Beside the ‘History of Labour’ gallery stood that of the Beaux-Arts. Imposing as were its contents, however, the dead hand of the Academicians had deliberately excluded all the rising talent that was in any way controversial. Works by Ingres, Corot, and Théodore Rousseau crowded the walls, but Pissarro, Cézanne, Monet were all rejected, as were Courbet and Manet; though the last two had managed to obtain permission to erect, at considerable personal cost, private pavilions outside, where for 50 centimes you could go to jeer at the Déjeuner sur l’herbe. Indeed, it was really in the outer space surrounding the immense dome that the chief magic of the Exhibition lay; a magic that tended to distract the visitor from the more solid displays within. Walking through it reminded one of a voyage round the world, and visitors of the epoch were suddenly astonished to discover for the first time how shrunken the telegraph, the steamship, and the soon-to-be-opened Suez Canal were making the world seem. French was a language hardly heard. Each nation had erected stalls and kiosks where pretty girls or ferocious tribesmen served their customers in bizarre national costumes. Russians wandered about with their little steppe ponies among Yakut and Kirghiz yurts; while Mexicans in gay ponchos ogled a reconstruction of the Roman catacombs, pigtailed Chinese wandered serenely round a replica of the Green Mosque of Bursa. Bosomy maidens from Bavaria dispensed beer to morose Andalusians, who in turn were wooed by Arab coffee-vendors, with their raucously insistent calls and magnificent robes. Via the port of Antwerp, one reached an Inca palace; an avenue of sphinxes guarding the Egyptian Temple led to the Swedish house of Gustavus Vasa. Inside the temple, the blackened flesh of a mummy, dead two thousand years, was unbandaged before the shocked eyes of the Goncourt brothers.
Above this extraordinary panoramic babel, as an unread augury of a less distant future, bobbed and hovered a double-decker captive balloon in which Nadar, the famous photographer, took visitors—a dozen at a time—for flights over the exhibition grounds; while up and down the Seine new excursion boats capable of carrying a hundred and fifty passengers made their first appearance. They were called bateaux-mouches.
Whether you regarded it from aloft in the Géant or the Céleste, from the river, or merely on foot, the Champ-de-Mars presented an unbelievable ensemble of brilliance, mediocrity, and simply execrable taste, but above all of dazzling colour beyond the palettes of even that garish new school not yet named ‘Impressionist’. In this era of the Suez Canal and Indian nabobs, of the Japanese print and the first of the European interventions in China, the influence of the Orient predominated. It was especially so as dusk came on. Then, the Goncourts remarked, ‘the kiosks, the minarets, the domes, the beacons made the darkness retreat into the transparency and indolence of nights of Asia…. And the banners, the flames, the unfurled flags of the nations gave us an impression of walking on a street of the Middle Empire.’ With nightfall, too, life on the Champ-de-Mars assumed a new allure. Cheap food, wine, and entertainment attracted all Paris; you could dine excellently for 80 centimes, and Edwin Child recorded that even on his apprentice’s pittance he could afford ‘a jolly good oyster supper and white wine’. At the same time in one of the casinos he also noted (though far from prudish) being ‘nearly disgusted with the masks… bordering on the obscene’. There was indeed something for everybody’s taste. Simple provincials came to gaze and gape at the city women wearing the new, svelte, seductively reduced line, with which the English couturier, Worth, had finally—that same year—dethroned crinoline with all its protective billows. From all over Paris the demi-monde in its various ranks converged; the cocodés and cocodettes, lorettes, grandes horizontales, and petits crevés jostled disapproving men in black selling Bibles. Pimps and pickpockets mingled with the swarm of street performers and the charlatan salesmen of patent hair-restorers and arsenic-based rejuvenators that were said to have killed off the Duc de Morny. All night, and week after week, the Capuan revels continued amid the kiosques with their provocative girls in national dress, offering an infinite variety capable of satisfying all but the most jaded appetite. Even the Goncourts, profoundly knowledgeable about Second Empire life, were evidently stirred by what they saw:
At the English buffets in the Exhibition, there is a fantastic quality in the lustre of the women, in their crude pallor and their flaming hair; they are like the whores of the Apocalypse, something terrifying, frightening, inhuman.
As the weeks went by, illustrious guests and visitors poured into Paris from every corner of the globe. The city resembled one enormous inn, bearing a sign of ‘Complet’ at the entrance. Prices soared, and in protest at being driven from their garrets by the sudden increase in rents, students in the Quartier Latin threatened to ‘go and camp in the Jardin du Luxembourg’. They were spurred on by an angry young man with a bushy beard called Raoul Rigault, who was later to achieve some notoriety during the days of the Commune, but now no one paid much attention to their plight. There were too many other things to occupy the mind, and what more than the resplendent arrival of the various monarchs and their retinues? There was the Prince of Wales, smiling appreciatively on the frivolous city he adored, and the Princess Royal, shocking it by her dowdy gowns; the Pasha of Egypt, the Sultan of Turkey, Kings of Greece, Sweden, and Denmark, Kings and Queens of Belgium and Spain; the brother of the Mikado of Japan, the King of Prussia and the Tsar and Tsarina of All the Russias. Only Franz-Josef of Austria, and his brother, unhappy Maximilian of Mexico, were conspicuously absent. Seldom had there been such a concourse. It comprised, as Prosper Mérimée remarked cynically, ‘a table d’hôte quite as amusing as that which Candide encountered in Venice’. No less than the cantonment on the Champ-de-Mars, Haussmann’s bright new Paris seemed to have been built specifically for these arrivals to the Exhibition. The straight wide boulevards imparted a pomp to the coach processions, flanked by the Imperial Cent Gardes, who with their blazing breastplates were themselves refulgent like gods of mythology; for all of which Edwin Child could only find the French word féerique. Almost daily there was a procession, with the Emperor seeming to be constantly in attendance at a station to meet a royal train.
Great was the excitement in Paris when it was announced that the King of Prussia and the Tsar would arrive in close succession at the beginning of June. Although the latter was the real guest of honour (high politics decreed it so), it was King Wilhelm of Prussia and his massive Chancellor, Count von Bismarck, who attracted all eyes. On the train they passed positions the old king had occupied in 1814, when he had contributed to the downfall of his present host’s uncle. Though some Parisians detected a note of typical Teutonic tactlessness as the King complimented them, ecstatically, on ‘what marvellous things you have done since I was last here!’, on the whole they thought his behaviour quite unexceptionable. In fact he stole many hearts by always doing the right thing; for instance, by his kindly display of affection for the fragile Prince Impérial, then recovering from an illness. A comfortable figure projecting an image of some benevolent country squire, he set the nervous French at ease, and indeed seemed utterly at ease himself; as someone remarked uncharitably after the event, he explored Paris as if intending to come back there one day. Even the terrible Bismarck, whose great stature made Wickham Hoffman of the U.S. Legation think of Agamemnon, positively glowed with goodwill. Beauties of Paris society surrounded him, admired his dazzling White Cuirassier uniform and the enormous spread eagle upon his shining helmet, and attempted to provoke him; but in vain. In conversation with Louis-Napoleon, he dismissed last year’s Austro-Prussian war as belonging to another epoch, and added amiably ‘Thanks to you no permanent cause of rivalry exists between us and the Court at Vienna’. The festive atmosphere temporarily obscured the full menace of this remark.
On April 12th, the Emperor attended the première of one of the great entertainments to be produced in honour of his Royal guests: Offenbach’s La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein, with the immortal Hortense Schneider (persuaded not without difficulty) playing the lead role. La Grande Duchesse was a
n event of international importance. Of all its galaxy of talent, no one represented the spirit of the Second Empire in all its irony and gay hedonism more than this migrant from a Cologne synagogue choir, Jacques Offenbach. For years the orchestras in the Bois had had their repertoires full of the lilting tunes from Orphée aux Enfers and La Belle Hélène, the regimental bands marched to Offenbach, and only last year Paris had been driven to a frenzy by the cancan from La Vie Parisienne. Now here was this new triumph about the amorous Grand Duchess of a joke German principality, embarking on a pointless war because its Chancellor, Baron Puck, needed a diversion. Its forces were led by a joke German general called Bourn, as incapable as he was fearless, who invigorated himself with the smell of gunpowder by periodically firing off his pistol into the air. The farce, tallying so closely with Europe’s private view of the ridiculous Teutons, was too obvious to be missed. When the Tsar came to see it, his box was said to have rung with unroyal laughter. Between gusts of mirth, members of the French court peeped over at Bismarck’s expression, half in malice, half in apprehension, wondering if perhaps King Wilhelm’s lack of tact about his previous visit to Paris had not been revenged to excess. But nobody appeared to be showing more obvious and unrestrained pleasure than the Iron Chancellor himself; one might almost have suspected that the pleasure was enhanced by the enjoyment of some very secret joke of his own. In the interval, crowned heads jostled each other to enter Hortense’s dressing-room, and the more fortunate were honoured at her home, gaining her the unkind nickname of le Passage des Princes. Overnight La Grande Duchesse became the jewel of the Exhibition.
Day after day the sparkling entertainments continued. On April 29th it was the first night of Gounod’s new opera, Roméo et Juliette; his greatest, Paris thought. On June 21st, as a demonstration of just how liberal the Empire was becoming, and could afford to become, Louis-Napoleon permitted a revival of Hernani, proscribed since 1852, the work of that incorrigible old revel in exile, Victor Hugo. It nearly backfired; the occasion was marked by a noisy anti-Bonapartist manifestation, amid a clamour to bring back Hugo. (Fortunately by this time most of the visiting dignitaries had already returned to their homes.) And all the time the giggles and laughter echoed from behind the cabinets particuliers in the restaurants and from the private establishments. Never had prostitution in all its various degrees found Paris such a paradise. On the Champs-Élysées one of the Goncourts over heard a cocotte boasting to her friend: ‘I’ll tell you frankly; one’s making eight hundred francs; one lives on three, and puts five hundred in a Savings Bank.’ Writing to his friend, Panizzi, about the opéra bouffe arrival of the Sultan, Prosper Mérimée expressed the thought that ‘all these great personages come to see Mademoiselle Thérésa1 and Mademoiselle Menken. These ladies are doing brilliant business and have raised their prices, like the butchers; like them they too are selling fresh meat, or what passes for it.’ The more prudish critics of the regime were heard to remark: ‘If I were the Emperor I wouldn’t be flattered that people came to visit me in order to carry out public orgies.’
Few nights passed without one of the magnificent balls in which the Second Empire so excelled. At the great embassies they waltzed till dawn to the latest Strauss number, ‘The Blue Danube’. At the Tuileries, where the Empress gave a ball in honour of her Russian guests, and the great Strauss himself led the orchestra, the gardens had been rendered even more enchanting by cordons of that new invention, electric light, which made the extravagant uniforms and jewels so glitter and flash that once again féerique was the only word that sprang to mind. As red and green Bengal lights were reflected in it, water cascading over stucco rocks from specially constructed fountains ‘looked like a torrent of fiery lava en miniature’, wrote one guest. ‘No one thought of dancing. Everyone wanted to listen to the waltz. And how Strauss played it!’ Then the Emperor took to the floor with the Queen of Belgium, the Crown Prince of Prussia with the Empress.
When could this dream of a Thousand and One Nights ever end, what would replace it? But the climax of it all was to come with the great review at Longchamp. Again it was organized principally for the delight of the Tsar, yet Louis-Napoleon also had in mind how nothing impressed the King of Prussia more than a good parade, and he was a man whom it was desperately important to impress. Sixty thousand troops were to have taken part—though, in the event, somehow only thirty-one thousand could be mustered. But in the vibrant sunshine, their sheer panache quite obscured such a numerical deficiency. From the great fortress of Mont-Valérien perched high above the racecourse, a cannon thundered out. The Emperor was arriving, escorted by Spahis on magnificent black chargers, and with the Tsar on his right and King Wilhelm of Prussia on his left. Led by the veteran Marshal Canrobert, the French troops marched and rode past their Emperor: grenadiers in high shakos, light infantry in yellow-striped tunics, chasseurs with green plumes, cavalry with their long lances and awe-inspiring helmets, fierce, turbaned zouaves in red and blue, accompanied by the little vivandières who skipped saucily along with small kegs of brandy slung, St. Bernard-like, round their necks. Then came the artillery, caparisoned as for a royal tournament, with superbly polished weapons that had seen service in the Crimea and at Solferino. To anyone who had inspected the Krupp monster on the Champ-de-Mars, the little brass cannon did seem somewhat antique; an observation not escaping the hard eyes of Bismarck, and which no doubt added savour to the private joke he had so enjoyed at La Grande Duchesse. But on this intoxicating June day these were ungrateful thoughts, drowned by the great roars of ‘Vive l’ Empereur!’ as each detachment swept past the Imperial stand. The review terminated with a massed cavalry charge of ten thousand cuirassiers, carabiniers, scouts, lancers, and hussars. Within five yards of the royal guests they halted, in perfect unison, saluting with drawn sabres. Amidst the wild applause of the spectators, the Tsar and the King of Prussia solemnly saluted their host, bowed to the Empress Eugénie, and then warmly congratulated Marshal Canrobert. It was, even the anti-Bonapartists had to admit, possibly the most memorable day of the reign. Nothing like it had ever been seen before—nor ever would again.
The Tsar, certainly, was impressed, and was almost effusive in the compliments he paid his host. Louis-Napoleon was delighted. The unattended new danger of Prussia in European affairs had dictated that his most important task during the Exhibition should be, in the unfortunate absence of Austria, to woo Tsar Alexander II, and the visit had not started off too auspiciously. There had been serious thought as to whether he should have come to Paris in the first place; it was after all the uncle of this new Emperor of the French who had caused the burning of his uncle’s Moscow, and memories of the Crimea were recent enough still to hurt. On his arrival a wide detour of the procession had been carefully planned by Louis-Napoleon, so as to avoid the Boulevard Sébastopol; yet despite these precautions there had been shouts from the crowd of ‘Long live Poland!’, and the Tsar had reached the Tuileries in ill humour. But the seductive soft charms of Paris in early summer, the brilliant spectacles lavished upon him as well as the attentive courtesy of his host, had begun to thaw the Russian ice, and as they drove together from Longchamp, he had never seemed in better humour. Then suddenly something terrible happened. A twenty-two-year-old Polish patriot called Berezowski leaped out of the crowd and fired a pistol at the Tsar. He missed, but the white gloves of the Tsarevich were spotted with blood from a wounded horse. Louis-Napoleon was distraught; ‘Sir’, he said gallantly, ‘we have been under fire together; now we are brothers-in-arms.’ The Tsar, shaken by this all-too-nearly successful preview of the dreadful death fate was storing for him, was icy. In one second all Louis-Napoleon’s dreams for an accord with Russia seemed farther off than they had ever been.
There was talk of calling off the great ball to be held in the Tuileries that night. Somehow the shot fired at the Tsar had extinguished a portion of the blaze of light generated by the Exhibition. The police state once again revealed itself beneath the benign, almost liberal, countenanc
e of the Empire. A heavy hand descended on ‘subversive elements’ in the Paris population, and even the ‘rebel’ artists were told that their private exhibitions outside the Champ-de-Mars would no longer be permitted. On June 11th a still outraged Tsar left Paris. Three days later the Prussian entourage followed, and the Chefs de Protocole stood at the station wondering if all the banalities of goodwill that had been uttered did not now ring a little hollow. As the lights dimmed, so people once more became aware of things standing in the dark shadows. Before long there was more bad news. On June 19th the Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, Franz-Josef’s brother and Louis-Napoleon’s puppet, abandoned by his French protectors to the mercy of the Mexican nationalists, was shot at Querétaro. Ten days later the news was brought to Louis-Napoleon just as he was distributing prizes at the side of the Sultan of Turkey. This time all celebrations were at once cancelled, for with the death of the unhappy Maximilian died the hopes of the Bonapartes’ last foreign adventure. At top speed Manet produced a huge painting of the tragedy, but was forbidden to hang it in his gallery, on the grounds that it might be construed as reflecting upon imperial policy. Next there came reports that that old trouble-maker, Garibaldi, was on the move again in Italy, while in the Assembly the Orleanist, Thiers, was up to mischief. There were predictions of a bad harvest in France, portending a rise in food prices, and news from Algeria of cholera and famine.
The Fall of Paris Page 3