Many sides of Marquis de Lafayette celebrated in exhibit

Illustration by Stephen Rokitka/University Communications

The life of a French aristocrat soldier who achieved folk-hero status for his service in the Revolutionary War is brought to life in a new exhibition, "Lafayette: Citizen of Two Worlds," opening Sept. 25 in the Carl A. Kroch Library's Hirshland Gallery, with a reception at 4:30 p.m. The exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of Lafayette's birth on Sept. 6.

With 11,000 items, Cornell's Lafayette collection is the largest outside France. The exhibition includes Lafayette's marriage contract (he was 15, she 13); his life mask; a bayonet excavated at the site of the battle of Saratoga; and correspondence with such luminaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Shelley and James Fenimore Cooper.

The collection's earliest Lafayette letter, written when he was an adolescent in 1772, mentions a ball with Marie-Antoinette and Versailles court gossip. The last, in 1834, is addressed to an abolitionist society.

"The letters show the progression of his life from courtier, a blueblood rich boy [to someone] interested in global politics and new ideas of freedom and civic equality," says curator Laurent Ferri. Part of his military service was motivated by a desire to avenge his father's death at the hands of the British, when Lafayette was 2 years old.

In France, public opinion turned against Lafayette when he continued to support the constitutional monarchy instead of the creation of a republic and then emigrated as the French Revolution raged. But even before that he had been denounced as a traitor, and worse. Radical newspapers called for his life. This led Lafayette to launch a public relations offensive, an effort he continued throughout his life. Today Lafayette remains relatively unpopular among the French left.

Laurent Ferri, Katherine Reagan and Margaret Nichols
Jason Koski/University Photography
From left, Laurent Ferri, Katherine Reagan and Margaret Nichols examine a page from the Lafayette exhibition catalog.
Jason Koski/University Photography
The French side of the Lafayette exhibition's bilingual catalog.

"The exhibition explores many themes," says Katherine Reagan, the Ernest L. Stern Curator of Rare Books at Cornell University Library. "Cornell's Lafayette Collection illustrates the wide range of issues in which Lafayette concerned himself: the status of women, the abolition of slavery, the right to self-determination of Greece, Poland and South America, and of course, the French and American revolutions."

During his two-year tour of the United States beginning in 1824, Lafayette made himself available for adoration from a populace eager to celebrate his contributions to the success of the Revolutionary War -- 33 U.S. cities and towns took his name.

Ferri, who hails from Lyons, France, sums Lafayette up as "complex, sometimes baffling, and sometimes disappointing. He was a general at 21, brave and generous -- he gave a lot of money to the American Congress in the 1780s and to liberal exiles from all over the world after 1800. But ... you don't become somebody just because of your personal skills. It's also your connections, your longevity, circumstances, money and the management of your own image, something Lafayette was quite good at."

When Lafayette died in 1834, the stars and stripes were raised over his grave in Paris' Picpus Cemetery and have continued to fly there since, even during the Nazi occupation in World War II. Since 1897 the flag has been replaced at the grave site every July 4. In 2002, the U.S. Congress conferred honorary citizenship on Lafayette, "who gave aid to the United States in a time of need," one of only six foreign citizens so recognized.

Other events on campus celebrating the 250th anniversary of Lafayette's birth: two Lafayette-related films, Oct.1 and Oct. 14, at Cornell Cinema; a pianoforte concert by graduate student Damien-Gerard Mahiet, with recitations by Marie -Claire Vallois, Cornell associate professor of Romance studies, Oct. 20 and 21, in the A.D. White House; and a lecture, "Lafayette and the Emergence of American National Identity," by University of North Carolina scholar Lloyd Kramer, Oct. 30.

For more information and a complete online version of the exhibition, also opening Sept. 25, visit http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/lafayette/.

 

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