Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  As for Offenbach’s “great little theater,” the Bouffes-Parisiens, the Goncourts spent part of an evening with friends discussing “the place it occupies, the curiosity it arouses, the various worlds it touches upon, from the Jockey Club to the demi-monde.” It was, they agreed, “a high-class place of ill repute, the home of the short skirt, the naughty song and the dirty joke.” Yes, it was delightful, except for its tie-in with people like the Duke de Morny, Offenbach’s patron, “the typical man of the Empire, steeped in all the corruption of Paris.”13

  More serious matters were afoot in the realm of grand opera, where the emperor—prodded by Princess Metternich of Austria—had requested a performance of Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser. Wagner’s operas had never before been performed in Paris, and it required an unheard-of 164 rehearsals for orchestra and performers to prepare for opening night, on March 13. The audience, including some staunch anti-Wagernerians, was waiting, and opening night as well as the two subsequent performances were disrupted by whistling and shouts, peppered by scattered outbreaks of fighting. The uproar had several causes, among them the ire of some opera lovers at Wagner’s refusal to introduce the usual ballet in the second act (he had agreed to introduce a ballet but insisted on putting it in the first act). Others were upset by Wagner’s willingness to accept the patronage of members of the German aristocracy; after all, he was a rebel, was he not? Critics were annoyed by Wagner’s talk of his music being that of the future, while musicians and composers were angered by the fact that the emperor was giving precedence to the music of a German over that of their own.

  Mostly, though, the audience as a whole was unprepared for what it heard. After three performances, Wagner conceded defeat and withdrew Tannhäuser. It would be several decades before his music became fashionable in Paris.

  Nadar, who opened his luxurious new studio in September 1861, welcomed many celebrities there, including Jacques Offenbach, whom he asked to play “La Marseillaise” on the studio’s piano—flinging open the windows so that this rallying cry of revolution, banned by the Second Empire, could be heard on the streets. Offenbach complied but, according to the story, improvised sufficiently that he disguised it from any passing authorities, even while providing a delectable moment for Nadar and his left-leaning friends.

  At the time, Nadar wanted to be the first to take photographs underground, using artificial light. His designated subjects were the Paris catacombs, into which he ventured in 1861, and the city’s sewers, which he photographed several years later—much to the interest of the public, which rarely hazarded into such places.

  Nadar was especially pleased with his sewer photos, which captured the new, spacious, and efficient tunnels put in place by Haussmann’s man Belgrand, as a sort of underground counterpart to the prefect’s aboveground thoroughfares. Gone, or going, was the damp and stinking labyrinth that would gain notoriety in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables as “the intestines of Paris.”

  Nadar was capturing on film the new Paris, even as Victor Hugo was memorializing the old.

  The journalist and dramatist Charles-Edmond Chojecki returned to Paris in mid-June after spending several days with Victor Hugo in Brussels. It was an especially memorable occasion, for on the day Charles-Edmond arrived, Hugo announced that he had just finished Les Misérables—having traveled to Belgium that spring to visit the battlefield of Waterloo, the last missing piece of his huge novel. Summing up his long-awaited masterpiece, Hugo remarked to Charles-Edmond that “Dante . . . made an inferno out of poetry; I have tried to make one out of reality.”14

  Hugo had left off writing Les Misérables with the onset of revolution in February 1848 and had not taken up the manuscript again until April 1860—possibly prompted by Napoleon III’s general offer of amnesty. Hugo had ignored the emperor’s offer, but it may have reminded him that Napoleon le Petit (despite Hugo’s fervent hopes and expectations) was still very much in power, even while Victor Hugo was not getting any younger. Following this wake-up call, Hugo spent months reviewing the original draft and writing a long preface, but he had not yet completed the story when, late in the year, he became seriously ill. Once recovered, he realized the importance of finishing his book while he still could. December 30, 1860, marked the date when he began the huge task of completing Les Misérables.

  It was between January and March of 1861 that Hugo wrote most of the remainder of Les Misérables, with the exception of the lengthy section—the introduction to part II—on the battle of Waterloo, which he would not complete until later. It was during January 1861 that Hugo revised the rest of part II, set in Paris, which he had written all those years before. He relied on his own memory, but he also sent a journalist friend who was able to take advantage of the 1859 amnesty to do a careful study of the book’s major Paris locations.

  Paris was in a real sense one of the characters of Les Misérables, and Hugo, an inveterate walker, knew his city well. He was passionate about Paris. But he was well aware that Paris had changed dramatically since his departure—and, in his opinion, not for the better. He had been fighting “progress” for years, most notably with his campaign to save Notre-Dame de Paris, a campaign capped by his 1831 Notre-Dame de Paris, which portrayed the cathedral and the city around it in the full splendor of the past.

  But the Paris Hugo depicted in Les Misérables was not one of splendor. His characters lived their lives in the tenements of what by 1860 had become the Left Bank’s fifth and thirteenth arrondissements, as well as in the territory stretching from the Right Bank’s Place de la Bastille (home of Gavroche’s moldering plaster elephant) through the then-decrepit Marais to the quarters surrounding the ancient church of Saint-Merri and the markets of Les Halles (the latter quarter being the setting for the book’s ill-fated barricade). Although Jean Valjean and Cosette would move to Rue Oudinot (called Rue Plumet in the book) in the more prosperous quarter near Les Invalides, where they gravitated to the pleasant Luxembourg Gardens, the book’s focus is on the darkened slums to the south and east, with their open sewers, hunger, filth, and despair.

  Hugo, writing in exile far from Paris, wrote Les Misérables as a kind of memory piece, but one with a purpose. By this time he had become an outspoken critic of the kind of society that could so devastatingly penalize someone like Jean Valjean for merely stealing a loaf of bread. Hugo’s politics were of course complex; after all, his personal history had been buffeted by contradictions, and his politics had evolved with age and experience. As Théophile Gautier reminded the Goncourts, Hugo had been a royalist during the early part of his career, and even in 1848, he was no liberal and did not believe “in all that nonsense.” In fact, continued Gautier, “he didn’t get mixed up in that filthy business until later.”15

  Gautier was stating matters too simplistically, but overall, he had a point: the author of Les Misérables had changed from the man he had been twenty or thirty years earlier. Along the way, Victor Hugo had determined that poverty rather than evil character lay at the root of most social ills. And, carefully noting the changes wrought by Napoleon III and the Second Empire, Hugo concluded that in demolishing those slum-ridden narrow streets, Baron Haussmann had not diminished poverty—only the means to resist.

  Cosette, from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Original illustration by Emile Bayard. © Les Misérables, Emile Bayard / Lebrecht Authors / Bridgeman Images

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Les Misérables de Paris

  (1862)

  Les Misérables was huge. Hugo likened it to a ship having “seven masts, five funnels,” with “paddles [that] are a hundred feet across, and the lifeboats [that] are battleships.” It was too big to enter any harbor and “will have to weather every storm on the open sea.” As a result, “not a nail must be missing.”1

  Hugo had ratcheted up the price for this manuscript with a new and exceptionally eager Belgian publisher, who agreed to a sum higher than any ever before paid to an author (300,000 francs for eight years, including translation rights)—an
amount equal to the annual salaries of more than one hundred civil servants. Hugo also made sure that the first print-run would be divided into several editions, to increase the appearance of the book’s popularity. Part I of Les Misérables appeared on April 3, 1862, in more than a dozen cities in the Western world, in the wake of an impressive international advertising campaign (fed by Hugo’s flood of press releases assuring everyone that this was not just a novel, but “the social and historical drama of the nineteenth century,” as well as “a vast mirror reflecting the human race”).2 Translations soon followed, as did parts II and III on May 15.

  What was especially striking about this book was its widespread appeal—not only to the usual readers of serious fiction but also, and especially, to the masses. On the morning of May 15, people from all social classes queued up to buy the newly released copies, some even bringing wheelbarrows. The word had spread that this was a good read—a great one, even—and the public responded with enthusiasm. Booksellers immediately sold out of thousands of copies of this latest installment, while factory workers set up subscriptions to share in a book that would have individually cost them far more than they could afford.

  After all, word had spread that Les Misérables was a book that understood the poor and their struggles. It was a book to which the poor could relate.

  Not everyone liked Les Misérables. Censorship in Napoleon III’s France was always a danger—Hugo certainly had encountered and even invited it before. But on this occasion he advised his publisher to play up Les Misérables’ lengthy section on Waterloo in order to overcome French censorship by arousing patriotic sentiment. This seems to have done the job.

  Still, the book offended and intended to offend. Alarmed members of the bourgeoisie took offense at the book’s language (especially the unapologetic use of the previously unprintable word “merde”), which prompted its omission in the English edition. Hugo’s extensive and vivid discussion of the purpose as well as the contents of Paris’s ancient sewers also offended many. But many more were alarmed by the book’s message, that society and its institutions rather than those individuals caught in a corrupt system were to blame for criminal behavior. The Spanish publicly burned copies of Les Misérables, while the pope placed the book on the Church’s Index of Proscribed Books—where it joined Madame Bovary and the novels of Stendhal and Balzac.

  And then there were the literary critics, who were shocked by Les Misérables. The Goncourts were predictably biting, relegating the novel to the kind of literature found in public reading rooms, and other critics followed suit. One described the morality of Les Misérables as “inane evangelism,” while another called the book’s egalitarian socialism “très dangereux,” adding that “this book accusing society would be more aptly entitled The Epic of the Rabble.”3

  Madame Hugo, in Paris to give interviews, found it difficult to rally Hugo’s literary friends and supporters, who unanimously turned down her invitation to dinner. As for Baudelaire, who early in his life had been a Hugo enthusiast, he detested the book, especially its message of progress and the natural goodness of man. But this created a quandary, since Baudelaire still was in awe of Hugo, to whom he had dedicated three of his poems in Les Fleurs du Mal. Even more to the point, Baudelaire was badly in need of money and wanted to write a paying review but feared that a critical review might not be printed in the journal he had in mind. His solution was to write a review favorable enough to be published in Le Boulevard, without praising Les Misérables too much. Those close friends to whom he had already ridiculed the book, as well as critics ever after, could only regard his review as hypocritical.

  The last two parts of Les Misérables went on sale on June 30, 1862. That September, Hugo’s publisher threw a grand dinner party in Brussels to celebrate the book’s success. Nadar, who was among those writers and journalists invited to the great bash, returned to Paris with reams of contraband—works by Hugo still banned in France, including Napoléon le Petit and a collection of poems attacking the Second Empire’s corruption and decadence. It was a fitting gesture from the author of Les Misérables.

  But despite Hugo’s efforts to call attention to their plight, the poor of Paris remained poor, many of them desperately so. That same year, Baron Haussmann did some calculations and figured that if food prices (especially the price of bread) went up even slightly, more than 1,200,000 Parisians would be affected—that is, three-quarters of the population.

  Given the bleak realities of life for the working poor, and even more so for those who were unemployed or unemployable, Parisians of the lower classes were becoming restive. Louis-Napoleon had always sympathized with the working poor but had done little or nothing for them. Now, with his wealthy supporters peeling away, it seemed to the emperor to be just the time to bolster his support from the other end of the economic spectrum by reinventing himself as a ruler favorably inclined to social reform.

  The previous year, two industrial bankers with Saint-Simonian sympathies had launched an effort to subsidize French workers to visit the 1862 World’s Fair in London, the idea being that they would be able to view the wonders of British industry up close and meet fellow British workers. The plan was successful, and French workers returned filled with enthusiasm for British trade unions, which had just won a fifty-five-hour week (a considerable decrease from the usual work week) plus wage guarantees. Instead of encountering opposition from Napoleon’s regime, they were able to publish their reports under the emperor’s patronage.

  Activist French workers were now enthused about their prospects but divided on whether to align with the republicans in the Legislature or to go it alone with their own candidates. This remained a moot point at present, as no elections were taking place that year. In the meantime, a print-workers’ strike, still illegal, caused consternation and convictions. The emperor took notice, and not only did he pardon the striking workers, but he sent a bill to the Legislature permitting nonviolent strikes—a bill that in early 1864 would pass with a large majority. Emile Ollivier, the republican legislator chosen to introduce the bill, received considerable criticism from his liberal colleagues for cooperating with the regime, but he merely replied: “I’ll take something good from whichever hand it comes.”4

  For some, it was a pleasing development, but for others, it was annoying and confusing. As Théophile Gautier remarked one evening at the Gon-courts, the emperor “wobbles from right to left, so that nobody knows what he wants to do.” Worse, no one could comment on it, since “nowadays you aren’t allowed to say anything at all.”5

  Business and politics continued to be closely aligned, and the emperor’s support was critical in many of the great financial battles of the time. Until the 1860s, the Pereires had rocketed to success with the blessing of Louis-Napoleon and his right-hand men, Persigny, Morny, and Haussmann. But as the 1860s progressed, the Pereire brothers found such support seeping away. This was painfully evident as early as 1862, when the Pereires (who, unlike the Rothschilds, were always short of funds) tried to obtain permission for the Crédit Mobilier to issue bank notes throughout France—a concession that would have provided them with virtually unlimited credit. But the scheme collapsed in the face of Banque de France objections, and Louis-Napoleon seems to have kept his distance. In the years to come, Crédit Mobilier would increasingly find itself in financial difficulties, even as imperial support became ever more elusive.

  In the meantime, the rift between the emperor and the Rothschilds had mended, and by late 1862—much to the Pereires’ dismay—the emperor was seen attending a hunt at the Baron de Rothschild’s château at Ferrières. The Pereires for their part continued to court trouble. That autumn, the Legislature voted in favor of a merger between the Pereire-controlled Société Immobilière and the Société des Ports de Marseille, in which they were shareholders. The whole thing, including the vote itself, smelled of collusion and corruption, and it continued to make its contentious way through the court system until 1865, when Emile Pereire and two of
his colleagues would receive significant fines.

  Still, word had it that the emperor himself had intervened to prevent a worse outcome, and Baron Haussmann continued to favor the Pereires, who despite their growing troubles had much to relish with the 1862 opening of their luxurious Grand Hôtel de la Paix in the heart of the newly emerging Opéra quarter. This hotel, a kind of palace for the people (or at least for those who could afford it), served as reassuringly solid testimony, for those who needed it, of the Pereires’ vision and enterprise. In addition, the elegant and extremely popular Café de la Paix soon opened on the hotel’s ground floor, providing its own kind of gilded counterbalance to the brothers’ increasingly tarnished reputation.

  That same year, the brothers built a large villa for themselves and their families in the forests of Armainvilliers, on land they had bought a decade before. Chalet Pereire, as they called it, was enormous, with two wings—one for each family—built around a central pavilion. Much to the annoyance of James de Rothschild, the Pereires established their far-from-modest villa near his château at Ferrières, which itself was impressively luxurious, with central heating, hot and cold running water, and silver baths in the principal bedrooms. As one observer waggishly noted, the sumptuous Rothschild château united sixteenth-century vision with nineteenth-century money. Rothschild was annoyed by the Pereires’ effrontery, as he viewed it, but he could be well consoled by the emperor’s visit to Ferrières that December—displaying James de Rothschild’s very public reconciliation with Napoleon III.