Thus, by his twilight years, Pissarro had formed a link between the then-revolutionary Impressionists, the neo-Impressionists who followed, and the young artists of the new twentieth century who were about to burst on the scene. It was a role he relished, but as he looked back on his life, he also felt a certain degree of melancholy. “I see that we are far from being understood,” he told his son Lucien, “even by our friends.”4
Despite failing eyesight and other physical ailments, Pissarro continued to paint, in particular his cityscapes of Paris, where he enthused about “superb motifs of light.” Yet he firmly believed in the necessity of returning to nature—“Renewal is indispensable”—and spent the summer and early autumn of the year in the vicinity of the seaside town of Le Havre. Here he painted his last series, the Jetty at Le Havre.5
Soon after his return from Le Havre he became ill, and in November he died peacefully in Paris. With him went the memories of an era.
That May, Paul Gauguin died penniless in French Polynesia. Pissarro had provided much-needed guidance when Gauguin (then a stockbroker) moved from collecting Impressionist art to making his own first attempts at painting. Pissarro did not always understand or appreciate the direction in which Gauguin moved, but despite the differences between them, Gauguin (in the year before his death) acknowledged that Pissarro “was one of my masters and I do not deny him.”6
That July, James McNeill Whistler, the American expatriate artist who lived most of his life abroad, died in far more comfortable circumstances in London. His artistic vision had for years embraced the delicate and dreamy realms which, by the late nineteenth century, the Symbolists made their own. This at last brought him a well-earned measure of fame at the end of a long and productive career.
Auguste Rodin now became Whistler’s successor as president of the recently formed International Society of Sculptors, Painters, and Gravers in London, where Rodin felt duly appreciated. In spite of the French establishment’s refusal to grant him the recognition he craved, Rodin was finding a gratifying degree of acclaim elsewhere in Europe, and made the most of it. According to one English friend, Rodin’s “head was a little turned, he played up to worshippers.”7
France had earlier (although belatedly) extended the Legion of Honor ribbon to Rodin, and now promoted him to Commander—an honor that thoroughly annoyed his critics, one of whom called for a public investigation of state expenditures on Rodin’s works, especially his uncompleted doors, The Gates of Hell, which remained unfinished after thirty years. Irritated by Rodin’s success in the teeth of traditionalism, and displeased as well by the money Rodin continued to make by selling individual sculptures enlarged from the mass of figures on the uncompleted doors (The Thinker being the most popular), his critics in effect called for his head.
In the meantime, Rodin’s admirers staged an event to honor Rodin’s Legion of Honor promotion. The sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, who for years had served as Rodin’s assistant and was beginning to branch out on his own, gave an emotional toast, while Isadora Duncan (back from her European tour) danced in Rodin’s honor and then fell in homage at his feet. Rodin, who later regretted that he had never drawn Isadora from life, described her as “sister of the breezes” and praised her ability to “[attain] sculpture and emotion effortlessly.” For her part, Isadora simply acknowledged Rodin as a “force of nature” and uncharacteristically concluded that “he is too great for me.”8
Isadora had already made her debut at Berlin’s New Royal Opera House in January, and she accompanied her success with efforts to communicate her vision to Berliners. Addressing the city’s press club, she gave what would become her manifesto of modern dance, “The Dance of the Future” (published later that year as a pamphlet). Inspired by Nietzsche’s pronouncements on dance (“Only in the dance do I know how to tell the parable of the highest things”), she extolled natural movement, the necessity of being in touch with the elements, and a future of dance in which the body expressed the language of the soul. In case her audience failed to understand what she was saying, she bluntly proceeded to reject traditional ballet’s unnatural poses and sterility while ardently praising the potential role of woman, unhindered by men. “The dancer of the future,” she promised her audience, “shall dance the freedom of woman.”9
Isadora was present in Paris to dance for Rodin after deciding (much to her manager’s despair) not to tour Germany. She was rich and, as she thought, sufficiently famous to conquer Paris as she had Berlin. In expectation of a repeat hit, she rented the huge Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt. But she had not yet made a sufficient name for herself in Paris outside of artistic circles, and the necessary audiences did not come. At the end of her season, she abruptly left Paris to avoid the debt collectors and returned to touring Germany. After a less-than-idyllic spiritual pilgrimage with her family to Greece, where they camped out, wore tunics and sandals, and tried to build a temple, she returned to Paris, via Vienna and Berlin, late in the year.
In a sage piece of advice, her manager urged her to think less about the ancient Greeks and more about her career.
Gertrude Stein arrived in Paris in October, several months after her brother Leo, and the two took up residence at 27 Rue de Fleurus, a location that at the time had little to recommend it except for its low rents and proximity to the Luxembourg Gardens. Situated unpromisingly between the Latin Quarter and Montparnasse, which itself remained in the artistic shadow of Montmartre, the Steins nevertheless quickly made themselves at home, enjoying the cultural vibrancy of Paris and forming connections throughout its avant-garde artistic milieu.
Gertrude Stein—“Miss Stein,” as she preferred to be called—was, like Isadora Duncan, a native of Oakland, California, just across the bay from San Francisco.10 The pampered youngest of five surviving children, she grew up in the happy assurance that those around her existed to care for and indulge her. As it happened, her supreme confidence and ability to charm usually got her what she wanted. One of the best known of these occasions was the time when, as a Radcliffe student, she got up and left a final exam given by her eminent philosophy professor, William James, after writing at the top of her paper that she did not feel like taking an exam that day. To which James calmly replied (via post card): “Dear Miss Stein, I understand perfectly how you feel. I often feel like that myself,” and gave her a top grade for the course. Whether or not this happened as Gertrude Stein later reported, it made for a good story—and certainly helped create the legend that she so consciously fashioned.11
Of course James did recognize Gertrude Stein’s brilliance, and it was this combination of brilliance, well-directed charm, and expectation that those around her were as eager to please as she was to be pleased, that would enable her to sail through whatever potential difficulties life had in store. Or at least to report it that way.
Gertrude Stein was raised in a reasonably well-off although not wealthy family and spent her earliest years in Vienna and Paris before her father brought his brood to Oakland by way of Baltimore. There young Gertrude read extensively, explored the countryside with her brother Leo, and joined with Leo in rebelling against their father, whom they found overly strict and controlling. The death of their invalid mother was momentarily saddening but came as no surprise, while their father’s sudden death merely freed the two from his objectionable ways. Now in their late teens and orphaned, Gertrude and Leo found life much pleasanter under the leadership of their oldest brother Michael, who in his mid-twenties became head of the family.
Michael managed family finances well, along with his job at San Francisco’s new Omnibus Cable Company, where his father had been vice president. Michael was fun to be with and indulgent, treating his younger siblings to dinners in fancy restaurants and to plays, including a special outing in 1891 to see Sarah Bernhardt on her third American tour. Gertrude loved it. Unlike other plays, which she had found overly fast-moving and assaultive on both ears and eyes, she enjoyed Bernhardt’s voice
“being so varied and it all being so French I could rest in it untroubled.”12
Gertrude Stein did not appreciate being troubled, and after a stimulating stint at Radcliffe College, where she enjoyed a wide range of intellectual challenge—including Professor James’s graduate seminar (to which she had been admitted as an undergraduate), as well as formidable philosophy courses from George Santayana and Josiah Royce—she left for Baltimore and Johns Hopkins Medical School. Her aim was to pursue her interest in psychology, but to do this she needed some background in medicine.
After two years of it, she was bored—“frankly openly bored.”13 Summers, she fled to Florence and to Leo, who had given up his studies of history at Harvard and his studies in biology at Johns Hopkins to become a student of aesthetics. Soon enough he would give up on that as well and decide to become an artist. Leo may have flitted from one enthusiasm to another, but Gertrude was devoted to him and to the carefree life he was leading. Certainly she was not devoted to her studies, and when at the end of her final year she flunked a critical examination, she had no intention of making up the work in summer school. Instead, she threw her career in medicine out the window and headed back to Italy.14
From Italy she and Leo left for London and Bloomsbury, with pleasant stays in the English countryside. But they found London bleak and depressing, and at length Leo returned to Florence via Paris, where he had dinner with a friend, a young cellist by the name of Pablo Casals. Something about that dinner stirred Leo’s inner artist, and that night he began to paint. Inspired by this experience, he decided that he would stay in Paris, and a cousin recommended a vacant apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus that conveniently combined living quarters with an adjoining studio. Leo was charmed, and soon Gertrude joined him. It was the start of an era.
In May, the Automobile Club de France organized its great inter-city race, this time between Paris and Madrid. Adding to the danger were the new speeds that some of these vehicles were now capable of reaching—up to ninety miles per hour. Despite the cars’ speeds, the roads remained primitive, making auto racing more treacherous than ever.
This only served to heighten the race’s appeal, and by the time it began in Versailles early on the morning of May 24, an enormous crowd of spectators had gathered. Motorcars and cyclists had converged on Versailles, while supplementary trains ferried Parisians from the Saint-Lazare and Montparnasse stations. Afterward, newspapers reported that some hundred thousand people had spent the night there, many of them in the open air, waiting for the race to begin.
More than three hundred drivers and their vehicles took part, including the only woman driver, Madame Camille du Gast, a rich widow and concert pianist with a penchant for danger (she also enjoyed ballooning, skiing, and parachute jumping and was reputed to be an excellent shot). Du Gast had participated in the 1901 Paris–Berlin race and the grueling 1902 race from Paris to Vienna. Tightly corseted as the times required, she sat bolt upright in her De Dietrich machine, powering it to eighth position before she stopped to assist a fellow driver who had become pinned in a ditch under his car.
The drivers started at one-minute intervals and headed off in a blaze of dust and exhaust. Crowds surged along the entire route of the first day’s race to Bordeaux, with children and cattle straying onto the road, and thrilled onlookers flocking to take photographs of crashed vehicles. Drivers and spectators were courting danger, but few seemed to care.
Louis and Marcel Renault were driving their light Renault vehicles and, from the start, were holding their own. Louis had drawn a better starting number than Marcel, but Marcel had been passing car after car in his race to the front.
And then disaster happened. Marcel attempted to pass in a cloud of dust and did not see the curve ahead. Within moments he had shot across a ditch at eighty miles per hour, his car somersaulting three times before landing on its back. Tragically, Marcel was caught underneath. Taken to a hospital, he did not regain consciousness and died the following morning.
His brother Louis, well ahead, did not learn the news until he arrived at Bordeaux (first in the light category and second overall). It was shattering. Not only had Marcel Renault died, but many others along the route had been injured or killed, some even burned to death. As news of the horrors poured in, the French government ordered that the race be stopped, and stringent measures were taken to prevent any of the competitors from continuing.
But Louis Renault had no intention of carrying on. Stunned by the loss of his brother, he immediately withdrew all the Renault drivers from the race.
Louis Renault would never race again.
That August, yet another disaster took place, this time on the Métro’s new Line 2, where a fire broke out in one of the train engines. Before it was over, this fire—and the toxic smoke it produced—spread to two other trains in the Ménilmontant station, engulfing passengers caught in the adjacent Couronnes station. In the resulting panic, more than eighty people died—most of them from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Flaws in the equipment were responsible, and failure to fireproof the wood portions of the trains had magnified the disaster—a conclusion that led to shake-ups in upper level management. Hastening to appease the alarmed public, the CMP (Compagnie du Chemin de Fer Métropolitain de Paris) quickly moved to correct these flaws as well as to indemnify the victims’ families. As the immediate drama receded from public consciousness, the Métro continued to build its citywide network according to schedule.
Nevertheless, it would continue to do so without the architect Hector Guimard. After a year of acrimony, Guimard and his employer, the CMP, definitively broke in May 1903. According to their agreement, Guimard was paid a favorable sum of twenty-one thousand francs in return for ceding artistic rights to the style that he had developed. As it turned out, his style, the “Style Guimard,” could indeed be implemented by someone else, and Guimard’s very reliance (much like Gustave Eiffel’s before him) on prefabricated modular construction made the hand-off easier.
The CMP finished installing Line 3 that year with Guimard-inspired entrances but without Guimard input or oversight. Since Guimard had only partially overseen the installation of Line 2 entrances, due to disputes with the CMP, Line 1 remained the only line whose entrances bore the stamp of direct Guimard oversight. After 1904, the CMP would turn in an entirely different architectural direction for its entrances, using Marie-Joseph Cassien-Bernard to build the classical entrance for the Paris Opera, a site that had loomed as a major sore point between Guimard and those who feared a Guimard-style entrance in front of this bastion of conservatism. With Guimard gone and Cassien-Bernard in, this battle was over before it even began.
Within the depths of the Zola household, another battle had ceased. Madame Alexandrine Zola had learned of her husband’s death while still in the hospital, and despite her deep jealousy of his mistress, Jeanne Rozerot, had informed Rozerot personally of the terrible news.
It was an unusually thoughtful gesture on Alexandrine’s part, all the more so because of the many years of hostility that had preceded it. Even more thoughtfully, Alexandrine began to do what she could to care for Rozerot, to whom Zola had bequeathed little except some income from an insurance policy.
Zola had not left either his wife or his mistress in good financial shape—he had earned grandly over the course of his productive life but had spent even more grandly. In addition, fallout from the Dreyfus Affair had made a significant dent in his bank account. Soon after his death Alexandrine moved to smaller, less expensive quarters and sold many of her husband’s most valuable possessions, including nine early paintings by Zola’s boyhood friend, Cézanne.
And yet Alexandrine was mindful of her husband’s love for Jeanne Rozerot and for the two children that Jeanne had borne him. Jeanne came to rely upon Alexandrine for financial support, but she came to rely upon Alexandrine as a friend as well. Over time Alexandrine would concern herself with the children’s health a
nd education, and in 1906 she took steps to legally adopt them, giving them the surname Emile-Zola and making them heirs to her estate.
It was an unexpected and touching denouement to what had been an unhappy family history. Now, as the two women drew together in memory of the man they both had loved, Jeanne could refer to Alexandrine—at least in letters to her children—as B.A., for “bonne amie.”
In June, Debussy wrote André Messager: “I’ve been listening to the Prix de Rome competition. You have no idea what goes on in that place . . . and how it breeds distaste for music. . . . Ye gods, what music! And all the artistic sensitivity of a pork butcher.”15
Ravel had much the same reaction, after having once again tried and failed to win the Prix de Rome. Again stuck with texts that were “so pretentious as to be amusing,” he nevertheless had been “required to set them in a serious manner.”16 Afterward, he mused that “[I] now think of the Prix de Rome as a bad dream which I absolutely forbid to happen again.”17
It had been a difficult year for Ravel. After being expelled two years earlier from Gabriel Fauré’s composition class (for failing to win a prize in two consecutive fugue competitions), he had remained, with Fauré’s encouragement, as an auditor. In January 1903 he then submitted the first movement of his String Quartet for the composition prize. His String Quartet, which now is a staple in chamber music repertory, did not, however, make the grade at the Conservatoire, and now Ravel left the Conservatoire for good.
Twilight of the Belle Epoque Page 10