Figure 1.--This illustration shows Delesseps being interviewed at his Windsor Hotel in New York on March 20, 1880. The article was published in "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper". The interesting point is that while the interview was being conducted, the family including the children are all around him. The children look like the girls, but given how the younger boys were dressed, there is no way of being sure of this.

One interesting thought as we assess some of the images of the DeLesseps family is the insights they offer on child rearing. Unfortunately, we do not yet have any information on what family life was like. DeLesseps was one of the most acclaimed me of the age, at least untill the Panama fiasco. Thus there were many press interviews, including articles in illustrated magazines. There are thus some family type images. These are drawings because the technology for inexpensively published photographs had not yet been worked out in the 1870s. Some of the drawings appearing in magazines suggest significant differences between French and British approaches to child rearing. It is interesting to note that in magazine interview young children are present. I don't think this would be the case in an upper-class English family where the children spent most of their time in nurseries, looked after by nannies or other caregivers, and were only paraded out for special occasions.

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Created: 6:32 AM 2/8/2005
Last updated: 6:32 AM 2/8/2005