Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  While Haussmann was spending vast sums on new roads and development schemes, including the beginning of a new water and sewage system that would prove to be one of his greatest contributions, ten-year-old Sarah Bernhardt was attending the Augustine convent school of Grandchamp, near Versailles.

  Born on the Left Bank of Paris, Bernhardt was the eldest daughter of a pretty Dutch courtesan who had clawed her way out poverty and into the arms of a series of wealthy protectors, one of whom (we do not know which) was Sarah’s father. The convent school had promised “to form the students by inspiring them to a solid, enlightened piety, [and] . . . to contribute, as much as possible, toward making their company agreeable and their virtues sweet.”11 But it was a lost cause. Little Sarah was trouble from the start.

  She sat on the convent wall and imitated the bishop when he delivered a funeral oration below. She shocked the nuns with her foul language, slapped one sister who tried to comb her tightly curled hair, and cursed another who tried to exorcise her evil spirits by flinging holy water on her. She repeatedly ran away from school and had already showed a reckless disregard for propriety as well as an insatiable need for attention.

  Where, the good sisters wondered, would it all end?

  Reception of Queen Victoria by Empress Eugenie at the Château de Saint-Cloud (engraving). Private collection. © Look and Learn / Illustrated Papers Collection / Bridgeman Images

  CHAPTER FIVE

  A Queen Visits

  (1855)

  Despite nothing but bad news as the siege of Sebastopol dragged on, Napoleon III did not want to alarm the public. Instead, he went ahead with celebrations for the new year that were even more over-the-top than those for the one before. Like its predecessor, the extravaganza that Haussmann held in the Hôtel de Ville garnered praise, especially for the fountain expressly built for the courtyard, whose waters cascaded down the grand stone staircase and into a pool below. The six thousand guests enthusiastically agreed that the whole effect was magical—an evening filled with enchantment.

  But the war continued as miserably as ever, and public opinion was growing testy. In April, Napoleon III decided that he would do what his uncle would have done and announced that he would sail for the Crimea to assume control of the French forces there. Eugenie, no shrinking violet, insisted that she would accompany him—at least as far as the civilized outposts of Constantinople.

  The British were terrified by the news that Bonaparte’s nephew would be leading his troops into battle, even if it was alongside British soldiers. The French also had reason to be unsettled by the news. Their emperor may have looked impressive on a horse, but his previous military experience (two quickly extinguished coup attempts plus some youthful hijinks in Italy) was not reassuring. Still, the British were sufficiently dismayed by the prospect of another Bonaparte at the head of an army that they quickly decided upon a diversionary tactic and invited the emperor and empress to visit Britain instead. Louis-Napoleon couldn’t resist. He loved London (ever since his residence there while exiled from France). In addition, he would get to meet the queen.

  Louis-Napoleon may not have been much of a soldier, but he was unrivaled as a charmer, and within even the limited time that a five-day visit allowed, he won over Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and their growing brood of children. Count Maurice de Fleury, who attended Louis-Napoleon during this state visit, recalled that “the Queen gave a very moving adieux, and it was with tears that her daughter, the Princess Victoria, threw herself into the arms of the Empress Eugenie.” Everyone cried, starting with the queen’s children and extending to the queen herself and her attendants. As for Prince Albert, he, too, seemed quite moved by the occasion.1

  Benjamin Disraeli, by now a leading figure in the Conservative party, was more cynical, but Fleury seems to have gauged the occasion about right. The emperor was delighted with the queen and her family, while Victoria was strongly impressed with Louis-Napoleon, taking care to write a long memorandum on his merits, especially noting his “indomitable courage, unflinching firmness of purpose, self-reliance, [and] perseverance.”2 She had kind words about Eugenie as well, and despite their vast differences in personality, they became lifelong friends.

  This visit resulted in a reciprocal one, in August, of the British royal family to France, specifically to visit Paris’s first Exposition Universelle, or World’s Fair. It marked Britain’s official recognition of Napoleon III’s Second Empire.

  Louis-Napoleon had been fascinated by the very first world’s fair, held in London in 1851. He was especially impressed with the Crystal Palace, a huge cast-iron structure whose walls and ceiling were filled with the greatest area of plate glass ever before seen. Light flooded in through its ceiling and walls, amazing visitors and inspiring Louis-Napoleon to build one of his own—one that would be even better.

  His idea for a world’s fair quickly grew from a world’s fair for agricultural and industrial products to one that included a world exhibition of fine arts. Fine arts were placed in a Palais des Beaux Arts at the far end of the site, along the Seine at Avenue Montaigne (although young Gustave Courbet—a pioneer in the new directions offered by Realism and miffed by the Salon’s rejection of several of his paintings—held a one-man show in a specially constructed building that he called the Pavilion of Realism, near the fine arts pavilion). The chosen site for the centerpiece, the Palais de l’Industrie, lay between the Seine and the Champs-Elysées (it would be destroyed in 1900 to make way for the Grand Palais). Other structures were added along the Seine as exhibit requests poured in, but it was the Palais de l’Industrie in which the emperor was most absorbed, envisioning it as a structure that would outdo even the Crystal Palace.

  As it happened, the end result was far from what the emperor had imagined. Although immense and well-lit from the acres of glass in its barrel-vaulted roof, the Palais de l’Industrie was sheathed in stone and appeared far heavier and less exciting than the Crystal Palace, which remained unchallenged as a forward-looking architectural wonder. In addition, the Palais was badly ventilated, miserably hot in the summer heat, and, even with its huge size, unable to accommodate all the exhibitions, some of which were sent to outlying exhibit halls.

  Throughout the exposition, the French, as always, excelled at design, while the British remained the leaders in heavy industry and manufacturing (although it was a Frenchman who had just devised an industrial method for producing aluminum, and aluminum bars were exhibited for the first time at this exposition). But it was the fine arts that attracted the most visitors and created the most interest. As Maxime Du Camp put it, “For the first time the English school of painting was well represented,” and works by German artists “revealed to our eyes the great decorative German school.” As for French painters, the placement of works by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Eugène Delacroix in the same room created a special stir.

  At the heart of this agitation was the rivalry dividing the French school, especially between Ingres and Delacroix. While Ingres had for years been the bastion of Neoclassicism, holding off the rising tide of Romanticism, Delacroix had become the leader of the French Romantic school. One painted the coolly classical ideal, proclaiming the superiority of line over color, while the other portrayed the heroic, with a fervor for action and color. Still, both were extraordinary painters, and both received gold medals from the exposition jury. In the end, though, it was Ingres—as always—who received the most acclaim.

  Neither artist had much respect for the other, although Delacroix buffered his criticism in wit. Ingres did not bother to hide his opinions and was especially down-putting when it came to Delacroix. As Du Camp tells the story, at some point during the exposition, a banker unwisely invited several artists, including Ingres and Delacroix, to dine with him. Ingres, who according to Du Camp “had a high opinion of himself” and thought that “after Raphael, the world had come to a standstill,” was displeased to find Delacroix among the guests. Ingres rolled his eyes, expressed his impatience, a
nd at the dinner’s end, he approached Delacroix, coffee cup in hand. “Sir!” he said to him. “Drawing means honesty, it means honor!” And he became so excited that he spilled coffee down his shirtfront. At that, he exclaimed, “I am going; I will not stay here to be insulted any longer!”

  Delacroix, for his part—coolly aristocratic, as usual—was more amused than offended by the incident and, according to Du Camp, had the good taste to stay above the fray. “Sometimes,” Delacroix remarked of his rapidly exiting adversary, “it is difficult not to be exclusive when one is very gifted.”3

  Queen Victoria and Prince Albert arrived in Paris in August, in the midst of all the demolition going on throughout Paris. To hide the eyesores, false facades of wood and painted cardboard were put up along their route from the Gare de l’Est—linked, for the occasion, with the Gare du Nord, where they actually arrived (which at the moment was unattractively surrounded by blocks of housing under demolition). Some 800,000 people lined the lengthy crosstown route to their quarters at the Château de Saint-Cloud. After all, it was a momentous event—the first time a reigning British monarch had visited Paris in centuries.

  The queen viewed the exposition, especially the products of British industry, and—at her insistence—visited the tomb of Napoleon I at the Invalides. There, as a summer thunderstorm darkened daylight to night, she paid her respects before the tomb of England’s great enemy while the organ played “God Save the Queen.” Later, Victoria wrote to her former tutor that “it was touching and pleasing in the extreme . . . to see old enmities wiped out over the tomb of Napoleon I, before whose coffin I stood (by torchlight) at the arm of Napoleon III, now my nearest and dearest ally.”4

  The emperor himself drove his royal guests around the streets of Paris, showing off his city to the newcomers. There were elegant state dinners, a ball at Versailles, and Haussmann outdid himself in providing a royal welcome at the Hôtel de Ville, for which the grand staircase was at last opened for use. Eight thousand guests were invited, and although the sovereigns gracefully bowed out before midnight, the party went on until morning.

  To cap it off, the queen graciously agreed to give her name to the new avenue that had just been opened from the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville to the Place du Châtelet.

  Fortunately, the royal visitors did not have to forage for hotel rooms, which were already at a premium by the time the exposition opened. Luxury accommodations were especially scarce: until the Pereire brothers’ Grand Hôtel du Louvre opened, the only luxury hotel in town was the Meurice. The Hôtel du Louvre, which went up on property the Pereires had only recently acquired, between the Rues de Rivoli and Saint-Honoré at the Place du Palais Royal, was huge (the largest at that time in Europe), with seven hundred rooms and a dining room that accommodated three hundred. It was also luxurious, with many bathrooms, a pair of elevators, sumptuous carpets, boutiques on its ground and mezzanine floors, and a museum’s worth of frescoes. Begun in August 1854, work proceeded on it round the clock—under electric arcs by night. But despite the Pereires’ efforts, the Hôtel du Louvre was not finished in time for the exposition’s opening (May 1, 1855), and no wonder. How could any such enterprise be completed within the time frame of eight months?

  A partial opening took place in October 1855 (still record time), and after a few opening bumps, the Hôtel du Louvre became a chic meeting spot and location for elegant receptions as well as a popular destination for travelers. The press was flattering, describing the Grand Hôtel du Louvre as “a palace that visitors demand to visit, much like a monument.”5 The Pereires, who benefited greatly from the publicity, were suitably gratified.

  That year, young Gustave Eiffel, who was making steady progress in his studies (although he was said to need improvement in technical drawing), asked his mother to buy him a season ticket for the Exposition Universelle. There, the future wizard of iron could not have missed seeing the iron-and-glass Palais de l’Industrie, although there is no indication that it made much of an impression on him.

  By August, the young man had received his diploma, and with the prospect of running his uncle’s successful vinegar factory no longer in the offing (due to severe political differences between Eiffel’s Bonapartist father and republican uncle), he cast about for something else to do. Astonishingly, given his eventual career, he had chosen to specialize in chemistry rather than in metallurgy or mechanics, possibly because of the promise of the vinegar factory. Now he was willing to look in quite a different direction and apprenticed himself, on an unpaid basis, to his brother-in-law, who managed an iron foundry at Châtillon-sur-Seine.

  Although young Eiffel was completely unprepared for this sort of work, he threw himself into learning as much as he could about all aspects of the iron-foundry business. At the same time, he looked for a permanent job, preferably in Paris, which had become the throbbing industrial and commercial center of France.

  There were many other young or youngish men making their way in Paris that year, including Nadar, who was frantically busy trying to establish himself in photography—at a time when mass production of photographs had become a reality and competition among photographers was fierce. By this time, chief among Nadar’s competitors was his uncooperative brother, Adrien, who had barred him from what was intended to be their joint studio and who refused to repay Nadar and Nadar’s new wife the large sum that they had expended (from her dowry) for his training and equipment.

  What really bothered Nadar, though, was the fact that Adrien was freely using the name “Nadar” to attract a bevy of fashionable clients. Nadar had established his pseudonym thanks to quite a lot of hard work, especially as a humorist and caricaturist, and along the way he had made important contacts in the press and with leading celebrities (“I had friendly relations,” he later said, “with all the illustrious people of the time”).6 He had immediately seen the financial prospects that mass production offered for selling large quantities of photos of celebrities, but Adrien was cutting in on his clientele. Concerned above all about protecting his identity, Nadar sent bailiffs to seize Adrien’s business cards at the printer and launched a lawsuit claiming trademark protection for his pseudonym. Life was tough enough without having to deal with an ingrate like Adrien.

  Another that year who was striving for success in Paris was Jacques Offenbach, the German cellist and composer who from an early age had tried and failed to make his mark in Paris, each time returning to his home in Cologne. The son of a Jewish cantor who had grown up surrounded by music, Offenbach had left the Paris Conservatoire because he was bored. But despite his obvious musical talents, he failed to establish himself in Paris. Parked in a position as conductor at the Comédie-Française, where he was both overqualified and underappreciated, he kept trying, without success, to be accepted at the Opéra-Comique, even though by this time he had staged several short works in Paris.

  It was the World’s Fair that gave him his opportunity. Offenbach spotted an unoccupied little theater opposite the Palais de l’Industrie and requested permission to use it. He received the necessary consent, along with restrictions that included limiting the size of his prospective cast to three characters. Offenbach agreed and renamed the place the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens. Assisted by Ludovic Halévy, a young civil servant with a gift for dialogue, he opened on July 5 with several one-acts, including Les Deux Aveugles (The Two Blind Persons), the first operetta ever performed in Paris. In it, two men pretending to be blind fight over the best spot for begging. The audience loved it, and it was still running a year later when the emperor asked for a special performance at the Tuileries Palace.

  Offenbach could now resign from the Comédie-Française, and once the World’s Fair was over, he moved his Bouffes-Parisiens to a larger hall, the Salle Choiseul, for the winter season. There, he began his extraordinary run of comic operas, mocking everyone from Victor Hugo and the Romantics to get-rich-quick stockbrokers and the importance of appearances in Parisian society.

  He was still not
out of the woods, financially speaking, but he would increasingly be a name to reckon with.

  Another that year who was still striving for success was Charles Baudelaire, already in his midthirties and aching for recognition. Still bearing childhood scars from the death of his beloved father, an amateur painter who was responsible for ordering pictures and statues for the Luxembourg palace, Baudelaire’s unhappiness seems to have been rubbed raw by his rivalry with his stepfather for the affections of Baudelaire’s mother. Whatever the cause, young Baudelaire—educated at the prestigious Lycée Louis-le-Grand in Paris but distinctly uninterested in the career in law or diplomacy that his stepfather urged on him—went through his inheritance from his father in record time, playing the dandy, dressing expensively, frequenting brothels, and contracting syphilis en route. He also acquired a mistress, whom Nadar called Baudelaire’s “black Venus” and who may have been a prostitute. In any case, she was not the sort of companion that Baudelaire’s stepfather (a general and soon a senator) had in mind for his difficult stepson.

  Despite the stepfather’s efforts to dissuade him from this lifestyle (efforts that always involved stern lectures but also included sending him on a voyage to Calcutta, which he never completed), Baudelaire continued to spend freely and live dissolutely, but he began to write poetry as well. He also visited studios and museums with artist friends, listened to and joined in serious discussions on art, and began to write art criticism, beginning with his review of the Salon of 1845, in which he championed Romanticism, especially the work of Delacroix.