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With Captain Gordon he dined as often as twice a week;1 and they took walks together, conversing on English and continental affairs, in the Promenade du Peyrou and in the Place de la Canourgie,—the last named resort not then laid out with trees and flowers, as the visitor now finds it. Young Richard Gordon was often his companion.
He was frequently at the house of Professor Martins in the Jardin des Plantes, dining with him from time to time, enjoying his daughter's playing on the piano, and listening to the band which played on Friday evenings in the Jardin.
He was invited to the sessions of the Friday Club, Societe du Vendredi, and here met the literary and scientific men of the city.2 He was a guest at a ball given by the military and civil authorities, where he observed Dr. Favrat, a mulatto, whose father was a citizen of Montpellier and whose mother was a negress.
Sumner said to Professor Martins at; the time, that such a man if found in such an assembly in America ‘would be thrown out of the window;’ while, as the professor observed in recalling the incident, his presence at the ball, with his brown skin and crisp hair, excited no surprise.
Other interesting acquaintances which Sumner made at Montpellier were Jules Renouvier,3 who had collected the best engravings and had a rare technical knowledge of the art, and Saint Rene Taillandier,4 then delivering at the university a course of lectures on French literature in the eighteenth century, including one or more on Beaumarchais, a course afterwards repeated at the Sorbonne.
Sumner attended the lectures of Taillandier and other professors in the Salles des Lettres, occupying a privileged
1 Captain Gordon's home was Maison Chaix, 5 Rue St. Croix.
2 Sumner, writing to C. F. Adams, described the club as ‘founded as long ago as 1811, by the celebrated botanist De Candolle, which has among its members two or three professors, several retired men of letters, two or three judges of the Supreme Court, one banker, and several proprietors. This description may remind you of the Friday Night Club of Boston. But the sumptuary law of the Montpellier club is strict. The entertainment is always confined to tea and four small plates of confectionery. I doubt if the expense any evening when I was present went beyond one or two francs; and yet I assure you that I have listened there to conversation on art, architecture, science, history, politics, and latterly on the prospects of war, which would not have disgraced a Boston club of any name.’
3 1804-1860; archeologist, and author of various notes on the historical monuments of France and Italy, and of a book on the art of engraving in Italy, Germany, the Pays Bas, and France, published in 1853; born and always having his home in Montpellier; a republican during the reigns of Louis Philippe and Louis Napoleon. He made long calls on Sumner, during which they talked on French literature.
4 1817-1879; distinguished in literary and historical studies, one of his papers being entitled, ‘La Promenade du Peyrou et la Cathedrale de Montpellier;’ member of the French Academy; professor at Montpellier, 1843-1863, and from 1863 at the Sorboune. He served the government in the department of education from 1870 to 1872.
Cambridge, MA. Press of John Wilson and Son. 1877.
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