Eiffel's Tower

by Jill Jonnes

  Ah, but how exactly would those curious hordes ascend to the top? Even as Eiffel was delighting in his tower in the sky, there remained the truly grave problem of the elevators (as Bourdais had ungraciously pointed out). Eiffel, an artist in the use of iron, had refused to take the easy route of simply having an elevator rise straight up through the center of what he rightly viewed as his magnum opus, marring the uncluttered simplicity of the tower’s elegant profile. Instead, two elevators would ascend to the first floor via the gently curving legs, and two would rise to the second floor via the far more curved upper legs. A third elevator would rise from the second platform of the tower to the pinnacle.

  Back in the spring of 1888, James Whistler had written a chastising letter to art collector Henry S. Theobald after he declined to loan one of his Whistler works to a show: “Your role herein, as the ‘patron,’ ” instructed The Butterfly, “certainly is that of the man who, owning some of the works of the Master, takes every occasion of spreading his fame by showing them, and is pleased and proud to do so. . . . [N]ext year, when the great International Exhibition takes place, do not the cruelty to me, and to yourself the injustice, of proposing to hold back these dainty pictures that should take their part before my confreres in the chapter of my work.”

  Not long after, Whistler had traveled to Paris to attend a Paul Durand-Ruel exhibition that featured a half dozen of his, Whistler’s, artworks. While there he wrote in French to Comte Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, a recent acquaintance, “I am burning with desire to see your beautiful things and I have a plan which I should like to discuss with you. So do come and lunch with me.” Whistler hoped that when the count saw his paintings and etchings at Durand-Ruel, he would agree to let Whistler paint his portrait. Montesquiou-Fezensac was one of Belle Époque Paris’s legendary personages, an aesthete, dandy, Symbolist poet, and connoisseur who “cultivated upward-pointed mustaches, improved his complexion with make-up and spent much of each day with his tailor, hairdresser and manicurist.” Yet he was also a wit and brilliant intellectual who “knew everyone in Paris worth knowing.” De Montesquiou (and his jewel-encrusted pet turtle) had already been immortalized in J. K. Huysmans’s novel À Rebours.

  The count was also renowned for transforming the attic in his family’s mansion with a novel interior décor that combined Arabian Nights and spare Japonaise style: “The room of all shades of red . . . the grey room where all was grey and for which he used to ransack Paris weekly to find grey flowers; the bedroom where a black dragon was apparently waddling away with the bed on his back. . . . It was all queer, disturbing, baroque, yet individual and even beautiful . . . a tiny fairy palace.” Wandering through these refined spaces was the famous turtle gilded with jewels. As Whistler had dubbed himself The Butterfly, so Montesquiou-Fezensac had adopted the sobriquet and emblem of The Bat. The two soon became fast friends.

  James McNeill Whistler

  Whistler went on to have a typically eventful summer. Early in June he had quarreled with his friend, the poet Algernon Swinburne, who had, at Whistler’s request, penned a review of a new Whistler venture: giving a formal lecture. The artist had judged Swinburne’s review of his Ten O’Clock lecture insufficiently adulatory and dispatched one of his signature waspish letters.

  Far more momentous and surprising had been his spur-of-the-moment marriage, on August 11, 1888, to Beatrix Godwin, formidable recent widow of an old architect friend. Whistler’s friends had been as stunned as his public. “The Butterfly chained at last!” declared the London papers. Whistler thus broke the heart of his model and mistress of fourteen years, the beautiful red-haired Maud Franklin, who had long called herself Mrs. Whistler. With many of Whistler’s old friends furious at his caddish desertion, the newlyweds decided it was a propitious moment to decamp to France on a leisurely honeymoon.

  Late that September, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West had concluded its lucrative sojourn on Staten Island and then headed south for a final run in Richmond. Before all the Indians dispersed home, Buffalo Bill escorted seventy-five of them to Washington, D.C., to see the House and Senate in action. They even dropped in at the Bureau of Indian Affairs to smoke a peace pipe. At the White House, President Grover Cleveland hosted a special reception in the East Room for Colonel Cody, famed for his exploits as a frontier military scout, and his more eminent Indians, solemn and resplendent in their feathered headdresses and beaded finery.

  Financially flush, Buffalo Bill had then departed the capital in a blaze of glory, passing through Chicago on the train en route to his house out on the prairie, Scout’s Rest Ranch, in North Platte, Nebraska. He had reunited with his beloved younger sister, Julia, and her husband, Al, who had helped build, furnish, and run the whole palatial enterprise while Cody gallivanted about trying to earn one final vast fortune. Buffalo Bill, a world-class convivial drinker, had instructed Al two years earlier: “I want a side board in the house someplace, probably just as well in my bedroom up stairs, with some nice decanters & glasses. I don’t propose to make a barroom out of your home, but must have a side board. All we big dogs have a side board.”

  Once home in North Platte, Cody had confided that he would be taking the Wild West show to the Paris World’s Fair in the upcoming year. He also engaged in his usual squabbling with his wife, Louisa, a.k.a. Lulu, about money, his philandering, and her bad temper. Some years back, Cody had discovered that “Lulu has got most if not all of our North Platte property in her name. . . . Aint that a nice way for a wife to act? . . . I don’t care a snap about money but the way she has treated me.” Ever since, he had had bouts of threatening divorce, making their children unhappy, but by November of 1888 he was preoccupied with organizing a hunt for Lords de Clifford and Mandeville and a handful of British nobles about to arrive at the ranch. With Buffalo Bill leading the way, they had ridden off into the southern wilderness, intending to amble through northern Mexico before traversing the Sierra Madres en route to Senator William Hearst’s magnificent California ranch overlooking the vastness of the Pacific Ocean.

  Annie Oakley was back on the East Coast by late 1888, trying her hand at a whole new theatrical venture, playing the star role in Deadwood Dick: or the Sunbeam of the Sierras. This western melodrama featured Oakley (the Sunbeam) shooting apple-sized glass balls with “unerring aim . . . leaving a houseful of smoke . . . and an astonished audience.” Such were the “desperate situations and howling climaxes” played out in the theater that at the end of three acts twenty-five characters were dead. In later years, Oakley wrote of this play and of her brief foray into theater: “I never quite understood just why the press abstained from vegetable throwing but they threw not one carrot.”

  When not on the stage, Oakley was often busy taking part in high-stakes shooting matches, notices of which she carefully clipped for her scrapbook. On September 26, 1888: “Annie Oakley defeats John Lavett. Miss Oakley appeared in a short skirt and otherwise jauntily attired. Twenty-five birds each were liberated at 31 yards. Mr. Lavett scored 21, while his fair opponent scored 23. She broke all records.” On October 5, 1888: “Annie Oakley defeated Miles Johnson, the champion of New Jersey, in a match of 50 live pigeons. Thirty-one thousand people saw, or tried to see, this match. The traps had to be moved farther out three times as the vast overflow from the grandstand closed in.”

  Paul Gauguin had finally made his way to Arles in Provence in late October 1888, settling in to paint with Vincent van Gogh, whose brother, Theo, was providing both men with monthly stipends. Vincent had rented and furnished a yellow house for them on the Place Lamartine, near the train station, and had covered the walls with his new paintings. On warm fall days the two men worked en plein air, and Gauguin, freed of money woes for the moment, wrote contentedly to Émile Bernard in Pont-Aven, “It’s strange, but Vincent sees opportunities here for painting in the style of Daumier, whereas I see in terms of colored Puvis [de Chavannes], mixed with Japanese style.”

  Theo van Gogh hoped that the presence of a fellow painter would
alleviate Vincent’s dark moods and loneliness. As young men, the two brothers had both entered the art trade. Although he had health problems, Theo had flourished, but Vincent had been fired in 1876, creating a family crisis. What would he do? First he considered university, but then decided to try preaching. He found a position in an impoverished mining district in southern France, but after only a year, the Protestant minister there and many of the villagers had concluded that Vincent was mad, and they wanted him gone. In the wake of this second failure, Vincent found his own salvation in art. For two years, he and Theo lived together in Paris before Vincent struck out for the more rustic ambiance of Arles. Theo believed that his brother had real talent as a painter. “It is amazing the number of things he knows and what a clear view he has of the world, this is why I am sure he will make a name for himself. I have gotten to know many painters through him as he is very well thought of in their circles. He is one of the champions of the new ideas.”

  Gauguin exulted that his lot was finally improving. Theo had sold a number of his paintings for good prices, including one to artist Edgar Degas, whom Gauguin much admired. In Arles, he and Vincent developed a productive routine, which included regular “hygienic” visits to the local brothels. By late November, Gauguin had dispatched four good paintings to Theo’s gallery. Next, an avant-garde group in Brussels, Les XX, had invited him to be in a show. Ebullient, Gauguin wrote painter Émile Schuffenecker (“Schuff”), “You can ask Pissarro if I am not talented. Personal hygiene and regular sex, together with work, are all a man needs to pull through.”

  But by early December, Gauguin’s mood had soured. “I feel completely disoriented in Arles,” he wrote Bernard. “I find everything so small and mean, both the landscape and the people. In general, Vincent and I do not see eye to eye, particularly on painting. He admires Daumier, Daubigny, Ziem and the great [Théodore] Rousseau, all of whom I cannot bear. And he hates Ingres, Raphael, Degas, all of whom I admire. I reply, ‘Corporal, you’re right,’ just to get a bit of peace. He likes my pictures very much, but when I’m painting them he criticizes me for this and for that. He’s a romantic, while I am more of a primitive.”

  Gauguin feared that if he left Arles too abruptly Theo might drop him as a client. But on December 12, as Vincent’s behavior became stranger and even hostile, Gauguin advised Theo, “All things considered, I find myself compelled to return to Paris. Vincent and I find it absolutely impossible to live peacefully in each other’s company; our temperaments are incompatible and we both need peace and quiet in order to work. He is a remarkable man of great intelligence. . . . I appreciate the thoughtful way in which you have behaved towards me and beg you to excuse my decision.”

  By December 20, Gauguin had calmed down, writing to Theo, “Please consider my journey to Paris as something imaginary and thus the letter I wrote to you as a bad dream. . . . I felt increasingly nostalgic for the West Indies, so of course as soon as I have sold a few things I shall be going there.” Meanwhile, he informed Theo that he had sent an offering, “a portrait of your brother on a size 30 canvas . . . [with] the theme The painter of sunflowers. . . . If you have no objection, keep it, unless you do not like it.”

  Gauguin confided to Schuff, “My situation here is painful: I owe much to [Theo] van Gogh and Vincent and despite some discord I can’t bear a grudge against a good heart who is ill and suffers and wants to see me. . . . I’m staying here now, but I’m poised to leave at any moment.”

  Late on the evening of Sunday, December 23, Gauguin walked out of the Yellow House, seeking fresh air and a respite from Vincent’s odd behavior. Vincent followed, brandishing a razor, but fled when Gauguin fixed him with a harsh stare. An uneasy Gauguin slept in a hotel and returned to the Yellow House the next morning to find blood everywhere, and the police, called by the neighbors, accusing him of murder. Full of trepidation, Gauguin led them upstairs, where they found Vincent, covered in blood but alive. He had sliced off his ear.

  Gauguin summoned Theo, who had just gotten engaged to a Dutch woman named Jo Bonger. He arrived by train on Christmas morning to find Gauguin badly shaken and Vincent in the hospital at Arles. “Will he remain insane?” he wondered sadly. Because Theo had to return to Paris, to his new fiancée and his gallery, he asked Vincent’s friends, the famille Roulin, to keep an eye on him while he was in the hospital. Late that night, Gauguin and Theo boarded the train to Paris. Amazingly, Vincent seemed to make a complete recovery in less than two weeks and was soon ensconced in his yellow house once again painting.

  Back in Paris and at a safe remove, Gauguin resumed his epistolary friendship with Vincent, praising a recent painting of “sunflowers against a yellow background. . . . I consider [this] a perfect example of a style that is essentially your own. At your brother’s I saw your Sower, which is very good, as well as a still-life in yellow with apples and lemons.”

  But Gauguin now had other matters on his mind. Like every other person in Paris, he had only to look up and see the marvel that was the almost-completed Eiffel Tower to be reminded that soon the World’s Fair would be opening. He had no doubt that his art had to be displayed at the fair. The problem was where? He entrusted his artist friend Émile Schuffenecker with finding a venue.

  As 1889 began, New York Herald publisher James Gordon Bennett was thoroughly enjoying having his new newspaper at 5 rue Coq-Héron, the “picturesque, rat-infested street near the Bourse.” Here he could descend at any hour, “turning the paper upside down, ripping out stories and advertisements which annoyed him, rampaging from press room to editorial department to composing room, promoting and demoting.” Despite Bennett’s notorious nocturnal sprees, the Herald publisher habitually rose with the sun, and after a quick, light petit déjeuner would be off to the Bois de Boulogne to see and be seen.

  Bennett’s carriage, amid horseback riders and coaches heading up the Champs-Élysées to the Bois, was part of “a glittering cortège, which included high-born dandies and their female counterparts, the beautifully costumed amazones like the Baroness Adolphe de Rothschild who always rode escorted by two grooms wearing cockaded top hats. Duels were still being fought in the Bois, amorous intrigues would be discreetly planned there and every morning the amazones would gallop between the Porte Dauphine and the Champ des Courses to stop at the Pré Catalan for refreshment and to exchange gossip.”

  When Bennett returned from his jaunt round the Bois, he settled into his office at a second luxurious apartment at 120 avenue de Champs-Élysées, and set to work dictating cables and marking up newspapers with his long blue pencils. New visitors were always taken aback to find every surface of his office occupied by owls.

  Even those who knew The Herald’s publisher well never ceased to marvel at the man. “His hot temper came from both parents,” said one longtime editor. “Unstable in many things, in others whimsical to the point of extravagance, close and generous, optimist and pessimist, unrelenting and unforgiving, sparkling with joy or deep in the blues, he was a constant puzzle to everyone about him, yet endowed with the perception of great things; prompt, open-handed and broad in their execution, and holding on grimly to the idea that the Herald must be kept at the front.”

  Bennett maintained newsroom spies (“The White Mice”) in Gotham who tattled faithfully, and the publisher thought nothing of summoning editors and reporters to cross the Atlantic immediately to see him. These commands always struck terror, for it was known that Bennett liked to do his firing in person. Some men found themselves waiting for weeks to be seen, only to be sent home without ever laying eyes on their boss. Another pair of editors recounted entering Bennett’s Paris office only to be received with a curt “What in hell are you doing here?”

  “You sent for us.”

  “Go back to New York!”

  This ferocious publisher, absent a wife and children, also surrounded himself with adorable (live) tiny dogs—Pekingese, Pomeranians, pugs, and Yorkshire terriers. When a wily Irishman working in Bennett’s London bureau was om
inously ordered to Paris, he prepared for the encounter by tucking little slices of liver in his trouser cuffs and silk hat band. As he entered Bennett’s owl-filled inner sanctum, the dogs swarmed happily about him, with the beaming Bennett observing, “You must be a good fellow or my dogs would find you out.”

  In early 1889 Bennett, always a ladies’ man, had been haunting the salon of his neighbor, the Duchesse d’Uzès, a superb horsewoman and monarchist who had fervently taken up promoting the political career of Gen. Georges Boulanger, the wildly popular veteran of the Tunisian campaigns and former minister of war. Boulanger “was handsome, he had fine whiskers, he rode a black charger superbly at military reviews. . . . He had been idolised for the way he had faced up to Germany over a frontier incident . . . [but] his warlike fervor had made him such an embarrassment to the government that in July 1887 he had been sent to the provinces to take command of a corps. . . . [A] huge crowd came to see him leave. . . . Royalist and right-wing propaganda made him out to be a patriotic martyr sacrificed to expediency by a cowardly and corrupt government, afraid of the ‘honest man.’ ”