Paris, City of Dreams

by Mary McAuliffe

  1. According to Pinkney, Haussmann considered the distinctions between his First and Second Systems, or Networks, as “purely financial.” The First, focused on the Rue de Rivoli, the Boulevard de Sébastopol, and the Boulevard Saint-Michel, along with streets accessory to them, was authorized before 1858 and built with financial aid from the state. The Second System, whose costs were shared by city and state, included only those streets specifically listed in the agreement of March 18, 1858, between the city and the state. A Third System would eventually follow and would include “all other streets built by the city alone without subsidy from the national government” (Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, 58–59).

  2. Carmona, Haussmann, 288.

  3. Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra, 55. According to Mead, “While the decree [of 14 November 1858, declaring the creation of Rues Auber and Halévy] did not include provision for the Rues Scribe, Meyerbeer, and Gluck, which would complete the network of streets around the future Opéra, or the avenue Napoléon [to become Avenue de l’Opéra] that would connect the Place de l’Opéra to the Louvre . . . their existence was implicit in 1858” (55).

  4. The house no longer exists.

  5. Sue, Mysteries of Paris, 5:211.

  6. Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire, 169.

  7. This mansion, at 63 Rue de Monceau, no longer exists. In 1911, the Camondos replaced it with a far more elegant and classically inspired model, which is now open to the public, along with the Camondos’ collections of art, china, and furnishings. The last members of the Camondo family were deported and murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.

  8. See chapter 4.

  9. Gagneux, Sur les traces de la Bièvre parisienne, 51.

  10. Efforts to revive the Bièvre have been successful upstream, outside of Paris, but have encountered enormous difficulties within the city—although several spots have been eyed as possibilities for rehabilitation. These include Parc Kellermann, Square René-Le Gall, Rue Berbier-du-Mets, and the annex of the Museum of Natural History.

  11. Brown, Zola, 47.

  12. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, 2:157. Du Camp now went to the Revue des Deux Mondes.

  13. Bressler, Napoleon III, 296.

  8. Dreams of Glory (1859)

  Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Bresler, Napoleon III; Maurice Paléologue, The Tragic Empress: A Record of Intimate Talks with the Empress Eugénie, 1901–1919 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928); Charles Beatty, De Lesseps of Suez: The Man and His Times (New York: Harper, 1956); Manet, Manet By Himself; Adler, Manet; Cachin, Manet; Baudelaire, Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait; Stanley Weintraub, Whistler: A Biography (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2001); Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler; Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, or the Triumph of Impression, vol. 1 (Cologne, Germany: Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1999); Ruth Butler, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master: The Model-Wives of Cézanne, Monet, and Rodin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008); Claude Monet, Monet By Himself: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Letters (London: Macdonald Orbis, 1989); Rewald, History of Impressionism; Begley, Great Nadar; Brown, Zola; Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah; Bernhardt, Memories of My Life.

  1. Jerome Bonaparte quoted in Bresler, Napoleon III, 302.

  2. Paléologue, Tragic Empress, 63, 66. Asked at what period did she begin to sit regularly at the Council of Ministers, Eugenie replied that she “never sat there regularly. I was only present for important deliberations. It was chiefly after 1866 that I was often seen there” (66–67).

  3. Haussmann, Memoires, 928–29.

  4. In 1859, Napoleon transferred these services to the Prefecture of the Seine.

  5. Beatty quoting from De Lesseps’s memoirs, De Lesseps of Suez, 175.

  6. Beatty, De Lesseps of Suez, 187.

  7. Manet to Antonin Proust, as recorded by Proust, in Manet By Himself, 28.

  8. Quoted in Adler, Manet, 28, 29.

  9. Baudelaire made Manet’s acquaintance in 1859 and immediately recognized his worth, coming to his defense in two articles published in 1862 (see Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait, 192).

  10. Butler, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master, 98–99; Wildenstein, Monet, 11.

  11. Wildenstein, Monet, 18.

  12. Monet to Boudin, 19 May 1859, in Monet By Himself, 18.

  13. Wildenstein, Monet, 25.

  14. Wildenstein, Monet, 31.

  15. Begley, Great Nadar, 81.

  16. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 26.

  17. Bernhardt, Memories of My Life, 39, 60.

  18. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 32.

  9. Suddenly Larger (1860)

  Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2; Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra; Bresler, Napoleon III; Schopp, Alexandre Dumas; Maurois, The Titans; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2; Macdonald, Bizet; Morisot, Correspondence of Berthe Morisot; Rewald, History of Impressionism; Wildenstein, Monet; Manet, Manet By Himself; Harvie, Eiffel; Begley, The Great Nadar; Brown, Zola; Josephson, Zola and His Time; Zola, La Curée.

  1. Four toll barriers are all that remain of this wall (see chapter 3, note 6).

  2. Goncourt, 24 Aug. and 18 Nov. 1860, in Journals, 53.

  3. Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire, 118–19.

  4. Maurois, The Titans, 322–23, 329.

  5. Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, II:179.

  6. Only the Venetia (still under Austrian control) and Rome itself (guarded by French forces) remained outside the new Kingdom of Italy.

  7. Macdonald, Bizet, 58.

  8. Manet recorded by Antonin Proust [1858–1860], in Manet by Himself, 29.

  9. Brown, Zola, 69.

  10. Josephson, Zola and his Time, 59.

  11. Zola, La Curée, 81.

  12. Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, 212–13.

  13. Haussmann, Memoires, 578.

  10. Turning Point (1861)

  Bresler, Napoleon III; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Paléologue, Tragic Empress; McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque; Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Brown, Zola; Josephson, Zola and His Time; Jack D. Ellis, Early Life of Georges Clemenceau, 1841–1893 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980); David Robin Watson, Georges Clemenceau: A Political Biography (New York: David McKay, 1974); Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Manet, Manet by Himself; Adler, Manet; Cachin, Manet; Rewald, History of Impressionism; Hyslop, Baudelaire; Morisot, Correspondence of Berthe Morisot; Goncourt, Journals; Baldick, First Bohemian; Begley, The Great Nadar; Beaumont-Maillet, L’Eau à Paris; Robb, Victor Hugo; David Bellos, The Novel of the Century: The Extraordinary Adventure of Les Misérables (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017); Victor Hugo, Les Misérables (New York: Penguin, 1985); Danielle Chadych and Charlotte Lacour-Veyranne, Paris au temps des Misérables de Victor Hugo (Paris: Paris-Musées, 2008).

  1. Bresler, Napoleon III, 304–5.

  2. Mérimée quoted in Bresler, Napoleon III, 330.

  3. Bresler, Napoleon III, 307.

  4. Paléologue, Tragic Empress, 92.

  5. Paléologue, Tragic Empress, 94. “Alas!” Eugenie continued. “We were mistaken about the resistance and the complications in store for us. Or rather, we were misled” (Paléologue, Tragic Empress, 93).

  6. Many years afterward, Eugenie continued to argue that, “as for the allegation that the Mexican expedition was undertaken at [Morny’s] prompting and for base motives, that is a calumny of which he should be entirely cleared. The improper influence of the Jecker bonds counted for nothing in our intervention of Mexico; it merely hooked itself on exactly as you will always find villainies creeping into the noblest enterprises” (Paléologue, T
ragic Empress, 74).

  7. This is the mairie of what had become the first arrondissement.

  8. See chapter 7, note 3.

  9. Josephson, Zola and His Time, 62.

  10. Watson, Georges Clemenceau, 22.

  11. Wildenstein, Monet, 29, 36–37.

  12. Goncourt, 10 May 1856, in Journals, 19; Baldick, First Bohemian, 184.

  13. Goncourt, 28 Jan., 17 March, 10 Oct., and 28 Nov. 1861, all in Journals, 57, 58, , 64–65.

  14. Goncourt, 12 June 1861, in Journals, 61.

  15. Goncourt, 20 July 1863, in Journals, 87.

  11. Les Misérables de Paris (1862)

  Hugo, Les Misérables; McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque; Robb, Victor Hugo; Bellos, Novel of the Century; Chadych and Lacour-Veyranne, Paris au temps des Misérables de Victor Hugo; Goncourt, Journals; Hyslop, Baudelaire; Begley, Great Nadar; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Mémoires; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2; Clément and Thomas, Atlas du Paris souterrain; Carrière, Saga de la Petite Ceinture; Bresler, Napoleon III; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Rewald, History of Impressionism; Morisot, Correspondence; Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler; Weintraub, Whistler; Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah; Harvie, Eiffel; Adler, Manet; Watson, Georges Clemenceau; Ellis, Early Life of Georges Clemenceau; Brown, Zola; Josephson, Zola and His Time.

  1. Hugo quoted in Robb, Victor Hugo, 374.

  2. Robb, Victor Hugo, 377.

  3. Quoted in Hyslop, Baudelaire, 157.

  4. Olivier quoted in Carmona, Haussmann, 341.

  5. Goncourts, 1 March 1862, in Journals, 69.

  6. These disappeared with the Third Republic.

  7. Carmona, Haussmann, 268.

  8. During the following decade, more than fifteen thousand gas lamps would be added to Paris’s streets, doubling the number in use (Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris, 72).

  9. Bresler, Napoleon III, 315.

  10. Wildenstein, Monet, 1:40, 42.

  11. Morisot, Correspondence, 20.

  12. Weintraub, Whistler, 77; Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler, 123.

  13. Marie Colombier quoted in Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 54.

  14. Goncourt, 16 and 21 Aug. 1862, in Journals, 74–76.

  15. Harvie, Eiffel, 35.

  12. Scandal (1863–1864)

  Manet, Manet by Himself; Adler, Manet; Cachin, Manet; Rewald, History of Impressionism; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Poisson, Eugène Viollet-le-Duc; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2; Hannoosh, Painting and the Journalof Eugène Delacroix; Erlande-Brandenburg, Notre-Dame de Paris; Macdonald, Bizet; Hyslop, Baudelaire; Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Monet, Monet by Himself; Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah; Bernhardt, Memories of My Life; Bresler, Napoleon III; Beaumont-Maillet, L’eau à Paris; Begley, Great Nadar; Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra; Baudelaire, Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait; Morisot, Correspondence; Carmona, Haussmann; Haussmann, Memoires; Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien; Emile Zola, Correspondance, vol. 1 (Montréal, Canada: Presses de l’Université de Montréal, 1978); Goncourt, Journals; Robb, Victor Hugo.

  1. In both Mademoiselle V. . . in the Costume of an Espada and Young Man in the Costume of a Majo (modeled respectively by Victorine Meurent and Manet’s younger brother Gustave), the same costume was thriftily used. Victorine Meurent also posed for the nude featured in Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe.

  2. Adler, Manet, 48.

  3. Rewald, History of Impressionism, 83.

  4. Widely quoted. See Macdonald, Bizet, 111, for one example.

  5. Du Camp, Reflections of a Literary Life, 2:208.

  6. Du Camp, Reflections of a Literary Life, 2:211. The 2018 blockbuster exhibition on Delacroix shown at both the Louvre and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art was an emphatic answer to Delacroix’s self-questioning.

  7. Monet to Amand Gautier, 23 May 1863, in Monet by Himself, 19.

  8. Bresler, Napoleon III, 317.

  9. Morny quoted in Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 158–59.

  10. It would be 1888 and 1904 respectively until they reached water.

  11. Quoted in Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire, 81.

  12. Bernhardt, Memories of My Life, 117.

  13. Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah, 62–63.

  14. Baudelaire wrote: “Manet has just told me the most unexpected news. He is leaving this evening for Holland from where he will bring back a wife. However, he has several excuses; for it seems that his wife is beautiful, very kind, and a very great artist [musician]. So many treasures in one woman is monstrous, don’t you think?” (Baudelaire to Etienne Carjat, 6 Oct. 1863, in Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait, 192).

  15. Monet to Frédéric Bazille, 15 July [1864], 26 August, and 14 October 1864, all in Monet by Himself, 20–22.

  16. Morisot, Correspondence, 21–23.

  17. Haussmann, Mémoires, 917.

  18. Goncourt, 8 May 1864, in Journals, 98–99.

  19. See chapter 6 note 7.

  20. Robb, Victor Hugo, 329.

  13. Death and Taxes (1865)

  Bresler, Napoleon III; Paléologue, Tragic Empress; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Pinon, Atlas du Paris Haussmannien; Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra; Macdonald, Bizet; Goncourt, Journals; Zola, Correspondance, vol. 1; Josephson, Zola and His Time; Brown, Zola; Adler, Manet; Manet, Manet by Himself; Baudelaire, Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait; Cachin, Manet; McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Monet, Monet by Himself; Butler, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master; Morisot, Correspondence of Berthe Morisot; Higonnet, Berthe Morisot; Louise Michel, Louise Michel (Melbourne N.Y.: Ocean Press, 2004); Louise Michel, The Red Virgin: The Memoirs of Louise Michel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Hyslop, Baudelaire; Begley, Great Nadar; Cara Sutherland, The Statue of Liberty (New York: Museum of the City of New York and Barnes & Noble Books, 2003); Walter D. Gray, Interpreting American Democracy in France: The Career of Edouard Laboulaye, 1811–1883 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1994).

  1. Quoted in Bresler, Napoleon III, 334.

  2. Quoted in Bresler, Napoleon III, 331.

  3. Paléologue, Tragic Empress, 61. “What stirred me,” she told Paléologue, “was the broad questions, where national interest, national prestige, were at stake” (62).

  4. Bresler, Napoleon III, 340.

  5. Goncourt, 7 August 1865, in Journals, 107.

  6. Zola to Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, 3 Feb. 1865, in Correspondance, 1:405 note 3; Goncourts to Zola, 27 Feb. 1865, in Zola, Correspondance, 1:405 note 3.

  7. Goncourt, 5 and 6 Dec. 1865, in Journals, 110–12, 113–14. See also 113 note 1.

  8. Zola to Edmond and Jules Goncourt, 7 Dec. 1865, in Zola, Correspondance, 426–27.

  9. Goncourt, 14 Feb. and 27 June 1866, in Journals, 116, 117.

  10. Brown, Zola, 122; Josephson, Zola and His Time, 94.

  11. Quoted in Josephson, Zola and His Time, 98.

  12. Manet, as recorded by Antonin Proust; Manet to Baudelaire, [early May 1865], both in Manet by Himself, 33. Baudelaire replied, “I must endeavor to prove to you your own worth” (Baudelaire to Manet, 11 May 1865, in Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait, 221). Several years after Manet’s death, Claude Monet set about raising the money to give Olympia to the state, to hang in the Louvre. This is a painting, Monet wrote to the minister of public instruction, “in which [Manet] is seen at the height of his glorious struggle, master of his vision and of his craft.” It was “unacceptable that such a work should not have its place in our national collections.” The Louvre turned it down, but the Musée du Luxembourg accepted it until the Louvre at length opened its doors—on the order of Georges Clemenceau, who by then was prime minister of France. Thanks to Monet and his good friend Clemenceau, Olympia now hangs in the Musée d’Ors
ay (see McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque, 198).

  13. Manet to Zacharie Astruc, 23? Aug. [1865] and 17 Sept. [1865], both in Manet by Himself, 34, 36.

  14. Manet recorded by Théodore Duret, [at the Salon of 1865], in Manet by Himself, 33.

  15. Wildenstein, Monet, 1:58; Monet to Frédéric Bazille, [July or early Aug. 1865], in Monet by Himself, 23.

  16. Wildenstein, Monet, 1:59.

  17. Now in the Musée d’Orsay, Paris. The oil sketch is in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow.

  18. Morisot, Correspondence, 24.

  19. Michel to Victor Hugo, in Louise Michel, 32, 35.

  20. Hugo, Viro Major, in Louise Michel, 25.

  21. Michel, Memoirs, 31, 39, 40, 44.

  22. Baudelaire to his mother, 3 Nov. 1865 and 16 Feb. 1866, both in Baudelaire: A Self-Portrait, 226.

  23. Manet to Baudelaire, [ca. 25 October 1865], in Manet by Himself, 37.

  24. Hugo quoted in Hyslop, Baudelaire, 163.

  14. Crisis (1866)

  Ferguson, House of Rothschild, vol. 2; Fargette, Emile et Isaac Pereire; Plessis, Rise and Fall of the Second Empire; Carmona, Haussmann; Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Bresler, Napoleon III; Paléologue, Tragic Empress; Mead, Charles Garnier’s Paris Opéra; Manet, Manet by Himself; Adler, Manet; Cachin, Manet; Brown, Zola; Josephson, Zola and His Time; Wildenstein, Monet, vol. 1; Butler, Hidden in the Shadow of the Master; Monet, Monet by Himself; Rewald, History of Impressionism; Du Camp, Recollections of a Literary Life, vol. 2; Brown, Flaubert; Begley, Great Nadar; Gold and Fizdale, Divine Sarah; Bernhardt, Memories of My Life; Baudelaire, Self-Portrait; Michel, Memoires.