Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  Instead of death, there now was dawn—along with another chance to define and redefine Paris, city of dreams.

  Notes

  Selected sources are listed by chapter, in the approximate order in which they informed the text.

  1. From Barricades to Bonaparte (1848–1851)

  Maurice Agulhon, The Republican Experiment, 1848–1852 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Graham Robb, Victor Hugo: A Biography (New York: Norton, 1997); Claude Schopp, Alexander Dumas: Genius of Life (New York: Franklin Watts, 1988); George Rudé, The Crowd in History: A Study of Popular Disturbances in France and England, 1730–1848 (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1981); Fenton Bresler, Napoleon III: A Life (London: HarperCollins, 1999); Maxime Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2 vols. (London: Remington, 1893); Frederick Brown, Flaubert: A Life (London: Pimlico, 2007); Lois Boe Hyslop, Baudelaire: Man of His Time (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1980); Michel Carmona, Haussmann: His Life and Times, and the Making of Modern Paris (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002); David H. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958); Edouard Manet, Manet By Himself: Correspondence & Conversation, Paintings, Pastels, Prints & Drawings (London: Macdonald, 1991); Kathleen Adler, Manet (Oxford, U.K.: Phaidon, 1986); Franҫoise Cachin, Manet: Painter of Modern Life (London: Thames and Hudson, 1995); Eugène Sue, Mysteries of Paris, vol. 1 (New York: Century, 1903).

  1. Schopp, Alexandre Dumas, 359. Dumas was writing the playwright and theater director Hippolyte Hostein two days before the barricades went up.

  2. Bresler, Napoleon III, 214–15. The second quote is quite possibly apocryphal, but nonetheless it sounds like him.

  3. Bressler, Napoleon III, 215. Louis-Napoléon was writing to Narcisse Viellard on 11 May 1848.

  4. By-elections take place to fill elected offices that have become vacant between general elections. Since candidates could run in more than one department, this necessitated by-elections in those departments they did not in the end choose to represent.

  5. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:265, 276. Disillusioned by the outcome of the 1848 revolution and the coup that followed, Baudelaire would withdraw from political life (see Hyslop, Baudelaire, 93).

  6. Hugo, Les Misérables, 987–88, 990.

  7. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:266.

  8. Carmona, Haussmann, 66; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:265.

  9. The priest and Christian socialist Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais, quoted in Agulhon, Republican Experiment, 62.

  10. Hugo quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 68. The Battle of Austerlitz is widely considered to be Napoleon Bonaparte’s greatest victory. The newspaper, L’Evénement, owned by Hugo’s sons and two friends and supporters, would enthusiastically endorse Louis-Napoleon in the December 1848 presidential election.

  11. Bresler, Napoleon III, 217.

  12. Agulhon, Republican Experiment, 69.

  13. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:276.

  14. Hugo quoted in Agulhon, Republican Experiment, 73.

  15. Dickens quoted in Robb, Victor Hugo, 245.

  16. Edouard Manet to Jules De Jouy, 26 February [1849]; Edouard Manet to Auguste Manet, 22 March 1849, both in Manet By Himself, 24, 25.

  17. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:292; Louis-Napoleon quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 84.

  18. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 1:292.

  19. Sue, Mysteries of Paris, 1:11.

  20. Robb, Victor Hugo, 290.

  21. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, II:23.

  22. Hugo quoted in Agulhon, Republican Experiment, 136.

  23. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:24.

  24. Bresler, Napoleon III, 233.

  25. For Du Camp’s account, see his Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:24–26.

  2. Blood and Empire (1852)

  Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life; Agulhon, Republican Experiment; Bresler, Napoleon III; Carmona, Haussmann; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Victor Hugo, Napoleon the Little (New York: Athenaeum Society, 1909); Adler, Manet; David I. Harvie, Eiffel: The Genius Who Reinvented Himself (Gloucestershire, U.K.: Sutton, 2004); Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, Pages from the Goncourt Journals (New York: New York Review of Books, 2007); Schopp, Alexandre Dumas; Robb, Victor Hugo; André Maurois, The Titans: A Three-Generation Biography of the Dumas (New York: Harper, 1957); Emile Zola, Au Bonheur des dames (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992); Charles Merruau, Souvenirs de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 1848–1852 (Paris: Plon, 1875); Bruno Carrière, La Saga de la Petite Ceinture (Paris: Vie du Rail, 1992); Alain Clément and Gilles Thomas, eds., Atlas du Paris souterrain: la doublure sombre de la Ville lumière (Paris: Parigramme, 2001); Guy Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire: L’esprit d’entreprise au XIXème siècle (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2001); Félix Nadar, When I Was A Photographer (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015); Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild, 2 vols. (New York: Viking, 1998–1999); Alain Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Henri Murger, The Bohemians of the Latin Quarter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Robert Baldick, The First Bohemian: The Life of Henry Murger (London: H Hamilton, 1961); André Tuilier, Histoire de l’Université de Paris et de la Sorbonne, 2 vols. (Paris: Nouvelle Librarie de France, 1994).

  1. For Du Camp’s account, see his Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:26–27.

  2. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:28; Hugo, Napoleon the Little, 121.

  3. Eiffel quoted in Harvie, Eiffel, 7.

  4. Goncourt, Dec. 1851, in Journals, 1–2.

  5. Goncourt, Dec. 1851, in Journals, 3.

  6. Dumas to writer Paul Bocage, quoted in Schopp, Alexandre Dumas, 385.

  7. Maurois, The Titans, 188.

  8. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:29.

  9. Merruau, Souvenirs de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 497. Hugo’s remark is from Napoleon the Little, 13.

  10. Agulhon, Republican Experiment, 173.

  11. Du Camp, Reflections on a Literary Life, 2:33, 42–43, and 53.

  12. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, 3.

  13. Today, the RER runs on a portion of the Petite Ceinture’s right-of-way, but for the most part, the Petite Ceinture remains a ghost of the past, its tracks closed off and neglected.

  14. Nadar, When I Was A Photographer, 204.

  15. Ferguson, House of Rothschild, 2:xxii.

  16. Persigny quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 262.

  17. Hugo, Napoleon the Little, 12, 27, 30, 293.

  18. Robb, Victor Hugo, 323.

  19. Du Camp, who quoted Louis-Napoleon, notes that the prince-president was repeating a saying by Louis Antoine de Saint-Just (Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:23).

  20. Murger, Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, xxiii, xxiv.

  21. Murger, Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, 392.

  22. Tuilier, Histoire de l’Université de Paris et de la Sorbonne, 2:362–63.

  3. Enter Haussmann (1853)

  Georges Haussmann, Mémoires: edition intégrale (Paris: Seuil, 2000); Carmona, Haussmann; Alain Plessis, The Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 1852–1871 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Pierre Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien: La Ville en heritage du Second Empire à nos jours (Paris: Parigramme, 2016); Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Nadar, When I Was A Photographer; Sarah Kennel, Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2013); Bresler, Napoleon III; Béatrice de Andia, ed., Les Enceintes de Paris (Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 2001); Charles Merruau, Souvenirs de l’Hôtel de Ville de Paris, 1848–1852 (Paris: Plon, 1875); Alain Erlande-Brandenburg, Notre-Dame de Paris (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998); Georges and Olivier Poisson, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: Picard, 2014); Bayle St. John, The Purple Tints of
Paris: Character and Manners in the New Empire, 2 vols. (London: Chapman & Hall, 1854); Emile Zola, La Curée (New York: Boni & Liveright, 1924); Frederick Brown, Zola: A Life (New York: Papermac, 1997); Maurois, The Titans; Schopp, Alexandre Dumas; Goncourt, Journals.

  1. Haussmann, Memoires, 81. Haussmann also credited his grandfather’s example for his own “moderation of character . . . and a personal disinterestedness which caused me to prefer less vain satisfactions than fortune and honors, satisfactions which remain assured, even in misfortune, by a clear conscience and a legitimate pride in a great task loyally accomplished” (Memoirs, 81). Haussmann, writing in retirement, was defending himself, his career, and his honor.

  2. Haussmann, Memoires, 75.

  3. Haussmann, Memoires, 357.

  4. See Bresler, Napoleon III, 265, 266. 268, 269, and 270, for all quotations in this section.

  5. Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 6, 9; Bresler, Napoleon III, 226–27.

  6. These are the Rotonde de la Villette; the small rotunda at the northern entrance to Parc Monceau; Place Denfert-Rochereau, where one now serves as an entrance to the Catacombs; and the two columns at the Place de la Nation, which dramatically mark the old Barrière du Trône tollgate.

  7. Carmona, Haussmann, 144.

  8. The first floor in French architecture is not the ground floor but what would be the second floor in American design.

  9. Haussmann, Memoires, 795, 796–97.

  10. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien, 139. See Haussmann, Memoirs, 826.

  11. Nadar, When I Was A Photographer, 211.

  12. Carmona, Haussmann, 159. See also Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien, 89.

  13. Dumas quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 249–50. Nerval’s body was found hanging from a bar of the cellar window on the morning of 25 January 1855. Dumas had been one of his closest friends.

  14. Haussmann retained the tower’s original elevation by placing it on an enormous pedestal surrounded by a small park, the first of many small parks or squares that Napoleon III would introduce into Paris. The difference in elevations between the tower and its surrounding area can be seen from the stair steps leading from nearby Rue St-Bon up to Rue de la Verrerie, a difference of almost five feet.

  15. Haussmann, Memoires, 1072.

  16. Only one of Baltard’s pavilions still exists and can be found in a park in Nogent-sur-Marne, on the eastern outskirts of Paris (see photo).

  17. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien, 87.

  18. Haussmann, Memoires, 471–72.

  19. Merruau, Souvenirs, 366.

  20. Erlande-Brandenburg, Notre-Dame de Paris, 212. Erlande-Brandenburg, a specialist on Gothic and Romanesque art, was director of the Musée de Cluny and president of the Société Franҫaise d’Archéologie.

  21. Lassus died in 1857.

  22. Following the tragic fire of April 2019, Notre-Dame will reemerge but by necessity will be extensively rebuilt, with an entirely new spire.

  23. Erlande-Brandenburg, Notre-Dame de Paris, 58, 219, 225.

  24. St. John, Purple Tints of Paris, 1:7.

  25. Zola, La Curée, 15, 18, 29, 27.

  26. Schopp, Alexandre Dumas, 409.

  27. Goncourt, 20 Feb. 1853, in Journals, 11–12.

  4. A Nonessential War (1854)

  Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Bresler, Napoleon III; St. John, Purple Tints of Paris, vol. 1; Haussmann, Mémoires; Carmona, Haussmann; Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Jean-Pierre Rigouard, La Petite Ceinture: Memoire en Images (Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, France: Editions Alan Sutton, 2012); Clément and Thomas, Atlas du Paris souterrain; Goncourt, Journals; Nadar, When I Was A Photographer; Adam Begley, The Great Nadar: The Man Behind the Camera (New York: Tim Duggan, 2017); Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale, The Divine Sarah: A Life of Sarah Bernhardt (New York: Vintage, 1991).

  1. See Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 141.

  2. St. John, Purple Tints of Paris, 1:16.

  3. Haussmann, Memoires, 825.

  4. Haussmann, Memoires, 838.

  5. Originally called the Compagnie des Immeubles et de l’Hôtel de la Rue de Rivoli, it changed its name to the Compagnie Immobilière in 1859.

  6. Both the Cité Napoléon and the Villa Daumesnil are now gated apartment complexes.

  7. Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien, 31.

  8. Goncourt, [undated, 1854], in Journals, 14.

  9. Nadar, When I Was A Photographer, 203.

  10. Begley, Great Nadar, 12–13.

  11. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 22.

  5. A Queen Visits (1855)

  Haussmann, Mémoires; Carmona, Haussmann; Bresler, Napoleon III; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Maurice de Fleury, La société du second empire: D’après les mémoires contemporains et des documents nouveaux, vol. 1 (Paris: A. Michel, 1917); Harvie, Eiffel; Adler, Manet; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2; John Rewald, The History of Impressionism (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1987); Michele Hannoosh, Painting and the Journal of Eugène Delacroix (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995); Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Begley, The Great Nadar; Hyslop, Baudelaire; Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait: Selected Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957); Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2006); Siegfried Kracauer, Jacques Offenbach and the Paris of His Time (New York: Zone Books, 2002); Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Mary McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Picasso, Stravinsky, Proust, Renault, Marie Curie, Gertrude Stein, and Their Friends, through the Great War (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014); Laure Beaumont-Maillet, L’Eau à Paris (Paris: Hazan, 1991); Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011); Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2; Goncourt, Journals; Alain Corbin, Women for Hire: Prostitution and Sexuality in France after 1850 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990); Emile Zola, Nana (Hammondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1972); Maurois, Titans; Marianne and Claude Schopp, Dumas fils, ou L’anti-Oedipe: biographie (Paris: Phébus, 2017).

  1. Fleury, Société du second empire, 1:214–15.

  2. Bresler, Napoleon III, 283.

  3. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2: 218, 221–22.

  4. Bresler, Napoleon III, 283.

  5. Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire, 188.

  6. Begley, The Great Nadar, 76.

  7. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:66.

  8. Baudelaire to [Mme Aupick], undated, in Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait, 99.

  9. Excerpt from Baudelaire, “The Swan” (from “Parisian Scenes”), in Fleurs des Mal (translated by Keith Waldrop), 116.

  10. A half-century later, the “immortels” put a stop to the most direct route for the construction of Métro line four, which as a result had to take a considerable jog around the Institut de France (see McAuliffe, Twilight of the Belle Epoque, 165).

  11. Goncourt, Aug. 1855 and 13 Oct. 1855, both in Journals, 17 and 18.

  12. The registered prostitutes underwent various regulations, such as health checks. Strictly speaking, even registered prostitutes were not legal but tolerated (see Corbin, Women for Hire, xviii).

  13. Maurois, Titans, 296, 297–98.

  6. What Goes Up . . . (1856–1857)

  Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Bresler, Napoleon III; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2; Zola, La Curée; Harvie, Eiffel; Goncourt, Journals; Adler, Manet; Begley, Great Nadar; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2; Brown, Flaubert; Hyslop, Baudelaire; Baudelaire, Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait; Berthe Morisot, Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, with Her Family and Her Friends Manet, Pu
vis de Chavannes, Degas, Monet, Renoir and Mallarmé (London: Camden Press, 1986); Anne Higonnet, Berthe Morisot (New York: Harper & Row, 1990); Rewald, History of Impressionism; Ronald Anderson and Anne Koval, James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2002); Hugh Macdonald, Bizet (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

  1. Bresler, Napoleon III, 287, 291.

  2. Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 72, 73.

  3. See chapter 3.

  4. Goncourt, 10 May and 14 Oct. 1856, in Journals, 19.

  5. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:144, 145, 146; Brown, Flaubert, 325.

  6. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:147, 149, 150–51. The Revue de Paris would not last much longer, however, being officially suppressed by Imperial Decree in early 1858 (see chapter 7).

  7. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:151; Hyslop, Baudelaire, 164–65. As Flaubert remarked to Du Camp, “They accuse me of realism, that means to say of copying what I see before me and of being incapable of invention” (Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:152).

  8. Hyslop, Baudelaire, 164.

  9. Baudelaire to Poulet-Malassis, 11 July 1857, in Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait: Selected Letters, 125.

  10. Goncourt, 7 and 20 Jan. 1857; Oct. 1857, all in Journals, 24, 25, 30–31.

  11. Cousin quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 271.

  12. Morisot, Correspondence, 18–19.

  13. Rewald, History of Impressionism, 31.

  14. Ponsard quoted in Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 143.

  15. Carmona, Haussmann, 271, 272.

  7. More and More (1858)

  Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Beaumont-Maillet, L’eau à Paris; McAuliffe, Paris Discovered; Christopher Curtis Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra: Architectural Empathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991); Eugène Sue, Mysteries of Paris, vol. 5; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Kennel, Charles Marville; Erlande-Brandenburg, Notre-Dame de Paris; Renaud Gagneux, Jean Anckaert, and Gérard Conte, Sur les traces de la Bièvre parisienne: promenades au fil d’une Rivière disparue (Paris: Parisgramme, 2002); Morisot, Correspondence; Higonnet, Berthe Morisot; Brown, Zola; Matthew Josephson, Zola and His Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Garden City Publishing, 1928); Bresler, Napoleon III; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2.