As he himself
said in writing to his sisters, "if able to accept invitations," he "would
have had the run of Faubourg St. Germain." I doubt, however, if his
personality is remembered by many, much less that strangely tortured life
which probably gave little mark of its suffering even to those who knew
him best in France.
I therefore recall some of the detail of the years preceding those days
when he appeared in the streets of Paris seeking health, but seeing often
Margry, the "intractable yet kindly keeper" of an important department of
French archives, who had in his secretive keeping documents most precious
to the uses of Parkman.
It is not altogether an agreeable chronicle, this autobiography.
[Footnote: Printed in "Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, 1892-
4," series 2, 8:349-360.] It is rather like a "pathological record," and
as totally unlike the pages of his books as can be well imagined. But it
is an essential document.
The first pages of this biography were withheld by him and so removed from
the parcel; the record begins with a general characterization of his
childhood.
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