Paris: With Pen and Pencil Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business — A Reader’s Guide

The Gobelins and the Artisan's Eye

Bartlett devotes considerable attention to the Gobelins manufactory, describing it as a place where tapestries and carpets are made for the emperor and foreign monarchs. He notes that between one and two hundred men are employed, dressed like gentlemen, and that a school of design and lectures accompany the workshop. The carpets, he claims, often take five to ten years to produce, with costs as high as thirty thousand dollars, and none are sold. One carpet for the Louvre gallery consisted of seventy-two pieces and measured over thirteen hundred feet. Bartlett's astonishment is palpable: he writes that some tapestries excel the best pictures in Europe, with each tint of wool worked into the web by careful fingers. This passage, while fitting the catalog subject of description and travel, also reveals Bartlett's interest in industrial craftsmanship—a theme that goes beyond mere social customs.

Literary Portraits as Cultural Windows

Nearly half the chapters are devoted to French authors, both living and dead. Bartlett profiles Lamartine, Hugo, George Sand, Dumas, Sue, Guizot, and Thiers, among others. He also includes a section on 'Men of the Past,' covering figures like the father of French tragedy, the great jester, and the fabulist. This literary focus is not incidental: Bartlett argues in his preface that 'Paris and France can only be truly known through French authors and literature.' The excerpts do not reveal the content of these sketches, but the chapter titles alone indicate a deliberate effort to bridge travel writing and literary biography. Readers should note that Bartlett's assessments are based on his own reading and encounters, not on exhaustive scholarship, and the excerpts provide no evidence of interviews or direct access to these figures.

Everyday Encounters and Economic Details

Bartlett's narrative is punctuated by small, concrete observations about daily life. He describes dining at a restaurant in the Garden of Plants, noting that if a hotel guest misses a meal, the cost is deducted from the daily charge. He contrasts a poor dinner there with a delicious cup of coffee and roll on the Champs-Élysées, where an orchestra played for patrons. Another day, he ventures outside the walls to a garden restaurant, enjoying a capital dinner for a small price. These vignettes illustrate the catalog subject of social life and customs, but they also reveal Bartlett's practical concerns as a traveler: cost, quality, and convenience. His attention to pricing and value suggests a readership interested in the economics of travel, not just picturesque scenes.

Bartlett's book resists easy categorization: it is part travelogue, part literary anthology, and part industrial report. Readers will benefit from noting the date of each observation—whether from the presidency or empire—as Bartlett himself advises. The excerpts offer no overarching argument, but they do show a writer keenly attentive to the material details of Parisian life, from tapestry threads to restaurant bills. Approach the text as a period document that reveals as much about the American traveler's expectations as about Paris itself.

Reading about Bartlett’s Paris of two regimes, I recalled my grandfather’s old atlas, where I first wandered, dreaming. That same patient wonder returned while holding Equatorial America, its pages warm with a traveler’s unhurried gaze. Some books feel less like destinations and more like quiet rooms you’re trusted to sit in. Equatorial America Descriptive of a Visit to St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbadoes, and the Principal Capitals of South America — Reading Companion felt like that, too—a hand resting on the same worn rail.