Eiffel's Tower

by Jill Jonnes

  About now, Mina Edison (Countess Edison, if she cared to be) emerged into the salon. Daughter of an inventor and manufacturer herself, she was an elegant dark-eyed beauty with high cheekbones, creamy skin, lustrous brown hair piled high, and an hourglass figure. She greeted all those present and invited them to lunch: Copello, Gouraud, Sherard, and a French writer, Émile Durer, who was working on a long article about Edison. Of course, what better spot than the Café Brébant on the Eiffel Tower? And so, off they went in a horse-drawn carriage, joining the multitudes always streaming toward the fair.

  From the tower’s first floor, the Champ de Mars took on the appearance of a giant picnic grounds, for every day promptly at noon, one of the little Eiffel Tower cannons gave a great BOOM! to announce the commencement of the sacred hour of the midday meal.

  “My déjeuner with Edison on the first floor of the Eiffel Tower,” wrote Sherard, “was one of the most pleasant meals it has ever fallen to my lot to share. I sat next to the great man, and we talked together all the time. ‘When we were on board ship,’ he said, as we sat down, ‘they put rolls and coffee on the table for breakfast. I thought that was a very poor breakfast for a man to do work upon. . . . I would like one American meal for a change—plenty of pie.’ He then smashed his petit pain with his fist. There were some shrimps among the hors d’oeuvres, and he looked at them in a surprised fashion. He had never seen shrimps before. ‘Do they grow any larger?’ he asked me. I suppose that he imagined they were the young of lobsters . . . he said, ‘Well, they give a great deal of trouble for very small results.’

  “We talked of many things,” Sherard continued. “Over the soles frites somebody asked him if it were true that he had been experimenting in photography in colours. He said, ‘No, that is not true. That sort of thing is sentimental. I do not go in for sentiment. [Andrew] Carnegie does. Poor Carnegie has turned sentimental. When I last saw him I wanted to talk to him about his ironworks. That is what interests me—immense factories going day and night, with the roar of the furnaces and the crashing of the hammers; acres and acres of activity—man’s fight with the metal. But Carnegie wouldn’t talk about it. He said, “All that is brutal.” He is now interested in, and will only talk about, French art and amateur photography.’ ”

  And what of this very Eiffel Tower? “The work of a bridge builder,” sniffed one guest.

  “ ‘No. It is a great idea,’ said Edison. ‘The Tower is a great idea. The glory of Eiffel is in the magnitude of the conception and the nerve in the execution. That admitted, and the money found, the rest is, if you like, mere bridge building. I like the French. They have big conceptions. The English ought to take a leaf out of their books. What Englishman would have had this idea? What Englishman could have conceived the Statue of Liberty?’

  “ ‘Will you beat the tower in New York?’ asked Sherard.

  “ ‘We’ll build one of 2,000 feet,’ said Edison. ‘We’ll go Eiffel 100 per cent better, without discount.’ ”

  With gravest ceremony, the sommelier stepped forward, cradling in a white napkin a bottle of Clos Vougeot, one of Burgundy’s legendary red wines. Edison watched with amusement as the sommelier reverentially poured a half glass and then waited as the ruby red vintage was tasted and approved. Edison said, “There is a great deal of humbug about wine . . . and about cigars. Men go by cost. The real connoisseurs are few. At home, for fun, I keep a lot of wretched cigars made up on purpose in elegant wrappers, some with hairs in them, some with cottonwool plugged into the middle. I give these to the critical smokers—the connoisseurs, as they call themselves—and I tell them that they cost me 35 cents apiece. You should hear them praise them.”

  Sherard found that “Brébant’s déjeuner was recherché in the extreme; but Edison barely touched anything. ‘A pound of food a day,’ he told me ‘is what I need when I am working, and at present I am not working.’ And just then as a fresh course was brought in, Edison took advantage of the café’s open door and slipped out.

  “A minute or two later,” wrote Sherard, “I found a pretext for following. . . . Edison was leaning over the railing, gazing down at the people hundreds of feet below. He told me that he was calculating the vibration or swaying of the tower. . . . ‘Say Sherard,’ said Edison, ‘don’t let them know in New York about that tomfoolery about the count and countess. They would never stop laughing at me.’ ” It was too late. Sherard confessed he had already cabled the story from the hotel before coming to lunch. Edison laughed, envisioning the newspapers “getting pictures out of me represented as an Italian organ-grinder with a crown on my head, and perhaps Gouraud as the monkey.” Now it was time to return to the restaurant for iced champagne and heartfelt toasts. Only when the coffee and cigars appeared did Edison perk up. “ ‘Mr. Edison is beginning to breakfast now,’ said Colonel Gouraud.

  “ ‘Yes,’ said Edison, taking an Havannah, ‘my breakfast begins with this.’ Then, speaking of his habit of smoking, he added, ‘I don’t find smoking harms me in the least. I smoke twenty cigars a day, and the more I work the more I smoke.’

  “His wife remarked, ‘Mr. Edison has an iron constitution, and does everything that is contrary to the laws of health; yet he is never ill.’ ”

  From the day the fair had opened, Whistler’s friends had been pressing him to come over to Paris with his new wife, Trixie. Back in May, John Singer Sargent had written, “They are all clamoring for you in Paris. Shan’t we see you there soon?” In late June, poet Stéphane Mallarmé wrote posing the same question, and Whistler reassured him, “I would very much like to be with you all in Paris—besides you will see us soon!” Yet mid-August found the Whistlers still ensconced in London.

  “The Master,” as Whistler liked to style himself, had agreed to let a London-based Herald reporter named Sheridan Ford assemble the clippings and correspondence regarding Whistler’s many artistic tiffs, feuds, and bons mots into an amusing little book, which was now at the printer’s and ready to be published. But on August 18, the ever-fickle Whistler, annoyed at Ford’s pressing for the final go-ahead, changed his mind. In a letter to Ford, he said, “I fear that I have an inherent objection to being at all hurried about any thing, [but] do let me recognize slightly the time & care you have taken to give the collection the shape it already has—I enclose therefore a cheque for ten guineas.” He thus dismissed as mere bagatelles Ford’s coming up with the clever book idea and title, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies, as well as the writer’s many hours of work. Apparently Trixie had sensed a lucrative enterprise in the project and had urged Whistler to cut Ford loose and reap all the profits himself.

  In Paris, Lady Campbell, the subject of Whistler’s prize-winning Exhibition oil portrait, was among the many people hoping the Whistlers would arrive soon. Lady Campbell had had her differences with the painter while sitting for him, but her easygoing nature had prevailed. On August 18, she wrote to Trixie: “But Paris is so lovely. The weather so perfect, with a brilliant sun & a fresh breeze, that I should feel positively selfish if I did not do my best to persuade you & the Master to give up this tarrying by the grey & foggy banks of the Thames, & come over here to all this dainty brightness. . . . [T]he trees are one mass of refreshing shade, the Eiffel Tower is a thing of beauty & grace—surely you will not resist such a list of attractions, but will pack up your traps at once.” But even with so gracious an invitation, the Whistlers declined to appear.

  Thomas Edison had certainly displaced Buffalo Bill as the most talked about American in Paris. If the World’s Fair had become a showcase for the triumph of technology, a new modern way of life, and republican democracy, Edison was happy to do his part to burnish that image, presenting himself and his latest products as embodiments of all those virtues. The American press obliged by exulting over Edison’s Parisian triumphs, boasting that no Old World eminence at the fair had received “a more enthusiastic welcome than this master mechanic. Even royalty has joined in this democratic greeting to an untitled and unostentatious man of genius.
The English Queen has honored him by sending a message of congratulations breathed from her own lips into one of his phonographs.”

  Colonel Cody’s Wild West show continued its successful run, having become such a beloved fixture that the clowns at the Cirque d’Été had worked up a parody called Kachalo-Ball. The real Wild West Indians instantly gave it cachet by attending the show in groups each night, cheering wildly as the French clowns satirized their riding and their wars and attacks. When the clowns took to dancing their version of Sioux war dances, the visiting Native Americans laughed so hard they had tears running down their faces.

  After three months of rapturously received performances, Buffalo Bill’s fame had risen to unprecedented heights in Europe. The wife of a London embassy attaché discovered just how famous one evening when “seated at a banquet next to the Belgian Consul. Early in the course of the conversation he asked:

  “ ‘Madame, you haf undoubted been to see ze gr-rand Bouf-falo Beel?’

  “Puzzled by the apparently unfamiliar name, I asked: ‘Pardon me, but whom did you say?’

  “ ‘Vy, Bouf-falo Beel, ze famous Bouf-falo Beel, zat gr-reat countryman of yours. You must know him.’

  “After a moment’s thought, I recognized the well-known showman’s name in its disguise. I comprehended that the good Belgian thought him to be one of America’s most eminent names, to be mentioned in the same breath with Washington and Lincoln.”

  Perhaps the Belgian consul had attended too closely to the booklet for sale at the Wild West show, which certainly did imply that Colonel Cody had almost single-handedly conquered the West, thus becoming a major historical personage.

  The New York Sun reported that “Edison has had a reception in Paris such as no American or foreigner has ever received” when at the Élysée Palace President Sadi Carnot welcomed the inventor with full pomp. Edison had not attended the 1878 Paris World’s Fair, but his exhibit that year featuring the original primitive phonograph had garnered him induction as a chevalier in France’s Legion of Honor, which entitled him to wear a red ribbon on his lapel. Now, in a formal ceremony, President Carnot elevated Edison to an officer in the Legion, which meant that, like Eiffel, he could wear the coveted red rosette in his buttonhole.

  Prime Minister Tirard and the City of Paris, the Academy of Sciences, and the Paris Telephone Company each organized on the spur of the moment elaborate formal banquets to honor this American inventor. Edison was more than happy to oblige, for he viewed these eight-course gastronomic evenings as perfect opportunities to promote the new Edison phonograph before influential audiences. And so each banquet invariably featured a demonstration of the miracle of the improved phonograph.

  “Dinners, dinners, dinners,” Edison would say later, “but in spite of them all they did not get me to speak.” Instead, Minister Reid, who spoke decent French, often undertook that honor. “Like every American abroad who finds himself in an embarrassing situation,” said Reid at one such banquet, “Mr. Edison calls upon his Minister to get him out of it. Well, I have come to his relief, and I find that all he wants is that I should speak for him. Now, Mr. Edison can speak for himself if he chooses—indeed, so fond is he of the sound of his own voice that he has spent months upon months devising a mechanical method of making it immortal. Besides, the man who has turned electricity into a domestic servant, carried the human voice hundreds of miles, and so vitalized it that it can be heard for hundreds of years, has no need of either speaking for himself or having others speak for him. His works speak for him.” Reid reminded the French that America’s first minister to France, Benjamin Franklin, had been another giant in the field of electricity.

  While U.S. minister Reid’s “duties” with respect to Edison were enjoyable and easily discharged, other official matters continued to prove more frustrating. He had still failed to obtain satisfaction in the matter of the young American women briefly arrested and jailed in early May over the disputed dressmaker’s bill. Early in August he had sent a coded telegram to Secretary of State James G. Blaine explaining that the offending “police agents at Mentone cannot be dismissed because not Government officers, only municipal agents. . . . Minister of Justice, while ready to rebuke, flatly refuses to dismiss for an offense which he says was not wanton but only a mistake and for which he apologized at once the next day.” Moreover, the French had dredged up some comparable incident in Philadelphia concerning a French citizen in which they had received no satisfaction.

  And then there was the matter of the Sioux Indian treaty. U.S. minister Reid had failed thus far to persuade the Wild West’s Sioux to sign the federal agreement selling almost half their lands. Having gotten nowhere on his visits out to the Wild West camp, the minister had deputized Cody, Salsbury, and Major Burke to exert their influence, but on August 15, Burke wrote Reid, “I have repeatedly read the bill regarding the opening up of the Dakota Sioux Reservation lands and explained carefully its various features. . . . [The Sioux] declined to sign it saying they were willing to abide by what ever decision the Indians at home made. . . . As they said, ‘We have to go home again and years from now we don’t want them to say we did what our people would be sorry for.’ ” Major Burke returned the unsigned treaty documents to the Legation.

  The next day, at Minister Reid’s behest, Major Burke brought the Indians into Paris to see Reid. Once again, Reid addressed the Indians, as he reported to the secretary of state: “I stated what was expected of them, explaining that the Government desired nothing contrary to their interest or inconsistent with their welfare. They withdrew without expressing any opinion and finally declared that they would take no action in the matter. They said they did not entertain any doubt that the intentions of the Government were just and fair, but that being only a few over here and without any means of communicating with their tribe, they preferred not to act independently on a subject which the great majority of their tribe at home understood better.” Admitting defeat, Reid entrusted the unsigned papers to the diplomatic pouch and sent them back to Washington.

  Alfred Tate had heard the first “Vive A-de-sohn!” from the French Customs official back in Le Havre. Now Tate observed in wonder as this cry became the background chorus to Edison’s visits whenever he ventured out in public. All those framed photos in shop windows and the reams of newspaper and magazine stories had made Edison’s a familiar face, and as his carriage rolled by, Parisians saluted his genius. “It came from a multitude of throats; from groups of sightseers on their way to feast their eyes on the glittering baubles in the jewelers’ windows of the Rue de la Paix . . . from the drivers and occupants of the swift little one-horse carriages that endangered the lives of all pedestrians; from the pretty mouths of petite midinettes hurrying with their bandboxes to some rendezvous with Fashion, from strollers along the tree-lined boulevards and loungers at the tables of the wayside cafés. . . . [From all] came this ringing salutation, ‘Vive A-de-sohn! ’ ”

  One night early in their visit, the Edison party arrived at the gilded Paris Grand Opera House during the first act. Commissioned by Napoleon III, this magnificent neo-Baroque confection bedecked with sculptures was one of the first places in France to be lighted by Edison incandescent lamps. “The managers took great pleasure,” said Edison, “in showing me through the labyrinth containing the wiring, dynamos, etc.” After their electrical tour, the Edison party slipped into the French president’s private loge, festooned with garlands of roses and decorated with French and American flags and potted ferns and palms. As soon as the curtain came down, wrote Margaret Upton, “the grand orchestra played The Star-Spangled Banner and everyone in the house rose, and turned around to face our box.” The bejeweled crowd began to applaud and yell out, “Vive l’Edison! Vive l’Edison!” “Edison rose first and bowed in acknowledgement,” wrote Margaret, “then we all rose and bowed—then every body turned their glasses on us and stared to their heart’s content. After that the opera went on. The manager came to the box and offered Edison the use of his own
box at any time.”

  About an hour later, Edison said, again “the manager came around and asked me to go underneath the stage, as they were putting on a ballet of 300 girls, the finest ballet in Europe. It seems there is a little hole on the stage with a hood over it, in which the prompter sits when opera is given. In this instance it was not occupied, and I was given the position in the prompter’s seat, and saw the whole ballet at great range.” Prince Roland Bonaparte had personally invited Edison and Francis Upton to his mansion at 22 cours la Reine later that night for a soirée for the Congress of Criminal Anthropology, which Margaret Upton reported was a “gorgeous affair” for men only.

  The French admired Edison’s lovely and fashionable wife, Mina, but she was already deeply homesick for their fifteen-month-old daughter, Madeleine, who was staying with Mina’s mother and had just learned to walk and talk. “It must be cute to see baby running about,” Mina wrote her; “I suppose she will be quite changed when I get home. . . . Has she been getting any more teeth and does she say any more words? I am getting hungry to see her.” While Edison was used to his fame and turned it to his own purposes, his young wife found it stifling. “It is terrible to try to do anything here,” she wrote, “everything is so crowded and everybody is on the make. It seems impossible to go anywhere with Mr. Edison. We never get out as somebody is after him all the time. Although we have been to a great many entertainments.”