by Jill Jonnes
At 8:00 p.m. Edison, accompanied by the artist A. A. Anderson, entered the dazzling rooms lit by incandescent lights arrayed in Baccarat chandeliers. As the band struck up the American national anthem, President Carnot and a phalanx of now-familiar city officials escorted Edison to the table of honor. A quick glance at the handwritten menu must have given Edison serious pause. Tonight’s gala eclipsed all the eight-course banquets to date: This was to be an eighteen-course gastronomic extravaganza, all to be consumed with some of France’s most legendary wines.
To the accompaniment of the music of Bizet and Massenet, the guests—largely engineers and architects—settled in to serious gustatory business: First a simple potage, followed by dainty Normandy meat pastries and little amuse-bouches, accompanied by a glass of Xérès 1865. Palates whetted, the guests next savored glazed trout à l’américaine, washed down with velvety Pomerol en carafes, followed by a quarter haunch of veal moscovite, enjoyed with the white Château d’Yquem Sauternes (Lur-Saluces), which had been Thomas Jefferson’s favorite white French wine. Then it was on to hen fatted with truffles and foie gras, quail cutlets sauced with Xérès, a small salad, and a gastronomic pause with a light mousse Armagnac. As it was game season, a dish of young pheasant and partridge with truffles appeared, matched with a glass of Château Margaux 1875. Then, to lighten the menu after the many meat courses, an aspic of crayfish tails Villeroy, counter-pointed by artichoke hearts Venetian-style and asparagus points à la française.
A collective feeling of satiety and bonhomie filled the banquet hall. Now it was time for the sweets, paired with the dessert wine, an 1874 Musigny. First, the refreshing glace havanaise. Next came the waiters with the Bombe Nesselrode, a rich confection of Kirsch-flavored chestnut purée encased in vanilla ice cream. A few delicate gâteaux Valasien et Breton were also served, followed by a selection of fruits and cheeses. President Carnot arose to offer the first of many toasts, all drunk with Veuve Clicquot. The mayor followed, pronouncing: “Paris, in the Hotel de Ville, has given many notable banquets to emperors, kings, and other royalty, but this is the first time we have ever given a dinner to an inventor. However, in giving a banquet to Mr. Edison, we are giving it to a prince, as he is the prince of all inventors.”
By now the waiters were offering liqueurs and cups of strong coffee, concluding a two-hour homage to Edison and French gastronomy. At ten o’clock the entire company of politicians, engineers, and architects rose and made their way into the interior of the Hôtel de Ville for a tour of the Edison Electric Works with the master himself. Many of the guests were introduced to Edison, as was the building’s chief electrician. Edison happily shook this fellow’s hand, endearing himself one more time to the French republicans. At ten thirty the banquet ended, with the guests reportedly “enchanted by Edison’s good humor and affability, and leaving with excellent memories of the fête honoring this man of genius, who is at the same time a worker, truly the son of his works.”
As Edison and his small party departed Paris for Berlin, the inventor further enchanted the French by announcing a gift of ten thousand francs ($2,000) to benefit the poor of Paris. Le Figaro quoted Edison as saying that this was but “a feeble mark of his gratitude to all who have contributed to make his stay in Paris a period of his life he will ever love to recall.” During the next two weeks, Edison enjoyed a triumphant tour through Germany and then took the ferry to England, where he kept his promise to stay with Sir John Pender at his Foot’s Cray estate in southeast London. On the night of September 26, Thomas and Mina Edison slipped quietly back across the Channel, headed once more for Paris and a final night at the Hôtel du Rhin. Shortly after arriving in his suite, Edison received a note from Minister Reid inviting him to come by that evening to the avenue Hoche, with the cryptic message, “I’ve got something for you.”
William Hammer, who had accompanied the Edisons on their travels, speculated that it was some further honor, and Edison invited him along. Hammer left to get changed into evening clothes and returned with a horse cab to take Edison to Reid’s mansion. There in the sumptuous salon they found many guests who had just finished dinner and were now enjoying cigars, including the recently arrived Charles Dana, editor of The New York Sun.
Minister Reid rose and with a knowing smile greeted Edison and Hammer. President Sadi Carnot, he told them, had sent over to the U.S. Legation a gift for the American inventor. He disappeared into another room, returning with a large plush case, which he handed to Edison, who put it under his arm and bowed in thanks. “Hold on there,” said Reid, “let’s see what you’ve got.” Edison reluctantly opened the box to reveal a broad red sash and a handsome medal. The French had elevated Edison to the highest possible rank for a foreigner in its Legion of Honor: commander. “Every man in the company certainly felt moved by a deep enthusiasm,” reported The New York Tribune, “and when Mr. Reid delivered to Mr. Edison the official diploma and letter and hung the [red sash with the gold cross] around his neck, this feeling found expression in some of the most fervent applause that ever was uttered. [Edison] blushed like a girl, and, after looking at us in pleased confusion, said, very simply, ‘I never in the world can wear it.’ A man of such fine and beneficent genius needs no decorations; but he deserves them all.”
Edison could not linger, for he had to depart early the next day. He and Hammer said their farewells and returned out into the cool of the night for Edison’s last ride through the nocturnal streets of Paris, where across the river the Eiffel Tower was ablaze with colored lights. The Place Vendôme was quiet but for the clopping of passing carriages. Hammer came in to say good-bye to Mrs. Edison, and watched with great amusement as his famous boss proudly profferred the plush box to Mina. She eagerly opened it, held up the red sash and medal, and began to dance around the opulent salon in glee. She then took the sash and hung it around her husband’s neck, arranging the medal just so. It was the final, fitting touch to their Paris sojourn.
The next morning Edison and Mina were up early to catch the boat train to Le Havre, where they set sail that afternoon for New York on a French ocean liner named (fittingly) La Champagne.
Rosa Bonheur poses with Rocky Bear, William Cody, her art dealers, Red Shirt, and an unknown man.
CHAPTER TEN
Rosa Bonheur Meets Buffalo Bill
On Thursday, September 5, a cold day with hints of autumn, Buffalo Bill entertained yet another personage of great renown: the celebrated French artist Rosa Bonheur, a short, stout woman of sixty-seven whose blunt-cut white hair framed a strong square jaw. Bonheur drove into the Wild West camp in a carriage with her American art dealer, Mr. Knoedler, and her French dealer, Benjamin Tedesco, fils. Wearing a dark fur-trimmed coat over her voluminous skirt, her tiny feet in smart boots, Bonheur looked about in wonder at the grazing buffalo; at the tents and teepees, some with small campfires burning; and at the Indians ambling about. Bonheur had been in mourning since her companion Nathalie Micas had died earlier in the year, and thought a visit to this strange encampment might leaven her sorrows.
Buffalo Bill, who had been expecting his illustrious guest, escorted her and the dealers over the grounds, while Bonheur silently absorbed the startling sights. Ever the genial host, Cody invited the party to join him in his tent for an intime lunch with Red Shirt and Rocky Bear. As the meal ended, someone commented on how little Bonheur had eaten. “ ‘Why do you want me to eat?’ she asked. ‘I do that every day, don’t I? But it’s not every day that I’ve got two such interesting beings right in front of my face.’ ” Afterward, a photograph was taken to preserve what became for Bonheur “a memory I really relish.”
For years, Rosa Bonheur had been as famous for her unorthodox attire as for her paintings of powerful draught animals and noble creatures, for she dressed en pantalon. Back in the 1850s, she had become one of the few women in France possessing an official cross-dressing permit (renewed every six months) that allowed her to wear pants, as long as she did not do so at shows, balls, and certain other publ
ic meeting places. She had argued that such attire was necessary as a disguise, because no respectable woman could venture alone to the horse and cattle fairs and slaughterhouses where she needed to sketch and paint. Those youthful forays were over, but at home she still wore a more elegant version of those early outfits—loose velvet trousers, an embroidered peasant smock with amethyst buttons on the collar, and leather boots. Knowing that her occasional visitors would find shocking the sight of a woman in pants, the artist always kept a skirt nearby for quick changes. Rosa Bonheur had also been the first Frenchwoman to be made a chevalier in the Legion of Honor back in 1865, her red ribbon presented personally by Empress Eugénie.
In 1887 Cornelius Vanderbilt had bought her 1853 Salon painting The Horse Fair for the fabulous sum of $55,500 and presented it to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Long before that, the popularity of Bonheur’s animalier art in the United States and England had made her very rich. In 1860 she had purchased the picturesque Château de By, on the edge of the Fontainebleau Forest, where she had thereafter lived and worked in relative seclusion with Micas, her companion since childhood. There they maintained a menagerie that included dogs, horses, cows, sheep, chamois, an eagle, a tame stag with six-point antlers, and a pet lioness named Fathma.
On the day of her first visit to the Wild West, Rosa Bonheur not only began a friendship with Buffalo Bill but also assumed the unlikely role of artist-in-residence at the camp. Many mornings that September she would arrive in her carriage and stroll about until she found an Indian scene that caught her eye. “Observing them at close range really refreshed my sad old mind,” Bonheur would later say. “I was free to work among the redskins, drawing and painting them with their horses, weapons, camps, and animals. . . . Buffalo Bill was extremely good to me. He was nice as could be about letting me work among his redskins every day.”
Bonheur rarely asked people to visit her château, but “in order to repay some of his kindness, I invited Buffalo Bill to By and loved showing him my studio and animals.” On Tuesday morning, September 24, Cody arrived in his carriage wearing his signature scout hat. At Bonheur’s high iron postern gate he tugged the bell, setting off “the barking of numerous dogs, the hounds and bassets in chorus, the grand Saint Bernard in slow measure, like the bass drum in an orchestra.” Somewhere a parrot awakened and began to squawk. Rosa Bonheur appeared and welcomed Buffalo Bill to her fiefdom. Next to the main brick house with its mansard roof, a quaint carriage house served as a studio, with “a huge chimney at one end, the supports of which are life-sized dogs. . . . The room is decorated with stuffed heads of animals of various kinds—boars, bears, wolves, and oxen; and birds perch in every convenient place.”
Over the years, Rosa Bonheur had repeatedly enlarged her country domain, purchasing surrounding lands whenever she could. “Behind the house,” said one visitor from this era, “is a large park divided from the forest by a high wall, a lawn and flower beds are out near the buildings, and on the lawn, in pleasant weather, graze a magnificent bull and cow, which are kept as models. . . . At the end of one of the linden avenues is a splendid bronze, by Isadore Bonheur [Rosa’s brother], of a Gaul attacking a lion.” Across the road was a large meadow bright with autumn wildflowers, where Bonheur kept her horses. She walked over with Buffalo Bill to show him a pair of mustangs, including one named Apache that was too wild to be tamed. Both of the horses, she told him, had been sent as gifts by admirers from the American West. If his cowboys could catch Apache and the other mustang, named Claire de Lune, they were his to keep. Cody gladly accepted the offer.
“Because of his frequent shows,” said Bonheur, “he didn’t have time to sample my fare. So I took him to lunch at the Hôtel de France in Fontainebleau.” But first she brought him to see the old château at Fontainebleau, and as they strolled about, Bonheur told Cody “more interesting things of French kings and queens, prisoner Popes, and great personages generally than he had ever heard before.” Before Cody returned to Neuilly for that day’s first Wild West show, he promised that two cowboys would come out early the next week to round up the pair of mustangs and take them away.
Imagine Rosa Bonheur’s embarrassment when three days later among her mail she found a note from John Arbuckle, president of Wyoming’s Post Percheron Company—the very admirer who had sent her Apache. Bonheur learned that he was in Paris for the World’s Fair and hoped to come out to visit Apache in his French home. She quickly wrote back on her black-bordered stationery, saying she would be delighted to see him, but “I hope you will not be cross that I have just given two of my mustangs to Colonel Cody. Yours was so wild! I had no use for him any more. Two cowboys are supposed to come lasso them on Monday. I dare not invite you for lunch because I lead a very simple life, but if you like fresh eggs, I would be very happy to entertain you as best I can. I must ask you to give me some forewarning if you accept. Of course, my invitation includes your gracious translator.”
On Monday, the two cowboys showed up as promised, and Bonheur and a crowd of locals lined the meadow fence to watch the show. The first cowboy lassoed the mustang on his second attempt. The horse bucked and fell to the ground. In a flash, the cowboy had Apache’s four legs pinned and tied, even as he gently slipped on a noseband halter. Speaking softly to the struggling horse, the cowboy eased on a blanket and then a saddle, undid the mustang’s legs, and mounted it. Apache, bucking madly, immediately took off.
The French expected the cowboy to be thrown as the horse flung itself ferociously about the meadow. Instead, with a serene air, he rode Apache round and round until slowly the mustang calmed. After a bit, the cowboy dismounted and tied Apache to a fence pole. The second cowboy reprised this startling feat with the other horse, and to the amazement of the onlookers, the two Americans were soon riding the animals down the country road to the Fontainebleau train station and into a railroad stable car. Before the train departed, Rosa Bonheur, no less astonished than her neighbors, congratulated the cowboys on their prowess.
At the World’s Fair that very same Monday, September 30, the journalists and typesetters of Le Figaro de la Tour were assembling their final issue. On this day the royal tourists scaling the tower’s heights were, reported Le Figaro de la Tour, the grandsons of Said Pasha, the former viceroy of Egypt: “The princes Saïd and Omar Toussoun are very amiable young people, with open and sympathetic faces; they speak and write French perfectly. Many members of their royal household were with them, as well as some friends. They signed their names in our register in Arabic and French.”
Ineluctably, the Paris World’s Fair was coming to an end. “Tomorrow begins the last month of the Exposition,” editor Émile Barr wrote in his farewell column in Le Figaro de la Tour. “The days will become much shorter, the mornings above all, while the evenings will be much cooler; soon enough the foreigners will be thinking of leaving us. . . . It seems to us, also, that our task is largely complete. . . . The exhibitors have received their prizes, and think of little but departure. . . . Our little newspaper will appear no more; but our pavilion remains open to friends and all visitors to the tower.
“Friends will find there, as in the past, shelter when it rains . . . and a register ready for their signatures; the ascensionnistes can still receive a certificate of ascension.”
Those who had yet to pay a visit to the Exposition Universelle now began converging in large numbers on Paris, determined to see and experience all they had read about, and on Sunday, October 6, such huge crowds flowed happily through the gates that by the end of the day, a new record had been set for attendance: 307,000 paid admissions.
One of those latecomers to the fair was Art Young, a twenty-three-year-old budding American artist, who rhapsodized: “Paris was like some lovely young hostess with arms outstretched that September afternoon as Clarence Webster and I strolled along the boulevards. . . . [We] crossed the bridges over the Seine with its gay Exposition-bound boats, and revelled in the sound of the animate voices all around us, the musical cries
, the bright faces, and the cracking of cabmen’s whips—a continual cracking above all other sounds. For months I had been hungering for all this, but my visions had never come near the reality.” Young had dressed to make a jaunty impression, in a flat-top black derby, cutaway coat with tails, flared trousers, cream-colored Windsor tie, winged collar, and cane.
He drank it all in: “Clear skies and a fresh breeze, and Chicago and New York far behind. Exquisite women passed in magnificent carriages, and on the wide walks were men of leisure topped by silk hats; trim nurse-maids with their convoys of children; artists and their girls, known as grisettes, whom my dictionary describes as having ‘lively and free manners but not necessarily of immoral character.’ Spreading green trees, statues of historic figures at every turn, fountains pouring forth sun-drenched water. And in the distance, dominating the whole scene, the black outline of the Eiffel Tower.”
The tower had continued to endear itself to even the most snobbish of Parisians, stirring upwellings of poetry and patriotism. Rastignac, the premier columnist of L’Illustration, who had been so dismissive early on, confessed that the tower had become a touchstone. Through the September fogs, wrote this elegant scribe, he looked expectantly for its lighted crown, twinkling on each night at dusk, dominating the landscape, visible from everywhere. “It has become the true crown of Paris, and for five long months already it has shone, shone, shone, seen by all, attracting so many people, like a lighthouse . . . one could say that this little luminous crown is the ray that shines above all else, at this moment, illuminating up there something which we dearly love, a flag that appears little seen from below, but is huge up close, waving in the wind, the beautiful French tricoleur .”
