what the poet William Blake called “dark satanic mills”: From “And did those feet in ancient times,” Milton (1804), preface. At this point in British industrial history, the mills in and around London would have been primarily water-powered textile mills and not the steam-powered mills that were later so common; see Sir Edward Baines, History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain, with a notice of its early history on the East, and in all the quarters of the globe: A description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain: And a view of the present state of the manufacture, and the conditions of the classes engaged in its several departments (London: H. & R. Fisher, P. Jackson, 1835).
Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orléans: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot: “At the moment of the coronation of Charles X, Madame Clicquot had the honor of lodging during his visit…the duke of Orléans, after Louis-Philippe,” p. 23. Charles-Philippe, Comte d’Artois, the younger brother of Louis XVI and brother-in-law to Marie Antoinette, became king in 1824, at the age of sixty-seven, after the death of Louis XVII. He was deposed during the revolution of 1830, and Louis-Philippe became king by popular acclaim.
Barbe-Nicole was almost $14 million: 700,000 French francs; statistics from Crestin-Billet, p. 91.
When a tearful and frightened young lad was sent to deliver a defective load of glass bottles: Interview, January 8, 2007, Fabienne Huttaux, Historical Resources Manager, Champagne Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin.
poor Thérèse had lost her husband: Adrien lived from 1802 to 1826; her son, Pierre, from her first marriage, survived until 1870.
Édouard’s wedding to a young woman named Louise-Émilie Boisseau: Crestin-Billet, p. 43.
engaged to marry the daughter of an important state official back in Germany: Vizetelly writes: “Establishment of G. C. Kessler and Co. at Esslingen—formerly one of the most important of the free imperial cities, and picturesquely situated on the Neckar—was founded as far back as 1826, and claims to be the oldest sparkling wine factory in Germany,” p. 192. Details here from G. C. Kessler promotional materials, available at www.kessler-sektkellerei.de.
Barbe-Nicole was running a large operation: Vizetelly records that her competitors at Moët et Chandon, for example, had 1,500 employees by 1879; p. 113.
“the superiority of her brand”: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, p. 63.
Barbe-Nicole knew what historian Kolleen Guy has recently discovered: Guy, “Oiling the Wheels of Social Life,” p. 216, n. 20; quoting U.S. Department of State, dispatches from U.S. consul at Rheims, January 15, 1869.
began to wonder if it might not be a good idea to protect her good name: Delpal, p. 173.
she went through the trouble of registering her trademark: Crestin-Billet, p. 134.
André Jullien had been working in Jean-Rémy’s cellars: Desbois-Thibault, p. 141; Fiévet, Histoire de la ville de Épernay, p. 82, discusses mechanization of industry by the late 1830s in greater detail. See also François Bonal, Champagne Mumm: Un champagne dans l’histoire (Paris: Arthaud, 1987).
Cyrus Redding’s monumental History and Description of Modern Wines: Cyrus Redding, A History and Description of Modern Wines (London: Whittaker, Treacher, & Arnot, 1833), p. 56.
massive crop failures across France: David H. Pinkney, “A New Look at the French Revolution of 1830,” Review of Politics 23, no. 4 (October 1961): 490–506, 492.
with the large and well-established firm of Poupart de Neuflize: Fritz Redlich, “Jacques Laffitte and the Beginnings of Investment Banking in France,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 22, nos. 4–6 (December 1948): pp. 137–161; and Richard J. Barker, “The Conseil General des Manufactures under Napoléon (1810–1814),” French Historical Studies 6, no. 2 (Autumn 1969): pp. 185–213, 196, n. 36.
losses of almost $5.5 million: 270,000 francs; Crestin-Billet, p. 93.
an astonishing 280,000 bottles of champagne: Ibid., pp. 88, 94; Desbois-Thibault, p. 333.
Soon, it was not a middle-class protest at all: Edgar Leon Newman, “The Blouse and the Frock Coat: The Alliance of the Common People of Paris with the Liberal Leadership and the Middle Class during the Last Years of the Bourbon Restoration,” Journal of Modern History 46, no. 1 (March 1974): 26–59, 31.
more than half the population was living in squalid poverty: Statistics here and following from Pinkney, p. 494.
“his jacket with its [royal] fleur-de-lis buttons”: François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d’outre-tombe [Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb] (1849–1850), trans. A. S. Kline, sect. 31, pt. 8, available at www.tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/Chateaubriand/Chathome.htm.
the town hall had been sacked: Fiévet, Histoire de la ville d’Épernay, pp. 318–320.
dislike of the Bourbon kings—and their supporters—was especially intense: Pamela Pilbeam, “The ‘Three Glorious Days’: The Revolution of 1830 in Provincial France,” Historical Journal 26, no. 4 (December 1983): pp. 831–844, 837.
waving the tricolor flag of an earlier, more radical, generation: The National Guard was revived with particular intensity in the nearby Haut-Marne and was associated specifically with the revival of the tricolore and with the democratic election of officers to serve as local civic and military leaders; see Pilbeam, p. 836.
“My feelings are divided…but I regret more than anything the family ties”: Quoted in Poindron, n.p.
“The reign of Louis-Philippe was a business régime”: Anonymous, “Entertaining the Son of the ‘Bourgeois King,’” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 3, no. 4 (June 1929): 15–17, 15.
the vast majority of them a new economic boom time: Pilbeam, p. 832.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: THE CHAMPAGNE EMPIRE
made his first visit to the Champagne wine country: Fiévet, Histoire de la ville d’Épernay, pp. 334–335.
what historians call “the managerial revolution”: Alfred D. Chandler Jr., “The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism,” Business History Review 58, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 473–503, 473.
“personally managed enterprises…had become specialized”: Ibid., p. 383.
the Widow Clicquot might easily have shared the same fate as those of the Widow Binet: For historical details on the Widow Binet, see Union des Maisons de Champagne, available at www.maison-champagne.com.
Already, the first railroad tracks were being laid in France: Fiévet, Histoire de la ville d’Épernay, p. 108.
He was also a gentle man possessed of an artistic sensibility: Tomes, p. 95; Gmeline, pp. 30, 170.
the average woman in France lived fewer than forty-five years: “Data on Healthy Life Years in the European Union,” available at http://ec.europa.eu/health/ph_information/indicators/lifeyears_data_en.htm.
“a dwarfish, withered old woman of eighty-nine years”: Tomes, p. 68.
“He is also a German, and a nephew, it is believed, of [Édouard] Werler”: Ibid., p. 89.
“I have my grandchildren and great-grandchildren around me”: Quoted in Crestin-Billet, p. 94.
“I am making preparations…for my removal to the country”: Details here and following from Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, p. 94.
an amusing story of its construction: Tomes, pp. 96–97.
“It was a grand château”: Maynard, preface, n.p.
“adorned with modern tapestries and richly sculptured panels”: Quotes here and following from Chimay, pp. 50–51.
“none of the wit and grace, but all the grossness, of those authors”: Tomes, p. 97.
if Louis had not found himself needing cash again: Gmeline, p. 25.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: LA GRANDE DAME
what the doctors then called a cerebral congestion: Gmeline, p. 2; Gustavo C. Roman, “Cerebral Congestion, a Vanished Disease,” Archives of Neurology 44, no. 4 (April 1987), abstract summary: “It accounted not only for cerebral hemorrhage, but also for lacunae (Dechambre, 1838), etat crible [sic; cribriform state] (Durand-Fardel, 1842), depression, manic outbursts, headaches, coma, and seizures. According to Ham
mond (1871, 1878), cerebral congestion was ‘more common…than any other affliction of the nervous system.’” See also Gustavo C. Roman, “On the History of Lacunes, État Criblé, and the White Matter Lesions of Vascular Dementia,” Cerebrovascular Diseases 13, no. 2 (2002): 1–6. Some have suggested this cerebral congestion was used to describe malaria, although cholera is more likely. By the 1820s, quinine had been extracted as a relatively reliable treatment for malaria, and it was commonly recognizable as ague. The symptoms are similar to cholera, which was still pandemic in Europe during the first part of the 1850s. However, cerebral congestion may have been a result of any other number of diseases. On possible diagnoses, see “Old Diseases and Their Symptoms,” available at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/thursday.handleigh/history/health/old-diseases.htm.
“I was already six when my brother Paul fell ill”: Gmeline, pp. 1–2.
Within days, everyone knew Anne, too, had contracted the illness: Ibid., p. 31.
continued outbreak of cholera in 1854: Ibid., p. 2.
“sad parents and aged grandparents”: Ibid., p. 3.
The two men, especially, did not get along: Ibid., p. 35.
“My dear mother had such a weak character”: Ibid., p. 30.
“life was not always easy”: Ibid., p. 7.
“animosity reigned”: Ibid.
Victor Fiévet’s Madame Veuve Clicquot: Published at the specific request of Louis de Chevigné, who contacted the author after reading his earlier biography of Jean-Rémy Moët.
Alphonse Marie Louise de Lamartine: French novelist and politician (1790–1869), author of Histoire des Girondins (Paris: Furne et Cie., 1847).
For a short while, there was a second republic in France: Following the abdication of King Louis-Philippe and the end of his so-called July Monarchy in 1848. By 1852, Louis-Napoléon had assumed the title of Emperor Napoléon III, which he retained until the intensification of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.
“Working women had emerged as a locus of tension and debate”: Judith A. DeGroat, “The Public Nature of Women’s Work: Definitions and Debates During the Revolution of 1848,” French Historical Studies 20, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 31–47, 32.
“Woman…was not made to manufacture our products”: L’Atelier, January 4, 1841; quoted in DeGroat, p. 34.
sounds of low voices in the distance and the creaking wheels of donkey carts: Vizetelly, p. 119.
the Clicquot-Werlé crushing rooms now had eight presses: Ibid., p. 39.
vats large enough to supply the international market: Tomes, p. 68.
known as “Consular Seal” champagne: Advertised in Harper’s Weekly, July 25, 1868; Tomes, p. 62.
“RHEIMS printed conspicuously on the labels of a bottle of Clicquot”: Ibid., p. 59.
“accumulated a fortune of four or five millions of dollars”: Ibid., p. 87; $1.00 in 1850 was worth $21.11 in 2003; statistical details available at http://listlva.lib.va.us/cgibin/wa.exe?A2=ind0410&L=VAROOTS&P=3010.
80,000 francs…to establish a home for poor children: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, p. 103.
“Madame Clicquot…is queen of Reims”: Prosper Mérimée, Oeuvres complètes de Prosper Mérimée, ed. Pierre Trahard and Edouard Champion (Paris: H. Champion, 1927); letter of July 26, 1853. This is an amount on the order of $700,000.
“Don’t ever accuse me of being jealous!”: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, pp. 73–74.
Édouard was appointed mayor of Reims: Details available at www.reims-web.com/reims/champagne-reims-veuve-clicquot.html.
“an ardent imperialist”: Tomes, p. 88.
“will do anything for his favorite wine-merchant but drink his champagne”: Ibid.
“the shrewdest manipulator of the sparkling products of Aÿ and Bouzy of her day”: Vizetelly, p. 21.
“made to suit the Russian taste, which likes a sweet and strong champagne”: Tomes, p. 68.
her husband, Alexandre, another of Reims’s dabbling wool merchants: Details here and following from “L’insertion de la maison Pommery dans le négoce du champagne,” available at www.patrimonieindustriel-apic.com.
“was just as equipped to run a government as a business”: François Bonal, Le livre d’or du champagne (Laussane: Édition du Grand Pont, 1984), p. 66.
Veuve Pommery and Company into an immensely profitable and important business: Raphaël Bonnedame, Notice sur la maison Veuve Pommery, Fils & Cie. (Épernay: n.p., 1892), quoted at www.patrimoineindustrielapic.com/documentation/maitrise%20piotrowski/partie%201%20chap%201.htm.
champagne in the style we still enjoy today as brut: “In 1860, she [Madame Pommery] understood that sweet champagne, doux or demisec, will always remain a wine without a big future. She saw that bringing these wines to the market as brut wines, under the names sec or extra sec would lead to bigger growth in the Champagne. And after investigating, she finally decided to market wines brut nature to accompany any meal…the brut nature, with no added sugar, was commercially released in 1874”; Glatre, p. 95. Vizetelly adds: “To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called ‘brut’ wines receive no more than from one to three per cent. of liqueur”; Vizetelly, p. 60.
in the style of the noble British estates: Helen Gillespie-Peck suggests a design based on Inveraray Castle and Mellerstain House; see Peck, [email protected] (Ely, UK: Melrose Books, 2005), p. 119. The domaine was built during the 1860s and 1870s.
cellars were adorned with great works of art in carved stone: Louise Pommery commissioned sculptor Henri Navlet to decorate some of her more than ten miles of cellars with bas-reliefs on the theme of wine and Bacchus; promotional materials, Champagne Pommery.
her ancestors still run Champagne Henriot: Promotional materials, Champagne Henriot, available at www.champagne-henriot.com/histoire.php.
“the largest and wealthiest of all” the local companies: Tomes, p. 69. On Madame Jacques Olry, see www.maisons-champagne.com/bonal/pages/04/04-01_1.htm.
“the high-class English buyer [who] demands a dry champagne”: Vizetelly, p. 60.
“color of the egg yolks of the famous corn-fed hens of Bresse”: Matasar, p. 29; see also Marion Winik, “The Women of Champagne,” American Way, March 1, 1997, p. 113. Although commonly considered a bright orange, the color is registered as “Clicquot Yellow.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE QUEEN OF REIMS
“Strangers and visitors were welcomed with an open hospitality”: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, pp. 90–91.
“the Château de Boursault was a must see on their list”: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, pp. 16, 98.
“every prince, czar, archduke, Roman cardinal, nabob, or lord mayor”: Quoted in Gmeline, p. 36.
“delicate features and full of energy”: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, pp. 88–91.
Half the dukes of France and the king of Serbia were vying for her hand: Gmeline, p. 43.
“I am going to tell you a secret”: “Extrait du livret conçu pour l’exposition itinérante de 2005,” Champagne Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, quoted at www.reims-web.com/reims/champagne-reims-veuve-clicquot. html#.
captured not far from the ancient province of the Champagne in the Battle of Sedan: Located some fifty miles northwest of Reims, the battle took place on September 1, 1870.
an important railway ran just below the outcrop: Fiévet, Madame Veuve Clicquot, p. 16.
nearly $10 million in damages: 400,000 francs; Poindron, n.p.
“I am an old man…and my life is not worth that sum”: Ibid.
“I thank my granddaughter…for the joy that she brought to the family”: Gmeline, p. 63.
through the phylloxera outbreak in the French wine country and the two world wars: Henri Jolicoeur, Description des ravageurs de la vigne: Insectes et champignons parasites (Reims: Michaud, 1894); J. L. Rhone-Converset, La vigne, ses maladies-ses ennemis-sa défense en Bourgogne et Champagne, etc. (Paris: Châtillon-sur-Seine, 1889); also Don and Petie Kladstrup, Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War
and Hard Times (New York: William Morrow, 2005).
AFTERWORD
“some of the largest commercial houses have women at their head”: Linus Pierpont Brocket, Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities (Cincinnati: Howe’s Book Subscription Concern, 1869), p. 201; for a broader survey, see also Angel Kwolek-Folland, Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870–1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) was the youngest daughter of the influential banker Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), who inherited the business from an aging female relation in 1837; she was courted by Louis-Napoléon and was an intimate friend of France’s Louis-Philippe. Refusing all comers until 1881, she spent most of her life as a businesswoman, philanthropist, and celebrity. She eventually married, at the age of sixty-seven, her thirty-year-old secretary, William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett (1851–1921). Edna Healey, Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts (New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1978).
“after my mother the most remarkable woman in the country”: Brocket, p. 201.
“many women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries participated in commerce”: Laura Cochrane, “From the Archives: Women’s History in Baker Library’s Business Manuscripts Collection,” Business History Review 74 (Fall 2000): 465–476.
They ran plantations in the South and textile mills in the North: On middle-and upper-middle-class businesswomen in nineteenth-century America, see, for example, Cara Anzilotti, “Autonomy and the Female Planter in Colonial South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 63, no. 2 (1997): 239–268; David L. Coon, “Eliza Lucas Pinckney and the Reintroduction of Indigo Culture in South Carolina,” Journal of Southern History 42, no. 1 (1976): 61–76; Eliza Pinckney, The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney 1739–1762, ed. Elise Pinckney (Chapel Hill: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).
seed merchant Carrie Lippincott or medicinal purveyor Lydia Pinkham: See Cochrane, pp. 465–469.
“no single one has led to so much mischief”: Charles Tovey, Champagne Revelations, pp. 32–33. On this issue of monopoly in the modern context, Jancis Robinson observes that “the central feature of geographical delimitation as it applies to wine is not just that it usually leads to an improvement in wine quality…it is [also] a legislative procedure whereby a privileged monopolistic position is created for producers within a demarcated area,” quoted in Michael Maher, “In Vino Veritas?: Clarifying the Use of Geographic References on American Wine Labels,” California Law Review 89, no. 6 (December 2001): 1881–1925, 1922.
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