Very handsome, the gilt on the upper board reads: “À Sa Majesté la reine d’Espagne Isabelle de Bourbon, très respectueux hommage, l’abbé Léoïs Dupuy-Péyou.”
Born in the Hautes-Pyrénées, Abbé Léopold-Louis Dupuy-Péyou (1847–1908) trained at seminaries in Tarbes and Périgueux, from which he was ordained a priest in 1872. He travelled to the United States in the same year and this rare collection of poems was inspired by that journey.
Following a brief stopover in Havana, he disembarked in New Orleans, where he was a guest for several weeks of the Archbishop, Monsignor Perché. He then travelled up the Mississippi by steamer. He spent a month on the banks of the Red River before visiting the Bishop of Natchitoches, Bishop Martin. He continued his journey through the central regions, then by rail to the northern parts of the Union and Niagara Falls.
The poems’ titles follow the story: “La Havane”; “Le Débarquement a la Nouvelle-Orléans”; “La Nouvelle-Orléans”; “Steamboat”; “En Steamboat sur le Mississippi”; “Railway”; “En Wagon”; “Le Dieu Dollar”; “Les Colons”; “Les Nègres”; “Erie Railway Niagara Falls (ode couronnée”; and “Sept Ans Après.”
The third poem, “La Nouvelle-Orléans”, is a veritable ode to the “opulence sensuelle” of New Orleans: “Le Nouveau-Monde a sa Venice.” It is a celebration of the colour and diversity of the city. In “Steamboat,” he contemplates the passing scenery of the American countryside whilst enjoying the bar: “Voici votre Bar-room, amateurs de Whisky; On y sert gin, cocktail, bière du and Kentucky.” In “Railway”, he notes the expansion of the rail network, but “En Wagon,” he tells us “C’est ici qu’on apprend l’american façon: il ne faut d’un Yankee qu’une courte leçon.” Finally, in “Le Dieu Dollar,” he speaks of the need to earn money in the US, but laments how quickly those “greenbacks” disappear.
The six-page poem, “Les Nègres,” is well-intentioned, going so far as to chastise Americans for their harsh treatment of African Americans, but this is undermined by both his paternalism and his own use of racial stereotypes.
Dupuy-Péou returned to France in May 1873. He later travelled to Rome, Algeria, Palestine, Constantinople and Egypt. He published poetry – he was a member of the French Academy of Poetry – as well as his memoirs, Mon Journal de pèlerin, which enjoyed some success in 1893. He also published La Bulgarie aux Bulgares in 1896, which he naturally submitted to Prince Ferdinand.
Part priest, part schemer, Dupuy-Péyou, later worked as an English teacher in Toulouse, and in the 1890s became Attorney-General of the Bulgarian Mission for France, a role that led him to rub shoulders with royalty and to travel extensively throughout the Balkans.
OCLC locates copies at Tulane, UBC and BnF only.
