Twilight of the Belle Epoque

by Mary McAuliffe

  In addition to bringing good news, Sarah and Michael prompted the arrival of two women who longed to escape San Francisco and visit Paris: the journalist Harriet Levy and Levy’s friend, Alice B. (for Babette) Toklas. Harriet and Alice arrived in the autumn of 1907 and took up residence in a small apartment on Rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, not far from the two Stein residences. Eventually, Alice would move in with Gertrude.

  Alice, a small, dark woman with an unobtrusive and refined manner, was the unmarried daughter of a well-to-do Jewish family that had settled in California a half-century earlier. The Toklas family being friends of the Steins, it was natural for Alice to be among those who greeted Michael and Sarah upon their return to San Francisco, and to hear of all the wonders of Paris. With limited personal prospects, Alice began to dream of visiting the City of Light. After inheriting a small legacy from her grandfather and persuading her father that a Paris trip would be beneficial, she and Levy joined the Steins in Paris. Once established there, she joined Gertrude and Leo on their many excursions, whether to galleries or to concerts and the theater, and soon she became an accepted presence among Gertrude’s extensive circle of friends. In time, she became an essential part of Gertrude’s life.

  Within months, Alice became Gertrude’s secretary. Gertrude had finally worked through the problem of getting Three Lives published by agreeing to pay for publication with a New York publisher. Etta Cone had originally typed the manuscript from Gertrude’s scattered notes, but it now fell to Alice to correct the proofs—which arrived after awkward inquiries from the publisher, who was under the impression that the author’s knowledge of English was limited, or alternately, “that perhaps you have not had much experience in writing.” Gertrude retorted that “everything that is written in the manuscript is written with the intention of its being so written and all he has to do is print it and I will take the responsibility.”20

  So the proofs arrived, and Alice had the job of correcting them. She also began to type up Gertrude’s burgeoning manuscript, The Making of Americans, which Gertrude described as “a history of a family,” which by this time “was getting to be a history of all human beings, all who ever were or are or could be living.”21 Etta Cone previously held this typing responsibility, as well as what probably was an intimate relationship with Gertrude, but Etta eventually begged off due to illness and left Paris—much to Gertrude’s annoyance, although their friendship continued. Alice soon took Etta’s place at the typewriter. She also took a primary place in Gertrude’s affections, to the evident discomfort of Etta, who plainly did not like Alice.

  Yet other rivalries beside this were developing chez Stein. Gertrude was less and less interested in what Matisse was painting and had some personal bones to pick with him, especially with his rising prices. Propelling Gertrude’s disaffection was an increasing rivalry with her sister-in-law. Sarah and Michael held their own salon on Rue Madame, not far from Gertrude and Leo’s on Rue de Fleurus, and many preferred Sarah and Michael’s salon, finding it warmer and less daunting than Gertrude and Leo’s. Sarah was devoted to Matisse, who later described her as the “really intelligently sensitive member of the family.”22

  Gertrude now had plenty of reasons to favor Picasso, especially since he and Matisse had become serious rivals bent on very different goals. “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity, and serenity,” Matisse wrote in 1908, in his “Notes of a Painter.”23 Picasso, for his part, wanted to burn the house down.

  While Picasso was hard at work in the Bateau-Lavoir, yet another promising young artist appeared in Montmartre—the Italian Amedeo Modigliani. It had been a rather good year for him: he had managed to get seven of his works into that year’s Salon d’Automne, although admittedly none of them sold. Still, he could console himself with the fact that his works had hung in close proximity to those of the most well-known avant-garde artists of the day, including a large memorial exhibition of Cézannes.

  The youngest child of a poor but cultured Italian Jewish family, twenty-two-year-old Modigliani had arrived in Paris in 1906, determined to make a name for himself. He was a survivor, having already successfully battled several life-threatening illnesses, and he would continue to struggle with tuberculosis throughout the rest of his short life. Yet during his early years in Paris, his tuberculosis was in remission, and the biggest obstacle he had to face was indifference to his art and the grinding poverty that resulted.

  He moved to Montmartre, where he lived in a shanty-like structure, rented a tumble-down studio, and frequented the Lapin Agile. Despite his poverty, Modigliani dressed with bohemian flair, and his good looks and charm soon drew him into the center of Montmartre’s social life, including Picasso’s gang (which Gertrude Stein described as “the little bullfighter followed by his squadron of four”—Derain and Braque, Salmon and Apollinaire, all of them large).24

  In 1907, after being evicted from his shanty, Modigliani moved his studio to a derelict house at the foot of Montmartre that was due for demolition but saved by a certain Dr. Paul Alexandre, who made it a shelter cum clubhouse for impoverished artists. It was a ruin, but its inhabitants were grateful for a roof, however leaky, and the meals and companionship that Dr. Alexandre provided. Dr. Alexandre was a dermatologist but, much like Georges Clemenceau a generation earlier, operated a general clinic for the impoverished residents of his Montmartre neighborhood. Only a few years Modigliani’s senior, he was enchanted with avant-garde art, and immediately took note of Modigliani’s work. Soon he became Modigliani’s staunch friend and patron.

  By this time Modigliani had also become friends with the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, a man of great artistic gifts but little education and fewer means, who had walked most of the way from Bucharest to Paris in order to reach this center of the arts, the home of his hero, Rodin. Not surprisingly, Brancusi’s early work showed Rodin’s influence, but by 1907, when he met Modigliani, Brancusi had become interested in abstract forms. As a result of Brancusi’s explorations as well as Modigliani’s own discovery of the African art that had already influenced Matisse and Picasso, Modigliani would reconceive his own ideas about sculpture.

  Brancusi had a studio in the Cité Falguière, a ramshackle group of artists’ studios in Montparnasse near the workshops of the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. For years Bourdelle had worked for Rodin as his assistant, or praticien, helping carve Rodin’s enormous output into marble.25 It was a love-hate relationship; Bourdelle idolized Rodin even as he strove mightily to break free of his influence and establish his own artistic identity. As the Lithuanian sculptor Jacques Lipchitz noted: “Modigliani, like some others at the time, was very taken with the notion that sculpture was sick, that it had become very sick with Rodin and his influence.”26 Although Lipchitz did not agree that sculpture was sick, he and Modigliani, Bourdelle, and Brancusi were determined to find their own way—one that did not follow in anyone’s footsteps, least of all Rodin’s.

  Several years later, in fulfilling a commission to provide decorative friezes for the new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Antoine Bourdelle would portray an imaginary dance between Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky—something that never happened, but certainly was worth dreaming about.

  In 1907, though, Isadora Duncan’s life was more of a nightmare than a dream. In February, she collapsed during a performance in Amsterdam, suffering from severe menstrual pain and fatigue. By May she was somewhat recovered, but her summer schedule, in which she danced continuously throughout Germany, left her “tired to tatters.”27

  She longed to see her baby, but the doctor warned that bringing the still-unnamed child (called Snowdrop) from Italy to a colder climate might be fatal. “O darling I am so sad & distracted,” Isadora wrote Craig in January, “but will try & be brave. . . . Too much Too much.”28 Adding immeasurably to her unhappiness was Craig’s response, a nasty mix of reproaches, evasions, and lies. “Visions of Craig . . . in the arms of other women haunted me at night, until
I could no longer sleep,” she wrote in her memoirs.29

  The break came that autumn in Florence. Isadora, who was in Venice, wrote Craig (in Florence): “If at the end of the week you don’t come I will & see you—if you want me. Do you?”30 She had underlined the “if” fourteen times. On an earlier request, he had penned in the note, “No,”31 and he meant it. When Isadora subsequently visited him in Florence, Craig completely turned from her. Within twenty-four hours she left, in tears.

  Isadora now began her series of affairs with a long string of lovers, accompanied by epic drinking and partying. It was not a happy life. “I have been en fête perpetual here [Warsaw],” she wrote Craig in November. “Champagne & dancing—it was the only alternative to suicide.”32

  In the days and weeks following Pierre Curie’s death, Marie battled severe depression and thoughts of suicide. “In the street,” she wrote in the journal she kept after his death, “I walk as though hypnotized, without care about anything. I will not kill myself, . . . [but] among all these carriages, isn’t there one which will make me share the fate of my beloved?”33

  Worsening her depression was self-condemnation. Uncharacteristically, she and Pierre had quarreled during what turned out to be their last moments together. He had reproached their maid, who wanted a raise, for not keeping up the house sufficiently. “I was taking care of the children,” Marie recalled in her journal. “You left, asking me from below if I was coming to the laboratory. I answered you that I had no idea and begged you not to torment me. And that is when you left, and the last sentence that I spoke to you was not a sentence of love and tenderness.” She could scarcely bear the thought of it: “Nothing has troubled my tranquility more.”34

  In the end it was her children, and her responsibility to them, that pulled her through, as did her laboratory work35—although at first she could not bear to visit the premises where she and Pierre had worked so closely together, or touch the instruments that Pierre had handled. Pierre’s chair at the Sorbonne now was vacant, and the question arose: How to deal with this? The chair had been created specifically for him, and the obvious answer was to appoint Marie to the position; after all, she and he had worked jointly together on their discoveries, and her qualifications were unquestioned. What was in question was her suitability as a woman; no woman had previously been appointed to teach, let alone hold a chair, at the Sorbonne, and the idea was much too radical for the old guard to stomach.

  Instead, the Faculty of Sciences finally proposed that the chair be left vacant, but that Marie take on Pierre’s responsibilities in teaching and research. After a long internal deliberation, during which she sometimes despaired of ever being able to work without him, Marie finally agreed to accept. She added, “There are some imbeciles who have actually congratulated me.”36

  She gave her inaugural lecture on November 5, taking up at the exact point where Pierre had left off. She also moved with her two daughters and father-in-law to Sceaux, just outside of Paris, where her daughters would be raised with a garden and fresh air. It meant extra commuting time for Marie, but she could not bear to remain in the house where she and Pierre had lived together. Pierre’s father, Dr. Curie, continued to reside with them, devoting himself to supporting her and his granddaughters.

  In 1908, Marie Curie published a volume of the Works of Pierre Curie—a work of six hundred pages that she had collected and edited, prefaced by her own introduction. “A new period of his life was about to open,” she wrote. “Fate did not wish it thus, and we are obliged to bow before its incomprehensible decision.”37

  In March 1907, the huge Savoy bell, named Françoise-Marguerite-Marie du Sacré-Coeur, took its place in Sacré-Coeur’s new bell tower, high above the cupola of the chapel of the Virgin Mary.

  Yet while Sacré-Coeur rose white and shining above Paris, life in the city below had—at least for the privileged—become ever more madly materialistic and self-indulgent. Abbé Mugnier, who was no prude, nonetheless reported with evident discomfort that the young girls of high society “are now smoking in front of their mothers.” On a recent evening he had even witnessed one particular mother and daughter smoking together.38

  The previous year, André Citroën’s brother, Bernard, opened Sans Souci, a trendy café-bar near the Opéra. Sans Souci was the first in Paris to feature the new fad of tea-dancing à l’anglaise, and its opening was a grand event, attracting celebrities from high society and show business. It was, as its name suggested, a place of sophisticated assignation, and when Isadora Duncan returned to Paris, she was rumored to be a regular.

  Bernard’s brother, André, was also a regular, joining Bernard and his amusing friends in a round of parties and entertainments. André Citroën, who now had money to spend, may have worked hard during the day, but he was known for playing in high style at night. His lifestyle contrasted dramatically with that of his future rival, Louis Renault, who did not play at all, period.

  A hard worker who wore the same kind of overalls as his employees and labored right beside them, Louis Renault was respected but not beloved. “Hard, he is,” his employees agreed, “a real slave-driver. But you can’t refuse him anything. Because he works harder than you do.” Renault rarely slept more than five hours a night, regularly working until 11 p.m. and returning to work by 6 a.m., having already bathed, breakfasted, and exercised. He was an intense and ubiquitous presence on the factory floor. “Working for him,” one of his employees commented, “was like being with a volcano.” Outside the factory, he had a reputation for boorishness. “The rudest man I’ve ever known,” one acquaintance recalled.39

  In 1904, when France led the world in automobile construction (producing more than thirty thousand vehicles annually), Renault still was a small player. Yet unlike Panhard, the French maker of luxury automobiles, Renault continued to focus on lighter and less expensive vehicles. When Panhard turned down the opportunity to build a fleet of inexpensive taxis for the city of Paris, Renault jumped at the chance. By 1906 he had supplied the city with fifteen hundred such taxis, and by 1907 his taxis had spread to London. Also, by this time Renault’s first bus was on the streets of Paris, and Renault delivery trucks and milk vans were appearing throughout France.40

  In addition, Renault was learning to use his growing financial power to his own advantage, suing those firms who dared to infringe on his patents. Proceeding carefully at first, he took on a small entrepreneur who was illegally using the Renault direct-drive. Renault’s legal adviser pointed out that suing this individual would bring Renault little in the way of recompense, and that the man would probably go bankrupt. “Exactly!” replied Renault. “Sue him.”41 Sue him they did, and the man indeed went bankrupt. But Renault had now established his patent in the courts, and the larger firms (in Germany, England, and America, as well as in France) who had infringed on his patent suddenly turned tail and settled out of court. For his part, Renault was perfectly willing to infringe on others’ patents, provided the inventor was unlikely to have sufficient funds to press a case against him. In other instances, Renault simply negotiated for the lowest price.

  As for expanding his plant in Billancourt, Renault typically offered a low price for the desired land, and then—if the owner refused to sell—had Renault vehicles drive up and down outside the person’s house, day and night, revving up continuously, until the owner capitulated. When Renault began to make airplane engines in 1907, their piercing noise was even more effective in persuading landowners to evacuate.

  Louis Renault was similarly tough with his brother, Fernand, who was his sole surviving partner. Taking due note of his brother’s declining health, Louis threatened and blandished him into relinquishing his share of the firm at a low price. Despite the fact that Fernand had children to inherit, he eventually capitulated. “Louis was hard, hard with me,” Fernand later told his wife. “You know what he is like when he wants something.”42 With Fernand’s death in 1908, Louis Renault at last had comp
lete control over the automobile firm that would soon be the largest in France.

  There were other ruthless and volcanic entrepreneurs hard at work in and around Paris at this time. Young Eugène Schueller was one of them. Raised in poverty by hardworking parents in the heart of Montparnasse, young Eugène—the only surviving child of five sons—was given a good education, despite the expense. Unlike his schoolmates, he was accustomed to working long hours in his parents’ pastry shop as well as working hard at school.

  His scientific ability emerged early, and until his family faced financial ruin, it looked like he was headed for the elite Ecole Polytechnique. Overcoming adversity after adversity, he eventually entered the Institute for Applied Chemistry, paying his way by working nights as a pastry cook. Graduating at the top of his class, he became an instructor at the Sorbonne. After a life of hard work, he found his days there boring and left for a job at the Pharmacie Centrale de France, the major French manufacturer of chemical products. There he quickly became head of research and eventually head of chemical service.

  Not one to rest easily in success, Schueller now decided, at the age of twenty-six, to branch out on his own. He had already become interested in a project to invent a safe and natural-looking hair dye. Until then, hair dyes were jarring in color and definitely unsafe, for customers and hairdressers alike. No one had bothered to explore this problem before, largely because it was of little interest to male chemists. Still, a fortune awaited in the beauty business, and Schueller spotted it. He worked at a hairdresser’s salon from the crack of dawn until his day job started, and then from eight to eleven o’clock at night, sandwiching his work at the Pharmacie Centrale in between. Sensing that he was on the right track, he quit his job at both places (to the utter disbelief of his employer at Pharmacie Centrale, who was paying him well) and lived on next to nothing while sleeping on a little camp bed next to his laboratory equipment and cooking on the Bunsen burner he used for his experiments. By 1907, he had discovered the formula he was looking for.