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Dazzling Paris Once Again

Dazzling Paris Once Again

By Louise Peloquin

In America, he is considered one of the great painters of the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. In France, he had fallen into oblivion. And yet, this artist perfectly seized the Parisian society of his time. His portraits show characters worthy of Proust’s novels. From 1874 to 1884, this virtuoso of the palette succeeded in capturing the intimacy and the secrets of worldly Parisian circles during “La Belle Époque.” (1) 

The Glass of Porto

     At the Musée d’Orsay until January 11th 2026, “Éblouir Paris” or “Dazzling Paris”, gathers more than 90 works from world museums and private collections to retrace John Singer Sargent’s stay in the capital of France. Born in Italy to American parents, Sargent (1856-1925) spent most of his time in London but Paris played a crucial role in his career. This special exhibition was organized in partnership with New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art for the centennial of the artist’s death. It charts Sargent’s rise to fame from 1874 when, at only 18, he began training in Carolus-Duran’s studio, to the 1884 “scandal” of his masterpiece, the portrait of Madame X, presented at the Salon (2) of 1884. Works Sargent produced during this decade are assembled for the first time in this exhibition.

Sargent only produced three self-portraits in his career. Here he is in 1886 at age 30. (3)

Sargent self-portrait

     As a very young man, Sargent’s works already displayed technical mastery as this “Light and Shade” drawing proves. (4)

“Light and shade” – drawing of a young man

     In “Head of a Male Model”, painted in the final months of his training under Carolus-Duran, we see how Sargent followed his teacher’s instructions to load the brush with paint and execute fast, energetic strokes to construct volumes using contrasting tones from dark to light on a dark background. (5)

“Head of a male model”

     In an interview, exhibition commissioner Caroline Corbeau-Parsons presents the artist and his work: (6)

“Sargent worked tirelessly to develop an unequaled technique which allowed him to work very quickly to create dazzling effects and capture the psychology of his models. With a single gesture, he managed to seize an expression, a thought.”

     Sargent’s portrait of writer, translator and art critic Madame Allouyard-Jouan, for example, prompted author Henry James to comment: “(This face) remains engraved in my mind as a masterful interpretation of the allure that comes with experience.” (7) 

Portrait of Madame Allouard-Jouan

Caroline Corbeau-Parsons speaks about Sargent’s artistic journey:

“Sargent was extremely cultured. He spoke five languages, traveled throughout Europe during his childhood – Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France. The Parisian intellectual community of his time appreciated his conversation and his art and so, very quickly, he found his place in their circles. In fact, he was a a prodigy. His extraordinary talent rapidly opened the doors of the Salon for him in 1878 at the age of 22. But in order to seduce the visitors of Europe’s most prestigious art exhibition, the novice painter knew that he had to produce exceptional work. Every year the public awaited him and praised him, like in 1883 with his astoundingly modern adaptation of ‘Las Meninas’ of Velasquez. Its beauty is mysterious and troubling as if revealing the very soul of his models. And when a work of art aroused commentary, it was good for business.” (8)

The daughters of E. D. Boit

Caroline Corbeau-Parsons continues:

“But how could an artist succeed in captivating the attention of 300 000 visitors among 5000 works of art all piled up one on top of the other? He had to paint what had never been seen before. In 1881, Sargent began a portrait of a new genre, that of Docteur Pozzi. Pozzi was one of the fathers of gynaecology in France, a man who enjoyed an important social status. He was well-known for his charisma, his beauty and his philandering. He was also a very cultured individual who frequented Parisian circles. Sargent’s portrait of Docteur Pozzi was unusual for the era – a man in a red dressing gown in front of a red background. Men were normally represented with virility in their black suits. But the Pozzi portrait presents a more feminine, graceful side. To avoid scandal, Sargent decided not to expose the work in Paris but rather in London. But on the other side of the channel, it did not escape criticism.” (9)

Dr. Pozzi

Caroline Corbeau-Parsons:

“Sargent nevertheless sought to make a sensation to seduce Paris. He undertook a second portrait which was even more ambitious and quite linked to Docteur Pozzi’s – that of Madame X. Behind this enigmatic title hides Virginie Gautreau, an American expatriate married to a wealthy banker. She was known for her strange beauty and made the headlines of gossip gazettes for her extravagant extra-marital adventures. Among her lovers was, wouldn’t you know it, Docteur Pozzi. All of the ingredients came together to create another scandal to the delight of Parisian society. And that is exactly what happened in 1884. It is already very rare to paint the portrait of a woman in profile. You see that the lines of this portrait are very marked. The painting is almost entirely black and white. Madame X’s skin is very white in contrast with the black gown. She holds the crinoline behind her in such a way as to make the gown appear as a sheath dress. The scandal also arises from Madame X’s lowered strap which suggested that the dress could slip off to bare her bosom. The painting is extremely modern. From the very opening of the Salon, protests arose against Sargent’s painting because it was a mirror of Parisian aristocracy and the reflection of the decadence that it preferred not to see. Sargent was an American painter, a stranger. Displaying the immorality of a foreign woman in the sacred ‘Salon’ was shocking and improper. When Sargent’s commissions declined, he decided to leave Paris to settle in London. As for Madame X, she was eventually also banished from Parisian high society.”

    The “Dazzling Paris” exhibition presents various “views” of “Madame X”, for example:

• a photographic reproduction of the portrait as Sargent originally exposed it at the 1884 Salon and later modified. (10) 
• An unfinished copy. (11) 
• A detail of the final portrait. (12) 

Print of the original “Madame X” with the fallen dress strap

Unfinished copy of “Madame X”

Detail of the final “Madame X” portrait

Detail of photo of Sargent in his studio

“Madame X” hangs majestically in her own room at the Musée d’Orsay where curious visitors swarm to discover “le scandale.” Some cruelly comment on her distinct profile, comparing it with today’s canons of cookie-cutter beauty. After a few minutes of loitering and listening, I concluded, and happily so, that the sheer elegance of Sargent’s work remains bewitching 141 years later. Its unusual aesthetics places it in a sphere of its own. “Madame X” towers over the run of the mill.

I went to the exhibition at the opening time slot and so was able to contemplate Sargent’s spectacular works at relative leisure. But as the minutes passed, the crowd thickened, causing unpleasant jostling. Even so, I lingered, meandering in rooms just visited, taking in the sheer beauty of Sargent’s “tableaux”, remembering  Henry James’s assessment of his friend whose work “offers the slightly ‘uncanny’ spectacle of a talent which on the very threshold of its career has nothing more to learn.” Were JSS still among us, he would have been thrilled at the commotion around his creations.

To close this piece, here is my sampling of “Dazzling Paris”, an exhibition whose beauty elevated me to a state of beatitude.

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British author Violet Paget (1856-1935), AKA Vernon Lee, was Sargent’s childhood friend. In his frequent letters to his fellow expatriate, the artist recounts the ups and downs of his life in Paris. Violet agrees to sit for him during one of his stays in London. In only three hours, he captured the glow of her intelligence. One almost expects her to come out with a witty quip. (13) 

“Vernon Lee”

This portrait of Amalia Subercaseaux, wife of the Chilean consul in Paris, earned Sargent a medal at the Salon of 1881. She was praised as the archetype of the Parisienne of the time, despite the fact that she was from Chile. (14)

Portrait of Madame Ramon Subercaseaux      

     Although sculptor August Rodin was 16 years older than Sargent, the two became friends and even exhibited together in 1884 in Brussels. Sargent participated in promoting Rodin’s work in England and later gave him this portrait which, much like Vernon Lee’s, perfectly captured the sculptor’s gaze. (15)

Auguste Rodin

After meeting Gabriel Fauré in 1886, Sargent became passionately enthusiastic for the musician’s compositions and performances. Fauré, head high but not arrogant, appears to contemplate a new horizon where music breaks free from the standards of the past. (16)

Gabriel Faure

     Admired by artists of his time, fencing master and historian Arsène Vigeant sat for many portraits. In this one, Sargent, once again, gives life to his model. He depicts a piercing, determined look, as if Vigeant were about rise from his armchair and grab the gleaming foil behind him. (17)

Arsene Vigeant

     In this portrait, Spanish dancer Carmen Dauset Moreno, whom Sargent met at the 1889 Universal Exposition in Paris, seems to be stepping onto the stage in her glittering yellow costume. Art critic Claude Bienne commented: “Monsieur Sargent excels at capturing something both attractive and disquieting in his subjects, and it is because of this that his art becomes superior.” Indeed, as in all of the previous portraits presented above, the model’s expression and attitude are boldly expressed, bringing her to life. (18) 

Carmen Dauset Moreno

     Sargent not only excelled in portrait painting but also in plein air scenes. As a child, he had enjoyed the many holidays in Britanny with his parents and returned there in 1877. Numerous studies of authentic scenes inspired him to compose this large-scale painting presented at the 1878 Salon. “Setting out to fish” earned him his first critical success. He audaciously used light and color to depict women and children en route to gather shellfish. (19) 

“Setting out to fish”

     “Wineglasses” demonstrates how Sargent mastered effects of light early on in his career. This is probably an arbor at the Hôtel Chevillon on the outskirts of the Forest of Fontainebleau where artists liked to meet. (20)

“Wineglasses”

     A trip to Naples and Capri in the summer of 1878 inspired Sargent to create this painting, showed at the Salon of 1879. The model, Rosina Ferrara, who sat for many artists, is languorously leaning against an olive tree. (21)

“Among the olive trees”

     Sargent’s nomadic life fed his inspiration to create unique compositions. He traveled extensively around France, Italy, Spain and Morocco and was filled with their colors, textures and atmosphere. Not until 1878, at the age of 20, did he visit the United States and, although he regularly returned there for commissions of his work, America never became his permanent home.

“Atlantic Sunset” invites you to discover John Singer Sargent wherever your own personal journey takes you. (22) 

“Atlantic sunset”

(Photos taken by Louise Peloquin on November 26, 2025 at the Musée d’Orsay “Dazzling Paris” exhibition.)

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1. “The Glass of Porto” – 1884, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.

2) The Salon was an art fair that attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors every year to Paris. In Sargent’s time, it was the largest exhibition of contemporary art in Europe with hundreds of artists and several thousand artworks gathered under one roof. For young artists like Sargent, it was the place to be noticed by the Academy of Fine Arts, critics and art lovers. Between 1877 and 1885 Sargent presented one or more paintings at the Salon every year.

3) “Self-portrait” – 1886, Aberdeen City Council Archives, Gallery and Museum.

4) “Light and Shade” – circa 1874-1877, the Õmer Koç Collection.

5) “Head of a Male Model” – circa 1878, private collection.

6) Caroline Corbeau-Parsons’s interview translated by Louise Peloquin.

7) “Portrait of Madame Allouard-Jouan” – 1882, Paris Petit Palais.

8) “The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit” – 1882, MFA Boston.

9) “Dr. Pozzi at Home” – 1881, Los Angeles Hammer Museum

10) Album of photographic reproductions of painting by Sargent at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

11) Unfinished copy of  “Madame X” – Tate, London.

12) “Portrait of Madame X” close-up — 1883- 1884, New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

13) “Vernon Lee” – 1881, Tate, London.

14) “Portrait of Madame Ramòn Subercaseaux” – Circa 1880-1881, Faye S. Sarofim Foundation.

15) “Auguste Rodin” – Circa 1884, Paris Musée Rodin.

16) “Gabriel Fauré” – Circa 1889, Paris Musée de la Musique, Philharmonie de Paris.

17) “Portrait of fencing master Arsène Vigeant” – 1885, Musée de la Cour d’Or, Metz France.

18) “La Carmencita” – Circa 1890, Paris Musée d’Orsay.

19) “Setting Out to Fish” – 1878, Washington, National Gallery of Art.

20) “Wineglasses” – Circa 1875, The National Gallery, London.

21) “Among the Olive Trees, Capri” – 1878, private collection.

22) “Atlantic Sunset” – Circa 1876 – 1878, private collection.

The risks of denying history by Marjorie Arons-Barron

The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog.

The Granddaughter is a pretty straightforward novel by German writer Bernhard Schlink, translated by Charlotte Collins. The time is contemporary Germany, and Berlin book store owner Kaspar comes home to find wife Birgit dead in the bathtub, apparently by drowning.  They had met in the early 60’s, in a divided country. They had fallen in love at university, he having traveled as a student to East Germany on several occasions in the early sixties. He helped her to escape from the GDR, and their early marriage seemed solid. Birgit, however, is hiding a dark part of her history, an affair with a married man that had resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and a life-altering decision.

Kaspar never learned about the tragic event until, as a grieving widower, he read an autobiographical novel Birgit had been working on before her death from depression, drugs and alcohol. Central to Birgit’s ability to adapt to her new life in West Germany had been her struggle over whether to search for the infant girl she had turned over years before to the married lover. Much of the book takes place well after the 1990 fall of the Berlin Wall, when Kaspar sets out to find the daughter and, now, a 15-year-old granddaughter.

This book is interesting to me for its setting.  There’s a small amount of character development. But, as one who traveled to Berlin and East Berlin both in 1961-62, shortly after the Wall had been built, and again in 1990, immediately after the wall came down, I found the historical and cultural differences between the East and West particularly fascinating.

Birgit had been a child of East Germany and believed in the myths of the German Democratic Republic, with the deeply embedded false promise of its own brand of nationalist socialism. Kaspar is a man of the enlightened West, a reader (and seller) of books, deeply imbued with the music, theater and arts of the world in which he grew up. Years after reunification, some who had lived on the former East side were still angry from the loss of the GDR. They suffered economically, and, over time, the antisemitism and xenophobia, repressed for years, rose to the surface.

Kaspar’s journey to find his stepdaughter and granddaughter brings him face to face with far-right Holocaust deniers, gay haters, despisers of foreigners, skinheads given to acts of violence.

In 1962, visiting a beer hall in Berlin, I remember my blood running cold to observe older men with their WWII medals pinned to their collars, stand and lift their steins fervently to the rousing anthem “Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles,” signaling to their younger compatriots the glories of their past. Such fearsome nationalist emotions still run deep.

Nearly 30 years later, in 1990, traveling though Eastern Europe with a group of editorialists meeting with students, labor leaders, politicians and others, I asked the then-head of the German Christian Democratic Party, who would go on to be mayor of the reunified Berlin, about the rise of skinheads and increasing attacks on Jews.  His answer was a chilling “boys will be boys.”

Today, we see the rise of the far right in Germany and throughout many countries in Europe. The Economist has followed the rise of such extremist parties in Europe, which now outnumber the more stable conservative and social democratic parties for the first time since 1933. And here, in the United States, we see Donald Trump’s sickening admiration of Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and other authoritarian leaders. Earlier this year, Vice President J.D. Vance even supported the radical right German party Alternative for Germany (AfD), providing an official stamp of legitimacy to these dangerous rising powers.

The narrative of The Granddaughter will hold the reader’s attention, but, as an attempt to come to grips with the lesson of the past, it is not as compelling as Schlink’s 1995 book The Reader. It is, however, an effective exploration of the effect of political extremism on families and society. The Granddaughter (1921) is less important to me as a literary accomplishment than as a  very timely red-flag warning of the tenacity of right-wing hatred and blindness to the truths of history. It’s yet another reminder of the fragility of liberal democracy in the face of rising right-wing radicalism.

Lowell Politics: December 7, 2025

The agenda for last Tuesday’s Lowell City Council meeting was so brief that councilors had to take a recess 20 minutes in because the rest of the agenda was finished before the 7 p.m. start time for public hearings arrived. However, brevity does not equal insignificance, for the council took a momentous vote by refusing to raise the money needed to complete the Lowell High School project.

Here’s what happened: A public hearing was scheduled on a loan order to borrow $40 million (in addition to the $382 million previously authorized to be borrowed) to pay “the costs of designing, constructing, equipping and furnishing an additional and renovation project at Lowell High School.” Most of this additional money is needed to pay for fixing the floor of the 1922 and Coburn Hall buildings, which sit between Kirk Street and the Merrimack Canal.

When contractors (and I’m using “contractors” to cover architects, agents, subcontractors and everyone involved who doesn’t work for the city) began work on the northern end of the 1922 building last summer, they discovered that the soil underneath the basement slab had washed away, leaving a void that had to be fixed before work could proceed. This discovery came as a complete surprise to the contractors, so the cost of fixing it – which involved removing the existing concrete floor, adding sufficient fill to eliminate all voids, and installing a new floor through the two buildings – was not included in the budget for the project. Not only would extra money be needed, but because of the late discovery, it is highly unlikely that the state building authority will provide any reimbursement for this portion of the project so the cost will be borne entirely by the city.

When this was first discovered, and again on Tuesday night, councilors criticized the contractors for not discovering this flooring problem during the design phase of the project. Councilors have been particularly critical of the contractor for drilling just one test hole through the floor to assess what was underneath. The contractors have pushed back saying that they followed accepted practices in their field; that the city’s concerns about disrupting student learning curtailed the number of holes that could be drilled in the floor; and that the floor had no cracks or depressions of the type that would be expected if there was nothing but empty space beneath the floor. Tuesday, the contractor categorized some council criticism as “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

When the roll call was taken, Councilors Wayne Jenness, Rita Mercier, Kim Scott, Paul Ratha Yem, Corey Belanger, Sokhary Chau, and Mayor Dan Rourke voted for the loan order, giving it seven votes. Voting against it were Councilors John Descoteaux and Erik Gitschier. Significantly, Councilors Vesna Nuon and Corey Robinson were absent.

A matter that deals with spending – like this one – that comes before the council requires a super majority of two-thirds of the eleven-member city council to pass. Two-thirds of eleven is 7.33. Since a fraction cannot be a vote, you must round up to the next whole number. That would be eight. So, for the Lowell City Council as now constituted to pass a measure that requires a two-thirds majority, eight councilors must vote for it, regardless of how many are present at the meeting. In this case, only seven councilors voted for the loan order, so it failed.

It feels apt to be writing about this on Pearl Harbor Day because the outcome seemed to come as a complete surprise. For example, when the public hearing was opened to those wishing to speak in favor of the loan, no one said anything. When councilors were debating the loan, no one questioned the city manager about what would happen if the vote failed. Even after the vote was taken, I’m not sure many of those in the council chambers realized the vote had failed. Everyone just moved on to the next public hearing without comment.

I won’t speculate about the many dire consequences that will result if this outcome is allowed to stand since the real-world effects of this vote will be apparent soon enough.

Coincidentally, on Friday, the Lowell Sun reported on the most recent meeting of the Lowell High School Building Committee which was held on November 20, 2025. (See “Progress, problems with school rebuild project” by Melanie Gilbert, December 5, 2025, print edition.) The committee learned that Phase III, which involved the northern half of the 1922 building has been completed. Over the coming Christmas break, classrooms that have been in the other half of the 1922 building and the adjacent Coburn Hall will be moved into the newly renovated portion. When students return to school in January, they will be in this new space, and renovations will begin on the rest of the 1922 and Coburn Hall buildings. Together, they constitute Phase IV, the final part of the project. Unfortunately, the subfloor problem discovered in Phase III also exists in Phase IV.

One of the uncertainties of the council’s rejection of the funding vote on Tuesday is whether this phase of the project will proceed on schedule or will be halted due to lack of money. Seemingly unaware of the impending council denial of funding, the School Building Committee cancelled its December meeting and is next scheduled to meet on January 22, 2026.

For those asking, “is it possible to scale back the rest of the project and finish it with the money already appropriated?”, the contractor addressed that on Tuesday by saying that would violate the agreement with the State Building Authority and could potentially jeopardize the state’s reimbursement for the entire project. Furthermore, contracts have already been executed with subcontractors for Phase IV, so cancelling them now would be costly to the city. For those and other reasons, scaling back on the project now does not seem like a viable solution.

Regardless of the ultimate resolution of this most recent High School funding issue, it seems that the FY2027 city budget, which will commence on July 1, 2026, will be a painful one. City Manager Tom Golden indicated that in his remarks on Tuesday. He said that the first 1.6% of the overall budget will go towards the indebtedness for the high school project. While this latest $40 million adds to that, the budget shock has other causes. Golden said that from the beginning of this project, the city chose to “backload the debt” making it all come due in FY27 rather than incrementally in the intervening years. He also said that beyond the high school, the city has been “doing a lot with roads and firehouses.”

A recurring theme of this newsletter over the past three years is that this council and its predecessor have been spending a lot of money. Perhaps the reason city roads were not in tip top shape is that keeping them in pristine condition is expensive, but fixing roads has been a priority for this council and that comes at a fiscal price. With rare exceptions, this council has added new positions to the city workforce without much regard for the future budget impact of more employees. Finally, past councils have been the beneficiaries of millions of dollars in federal funding through programs like ARPA and ESSER which landed the city an entirely new fleet of fire trucks; nearly a million dollars each in renovations to eight city parks (one per council district); countless improvements to school buildings; and much else that was funded entirely without city funds. Beyond the future of the Lowell High project, this council vote is a sign of the fiscal chaos that will engulf the city in the coming year.

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As mentioned above, today is Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day. It is not a federal or state holiday, but if you look at many wall calendars, December 7 will be so marked. That is largely through the efforts of the late Henri Champagne who died in 2006 at age 86. Born in Lowell but a Dracut resident for most of his life, Champagne was at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, aboard the destroyer USS Phelps. He served on the ship throughout the war and then was active in Greater Lowell veterans affairs for the rest of his life, especially his calendar advocacy.

Henri Champaigne was not the only Lowell resident at Pearl Harbor on December 7. Two men from Lowell were killed there by enemy fire. Clifton Edwards, a 1936 graduate of Lowell High who lived on Merrill Street, was a 24-year-old seaman on the USS Curtiss, which was one of the few ships to get underway that morning. The ship’s movement and the intense anti-aircraft fire coming from it attracted the attention of the Japanese and the Curtis was hit by several aerial bombs, killing 19 of its crew, including Clifton Edwards. The second Lowell man to die that day was 23-year-old Arthur Boyle of 28 Ralph Street. A 1940 graduate of Lowell High, Private Boyle was an aviation mechanic stationed at Hickam Field, the main US Army air base in Hawaii. Boyle was killed while trying to get an American fighter plane airborne to counterattack the Japanese.

Pearl Harbor received enhanced attention in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. In both instances, assaults from the air came completely by surprise although there was ample evidence in advance to have uncovered enemy plans. In both attacks, thousands of Americans lost their lives. And in both cases, the United States launched long and costly wars in response to the attacks.

Today, World War II has assumed greater geopolitical significance. As President Donald Trump aligns the United States closer with Russia and China (our antagonists for the past 80 years) and further away from Germany and Japan (two of our most reliable post World War II allies), both Russia and China are pushing World War II nostalgia to provide Trump with an intellectual underpinning for this mammoth geopolitical shift.

Specifically, this year China has repeatedly cited its role in World War II as the key American ally in the defeat of fascism in the Pacific. Left unsaid but certainly implied is that Japan was the fascist country that had to be defeated. It is no coincidence that Japan which has made clear its intent to intervene militarily if China moves against Tiawan, is being framed as the bad guy by the Chinese.

Similarly, in justifying its invasion of Ukraine, Russia invokes the need to de-Nazify that country, which relates back to World War II when several thousand Ukrainians joined the German military. What is left unsaid is that an equal number of Ukrainians fought the Nazis as partisans or as members of the Soviet army. By highlighting the US and Soviet alliance in World War II and by portraying Ukrainians (and Germans) as heirs to Nazism, today’s Russia seeks to influence American policy in a pro-Russian, anti-Western Alliance way.

As William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” By which he meant that past experiences, both personal and historic, are not gone but actively live on, affecting current realities and choices.

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Yesterday I made the rounds of downtown retail establishments which included the Hive Public Market at 101 Paige Street, Pop Cultured at 58 Prescott Street, the Brush Gallery and the National Park Visitor Center Gift Shop at 246 Market Street, and lala books at 189 Market Street. Christmas shopping in downtown Lowell is alive and well at these and other places, so please consider visiting them in the coming weeks.

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Finally, if you haven’t already read it, please check out The Rag Man, a nostalgic Lowell story by Rocky Provencher, the newest contributor to richardhowe.com.

Jack Kerouac’s baptismal record now an open book

Jack Kerouac’s baptismal record now an open book

By Benie Zelitch (by Annie Powell)

Archives Assistant Savannah Miller (left), and Reference Associate Kathleen Allen (right), at the Archdiocese of Boston Archives in Braintree. They are reading page 80 of the St. Louis de France Church record book with Jack Kerouac’s 1922 baptism entry.

When he was seven days old, author Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) was baptized at St. Louis de France,  a French-speaking church and parish in Lowell. This knowledge is widely known as a few biographers reviewed his records at St. Louis before it closed in 2005 after a century of service. But thanks to an incidental comment made a few days ago at the home of the record, the Archdiocese of Boston Archive and Library in Braintree, it’s easy for anyone to see the original or a scan.

The arrow points to the two-page entry of “Jean Louis Kirouac.” Due to the fragile binding, the archivists decided to restrict scans to a partially closed record book. This is a smartphone image but there are plans to send it to a company specializing in archival scans.

Courtesy of Archdiocese of Boston Archives, Baptisms, St. Louis de France (Lowell), 1918-1926, p. 80, no. 56.

The archive and library were happy to share their “discovery”—which almost didn’t happen—on social media.

With this new publicity, Kerouac’s many passionate admirers around the world have gained a revised connection to the author. The record book is a physical reminder of his first public appearance as the newest member of the church. It may also hold some details of the writer’s biography.

Today, the archivists of the Boston Archdiocese mainly provide local Catholics with sacramental records to prove their Catholicism. This is particularly relevant to events like church marriage ceremonies or annulments. Director Violet Hurst told me that about once a month a researcher spends time viewing their extensive collection of church publications and ephemera, including photographs. That is why in early November I spent an enjoyable morning studying the archives of former Lowell Catholic churches. I was furthering my research into Lowell photographer Annie Powell (1859–1952).

After finding a few important Powell-related images I readied to leave. I said to Violet, “I bet you’re tired of people asking to see Jack Kerouac records.” After a long pause she said, “I didn’t know he was Catholic!” During her five years at the archives his name was never mentioned. “But if you tell me his church, I can find his baptismal record pretty easily.” I did and she found it.

Kerouac’s record has legibility and language challenges. With the grateful assistance of others, I offer this working transcription. Corrected words have strikethroughs. The Latin column title translations appear in bracketed italics as do French translations:

In addition to featuring the names of Jack’s parents, the record tells us that his godparents were Leo’s brother Jean-Baptiste (1887-1969) and sister-in-law Rosanna Dumas Kirouac (1889-1940).  The baptism was performed by Rev. Donia W. Boisvert (1892–1968). Born in Lynn, MA, he served as a chaplain on the Western Front during World War I, then as assistant pastor at the French-speaking St. Joseph’s Church in Waltham before reassignment to the Lowell church at 257 W. Sixth Street. He held that post from 1921-22 and with Reverends Eugene J. Vincent (1887-1967) and Francis X. Gauthier (1893-1963), acted as assistants to Rev. John B. Labossiere (1864-1940), pastor. In addition to overseeing confessions, baptisms, and funerals, they and one lay teacher would have been busy supervising the instruction of the 481 boys and 608 girls attending the church school (The Official Catholic Directory).

The record book shows that Kerouac’s baptism at several days old was the rule and not the exception. At a time before antibiotics when infant mortality was high, some may have viewed the sacrament which cleansed the soul of original sin as a safe measure against the unthinkable.

Before the record book found its permanent home in Braintree in 2005, biographers reviewed entries at the church, scribbled detailed notes, but shared no photographic images. According to longtime Lowell Celebrates Kerouac member and former president Steve Edington, Franco-American teacher and scholar Roger Brunelle (1934-2021), who attended the St. Louis School, almost certainly saw the original baptismal records as part of his research into Kerouac’s ethnic boyhood. Gerald Nicosia probably saw them in preparation for his seminal 1983 biography of Kerouac, Memory Babe. In noting the details of the record, Nicosia reminds us that the familiar spelling of “Kerouac” was often shown to have numerous alternates:

He was a man for whom nothing was secure, not even his name. He had been baptized Jean Louis Kirouac, son of Leo Kéroack and Gabrielle L’Evesque. In the rectory of the poor unfinished St. Louis de France Church in Centralville, the nicest French section of Lowell, Massachusetts, his name meant so little that even a priest could carelessly misspell it. All his life, in fact, people misspelled and often deliberately mispronounced his name. It made him so angry he determined to trace his ancestry…  with the minute curiosity of a lover…

The note in the last column tells us that at some point someone requested a certified copy. It might have been a biographer or Kerouac himself, possibly to be used to validate him for one of these events:

• 1946: Marriage to Edie Parker annulled
• 1950: Marriage to Joan Haverty
• 1966: Marriage to Stella Sampas

Lastly, the request for a baptismal certificate contains the abbreviation “C.A.E.”  This does not match the names of any clergy posted from 1922 through 1987 (the closest is Rev. Charles A. Cordier from 1941–45, but the initials “C.A.C” obviously don’t match “C.A.E.”).  A French-Canadian friend with first-hand knowledge of French churches and educational institutions recalls in her lifetime the abbreviation was occasionally used for Certifié Authentique et Exact (Certified Authentic and Accurate).

Other family member baptismal records

Though the Kerouac children’s baptisms were performed at two different French churches in Lowell, all records were eventually stored at St. Louis de France Church before being collected by the archdiocese archives in 1995. Upon request, Violet also provided the pages (below) for Jack’s brother Francois Girard (St. Jean Baptiste Church) and sister Caroline (St. Louis de France Church). Caroline’s record was updated later to note her marriage at St. Jeanne D’Arc Church.  Again notice the spelling variation for the family surname.

Archdiocese of Boston Archives Baptisms, St. Jean Baptiste (Lowell), 1916, p. 168.

Courtesy of Archdiocese of Boston Archives Baptisms, Baptisms, St. Louis de France (Lowell), 1908-1918, p. 988.

A warm thank you to Louise Brisson, Louise Peloquin, and Kurt Phaneuf for their French language and Kerouac insights.

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Bernie Zelitch is founder and director of by Annie Powell.