Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  To all appearances, they were reconciled, but Eugenie had clearly used the time to consider her future role in this marriage. Empress, yes, but especially mother. She was appalled at the reforms her husband had initiated during her absence, viewing them as signs of weakness that would endanger her son’s position when he came to power. For the past two years, she had insisted on attending her husband’s twice-weekly Council of Ministers meetings; from now on, she would no longer be a mere spectator but would make her own contributions to the discussions. She would now dedicate herself to preserving the throne for her young son.

  In the meantime, life in Paris went on. Georges Bizet, after three years in Rome, took his fourth year of the Prix de Rome in Paris, as he was allowed. The prize provided him with a modest income, at least until the end of 1861, and he reduced his expenses by moving back in with his parents, in the ninth arrondissement. His first choice, to have an opera of his accepted at one of the lyric theaters, was not immediately forthcoming, and he seems to have filled his days by teaching piano, harmony, and singing, as well as by working as an arranger and transcriber. But Paris could be intimidating to a sensitive soul like Bizet, and he had been “scared of coming back,” as he wrote a friend from Italy. “I am scared of dealing with theatre directors and librettists,” he confessed. “I’m scared of singers, I’m scared in a word, of the tacit civility of people saying nothing disagreeable to your face but stubbornly making sure you get nowhere.”7 The next few years would not be easy ones for him.

  In another part of town, Berthe Morisot, having spent long hours with her sister copying art at the Louvre, had changed teachers, with the aim of working as much as possible out of doors and in nature. The sisters’ new teacher, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, quickly became a friend as well as a valued instructor, one who proved a useful guide in developing their talent. The sisters evidently paid no heed to Corot’s critics, who thought he had lapsed into landscape painting because he could not draw figures.

  Other young artists were also making their way, not always with success. Claude Monet had stayed on in Paris, with his father’s reluctant approval, but he soon found his allowance diminished—not so much because of his failure to enter the atelier of Thomas Couture, but because of the birth of an out-of-wedlock child to his father, who now had significant new expenses to bear. Monet may not at first have been aware of this unexpected development, but he certainly was mindful of what loomed in November, when he turned twenty and became eligible for the draft. His fears proved all too real the following year when he drew a number in the draft lottery that committed him to seven years in the army. Choosing to join the Chasseurs d’Afrique (Monet later claimed that their colorful uniforms had attracted him), he soon would be stationed in Algeria.

  Edouard Manet, eight years older than Monet and already well beyond any dangers from the draft, had by now moved into a studio in the unfashionable Batignolles quarter in newly annexed northwest Paris. There, he began living with Suzanne Leenhoff, a pianist of Dutch birth two years his senior, who may have been the model who at about this time posed nude for several of his paintings. Manet had made Leenhoff’s acquaintance back when he was an art student; it was then that she came to live with his family to give piano lessons to him and his brother Eugène. Suzanne by now had an illegitimate son, who does not seem to have been Edouard’s but may have been the offspring of Edouard’s father. The possibilities for family strife over Edouard’s relationship with Suzanne seem to have been considerable, but for the moment Edouard kept their relationship a secret.

  While setting up his unorthodox household, Edouard continued to pursue his vision of truth in art, declaring to his friend Antonin Proust: “We’ve been perverted by all the artistic tricks of the trade. . . . Who’s going to give us back a clear, direct kind of painting and do away with the frills?” Pondering this, he added, “The one true way is to go straight ahead, without worrying about what people are going to say.”8

  Other young strivers in Paris were doing well for themselves. Gustave Eiffel’s reputation had spread rapidly following his remarkable role in supervising the bridge over the Garonne, and in 1860, he was promoted to engineer-general in his company’s railway division, complete with a nice raise—including 5 percent of the profits of any projects he henceforth directed.

  Nadar was also doing well, despite the fierce competition that already was growing among professional photographers in Paris. It was now that Nadar, with the financial backing of the Pereire brothers, left his modest Rue Saint-Lazare studio and established a far more glamorous one at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, in the heart of the emerging Opéra quarter. His brother Adrien had by 1860 gone bankrupt, and Nadar now paid off much of his brother’s debt and bought up his equipment, even after expenditures on a huge and expensive renovation at the new address.

  Some rose and others sank in the boomtown that was Second Empire Paris, a cutthroat metropolis that rewarded enterprise and hustle but mercilessly punished those who failed to make the grade. Emile Zola was by now among the latter group, having endured a lycée education without having attained the expected and necessary diploma. This unfortunately disqualified the young man for any reasonably lucrative white-collar work, while at the same time his education had not prepared him in any way for manual labor. Almost destitute, he and his mother—who still was hopelessly wed to her impossible dreams of financial restitution—left one dreary abode after another, finally settling in early 1860 in an eighth-floor garret at the top of 35 Rue Saint-Victor.

  This was the heart of the area that Louis-Napoleon had chosen for his longed-for extension of Rue des Ecoles, where it crossed the newly formed Rue Monge. Haussmann had by now convinced the emperor that the Rue des Ecoles should stop at this point, its place in the grand scheme of things to be taken by the new Boulevard Saint-Germain. Located at the center of all this activity, Emile and his mother lived in a cacophony of roadbuilding surrounded by demolished houses. Soon number 35 Rue Saint-Victor would disappear into the rubble along with the rest.

  But for now, young Zola needed a job. Not that he wanted one—he yearned to write. Yet extreme poverty forced the issue, and at last, the same friend of his father who had opened the doors for a lycée education found him employment as a low-level functionary at the Customs House. Here, at the Docks Napoléon, overlooking the Canal Saint-Martin, Zola collected his pittance of a salary and endured largely by gazing out the window and dreaming of Provence. “Before me,” he wrote a friend, “stretches endless desert.”9

  After two months, he quit. But other jobs were not forthcoming, especially ones that would allow him to earn his living with his pen, and his situation—and that of his mother—was becoming desperate. By the year’s end, his mother had moved to a dismal boardinghouse, while Emile moved to an attic room in the most squalid part of Rue Soufflot. There, he endured in quarters that resembled the interior of a coffin, where he looked out on a sooty wall and suffered from the damp. During the cold winter nights, he would incessantly write stories and poetry, all of these, according to one biographer, “alarmingly bad.”10

  Reduced to setting traps on the roof for sparrows and broiling them on the end of a curtain rod, he lived for days with his dreams and little else. And he wrote—badly, but he wrote.

  Zola knew his subject intimately when he wrote, in La Curée, of the upheaval that Haussmann was creating throughout Paris. “When the first network is finished,” his character Saccard notes, “the fun will begin. The second network will pierce the city in every direction. . . . The remains will disappear in clouds of plaster. . . . A cutting there,” he added, “one further on, cuttings on every side, Paris slashed with sabre-cuts, its veins open.”11

  But as the decade progressed, Haussmann would no longer be able to ram his enormous projects through as before. No longer would an overwhelming majority of deputies be willing to give way to the emperor or, more specifically, to Haussmann. Republican opposition to imperial rule was growing, and Haussmann was a
convenient target for those who wanted to attack the emperor without actually saying so.

  In addition, Haussmann’s own family affairs had opened him up to considerable criticism. His wife was rumored to have indiscreetly mentioned at dinner parties that her real estate purchases had been so silly because whenever her husband advised her to invest in a certain block, it was certain to be pulled down soon after (a rumor that one historian has called “without foundation,” originating with “a disgruntled Orléanist”).12 Still, Haussmann’s eldest daughter, Marie-Henriette, unquestionably created problems by falling in love with one of her father’s young employees, leading to a hastily arranged marriage with a far wealthier and more suitable gentleman—a marriage that the Pereires may have had a hand in arranging and that, before it was over, involved both the municipal council and the emperor. Haussmann himself caused comment with his showgirls, while his youngest daughter, Valentine, a strong-minded beauty widely believed to be yet another of the emperor’s favorites, would in mid-decade be married off hastily to provide a semblance of respectability to the birth of her son, whom most regarded as another of the emperor’s illegitimate children.

  But all of this, although admittedly rich stuff, was merely fodder for gossip. Haussmann’s real problem was a more personal one. Autocratic by nature, he had become increasingly self-important with his years of success and power, marked by his easy access to the emperor. But the emperor would be decreasingly able to protect Haussmann. In part, this was the product of those new opportunities for opposition afforded the emperor’s critics after 1860, when the Second Empire pivoted cautiously toward liberalism. This encouraged republican opposition, which now found a growing audience among those who were alarmed by the ever-larger loans that Haussmann’s projects required. In addition, the French economy, whose expansion Louis-Napoleon had so strongly promoted, would not continue its remarkable growth into the empire’s second decade. This in turn would undermine the very pillars on which both emperor and empire rested.

  But perhaps most important was the health and strength of the emperor himself, which would markedly decline as the decade progressed. Haussmann would bear the brunt of Louis-Napoleon’s physical decline, as the emperor became decreasingly able to deal with the host of problems that came his way. Increasingly, the transformation of Paris, and the prefect who was so staunchly driving it, would have to take second place in the emperor’s mind to other concerns.

  And so, in late 1860, when Haussmann pressed to be appointed minister for Paris, Louis-Napoleon—fearful of a violent reaction from Haussmann’s enemies—did not give his prefect what he so dearly wanted. Instead, the emperor gave Haussmann the right to take part in any deliberations of the Council of Ministers affecting the city of Paris. And subsequently, the emperor tried to soften any blow by piling honors on Haussmann, including the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. It was now that the emperor named one of the major new thoroughfares in Paris as Boulevard Haussmann, in the prefect’s honor.

  But Haussmann was bitter about not attaining the rank of full minister, and years later, when writing his memoirs, he remarked that after this, his opponents in the government never missed an opportunity “to make me feel . . . that a distance still existed between us; that I was a mere prefect (thus, their subordinate).”13

  Although Haussmann did not realize it, these enemies would in time bring about his downfall.

  The Great Drawing Room of the Napoleon III Apartments, c.1861 (photo). © Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman Images

  CHAPTER TEN

  Turning Point

  (1861)

  From his contemporaries’ perspective, the new decade promised evermore-glittering success for Louis-Napoleon’s empire. After almost a decade of rule, his Second Empire seemed more secure than ever. His country’s economy was booming, and his position among the other European rulers was well established. Moreover, his health appeared good, and his energies, sexual and otherwise, remained undiminished.

  Yet storm clouds loomed, which the emperor himself was quick to sense. Despite his long-held confidence in his destiny, Louis-Napoleon had begun to harbor darkened thoughts about the future. As early as 1859, he confided to his cousin, Prince Napoleon, that “nothing lasts for ever.” He then added that he did not believe in the future.1

  It was during the early 1860s that Louis-Napoleon began to send large sums of money to Nathaniel William John Strode, an Englishman whom the emperor had used as a go-between to repay his former mistress, Lizzie Howard, for the large sums she had spent on his election and 1851 coup. This second set of sums was recorded as gifts, but they were not for Lizzie. Only later it was discovered that around this time Strode bought and furnished a country house called Camden Place in Kent, which would in time serve as a home for the exiled emperor and empress. Even this early, Louis-Napoleon was contemplating a possible need for escape.

  His regime still glittered with power and glory, but for those on the lookout for danger signs, its decline had already begun. For one thing, Louis-Napoleon’s health was deteriorating, even though his condition—gallstones, which would not be diagnosed for several more years—was not yet serious or incapacitating. Still, Louis-Napoleon’s empire depended entirely on his person, especially since his heir was still a very young child. Any threat to the emperor, whether from assassins or disease, was a threat to the entire dazzling edifice.

  Yet any impediments to Louis-Napoleon’s health certainly did not limit his sexual adventures. Despite at least one bout with gonorrhea, he continued his avid pursuit of the ladies. According to the writer and historian Prosper Mérimée, who for years had been a friend and adviser to the emperor, Louis-Napoleon “likes to chase the girls. . . . He gets all excited and for a full two weeks can think of nothing or no one else. Then he immediately cools down and doesn’t think about her again.”2 Following which, the whole fandango would begin all over with another woman.

  Empress Eugenie was not pleased with her husband’s behavior, which led to frequent altercations. According to observers, he was terrified of these encounters and would do anything to avoid them, save giving up the indiscretions that caused them. Louis-Napoleon did not give up his women, but he did give way to his wife on one important subject: from now on, Eugenie would exercise a great deal of political power, not only in attending meetings of the Council of Ministers but also by having an ongoing and commanding influence over her husband’s decisions. Some quietly referred to her as the co-ruler of France, especially in her dealings with foreign ambassadors, with whom she now conducted her own private discussions.

  In addition to feeling the effects of the emperor’s declining health, the empire was beginning to suffer from its very success, or at least from its longevity. With more than a decade having passed since the failure of the Second Republic and the fear of anarchy that had catapulted Louis-Napoleon into power, his subjects no longer dreaded mob rule and devastation. The passage of a decade had brought a new generation of bourgeoisie to the fore, including many who were opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and who were equally opposed to the empire’s constraints on their liberties.

  At the same time, Louis-Napoleon had seriously undermined his support with conservative Catholics by his interventions in Italy, which had blown holes through the hitherto-sacred integrity of the thoroughly secular Papal States. And just as damaging, he had angered the significant group of protectionists among his supporters. Even the working class was emitting rumbles of discontent, as prices rose, misery increased, and the well-to-do were more ostentatiously well-to-do than ever.

  The emperor responded by trying to shore up support among his more liberal subjects by making further concessions, such as those of late 1861, whereby the Legislature received a say over supplementary and special funds, hitherto raised by decree, as well as by other concessions that gave Parliament greater control over the budget—no small thing given Haussmann’s enormous ongoing expenditures.

  Still, Louis-Napoleon’s Second Empire wa
s far from being a parliamentary or a liberal regime, and his unpredictable and unsettling forays into foreign affairs only added to a growing sense of unease, both at home and abroad.

  “Everyone distrusts him without knowing why,” the Austrian ambassador, Prince Richard Metternich, wrote to his foreign secretary. Britain’s ambassador, Lord Cowley, reported that “he must be a bold man who speculates upon the Emperor’s intentions. . . . I must doubt whether he knows them himself.”3

  Louis-Napoleon was a schemer and had been from the outset. But now, his constant plotting and counterplotting had begun to undercut him with his staunchest allies, including Queen Victoria, who—despite her susceptibility to his charm—came to regard him as untrustworthy.

  It was now that affairs in far-off Mexico came to the fore. These began that autumn when a Mexican diplomat, a childhood friend of Eugenie’s, suggested that Louis-Napoleon should think seriously about founding a great Catholic empire in Mexico, with a European Catholic prince as emperor. Eugenie immediately thought of the young archduke of Austria, Maximilian, as the emperor-to-be, and her husband quickly saw the possibilities. After all, this scheme would prevent the predominantly Protestant United States from taking over Spain’s former colonies of Latin America, which had recently won their independence. And the timing was right, since at the moment, the Americans were thoroughly mired in their bloody civil war and could be counted on paying little heed to affairs in Mexico. In addition, the idea appealed to Louis-Napoleon because it would involve the Austrian emperor’s younger brother. According to Eugenie’s later interviews with Maurice Paléologue, “In my husband’s thoughts, the elevation of the Austrian archduke to the throne of Mexico, would one day serve him as an argument to obtain from [Austrian Emperor] Franz-Joseph the cessation [transfer] of Venice to Italy.”4