Eiffel's Tower

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Eiffel's Tower Page 37

by Jill Jonnes


  33 “watching the never-ending procession”: Raymond Rudorff, Belle Époque: Paris in the Nineties (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972), p. 32.

  35 “This is not a new newspaper”: Robertson, The International Herald Tribune, p. 3.

  36 “predicted flatly”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 69.

  36 “I had never believed ”: Ibid., p. 157.

  37 “The Tower Is Sinking”: Ibid., pp. 69-70.

  38 “If a column”: Ibid., p. 68.

  38 “Despite all the snowfalls”: “Visit to the Eiffel Tower Work,” L’Illustration, March 3, 1888, p. 31.

  38 “Joined by a belt”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 76.

  CHAPTER THREE: Troubles on the Tower

  41 “the oyster peddler”: Norma Evenson, Paris: City of Change, 1878-1978 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1979), p. 20.

  41 “so frisky, so affable”: Mark Twain, The Travels of Mark Twain (New York: Howard-McCann, 1961), pp. 155-56.

  41 “M. Eiffel’s Tower of Babel”: “M. Eiffel’s Big Tower,” New York Times, May 18, 1888, p. 6.

  42 “The four cranes”: Poirier, Fifteen Wonders of the World, p. 252.

  42 “Each piece”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 62.

  42 “a chunk of coarse bread ”: “Boulanger’s New Contest,” New York Times, Jan. 27, 1889, p. 10.

  43 “People who have watched”: Harriss, The Tallest Tower, p. 69.

  43 “Paris is making great preparations”: “Jennie June Abroad,” Godey’s Lady’s Book 117, no. 699 (Sept. 1888): 240.

  44 “it will be, when completed”: Ibid.

  45 “On the Left Bank”: Caroline Mathieu, Paris in the Age of Impressionism (New York: Harry Abrams, 2003), p. 22.

  45 “The beginning was difficult”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 735.

  46 “a grandiose marvel”: “Next Year’s Big Show,” New York Times, May 6, 1888, p. 10.

  47 “Friend Gouraud ”: Letter from Thomas Edison to George Gouraud, dated June 12, 1888, Thomas A. Edison Papers Digital Edition [TAED], Rutgers University.

  48 “Rumors were afloat”: “Work on the Eiffel Tower,” New York Times, Sept. 8, 1888, p. 16.

  48 “There was snow”: Bermond, Gustave Eiffel, p. 296.

  49 “After the second platform”: Eugène-Melchior de Vogüé, Remarques sur l’exposition du centenaire (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1889), p. 15.

  49 “The professional risks remained”: Loyrette, Gustave Eiffel, p. 149.

  51 “Were those workmen specially trained? ”: Tissandier, The Eiffel Tower, pp. 38-39.

  51 “Their workmates laughed ”: Loyrette, Gustave Eiffel, p. 149.

  51 “the Americans”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 729.

  52 “the Washington shaft”: “Big Bait for Yankees,” New York Times, Feb. 25, 1889, p. 4.

  52 “The public may go up”: “Next Year’s Big Show,” p. 10.

  52 “Your role herein”: Whistler on Art, Nigel Thorp, ed. (Manchester, U.K.: Fyfield Books, 1994), pp. 111-12.

  52 “I am burning with desire”: Letter from J. M. Whistler to Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac, dated May 24/25, 1888, Centre for Whistler Studies, Glasgow University Library, Online Archive, Glasgow University, http://www.whistler.arts.gla.ac.uk/correspondence.

  53 “cultivated upward-pointed mustaches”: Weintraub, Whistler, p. 347.

  53 “The room of all shades of red”: Edgar Munhall, Whistler and Montesquiou: The Butterfly and the Bat (Paris: Flammarion, 1995), p. 36.

  54 “I want a side board”: Letters from Buffalo Bill, p. 24.

  54 “Lulu has got most”: Ibid., p. 18.

  55 “unerring aim”: Kasper, Annie Oakley, pp. 100-101.

  55 “Annie Oakley defeats John Lavett”: Annie Oakley, The Autobiography of Annie Oakley (Greenville, Ohio: Darke County Historical Society, 2006), p. 36.

  56 “It’s strange”: Gauguin by Himself, pp. 97-99.

  56 “It is amazing”: Chris Stolwijk and Richard Thomson, Theo van Gogh (Zwolle: Waanders, 1999), p. 45.

  56 “You can ask Pissarro”: Gauguin by Himself, p. 95.

  57 “All things considered ”: Ibid., pp. 94-95.

  57 “My situation here”: Martin Gayford, The Yellow House (Boston: Little, Brown, 2006), p. 271.

  58 “sunflowers against a yellow background”: Gauguin by Himself, pp. 97-99.

  58 “picturesque, rat-infested street”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, p. 185.

  58 “a glittering cortège”: Rudorff, Belle Époque, p. 34.

  59 “His hot temper”: Joseph I. C. Clarke, My Life and Memories (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1925), p. 143.

  59 “What in hell”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, p. 166.

  59 “was handsome, he had fine whiskers”: Rudorff, Belle Époque, p. 23.

  60 “We enjoy having you”: Laney, Paris Herald, pp. 28-29.

  61 “huge crowds gathered”: Rudorff, Belle Époque, pp. 25-26.

  61 “the late cold snap”: “Boulanger’s New Contest,” p. 10.

  62 “It is impossible! ”: David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas (New York: Touchstone, 1977), p. 202.

  CHAPTER FOUR: “The First Elevator of Its Kind”

  65 “Desolation on desolation!”: Hugues Le Roux, “The First Ascent of the Eiffel Tower,” Current Literature 2, no. 5 (May 1889): 386.

  68 “congratulations were coming in”: Ibid.

  69 “The curvature of the Tower’s legs”: Vogel, “Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower,” p. 24.

  70 “[We] have shipped our products”: Jason Goodwin, Otis: Giving Rise to the Modern City (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), pp. 66-67.

  70 “Yes, this is the first elevator”: Vogel, “Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower,” p. 24.

  71 “the perfect safety”: Ibid.

  71 “Meantime . . . we examined the Tower”: Report of Chief Otis Engineer Thomas Brown, 1888, Otis Corporate Archives, Farmington, Conn.

  72 “I should favor”: Letter from W. E. Hale to Charles Otis, dated Feb. 16, 1888, Otis Corporate Archives, Farmington, Conn.

  73 “You forget that”: Letter from Charles Otis to Gustave Eiffel, dated Feb. 18, 1889, Otis Corporate Archives, Farmington, Conn.

  73 “an ingenious modification”: Vogel, “Elevator Systems of the Eiffel Tower,” p. 24.

  74 “Keep right ahead”: O’Connor, The Scandalous Mr. Bennett, pp. 214-15.

  75 “you have lost all confidence”: Letter from Charles Otis to Gustave Eiffel, dated Feb. 18, 1889, Otis Corporate Archives, Farmington, Conn.

  77 “Fine! Wonderful!”: Oakley, The Autobiography of Annie Oakley, p. 19.

  77 “I had Jerry, the big moose”: Ibid., p. 26.

  77 “Tons of beautiful flowers”: Ibid., pp. 28-30.

  79 “On the highest point reached”: “Eiffel’s Tower of Babel,” p. 12.

  79 “a rumor that [the Eiffel Tower]”: “The Eiffel Tower,” The Engineer, Jan. 11, 1889, p. 39.

  80 “thick coal tar smoke”: Bertrand Lemoine, La Tour de Monsieur Eiffel (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), p. 45.

  80 “As soon as it was possible”: de Vogüé, Remarques sur l’Exposition du centenaire, pp. 16-17. This translation is from The Eiffel Tower: A Tour de Force, Phillip Dennis Cate, ed. (New York: Grolier, 1989), p. 50.

  81 “merits, or otherwise”: “Fritz,” The Eiffel Tower (London: F. C. Hagen and Co., 1889), Box 60/brochures/Eiffel Archives, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

  81 “How many times”: Tissandier, The Eiffel Tower, pp. 82-83.

  82 “pen, pencil, and brush”: Richard Kaufman, Paris of To-day, excerpted in Cate, ed., The Eiffel Tower: A Tour de Force, p. 51.

  82 “the Eiffel Tower mania”: Ibid.

  82 “the practicality and methodical sang-froid”: Max de Nansouty, “Gustave Eiffel,” Revue illustrée 6, no. 62 (July 1, 1888): 6.

  82-83 “The form suggested the ugliest”: “The Eiffel Tower,”
Times (London), April 1, 1889, p. 5.

  84 “Their idea of the American”: “The Paris Exposition, III,” New York Daily Tribune, June 23, 1889, p. 14.

  CHAPTER FIVE : In Which the Artists Quarrel and the Tower Opens

  86 “Whistler, if you were not a genius”: Weintraub, Whistler, p. 345.

  86 “I am Mr. Whistler”: James M. Whistler, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (New York: G. P. Putnam and Sons, 1904), pp. 266-67.

  89 “Mounts Valérien, Montmartre”: “Sur La Tour Eiffel,” Le Figaro, April 1, 1889, p. 1.

  90 “We salute the flag”: “Above the World,” New York Herald, European edition, April 1, 1889, p. 1.

  90 “an elegant little lunch”: “Upon the Eiffel Tower,” New York Herald, European edition, April 2, 1889, p. 1.

  91 “decided to inscribe in letters of gold”: Eiffel, “The Eiffel Tower,” Annual Report of the Board of Regents, p. 733.

  92 “Bravo! ”: Gauguin by Himself, p. 102.

  92 “At first”: John Rewald, Post-Impressionism (New York: MOMA, 1978), p. 258.

  93 “excessive drinking”: Gayford, The Yellow House, p. 296.

  93 “moods of indescribable”: Ibid., p. 298.

  93 “Only remember”: Gauguin by Himself, p. 102.

  93 “the State increasingly protected ”: Ibid., p. 108.

  93 “The fear and horror”: The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh (Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1978), pp. 170 and 173.

  94 “ ‘making a great deal of money’ ”: Letter from Samuel Insull to Alfred O. Tate, dated Oct. 16, 1888, TAED (D8850AD01), Rutgers University.

  94 “I am astonished”: Josephson, Edison, p. 326.

  95 “Without doubt”: Letter from Thomas Edison to George Gouraud, dated March 5, 1889, TAED (LB028520), Rutgers University.

  95 “I have placed Mr. W. J. Hammer”: Letter from Thomas Edison to George Gouraud, dated Dec. 19, 1888, TAED (LB027491), Rutgers University.

  95 “anyone who wishes”: Letter from George Gouraud to Thomas Edison, dated March 26, 1889, TAED (D8946AAW), Rutgers University.

  95 “Refuse absolutely”: Cablegram from Thomas Edison to George Gouraud, dated April 8, 1889, TAED (LB029010), Rutgers University.

  95 “a small charge of admission”: Letter from George Gouraud to Thomas Edison, dated April 12, 1889, TAED (LB029076), Rutgers University.

  95 “Make no arrangement”: Cablegram from Thomas Edison to W. J. Hammer, dated April 19, 1889, TAED (LB029155), Rutgers University.

  95 “threatens to bring the enterprise”: Letter from Thomas Edison to George Gouraud, dated April 20, 1889, TAED (LB029180), Rutgers University.

  96 “congregate at the Palais de l’Industrie”: Edward Simmons, From Seven to Seventy (New York: Harper’s, 1922), pp. 125-26.

  96 “Everyone of importance”: Ibid.

  97 “Whenever Chauchard’s”: Rudorff, Belle Époque, p. 105.

  97 “I never in my life”: Americans in Paris (Oklahoma City: Oklahoma City Museum of Art, 2003), pp. 22-23.

  98 “three prying scribblers”: “Music in the Air,” New York Herald, European edition, Oct. 7, 1889, p. 1; “Hawkins Hits Back,” New York Herald, European edition, Oct. 8, 1889, p. 1.

  99 “Paris is going into raptures”: “The Eiffel Tower,” New York Tribune, May 9, 1889, p. 1.

  99 “Eiffel Towers of every size”: “The Eiffel Tower,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 1889, p. 11.

  99 “As an enormous and skillful monument”: “The Show That Paris Is,” New York Times, May 26, 1889, p. 12.

  100 “monstrous erection”: “The Completion of the Eiffel Tower,” Times (London), April 2, 1889, p. 9.

  100 “ fever of festivity”: “The French Exposition,” New York Tribune, May 5, 1889, p. 1.

  100 “Haven’t we had enough”: “Buffalo Bill in Paris,” no date, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Paris scrapbook, McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.

  101 “We were there early”: “Observations Abroad,” Christian Advocate 64, no. 22 (May 30, 1889): p. 342.

  101 “[British ambassador] Lord Lytton”: “The Paris Exhibition,” New York Tribune, May 5, 1889, p. 1.

  102 “the exhibits in an imperfect state”: “Observations Abroad,” p. 342.

  102 “humanistic, philanthropic”: Gatot, “The Magnificent Exposition Universelle of 1889,” p. 15.

  102 “palace of the Argentine Republic”: Edyth Kirkwood, “The Paris Exposition,” Arthur’s Home Magazine 59 (Sept. 1889): 799.

  102 “There are fi fty or sixty Egyptian donkeys”: “Observations Abroad,” p. 342.

  104 “all aspects of French industry”: John W. Stamper, “The Galerie des Machines of the 1889 Paris World’s Fair,” Technolog y and Culture 30, no. 2 (April 1989): 347.

  104 “The Exposition has been opened”: Letter from W. J. Hammer to Francis Upton, dated May 13, 1889, TAED (D8946AB0), Rutgers University.

  104 “as his solitary picture”: “American Art in Paris,” New York Times, June 16, 1889, p. 11.

  105 “The walks are broad ”: “Paris and the Great Fair,” New York Times, Aug. 3, 1889, p. 5.

  105 “We stood before a grating”: Twain, Travels of Mark Twain, p. 161.

  106 “actors and singers”: Rudorff, Belle Époque, p. 72.

  106 “He would gaze”: Ibid., p. 77.

  106 “an arrogant and brutal voice”: Ibid.

  106 “and the hint”: Ibid., p. 65.

  107 “antique furniture”: Ibid., p. 67.

  107 “might drop off where”: Rita Napier, “Across the Big Water: American Indians’ Perceptions of Europe and Europeans, 1887-1906,” in Indians and Europe: An Interdisciplinary Collection of Essays, Christian F. Feest, ed. (Aachen, Germany: Herodot, 1987), p. 386.

  107 “an elegant cold collation”: “Wild West Here,” New York Herald, European edition, May 11, 1889, p. 1.

  108-9 “There must have been fifty thousand ”: “Colonel Cody in Camp,” New York Herald, European edition, May 13, 1889, p. 1.

  109 “crowded with strange”: “Buffalo Bill on French Soil,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1889, p. 15.

  109 “twenty hands”: “Buffalo Bill à Paris,” Le Figaro, May 12, 1889, p. 1.

  111 “We sure did attract some attention”: Kasper, Annie Oakley, p. 105.

  111 “curious cavalcade”: “Colonel Cody in Camp,” p. 1.

  112 “Buffalo Bill was one of the world ’s great men”: Larry McMurtry, The Colonel and Little Missie (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2005), p. 12.

  112 “In nine times out of ten”: Louis S. Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show (New York: Knopf, 2005), pp. 195-96.

  113 “Where did the money go? ”: Ibid., p. 346.

  113 “ wildly in mines”: McMurtry, The Colonel and Little Missie, p. 9.

  113 “Midi moins neuf, ouf!: Charles Braibant, Histoire de la Tour Eiffel (Paris: Plon, 1964), p. 138.

  114 “We have put together this number”: “Inauguration,” Le Figaro de la Tour, May 15, 1889, p. 1.

  114 “remained all day”: “The Great French Show,” New York Times, May 19, 1889, p. 1.

  115 “it’s not more”: “Échos de la Tour,” Le Figaro, May 16, 1889, microfilm, Bibliothèque Nationale Mitterand, Paris.

  115 “What Eiffel is to the externals”: “America at the Big Show,” New York Times, June 10, 1889, p. 2.

  115 “ for business purposes only”: Josephson, Edison, p. 326.

  116 “A girl in half-nude dress”: “At the Paris World’s Fair,” New York Times, June 23, 1889, p. 16.

  116 “half a dozen grimy cafés”: W. C. Brownell, “The Paris Exposition,” Scribner’s 7, no. 1 ( Jan. 1890): 28.

  117 “A very wobbly, rock-a-bye”: Kirkwood, “The Paris Exposition,” p. 800.

  118 “the Arabic, Moorish and Turkish”: Susan Hayes Ward, “With the Crowd at the Exposition,” Christian Union 40, no. 3 (July 18, 1889): 74.

  118 “I think you were right”:
The Complete Letters of Vincent van Gogh, p. 182.

  119 “Of course this exhibition”: Gauguin by Himself, p. 103.

  119 “a troupe of temple dancers”: David Sweetman, Paul Gauguin (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995), p. 227.

  119 “You missed something”: Gauguin by Himself, p. 104.

  119-20 “all of artistic Paris”: Brownell, “The Paris Exposition,” pp. 29-30.

  CHAPTER SIX: Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley Triumphant

  122 “Last—but not by any means”: “Carnot Among the Cowboys,” New York Herald, European edition, May 19, 1889, p. 1.

  122 “L’attaque d’un convoi”: “Programme de la Buffalo Bill ’s Wild West Company,” Ms. 6, Series 6A/Box 1, Folder 9, McCracken Research Library, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.

  124 “a very pretty one”: Don Russell, The Lives and Legends of Buffalo Bill (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1960), p. 314.

  124 “They sat like icebergs”: Kasper, Annie Oakley, pp. 104-5.

  125 “As the cheers”: Oakley, Autobiography of Annie Oakley, p. 37.

  125 “ fashionable young men”: L. G. Moses, Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996), p. 22.

  125 an American Corn Palace: “A People’s Work,” New York Herald, European edition, May 7, 1889, p. 7.

  126 “Carrying his rifle lightly”: Warren, Buffalo Bill’s America, p. 146.

  127 “I have tried and used ”: John F. Sears, “Bierstadt, Buffalo Bill, and the Wild West in Europe,” paper from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, p. 9, files of Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, Wyoming.

  127 “We laughed a lot”: “Échos de la Tour,” p. 1. Other information on painting mishap from Eiffel documents in ARO 1981 1271 1-27, Eiffel Archives, Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

  127 “The platform was at that moment”: Ibid., p. 1.

  129 “W hat was to be done”: “The Otis Lift in the Eiffel Tower,” Times (London), May 30, 1889, p. 5.

  130 “I was at Buffalo”: Lettres de Paul Gauguin à Émile Bernard, 1888-1891 (Geneva: Pierre Cailler, 1954), p. 75.

  130 “white men have eaten”: Daniele Fiorentino, “Those Red-Brick Faces: European Press Reactions to the Indians of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show,” p. 407, in Feest, ed., Indians and Europe.

 

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