Voyage du General La Fayette
Translated by Norman Desmarais, 2025
click this link to download the book in .pdf format
Voyage du General La Fayette - entire book - with new index - July 2025.pdf
About this book:
The genesis of this American Friends of Lafayette publication came in January 2024 when AFL member Peter Reilly sent me an electronic file of a book about Lafayette’s 1824-1825 grand tour. It was written in French and, we learned later, had never been translated into English. I thought it would be a great virtual addition to the goody bags that our New York City planning committee will give AFL attendees at the kick-off of the Farewell Tour Bicentennial on August 15th.
I consulted Dr. Robert Rhodes Crout, AFL President Emeritus. Robert, who has been studying Lafayette for his entire professional life, filled me in on the backstory of this book. I knew from my work translating Auguste Levasseur’s Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825 that Lafayette brought his secretary – Auguste Levasseur – along on the tour for the purpose of sending dispatches back to France to be published in friendly newspapers and journals. The purpose of these reports would have been to demonstrate the success of the American experiment in republicanism and to influence French public opinion in favor of the liberals who had been soundly defeated in the election of 1824. However, the ultraroyalist French government was in no mood to permit this and censored these reports in the periodic press.
As an alternative, Lafayette and Levasseur turned to the vehicle of a book about the Farewell Tour to be published as soon as possible. The authors – Charles Ogé Barbaroux and Joseph Alexandre Lardier – produced this work in four parts, which were published in seriatim, and the entire work was published in 1826. Levasseur had sent not only reports of his personal observations, but newspaper accounts of many Farewell Tour events to Lafayette’s family. It is likely that the family negotiated with Barbaroux and transferred Levasseur’s materials to him. Lardier was probably engaged for his knowledge of English and was assigned the task of translating the newspaper accounts from American papers into French.
As part of my due diligence, I sight-read several passages of the book about Lafayette’s visits to places that I was very familiar with and found them both readable and accurate.
Thus, it was that I concluded that the translation and publication of General Lafayette’s Journey to the United States of America in 1824 and 1825 would be a worthy project for the American Friends of Lafayette to undertake as well as being in the tradition of its history of producing scholarly publications periodically.
The next steps were to locate and engage a translator to work on the project and to obtain funding for their services. I reached out to Norman Desmarais of Rhode Island. He is a respected scholar, author, and translator and has worked on translations from this period. Once we had received his proposal, we had to raise the funding. This was made easy because two generous AFL members – Peter Reilly and John Becica – each agreed to fund half of the translator’s fee.
Norman Desmarais was an excellent choice for this project. He was extremely competent and amazingly efficient, sending me parts of the book to review in rapid-fire succession. Knowing how long it took me to translate Levasseur’s book, I was astounded by his pace! Norman was also a pleasure to work with as he reviewed and discussed the edits that I and my co-editor Jan O’Sullivan were proposing. The editing process was both time-consuming and exhaustive. It involved referring to the original French language as well as its style, and then wordsmithing – informed to some extent by my prior knowledge of Levasseur’s book and the Farewell Tour. My colleague, Jan O’Sullivan, played a key role in the editing process.
Unlike the 1826 French book, our translation contains an index! Eleanor Smith, our Serving the City intern from Fordham University, created the index.
While publication at the commencement of the Farewell Tour Bicentennial is surely timely, we think the publication of this first English translation of General Lafayette’s Journey to the United States of America in 1824 and 1825 at any time would be an important event. First, as it is one of a handful of books that purport to be a comprehensive account of Lafayette’s tour. Edgar Ewing Brandon’s five volumes, Levasseur’s book, Marian Klamkin’s The Return of Lafayette 1824-1825, and Jane Bacon MacIntire’s Lafayette, the Guest of the Nation come to mind. Second, the sources on which the authors relied – newspaper accounts likely provided by Lafayette’s secretary, and Levasseur’s own descriptions – are both contemporary and first-hand. As to stories that clearly came from Levasseur, they are generally similar, occasionally almost identical, to Levasseur’s version, although I noticed a few differences in the stories both books tell. Third, the authors in their introduction and in various other places in the book provide an interesting and contemporary perspective on the state of France and the differences between America and Europe at the time of Lafayette’s triumphal tour.
- Alan R. Hoffman
President, AFL
August 14, 2024