The Admiral and the Ambassador (12 page)

A short time later, the
Bonhomme Richard
fell quiet. A rumor ran through the British command that the Americans had “asked for quarter” and “struck,” that is, surrendered. Pearson yelled to Jones for confirmation but received no reply. Pearson ordered his crew to board the other ship, but once the sailors were on deck and exposed, Jones's men, carrying sharp pikes, emerged from hiding spots and swung away, killing several and forcing the rest to scamper back to the
Serapis.
Amid the renewed fighting, Jones's men kept firing small cannonballs at the
Serapis's
main mast, which began to creak and crack. A short time later, his ship ablaze and his cannons useless, Pearson—believing incorrectly that the
Alliance
was also trying to sink his ship—surrendered.

Jones had won the battle, but he lost his ship and a greater portion of his men as well. Efforts to save the
Bonhomme Richard
failed, and she sank into the North Sea. Jones reported 150 of his 322 men dead or wounded; Pearson, who had about 325 men, lost 49, with another 68 wounded. More would die over the next few weeks from their wounds or infections. And while Pearson lost the naval battle and two ships (the
Pallas
had taken the
Countess of Scarborough),
the convoy he was assigned to protect escaped unscathed.

Jones and his small fleet arrived at a port on the small Dutch island of Texel on October 3, 1779, four days after the battle. The British quickly
learned of his presence and blockaded the harbor; they pressed the Dutch, who were neutral in the war, to return their ships and captured crewmen and order Jones to sail from Texel and, presumably, into their waiting blockade. The French intervened, arguing that Jones's squadron consisted of French ships, and suggested that turning them over to the British would insult the French king, a not-so-veiled threat of retaliation. As the diplomats wrangled, Jones's crew worked to get the ships seaworthy; Jones himself traveled to Amsterdam, where he was feted as a hero. Landais went on to Paris, where Benjamin Franklin had already received reports from Jones and crew members of both the
Bonhomme Richard
and the
Alliance
of his treachery at sea, and Landais was eventually bounced from the navy.

Jones, though, was hailed as a hero, and as word spread of the unlikely victory of the outgunned
Bonhomme Richard
against the
Serapis,
Jones's reputation grew.

I
T TOOK THE
S
T.
P
AUL
a week to reach England, and Porter, who had turned sixty just a month earlier, spent a lot of the crossing thinking about his upcoming role as the US ambassador to France. Thinking, in fact, about what the proper role of an ambassador should be.
¹
It was a fairly new job in the American diplomatic corps. In the years after the Civil War, being an American emissary was little more than a patronage scheme, a place for the well connected and the adventurous to enrich themselves in the name of the US government.

In 1893, the State Department was reorganized as the United States began paying more attention to foreign relations and to its place in the world. Until then, the highest possible rank available to an American emissary was minister, which in the world of international protocol was a rung down the ladder from an ambassador, who traditionally represented royal courts. By now declaring their top diplomats ambassadors, the US government put its representatives on equal footing in foreign capitals with
emissaries from the great nations of Europe and around the globe. It was as though the upstarts from the New World were inviting themselves to the adult table.

President Cleveland opened the first American embassies in England, Germany, Italy, and France, where the United States had stationed a representative ever since Benjamin Franklin arrived to persuade Louis XVI to side with the colonial rebels against France's recurring enemy, Britain. The first representative to hold the new rank of ambassador was Thomas F. Bayard, whom President Cleveland sent to London just a few weeks before he appointed James B. Eustis—the man Porter was replacing—to France. Porter understood the significance of the job he was undertaking. He would be the connection between the US government and that of France, the nation's oldest ally, as well as a link between old Europe and new America. He also saw his role as representing American industry and pursuing policies and lobbying efforts that would improve trade between US businesses and France, as well as the rest of Europe. And he had to act and live accordingly.
²

The
St. Paul
arrived in Southampton, England, on the afternoon of May 12, 1897. Porter's wife, Sophie, and daughter, Elsie, went on to London, where they planned to spend a month touring and visiting friends while Porter settled into his office in Paris. The ambassador spent the evening at the port, then boarded a midnight steamship from Southampton to Havre, where he transferred to a train and arrived in Paris late in the morning on May 13. It's unclear whether John Gowdy, who also sailed on the
St. Paul
to assume his post as consul general, was on the same train, but he arrived in Paris around the same day.

Porter was met on the platform by a small party of fellow Americans led by Eustis, the departing ambassador, who was a Confederate war veteran and former US senator from Louisiana.
³
The welcoming party also included two other Confederate veterans: the embassy's first secretary, Henry Vignaud, another Louisianan who first went to Paris in 1862 as an aide to the Confederate minister to France, and Arthur Bailly-Blanchard, a New Orleans native who did occasional work for the embassy. A smattering of other embassy officials and Americans living or working in Paris at the time were there too, including former Union army general Edward Winslow, an
old friend of Porter's who had agreed to host the new ambassador while he searched for a home of his own. And that would prove to be no easy task.

The American embassy occupied part of a five-story building at 59 Rue Galilée, a narrow cross street a few blocks southeast of where the Arc de Triomphe anchored the western end of the Champs-Élysées. The embassy was all offices, with no living quarters for the ambassador, a function of the US government's policy to not provide housing for its emissaries. And it was much too small for the staff. Weeks before Porter stepped aboard the
St. Paul
to sail to Europe, Vignaud, the embassy's first secretary, had written him about the need for more space. Porter agreed. “When I last saw the office rooms they did not appear to be in keeping with the dignity of the Embassy,” Porter had replied. “I appreciate the importance of moving promptly in the matter, and I have no doubt with your intimate knowledge of all the requirements you will be able to select eligible new quarters. I should think that they ought not to be a great distance from the present location, as Americans have been accustomed to finding the Embassy in that part of the city.”
⁴

Vignaud eventually found larger space in a five-story building at 18 Avenue Kleber, some five hundred yards west of the existing embassy and still near the Arc de Triomphe. Porter quickly approved Vignaud's selection and made the pitch to the secretary of state, John Sherman, in Washington. “The new quarters will consist of a suite of rooms on the ground floor and a very large apartment on the second floor in a house,” which he described as being on “one of the finest streets in this part of Paris.” In addition, he declared that it was “by far the best quarters to be found for anything like the price of 8,000 francs per year. The present quarters were not fit for a legation and are totally inadequate for an Embassy. There is not even space for the archives and the rooms do not rise to the dignity of the ‘shabby genteel.' The new location will be a matter of congratulation to all who have had to visit the present offices.” Sherman wired back that he approved, though he told Porter that regulations barred leases longer than two years.
⁵

Porter also decided that the US ambassador's residence needed to be grand, an emblem of wealth and success, and large enough to host receptions and other diplomatic social obligations. So his first efforts after
arriving in Paris were focused less on representing the United States than on meeting with brokers, inspecting buildings, and trying to fight off the inflated prices he was quoted once it was learned the potential renter was the new American ambassador.

It took more than a month, but Porter eventually found the right spot, a mansion at 33 Rue de Villejust, a short street linking Avenue Victor Hugo and Avenue Bois de Boulogne just three blocks southwest of the Arc de Triomphe. Porter thought the space was perfect for what he wanted: big and roomy, it exuded a sense of contemporary wealth, with enough trappings of old Europe to give visitors a sense that this was the home of a serious man. Porter was leery of European prejudices against Americans, who were seen as brash, uncouth, money-hungry upstarts. Porter sought to project an image of modernity and business competence, but also of long-term stability. And he paid for it out of his own pocket, an annual rate about equal to his ambassadorial salary of $17,500—which meant the wealthy one-time railroad executive and former presidential aide was essentially working for free.

The mansion was in the heart of the upper-class sixteenth arrondissement, which was the anchor of the expatriate American colony and home to a few notable French as well. Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot and her husband, Eugène Manet, younger brother to painter Édouard Manet, had lived up the street until their deaths a few years earlier. The place “suits me to a T,” Porter wrote. “The reception floor is as large as the entire second floor of Union League Club and with the garden etc. it enables me to receive any number of people.”
⁶
The building and grounds had been owned and renovated by art dealer Frederic Spitzer, who died in 1890 after amassing one of France's premier private collections of art and medieval relics (and restoring many objects—with subsequent controversy over whether some of the items he sold were forgeries). A portion of the collection was still in the mansion and included in the rental agreement. “I raked this city with a fine-toothed comb to find a house into which I would not be ashamed to take the folks when they come to see me…. It is in the best quarter of the city, has no end of rooms for receptions, is filled with old tapestries, interesting old art objects, etc., so that I am very fortunate in a matter really so important in this Capital.”
⁷

The Porters moved into the Spitzer mansion in time to host a formal reception on the eve of the American Fourth of July celebration, relatively
meaningless to the French but significant for the expatriate community in Paris. In a sense, it was a coming-out party for the new ambassador. Following the directions of the French protocol office, Porter invited top French officials as well as all the ambassadors in residence in Paris and their families. Porter, to send a message of independence, also broke with protocol and invited another two hundred expatriate American families, bringing the top businessmen into close contact not only with French officials but also with the top delegates from other countries represented in France. Some 1,500 people ultimately were invited, and they streamed into the mansion, the most notable couples pausing to be announced by “a tall, pompous man in black, with knee-breeches, a silver chain around his neck, a rod in his hand and a voice like a megaphone.”
⁸
Porter and his wife waited on a landing of the sweeping staircase to greet each arriving guest as they passed through the large
salle d'armes
and then on up to the main ballroom on the second floor. Porter wore a deep-black suit; Sophie was in a white satin dress with silver accents, wearing “diamonds around her neck and in her hair.” They made for an impressive-looking couple.

Two days later, the Porters hosted a second, less formal reception celebrating American independence, to which, via newspaper ads, they invited every American living in Paris at the time. “His house is splendid—the finest any of our representatives have ever had here, and the American colony is tickled to death,” William S. Sims, the embassy's naval attaché, wrote to his mother. “General Porter saws wood [note: Sims used the expression to mean “works hard”] and doesn't bother anybody. Mrs. Porter is very nice. The daughter is a ‘kid' of 17 and a right good-looking girl. None of them speak French well, unfortunately, but you needn't say I said so.”
⁹
More than two thousand people streamed through the Porters' new residence and small grounds that day. “They all had something to eat and drink and wound up with a dance and were set ahead about ten years in their patriotism,” the ambassador later bragged to Hanna.
¹⁰
The Porters had indeed arrived.