Luxagraf

To an American, Europe is a cautionary tale. From Jefferson’s warning that when we “get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall be as corrupt as Europe” to Madison’s explanation that separation of church and state was the only way to avoid “the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries,” the Founding Fathers used the Continent to signify everything our new nation was not. A century later the Gilded Age’s yearning for cultural validation complicated matters, requiring a Henry James or an Edith Wharton to do justice to the shifting balance of social insecurity, moral superiority, confidence and naivete. But even the most starry-eyed grand tourist knew they were traveling backwards in time. Well into the last century, Europe was the “old world,” a fading catalogue of postcard views and primitive plumbing where Americans came to lose their innocence.

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