The First Public Library

by ZOLTAN HARASZTI

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A HUNDRED years old, the Boston Public Library still holds a special position among the public libraries of America. Its home in Copley Square, that noble Renaissance palace with its beautiful stairway and magnificent halls, its famous murals of Puvis de Chavannes and John Singer Sargent, and its charming arcaded courtyard, is a must for all the innumerable sightseers to Boston and New England. Its great special collections, particularly its superb early Americana, Shakespeareana, and first editions of Spanish literature, make it one of the richest storehouses for scholarly research. It was the first large public library to be supported by taxation, and it thus determined the development of the entire public library movement.

Now that the hundredth anniversary of the Library is being celebrated, Alexandre Vattemare, who perhaps more than any other man was responsible for its foundation, should be recalled. The encyclopedias, Britannica or Larousse, do not oven mention his name. And yet in the forties of the last century Alexandre Vattemare was one of the most widely known figures here and in Europe. In fact, he achieved fame not only in one but in two distinct personalities: as Monsieur Alexandre and as M. Vattemare.

M. Vattemnre, the earnest, eloquent Frenchman whom America knew a gentleman in early middle age, with large, quick eyes under a fine and open forehead, and wilh distinguished manners — was eager to build public libraries and to establish a system of literary and scientific exchanges among the nations. And his zeal certainly met with appreciation in America, including Canada. He was hailed everywhere as the apostle of a new era of civilization. Monsieur Alexandre, however, some twenty years before M. Vattemare, had exerted even a stronger hold upon the public. In the chief cities of Europe, from London to Moscow and from Madrid to Pesth, he was known to vast audiences — as the greatest ventriloquist of the age.

Nicholas Marie Alexandre was born in Paris in 1797, the son of a well-to-do advocate. Wearied by the Revolution, Vattemare père retired to a small estate at Lisieux, in Normandy, and it was there that the peculiarities of his son’s voice were discovered. As a boy of eight or ten, young Alexandre played one practical joke after anot her on neighbors, innkeepers, sentimental widows, and even on his father. For two years, he studied in a seminary, then entered the Hospital of St. Louis in Paris, He quickly became an assistant surgeon, but with all his duties he continued his tricks, on colleagues and patients alike. His great courage in treating the Prussian prisoners of war for typhus was remembered after Waterloo; he was asked to accompany the convalescent soldiers to Berlin. Persuaded by friends to become a professional entertainer, for the next three years he performed in Germany, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, and finally in England.

Money was never a primary consideration with Vattemare; once he gave — so he said — half of his earnings for the relief of a burned-down city in Russia. Generous in the extreme and received everywhere with hospitality, he believed that the barriers between nations were largely artificial. Understanding was what was most needed; thus he hit upon the idea of an international exchange of books of science and literature. He had great physical endurance and was trained to overcome obstacles; the perseverance required by his early profession he henceforth applied to his now work. Resuming his old family name, from Monsieur Alexandre he became M. Vattemare.

Vattemare first came to America in October, 18B9. The New York newspapers wrote excitedly about him. The news of his plan — “important intelligence” — was printed in headlines; meetings were held, and he had “crowds of listeners.” He told the audience how on his countless travels ho found that the great libraries often possessed duplicate copies of books, looked upon as mere rubbish in one city and regarded as indispensable in another; that important works giving information about the problems of taxation, water supply, and street pavements of one country were unknown in another! And people swallowed his words in wonderment.

In Washington, President Van Buren was delighted with his proposal that the great libraries should give their duplicates to an international clearing house. John Quincv Adams, always cosmopolitan in his sympathies, was most active in his support. Vattemare outlined his plan to Congress. What could America offer in a system of international exchanges? In the absence of printed books. Vattemare wrote, “the natural products of the countries . . . are sought and inquired for with avidity in Europe.” Europe was also interested in our laws, statutes, and ordinances. By unanimous vote, the House and Senate authorized the Librarian to exchange their duplicates, and to print thereafter fifty additional copies of their documents for the purpose of exchange.

The state governments followed the example of the Federal gov ernment. Vattemare journeyed from one capital to another; in April, 1841, he appeared in Boston. His first visit was to the home of Josiah Quincy, Jr., where he met a dozen gentlemen, the father of his host among them. The elder Quincy, President of Harvard and former Mayor of Boston, heartily endorsed Vattemare’s idea that “a building should be obtained for uniting all the; libraries and collections in one place . . . and the whole freely opened to the public. He meant the Boston Athenaeum, Mercantile Library, Social Law Library, and half a dozen other libraries.

Josiah Quincy, Jr., shared his father’s opinion, and with him all the young men to whom Vattemare addressed himself. With the idealism which led some of their friends to t he founding of Brook Farm, they advocated the establishment of a public library which “would benefit the great body of the people.

Unfortunately, the proposal of uniting the various local libraries mot with little success. The enterprise began to lag. But Vattemare s letter of January, 1848, announcing the sending to Boston of fifty volumes given by the city of Paris, aroused some qualms of conscience. A movement was started to reciprocate the gift. Hundreds of volumes were donated by various citizens, among others Emerson and Longfellow.

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IT WAS on his second visit to America that Vattemare accomplished most. He arrived in May, 1847, and stayed till December, 1850. During the years between his two visits he had sent Over thousands of books, and he now brought with him twelve thousand volumes, three thousand maps, and a large number of medals, statues, and engravings. These were destined for the various states.

His reception was even warmer than before. He knew how to arouse patriotic pride. “France and Maine,” he began at Augusta, “are now connected with so many ties, not only of ancient friendship, but increasing social relations...”AT Concord it was the two republics “France and New Hampshire": at Montpelier, “France and Vermont": at Providence, “France and Rhode Island.”His addresses to the legislatures, printed In every state, were admirable for energy and clarity.

Congress granted him the privilege franking letters and packages, and also of receiving them free of postage; he was exempted from paying duties on parcels from abroad and was given free dock space in the port of New York as his central depot in America. Not only the government, but the shipping companies, railroads, hotels, and restaurants regariled him as their own distinguished guest. “From the hour I set my foot upon your shores to this hour,” he said in the third year of his stay, “I have not yet been permitted to expend the first, dollar, either for my personal support or my traveling expenses.”

Maine was the first to appoint him its literary agent. Massachusetts followed suit, with eleven other states, including far-off Indiana, joining in. Vattemare’s scheme required ten thousand dollars a year for the upkeep of a central agency in Paris. The Federal government voted two thousand dollars and the states, variously, three or four hundred as their contributions.

In Boston the auspices were especially favorable. Josiah Quincy, Jr., was now Mayor, and he was a real friend. To provide an occasion for talking matters over, he gave a party to which all members of the City Council were invited. And Vattemare was not slow in persuasion. He kept close to the Mayor, trying to convince him that a gift, by him would inspire generosity in others. Quincy finally decided to offer five thousand dollars for a public library, on condition that other citizens double the sum.

Meanwhile more and more shipments of books arrived in Boston through Vattemare’s agency: books on geological measurements, regulation of slaughterhouses, the cultivation of the mulberry and the rearing of silk worms, and similar subjects. A room in City Hall was set aside for their safekeeping, and for the books which would be used in exchange for the gift.

The Mayor’s offer was allowed to lapse, but the committee on the Library was meeting frequently, and in January the Mayor was directed to apply to the legislature for power to establish and maintain a public library. In response to his move, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed an enabling act which, with the acceptance of the aldermen, on April 8, 1848, became a statute—the first statute ever passed for a public library as a municipal institution supported by direct taxation.

Official action is slow at its best, and Vattemare bad to kill much time in Boston. In many houses he was a welcome visitor, and nowhere more than at the Quincys’ — in the home of old Josiah Quincy; of his son, the Mayor; or at his daughter’s, Mrs. Benjamin D. Greene. Vattemare was a most entertaining companion. His face, melancholy at rest, lighted up with animation when he began to talk. His foreignness, his many experiences, invested him with a piquant interest. And he was always tactful, “indescribably simple, resembling a child.”

In his public utterances he never mentioned his earlier occupation, but among friends he was not shy to talk about it. He even improvised little performances, imitating the buzzing of the bee, the ticking of the clock, the crackling of lire, and the frying of butter. Monsieur Alexandre, he said himself, had no little influence upon the success of the literary exchanges of M. Vattemare. “When the latter failed to interest the attention or gain admission to important personages, the former took the place and carried the day.’ There was, however, something touchingthe confession of a feeling of inferiority—in his remark that “Monsieur Alexandre was dead, never to rise again,” and that “ Vattemare’s children had never heard Alexandre.”

He brought with him the facsimile of an album filled with the autographs of famous men and women of all nations. There were letters from Lafayette, Thomas Moore, the Dowager Queen of England, and scores of others. As they went through the album, Vattemare would tell his hostess innumerable anecdotes. It was rather exciting to hear on Beacon Hill bow the Emperor of Austria had sent him the flowers which he and Madame happened to admire on a walk in the palace gardens; how Nicholas, the handsome Emperor of Russia, rode the side of his carriage to hear him tell a story.

But his talk about the literary people of Paris was perhaps even more fascinating. In a drawing room one does not need to be eloquent; so he spoke with casual frankness. Chateaubriand he called the worst spendthrift who ever lived, and the vainest of men too with the single exception of Lamartine, who was “the incarnation of egotism and vanity. Before he left France, all the celebrated authors gave him copies of their works to take for exchange to America. Lamartine alone declined. “If the Americans want my books, they may buy them, he said phlegmatically. But in spite of these shortcomings, Vattemare always admired in him the poet. Victor Hugo, George Sand, and “others of that class offered him, of course, plenty of their books, but he refused to take them. Vattemare was a thoroughly respectable man who could not approve of the loose life and crazy Views of those bohemians. George Sand, he said (and ladies in Boston liked to hear of George Sand), he had never seen in woman’s dress but twice.

From pleasant gossip he would suddenly shift to the topic of international exchanges. Life was not all pleasure for him, and he often complained of the impossibility of making people “ understand.” In certain quarters his early profession could not be forgotten. There they looked upon “the bumble missionary of the intellectual union of nations” (as he called himself) with skepticism, and there were even murmurings that he was a charlatan.

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NEVERTHELESS, gifts of books and money were rapidly accumulating; the Library, without people’s noticing it. was already there. In May, 1852, Mayor Seaver appointed the first Board of Trustees, and finally in October a city ordinance gave a definite form to the institution. That same month a letter was received from Joshua Bates, senior member of Baring Brothers in London and once a poor Boston boy, offering fifty thousand dollars to buy “all the necessary books.” The Library was finally opened on March 20, 1854, on the ground floor of the Adams School-house on Mason Street.

Vattemare continued his work in Baris with unabated vigor. His books came in ever-increasing numbers not only to Boston but also to other cities in America as well as Europe. His “intellectual federation, he assured the Belgian Academy in 1853, was extended to “almost all the governments the two hemispheres. He had brought by then one hundred and thirty libraries within the scope of his operations. The “Agence Central des Échanges Internationaux,”56 rue do Clichy, was a flourishing enterprise.

He never came to America again. His interest in things American, however, did not diminish. And Boston remained especially dear to his heart. The Library was now a reality, and he rejoiced to hear about its progress. He did not claim any merit for himself. “If the steed planted has produced an abundant harvest, it is only to be attributed to the nature of the soil,”he wrote to Josiah Quincy, Jr. He pointed rather to the “generous patriotism of Messrs. Bates, Phillips, Ticknor, Edward Everett and other noble sons of Massachusetts.”

Time worked against Vattemare. His idea was good — it was accepted and practiced in full. But as the years went on, there was less need for the services of the originator. The Smithsonian Institution took over the distribution of scientific publications, and the libraries became more and more dependent upon professional book dealers. Then came the Civil War, and amidst its tumults the “Échanges Internationaux" passed into oblivion.

When Vattemare died in 1864, at the age of sixtyseven, the papers reported it in a single paragraph.