by Jill Jonnes
Presidential son Russell Harrison had recently been similarly fêted, sitting atop the careening coach and waving his silk top hat to the cheering grandstands. Harrison, a typical example of the amiable but feckless son of an eminent family, first came to public notice as a young man when assigned the unfortunate job of telling the press that the stolen corpse of his grandfather (also the son of a president, William Henry Harrison) had been found at Ohio Medical College, where the corpse was hanging by the neck, waiting to be dissected. Subsequently, young Russell had moved to Montana to seek his fortune, but various mining and cattle ventures had gone disastrously wrong. His father, Indianapolis lawyer Benjamin Harrison, repeatedly bailed his son out. In the 1888 election, Russell, forty-five, had worked to elect his father, yet just before leaving for Paris, Russell had once again been making unwelcome headlines, this time for a convoluted libel case brought by the governor of Montana involving disappearing diamonds and a politician’s wife.
Colonel Cody, no stranger to the White House, treated the presidential son to a Wild West breakfast. As ever The Herald’s man was there: “Such a breakfast had the gallant Colonel prepared for his visitors as they had not eaten for many a day. Baked beans, with the flavor of savory pork, corn bread, custard pie and ice cream. Where all these wonderful things came from was a mystery, but there they were, and very good they were. Nor was the menu limited to purely American dishes, but various products of Parisian culinary skill were pleasingly blended therein. The collation was served up in one of the luxurious tents, which was fitted up for the occasion with flowers, flags and all sorts of trophies from the Wild West.” Major Burke and Nate Salsbury were present, along with numerous American journalists and other visiting dignitaries. Many toasts were drunk. “Mr. Harrison himself is a genuine Westerner. Consequently he enjoyed to the utmost all the stories of life on the plains, which grew more and more thrilling as the repast advanced.”
Unlike social lion Buffalo Bill, who was the public ambassador and face of the Wild West show, Annie Oakley and her husband, Frank Butler, preferred to spend their free time at private shooting clubs or in high-stakes shooting matches. In Paris, Oakley was invited to join the elite club Le Cercle des Patineurs. “Thereafter Mr. B and I often spent a pleasant afternoon after the performance at the club, meeting many charming people and carrying away beautiful bouquets of tea roses grown in the club rose gardens.
“Mr. B and I arrived at the club rather early one morning and found two strangers shooting. There was no one to present us, but the taller stranger asked Mr. B if he would join them. Mr. B answered that the gun belonged to the lady. Then they bowed and asked if I cared to shoot. Mr. B said that he would go to the pool, so we shot for an hour and Mr. B’s pockets were some puffed out when the secretary arrived and said, ‘I see you have met the Grand Duke.’
“Then I was presented to the Grand Duke Michaelvitch of Russia with whom I had been shooting for the last hour.”
During breaks in the Wild West schedule, Annie Oakley also relished special shooting holidays on great estates. When she had been in England, she wrote, “there were 12 days spent in roaming over their 5000 acres, shooting partridges, pheasants and black cock, the latter being rather scarce and the mountain climbing hard. The lodges were furnished comfy on the shooting estate, and after a 12- or 15-mile walk each day, there was a hot bath, a delicious dinner, then gathering around the open fire, in easy chairs to talk over the day’s sport and bygone days, then the soft bed at 9:30 and out at the first streak of dawn.”
By late summer the American artists of Paris were still venting their ire at Gen. Rush Hawkins in the pages of the Paris Herald. On August 5, a letter writer weighed in with the following revelations:
1. The American jury for admission of works of sculpture in Paris was composed of two sculptors, Messrs. Kitson and Bartlett, to whom was added, at their own request, Mr. Harrison, a painter, already one of the jury on paintings.
2. This [sculpture] jury originally admitted works by Messrs. Kitson and Bartlett, and by a pupil of the former also a bust of Mr. Adams. . . . Subsequently, however, on a revision, they consented to allow three or four other [sculptural] works to be placed, not within, but outside the American galleries.
3. The same Mr. Bartlett, of the American Jury of Admission, became a supplementary member of the international jury. . . . It is hardly to be wondered at that the only medal of honor to any American sculptor was awarded to Mr. Bartlett.
As if all these conflicts of interest were not galling enough, Commissioner of Fine Arts Hawkins, the letter writer continued, “refused to admit anything from the Salon, even the only work of an American sculptor that had received a recompense [prize] this year. This statue, a ‘Diana,’ by Mr. MacMonnies, was, however, finally by the act of Commissioner-General Franklin, placed in the Exhibition apart from the American galleries, and maintained for days without indication to what nation it belonged. . . . Had Commissioner Hawkins promptly admitted this work . . . it would have enabled Mr. Bartlett, as member of the jury which adjudicated to himself the medal of honor, to feel that he had at least one competitor.”
When the artists of all nationalities were not squabbling about whose work deserved to be displayed or to win honors at the Universal Exposition, many were actually engaged in painting and sketching its astonishing sights. Paul Signac, an architecture student who became an artist and follower of the pointillist Seurat, was the first, painting the Eiffel Tower when it was still half-finished. Henri Rousseau, a self-taught naïve artist and employee of the Paris Customs Office who was known as Le Douanier, painted a charming self-portrait with the new tower in the background, French flag flying at its pinnacle. Young Henri Rivière, an artist who worked at the avant-garde Chat Noir cabaret in Montmartre, helping with its weekly journal and also putting on shadow puppet shows, spent hours making sketches around the tower and its environs. Inspired by Japanese prints, he depicted the workers erecting the tower in all the seasons, as well as the under-construction and finished edifice from many different vantage points. A series he titled Thirty-six Views of the Eiffel Tower evolved through sketches, colored woodblocks, and finally colored lithographs into a lovely homage to Japanese print master Hokusai’s Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji.
After the Eiffel Tower, the Exposition subject that most attracted French artists was the Javanese dancing girls. Camille Pissarro described them as “very picturesquely costumed . . . yet bizarre in their gilt head-dresses decorated with black feathers.” Gauguin, Rodin, and Toulouse-Lautrec all made sketches or paintings of them, as did American John Singer Sargent.
Despite James Gordon Bennett’s early insistence that his Paris Herald was never intended to make money, it flourished during the Exposition, turning a tidy profit. Moreover, his cable company was reaping extra income from all the American journalists reporting back to their papers, not to mention all the Americans needing to be in touch with home. When Bennett first began running his New York paper from Paris, cable rates had been reasonable. Imagine, then, his ire when in 1881 his longtime nemesis Jay Gould seized control of the transatlantic cable and began jacking up rates.
Deliverance arrived in the person of Comstock Lode millionaire John W. Mackay, who also resented Gould’s extortionate charges. A resident of California, Mackay depended on the cable to maintain uxorial contact with the flamboyant Mrs. Mackay (late of the Virginia City silver mining camp), who preferred life in Paris and London. In late 1883, Mackay and Bennett launched their own cable company. Jay Gould used every means to derail the new venture before admitting defeat in 1885, complaining, “There’s no beating John Mackay. If he needs another million or two he goes to his silver mine and digs it up.”
The success of the cable enterprise came at a convenient time, because by 1889 James Gordon Bennett was living a wildly extravagant life. In addition to his two sumptuous apartments on the Champs-Élysées, The Herald ’s publisher was the proud owner of a bosky country estate out in Versailles of a Lo
uis XIV provenance, well situated for coaching and hunting parties. On summer evenings there Bennett entertained impecunious barons and countesses, the ragtag European nobility that he, like so many rich Americans, found irresistible. The aristocrats, in turn, were more than happy to dine and drink al fresco at Versailles under ancient oak trees bedecked with glowing lanterns and multiple hanging centigrade thermometers. Like the owls, the thermometers were ubiquitous in the many Bennett abodes, allowing the Commodore to monitor the temperature and be reminded of his mission to convert the English-speaking world to centigrade.
Anxious Herald correspondents summoned from New York to see Bennett in Paris not infrequently found themselves directed to yet another Bennett domicile, this one in the Riviera village of Beaulieu-sur-Mer between Nice and Monaco. Bennett’s favorite home was a magnificent sun-washed villa famous for its elaborate rose gardens. (Few ever saw his Scottish Highland castle, a place he himself rarely set foot in from one year to the next. It served primarily as the all-important source for the Bennett table’s grouse and, above all, his beloved tiny plovers’ eggs.)
The capricious Commodore, if in the best of spirits, might bestow upon his visiting New York employee a generous raise or elevation to a plum job. As a leader, Bennett was a terrifying figure, mercurial, haughty, ruling his “news empire with an iron hand. Every man who worked for The Herald, no matter how important or lowly his job, had to please Bennett, who was as changeable as a chameleon, domineering, hypersensitive and full of whims.” It was just as likely that the anxious reporters might arrive to find their capricious boss (and soon themselves) aboard his ocean-going steam yacht, the gleaming white 167-foot Namouna, complete with its own Alderney cow aboard.
Reporters and editors had all reason to feel anxious about precipitous firings. One day, when Bennett summoned a particular reporter to Paris, the New York editors balked, wiring back that right then the man was “indispensable.” Who else on the staff, Bennett wondered via cable, was indispensable? A dozen names were sent. Back came the order that every one of them be fired. Said Bennett, “I will have no indispensable men in my employ.”
Bennett also maintained another three homes in the United States, though he had not lived there for a dozen years: a mansion on Fifth Avenue, his late father’s rustic estate up in Washington Heights, and a “cottage” in Newport. Each was fully staffed, ready to serve Bennett should he stride in the front door unannounced—the wine cellars were kept stocked, fires roared in the grates, and sheets were turned down nightly. In truth, Bennett could long since have returned to live and work in Gotham. “A wealthy bachelor and a powerful editor is always forgiven and always welcome,” one contemporary noted with vexation; “this is an axiom which Mr. Bennett has learned too well and upon which he often trespasses too far. But just as everyone is blaming him for some social error, he gives $100,000 to the starving poor of Ireland or cables $10,000 to the Actors’ Fund.” All in all, like many expatriates, Bennett lived in beautiful Paris out of preference.
On Friday, August 9, about a week after the Shah’s visit to the Wild West show, Major Burke once again gathered together forty of the Indians and set off downtown in the large brakes. By 9:00 a.m., they had ridden the elevators to the top of the Eiffel Tower, where they caused a sensation. “With their large dark coats thrown over their shoulders, their big sheepskins dyed in bright colors,” reported Le Figaro de la Tour, “and their long hair ornamented with feathers and their tattoos, they have a striking and original beauty.” The Indians “admired the panorama of Paris and its suburbs with great exclamations of surprise and great gesturings.” Most of the 12,237 Eiffel ascensionnistes that day visited only as far as the second platform. The Indians were among the 3,527 who pressed on all the way to the top.
When the Wild West group came down to the second platform, the Indians and Major Burke squeezed into Le Figaro’s little newsroom while “all around, the many other visitors pressed in to see them, filled with enthusiasm.” Because the Indians wanted their names to appear in that day’s newspaper but could not write, Major Burke had them line up behind him and helped each one in turn make an X, after which Major Burke wrote the man’s name. Le Figaro de la Tour duly printed each one: Red Shirt, Agulalla Chief, Feather-Man, Black-Heart, Long Crane, Billy Peno, Ju Bisnett, Kills Enemy No. 2, Little Bear, Yellow Horse, Little Iron, One Side, Left Hand, Dog Ghost, Wooden Face, Black Fox, Big Chief, Kills Enemy Quick, Fast Hawk, Standing Bear, Goes Flying, Two Eagle, Little-Chief, Stands Still, Prairie Chicken, Runs on Edge, No Neck Chief, Charging Crow, Bear Pipe, Medicine Horse, Short Bear, Blue Shield, Black Hawk, Swift Bear, Short Man, Brave Bear, Jule Keen, Billy Langdon. The final name was Raphaël Weill, Major Burke’s interpreter.
“Paris is again Paris, the gay, glad city of old,” enthused American writer Edyth Kirkwood in her report on the World’s Fair. “High and low, rich and poor, are, for once, of one mind. Merriment, joy, feasting succeed in a giddy whirl. . . . No more politics. Who cares for M. Ferry or General Boulanger? Hurrah! For the Eiffel Tower! Which edifice is, indeed, the present point of interest for the whole world. Even the Chinese, who are not easy to astonish, gaze with awe and admiration at ‘the big pagoda.’ . . . ‘Meet me under the Tour Eiffel!’ is the general cry for a rendezvous.” Miss Kirkwood and her friend, in their summer hats and light gowns, promenaded on the first platform, with its restaurants and “twelve little shops or counters for the sale of photographs, guides, cigars, etc.,” and enjoyed the clear, wide view.
“Meet me under the Eiffel Tower!”
They decided—“I should say rashly”—to ascend to the second platform via the spiral staircase. “Woe are we! Once started there is no returning. That is against the rule. You may find yourself dying from fright, n’importe, on you must go, as there are stairs for people to go up, and others for them to come down. After going many times round and round on a shaking little iron spiral two feet or very little wider, and very steep, Agatha says, positively, that she has had enough of it, and really must go back, and be pretty quick about it, too. I agree with rapture. We turn, but are met by a line of ascending men who greet us with assurances that it’s not permissible to go down, and insist firmly that we must proceed. They warn us that we may only be sent back from the foot of the stairs and it will save fatigue to go on.
“We yield and so march up, up, up to the weary top, wrathfully thinking unpleasant things about M. Eiffel for not making his little stairs wide enough to allow people to change their minds. In desperation I look up to see how much further it is to the top, and am seized with a dizziness that makes me long to sit down and remain where I am indefinitely. But the multitude behind push us on, and on we have to go. . . . At last we arrive, very warm and pink, and out of breath, still possessed by the delusion that we are on the main-mast of a ship, and if we don’t mind our steps we shall fall into the sea.” Having reached the second platform, Miss Kirkwood saw no great advantage to its superior height. “Altogether it is a wonderful thing this tower; but I like it best from below, especially on the gala nights, when it rivals the luminous fountains with the splendour of its red fires.”
The artist Henri Rousseau was so taken with the Eiffel Tower that he not only painted it into the backdrop of his self-portrait but wrote a three-act vaudeville show titled Une Visite à l’Exposition 1889, about a family of French country bumpkins (speaking thick patois), which included their encounter with the Eiffel Tower and other marvels of the fair. Mariette, one of his characters, exclaimed upon seeing the tower: “Ah, Saint Virgin Mary, how beautiful it is, how beautiful it is, and how big that huge ladder is, bigger than the bell tower of our church.” They wondered how they could possibly go to the top where the French flag was flying. A gendarme directed them, but then Rousseau said only in his play directions: “They ascend the tower, and then continue their visit, heading towards the Trocadéro.”
During these warm August Sundays, those Parisian families who were not sampling the delights of the Exposition U
niverselle could be found enjoying the countryside along the Seine out in “Neuilly, the Isle of La Grande Jatte, Bougival, Argenteuil, Charenton or along the Marne. It was there by preference that they would spend their Sundays fishing, picnicking en famille, dancing in guinguettes among the trees and eating the delicious little fried fish from the river. There were fairs and sideshows in the Parc de Vincennes.”
On August 10, the Shah of Persia departed Paris in a final blaze of pomp. Edmond de Goncourt, ever the faithful diarist, recorded a few evenings later how much this Eastern potentate had irritated de Goncourt’s old friend Princess Mathilde, the niece of Napoleon I, when he graced her with a call. “Before the Persian shah’s visit, the Princess received a message instructing her to prepare: ‘A glass of iced water, cakes, and a night commode. ’ She placed the commode chair in a corner of the library, and Primola [her nephew] chose this place for taking a [surreptitious] snapshot of the Shah; unfortunately, the Shah wanted the commode chair placed like a throne, in the middle of the room, and Primola was thwarted. ‘A swine,’ exclaimed the Princess, ‘a swine!’ ”
Later that evening de Goncourt and friends went out with the Shah’s physician of thirty years, a man named Tholozan, who indiscreetly revealed the Shah’s disdain for European nobility. He also regaled his hosts with bloodcurdling accounts of palace life. “He told us,” wrote de Goncourt, “that a few years back, [when] the [Persian] minister of Police had committed various abuses of his office, the Shah had the whim to have him whipped in front of him; and when he found the minister screaming too loudly, [the Shah] asked for a lovely, a very lovely cord, and proceeded very calmly to have him strangled.”