen. Delphine is unhappy and trying to attract attention. The two sisters are rivals and enemies. Despite her cold blooded advice, secretly Madame de Beauséant has a broken heart because her lover, a marquis, is leaving her to marry another woman.

Rastignac writes his mother and his sisters, asking to borrow money, which they send to him even though they are poor. He buys beautiful clothes to fit in with his newfound lifestyle. He meets Delphine at a ball. She is troubled and in debt, so he risks his money at a casino and wins enough to pay what she owes. She loves him. They date, for lack of a better word. Time passes, and she becomes more critical of him. He loses money gambling and is almost out of funds. He is in at the end of his wits.

One night at dinner, Vautrin approaches him with advice. First, he needs to be hard hearted, but also that this pursuit is fruitless. He suggests a more lucrative approach. There is another resident at the pension, Victorine Tallefer, whose father has millions, but who denies it all to her in favor of her brother. She is in despair because of her poverty. Vautrin proposes that he arrange to have the brother killed in a duel, thus the father’s fortune will pass to Victorine. Rastignac could move in and instantly become part of the fortune. Vautrin desires to make a contract that would pay him two hundred thousand francs for his services, a small price for Rastignac to achieve everything he wants.

The moral contradiction is too much for Rastignac, and he declines. Still he cozies up to Victorine, who seems to like him. That night at dinner, Vautrin offers some wine to both Rastignac and Le Père Goriot, who has also become Rastignac’s confident. He has spiked the wine with something, and they both fall asleep. When they awaken, they find out that someone killed Victorine’s brother in a duel, and that she has departed to be with her father.

Another man and woman living at the pension, who seem to be amorous, meet secretly with a police detective in the Jardin de Plantes. The detective says that he thinks Vautrin is a wanted criminal who has escaped from prison. There is a substantial reward for his capture. He gives them a potion to slip into Vautrin’s drink. It will put him to sleep so they can identify if he has the prison tattoo on his arm. They drug Vautrin and discover that he is indeed this criminal. The police arrest Vautrin and lead him away. Others at the pension condemn the couple for denouncing him and force them to leave. The landlord, Madame Vauquer, bemoans her loss as her tenants depart for new apartments.

Le Père Goriot tells Rastignac that in spite of appearances, his daughter Delphine loves him dearly. Goriot has purchased for them a flat where they can get away together. Delphine sends him a love letter promising a bright future. Rastignac meets her at the new place, and sees that all is as arranged, though Delphine will continue to live with the Baron and only visit from time to time. Anastasie has come to her father with a sorrowful tale of the debts of her lover, which her husband insists that she pay. Le Père Goriot gives her his nearly exhausted funds to pay her debts.

Meanwhile Madame de Beauséant has invited everyone to a grand ball at her mansion. Her secret plan is to leave Paris and escape her failed love life, never to return. Both of Le Père Goriot’s daughters will be there. He has given up the last of his funds to buy a dress for Delphine. Anastasie will wear her husband’s family diamonds for the last time, since she has promised them to pay the gambling debts of her lover. Le Père Goriot, realizing he has nothing left to offer his daughters, has a stroke and is dying in his room. He is crazy, both expressing love for his daughters and remorse at the heartless way they have treated him. Rastignac remains behind to tend to Le Père Goriot with another tenant, a medical student.

Rastignac reaches out repeatedly for the daughters to come to the side of their dying father, but neither responds. He receives a menacing note from Delphine that he better accompany her to the ball or else. Finally he goes, and it is a grand affair. Afterwards, the daughters go home and are preoccupied with sleeping and explaining their debts to their husbands. Rastignac returns to the side of Le Père Goriot, remaining there until he expires.

Anastasie stops by briefly after her father is dead to express her love and her guilt, then departs. Delphine never shows. Rastignac uses the last of his own funds to arrange a funeral and burial. He must borrow money to tip the grave diggers. At the end of his ordeal, he sheds the last tear of his youth. Now understanding the game, Rastignac declares, “It’s just the two of us two now.” He departs to have dinner with Delphine, who will become his doorway to enter French high society.

Honoré de Balzac

Between about 1830 and 1850 Balzac wrote prolifically, producing more than 100 works including books, plays, novellas, short stories, and poems. Le Père Goriot is one of the most important books in Balzac’s series Le Comédie Humaine . In this series of publications, he attempted to provide an all-encompassing description of Parisian society.

His masterpiece was a unique contribution to the literary craft. His employment of realism and highly descriptive details, not to mention scandalous subjects, would influence fiction for generations to come. He also started reusing the same characters in different novels at different stages in the character’s lives, a unique method that created a web that give life to Le Comédie Humaine.

His characters are complex people, having both good and bad qualities. Rodin’s sculpture of Balzac, created nearly 50 years after his death, is less a likeness than a monument to his creativity and spirit. Balzac was a man who failed in many things before realizing his great success as a writer. His work and his characters reflect many of his own experiences.

Improving my sleep

I owe a lot to Balzac. Reading Le Père Goriot (in French) was hard work. First I tried the audio book – too hard. Then I bought the paperback – difficult and time consuming. Then I took some months off to read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and all of the Harry Potter series. Finally I started Le Père Goriot again on my Kindle. Better this time, but still not easy. It was the perfect antidote to coronavirus restlessness, making me weary and allowing me to fall back to sleep.

I hope I’m receiving compensating effects from my dreams. They seem to be affirming that there’s not much I can do but wait. On a hopeful note, you know that there are a lot of efforts to combat the virus that are farther along than we think, whether they be to manufacture and distribute masks or ventilators or plastic suits, to develop better testing for the virus, or to make progress towards a medicine or trial vaccine. Both in France and US we are nearing a peak in the number of deaths and new cases. We hope that the number of serious cases remains within our capacity for medical treatment. In another week we’ll find out new developments in all these areas. In the meantime, stay away from others and keep washing your hands.

But there’s a missing piece. Many of us are isolated away from family and friends. With whom can we share this anxiety?

Every night at 8pm, Parisians open their windows to applaud our healthcare workers for their tireless efforts in combatting the virus. Besides the applause we hear bells, whistles, shouts, and sometimes singing. A recent article in Le Figaro found that some doctors are indifferent to this showing of gratitude. It’s hard to feel it when you aren’t there. A sociologist said that these displays of support are really for ourselves, to show solidarity in our isolation. We hardly know our neighbors, much less the people across the street, but in this cause we are all together.

John Donne said it best: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Any therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

August 15th is the French national holiday for the Assumption of Mary. This religious day is celebrated in many parts of the world by about 1.5 billion Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, as well as by parts of the Anglican Church. The holiday celebrates the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life. For Catholics, it is a day to go to mass. For France, it is a day when almost everything is closed, similar to Christmas.

Yet France is one of the most unreligious countries in the world. In one survey of 2010, about 40% of the participants identified as not believing there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force, about 50% as Christian (almost all Catholic), less than 6% Islamic, and only small percentages of Jewish and other religions. The group identifying as Catholic has dropped from about 80% to 50% since 1985.

An article in Tuesday’s La Figaro showed how large numbers of believers participate in pilgrimages as part of practicing their faith. While destinations like Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain attract large numbers, there are numerous destinations in France that are also attractive. A sizable percentage of French tourism is for reasons of spiritual belief.

The Roman Catholic Church has recognized eleven Marian apparitions (supernatural appearances of Mary), five of which occurred at locations in France in the 19th Century. A line superimposed through these five locations on the map of France produces the shape of an M. One of the locations is in Paris, at a chapel I had never heard of, The Chapel of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse). The La Figaro article said that over 2 million people visit this chapel each year. It’s on rue de Bac near the Bon Marché department store, not far from our apartment. So I set out on a pilgrimage.

On rue de Bac near the popular Grande Epicérie de Paris, the specialty food store of the Bon Marché, I found a doorway allowing people to come and go down a long corridor to Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. I walked around trying to photograph the outside of the chapel, but at ground level it is completely hidden from view by other structures.

Once inside I walked past displays and religious coin vending machines, statues, and welcome offices for arriving pilgrims. The chapel was at the end of the hall. A service was in progress. I entered, found a seat in the back, took an inconspicuous photo, and sat through a mass in a language I believe was Korean. I tried to participate, but was hampered by my complete lack of knowledge of Catholic traditions, customs, and liturgy, not to mention the Asian language of the service. People occasionally left something in a basket in the center of the room. I assumed it was an offering, so as I departed I walked up and put in a small donation. Too late I noticed that inside the basket were slips of paper, prayer requests! My bad.

Outside again, I saw a display explaining the story of the Marian apparition. A young nun, Catherine Labouré, began her service here in 1830 with the Company of the Daughters of Charity. Their motherhouse was at 140 rue de Bac. On the 18th of July and the 27th of November 1830, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the Chapel before Catherine. She asked that a medallion be made to a design that she dictated, adding that, “All who wear this medal will receive great graces.”

It was a time of great unrest in France. The bloody 3 day revolution of July 1830 replaced the constitutional monarchy of the last of the post-revolution Bourbon kings with another conferring the monarchy to Louis Philippe of the Orleans line of the royal family. France was industrializing and becoming more wealthy, but there were few social services and the poor were miserable. The workers were dissatisfied with the status quo. It is the same setting as in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”, a novel that above all was about the misery of poor people in France. In 1830, Jean Val Jean, the hero of that story, is living with his adopted daughter Cosette on rue de Plumet (today’s rue Rue Oudinot). This street ends almost exactly at La Chapelle de Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. Uncanny.

Catherine Labouré reported her visions to her priest, who took two years to report this to the archbishop. Eventually a medal referred to as the Miraculous Medal was produced. In the meantime, in 1831, Catherine was sent to Enghien les Bains, to a home for the elderly, north of Paris, where she spent the next 40 years serving these largely poor and miserable residents. The church did not forget her. Following her death in 1876, her body was moved in 1933 to the chapel at rue de Bac and placed under the alter. In July 1947, Pope Pius XII declared her a Saint. It was not until 1950, via this same Pope, that the Assumption of Mary was officially recognized, though it had been part of the teachings of the church for hundreds of years before.

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in 1952 said that the Assumption of Mary was the most significant Christian religious event since the Reformation. Finally the church acknowledged a feminine element, allowing Mary to join the three masculine religious figures of Christianity. The realization of this feminine aspect has been slow in arriving, but gradually it is asserting itself, not only in the church, but in secular life as well. Religions adapt to changes in society to offer their adherents a more meaningful view of life, but as you can see, sometimes one must have lots of patience. Bonne fête de l’Assomption!