Gifford Pinchot’s great grandfather, Constantine Desirée Pinchot, known as C.D., must have been ecstatic in 1815 when he learned of Napoleon’s1 escape from exile from the Isle of Elba – poetically called the Flight of the Eagle. C.D. Pinchot had a successful business, he was mayor and a member of a religious minority – Huguenots. Protestants in a Roman Catholic a country. Most importantly, a country now again ruled by the aristocratic Bourbons (19th Century version of “concentrated wealth”).
C.D. tells his only son, 19-year-old Cyrill, to round-up as many men as he could and join Emperor Napoleon in his fight to take back the French government. Napoleon with his much smaller army meet the Duke of Wellington, Lord Wentworth2 at Waterloo. Cyrill and his volunteers were late to the fight. Napoleon was already defeated and in process of being exiled – for a second time, but this time to a rock pile of an island off the African coast – St. Helena.
The Napoleonic Wars were brutal affairs. In some battles, hundreds of thousands were killed, and an almost equal number wounded. Why would you send your only son? Either he was naive, or passionately believed in what Napoleon stood for. The monarchs are fighting for their lives too. Napoleon threatened the status of every aristocrat. The monarchies formed an awkward alliance to stop Napoleon and bring an end to the Napoleonic Wars.
C.D. Pinchot realized their lives were in danger (French invention – décapitation.) The Bourbons had controlled everything pre-revolution, wanted to. King Louis XVI was the only French King executed in history. The pro-Monarchy aristocrats were back in charge and acted to eliminate any chance of this happening again. Napoleon is exiled to island St. Helena. They wanted to remove the troublemakers – and not just Napoleon. The Pinchot’s emigrated to America in 1815. They also fled for their lives.
Napoleon, to me, is a mixed bag. He was quite brutal in his wars and maintaining control of the government. He was both an excellent politician as well as military genius. The Napoleonic Code reorganized a fragmented set of laws of pre-revolutionary France, many conflicting and open to self-serving interpretation by the aristocrats. Napoleon transformed and revised the law into a unified code. The Code influenced civil law codes across the world. It established a meritocracy. Under the code, all male citizens are equal primogeniture; no hereditary nobility; class privileges extinguished; civilian institutions are emancipated from ecclesiastical control; freedom of person, freedom of contract, and inviolability of private property. There is one other critical part of the Napoleonic legacy – the belief one needed to fight for what you believe in. Gifford uses the word fight in his rhetoric and speeches. Standing up, fighting for public values. A moral crusade, not just an argument.3
Once arriving in America, C.D. Pinchot and his son chose to settle in Milford in the upper Delaware River Valley, probably because of other French Huguenots in the region. With their nest egg from France, they bought what in France was unheard of – they bought land. In America, Cyrill made a successful and prosperous life. As he grew old, he (again) became obsessed with Napoleon. He collected every piece of Napoleana he could get his hands on: dishes, campaign metals, articles of clothing, his pillow and most importantly his writings. James Pinchot, Cyrill’s son, wrote the American Ambassador in Paris and asked for help in obtaining copies of all of Napoleon’s writings. Cyrill commissioned the 19th-Century artist Launt Thompson to sculpt a larger-than-life statue of Napoleon. It was meant to be erected in on the center square in Milford. Napoleonic legacy is very much a part of them. The statue is now on display at Grey Towers, on permanent loan from the Smithsonian Institution.
I believe the Forest Service carries Napoleonic genes – belief in a meritocracy, distain for inherited privilege, quest for what is right, and an imbedded commitment to serve the public good. Gifford, through his family’s experience, knew he needed to fight for what he (his family) believed. After leaving the Forest Service in 1910, Gifford wrote the book The Fight for Conservation, his emerging manifesto. He makes it clear – this is a fight.
Cyrill Pinchot thrived with his dry goods store, land speculation, and timbering of the old growth white pine. James, Cyrill’s son, left his hometown to make his fortune in New York City. He succeeded beyond his dreams. He added to his wealth the old-fashioned way—he married Mary Jane Eno,4 the daughter of New York real-estate tycoon and Huguenot, Amos Richards Eno. Nancy Pittman’s more comprehensive piece on James is instructive.
James joined the prestigious Century and Cosmos Clubs and supported civic causes. He was a patron of the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Forestry Association, and the National Academy of Design. He was a passionate proponent of the arts and European forestry. He named their first son Gifford, after Hudson River School painter and friend, Sanford Gifford. James wrote, “Now the forests are gone. Their disappearance forced us to think of its preservation. We thought, like so many others since, that something ought to be done. But what we did not know.”5 He did know. He more than nudged his oldest son Gifford to take up the cause. They went all-in and put their wealth, connections, and almost every aspect of their lives behind Gifford.
Forestry and art were linked in James’s mind. In 1905, the dedication of Forest Hall in Milford as a classroom building for the Yale School of Forestry was led by his artist friend, John Weir, dean of the Yale School of Art. James included an apartment studio for his artist friends in Forest Hall. Art is literally IN forestry for James.
Many in James’ economic and social class built magnificent “cottages,” mostly all lumped together in places like Newport, the Maine coast, or on Long Island Sound. James went home and built Grey Towers on a hill overlooking his hometown. He was no longer a commoner. James and Mary opened Grey Towers with a tea on Gifford’s 21st birthday, at which he was presented a book by his younger brother Amos: George Perkins Marsh’s, Man and Nature or the Earth as Modified by Human Action. Amos was a teenager, so it is doubtful he selected a scholarly book. No doubt it was James who picked the book.
Marsh’s book is referred to as the fountainhead of conservation, what biographer David Lowenthal has termed utilitarian optimistic conservation. Lewis Mumford says it is second only to Darwin’s The Origin of Species. Marsh defines the two great challenges facing conservation: overcoming ignorance and overcoming greed. After shocking the reader with the dire consequences of forest destruction he observed in a tour around the Mediterranean, he turns to a message of optimism: It does not have to be this way. The Earth can be like a garden. This sticks with Gifford. A senior at Yale, he changes his mind at graduation and declares he wants to be a forester. He previously considered going into the ministry. He made forestry his ministry. At his Yale graduation ceremony, Pinchot’s address to the graduates announced his intent to make forestry his life’s work. Probably no one in the audience knew what he was talking about, because forestry was not yet practiced to any extent in the United States. Gifford does not refer to forestry as his career. It is his life’s work.
- The release of the “historical fiction” movie, Napoleon, as I’ve been writing this series of posts is one of those serendipity events. The battle scenes illustrate how brutal and bloody the battles were. His invasion of Russia in winter cost 460,000 lives. Napoleon fought 61 battles. The movie includes the more well-known. It also depicts the chaos in France. The beheading of Marie Antoinette is gruesome, and you will see what a motivation that must have been. ↩︎
- The French and British do not have a long history as friendly allies. If they did, there would be no USA. (In my opinion.) This was more about curbing the fear of rebellion against hereditary aristocrats. As it turns out, their fears were well-founded. ↩︎
- This is my opinion. Only 1 of Pinchot biographies includes his family history – Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Conservation ↩︎
- See James Wallace Pinchot (1831-1908), One Man’s Evolution toward Conservation in the Nineteenth Century, Nancy Pittman, Yale F&ES Centennial News, Fall 1999. ↩︎
- James Wallace Pinchot, The Yale Summer School of Forestry, pages 371-374. ↩︎