The Woodcutter and the Fisherman

When Talleyrand, romantic adventurer and faithless bishop, rode through the American forests on horseback, accompanied by his trusty servant Courtiade, he found it hard to pass the time and distract his thoughts from the grim news brought by every ship from France. A call could sometimes be heard among the dense woodland, far from the beaten track: “Courtiade, are you there?” swiftly followed by a far-off, deferential reply: “Oh Lord, yes, Monseigneur, I’m here.” Talleyrand smiled at his own incongruity, a feudal remnant, now beyond the frontier of société. He gazed about him and had the impression of traveling back down the course of history, of gradually journeying in time and space as he moved slowly away from the cities, the villages, the farms, and the fields, and ended up among the beaver hunters of Connecticut, forded vast swamps and disappeared into the forests. In this sequence, it seemed as though the improbable amalgam of civilization were decomposing before his eyes, returning, little by little, to its simple elements. “At the end of every day,” he noted, “we lose sight of some of those inventions which our wants, as they have increased, have rendered necessary; and it seems we are traveling back in the history of the progress of the human mind.”¹⁵⁸ But that “progress” held many surprises: having reached the point of utmost simplicity, Talleyrand encountered two model characters: the woodcutter and the fisherman. He described them—and the portrait he drew was not of two figures forsaken by history, but the anticipation of two faces that history was about to adopt: they were the silhouettes of the first new men, already anticipating Tocqueville. In their wilderness surroundings, they were about to make their appearance as representatives of the mass. Indeed, they were representatives of those who in an age without irony would be called “mass men.” Talleyrand encountered the odor specificus of the mass not just in the large city but in desolate, unblemished nature. It was a curious detail, worthy of note. Talleyrand included these two portraits, as instructive clinical cases, in his Mémoire sur les relations commerciales des États-Unis avec l’Angleterre, which he would read to the Institut de France on April 4, 1797.

The woodcutter. “The American woodcutter does not interest himself in anything; every idea of sensibility is remote from him.¹⁵⁹ Those branches so agreeably disposed by nature; beautiful foliage; the bright color that enlivens one part of the wood; the darker green that gives a melancholy shade to another: these are nothing to him: he retains no recollection of any place: the number of axe-strokes required to fell a tree fills all his thoughts. He never planted; he knows not the pleasures of it. A tree of his own planting would be good for nothing, in his estimation; for it would never, during his life, be large enough to fell: it is by destruction that he lives. He is a destroyer wherever he goes: so every place is equally good in his eyes. He has no attachment to the spot on which he has spent his labor; for his labor is only fatigue, and is unconnected with any idea of pleasure. In the effects of his toil he has not witnessed those gradual increases of growth, so captivating to the planter; he regards not the destination of his products; he knows not the charm of new attempts: and, when quitting the place where he has lived for many years, provided he does not forget his axe, he leaves no regret behind him.”