In fact, all the material about the South was cribbed from other French and Italian visitors and other explorers, notably the pioneering botanist William Bartram. And his famous meeting with George Washington never happened, even though his portrayal of the first President did much to solidify Washington’s image in Europe as “ an outstanding man of classic simplicity and republican ethos,” as historian E. He definitely got to Niagara Falls, which awed him, and possibly to Pittsburgh. Yet it wasn’t until 1903 that a thorough debunking by a fellow Frenchman showed that Chateaubriand’s American trip was largely fictitious. Given the non-existent state of national infrastructure, it seemed highly improbable that he covered so much terrain in less than half a year. It wasn’t until 1903 that a thorough debunking by a fellow Frenchman showed that Chateaubriand’s American trip was largely fictitious.
In his Memoirs and his Voyage en Amérique, Chateaubriand claimed to have visited Niagara Falls, voyaged on the Ohio and the Mississippi, and seen Louisiana, Florida, and Kentucky. As early as 1827, however, the American Quarterly Review questioned the veracity of the Frenchman’s alleged itinerary. Among many others, his distant cousin Alexis de Tocqueville was profoundly influenced by Chateaubriand’s view of America. His works, especially his novellas Atala and René, stormed Europe both are set in America and are some of the first fictions to include Native American characters. One of the founders of French Romanticism, Chateaubriand spent five months traveling the United States in 1791 and then proceeded to write wildly successful books about his American experiences, real and imagined. The first unabridged English translation in a century of author, diplomat, and historian Francois-René de Chateaubriand’s remarkable Memoirs From Beyond the Grave gives us the opportunity to take a look at a man who did so much to mold the early nineteenth century European view of America.
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