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Exiled: The Last Days of Sam Houston by Ron Rozelle
Journal of Southern History Pub Date : 2019-01-01 , DOI: 10.1353/soh.2019.0113
Paul D. Travis

the University Press of Kentucky. Runyon, professor emeritus at Miami University, has focused his career on nineteenthand twentieth-century American cultural history. His resume includes books on poet-authors Robert Penn Warren and Raymond Carver, abolitionist Delia Webster, and French philosopher Michel de Montaigne. In this newwork, Runyon uses the recently digitized papers of Constance de Salm, as well as several depositories in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri, to examine in detail the lives of Augustus Waldemar and Charlotte Victoire Mentelle. Particularly, he focuses on their associations withMary Todd Lincoln and Henry Clay, claiming early on that his sole purpose in writing the book “is to provide as full an answer as we are likely to have to the question, whowas this woman who was such an important figure in her [Mary Todd Lincoln’s] life?” (p. 2). In chronicling their lives, Runyon is careful not to paint the Mentelles in a hagiographic light—a trap easy to fall into given that he is a descendant of their daughter Lucretia. Their association with the famous figures of American history, he claims, did not make them any more deferential to them—their private letters reveal much disdain for their American neighbors—and the connections are not nearly as fascinating as the Mentelles’ own story of immigration to and survival in America. Far from fleeing revolutionary France, as the Mentelles claimed, the true reason for their immigration originated with their strained relationships with their parents, Runyon writes, as well as their fostering a child out of wedlock—facts that would have shocked their Kentucky neighbors. Waldemar, unable to devote himself to a trade or profession, was pressured by his parents to leave France for America but drifted about for years before arriving in the early 1790s at the French community of Gallipolis in Ohio. Charlotte joined him there a few years later. From there, they migrated to Kentucky, eventually landing in Lexington, where Waldemar experienced a tumultuous professional career, while Charlotte’s French boarding school attracted the attention of the well-to-do of Lexington society. Runyon’s work is an excellent social history in that it studies the impact of ordinary people on otherwise extraordinary ones. As one reads this book, the question naturally arises, would we know about the Mentelles save for the important men and women whose lives they touched? Perhaps not, but that is beside the point. By stressing the Mentelles’ importance to their cultural educations, Mary Todd Lincoln and Henry Clay made sure that historians would know the names of Waldemar and Charlotte Mentelle.

中文翻译:

流放:山姆·休斯顿的末日 作者:罗恩·罗泽尔

肯塔基大学出版社。Runyon 是迈阿密大学的名誉教授,他的职业生涯专注于 19 世纪 20 世纪的美国文化史。他的简历包括关于诗人作家罗伯特·佩恩·沃伦和雷蒙德·卡佛、废奴主义者迪莉娅·韦伯斯特和法国哲学家米歇尔·德·蒙田的书籍。在这部新作品中,Runyon 使用康斯坦斯·德·萨尔姆 (Constance de Salm) 最近数字化的论文,以及田纳西州、肯塔基州和密苏里州的几个储藏室,详细研究了奥古斯都·瓦尔德玛 (Augustus Waldemar) 和夏洛特·维克托瓦·门特尔 (Charlotte Victoire Mentelle) 的生平。特别是,他关注他们与玛丽·托德·林肯和亨利·克莱的联系,很早就声称他写这本书的唯一目的“是提供我们可能对这个问题尽可能完整的答案,这个在她(玛丽·托德·林肯)的生活中扮演如此重要角色的女人是谁?” (第 2 页)。在记录他们的生活时,Runyon 小心翼翼地不要用圣徒式的光来描绘 Mentelles——鉴于他是他们女儿 Lucretia 的后代,这很容易陷入陷阱。他声称,他们与美国历史上著名人物的联系并没有使他们对他们更加恭顺——他们的私人信件显示出对他们美国邻居的蔑视——而且这种联系远没有门泰尔自己的移民故事那么迷人到美国并在美国生存。鲁尼恩写道,他们移民的真正原因远不是像孟特勒斯声称的那样逃离革命的法国,而是源于他们与父母的紧张关系,以及他们非婚生养一个孩子——这些事实会让他们的肯塔基州邻居感到震惊。Waldemar 无法投身于贸易或职业,在父母的压力下离开法国前往美国,但在 1790 年代初抵达俄亥俄州加利波利斯的法国社区之前,他漂泊了多年。几年后,夏洛特加入了他。从那里,他们移居肯塔基州,最终抵达列克星敦,在那里瓦尔德玛经历了动荡的职业生涯,而夏洛特的法国寄宿学校则吸引了列克星敦社会富裕阶层的注意。鲁尼恩的作品是一部出色的社会史,因为它研究了普通人对其他非凡人的影响。读这本书的时候,问题自然而然地出现了,除了他们所触及的重要男女之外,我们会知道 Mentelles 吗?也许不是,但这无关紧要。玛丽·托德·林肯 (Mary Todd Lincoln) 和亨利·克莱 (Henry Clay) 通过强调门特尔家族对其文化教育的重要性,确保历史学家知道瓦尔德玛 (Waldemar) 和夏洛特·门特尔 (Charlotte Mentelle) 的名字。
更新日期:2019-01-01
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