Nicolas Marie Alexandre Vattemare

Background

Nicolas Marie Alexandre Vattemare was born on November 8, 1796, in Paris, and was the son of an advocate.

Education

Vattemare spent brief periods in a seminary and in a hospital as a student.

Career

In Germany, where Vattemare had been sent in 1814 with a group of Prussian prisoners, he began the use of his natural gift of ventriloquism and as "Monsieur Alexandre" soon became one of the popular entertainers of the day. He appeared in London in 1822 under the management of W. T. Moncrieff, in whose Rogueries of Nicholas he was a great success. His brief appearance in the United States began at the Park Theatre in New York City, October 28, 1839. Impressed by the number of duplicate books and art objects in libraries and museums which he visited, he had evolved the idea of a system of exchange and had won some support for it in Europe. Early in 1840 he sent Congress a memorial on the subject which received favorable action.

Traveling extensively in the United States and Canada, he enlisted the sympathy and aid of prominent people, and returned to France in 1841 with many items for exchange. The expansion of his system and the development of an agency for handling exchanges occupied him until his return to America in 1847. His second memorial to Congress and various appeals to state legislatures resulted in his appointment as agent by Congress and a few states to handle their exchanges, and in the granting of some financial aid. After his return to France in 1850, his system continued to flourish for a few years, but it gradually declined in popularity, support was withdrawn, and Vattemare's hope of its permanent establishment failed.

Vattemare died on April 7, 1864 in Paris.

Achievements

• Alexandre Vattemare was a founder of a system of international exchanges. He lost no opportunity to urge the establishment of free libraries and museums. It is generally conceded that he was largely instrumental in the founding of the Boston Public Library. He was also responsible for what was known as the American Library in Paris, a collection of American books and documents housed in the Hotel de Ville, which has since been lost.

Views

In his Report on the Subject of International Exchanges (1848), one of his numerous publications, he points out the value of such exchanges in lessening national prejudices and developing good will.

Personality

Whatever success he attained was due largely to the cooperation given him in America. He seems to have been temperamentally unsuited to carrying out some of his own ideas, which, indeed, were better suited to be the work of an institution than of one man. Some of his suggestions seem impracticable and naive, but he was interested in moral and social effects as well as in the exchange of material things.

Evidence that Vattemare counted among his friends many prominent people is to be found in his Album Cosmopolite (1837), a collection of letters, miscellaneous autographs, and reproductions. He was a Chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur. The elder of his two sons, Hippolyte, and his son-in-law, C. Moreau, were associated with him in the work of his agency.