Eiffel's Tower

by Jill Jonnes

  Even Edison, as he admitted to Robert Sherard, was astounded by the sheer number of people wanting a piece of his time or money. He was also dismayed at “the enormous number of cranks and crooks that there are here. You would be surprised to read some of the letters which I receive by the hundreds. I have given up looking at them at all. Some of these letters contained the strangest offers that you could imagine. Many were from inventors, who begged me to come to their places to give the last touches to some lunatical invention of theirs. There was one man who wrote several times. He had invented an electrical toothbrush or some such nonsense. But the bulk of them wanted assistance in another way. I have had hundreds of applications for loans. . . . It would have required an enormous fortune.”

  Mina Edison’s discomfort in Paris was not eased by the presence of her two sisters, for they had been feuding with Edison’s sixteen-year-old daughter, Marion, known as Dot. After her mother’s death, Dot had become Edison’s frequent companion and she was not pleased to find this role usurped by her young stepmother. Allowed to sail to Europe earlier in the summer with Mina’s sisters, Dot had turned sulky and troublesome before the ocean liner even reached the Continent. And once on the Grand Tour, she did not get any easier. “She doesn’t give a snap for really seeing things,” complained Mina’s sister Mary Miller. “I think you ought to know how she is spending her money [in Paris]. When she came she was to get one dress for the summer. . . . Well, she got a dress but such a dress. It is heliotrope with deep hand embroidery around the bottom. . . . It is very pretty.”

  But Dot had decided the garment didn’t suit and thus ordered another with large white stripes that she then ruled “hideous.” Miss Edison had then ordered yet a third gown from the dressmaker that she then also rejected. “Then her hats—three great immense hats,” all of which she also did not like, or so she said to Mary Miller, whom she also declared she did not like. Mary had gone to a spa to recover, while Dot stayed in Paris with a chaperone and refused to study French.

  Edison, when not attending banquets or promoting the phonograph and other business matters, acquiesced to some sightseeing with his wife and their friends. They toured the French painting galleries at the Exposition, and later took in the many treasures at the Louvre. Not surprisingly, Edison had opinions on them all. The French paintings displayed at the World’s Fair? “Oh, yes,” he told Sherard, “they are grand art. I like modern pictures as much as I dislike the antique stuff. I think nothing of the pictures in the Louvre. I have no use for old things; they are wretched old things. Now the pictures at the Exhibition are all as new and modern as they can be; they are good.” As for his fellow American millionaires snapping up old European paintings, Edison was dismissive: “To my mind the Old Masters are not art, their value is in their scarcity and in the vanity of men with lots of money.”

  Edison made numerous sorties to sample the fair’s smorgasbord of human achievement. At “the exhibit of the Kimberley diamond mines,” he said, “they kindly permitted me to take diamonds from some of the blue earth which they were washing by machinery to exhibit the mine operations. I found several beautiful diamonds, but they seemed a little light to me when I was picking them out. They were diamonds for exhibition purposes—probably glass.” When strolling through an art gallery, Edison and Mina spotted A. A. Anderson’s The Morning After the Ball, an oil in pale blues and pinks of a young woman in a negligée sitting up in a frilly bed reading a newspaper account of her debut. It had won a prize in the Salon, and sold endless copies as a popular lithograph. The Edisons arranged to buy it and would hang it in a place of pride at their Llewellyn Park mansion, Glenmont. Edison was especially fond of sculpture and he wandered contentedly through those galleries. It was in the Italian section of the fair’s fine arts department that he spotted another piece of art he simply had to possess: a two-foot-tall white marble sculpture of a lithe nude winged sprite holding aloft a working lightbulb. Edison paid $1,700 for The Genius of Electricity, sculpted by A. Bordiga. It would sit atop the desk in his West Orange laboratory study for years, a happy souvenir.

  A. A. Anderson, painter of After the Ball, was one of the Paris expatriates, a formidable businessman who had changed careers to become an artist. He had spent a decade in Paris painting, and had made a success of that as well. Concerned about the naïve young Americans coming to France to study art, Anderson had organized and underwritten the American Art Association of Paris, establishing it in a spacious leased mansion surrounded by a large walled flower garden on the boulevard Montparnasse. He wrote, “We had a good library, a reception room, a dining room where a student could get a meal for one franc, and a garden where we could recreate and could sketch and paint. There were frequent social occasions, receptions, lectures, and dances.”

  Interior of the Galerie des Machines

  Anderson proposed to Edison that while the inventor was in Paris Anderson paint his portrait. “To avoid the crowd and find quiet, he visited my studio frequently,” wrote Anderson. “I have never had a more interesting sitter. Like most great men, he was exceedingly modest, as ingenuous as a boy, and revealed a decided fund of humor. I painted him listening to his first perfected phonograph.” Anderson joined Edison’s entourage at times, serving as an interpreter. “One day he remarked to me, with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Anderson, I am never so happy as when I sit down to a ten-course dinner between two Frenchmen who cannot speak a word of English.’ ”

  For Edison, Eiffel’s Tower remained the highlight of Paris and the fair. “I must say that the Eiffel Tower is grand,” he said, “and after that, what impresses me most is the machinery hall.” But Edison felt solidarity with all the other footsore fairgoers, complaining that the gigantic Galerie des Machines with its sixteen thousand machines was “a sadly tiring place . . . altogether too big, miles and miles too much of it. I have a headache when I even think of it. I can’t say I have seen a quarter of what there is to be seen in it and I don’t suppose I ever shall. So far as I have noticed I have not been struck by any novelty on a large scale. There are plenty of improvements in small things.” Edison was equally dispirited by the official American exhibit, observing, “It represents nothing. It represents American industry just as much as that cab-horse outside represents the animal kingdom. It is a one-horse concern altogether. . . . That’s exactly how I feel about it, and so, I must say, does every American I meet in Paris.”

  As for the French inventors, Edison was likewise unimpressed: “Oh, they don’t have inventors, in our American sense of the word, in Paris at all. They haven’t any professional inventors here, as we have on the other side; that is to say, men who will go into a factory, sit down and solve any problem that may be put before them. That is a profession which they seem to know nothing about over here. In America we have hundreds of such men.” Of course, Gustave Eiffel and other masters of French industrialism might have begged to differ.

  In the waning days of summer, James Gordon Bennett made his semian- nual trip to New York City. Bennett sensibly kept his homecomings to Gotham as secret as possible, and not just so he could surprise his unwary staff. His stealth served a very specific purpose. “The fact is this,” New York’s sheriff Grant had explained to a rival paper, “Bennett [as publisher of The New York Herald] is the defendant in a large number of civil suits ranging from $1,000 to $25,000. Some of the suits were instituted several years ago. He deems the suits unjust and won’t pay. We have been trying to serve him with the summonses ever since, but it seems impossible to catch him. . . . The law says if a man remains away from a place more than six months he thereby loses his legal residence, and then if a suit for money is pending against him . . . an attachment can be taken out” on his property. Bennett had no intention of letting any enemy of his get hold of his Fifth Avenue mansion or his Washington Heights estate. And so each winter and summer he would sail stealthily to Manhattan—either on his own yacht, Namouna, or on a steamship using an alias for the passenger list.

  Always de
eply suspicious, Bennett delighted in appearing in his New York newsroom with “what one of his editorial writers called a ‘terrifying suddenness,’ [whereupon] shock waves of hirings, firings, promotions and demotions, accusations and recriminations would hit the place like a man-made earthquake.” Naturally, the newspaper staff dreaded these unannounced visits by their fearsome boss, and sometimes, if their luck held, The Herald’s maritime reporter garnered advance word that Bennett’s yacht had been sighted arriving in New York Harbor. The city desk went into high alert, and after “the usual panicky reaction, reporters were rounded up from Park Row saloons, bullied into sobriety, ordered to shave and put on clean collars. All through the building, in fact, the Commodore’s satraps were frantically tidying up for his inspection.” After making his appearance at The Herald, Bennett then eluded the sheriff (once again) and sailed quietly home to France. As the patient sheriff said, “This last trip he got ahead of us, but he will be back again in six months time, and then we will have more fun with each other.”

  Bennett returned to Paris in sufficient time to observe the continued lionizing of Thomas Edison at numerous lunches and dinners. As a matter of principle, he himself avoided such functions, not wishing to be influenced by friendships with the powerful or buttonholed by editorial favor seekers.

  On the wet Monday night of August 26, Le Figaro hosted the most glittering of the many soirées to honor Edison. Alfred Tate accompanied his boss to “this most spectacular tribute,” and the two stepped in from the rain at half past ten to find the Figaro office-mansion ablaze with electric lights and bedecked with the Stars and Stripes. Edison and Tate passed through the paper’s little greenhouse fernery, charming with perfumed flowers and colored fountains, and then entered the salle, where they were greeted by editor Francis Magnard, the nation’s leading political writer, and his staff. Minister Whitelaw Reid arrived moments later, whereupon he and Edison were seated in two velvet armchairs by the stage. A large portrait of Edison inscribed SA MAJESTÉ EDISON faced the arms of the United States. Other luminaries were not far behind.

  First came the Bey of Tunis, His Highness Tieb, with his suite, all in picturesque costumes. “Then, blazing in diamonds and gold lace, two popular idols came swaggering in,” Tate wrote, “the famous toreadors Garcia and Valentin, followed by the no less idolized figure of Buffalo Bill, also glittering in his well-known costume of white and gold, topped by his ten-gallon hat, which he removed with a sweep that comprehended the whole audience.” In Cody’s wake came the composer Jules Massenet and Prince Roland Bonaparte, who in turn “were trailed by a procession of Foreign Ministers, French generals, and various exponents of Art and Literature, marching to the weird strains of an overture by a company of Roumanian musicians.”

  Once the guests were seated, the renowned actor Jean Mounet-Sully declaimed, followed by sopranos singing light chansons. Le Figaro had engaged no less a giant of the French theater than the beloved star of the Comédie Française, Coquelin the Younger, who “mounted the stage and in the role of a penniless inventor delivered a monologue that evoked uproarious laughter. He produced an instrument which he called the ‘Per- fected Telephone’ and which would translate French into English or vice versa. With his lips to the mouthpiece he said: ‘Edison est un roi de la république intellectuelle. L’humanité lui est reconnaissante.’ And then turning the instrument around there appeared on its reverse side the translation of this tribute into English in large printed letters: EDISON IS A KING OF THE REPUBLIC OF THE MIND. MANKIND IS GRATEFUL TO HIM.

  “ ‘And you can’t invent an instrument that will do that, Mr. Edison, can you, my illustrious confrere?’ asked this inimitable comedian, as with an assumed air of superiority and triumph he vanished through the wings of the stage.”

  The comedian was followed by more singers and dancers, including the Exposition’s exotic Javanese troupe. As ever, Edison saw to it that the phonograph was center stage. Reported The Herald’s man: “It reproduced speeches made by the Figaro staff to Mr. Edison and Mr. Edison’s reply. The phonograph also reproduced the ‘Telephone March’ that was played recently at a banquet.” The evening continued merrily on until 2:00 a.m.; “everybody was sipping champagne and nibbling away at pâtés or sandwiches.” Many guests did not leave until dawn.

  Later that same morning, the Edison party reassembled to journey out for a very different homage American-style: a late-morning “grub steak” breakfast at Buffalo Bill’s Neuilly camp, capped by the three o’clock performance of the Wild West show. Days of heavy rain had given way that Tuesday morning to a sparkling blue sky. Edison and his entourage, Minister and Mrs. Reid, a clutch of American millionaires and theatrical personalities, many distinguished French guests, the usual favored journalists, and all the Wild West higher-ups walked through puddles past the teepees and tents to a luxurious sprawling dining tent decorated with French and American flags, flowers, and potted palms. Cody, flanked by Reid and Edison, presided at the head of the flower-strewn table. The Cowboy Band played airy tunes to aid digestion. The eighteen-course meal was strictly American, and included (to Edison’s utter delight) two kinds of much-missed pie. The menu:

  Clam Chowder

  Soles

  Quail on toast

  Sweetbreads

  Pork and Boston baked beans

  Grub steak with mushrooms

  Chicken, Maryland style

  Green corn

  Hominy

  Baked potatoes

  Blanc Mange

  Jelly

  Pumpkin pie

  Apple pie

  Watermelon

  Pears, peaches, grapes

  Nuts

  Pop-corn—Peanuts

  Coffee

  Corn bread—Biscuits

  This daunting feast was followed by the inevitable few words from Minister Reid, followed by Nate Salsbury, a famous wit who no doubt revealed how he and Cody had not been formally introduced to the Shah of Persia just a few weeks earlier, and who “kept the company in roars of laughter until it was time to adjourn to the performance.”

  Buffalo Bill ( fourth from left in suit, holding cane) poses with the Deadwood Stage and various Wild West performers. Major Burke is behind Cody, on the front coach step.

  That afternoon, as Buffalo Bill and the painted Indians galloped forth and the show opened, the crowd spied Edison, and as at the Paris Opéra, they leapt to their feet roaring “Vive Edison! Vive Edison!” As was now the custom, when the battered Deadwood Stage lumbered into the arena, the show’s guests of honor were invited to climb in for the fun. Edison declined, instead urging William Hammer to join Chauncey Depew and actress Ada Rehan inside. Young Alfred Tate chose, he recounted, “with special permission, a seat on the roof at the rear of the coach beside the hardy plainsman clad in buckskins and armed with a rifle, who formed the rearguard of the perilous expedition. I never had enjoyed the horrors of an Indian raid outside the pages of certain proscribed yellow-backed literature and did not want to miss anything.

  “As we rounded the extreme end of the enclosure we were greeted with a series of savage yells and then a swarm of mounted Indians began to pursue us to the accompaniment of blasting volleys of rifle fire. As these raiders came closer and began to shoot from all sides, I began to speculate uncomfortably on the possibility of one of those savages having inadvertently, or otherwise, slipped a ball cartridge in his rifle, when I was restored to reality by the buckskinned scout at my side holding his fire long enough to lean over and shout at me above the din of battle, ‘You’d better pull yer legs up. Ye might git them pants o’ yours dirtied!’ ” And then! On cue, here came Buffalo Bill and his men to the rescue. The audience cheered lustily as the two most famous Americans in Paris, both notable for their easygoing modesty and humor, occupied the same arena. Reported The Herald’s man, “At the end of the performance, the whole house rose and gave one loud shout of ‘Vive Edison.’ Crowds waited long round Buffalo Bill’s tent to catch a glimpse of the celebrated invento
r.”

  After the show, the Edisons toured the camp, followed by a large crowd of enthralled French. When they came to her tent, Annie Oakley inquired if Edison might invent an electric gun, one that would dispense with gunpowder? “I have not come to that yet,” he replied, “but it may come.” Then Oakley produced her autograph album. While in London, she had collected the signatures of every member of the Chinese and Japanese embassies, as well as that of the Duchess of Cumberland. Mark Twain had signed on one page, “You can do everything that can be done in the shooting line and then some.” And the ever-gallant Cody had written, “To the loveliest and truest little woman, both in heart and aim in all the world.” Edison added his signature, not far from that of Salifou, king of Senegal.

  While Thomas Edison and Buffalo Bill were savoring triumphs, Paul Gauguin was lamenting his failure to make any impression at all during the fair. Despite the thousands of visitors who supped at Volpini’s Café des Beaux-Arts these many summer months, not a single painting of Gauguin’s had been sold. “Nothing either in the daily papers or in the so-called art periodicals. Isn’t that fine? ” bemoaned Gauguin. In September he returned again to Pont-Aven from Le Pouldu, for he could live now more cheaply there while he tried to secure a colonial job in the tropics.

  On September 1, Gauguin wrote two letters. The first was to Theo van Gogh, revealing his impoverished state and wondering, “Is Manet [brother of the dead artist] in Paris at this moment? I want to write him to ask him if he could speak to [Minister of Culture] Antonin Proust about a government job for me in Tonkin? These are jobs one can get through patronage.” The second letter was to his old friend Schuff to complain that all their efforts and excitement in mounting their show at Volpini’s café at the World’s Fair had come to naught. “And this exposition! Look at it. Guillaumin wrote me that no one has paid any attention. . . . No real news from here. I do no real work. The struggle in Pont-Aven is finished; everyone is gone.” Later, he confessed, “I have been in a horrible state of depression,” idling away his days in Brittany shooting arrows in the sand like the Wild West show Indians.