Read The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris for Free Online

over the rough stones, this rumbling of the omnibuses. For the street cries—one might have relief from them by file and handsaw.
     
    Even as the famous bridges on the Seine, the splendors of gardens and palaces and the gilded dome of the Invalides came into view, the close proximity of such appalling poverty and immeasurable riches was both startling and unsettling. After years of living in Paris, James Fenimore Cooper said he still struggled to adjust to a country comprised of “dirt and gilding … bedbugs and laces.”
    Many, like Emma Willard, arrived so utterly exhausted that under the circumstances little if anything could have pleased them. Gone was any trace of the “sublimity” she had felt at the cathedral in Rouen. “We were amidst dirt and disorder, fatigued … and strange eyes seemed to glare upon us.”
    But the famous allure and vitality of the great city won them over soon enough. Never in their lives had the Americans seen such parks and palaces, or such beautiful bridges or so many bridges. Or so many people ofevery kind. For those staying at the best hotels, such comforts and attentions as awaited them almost immediately, magically alleviated whatever initial disappointment they had felt.
    To Nathaniel Willis the Hôtel des Étrangers on the rue Vivienne was everything the weary traveler longed for. Arriving in the rain at mid-morning after a long night on the road, he was shown every courtesy, including his choice of several “quite pretty” rooms. The beds were surely the best in the world, he thought. “Five mattresses are successively piled on an elegant mahogany bedstead” to a thickness of eighteen inches. The pillow was “a masterpiece.” There was simply no “opiate” like a French pillow. Then followed a breakfast that carried the day:
There are few things bought with money that are more delightful than a French breakfast. If you take it at your room, it appears in the shape of two small vessels, one of coffee and one of hot milk, two kinds of bread, with a thin, printed slice of butter, and one or two of some thirty dishes from which you can choose, the latter flavored exquisitely enough to make one wish to be always at breakfast, but cooked and composed I know not how or of what. The coffee has an aroma peculiarly exquisite, something quite different than any I have ever tasted before; and the
petit pain
, a slender biscuit between bread and cake, is, when crisp and warm, a delightful accompaniment.
     
    And the cost was a third that of steak and coffee at home and the civility of the service worth three times the money.
    The location on the bustling rue Vivienne was ideal. The Palais Royal, with all its famous enticements, the Louvre, and the Garden of the Tuileries were only a little way down the street, southward toward the Seine. Up the street in the other direction was the Bourse, which with its grandiose Doric columns looked more like a palace or temple than what it was, a stock exchange.
    Best of all, Galignani’s, the English bookstore and reading room, a favoritegathering place, stood across the street from the hotel. There one could pass long, comfortable hours with a great array of English and even American newspapers. Parisians were as avid readers of newspapers as any people on earth. Some thirty-four daily papers were published in Paris, and many of these, too, were to be found spread across several large tables. The favorite English-language paper was Galignani’s own
Messenger
, with morning and evening editions Monday through Friday. For the newly arrived Americans, after more than a month with no news of any kind, these and the American papers were pure gold.
    Of the several circulating libraries in Paris, only Galignani’s carried books in English, and indispensable was
Galignani’s New Paris Guide
in English. Few Americans went without this thick little leather-bound volume, fully 839 pages of invaluable insights and information, plus maps.
    Like Nathaniel