Adolphe Gouhenant: French Revolutionary, Utopian Leader, and Texas Frontier Photographer by Paula Selzer and Emmanuel Pécontal

Abstract

Reviewed by: Adolphe Gouhenant: French Revolutionary, Utopian Leader, and Texas Frontier Photographer by Paula Selzer and Emmanuel Pécontal Gerald D. Saxon Adolphe Gouhenant: French Revolutionary, Utopian Leader, and Texas Frontier Photographer. By Paula Selzer and Emmanuel Pécontal. Texas Local Series. (Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2019. Pp. xxii, 430. $34.95, ISBN 978-1-57441-769-2.) Adolphe Gouhenant: French Revolutionary, Utopian Leader, and Texas Frontier Photographer is a well-researched and engagingly written biography of Adolphe Gouhenant (“pronounced Gounah”), an individual whom most people will know little about, unless they are familiar with the early history of [End Page 122] the north Texas region, especially Dallas, Denton, Fort Worth, and Pilot Point (p. xvii). Gouhenant, born in 1804 in the small village of Flagy in revolutionary France, had a remarkable life, which authors Paula Selzer and Emmanuel Pécontal divide into three parts (as noted in the subtitle of the book). First, he was a French revolutionary and artist/scientist who pushed for workers’ rights and was briefly imprisoned for his political activities. Gouhenant emerged later to become a Utopian leader, in the vanguard of an attempt to establish a communist settlement, Icaria, in north Texas in 1848. Despite being blamed for the settlement’s failure, he stayed in north Texas and reinvented himself yet again, this time as a photographer, teacher, doctor, landholder, and owner of the “first cultural institution” in Dallas (p. xix). The authors argue that Gouhenant was as “an outrageously complex character who wandered around grasping at the edges of a successful career, staking small claims along the way” (p. 336). Gouhenant “was complicated and misunderstood. His motives were sometimes unclear and his actions tested the limits of the law in both France and America” (p. 337). He had a penchant to reinvent himself after personal and professional failures and a resilience to try again—to try anything again! The authors find that the major challenge in researching Gouhenant is the fact that documents, manuscripts, official records, and newspapers have spelled his last name at least twenty-four different ways, which makes research a challenge in both France and the United States. Selzer is a third-generation granddaughter of Gouhenant, and Pécontal is a French historian of astronomy; their styles blend seamlessly in the narrative. One of the book’s most important contributions is tracing Gouhenant’s life in France before he immigrated to Texas. “In 1831, he petitioned the Duc d’Orléans requesting funds to build a monument to science” in Lyon (p. xviii). Though his request was denied, Gouhenant did construct “a one-hundred-foot observatory” on a hill overlooking the city (p. xviii). He financed the construction with loans but later defaulted on paying them back, sparking a series of civil cases against him, after which he declared bankruptcy. He reemerged and worked as “an art dealer, painter, and restorer, and fought for workers’ rights during the final years of the French monarchy” (p. xviii). His zeal and enthusiasm got him arrested in Toulouse, where he was tried and acquitted of revolutionary activity in 1843. He became a convert to Icarian communism and advocated installing it in France by force. Leaving behind his wife and two children in France, Gouhenant led the vanguard of a Utopian dream to establish an Icarian settlement in Denton County in north Texas in 1848. The settlement failed, and Étienne Cabet, the founder of Icarian communism, accused Gouhenant of treachery, incompetence, and a double cross. The authors, however, write that “Gouhenant was none of these, and it is to his credit that he was able to hold together the men in his charge for as long as he did” (p. 197). Trying to rebuild his life again, Gouhenant drifted from Fort Worth to Dallas and back, teaching music, drawing, and French and buying and selling property in both towns—property transactions that got him entangled in countless court cases. In 1851 he established the Arts Saloon, the first art gallery and ballroom in Dallas, and in 1853 he was the first to be naturalized in the city. He also became the first photographer in Dallas, and his daguerreotypes provide some [End Page...