With Americans of Past and Present Days — Text and Context

A Diplomat's Eye for Detail

Jusserand's prose is marked by a diplomat's precision and a historian's relish for the telling fact. In the dedication, he notes that during his thirteen years in Washington, the United States added "something like one-fourth or one-fifth of the population," the number of states rose from forty-five to forty-eight, and the Panama Canal "was not yet American." He lists vanished luminaries—La Farge, McKim, Saint-Gaudens, William James, Mark Twain—as if cataloging a lost world. This habit of enumeration, of measuring change by increments, recurs throughout the book. When describing L'Enfant's dismissal, Jusserand quotes Washington's letter to the Commissioners verbatim: "It having been found impracticable to employ Major L'Enfant in that degree of subordination which was lawful and proper." The author lets the official language speak for itself, trusting the reader to hear the finality in Jefferson's phrasing.

The Voice of L'Enfant's Ambition

Jusserand's portrait of Pierre Charles L'Enfant is built around a recurring French phrase: en grand. He writes that L'Enfant had a "same tendency to ever see things 'en grand,'" and later, describing the financier Robert Morris's mansion, notes that L'Enfant did things "'en plus grand' than even the financier had dreamed." This repetition becomes a stylistic signature, underscoring the architect's grandiosity and his inability to compromise. Jusserand also weaves in L'Enfant's own words through letters: Morris's plaintive plea, "Dear Sir, I had like to have stopped my house for fear of wanting money; that difficulty being removed, it will now be stopped for want of Major L'Enfant," captures both the architect's genius and his impracticality. The author does not moralize; he lets the correspondence reveal character.

Washington as Correspondent and Manager

Jusserand presents George Washington not as a marble icon but as a manager of men, revealed through his letters. He quotes Washington writing to the Commissioners about a landowner whose house had "contrary to expectation, fallen into a principal street," adding dryly, "But I hope the major does not mean to proceed to the demolition of this also." The humor is understated, the tone of a patient administrator. Elsewhere, Washington notes that L'Enfant "is performing wonders at the new town of Paterson," a phrase Jusserand uses to show Washington's continued goodwill even after friction. The author's method is to let Washington's own diction—practical, occasionally wry—define him, rather than imposing a biographical gloss. This restraint gives the portrait authenticity.

Structure as Argument: The Dedication as Microcosm

The book's opening dedication is not a mere courtesy but a miniature of Jusserand's entire approach. He begins with a specific date—"This day, thirteen years ago"—and moves through a series of concrete observations: the first conversation with Roosevelt, the presence of John Hay ("author of the 'Pike County Ballads' and of the Life of Lincoln"), the childhood memory of Cooper's Deerslayer. Each detail is chosen to illustrate a theme: the intertwining of French and American histories, the importance of personal encounter, the way national character reveals itself in everyday life. Jusserand then lists the changes he has witnessed—population, states, commerce, navy, technology—as if taking stock of a nation's growth. This structure, moving from the personal to the statistical, mirrors the book's larger movement from anecdote to analysis.

Jusserand's essays reward readers who attend to the texture of his language—the repeated French phrases, the quoted letters, the precise enumeration of change. He writes as a foreign observer who has earned the right to comment, having witnessed over a decade of American life. His perspective is neither adulatory nor critical; it is curious, patient, and grounded in evidence. Readers interested in the craft of historical portraiture will find here a model of how to let documents and details speak for themselves, without forcing a thesis.

I keep thinking of Jusserand’s patient, formal gaze, how he saw Americans through a Frenchman’s kindness. It reminded me, oddly, of my grandfather’s letter from 1944—thin paper, careful handwriting, full of quiet duty. Then I recalled Carry On: Letters in War-Time — Reading Notes, where letters became small lanterns in the dark, and both books felt like the same memory: someone far from home, choosing their words with love.