Alexandre Vattemare

Nicolas Marie Alexandre Vattemare (Paris, 1796 - 1864) is ventriloque and French, creative philanthropist of the first system of international cultural exchange.

The ventriloque one

Alexandre Vattemare grows with Lisieux. He is discovered very young person an extraordinary gift of ventriloquie of which he uses abundantly to make jokes with his entourage. After its studies, he is briefly assistant-surgeon with the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris, establishment of which it would have been returned to have made speak the corpses about the lessons of anatomy.

In 1814, it leaves for Berlin, guide of 400 Prussian soldiers wounded or reached typhus, and it is in Prussia, because the political events prohibit to him to return to France, that it begins his career of ventriloque. To the talent to emit sounds without stirring up the lips is added astonishing faculty to give the illusion which they come from a wall cupboard, a statue or a close part, and a not very common genius of the imitation and physical transformation.

A long round makes him traverse the Germany, the Netherlands, then the the United Kingdom. In 1821, with the Adelphi Theater of London, it off interprets with him only the sixteen characters of the “Rogueries Nicholas”. With the apogee of her career, its celebrity is such as her name of scene, “Mr Alexandre” is, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, with the ventriloquie what Frégoli will be with the Transformisme or Robert-Houdin with the Prestidigitation.

Made fortune, it turns over to France in 1826, settles with Marly-the-King and continues his career through all Europe, before going, in 1839, with the the United States and the Canada.

The creator of the international system of exchange

During his rounds, Mr Alexandre constituted of remarkable collections of medals, prints and autographs. Curious spirit, of pleasant trade, and very undertaking, it sought the company of the scientists and of the scholars, and, applauded everywhere by the princes and the good company, a vast network of relations tied. However, while visiting in all the cities which it crossed the cabinets of curiosities, the museums and the public libraries, it was struck by the great number of doubles which one found in their collections.

Since 1833, it begins the work which will monopolize it until the end of its life and will constitute its second career: design, the implementation and administration of an international system which allows the diffusion of knowledge by the exchange: the “system of scientific, literary and agricultural exchange international”. “To receive those which have to give to those which do not have” is the philanthropic currency of the agency that it creates for this purpose.

Inlassablement, to its last breath, it spends a considerable energy in visits, reports/ratios and correspondence, to obtain authorities of the doubles of books, publications administrative, but also of the fossils, samples of minerals, plants or animals, whose it organizes the exchange after a fashion, of cities to cities and States in States, through the continents.

Nothing stops it, neither the modesty of the means which are allocated to him, neither the extent of the task which it sets, nor skepticism, if not the distrust, which it meets in France. On the contrary, its enthusiasm pushes it increasingly front. Stocks of books which it conveys requiring of the buildings to accommodate them and allow their consultation, it is necessarily interested in the libraries, and thus it is one of the inspirers of the creation of the first large American public library, the Boston Public Library, of which he calls the foundation since 1841; the exchange between France and the United States him sufficient step, it manages to gain other countries with its cause and extends its network as far as Turkey and in Iran; it takes part in the World Fairs, of which it is claimed even the inventor; when George Catlin organizes the visit of Iowas Indians in Paris, it is Vattemare which, as it did for other American, is used as cicerone with the troop, and, with died of an Indian, obtains to him funeral of first class to the church of the Madeleine and organizes a subscription to offer to him, with the cemetery of Montmartre, a burial decorated with a sculpture of Préault. In 1862, sick and old, whereas it makes in Saint-Malo a stay of convalescent, it still manages to create the museum of the city.

In 1853, the system of exchange became considerable extensive, Vattemare is held in high regard in the United States, where a law was even voted to support its company, nearly 130 libraries and institutions are implied throughout the world, and, in 1855, a report/ratio of Guizot pays finally homage to its achievements. However, work crumbles little by little, partly victim of its success. The considerable mass of publications and objects proves ingérable by a structure which, for lack of true supports, remains reduced and well too centralized, volumes accumulate, the delays increase, the Crimean War, then the American Civil War immobilize temporarily, and often definitively, of broad portions of the network.

Today forgotten, Alexandre Vattemare is a precursor in the field of the cultural exchanges. It is under its direct inspiration, in its wake or with its continuation which were founded the exchanges of the Smithsonian Institution, created in 1848 the Canadian Institute of Quebec, established in 1877 the French Commission of the exchanges international or concluded in 1886 Convention from Brussels concerning the international exchanges for the official documents and the scientific and literary publications. The Handbook of the international exchanges of the publications published in 1956 by UNESCO pays homage explicitly to him.

External bonds

http://www.sdn.ac.uk/dixneuf/september04/nash/vattemare.pdf
http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla64/151-133f.htm

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