Twilight of the Belle Epoque

by Mary McAuliffe

  Indeed, he did.

  That same spring, Isadora Duncan returned to Paris, where she presented her latest creation, an interpretation of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. Beethoven’s Seventh easily evokes images of dancing, but Duncan’s audiences in Munich and Berlin were shocked by her boldness in venturing to interpret the master. Parisians were not so easily shocked, and Duncan performed her interpretation of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony at the Trocadéro before immense and enthusiastic crowds. This, her third visit to Paris, was a triumph. “For the third time a great artist has passed through Paris,” wrote Debussy’s friend, the critic and musicologist Louis Laloy, “and this time Paris understood.”10

  Never short on daring, Isadora then left for Bayreuth, mecca for Wagner pilgrims. Wagner’s widow, the formidable Cosima, had requested her to choreograph and dance in a production of Tannhäuser for that summer’s Wagner festival. This required Isadora to work with classically trained ballet dancers (whom she openly despised) as well as with Cosima, who did not countenance anyone messing with her beloved husband’s legacy. Isadora soon discovered that everything was to remain pretty much as it was, which was hardly the stimulus or latitude for creativity that she required. In the end, her choreography and dancing fought against the strictures of tradition, and her version of Tannhäuser’s Bacchanal turned into an unsettling mess.

  Isadora’s flamboyant lifestyle, which included provocative clothing, costumes, and gentlemen friends, only exacerbated the situation. Not surprisingly, Bayreuth did not invite her back. It hardly mattered, as by this time she was off to other adventures, including the founding of her school in Gruen-wald, Germany, an all-important milestone in her life. Of these, the most earth-shaking was her December encounter in Berlin with Gordon Craig.

  Craig, son of British actress and national sweetheart Ellen Terry, was a pioneering stage designer who, at the time he first met Isadora, had yet to achieve success. Nonetheless he was drop-dead handsome, sexually magnetic, and keyed to some of the same dramatic ideals as Isadora. He was also monumentally self-absorbed, married, and living with a second woman, his mistress, as well as with a common-law wife. Yet this mattered little to Isadora. She later described their first night together in rhapsodic terms: “Hardly were my eyes ravished by his beauty than I was drawn toward him, entwined, melted. As flame meets flame, we burned in one bright fire.”11 As for Gordon Craig, he announced the beginning of their affair with one single entry in his daybook: “God Almighty.”12

  While Isadora and her lover were busily fanning love’s flames, a young Adonis by the name of Jean Cocteau was exploring life and his identity among the sailors in Marseilles. Earlier, as the youngest child in an artistically inclined and well-traveled Parisian family, Cocteau vastly preferred the theater to school. He later remarked that it was during his early teens that he “caught an illness much more serious than scarlet fever or measles—what I call the red-and-gold disease: theatre-itis.”13

  A darker event that he kept well hidden until late in life was his father’s suicide, which occurred when young Cocteau was only nine. The details remain vague: “We were a family close to ruin,” Cocteau later said. “My father committed suicide in circumstances that would not cause anyone to commit suicide today.”14 His cousin and childhood companion, Marianne Lecomte (later Madame Singer), recalled only that “Jean and I came home from a walk one day and were told that his father was dead. The news made little impression on us at the time—I remember that we were soon laughing and playing as usual. . . . I never heard why he did it.”15

  Despite this single jarring event, it was a protected and pampered childhood, during which Cocteau was treated to concerts, theatrical entertainments, and skating at the famed Champs-Elysées Palais de Glace, the popular skating rink frequented by schoolboys like Cocteau as well as by dandies and their mistresses, the great cocottes of the era. Cocteau quickly learned that indulgence came as a reward for being charming and easily manipulated his doting mother; but school was boring, and in 1904, at the age of fifteen—after being expelled from one school and twice failing his baccalaureate at another—he decided that it would be far more romantic to be a sailor. After that, he seems simply to have run away to Marseilles, where he lived in the old quarter, surrounded by brothels, opium-smoking, and crime. By his own account, it was the best time in his life.

  This romantic breakaway lasted for about a year, or at least until an exasperated uncle told the police to find him, and two gendarmes subsequently brought him home. As with everything in Cocteau’s life, fact is difficult to separate from fiction, but whatever actually occurred, the story of his defiant disappearance and subsequent revolt against any and all attempts to restrain him gave him a glamorous aura of rebellion that would surround him for the rest of his life.

  The year was 1904, and François Coty was about to engage in his own act of rebellion. Or was it simply a superb marketing tactic? We do not know. What we do know is that on one fateful day, on the ground floor of the Louvre department store, Coty smashed a bottle of perfume on the counter—with momentous results.

  Following his decision to learn more about the perfume business, Coty had indeed gone to Grasse, which was the long-established center for cultivating the flowers essential for making perfume. It was also the research center for the entire perfume industry. There, he applied for training at the esteemed Chiris company, which represented the cutting edge of current perfume technology. Fortunately, the head of the firm, now a senator, was a friend of Coty’s patron, Senator Arène, which eased Coty’s way. Coty then worked diligently for a year to learn all that he could, from flower cultivation to essential oils, spending much of his time in the laboratory. He analyzed, he synthesized, and he learned how to blend.

  During his apprenticeship, Coty learned about two new tools that the established perfumers had for the most part neglected in favor of more traditional methods. The first of these was the discovery of extraction by volatile solvents, a technique that made extraction of large quantities of fragrance possible and could even be used with nonfloral substances such as leaves, mosses, and resins. Shortly before the turn of the century, Louis Chiris secured a patent on this technique and set up the first workshop based on solvent extraction. Coty was an early student of this pioneering work.

  The second and even more revolutionary discovery was that of synthetic fragrances. Earlier in the nineteenth century, French and German scientists had discovered synthetic fragrance molecules in organic compounds such as coal and petroleum that allowed perfumers to approximate scents that could not otherwise be easily extracted. It was an amazing breakthrough, and a few perfumers experimented briefly with the artificial scents of sweet grass, vanilla (from conifer sap), violet, heliotrope, and musk. A few also explored the possibilities of the first aldehydes, which gave perfumes a far greater strength than ever before. Yet with only a few exceptions, established perfumers in the early 1900s avoided these synthetic molecules.

  In studying the successful perfumes of the day, Coty concluded that most were limited in range and old-fashioned, pandering to conservative tastes with heavy, overly complex floral scents that were almost interchangeable. He had educated his nose and learned his trade, and although he never would become a perfumer per se, he had an extraordinary imagination and a gift for using it to explore new realms. It was with this gift, newly honed, that he returned to Paris, and with ten thousand borrowed francs set up a makeshift laboratory in the small apartment where he and his wife lived.

  He was willing—even eager—to break with convention, aiming to create a perfume that combined subtlety with simplicity. Even at the beginning, his formulas were simple but brilliant, using synthetics to enhance natural scents. Coty also revolutionized the bottles containing his perfumes. Remembering the beauty of the antique perfume bottles at the 1900 Paris exposition, which made the virtually standardized perfume bottles of the day look boring, Coty unhesitatingly went to the top an
d hired Baccarat to produce the lovely, slim bottle for La Rose Jacqueminot, his first perfume. As he later remarked, “A perfume needs to attract the eye as much as the nose.”16

  Coty’s wife sewed and embroidered the silk pouches with velvet ribbons and satin trim that contained the bottles, and Coty now drew on his sales skills—this time selling his own rather than someone else’s product. Much to his dismay, it proved almost impossible to break through the established perfumers’ stranglehold on the market. Coty went from rejection to rejection, until one day he lost his composure. He was on the ground floor of the Louvre department store trying to sell La Rose Jacqueminot, and the buyer was about to show him the door. In anger—or in what perhaps was a supreme act of showmanship—Coty smashed one of the beautiful Baccarat bottles on the counter, and a revolution began. According to legend, women shoppers smelled the perfume and flocked to the source, buying up Coty’s entire supply. The buyer took note, became suddenly cooperative, and Coty was on his way.

  After the fact, some groused that Coty had staged the entire stunt, including hiring actresses to play the part of shoppers entranced by his perfume. Yet by this time it didn’t matter. Coty had made his first publicity coup, whether or not it was intentional, and he and his perfumes were launched.

  Throughout France, and especially in Paris, change was bounding along at what seemed a dizzying pace. City and country roads may still have been filled with horses and carriages or horse-pulled wagons, but trains had already brought distant places closer, and in Paris, the Métro’s network had by 1904 more than doubled (from thirteen thousand to thirty thousand meters), while its trains had expanded from three to eight carriages apiece to accommodate the surge in riders.

  Bicycles and other horseless vehicles were appearing with more frequency on Paris streets and in nearby rural areas. Young, well-to-do Parisian women had for several years been cycling in the Bois de Boulogne on the trendiest models, the Little Queen or the Steel Fairy, dressed in their culottes bouffantes—a daringly short style that allowed them to straddle their bikes while maintaining a certain amount of decorum (although both the style and the activity still aroused disapproval). As for the horseless carriage, by 1901, when the first Salon des Automobiles was held in Paris’s Grand Palais, more than two hundred thousand visitors attended. Not all of these, of course, were prospective buyers, but such crowds, along with soaring attendances at French road races, showed that public interest in the motorcar was rapidly growing.

  As the new century progressed, motorcars became a more familiar sight. Even in Claude Monet’s little Giverny, they had become so much of a nuisance that the municipal council passed a rule limiting all vehicles to a “moderate speed.” Monet, a recent convert to the motorcar, was in fact fined in the spring of 1904 for speeding. This by now respectable old gentleman had dared to accelerate through Freneuse, between Giverny and Lavacourt.

  As if that were not enough trouble for any one year, Monet now insisted on driving his treasured Panhard automobile all the way from Giverny to Madrid, accompanied by his wife, Alice, and son Michel. Wrapped in dusters, hats, and goggles to ward off the clouds of dust that plagued early automobile travel, they bravely set off, with their Michelin Guide in hand.

  Michelin Guides had in fact first appeared only a few years before, as a promotional gimmick for Michelin tires and as an encouragement for auto travel, which the Michelin brothers perceptively understood would benefit their business. The brothers, Edouard and André, came from a family that for years had produced rubber products. The family firm was flagging when the brothers revived it in the late 1880s by specializing in bicycle tires and, soon, automobile tires. In 1891, shortly after the invention of the pneumatic bicycle tire (replacing the solid rubber variety), the Michelins took this discovery one step further by developing pneumatic bicycle tires that were not glued to the rim. By 1895 the Michelins were producing automobile tires, and by 1900, Michelin tires dominated the French tire market, which was the largest in the world until the United States overtook it in 1905.

  Bicycle tires may still have represented a far larger market than auto tires in the early 1900s, but the Michelins sensed that the future lay in auto tires and began to specialize in them. This gave them a vested interest in increasing auto sales and auto tourism. André Michelin, the brother in charge of advertising, who was based in Paris (the company itself, run by brother Edouard, was located in Clermont-Ferrand), was adept at marketing. It was in 1900 that André came out with the first Michelin Guide, to make auto travel easier. The 1900 edition ran to thirty-five thousand copies, was free, and contained tips on how to repair tires, where to find hotels and gas stations, and where to find mechanics (there still were precious few).17 “This Guide was born with the century, and it will last every bit as long,” the brothers wrote in the preface to this first Guide. By 1904, when the Monets took off for Madrid, the Michelins had expanded publication to include Belgium, and Spain would eventually follow.

  Monet’s beloved Panhard made the 800 kilometers from Giverny to Biarritz in four days, but the trip evidently was more wearing on the automobile than on its passengers. After a good deal of trouble, the Monets had to leave the car in Biarritz for repairs while they finished the journey by train. Their stay in Madrid was a success (Monet was moved to tears by the paintings of Veláquez, and was astounded by the El Grecos), and their return journey was blessedly uneventful—although the repaired Panhard seemed dispirited and would not go more than thirty kilometers per hour.

  Despite this, soon after returning to Giverny, Monet—who had evidently become an auto enthusiast—set off for the car races at nearby Gaillon. There, amid dust and exhaust fumes, he and his family partook of a leisurely picnic in the grass.

  Picnics in the grass were not among Auguste Escoffier’s specialties, although he certainly was interested in making cuisine more accessible and less formidable than the mountainous feasts created or inspired by his legendary predecessor, the celebrated nineteenth-century chef, Marie-Antoine Carême. Escoffier addressed the problem of expanding waistlines and diminishing enthusiasms for the same old grandiose banquets by creating a new approach to cooking and dining, one that cleared away much of the ostentation, the richness, and the sheer overabundance of food. Although neither his recipes nor his menus would appear light or simple to twenty-first-century eyes, they focused on the essentials to a degree not before encountered in Parisian haute cuisine.

  Originally, Escoffier had wanted to become a sculptor, but he quickly learned that his family’s humble circumstances made this impossible. Both his father and grandfather were blacksmiths, but there was another option: an uncle had a restaurant in nearby Nice, where the family arranged for thirteen-year-old Escoffier to begin his apprenticeship. “Even though this is not the profession I personally would have chosen,” he remembered telling himself, “since I am here, let me work to make the grade.”18

  After three grueling years of apprenticeship and several subsequent jobs in Nice, young Escoffier headed for Paris, where he went to work as a lowly kitchen aide at an elegant restaurant in the eighth arrondissement. The Franco-Prussian War landed him in the army as a cook, where his reputation began to build. Once the war (and a brief period of German imprisonment) was over, he returned to Paris—this time as chef de cuisine, where he was becoming known for his inventive dishes and menus.

  It was in 1874 that he first encountered Sarah Bernhardt, then at the onset of her meteoric career, and created a memorable dish for her—not the Fraises Sarah Bernhardt (strawberries, pineapple sorbet, and curaçao-infused citrus ice cream) that he would later present in her honor, but what he termed a “light dish” of calf sweetbreads with fresh noodles served with a purée of foie gras and truffles. He knew that Bernhardt had a passion for calf sweetbreads, and he was right—she adored the dish and asked him to make it for her again and again. Who knew that slim Sarah Bernhardt had such a passion for sweetbreads?

 
From Paris, Escoffier (now a married man) went to Cannes, then on to a series of better-and-better jobs in Paris, Lucerne, and Monte Carlo, where he met César Ritz, who also was on a phenomenal upward climb. Ritz recognized the importance of a brilliant chef like Escoffier, while Escoffier appreciated Ritz’s extraordinary management abilities. “An excellent cuisine,” Escoffier later wrote, “the best list of French wines, and perfect service made it so that clients never wanted to leave.”19

  Unfortunately Escoffier and Ritz’s joint venture at London’s Savoy Hotel ended badly, with much finger-pointing all around. But in the meantime Ritz (much to the displeasure of the Savoy’s chairman of the board, Richard D’Oyly Carte) was building his own hotel in Paris, the Ritz Hotel, which opened in 1898 with Escoffier in charge of the kitchens. From the outset, the Ritz Hotel was a smashing success, making it possible for Ritz to send Escoffier to yet another new venture, London’s Carlton Hotel, whose kitchens Escoffier would direct for twenty years.

  It was a breathtaking rise for the boy from a backwater Provençal blacksmith’s family, and Escoffier never forgot it. His memoir is larded with the names of the titled, the rich, and the famous, who continued to dazzle him. When speaking of the Carlton Hotel, he remarks that he is “sure that the aroma of the suprêmes de perdreaux au parfum de truffe and other such delicacies that I proposed helped to enhance its reputation as a new temple of gastronomy.”20

  Of course he was right, and it was his insistence on perfection, on well-organized kitchens, and on constantly inventing new dishes to vary the menus and satisfy his clients that kept him at the top of his game. By 1903, when he published the first edition of his combined cookbook and textbook, Le guide culinaire, he was considered France’s greatest chef. He had made his mark on the Belle Epoque and on much of the century thereafter, and this volume of more than five thousand recipes would define French haute cuisine for decades to come.