Ventriloquist Vattemare

Vattemare biography from the BPL site

I got to wondering about how a successful French ventriloquist ended up founding the Boston Public Library.  Why did he even care about a library in America?  It’s another delicious library story.

In the late 1700s divorce by mutual consent in France was legal and Alexandre Vattemare’s parents took full advantage of the situation to marry three times - each.  If you got confused by the Brady Bunch, imagine blending six families.  It is not surprising that Alexandre’s childhood in Lisieux, France was unsettled and unhappy.  

According to Suzanne Nash’s article Alexandre Vattemare:  A 19th Century Story, when Alex was quite young he discovered he had a special gift that made him the center of attention and he used it, annoyingly, at every opportunity. His gift was making his voice come from outside sources or, ventriloquism.  He sure knew how to have fun with it.  Later in life he recalled some of his best tricks:

“cries of a drowning man being swept away by the current that brought crowds of Lisieux’s inhabitants with barges to drag the bottom of the river; cries of a voice in the chimney and cupboards and haystacks of neighbouring farms that the superstitious rustics believed to be the Devil or souls trapped in Purgatory; cries of a dead relative out of the embers of a fire that inspired the local curate to sprinkle the hearth with holy water.”

And he especially enjoyed tormenting his father by imitating the voice of the mailman when his father was expecting important letters.

His six parents, not surprisingly, sent him off to the seminary to straighten out.  He was promptly kicked out.  

Next stop was medical school where he excelled and was made a medical assistant at 16.  But after making the cadavers “talk” one time too many he was refused a diploma there as well.  Thanks to a shortage of doctors, Vattemare did work as a doctor and was sent to Germany with Prussian prisoners.  
By 1815, Napoleon was defeated and Vattemare’s father was dead.  Alexandre needed money and made a career change.  He decided to turn his boyhood talent into a road show and headed out across Europe.  

Nash writes that he became “M. Alexandre, Ventriloque et Gentilhomme” an “itinerant actor, playwright, self-styled aristocrat, and citizen of the world...he brought surprise, hilarity, and healing self-awareness to over 550 cities of Europe with satirical shows in which he single-handedly impersonated as many as ten separate characters in one play.”  His entertainment career lasted for 20 years, during which time he performed at all the Courts, including Queen Victoria’s and Nicholas I.  

Just like rock bands shout out to the locals, Vattemare loved adding a local twist to his nightly shows.  When he got into a new town he headed to the library or museum to do a little research.  That’s when he began to notice “doubles” of books and artifacts in some towns and large gaps in others.  He began keeping a list of what he saw and then, thanks to his great fortune, began a grand collection of his own.

In 1830 Vattemare acted on his idea of sharing materials for the greater public good and started travelling back to the courts he visited as a performer to spread his vision for cultural exchange.  His motto was, “Recevoir de ceux qui ont, pour remettre à ceux qui n’ont pas” which is loosely translated as “receive from those who have and give to those who don’t”.  Which brings us back to where we started with yesterday’s entry.

And that is how a neglected and rambunctious French kid turned into a world famous ventriloquist who became the Robin Hood of libraries and a founder of the Boston Public Library.

Vattemare's Vision

Vattemere, from the BPL website

If Alexandre Vattemare were alive today he might have felt a little smug about his life’s work but, unfortunately, his ideas about cultural exchange were about a century and a half ahead of their time and he is only now getting some of the recognition he deserved.  

Vattemare was a Frenchman, born in 1796,  and a founding father of the Boston Public Library.   BPL’s website notes that he was an, “ advocate of the establishment of a public library in Boston...after 1827 devoted his time and private fortune to the promotion of a system of international exchange of books.”  While this is true, there is a little more to the story, revealed in a biographical article written by Suzanne Nash, entitled Alexandre Vattemare:  A 19th Century Story.

Vattemare’s dream was to set up a public institution for the “universal dissemination” of culture.  For 25 years, he travelled around the world sharing his obsession of linking cultural institutions together to share  their prized possessions and, hopefully, spread a little understanding.   

At first he travelled around Europe and got letters of agreement from Prussia, Bavaria, Austria, Holland, Belgium and Russia, but in his home country of France, they only agreed with his vision on paper.  He was brushed off and stalled by the French Government so many times that he finally set up a private office and took off on his own to share and collect.  

But he found the most receptive group in the United States and Canada.  All thirteen original colonies were eager to share the documents that represented their culture and handed over books, maps, artwork and cultural objects along with money to support his mission.  Philadelphia presented him with a copy of the Constitution and John S. Meehan, head Librarian of Congress,  said that Vattemare’s "legacy would be honored and respected by countries around the world."  Vattemare hauled his treasures back to Paris to create an American Library in Paris.

This was the quest that led Vattemare to Boston in 1840 where he encouraged the small, separate libraries of Boston to come together as one to serve the public and eliminate duplicate books and treasures (that could then be shared with other places!).  The libraries weren’t interested, while it was a nice idea, they were happy with the status quo and weren’t that interested in sharing their hallowed grounds with the unwashed masses.  

But the Mayor of Boston, Josiah Quincy, was interested.  Josiah and his family became close friends of Vattemare, who stayed at Quincy’s home while in Boston.  Josiah Quincy believed enough to make the first donation to begin a public library, $5,000, contingent on a $10,000 donation by the city and the requirement that “the library should be as fully used by all, as may be consistent with the safe-keeping of the property."

Quincy’s contribution and Vattemare’s exchange of French books in 1843, 1847 and 1849 were catalysts that led to the birth of the Boston Public Library on March 20, 1854.   It was Quincy’s son who was responsible, twenty years after Vattemare’s death,  for a plaque commemorating Vattemare’s founding role in the BPL in the entrance hall.  

By the time BPL was lending out books,  Vattemare’s project was finding success.  Thousands of books, coins, engravings, letters, official documents and drawings had been exchanged between the U.S., France and Canada.  In 1848 Vattemare received the backing of the Congress who agreed to pay him almost $6,000 a year to continue his work and by 1860 he was responsible for  300,000 volumes of material travelling to new lands.

But Vattemare’s story is not a simple one...he was not the average philanthropist on a mission to “do good”, and his fortune did not come as a result of banking, railroads or nobility but as a world famous ventriloquist...