Come winter he was usually off to Egypt with his wife and children, and wherever they went she attracted still more attention for him. “Her form is the admiration of every dressmaker in the French capital,” reported the Paris correspondent of the Chicago News, “and a tight fitting dress sets off her elegant figure to the greatest advantage.” They were seen riding in the Bois, at balls at the Elysee, where the stately Marshal MacMahon, president of the Republic, and his lady led “the decorous waltz” past flower-wreathed panels that still bore the imperial initials of “N” and “E.”
They entertained often and grandly at a new apartment on the Rue Saint Florentin, a home with “every elegance”–Persian rugs, walls of family photographs and paintings in heavy gilt frames, a pair of tremendous elephant tusks in one antechamber, in another a display of his decorations. Presently, with her money, a larger, more impressive residence was purchased, a five-story private mansion, or hotel particulier, on the chic new Avenue Montaigne, where, as at La Chesnaye, the custom was never-ending hospitality. There were always ten to twelve people at dinner, always some old Suez comrade or distant kinsman or other stopping over for the night and staying a week or six months.
As chairman and president of the Suez Canal Company, he remained for thousands of shareholders the charmed guardian of their fortunes, which kept gaining steadily as the value of the stock grew ever greater. He thrived on the public role expected of him, rising to all occasions banquets, newspaper interviews–with exuberant renditions of his adventures in the desert, or, increasingly, with talk of some vast new scheme in the wind. He talked of building a railroad to join Paris with Moscow, Peking, and Bombay. He had an astonishing plan to create an inland sea in the Sahara by breaking through a low-lying ridge on Tunisia’s Gulf of Gabes and flooding a depression the size of Spain.
Interestingly, when a special commission of engineers was appointed to appraise this particular scheme, his absolute faith in it was not enough. Among the members was Sadi Carnot, a future president of France, who would recall de Lesseps’ performance years later. “We had no difficulty in showing him that the whole thing was a pure chimera. He seemed very much astonished, and we saw that we had not convinced him. Take it from me that as a certainty he would have spent millions upon millions to create his sea, and that with the best faith in the world.”
It was said that he could command money as no one else alive, and encouragement came from every quarter. Victor Hugo urged that he “astonish the world by the great deeds that can be won without a war!”
A forum for de Lesseps’ interests, now a favorite gathering place for those most intrigued by his future plans, was the Societe de Geographic de Paris, where Humboldt had once been a reigning light. Geography, since the war, had become something of a national cause. Among men of position it had also become extremely fashionable. It was said that ignorance of the world beyond her borders had put France in an inferior position commercially, that it had contributed to her disgraceful performance in the late war. Geographical societies sprouted in the provinces. Geography was made mandatory in the schools. Membership in the Paris society increased four times, and Vice Admiral Clement Baron de La Roncière-Le Noury, president of the society, wrote of “this ardor for geography” as one of the characteristics of the epoch. When the first serialized chapters of Around the World in Eighty Days appeared in Le Temps in 1872, Paris correspon-dents for foreign papers cabled their contents to home offices as though filing major news stories. Nothing else had ever made the geographical arrangement of the planet quite so clear or so interesting in human terms. An extravagant stage production of the novel opened in Paris, complete with live snakes and elephants, and between acts audiences jammed the theater lobby to watch an attendant mark Phileas Fogg’s progress on a huge world map.
Jules Verne, strictly an armchair adventurer, worked in a tower study in his home at Amiens, but came often to Paris to attend meetings of the Societe de Geographie and to do his research in its library. When he was made Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, it was on the nomination of Ferdinand de Lesseps, and the sight of two such men at Societe functions, talking, shaking hands with admirers, was in itself a measure of the organization’s standing.
It was at an international congress held under the auspices of the Societe the summer of 1875 that de Lesseps made his first public declaration of interest in an interoceanic canal. The meetings opened at the Louvre, in conjunction with a huge geographical exhibition, the first of its kind, that took Paris by storm. Crowds ranged from ten to twelve thousand people a day.
Two issues must be resolved, he said. First was the best route; second was the type of canal to be built, whether at sea level (a niveau was the French expression) or whether a canal with locks. Several French explorers who had been to Darien spoke On their experiences and presented proposals. Joseph E. Nourse, of the United States Naval Observatory, reported On the recent American expeditions to Nicaragua and Panama. But de Lesseps was the center of attention, and when he declared that the canal through the American Isthmus must be a niveau and sans ecluses (without locks), it seemed that side of the problem had been settled.
Events began to gather momentum. Aided by the Rothschilds, England suddenly acquired financial control of the Suez Canal, and de Lesseps, while still head of the company, with offices in Paris, found his influence substantially undercut. The beloved enterprise, the pride of France, had become the lifeline of the British Empire.
Then before winter was out came the decision of President Grant’s Interoceanic Canal Commission. Having weighed the results of its surveys in Central America, the commission had decided in favor of Nicaragua. The decision was unanimous. Panama received little more than passing mention.
Within weeks it was announced that the Societe de Geographie would sponsor a great international congress for the purpose of evaluating the scientific considerations at stake in building a Central American canal. The American efforts had been insufficient, it was stated.
III
Whether Ferdinand de Lesseps was merely an adornment for the Tün Syndicate or a willing confederate or its guiding spirit were to become questions of much debate. In some accounts he would be portrayed as the victim of forces beyond his control. “Inevitably the whirlpool began to draw Ferdinand nearer and nearer its vortex,” reads one interpretation of events surrounding the origins of the Panama venture, and he is pictured struggling valiantly against the current. To a great many contemporary American observers he would appear more the innocent dupe of furtive schemers–“insidious influences,” as one of the New York papers said–who were placing the old hero out in front of the French people like a goat before sheep.
Had things turned out differently, however, it is unlikely that the galvanizing leadership of the effort would ever have been attributed to anybody other than Ferdinand de Lesseps, which, from the available evidence, not to mention the man’s very nature, appears to have been the truth of the matter. As he himself once remarked to an American reporter, “Either I am the head or I refuse to act at all.”
The newly formed Türr Syndicate was quite small but made up of such “well-selected” figures as to command immediate attention and confidence. Its better-known stockholders included Senator fimile Littre, author of the great French dictionary, and Octave Feuillet, the novelist. (Littre declared that the five thousand francs he put in represented the first financial investment of his life.) There were General Claude Davout, Charles Cousin, of the Chemin de Fer du Nord, the Saint-Simonian financier Isaac Periere, and Jules Bourdon, who was curator of the Opera. Dr. Henri Bionne, an official of the Societe de Geographie, was an authority on international finance, a former lieutenant commander in the French Navy, who had degrees in both medicine and law. Dr. Cornelius Herz, a newcomer to Paris and an American, was a physician and entrepreneur who claimed a personal friendship with Thomas Edison.
The syndicate’s formal title was the Societe Civile Internationale du Canal Interoceanique de Darien.
It had a capital of 300,000 francs represented by some sixty shares and de Lesseps was neither a shareholder nor an officer. The leadership and the bulk of the stock were in the hands of three directors. The most conspicuous of these was General Istvan Türr, a Hungarian who had covered himself with glory in Sicily as Garibaldi’s second in command and who for a time had been employed by King Victor Emmanuel II for diplomatic missions. With his long, elegant figure, his long, handsome face and spectacular Victor Emmanuel mustache–it must have been the largest mustache in all Paris in the 1870’s–Istvan Türr had become something of a celebrity, the sort of personage people pointed out on the boulevards. His social connections included Le Grand Français.
The second man was the financier Baron Jacques de Reinach, a short, stout, affable man about town, known for his political pull and his voracious interest in young women. Like Türr, he was foreign-born, but a German and a Jew, as would be made much of later. He had founded the Paris banking firm of Kohn, de Reinach et Compagnie and had become rich speculating in French railroads and selling military supplies to the French government. His dealings had been subject to some question, although as yet nothing serious had come of it. Most important of the three was Lieutenant Wyse, Lieutenant Lucien Napoleon-Bonaparte Wyse, who was the illegitimate son of the first Napoleon’s niece Princess Laetitia. Temporarily on leave from the French Navy, Wyse was twenty-nine years old. He did not look much like a Bonaparte. Tall and slender, he had an open, friendly face with a high forehead, blue eyes, and full beard. His mother, a sensational woman who had been known in every capital in Europe, was the daughter of Napoleon’s wayward brother Lucien Bonaparte, Prince of Canino. Her early marriage to Sir Thomas Wyse, an Irish diplomat, had failed, but was never dissolved legally, and by the time Lieutenant Wyse was born, nineteen years had passed since she and her husband had even seen each other. Two illegitimate daughters had also resulted, magnificent-looking women, very much like their mother, one of whom married Istvan Türr (which made Türr and Wyse brothers-in-law). The other, known as Madame Rattazzi, was a literary figure of sorts and one of the most dazzling and publicized figures of the day. The father of the sisters was an English Army officer who had pulled Princess Laetitia from a pond in St. James’s Park after she had attempted a public and rather ridiculous suicide at the time her marriage was breaking up. But the identity of the young lieutenant’s father was never divulged, though naturally there was speculation on the subject and especially when the Panama venture commenced. The money he put into the syndicate had come from his wife, a wealthy English-woman.
It was Wyse who went to see de Lesseps and in the early stages de Lesseps appears to have found him a young man much after his own heart. Wyse would also be the sole member of the syndicate to subject himself to any physical danger or hardship.*
The initial plan announced by the Societe de Geographie was for a series of definitive explorations and surveys, a binational, wholly non-partisan effort, with the world’s leading scientific societies participating. But all such talk ceased the moment the Türr Syndicate made itself available, offering to handle everything. Permission to conduct explorations within Colombian territory was secured by sending an intermediary to Bogotá, and six months later, in early November 1876, an expedition of seventeen men sailed on the steamer Lafayette, flag-ship of the French West Indies line. Lieutenant Wyse was in command, assisted by another French naval officer, Lieutenant Armand Réclus, and their orders were to find and survey a canal route, but to confine their activities to Darien, east of the railroad, since the Colombian government had forbidden any intrusion along the railroad’s right of way. In other words they were to look only in that area wherein the syndicate had a legal right to carry on its business, which was scarcely the broad-range perspective embodied in the Society’s original proposal.
The party was gone six months, two of which were spent at sea. Everyone suffered from malaria, two men died in the jungle, a third died during the voyage home. Wyse returned thin and drawn and covered with tiny scars from insect bites. He was thoroughly discouraged and made little effort to hide it. Though they had managed to cross the divide, the terrain, the punishing heat, the rains, had defeated them. The best he could recommend–and purely by guesswork–was a Darien canal with a tunnel as much as nine miles in length.
De Lesseps was wholly dissatisfied. How instrumental he had been in planning the expedition, if at all, is not apparent. His role was supposedly that of an arbiter only. He was the head of the Societe’s Committee of Initiative.
At any rate, having heard the young officer’s report, he declared it as good as worthless. He would agree only to a canal at sea level–no locks, no tunnels. Furthermore, he now knew where to build the canal. As he would remark later to a New York newspaperman, “I told Messrs. Wyse and Réclus when they made their report that there could be no other route than that of the railroad. ‘If you come back with a favorable report on a sea-level canal on that route I shall favor it.’ “
So Wyse and Réclus sailed again, accompanied by many of the same men who had been on the first expedition. And this time things went differently. Considering how much was to hang on their efforts, how much would be risked on the so-called Wyse Survey at Panama, it is interesting to see just how their time was occupied.
Landing at Colón and crossing to Panama City, Wyse assembled the necessary provisions and sailed for the Pacific shores of San Bias, where his efforts appear to have been half-hearted. Indeed, it is puzzling why he bothered at all, knowing de Lesseps’ attitude. In three weeks, certain that no canal could be built at San Bias without a tunnel, Wyse ordered everybody back to Panama City.
Lieutenant Réclus was told to explore the Panama route, keeping to the line of the railroad, and since this was in violation of the agreement secured earlier, Wyse decided to go himself to Bogotá. Time suddenly was of the essence. On the first of April the president of Colombia, Aquileo Parra, would be retiring from office and President Parra was known to favor the Wyse-Türr enterprise.
Lieutenant Réclus, meantime, began an informal reconnaissance of the Pacific slope a few miles east of the railroad, assisted by a young Panamanian engineer, Pedro Sosa. It was, as Réclus himself noted in his diary, “not an exploration in the true sense of the word.” It was more of a walk, a ride on the railroad even. Sosa became ill Within a week. Then Réclus too was stricken with an excruciating earache, and so he called the whole thing off. On April 20, they were back in Panama City and ten days later, with no word from Wyse, Réclus sailed for France.
And that was the sum total of the Wyse Survey. The exploration of the Panama route that was “not an exploration” had occupied all of Two weeks, four days. Wyse had played no part in it and in fact no survey had resulted.
By contrast, the American expedition of three years before had remained Two and a half months in Panama and virtually all that time had been spent in the field. The Americans, more than a hundred in number, had run a line of levels from ocean to ocean, explored the Chagres watershed, and prepared maps, charts, and statistical tables. And the Government Printing Office in Washington had made most of these findings, except for the maps and plans, available in a document of several hundred pages, a document Wyse would be perfectly happy to rely upon. Such borrowing would pose no conflict presumably, since the material had been published in the spirit of open exchange of scientific information and the Americans had already rejected the Panama route.
It was well afterward, when he was safely back in Paris, that Wyse wrote of his mission to Bogotá, then one of the most inaccessible cities on the face of the earth. From Panama City to Bogotá was normally a journey of three, even four weeks, though the distance on a straight line was only about five hundred miles. Moreover, it was a vastly different world from Panama that one found On arrival–a gray stone city set on a tableland at 8,600 feet and hemmed in by two of the three tremendous ranges of the Andes that divide Colombia like giant fingers; a mild damp climate that seldom varies,
skies often clouded; a solemn, impoverished populace clothed in black; a proud ruling class of bankers, scholars, poets, who spoke the most perfect Castilian to be heard in Latin America.
Because the Darien wilderness stood between Panama and the rest of Colombia, Panama was as removed as if it were an island, and Colombia could be reached only by sea, either by the Caribbean or the Pacific. One sailed first either to Barranquilla or to Buenaventura. The journey from Barranquilla to Bogotá involved a four-hundred-mile trip by river steamer up the Magdalena to a point called Honda, then another hundred miles over the mountains by horse or wagon. There were no railroads.
The other way, by Buenaventura, the route Wyse took, was shorter but considerably more arduous, covering nearly four hundred miles. Wyse went by horseback, traveling with one companion, a French lawyer, Louis Verbrugghe, the two of them in serapes and big Panama hats. The general direction, as Wyse wrote, was “perpendiculaire.”
They reached Bogotá in just eleven days, during which they sometimes spent twenty-four hours in the saddle. They arrived unshaven, their clothes torn and filthy. Wyse was missing one spur and had broken the other so that it clanked disconcertingly as they walked along the streets. Hotels turned them away because of their appearance, as Wyse would tell the story. But the following morning, March 13, bathed, shaved, looking most presentable, Wyse met with Eustorgio Salgar, Secretary of Foreign Relations. On March 14 he saw President Parra, who was especially “well disposed” toward his proposition.
David McCullough Library E-book Box Set Page 335