. John La Farge : a memoir and a study . and he mused quizzically on the subject;but it interested him only as something veryremote and vague. That he came of a line ofFrenchmen was all he really knew or cared toknow. He cared, I think, not only in obedience tothe instinct of race but because his ancestralhistory touched his imagination. La Fargelived by imagination and this fact is my gov-erning principle in traversing his life. Theplace of his birth, the houses he lived in, thesources of his education, the journeys he made— such things as these count in his biographyonly as they bear upon th
. John La Farge : a memoir and a study . and he mused quizzically on the subject;but it interested him only as something veryremote and vague. That he came of a line ofFrenchmen was all he really knew or cared toknow. He cared, I think, not only in obedience tothe instinct of race but because his ancestralhistory touched his imagination. La Fargelived by imagination and this fact is my gov-erning principle in traversing his life. Theplace of his birth, the houses he lived in, thesources of his education, the journeys he made— such things as these count in his biographyonly as they bear upon the development ofhis character and the fertilizing of his brilliantintellect. The memories that he rescued fromthe past embraced, of course, the simple every-day incidents that are common to most chil-dren and young men; but as he looked backat his boyhood he could see how the special in-fluences at work therein had given a specialturn to his way of thinking and feeling. Espe-cially he recognized the formative effect at Sleeping Woman. // is<//t< /if . fain .*j€- I 43 ] that time of associations which, if then buthalf understood, nevertheless enlarged hisperspective and gave him an obscure con-sciousness of contact with exceptional condi-tions. Through his father he touched handswith participants in the great military colli-sions and political upheavals of the late eight-eenth and early nineteenth centuries. Therewas romance in the possession of a fatherwho had felt the shock of the French Revo-lution and had been in peril of his life inscenes of tropical adventure. It was in 1806 that Jean-Frederic de laFarge had come to this country, a lucky refu-gee from the massacre in San Domingo. Hehad come to the island as an Ensign in thenaval expedition which landed General Le-clerc to effect the seizure and transportationof Toussaint. Young La Farge was woundedin the action through which his ship piercedthe British blockade, but evidently this onlyheightened his spirits,
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