History Archives - Much Ado About Paris

Bartholdi and his Statue of Liberty

May 16, 2020 by Hugh Nelson 4 Comments

The dictionary sums up what most of us know about Bartholdi and his Statue of Liberty. This brief description of a statue by a man we’ve never heard of conveys nothing of the quest and the ideas that produced this phenomenal work of art.

The Statue of Liberty in New York (Click for larger version of all photos) User:Mcj1800 / CC BY-SA

The Statue of Liberty:

a statue at the entrance to New York Harbor, a symbol of welcome to immigrants, representing a draped female figure carrying a book of laws in her left hand and holding aloft a torch in her right. Dedicated in 1886, it was designed by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi and was the gift of the French, commemorating the alliance of France and the US during the American Revolution.

The Statue of Liberty was not a gift from the French government. It was not intended to be a monument welcoming immigrants to the United States. The statue was built in Paris, disassembled, and shipped to the US using contributions of many small donors in France. It was reassembled in the US on a pedestal built by Americans and funded by American small donors. The island on which it was erected, formerly the site of the Army’s Fort Wood, was ceded for that purpose by the US government.

It was a messy process, as many never-before-tried things are.

At the time of its construction, it was by far the tallest statue in the world, taller than any building in Paris or New York. It was primarily the idea and design of one man, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, who spent much of his career in a quest to build the world’s largest statue. His quest was far more important to building the Statue of Liberty than any national spirit of friendship and camaraderie between France and the United States.

Bartholdi’s Early Life

Bartholdi’s General Rapp Statue, now in Colmar, France Poudou99 / aka Kootshisme / CC BY-SA

Bartholdi was from Colmar, France, part of today’s region known as Alsace. His father died when he was young, leaving his mother Charlotte to raise him and his older brother Charles. In 1843 she moved the family to Paris to properly educate her boys. August wasn’t a very good student, but outside of school he studied art with Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, who would later lead the restoration of Notre Dame de Paris.

Bartholdi decided to become a maker of statues, rather than a sculptor. At age 19 he won a third place award for his statue of Napoléon’s General Rapp at the 1855 Paris Universal Exposition. His statue at the entrance to the Palais des Beaux-Arts was too large to fit inside.

The Egyptian Lighthouse

In 1855 Bartholdi traveled to Egypt to collect photographic evidence of historical monuments. Egypt’s art and its people had a deep impact on him. Thus Egypt became his first idea for a monumental work of art.

At the 1867 Paris Universal Exposition, Bartholdi offered the khedive (leader of Egypt), Ismail Pasha, his idea for a monumental Egyptian statue at the port for the Suez Canal, which was then under construction, led by French engineers. His lighthouse statue, portraying a fellah, an indigenous North African slave woman, would have been the tallest statue in the world. Bartholdi’s proposal was never accepted.

Bartholdi’s Decides to go to the United States

After Egypt, Bartholdi needed to find a new theme and a new location for his colossal work of art.

First he was called home to Colmar to fight in the militia in the Franco Prussian War of 1870-71, which France lost. Part of the treaty ending the war called for Alsace to become part of Prussia, so Bartholdi had to decide whether to stay or leave. He ruled out staying in Colmar.

Following the war, there was a civil uprising in Paris by a group called the Paris Commune. Thousands were killed or put in jail to restore order. The government of France owed Prussia billions of francs in war reparations. Bartholdi saw little opportunity so he ruled out going back to Paris.

Thus he decided to go to the United States, and he had a French friend who could help him. In 1865 he created a bust of Edouard René Lefèbvre de Laboulaye, a French jurist and writer. Laboulaye adored America and its ideals, laws, and history, and all the more so after slavery had been abolished. So in 1871 Bartholdi visited Laboulaye again and revealed his hope to build a great work in America. Laboulaye gave him the names of some contacts and suggested that he propose a joint venture between France and the United States. He no doubt also influenced the title and purpose of the work as being “Liberty Enlightening the World”.

Laboulaye would organize the Franco-American Union in 1872, a committee to raise funds for the statue in France. In their first dinner at the Louvre, they raised about 10% of the estimated 400,000 francs needed to build the statue.

Bartholdi’s First Visit to America

When he arrived in New York, Bartholdi wasn’t optimistic about his chance of success. He wrote his mother that he didn’t think the American character was open to things of the imagination.

His sales pitch to those he visited in New York was that in exchange for the Americans providing land and hopefully the base for a statue, he would provide a monument for the 100th anniversary of the American Revolution, 1876. This offer underplayed the American responsibility and oversold France’s knowledge of the project. He also visited Washington, DC and Boston, afterwards taking a tour of American west.

Along his way, Bartholdi met Americans Richard Butler, John LaFarge, and lawyer William M Evarts, who would form a committee to raise funds. He also met the President, Ulysses S Grant, who indicated that a suitable site could be arranged by the government. Bartholdi liked the site at Bedloe’s Island in New York harbor since it stood apart from the tall buildings. He wanted his statue to be in such a prominent location and of such size that it could not be ignored by the public and would become an icon for the city. He thought Americans were too concerned with money, but he liked that they dreamed big.

Design and Construction of the Statue

Wood slatted forms used to shape copper for the statue.

Bartholdi turned to Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who had completed the Notre Dame restoration, for help in construction of La Liberté. They chose the forge of Emile Gaget and JB Gautier in Paris for their iron works. Viollet-le-Duc proposed copper for the statue, with iron bracings for the interior. They began work with a team of about 50 men.

Bartholdi worked on a simple design for the statue, a woman in a stola, the traditional garment for Roman women. For her crown he settled on a rayed diadem. Because the centenary of the Declaration of Independence was only five years away, he put a tablet in one of her hands with July 4, 1776 inscribed on it.

Diorama created by Bartoldi to show measuring and shaping of the plaster forms scaling the smaller head from the 37ft model

The arduous, never-before-tried process of creating the statue started with creating a maquette – a small display version. Bartholdi then created a plaster statue about 7 feet tall. Using careful measurements from this plaster statue, he created a plaster model of 37.75 feet. Workers marked this model with dots to divide it into pieces, then measured carefully, scaling up from the 37 foot model using some 90,000 measurements to create wooden slatted frame slices four times as large. They covered each wood frame with smooth plaster on which they could hammer into shape each piece of the copper skin for the full-sized statue.

Fundraising in France

Hand and torch in Philadelphia New York Public Library / Public domain

In the centennial year of 1876, Bartholdi first arranged a giant banner with the image of his statue in New York’s Madison Square during their 4th of July Parade. The French team shipped the completed Hand of Liberty with Torch from France for the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition at the end of September. Bartholdi raised funds by selling souvenirs and tickets that allowed people to climb up the hand to view out. He realized that people would make donations for the chance to interact with the project.

Bartholdi met with Butler and Evarts to form of a group of businessmen to raise funds in the US for the pedestal. The committee grew to become 400 prominent men, eventually including Teddy Roosevelt. Their hope was that the pedestal would be funded by many small donors.

Army General William Tecumseh Sherman made the decision on behalf of Congress that the statue would be erected on Bedloe’s Island.

Back in Paris in 1877, Bartholdi arranged for Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype, and Jean Baptiste Lavastre, decorator of the Paris Opera, to create a scene in the Palais de l’Industrie where viewers could climb a balustrade and gaze at a panorama of New York harbor. Over top of the harbor rose a gigantic Statue of Liberty with her beacon. Thousands came to pay to see this view. After its run at the Palais, they moved it to the Tuileries, where it would play for two more years.

Head of the Statue of Liberty 1878 Paris Exposition Albert Fernique / Public domain

At the 1878 Paris exposition on the Champ de Mars, Bartholdi revealed the head of the Statue of Liberty. He raised money by charging for photos of New York harbor to those who wanted to climb up inside the head.

Fundraising in France slowed down after that, and finally the Franco-American Union convinced the government to allow a national lottery to raise funds, providing another boost in funding.

Gustav Eiffel Joins the Project

At this critical point, Viollet-le-Duc died unexpectedly. Bartholdi realized that he still had no plan to get Liberty to her feet. He needed an engineering genius to save him and his 151 foot sculpture, so he went to the world’s foremost maker of bridges, Gustav Eiffel.

Eiffel was taciturn about his commitment to the project, but he was intrigued by the technical difficulties. The huge surface area would be buffeted by high winds that could topple the statue into the sea. It had to withstand the extreme temperature changes, so there must be a way for parts to slide to adapt. Lastly, the copper skin would react with sea spray and the iron interior to cause galvanic corrosion. He agreed to complete the construction of the statue, but not the installation on the pedestal.

The Statue is done but the Americans Need Funds

The Americans were making almost no progress in fundraising for the base of the statue. Finally in November, 1881, the American Committee agreed to a campaign soliciting funds from all of the states and setting up a fundraising network in all the major cities.

Meanwhile in France, Bartholdi opened his Paris workshop for visitors. He turned curiosity seekers into subscribers by selling tickets to view the progress of the construction of the statue.

Eiffel’s iron skeleton and the statue towering over the neighborhood

Eiffel conceived of an assembly plan. The rivets would be slightly loose to accommodate the wide temperature variations. Bolts would be hidden on the inside, so they would not show. In the workshop courtyard, workers erected a giant iron skeleton to be inside of the statue. This skeleton would bear all the of weight and provide all of the strength. Eiffel devised an intricate anti-corrosion scheme. Workers wrapped copper pieces in cloth between each pair of joints and rivets.

By January of 1883, the Americans had raised only $70,000 of the estimated $250,000 needed for the base. That summer, Bartholdi wrote the American Committee, informing them that he would temporarily transfer all royalties from his copyright, so that they might raise funds by selling reproductions of his statue. The American committee, which had begun as 400 men, was now whittled down to just three.

In Paris near Parc Monceau one could hear the hammering from blocks away and see a giant statue towering above the 6 story buildings in the neighborhood. You could buy a ticket to visit the statue, entering through the back foot and climbing a staircase up to see the view from the head, or for the daring, continue the climb up the arm to see out of the torch, from where there was a spectacular view of all of Paris. People came in droves. It was enough to finance the statue’s completion.

Liberty was now ready for her passage to America.

America’s Struggle to Complete the Pedestal

General Sherman appointed Charles P Stone to oversee the effort of getting the statue safely in place on Bedloe’s Island. He began his work as Engineer in Chief on April 3, 1883. Stone’s own calculations were that he would have to pour the largest block of cement ever fashioned in order to secure the statue. With 100 workmen, they started in on the task, which required extensive excavation.

Joseph Pulitzer was a newspaperman from St Louis who wanted to move into the New York market. He negotiated to purchase the seedy New York World from Jay Gould, one of the richest men in America. Pulitzer was an advocate for the underdog. He had visited the Paris exposition in 1878 and seen Liberty’s head, met Bartholdi, and found a perfect story to criticize the American rich, since the base was in desperate need of funding and no millionaire was stepping forward. Pulitzer put the statue on the masthead of his newspaper.

President Grant solicited John D Rockefeller to fund the work, but to no avail. By early 1884 the funding situation of the base had become critical.

Richard Morris Hunt, who created the first New York apartment building, became the architect for the pedestal. By November 1883, he had designed a model.

The Link to Immigration

The American Committee organized an art exhibition fundraiser for December 3, 1883. Constance Cary Harrison, a New York socialite, solicited contributions of poems and prose for auction during the exhibition. She asked Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Bret Harte. She also asked her friend Emma Lazarus, a Jewish aristocrat and activist who had previously taken to the plight of the Russian Jewish refugees on Ward’s Island. After first brushing aside the request, Lazarus addressed it, sending her sonnet , The New Colossus, which includes these lines known to many Americans:

Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she

With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

This poem would be one of several factors that turned the meaning of the statue from “liberty enlightening the world” into a symbol of freedom and opportunity for immigrants.

Sealed bids for the pedestal construction came out uniformly astronomical in cost. Materials alone would cost nearly the previously estimated amount for the entire project, $250,000, of which the Americans had raised only $140,000. The New York legislature authorized funds, but Governor Grover Cleveland vetoed them.

On July 4, 1884, the process for handing over the statue started. Laboulaye unfortunately had passed away the year before. Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez Canal, had taken over as chairman of the Franco-American Union.

Pulitzer’s Fundraising Campaign

This lack of American civic pride enraged Joseph Pulitzer, who after some consideration penned an article stating the World would raise funds for the completion of the statue. He offered to print the name of every donor in his paper. It was a savvy plan. There were businesses that would donate every day just to keep their name in the paper for the almost free advertising. After 2 months, the fund for the base still needed $70,000.

The statue arrived in New York on July 17 housed in 220 crates for the passage to America. The captain of the French cargo ship transferred ownership of the statue to General Stone, who still lacked funds to finish the pedestal. As the ship headed towards the Battery at the tip of Manhattan, thousands lined the Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn, as well as the docks in Manhattan, to celebrate the arrival.

At this point, Pulitzer created the first professional fundraising corps in the United States. He discovered that the immigrants were far more appreciative in their donations than the native born. Each day his team of fundraisers would fan out in New York, soliciting funds. Each man was allowed to keep 20% of what he raised. On August 11, 1885, Pulitzer announced that he had raised the required $100,000 to complete the pedestal. There were 120,000 contributors. The target for completion of the statue was July 4, 1886.

Finishing the Pedestal

More funds were needed. Construction estimates were off. By mid-August an informant had accused Stone of incompetence and overspending. Others chimed in to confirm the accusations. On October 20, the American Committee informed Stone that they no longer needed his services after January 1. A French engineer would direct installation of the statue. Despite the loss of his position, Stone stayed on as a volunteer to coordinate non-construction activities of the project.

In November 1885, the work on the pedestal was still not finished. At this point Bartholdi realized that he would need to delay the unveiling until September, to coincide with the anniversary of the Treaty of Versailles (which was the treaty that formally ended the Revolutionary War).

Though the Americans were still short of funds, on April 22, 1886, workers finally put the last stone of the pedestal in place. After much political infighting, the US House of Representatives voted down a bill to complete funding of the statue. There were accusations of scandal and lies. In the end, the Senate slipped in $56,500 in funding, and the President signed the bill. There would be an unveiling after all.

Unveiling the Statue of Liberty

The statue was complete, but almost every preparation for the unveiling was behind schedule. On October 28, it poured rain. Stone stood in uniform, ready to lead a parade of 30,000 in Manhattan. At 10 am President Cleveland and Secretary of State Thomas Bayard arrived to join the festivities, and the group started down 5th Avenue, passing buildings draped in flags and decorations with stars and stripes. There were soldiers, firefighters, flower girls, students, and bricklayers. Pulitzer stood outside his office with a masthead decoration that included the statue in the center. French dignitaries arrived as well. On Wall Street they threw ticker tape out the windows, the first-ever ticker tape parade.

After the parade the visitors headed to boats to go to the unveiling. Two hundred steamers cruised near the island after delivering 2500 guests ashore. When the President arrived, the ceremony began. Ship’s whistles and crowd noise drowned out the prayer. Then de Lesseps spoke and everything quieted down, as if by magic. He said that France and America had only a rivalry of progress. Bartholdi made no remarks. Evarts commenced his speech leading to unveiling the monument while Bartholdi climbed to the statue’s highest point.

Thinking he heard Evart’s signal, Bartholdi released the veil prematurely. Evarts was still in the middle of his speech, pausing as the crowd started cheering. Then the ships offshore rendered the 500 gun salute. Next the crowd sang the national anthems of France and the United States. People wondered what was happening when Evarts continued his speech and addressed the President, finally turning over the statue to the United States. The President accepted the statue, and then Chauncey Depew, a railroad magnate, concluded the ceremony with a speech about Lafayette. All goes well that ends well.

Epilogue

During the project and for some time after, people knew it as Bartholdi’s statue, but over time they would forget the sculptor’s name. People judged Charles P Stone a success because he organized the best parade New York had ever seen. Three years after Liberty’s unveiling, Gustav Eiffel would build his tower in Paris and lay claim to the tallest structure in the world. He would not build anything after that. Both Eiffel and de Lesseps were convicted of crimes (later overturned) in the scandal following the French failure to build the Panama Canal.

Ultimately the Statue of Liberty has become iconic. It represents us, Americans, rather than our bond with France, though we should be mindful from whence it came. Bartholdi acted very much like an American in his quest. He dared, he innovated, he solved many problems, and with the help of other similarly-minded French and Americans, he succeeded. It’s not your typical European story, but it’s very American.

Several copies of the Statue of Liberty, each with a pedigree from the original statue, are on display in Paris. See this slide show for photos and more information, as well as other Bartholdi related statues.

Much of the material for this article comes from this book: Mitchell, Elizabeth. Liberty’s Torch: The Great Adventure to Build the Statue of Liberty, 2015.

Filed Under: History, Sight Seeing

“The Third Man” needed help from Peoria

April 13, 2020 by Hugh Nelson 8 Comments

The Third Man a 1949 film directed by Carol Reed and starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, and Trevor Howard. The screenplay was by Graham Greene.

With current restrictions in Paris on how and why we can leave our apartment, we’ve had to make adjustments in shopping routines, exercise routines, and certainly social routines. For instance, a couple times each week, my wife and I watch a movie together, sort of a date night for people in lockdown. Rather than choosing some trendy TV series to binge-watch, I’ve looked for older, good movies that have passed me by. Recently we watched The Third Man, which was filmed in 1949 in post-war Vienna. Though it was a very popular and successful film, I realized that the plot of The Third Man needed help from Peoria, Illinois, my hometown, or it couldn’t have worked.

First, here is some background. Carol Reed directed the film starring Orson Welles, Joseph Cotten, and Trevor Howard. The screenplay was by Graham Greene. In 1999, the British Film Institute voted The Third Man the greatest British film of all time. An unknown café musician created the award winning musical score using only a zither.

Josefsplatz, Vienna, Austria. They dragged the body to the base of the statue. (Click images to see larger version)

Since we had visited Vienna last fall, I was curious whether we had been to some of the locations filmed in the movie. The answer is yes, but I didn’t know then to take all the right pictures. There are actually Third Man walking tours in Vienna.

The film opens with an American writer named Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten) arriving in town to visit his friend Harry Lime. When Holly goes to his apartment, Harry isn’t there. Turns out that a passing car struck and killed Harry just the day before.

The entrance to Harry’s apartment is just across from Josefsplatz near the Hofburg Palace. Witnesses describe how they dragged Harry over by the base of the statue of Josef II. An American Army Major (Trevor Howard) offers to put Holly up at the Hotel Sacher, which is just across the square from the Albertina Museum. The Café Mozart near the Hotel Sacher is part of the script, but they used another location for the café scenes. During our visit, we passed through a number of the other shooting locations in the old city and along the Ringstrasse. We didn’t go to the cemetery or to the amusement park in the Prater neighborhood across the Danube Canal, both also used for scenes.

Hotel Sacher, which is behind the status across the square from the Albertina Museum

Now for the curious circumstance. Part of the movie’s plot revolved around the black-market sales of diluted penicillin. That there was any post-war penicillin at all in Europe was in large part due to the work of people from Peoria, Illinois.

Between 1837 and 1919, Peoria was the Whiskey Capital of the World. It had everything necessary for the production of whiskey: a plentiful supply of grains, clean and abundant spring water, dependable transportation, and fuel resources (wood and coal). The Great Western Distillery built in the 1880s was then the largest in the world. In 1919, the whiskey business in Peoria stopped because of Prohibition.

After the repeal, a large brewing and distilling industry returned when Hiram Walker and Pabst Brewing resumed operations. They continued in business for many years. In 1940, the Department of Agriculture built Peoria’s Northern Regional Research Laboratory. Being whiskey capital was an important factor in choosing Peoria for this laboratory because distilling and brewing provided natural benefactors and partners for research using corn and wheat in fermentation technology. Beyond its having just the whiskey business, Peoria was chosen “…because of the industry that was here and because of the agriculture commodities that were here and because of its close proximity to the Great Lakes. This was in the heart of agriculture territory.” Nowadays the Laboratory is called the Ag Lab. The broader function of the laboratory is the study and development of new and improved industrial uses for farm products.

In 1928 British bacteriologist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in London. 11 years passed before a group of scientists at Oxford started research to use penicillin to kill bacteria. With the onset of World War II, England turned to the US for help in producing the quantities of penicillin needed for human clinical trials. The US Department of Agriculture chose the new regional lab in Peoria to lead the effort to produce higher penicillin yields because of its expertise in fermentation technologies.

The original penicillin strain could not be cultured in large quantities. To find a more productive strain, the Peoria lab first sent out a world-wide call for penicillin cultures. In response, Army pilots started sending dirt samples from wherever they landed. “Ironically, a strain of penicillium on a moldy cantaloupe from a Peoria market was found to produce the largest amount of penicillin.” Eventually Ag Lab found they could culture penicillin rapidly by submerging the strain in a deep vat using corn steep liquor, a by-product from a process to soften seeds and separate them into various components.

Working with Ag Lab, the USDA completed clinical trials of penicillin in 1943. The production methods and samples developed at Ag Lab were transferred to industry so that manufacturers could produce large quantities of penicillin in time for D-Day. The rapid upscaling of penicillin production was a huge success. It was also a huge step forward in the production of antibiotics and fostering of today’s pharmaceutical industry. Over the years, Ag Lab has touched the world in other ways. For example they created the super absorbent material used in disposable diapers and operating rooms everywhere. Also, they still maintain one of the world’s largest collections of microbes (yeasts, bacteria, fungi, etc.).

Thus, without help from Peoria, The Third Man might not have had any penicillin at all. As for the film, I don’t want to spoil it. You’ll have to watch it yourself.

That was supposed to be the end of this article, but there was another curious twist.

In searching for more information about industry, natural resources, and agriculture in Peoria, I found an old Industrial Resource Survey of Metropolitan Peoria from about 1955. It seemed promising so I started to read it. The author was Francis C. Mergen of Bradley University. Published by the Peoria Association of Commerce, it was the type of pre-internet data that could attract businesses and employees. For those of my readers who are from Peoria, it is a rich history of the city’s companies and manufacturing.

The shock for me was that I knew Dr. Mergen and his family. The Mergens lived a block down the street from us in Peoria. Their son Jerry was my good friend all through grade school and high school. Furthermore, my mother worked with Dr. Mergen in the Industrial Engineering Department at Bradley University. My parents and the Mergens socialized together frequently with other Bradley employees. Unfortunately, Dr. Mergen passed away in 1972. Bradley University offers an annual award in his name for the faculty member whose community service has best extended the impact of the university beyond the reach of the classroom.

I stopped working on this article to search for the Mergen kids and send them their father’s work. I reached Carole, the oldest, in Arizona and sent her the 400 page study. She replied that reading her father’s acknowledgement brought tears to her eyes, such sweet memories. She will forward the study to her brothers and her mom. What an amazing encounter it was for me, for remembering Dr. Mergen and his family brought back my family, our home, our neighborhood, our town, and the experience of growing up.

Filed Under: History, Living, Travel Outside Paris

Need help with sleep – read Balzac

April 8, 2020 by Hugh Nelson 10 Comments

Rodin’s rendition of Balzac, 1897 (click on images to view larger version)

Both in France and in the United States, we seem to be in the worst of the COVID-19 problem now. There are shortages of equipment, rising numbers of deaths and infected, new outbreaks, and no quick fix on the horizon. We continue to be inundated with non-stop news, most of it bad. I’ve discovered that when you need help with sleep, read Balzac!

In France we are hunkered down, except to go outside by ourselves for exercise or to buy food. Still, I don’t sleep so well with all the things beyond my control. It’s not because there is too much noise in the neighborhood. I have dreams about situations that make no sense, problems that can’t be solved. I wake up when it gets too difficult.

Scientists don’t really know why we dream, but one interpretation is that, unlike focused activity like hammering a nail, dreams represent a supremely unfocused state in which our brains make broad, unfocused connections guided by our emotions. If there’s only one strong emotion, the dream is more straightforward, but if there are several conflicting emotions, dreams can be complicated. Dreams are thought to be a way that new material can be woven into our conscious thinking, providing compensation for our waking, perhaps unconscious, problems. I think there is a coronavirus restlessness that comes to bed with me every night. There have been other times like these.

London’s Thames River, Millenium Bridge, Tate Modern on the far shore, restored Globe theater on left (click on photos to see larger version)

From 1348 to 1665 the Black Plague struck London every 20 years or so. Bubonic plague was a disease spread by the bites of fleas from black rats. One of these epidemics struck London in 1604, and they ordered social distancing. Houses with infected people had to hang a bale of straw on a pole for 40 days to warn others. They had a special bell to ring when transporting the dead through the streets to mass graves. There was much suffering with poor treatment options and no known cures, but also there was unexpected good. All the London theaters were closed, and William Shakespeare used his time in lockdown to write Macbeth and King Lear. No wonder that Shakespeare turned to writing tragedies while he was in isolation. Here’s a little background on King Lear.

King Lear

Stage of the rebuilt Globe Theater

In Shakespeare’s King Lear, the King announces to his three daughters that he’s giving up his kingdom and will award it to the one who loves him the most. The first two daughters praise him effusively, and are each awarded a share. The third daughter states that she loves him and that the award of his kingdom will make her love neither more nor less. She is disinherited. A complex story follows, but let it suffice to say that the first two daughters consider the king a fool. Each with her husband sets about trying to take all the power and money for herself. Only the third daughter has true love for her father. The first daughter kills the second, then commits suicide when her betrayal is discovered. The third daughter dies trying to save her father. The King dies of his heartbreak because he loses everything he values.

Le Père Goriot

Looking towards the Pantheon on Rue Tournefort, the neighborhood of Le Père Goriot

When I can’t sleep I’ve been reading Le Père Goriot, a novel by Honoré de Balzac, one of France’s greatest writers. Le Père Goriot is similar in many ways to King Lear. Two daughters take advantage of their father’s love and drive him to financial ruin, all to keep up appearances and improve their social status in the post-Napoleonic Paris of two hundred years ago, when King Louis XVIII (whose brother Louis XVI was beheaded in the Revolution) was brought back to the throne in a constitutional monarchy. It was the first time in France that lower classes had a chance to gain wealth and power and move up in social status.

Our protagonist, a young student named Rastignac, is trying to figure out how to get ahead in his life. He lives with a number of other characters in the run-down pension Vauquer near today’s Pantheon on rue Neuve Saint Genevieve. Today rue Neuve Saint Genevieve is known as rue Tournefort. The steeply sloping part where the house would have been has become rue Lhomond. Balzac’s descriptions of the shoddiness of the pension are legendary. There Rastignac meets Le Père Goriot, a retired vermicellier (pasta maker) whom everyone thinks is a dolt, and also a gregarious man named Vautrin, who seems to know everything about everyone. The ladies boarding at the pension all seem to like him. He pays the servants to let him come and go furtively in the night.

Old houses on the hill rue Lhomond near the fictional Maison Vauquer

At first the women in the pension try to attract Le Père Goriot, since he seems to have lots of money, but he ignores them. They think he pays for two beautiful women who stop by his room from time to time. It turns out these are his daughters, who only come to visit him when they need money. As he runs out of money, he keeps moving into cheaper and cheaper rooms in the pension. Everyone at the pension makes fun of him, but he seems not to notice.

Rastignac has a distant cousin, Madame de Beauséant, who lives in the district Faubourg Saint Germain (the neighborhood on the other side of Invalides from ours). She is wealthy and belongs to that part of society that Rastignac wants to enter. She arranges an invitation for him to attend a ball, and there he meets a beautiful young woman, Madame de Restaud, whom he vows to see again. When he comes home that night, full of hope for his future, he hears his neighbor, Le Père Goriot, working away in his room. Peering through the keyhole, Rastignac sees Goriot winding silver around a sculpted piece with great skill, all the time muttering about his poor child. Rastignac is impressed and realizes that he and others have greatly underestimated Le Père Goriot.

Rastignac goes to visit Madame de Restaud (Anastasie, a countess) at her house on Rue du Helder, east of the Paris Opera. He walks, muddying his boots along the way. The countess isn’t expecting him, and she makes him wait. While waiting he unexpectedly sees Le Père Goriot departing via the servant’s entrance. He meets another young man, beautifully attired, named Maxime de Trailles. He turns out to be Madame de Restaud’s lover. Then he meets Count de Restaud, her husband. They exchange pleasantries. When Rastignac mentions that he knows Le Père Goriot, the others become angry. He is shown the door. The Count informs the servants to never again present him at their home.

Rastignac realizes he needs to up his game. He visits his cousin Madame de Beauséant for advice. She says that to succeed he will need to have a hard heart, to never show his emotions, to guard against ever letting a woman know he loves her. The way to get the attention of Anastasie is to become companion to her sister, Delphine, wife of Baron de Nucingen. Delphine is unhappy and trying to attract attention. The two sisters are rivals and enemies. Despite her cold blooded advice, secretly Madame de Beauséant has a broken heart because her lover, a marquis, is leaving her to marry another woman.

Rastignac writes his mother and his sisters, asking to borrow money, which they send to him even though they are poor. He buys beautiful clothes to fit in with his newfound lifestyle. He meets Delphine at a ball. She is troubled and in debt, so he risks his money at a casino and wins enough to pay what she owes. She loves him. They date, for lack of a better word. Time passes, and she becomes more critical of him. He loses money gambling and is almost out of funds. He is in at the end of his wits.

One night at dinner, Vautrin approaches him with advice. First, he needs to be hard hearted, but also that this pursuit is fruitless. He suggests a more lucrative approach. There is another resident at the pension, Victorine Tallefer, whose father has millions, but who denies it all to her in favor of her brother. She is in despair because of her poverty. Vautrin proposes that he arrange to have the brother killed in a duel, thus the father’s fortune will pass to Victorine. Rastignac could move in and instantly become part of the fortune. Vautrin desires to make a contract that would pay him two hundred thousand francs for his services, a small price for Rastignac to achieve everything he wants.

The moral contradiction is too much for Rastignac, and he declines. Still he cozies up to Victorine, who seems to like him. That night at dinner, Vautrin offers some wine to both Rastignac and Le Père Goriot, who has also become Rastignac’s confident. He has spiked the wine with something, and they both fall asleep. When they awaken, they find out that someone killed Victorine’s brother in a duel, and that she has departed to be with her father.

Another man and woman living at the pension, who seem to be amorous, meet secretly with a police detective in the Jardin de Plantes. The detective says that he thinks Vautrin is a wanted criminal who has escaped from prison. There is a substantial reward for his capture. He gives them a potion to slip into Vautrin’s drink. It will put him to sleep so they can identify if he has the prison tattoo on his arm. They drug Vautrin and discover that he is indeed this criminal. The police arrest Vautrin and lead him away. Others at the pension condemn the couple for denouncing him and force them to leave. The landlord, Madame Vauquer, bemoans her loss as her tenants depart for new apartments.

Le Père Goriot tells Rastignac that in spite of appearances, his daughter Delphine loves him dearly. Goriot has purchased for them a flat where they can get away together. Delphine sends him a love letter promising a bright future. Rastignac meets her at the new place, and sees that all is as arranged, though Delphine will continue to live with the Baron and only visit from time to time. Anastasie has come to her father with a sorrowful tale of the debts of her lover, which her husband insists that she pay. Le Père Goriot gives her his nearly exhausted funds to pay her debts.

Meanwhile Madame de Beauséant has invited everyone to a grand ball at her mansion. Her secret plan is to leave Paris and escape her failed love life, never to return. Both of Le Père Goriot’s daughters will be there. He has given up the last of his funds to buy a dress for Delphine. Anastasie will wear her husband’s family diamonds for the last time, since she has promised them to pay the gambling debts of her lover. Le Père Goriot, realizing he has nothing left to offer his daughters, has a stroke and is dying in his room. He is crazy, both expressing love for his daughters and remorse at the heartless way they have treated him. Rastignac remains behind to tend to Le Père Goriot with another tenant, a medical student.

Rastignac reaches out repeatedly for the daughters to come to the side of their dying father, but neither responds. He receives a menacing note from Delphine that he better accompany her to the ball or else. Finally he goes, and it is a grand affair. Afterwards, the daughters go home and are preoccupied with sleeping and explaining their debts to their husbands. Rastignac returns to the side of Le Père Goriot, remaining there until he expires.

Anastasie stops by briefly after her father is dead to express her love and her guilt, then departs. Delphine never shows. Rastignac uses the last of his own funds to arrange a funeral and burial. He must borrow money to tip the grave diggers. At the end of his ordeal, he sheds the last tear of his youth. Now understanding the game, Rastignac declares, “It’s just the two of us two now.” He departs to have dinner with Delphine, who will become his doorway to enter French high society.

This is the last remaining of Balzac’s many residences. He lived here in Passy for 7 years. Now it’s the Balzac Museum.

Honoré de Balzac

Between about 1830 and 1850 Balzac wrote prolifically, producing more than 100 works including books, plays, novellas, short stories, and poems. Le Père Goriot is one of the most important books in Balzac’s series Le Comédie Humaine . In this series of publications, he attempted to provide an all-encompassing description of Parisian society.

The many characters from Le Comédie Humaine with a graph showing their complex interrelations between different books

His masterpiece was a unique contribution to the literary craft. His employment of realism and highly descriptive details, not to mention scandalous subjects, would influence fiction for generations to come. He also started reusing the same characters in different novels at different stages in the character’s lives, a unique method that created a web that give life to Le Comédie Humaine.

His characters are complex people, having both good and bad qualities. Rodin’s sculpture of Balzac, created nearly 50 years after his death, is less a likeness than a monument to his creativity and spirit. Balzac was a man who failed in many things before realizing his great success as a writer. His work and his characters reflect many of his own experiences.

Improving my sleep

My early struggles to read Le Père Goriot in print.

I owe a lot to Balzac. Reading Le Père Goriot (in French) was hard work. First I tried the audio book – too hard. Then I bought the paperback – difficult and time consuming. Then I took some months off to read Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and all of the Harry Potter series. Finally I started Le Père Goriot again on my Kindle. Better this time, but still not easy. It was the perfect antidote to coronavirus restlessness, making me weary and allowing me to fall back to sleep.

I hope I’m receiving compensating effects from my dreams. They seem to be affirming that there’s not much I can do but wait. On a hopeful note, you know that there are a lot of efforts to combat the virus that are farther along than we think, whether they be to manufacture and distribute masks or ventilators or plastic suits, to develop better testing for the virus, or to make progress towards a medicine or trial vaccine. Both in France and US we are nearing a peak in the number of deaths and new cases. We hope that the number of serious cases remains within our capacity for medical treatment. In another week we’ll find out new developments in all these areas. In the meantime, stay away from others and keep washing your hands.

But there’s a missing piece. Many of us are isolated away from family and friends. With whom can we share this anxiety?

Every night at 8pm, Parisians open their windows to applaud our healthcare workers for their tireless efforts in combatting the virus. Besides the applause we hear bells, whistles, shouts, and sometimes singing. A recent article in Le Figaro found that some doctors are indifferent to this showing of gratitude. It’s hard to feel it when you aren’t there. A sociologist said that these displays of support are really for ourselves, to show solidarity in our isolation. We hardly know our neighbors, much less the people across the street, but in this cause we are all together.

John Donne said it best: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main…. Any man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Any therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Filed Under: History, Sight Seeing

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

March 23, 2020 by Hugh Nelson 22 Comments

Plaza Fernandez de Madrid, Cartagena, Colombia

Photo from Plaza Fernandez de Madrid, where parts of the movie _Love in the Time of Cholera_ were filmed. This square also contained the cisterns for Cartagene’s water supply, fitting since cholera spreads through contaminated water.

Much of the news each day is devoted to describing problems with a new coronavirus, COVID-19, which has been spreading over the world since the beginning of 2020. Typically people try to ignore it, hoping it will go away. Then suddenly it sweeps through in a terrifying manner, and there is panic. Governments are left with an impossible situation, trying to protect their population while at the same time keeping an economy running so that businesses and people don’t go bankrupt. It’s a kind of a love story, where the girl must choose between two suitors she loves, hoping to choose one without hurting the other.

There were six world cholera pandemics in the 19th century. The third pandemic brought the disease to South America in the mid-1800s. In February, when COVID-19 was just starting to spread in China, we were on vacation in Cartagena, Colombia (South America), home of Gabriel García Márquez, the famous Colombian author. He wrote Love in the Time of Cholera, a story spanning the period from about 1880 to 1930 that follows the lives of two main characters, Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino, a passionate, artistic man, is struck by love at his first sight of Fermina. She is swept up by the same longing for him. Fermina’s father won’t allow her to see Florentino, and the family moves away to keep her at a distance from him. Still the couple exchange love letters.

The family eventually returns home. There, a third character, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina when he is called to examine whether she has cholera. The doctor verifies her good health and starts to court her, much to the liking of her father. The doctor has become rich and famous after ridding the town of cholera. He is a logical thinker who is driven to find fame and success.

Dr Urbino proposes to Fermina, and she rationalizes that, as much as she loves Florentino, she really hasn’t spent much time with him. She makes the logical choice is to marry the Doctor. Thus they are wed.

Florentino is disconsolate and swears his undying love for Fermina, despite being rejected as her suitor. In French en colère means angry; Florentino is choleric. He realizes he can somewhat ease his emotional pain by having trysts, so he starts to keep count of the number of his affairs. Sometimes he has fun. Sometimes there are terrible consequences. He never marries.

Meanwhile Fermina and Dr Urbino raise a family, have a comfortable life, and are widely respected in the community. Yet they have disputes, and the doctor is unfaithful. Like in any marriage, life is less than perfect. Years pass by, everyone grows old. One day Dr. Urbino falls off a ladder and dies. As soon as the funeral is over, Florentino appears before Fermina to again court her. She repulses him, but he is persistent. He has become head of a river transport company and is himself successful. She eventually gives in, and they settle together in old age.

This love story is a kind of dance between the three characters, and likewise, treating a pandemic is also a kind of dance until there is a vaccine to protect people from it. The city of Paris has a long history with vaccines, starting with cholera.

Large monument to Louis Pasteur at Place de Breteuil, Paris (click on photos to see larger version)

A cholera vaccine for chickens was first discovered almost by accident in 1879 by Louis Pasteur, a microbiologist here in Paris. He was the first to understand the concept of a vaccine. He also made important discoveries in wine fermentation, inventing the process known today as pasteurization, widely used to preserve milk, wine, and other foods. Pasteur invented the vaccines for rabies and anthrax. I got my last cholera shot at the Pasteur Institute, which he founded and where he is buried. The search for a new vaccine is important to our story.

Love in the time of Coronavirus is perhaps just as intriguing as Love in the Time of Cholera. The government of every country on earth is faced with an impossible situation involving two things it loves. One, the economy, provides the means to live for everyone in the country (as well as for the government), but the economy requires a great deal of interaction between people. The other love, the people themselves, is threatened by a disease that will infect and kill many of them should they work to make the economy successful. Governments faced with this dilemma have chosen so far to protect the people, but it is killing their economies, perhaps promising financial and employment losses greater than any we have seen in our lifetimes.

Paris Marché Saxe with police patrols and places marked to indicate where to stand in line.

Here in Paris we are under a pretty strict protocol. We can’t meet with anyone. There is no getting together with other family or friends. This is central to limiting the spread of the disease. No one knows who is infected. We can only go out to the grocery store or the pharmacy or the doctor or for exercise by ourselves (which still allows walking the dog should you have one). Access to stores is controlled to limit the number of people inside. There is a line at the door. At the outdoor markets, there are marks on the ground by the vendor stalls to keep people waiting in line at least one meter apart.

The French have issued a form that you must carry to show the police that you are outside for an authorized purpose. Your actions need to conform to your stated purpose. Parks and monument areas are off limits, even for those who want to exercise. People have been instructed to limit outdoor trips to a 2km radius from home. I was checked for my form and activities by a police patrol on Saturday. They forbid me to cross the Champ de Mars on my way to the grocery store. We wash our hands every time we come back in the apartment. We disinfect reusable bags after getting groceries.

I run alone regularly and go to the store for necessities. Otherwise I am here in the apartment. It’s not really a problem since I have plenty to do, study French, listen to audio books or read (in French and English), work on the Poulsbo Rotary web site, on home office projects I’ve been neglecting, and on keeping up with friends and family via FaceBook, e-mail, etc. Brenda does much the same. She goes to the outdoor markets. She also has a video workout session each week via FaceTime with her fitness trainer, as well as other fitness workouts from the internet. We’ve been scheduling movie rentals to have a date night that we can look forward to. The food in France is still excellent, and Brenda is a fantastic cook. We are not suffering.

I attended a Poulsbo Rotary Club online meeting using Zoom, a teleconferencing Web site and app. The meeting was really quite effective. Applications like Zoom could meet many needs as group congregations continue to be banned in the coming months.

Every night at 8pm, Parisians open their windows and applaud our healthcare workers for their efforts in combatting the virus. In my mind we extend these thanks to the police, rescue workers, sanitation workers, delivery personnel, and everyone else who still goes to work each day to supply the public with life’s essentials.

You can think of COVID-19 as an iceberg – what you see is only a fraction of what there is. When you try to calculate how fast the virus is spreading, you must make assumptions about the huge number of the already infected that you don’t officially know about. Many infected don’t ever have symptoms but can still spread the disease. I made an estimate of the growth of known active cases using assumptions from an article by Thomas Pueyo. Based on what is known now, the true number of active cases must be much greater than the number of known cases. Social distancing is necessary to slow the real (unknown) number of new active cases so that the known active cases, accounting for recoveries and deaths, can remain within the capacity of the medical establishment. If you can make the number of known active cases go down, you can be sure that the number of unknown cases is reducing by an even greater number.

Known active COVID-19 cases in France and the US vs theoretical exponential rise as of 22 March

I have been plotting the number of known active cases in France and in the US versus the predicted exponential growth of known cases using Pueyo’s original assumptions. As you can see, the curve of active cases in both countries appears to be diverging from the predicted exponential rise if there were no controls. However, the rise in the US is still troubling.

A more recent article from Thomas Pueyo exhorts the US to do more now and outlines some ways to proceed once the initial surge of cases has flattened. Though the time to flatten the initial peak can be as short as a month with strict social distancing, the course of the recovery may be much longer, perhaps 18 months with some lesser social distancing measures still in place. Brace for big changes in how we interact socially.

Social distancing is a temporary strategy to buy time, not a fix, and will be financially devastating if it continues for a long time. Strict social distancing now will shorten the time of economic devastation. How can the government give some attention to her other love, the economy? We need to figure out how to test everyone rapidly and easily. Who has COVID-19, who doesn’t, and who has recovered and is now immune? Once we know this, we can figure out how to get people back to work.

Besides universal testing, we should consider other strategies:

Use of drugs already approved for another purpose, such as hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, in combination with azithromycin, to lessen the effects and shorten the recovery time. French doctors are having success when starting treatment before severe effects take hold.
Use of a cell phone app or other means that identifies everyone with the virus and is able to track with whom they have had recent interactions. This method has been used successfully in South Korea and China. There may be privacy concerns with doing this in the west.
Isolating everyone over age 65 and sending everyone else back to work. This could still expose millions of younger people to deadly consequences, and isolating the elderly will be difficult to control.
Development of a vaccine – they say it will take 18 months.

Our leaders should insist that the bureaucracy act urgently to evaluate treatments that mitigate the disease or to evaluate for approval any proposed vaccine. These are tricky processes that require care so as not to do further harm, but stopping the spread and protecting those most vulnerable is urgent. We need a revolution in reviewing and approving solutions or many many will die.

As is apparent, the plot of Love in the time of Coronavirus is still under development. I’m confident that a world working furiously to solve these problems will be able to produce unexpected solutions. I ask you to practice strict social distancing, even if not yet mandated by your local or federal government. Keep your distance from others outside of your home. A lot is at stake here.

Filed Under: History, Living

A Tale of Two Cities – Part 1

January 29, 2020 by Hugh Nelson 10 Comments

The Bastille is long gone, remembered only in the pavers that outline the building walls crossing the square. The city gate to the Faubourg would have been behind the bicycle at left. (Click photos to enlarge.)

I’m reading Charles Dickens’s novel, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in French. It is a story of London and Paris before and after the French Revolution. I’m only part way through, and not sure I understand everything that is happening. Here is what I know so far. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to pick up the book.

Our story starts with a banker (Jarvis Lorry) traveling by stagecoach from London to the English coast. It’s dark and cold and everyone is afraid of thieves who rob stagecoaches along this route all the time. Their coach fights up the hills through the mud. The horses are exhausted. A stranger appears along the road. Guns are cocked. He has only a message for the banker. He is to meet someone at Dover. The banker hopes the others in the coach were asleep.

At Dover the banker meets a young woman (Lucie Manette – about 18 years old). She is very afraid of her circumstances, and the banker keeps trying to convince her that it’s only business and she just needs to trust in the logic. They take a ship to Calais, in France, and then proceed somehow to Paris.

They show up at a bar in the neighborhood of today’s Faubourg Saint Antoine, just outside the city gate near the Bastille. The bartender, Mr. Defarge, leads them to a room upstairs where there is a man working diligently to make shoes. He doesn’t notice them as he keeps at his work. He has been imprisoned for a long time in France and seems to have lost his mind. The bartender and the banker try to approach him without any apparent success, while the young woman hangs back in fear. Then she comes to the front, comforts the man, her father, and after some time easing his pain, they all depart for England.

Back in London, there is a trial for a man accused of treason, Charles Darnay. He calmly awaits his fate. The punishment for conviction is death by the most horrible means – body separated into many parts. The King has a prosecutor and a couple of witnesses. They, upon questioning, appear to be witnesses for hire who say what the Crown wants them to say. There is a jury. Two other witnesses are the rescued prisoner, Dr Manette, and his daughter Lucie. It seems that they were on the ship and the stagecoach from Calais to London with the accused. They don’t seem to remember anything incriminating, but the crowd of onlookers is stuck by the image of rapport and consolation given the accused from these witnesses. There ensues a story of the two lawyers for the defense, the lion and the jackal so to speak. One is competent, the other is drunk and pitiful, but they compliment each other in their results. Ultimately Charles Darnay is acquitted and spared his life.

Years later, in London, Dr Manette lives in a peaceful house in Soho, shaded by a plaine tree. He has recovered (supported by the constant attention of his daughter) many of his previous faculties, but he is still haunted by the nightmares of prison. Occasionally he paces, but his daughter Lucie sees him through it. His shoe making bench sits in the corner of his bedroom. The banker, the lawyers, and even Charles Darnay are all visitors at their home.

Typical street in Faubourg Saint Antoine as it might have been (sans street art) in 1780

The story shifts to Paris. There is a Monseigneur (a French nobleman of considerable wealth and power) whose day’s success or failure is determined by the quality of the service of his breakfast chocolate by his four servants. He has no idea or consideration for the lives of common people, who exist only to serve him. In the neighborhood Saint Antoine in Paris, there is another, similar minded aristocrat, the Marquis St. Evrémonde. The Marquis stands in line that morning for a long time hoping for an audience with the Monseigneur, and then departs Paris in a fury at being ignored.

The Marquis’s carriage runs down and kills the son of a man named Gaspard as the carriage races through the streets of Faubourg Saint Antoine. The hard-hearted Marquis offers Gaspard a coin for his trouble. Mr. Defarge, the bartender whose business is nearby, comforts Gaspard. The Marquis also gives him a coin for his trouble, The bartender hurls it back into the carriage as it speeds away.

The Marquis is absolutely convinced that his success depends upon his keeping the lowly people in their place. He takes his entourage to the countryside, where he has a château. Along the way he passes through a town where folks are gathered around a fountain. There are many stories and mentions of the Marquis. He recognizes in the town near the fountain a road mender whom he also saw earlier along his route through the countryside. The man asks him about the people in chains beneath his carriage. I don’t understand this part. Are these people being dragged along or are they hitching a ride (or neither)?

Upon his arrival at the Chateau, the Marquis is informed that a guest is expected that evening. Eventually they meet – it is his nephew, who uses the fictional name Charles Darnay. They dine together. The nephew says that his uncle needs to change his attitude towards the people, but the uncle says that it cannot be done. The nephew, who is also to be the heir of his uncle’s estate, renounces his claim to his inheritance. He sets out for London. That night, someone stabs the Marquis to death in his sleep.

Back in London, Charles Darnay realizes that he is in love with Lucie Manette. He approaches her father to reveal his love and to assure the doctor that above all else, he wishes that the close relations between the doctor and his daughter continue. He asks the doctor’s blessing, and offers to reveal the truth about his name. The doctor demurs. It will remain a mystery until the marriage. Meanwhile the lion lawyer decides that he must marry Lucie. He tells the jackal that he would be advised to get married too, should he ever be able to find someone compatible. Then he sets out to announce to Lucie his intentions, but along the way he stops by Tellson’s bank to see his friend Jarvis Lorry. After the lion announces his plan, the banker tells him he would be a fool to ask for the hand of Lucie. Though completely incensed, the lawyer accepts this analysis that his plans would certainly fail, and withdraws. After all, there must be better fish in the sea for someone with his impeccable qualities.

Meanwhile, his jackal failed partner visits Lucie and tells her what a failure his is. She responds with compassion and tries to inspire him. It’s an interesting exchange, and you wonder where it is going when it ends.

The scene shifts back to Paris. The bartender from Saint Antoine, Mr. Defarge, and his wife operate together a secret society aimed at overthrowing the King. She knits all the information that they discover into meaningless pieces of clothing. They don’t know if revolution will happen in their lifetimes, thus they play for the long term. Today, there is a man from the countryside who comes to the bar (the road mender). The bartender takes him upstairs to a private room to ask him to tell his story to himself and several friends, all named Jacques. The stranger tells of seeing a tall man named Gaspard, who was dragged through the village and taken to the prison. Horrible things had been done to him, and he was executed for killing the Marquis.

Restaurant Gaspard à la Nuit in the Marais near the Bastille.

I’m eating the other day at a restaurant in the Marais near rue Saint Antoine. On my way home, I pass a restaurant named Gaspard’s. I think I’m really on to something. I’m at ground zero for A Tale of Two Cities. After all, the Bastille was just a block away – that must have been the Doctor’s prison. The restaurant is La Gaspard de la Nuit. I think maybe we ate there one time – just to add to the intrigue.

I check out Gaspard de la Nuit on Google. The original reference is a poem by Aloysius Bertrand in the 1830’s. Gaspard is a man who lends another a book. When the borrower attempts to return the book, he finds that the lender is the devil. In 1908 Maurice Ravel turned this idea into one of the most difficult pieces ever for piano, La Gaspard de la Nuit. I haven’t determined why the restaurant chose that name, but I doubt is has anything to do with the tall man executed for killing the Marquis. Funny how we think we’re on to something, mais no.

Our adventure with the Tale of Two Cities will continue…

Filed Under: History

A Song of Egypt

March 9, 2019 by Hugh Nelson 9 Comments

Five of us traveled together from Paris – me, Brenda, Cat, Jacques, and Betty. (Click on any photo to enlarge)

Every morning at our hotel by the Red Sea the guy making eggs would hum a little song. It was a happy song, though I had never heard the tune. It was always the same. He was always happy, cooking eggs, humming a song of Egypt.

I would never have chosen to travel to Egypt on my own, yet luckily I have friends who see the world differently. Our French friend Cat heard from her friends that Egypt was a great vacation experience and that the fear of terrorist attacks that had seriously affected tourism had subsided. She pushed for us to go there on a winter vacation, and thus it came to pass.

Egypt is so old. Go back a thousand years in our history to the beginnings of France and England. Continue back another thousand to the beginning of Christianity. Keep going back 300 more years, to the end of the Greeks and also the end of the Egyptian Pharaohs. Finally go back 2700 more years to the beginning of recorded Egyptian history (3000 BC), though the culture had no doubt been preparing itself for several hundred years before that time. The reign of Egyptian Pharaohs endured far longer than has our western culture.

Several women with their animals showed up at our first rest stop to earn money by posing for photos.

Yet there is a modern day Egypt. 100 million people live there, 90% Muslim, 10% Coptic Christian (Coptic is a Greek word meaning Egyptian). The population is poor by western standards, yet richer than you would think in terms of material possessions, health care, infant survival, and many other measures of the quality of life (see the short video clip below). Tourism is the largest component of their economy. Despite perceptions, our guide told us that Christians and Muslims get along, that the culture is centered on the family and is traditional to a far greater extent than we accept today in the west. Another guide talked about the principles of Islam, the difficulty of remaining celibate until marriage, which typically for men is in their 30s and for women in their mid 20s. Religious law still prescribes death for the woman who becomes pregnant before marriage. Very unsettling for westerners.

Travel to Egypt

Travel to Egypt was harsh. Our flight on FlyEgypt Air was spartan – they serve free water, and the seats do not recline. People were packed in like sardines. Our flight from Paris to Hurghada, halfway down the country along the Red Sea, was delayed 3 hours, resulting in our spending a night in a hotel on the Red Sea coast before arriving at our Nile cruise boat. We were late to bed and set out early the next morning by bus for the Nile. All slack was removed from our tour schedule because of that delay.

On the Nile River proceeding south from Luxor

Still, once aboard our boat on the Nile, everything was sublime. It was a fine hotel. The weather was mid 70s (25°C) and sunny. There was a gentle breeze. We spent a week cruising down the Nile, starting at Luxor (Thebes in ancient times), going to Aswan (where Egypt twice has built a dam to contain the flooding of the Nile), and then returning to Luxor. We went on a number of tours along the way to see the temples at Kom Ombo, the Temple of Isis on the Island of Philae, Abu Simbel, Esna, Karnak, Luxor, some tombs at the Valley of the Kings, and other tourist activities.

When we weren’t on tour, the boat was underway, and we were enjoying the sun and perfect weather while watching and listening to the sounds on the banks of the Nile as we passed by. While at Aswan, we ventured further south by bus to near the border of Sudan to see the ancient temples at Abu Simbel. These were moved in a giant engineering project of the ’60s to prevent permanent immersion beneath Lake Nasser when the High Aswan dam was built.

Mina, with the umbrella, was our guide and leader.

Our tour guide, Mina, was terrific. He spoke slow and grammatically correct French, which was perfect for us amateurs. Did I mention that only French and German were spoken on our boat? We fell in with our French group (18 total) and benefited from a concentrated course in French conversation. By the end of the trip we were all friends. We had mostly late nights and early mornings to make our tour schedule, and after a week of cruising and touring Egyptian antiquities, most of us were tired.

To get over being worn out from touring, we spent a second week in a quiet all-inclusive hotel along the Red Sea at Safaga. This area primarily attracts diving enthusiasts because of the ample sea life in the off shore reefs. For us it was a chance to relax and enjoy the sunny winter weather. Starting in 2008 there was a push to develop the Red Sea coast for tourism, but unfortunately an economic downturn in 2011 stopped many of these projects, leaving half finished buildings along the way.

Touring out in town – security concerns

Brenda poses with one of the security guards at Abu Simbel. He has us covered.

Security is still a concern. One day we ventured to the busier tourist area of Hurghada to the north. The city sprawls with hotels and unfinished development. We visited a mosque, a Coptic Christian church, and a mall with various shops selling Egyptian goods that might appeal to tourists. The mosque was fenced and guarded at the boundaries. Women had to don chadors, the body and head coverings traditional for muslim women. The street in front of the Coptic church was barricaded, and there was security at the entry. We could not visit the local marketplace, the souq, because there had been too many problems with theft and pickpocketing. Our boat and hotel had tight security and armed guards. A couple times we had an armed guard on the bus with us.

One morning in Luxor Brenda and I escaped our net of tourist security and went into the town unguided. We set out to walk from our boat to the Luxor Museum, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) to the north. As with every trip into the public, even with guides, we were immediately accosted by people wanting to sell us stuff – scarves, taxi rides, carriage rides. First they greet you – “hello, where are you from? Parlez vous français?” After establishing a language, they make low price offers. As we walked along a man was trotting in his carriage beside me, offering a ride at various prices. “Non merci”, I kept saying to him and to the many others who approached. One always must negotiate price; nothing is ever as first announced. It’s a tricky game that we don’t play well.

Brenda and Mr Sisi

Finally, after perhaps 4 kilometers we were approached by a man in bluejeans and a blue working shirt. He said his name was Mr Sisi and that he worked at the Tourist Bureau, that no one would bother us when he was around. Mr Sisi spoke the best English of anyone we met in our travel to Egypt. He told us he met his wife in Minnesota when he lived in the US, and that he spoke 6 different languages. Then he told us what a rip off it is to go to tourist shops with our guide, who probably gets a portion of whatever is sold, adding that he knew of a market where the prices were fair and a portion of the proceeds would go to benefit the children.

I asked if he wasn’t actually the President of Egypt (whose name is el-Sisi). He said no, he didn’t have time for that. He mentioned that the Luxor Museum only takes Egyptian pounds for entry fees. We only had Euros and a credit card.

He led us over to see his market, and eventually we found ourselves sitting in front of Mr George, who was a jeweler. He showed us movies of himself and his son making jewelry in their family business. Brenda found a piece she liked, and he told us the story of it. He quoted an enormous price, which we did not agree to. He kept talking about it. Since we were friends of Mr Sisi, he could reduce the price by 40%. Because we were his first customer of the day, he could reduce by another amount. Since he liked us, he could come down some more. Eventually he offered a price that was about 20% of the original price. We agreed to this amount and paid.

I’m sure we still overpaid, but it was quite an adventure. We lost interest in going to the museum and decided to head back to the boat. Mr Sisi, true to his every word, made all arrangements for us. I gave him a tip for all his hard work.

Learning to Appreciate Egyptian Art and History

Temple of Khnum at Esna. King with queens of upper and lower Egypt approaching temple to honor Amun-Ra. This part built by Romans/Greeks about 150 BC.

On vacation I had the sense that what was in my guide book plus what I learned about ancient Egypt during our tours didn’t prepare me to appreciate the scope of what we had seen. Entering a tomb or temple with hundreds of hieroglyphs and art works provides an overwhelming experience of the very ancient art and the enormity of effort to construct these monumental works. I found myself asking what all this was about and why. So I bought a book on Egyptian Art. Though I still don’t know much, here’s a little more.

The Great Pyramids, the Sphinx, and the wonderful Cairo museum, as well as many ruins, are in the heavily populated north of the country. However, the temples and tombs of the New Kingdom at Thebes (1500 – 1100 BC) and further south are better preserved and offer a better way to appreciate how the tombs and temples were arranged in relation to the settlements, not to mention the opportunity of cruising the Nile, seeing the Aswan Dam developments, several later temples built under control of the Greeks, and the magnificent restoration of Abu Simbel almost at the border of Sudan.

Ramses III making an offering to Osiris and Isis, 1150 BC

What is most striking is that the mythology, the artwork, the design of temples and tombs, and the basic organization of society hardly changed over the entire 3000 years of ancient Egypt. The temples and tombs and gods and goddesses of the Old Kingdom (3100 to 2100 BC) and the Middle Kingdom (2000 to 1650 BC) were like those of the New Kingdom and even like the temples built under Greek rule after 331 BC. Admittedly the tombs changed from pyramid design to underground structures, but the elements of design, the gods represented in typical art works, and the traditions of burial were not significantly different.

Two elements assisted in maintaining this incredibly stable society. One was the agricultural wonder of the Nile valley, where spring rains overflowed the banks and revitalized the desert soil every year, making crop production much easier than in other parts of the world. The second was a creation myth that explained that even before there was humanity, fundamental principles governed our world, not just principles of physics and mathematics but also of authority and morality. Everything a person might seek or need in his life had already been given.

Ceiling above the sarcophagus of one tomb shows Nut, the sky goddess and Osiris mother, held up by Shu, her father who separates the sky from the earth. Nut swallows the sun each night and gives birth to it each morning.

Before humanity, the Creator had made Osiris along with his brother Seth and sister Isis. Osiris was created as the first king and the first mortal. Seth, a force of chaos and rebellion, murdered Osiris and cut his body into pieces, distributing them all over Egypt. Isis, the mother figure, put the pieces of Osiris back together, wrapping his body in linen, and brought him back to life, the first to be mummified and then reborn into the next life. She also bore Osiris’s son, named Horus, who became the successor as king. Horus defeated Seth and his powers of disruption, and the stable Egypt was born. Every king is a descendant of Horus with authority that was spiritual and universal rather than political. Each new king buried his predecessor in a tomb, a monumental interpretation of his palace, and provided offerings for the late king as if for a god. ¹

The Creator-given fundamental principles of authority, morality, mathematics, and physics created the fate of not only the pharaoh, but also every Egyptian. Every Egyptian was to seek to bring his life and expectations in line with the truth of what had been given by the Creator. In doing so, each could assure his or her perfect rebirth into life after death.²

Karnak Temple, Luxor, Statues of Ramses II and Great hypostyle Hall, about 1250 BC, looking south along the path towards towards Luxor Temple.

Unlike anywhere else in that era (Mesopotamia excepted), Egypt could produce enough food so that a portion of society didn’t need to farm. Egyptians organized society to use the crops as the taxes paid to the pharaoh, who in turn used the taxes to support an enormous cultural effort to honor the gods, the kings as they passed to the next life, and to a lesser extent other officials deserving recognition for their contributions in helping society honor the Truth.

This was an enormous collective effort, farming, harvesting, moving the crops to storage, building communities and training artists to build temples and tombs, providing the resources to feed and house them, gathering and transporting the materials of construction, designing and building the structures, and planning and accounting for the materials and resources to accomplish the goals of the pharaoh. ³

Entrance to Luxor Temple. Twin of the Obelisk (about 1250 BC) shown rests at Place de la Concord, Paris, a gift to France in 1830. During the inundation festival, statues of the gods would sail here from Karnak to greet the god Amun-Ra.

The king must have spent much of his time traveling from temple to temple celebrating festival after festival away from his grand residence. The New Kingdom pharaoh was, as with the earliest of pharaohs, as much a figure in social and religious ceremonies as he was the central figure of government. Thebes was designed to accommodate the festival routes of Amun-Ra. North and South there were the temples of Karnak and Luxor, and between them was a sphinx-lined causeway running parallel to the river. Karnak also had a second axis east and west to celebrate the dry season through a festival from Karnak to the king’s mortuary temples near the Valley of the Kings. The Temple of Hatshepsut remains mostly intact, the lone remaining mortuary temple.

Ancient Egyptian art belongs in sacred, contemplative contexts, especially in temples and tombs that became places of offering. The act of making the art was an important part of Egyptian culture. Much of what was created was never intended to be seen. The art seeks to illustrate the perpetual and eternal. Egyptian art is intended to seem clear, familiar, and human. At the same time it is quite abstract and symbolic. It expresses abstract ideas in many different ways through iconography, relative size of figures, and texts. ⁴

The Colossi of Memnon were statues at the entrance to the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III, 1352 BC, the largest of the temples in the dry season procession from Karnak west to the mortuary temples of the kings.

The artist puts more stock in presenting recognizable characters and their interaction than in creating realistic representations of the world as it appears to the eye. The artist gives the gods human characteristics and the power of speech. He employs standard forms and poses with stock clothes and regalia. The artist organizes and divides the composition into distinct areas of information. The arrangements are acceptable to the eye and seem real-world at first glance. ⁵

Hieroglyphs state identities and details. They are a device for writing the sounds of ancient Egyptian to add information that enhances visual attractiveness while clarifying meaning. ⁶

The human form of Egyptian art in two dimensions is so iconic that we lampoon it, witness the 80’s sketch by Steve Martin. This style of art is not from lack of skill. The Egyptians maintained this form across dozens of centuries. Art often depicts shoulders square to the canvas, but shows the hips and feet and head turned 90 degrees. There is no unified viewpoint for the body as a whole, rather, the artist maintains a single distinctive view for each part of the body. The eyes are often over sized and looking at you even if the head itself is turned. ⁷

Great Temple of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, 4 statues of Ramses II, about 1250 BC, stare impassively outward, inviting you to make an offering.

“The art of ancient Egypt represents a committed attempt throughout the centuries to illustrate human lives in a context that does not move on or pass away.”⁸ For nearly 3000 years Egypt remained this beehive of human activity responding to the Truth, the unchanging fundamental principles of its very creation.

Imagine how much different that is from our worldview of progress, scientific revolution, and individual attempts to achieve freedom, equality, nirvana, agelessness, peak experiences, etc. In our society we seek progress towards perfection. In ancient Egypt, perfection was already there, and the challenge was to accept the Truth and adore what was already perfect and present from the creation.

To see more photos of our travel to Egypt, including more about our time on the Red Sea, follow this link to a Photo Tour.

Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch2 loc 465 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch3 loc 544 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 4 loc 935 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 8 loc 1661 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 1 loc 156 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 6 loc 1282 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 7 loc 1371 ↩︎
Manley, Bill. Egyptian Art. World of Art. London: Thames & Hudson, 2017. Ch 15 loc 4307 ↩︎

Filed Under: History, Sight Seeing, Travel Outside Paris Tagged With: art

Columbus Day

October 9, 2018 by Hugh Nelson 4 Comments

Statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona, Spain

Statue of Columbus for the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888 commemorating his first voyage to America

With the growing unpopularity of Columbus Day (the second Monday of October in the US), this might be the perfect opportunity to review why we celebrate. This statue of Columbus in Barcelona was erected for the Barcelona Universal Exposition of 1888 to commemorate his first voyage to America. His statue points seaward from the harbor in Barcelona.

Columbus was Italian, but he sailed under the flag of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. They represented the crowns of Castile and Aragon, lands which today make up the northern part of Spain. Modern Barcelona was part of Aragon. Spain itself wouldn’t become a unified country until 1512.

Columbus was seeking a sea route to the East Indies (China and India and the spice islands). Since the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman Empire was charging European traders high fees for those making the dangerous passage to cross by land though the modern day Middle East and Russia or across Egypt to the Red Sea. It was possible but also very treacherous to sail around the horn of Africa. Another sea route would benefit the growing amount of trade between Europe and the East Indies.

At the time of Columbus’s voyage, many educated Europeans thought that the world was round, but they greatly underestimated its size. Columbus believed it was possible to reach the East Indies by sailing west. He first landed somewhere in the Bahamas on October 12, 1492, and later would make expeditions to modern day Cuba, Hispaniola Island (modern day Dominican Republic and Haiti), parts of Central and South America and other islands in the Antilles. Europeans named this part of the world the West Indies, since it obviously wasn’t the East Indies.

Columbus never realized his goal of finding another route to the East Indies, though his efforts and subsequent European exploration conferred great wealth upon Spain, brought French, English, and Dutch explorers to America, and left a lasting impact on the continents of North and South America, which we celebrate by a day named in his honor. The process of European exploration and colonization, which also involved slavery and subjugation of the indigenous peoples, produced many negative effects that continue to be addressed in national and world politics. Thus this heroic icon is taking on a new and fuller meaning of the process by which our world has developed.

Filed Under: History

The Assumption of Mary

August 15, 2018 by Hugh Nelson 7 Comments

Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal – our destination for the Assumption of Mary

August 15th is the French national holiday for the Assumption of Mary. This religious day is celebrated in many parts of the world by about 1.5 billion Catholics, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox, as well as by parts of the Anglican Church. The holiday celebrates the bodily taking up of the Virgin Mary into heaven at the end of her earthly life. For Catholics, it is a day to go to mass. For France, it is a day when almost everything is closed, similar to Christmas.

Yet France is one of the most unreligious countries in the world. In one survey of 2010, about 40% of the participants identified as not believing there is any sort of spirit, God, or life force, about 50% as Christian (almost all Catholic), less than 6% Islamic, and only small percentages of Jewish and other religions. The group identifying as Catholic has dropped from about 80% to 50% since 1985.

An article in Tuesday’s La Figaro showed how large numbers of believers participate in pilgrimages as part of practicing their faith. While destinations like Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostela in Spain attract large numbers, there are numerous destinations in France that are also attractive. A sizable percentage of French tourism is for reasons of spiritual belief.

The Roman Catholic Church has recognized eleven Marian apparitions (supernatural appearances of Mary), five of which occurred at locations in France in the 19th Century. A line superimposed through these five locations on the map of France produces the shape of an M. One of the locations is in Paris, at a chapel I had never heard of, The Chapel of our Lady of the Miraculous Medal (Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse). The La Figaro article said that over 2 million people visit this chapel each year. It’s on rue de Bac near the Bon Marché department store, not far from our apartment. So I set out on a pilgrimage.

Entry Hall, Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse

On rue de Bac near the popular Grande Epicérie de Paris, the specialty food store of the Bon Marché, I found a doorway allowing people to come and go down a long corridor to Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. I walked around trying to photograph the outside of the chapel, but at ground level it is completely hidden from view by other structures.

Once inside I walked past displays and religious coin vending machines, statues, and welcome offices for arriving pilgrims. The chapel was at the end of the hall. A service was in progress. I entered, found a seat in the back, took an inconspicuous photo, and sat through a mass in a language I believe was Korean. I tried to participate, but was hampered by my complete lack of knowledge of Catholic traditions, customs, and liturgy, not to mention the Asian language of the service. People occasionally left something in a basket in the center of the room. I assumed it was an offering, so as I departed I walked up and put in a small donation. Too late I noticed that inside the basket were slips of paper, prayer requests! My bad.

Chapel, Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse

Outside again, I saw a display explaining the story of the Marian apparition. A young nun, Catherine Labouré, began her service here in 1830 with the Company of the Daughters of Charity. Their motherhouse was at 140 rue de Bac. On the 18th of July and the 27th of November 1830, the Blessed Virgin appeared in the Chapel before Catherine. She asked that a medallion be made to a design that she dictated, adding that, “All who wear this medal will receive great graces.”

It was a time of great unrest in France. The bloody 3 day revolution of July 1830 replaced the constitutional monarchy of the last of the post-revolution Bourbon kings with another conferring the monarchy to Louis Philippe of the Orleans line of the royal family. France was industrializing and becoming more wealthy, but there were few social services and the poor were miserable. The workers were dissatisfied with the status quo. It is the same setting as in Victor Hugo’s “Les Misérables”, a novel that above all was about the misery of poor people in France. In 1830, Jean Val Jean, the hero of that story, is living with his adopted daughter Cosette on rue de Plumet (today’s rue Rue Oudinot). This street ends almost exactly at La Chapelle de Notre Dame de la Médaille Miraculeuse. Uncanny.

Catherine Labouré reported her visions to her priest, who took two years to report this to the archbishop. Eventually a medal referred to as the Miraculous Medal was produced. In the meantime, in 1831, Catherine was sent to Enghien les Bains, to a home for the elderly, north of Paris, where she spent the next 40 years serving these largely poor and miserable residents. The church did not forget her. Following her death in 1876, her body was moved in 1933 to the chapel at rue de Bac and placed under the alter. In July 1947, Pope Pius XII declared her a Saint. It was not until 1950, via this same Pope, that the Assumption of Mary was officially recognized, though it had been part of the teachings of the church for hundreds of years before.

The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung in 1952 said that the Assumption of Mary was the most significant Christian religious event since the Reformation. Finally the church acknowledged a feminine element, allowing Mary to join the three masculine religious figures of Christianity. The realization of this feminine aspect has been slow in arriving, but gradually it is asserting itself, not only in the church, but in secular life as well. Religions adapt to changes in society to offer their adherents a more meaningful view of life, but as you can see, sometimes one must have lots of patience. Bonne fête de l’Assomption!

Filed Under: History, Sight Seeing

Eisenhower in Paris

June 7, 2016 by Hugh Nelson Leave a Comment

The only President I’ve ever seen in person was Dwight Eisenhower. It was 1956, and we lived in Peoria, Illinois. You might think that a 5 year old would not remember much of what happened back then, but I already knew who he was and what he looked like. He was revered in our family for being a great leader in World War II. Fortunately we have the Internet to help with the details – Eisenhower spoke at Bradley University on September 25, 1956. Election campaigns back then didn’t start two years before the election. Before the event there was a parade up Main Street, and my parents took my brother Pete and me to see the President. I remember the cold night air and eventually after a cavalcade of other cars, the President passing by, waving from the back seat of his limousine. That was it – I saw the President.

At his speech in Peoria that night, President Eisenhower recognized Senate Minority Leader Everette Dirksen, who was from the nearby town of Pekin, and also Robert Michel from Peoria, who at that time was running for Congress from Peoria’s Congressional District. Michel would be elected and would eventually become the House Minority Leader. He was also the Congressman who in 1969 gave me my appointment to the Naval Academy. I have an old letter from Senator Dirksen congratulating me upon my appointment. Eisenhower died in March 1969 after a long illness, and Dirksen died in September of that year. My brother Chris and his wife Michele raised their family in Pekin, and both my parents lived there at the end of their lives. Many times I’ve run by the statue of Dirksen in Pekin’s Mineral Springs Park. Many aspects of my future life were represented in the President’s 1956 speech in Peoria.

Building where Eisenhower lived in Paris in 1928, now 68 Quai Louis Blériot

Nearly 60 years have passed since I saw President Eisenhower, but recently I received an email from my friend and former colleague Monty Bolstad. We used to work together at the Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington. He was reading a biography of Dwight Eisenhower by Jean Edward Smith (Eisenhower in War and Peace), and he asked me if the experience described in this quote about Eisenhower was my experience with trying to learn French: “Eisenhower initially relished his post to Paris. He and Mamie commenced daily French lessons, and Ike set out to explore Paris on foot. After three months of daily instruction, Eisenhower became proficient at reading and writing French, but the spoken word eluded him. ‘Major,’ said his French teacher, ‘you are one of the best readers of French and translators of the written language that I have among my students, but you are the worst candidate as a French linguist I have ever tried to teach.’ Ike persevered for a year, but his effort to speak French proved hopeless. Mamie, for her part, began enthusiastically but soon lost patience.”

Eisenhower had come to Paris when he was assigned to General John J. Pershing’s Battle Monuments Commission. His job was to create a guide to the American WWI battlefields in Europe. It was a complete history, battle by battle, of the American war on the western front. When the job was completed, Eisenhower was the best informed officer in the Army on the strategy and battle tactics that Pershing had employed, other then Pershing himself and his director of operations, Fox Conner.

Eisenhowers lived upstairs in this photo of the apartment at 68 Building where Eisenhower lived in Paris in 1928, now 68 Quai Louis Blériot

In July 1928 Eisenhower and his wife Mamie arrived in Paris, Mamie taking a plush apartment in the 16th arrondissement about a mile downstream from the Eiffel Tower and close by the Bois de Boulogne. The apartment was on the 1st floor (2nd floor US) at 68 Quai d’Auteuil, owned at the time by the Comtesse de Villefranche. It was beautifully furnished, and the Eisenhowers soon became the social center for their friends in Paris and guests visiting France. Because of exchange rates, Paris was then very inexpensive for Americans, and the apartment was far more elegant than the Eisenhowers could have afforded on his salary in the US. The quai where Eisenhower lived is now called Quai Louis Blériot, named after a French engineer and aviator who invented the first headlamp for trucks and who also was the first person to fly across the English Channel. The adjoining quai is Quai Saint-Exupéry, so after the war they must have renamed some of the streets after French aviators. Eisenhower would walk to work each day to Pershing’s headquarters at 20 rue Molitor, a few blocks down the road. I walked there one day and took photos of both buildings, still today much as they must have been back then.

View across the Seine near the old Eisenhower apartment

Though the area on the right bank hasn’t changed much, the Eisenhower’s view across the Seine has changed markedly. The Citroën factory that used to be across the river is now Parc André Citroën. It has the world’s largest hot air balloon, tethered so that groups of tourists can rise up and take in the city, and then re-descend without an uncontrolled flight over central Paris. Many of the other left bank buildings in this area have been torn down as part of modernization that started in the ’60s and ‘70s.

I had always assumed that though Eisenhower graduated in the middle of his West Point class and was a middling officer very junior in the army leadership at the start of World War II, his meteoric rise to Supreme Allied Commander was because he performed successfully in the war whereas many more senior to him had failed. It turns out he had been on this trajectory for many years before the war.

In 1920 he met George Patton, 6 years his senior and already well known for his heroic service in World War I. Together they worked on radical new strategies for tank warfare, so radical that they incurred the wrath of the Army for publishing ideas that conflicted with existing doctrine.That same year Congress reduced the size of the Army to 288,000, about one tenth of its 2.4 million wartime strength. Eisenhower was promoted to the rank of major, a rank he would retain for the next 16 years. The tank core was abolished, and Eisenhower decided to return to the infantry.

Balloon airborne above Parc André Citroën

Before the officers parted company, Patton hosted a party in the honor of Brigadier General Fox Conner, and Eisenhower’s were invited. Conner came to the party to meet Eisenhower as a result of the high recommendation of Patton. Conner had a long discussion with Eisenhower and asked him many questions about his views on armored warfare. In 1922 Eisenhower was assigned to the 20th Infantry Brigade working as a staff officer for Fox Conner in Panama. Conner spent many hours during that tour educating Eisenhower about history, warfare, and the Army.

Conner had been on the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) staff working for General Pershing. Conner helped Eisenhower to receive orders in 1925 to Command and General Staff School (CGSS), where he studied the problems of military command. Eisenhower finished ranked first of 245 in his class. Conner then helped Eisenhower to receive assignment to the Battle Monuments Commission, headed by General of the Armies John J Pershing. Pershing, who had already served in the Army’s senior-most position, Chief of Staff, was at that time the only 6 star general in the US Military. Eventually Congress also conferred this honor on George Washington.

Pershing’s quarters and office at 20 rue Molitor

When working for Pershing, Eisenhower met George Marshall, who would eventually become Army Chief of Staff and Eisenhower’s boss throughout World War II. He also worked directly for Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur and later worked with MacArthur to train and equip the Philippine Military. Thus starting in about 1920, Eisenhower met and impressed a series of most influential seniors who helped guide his career to the pinnacle of army leadership. In little more than 10 weeks in 1942, he moved ahead of 228 general officers of greater seniority to become a lieutenant general (3 stars) and command the Allied invasion of North Africa. In 1943, he was promoted to full general and directed the invasion of Sicily and Italy.

Eisenhower became the Supreme Allied Commander for the D-Day invasion and for the eventual ending of the war in Europe. With the exception of Marshall and MacArthur, he had more political experience than any officer in the American Army. He was chosen because of his political sensitivity. He worked successfully with military and civilian leaders of the US, Great Britain, France, Russia, and other countries involved in the war effort. He was not a great tactician, and in fact made several blunders during the war that cost lives and time in completing the effort. But he was unrivaled as a decisive, organized, leader with a deft political touch, effective communications skills, extensive knowledge of history, and extraordinary common sense. He kept a diverse coalition working in harmony. He was, incidentally, the only one at the Potsdam Conference who felt the US should not drop the atomic bomb.

After the War he served as Army Chief of Staff. He then retired to become President of Columbia University, but went back on active duty and returned to Paris to lead the effort to start NATO. Then he campaigned successfully and was elected the 34th President of the United States.

He was the only 20th Century President to preside over 8 years of peace and prosperity. He negotiated an end to the Korean War, opposed segregation and integrated the nation’s schools and institutions, successfully opposed the red baiting of the McCarthy era, contained the communist threat, balanced the budget, continued social programs of the New Deal, sponsored building of the interstate highway system and the Saint Lawrence Seaway, successfully opposed the French and English effort to seize control of the Suez Canal from Egypt, twice refused requests of the Joint Chiefs to authorize the use of nuclear weapons, warned against unwarranted influence of the military industrial complex, and promoted peace and understanding as the way forward.

View of Paris from the bridge by Eisenhower’s 1928 apartment

In the ’70s I remember visiting Eisenhower’s home in Abilene, KS, and in the car reading Is Paris Burning by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins. It was about the German plan to blow up Paris when the Germans retreated as the Allies were advancing. German generals defied Hitler, ignoring his order to defend the city and refusing to blow it up. Eisenhower didn’t want to spend the resources to liberate Paris, but was convinced to do so by Charles de Gaulle, for whom he had great respect. Eisenhower deftly outmaneuvered President Roosevelt and the State Department, who did not like and refused to support de Gaulle. He allowed the French Army to liberate the city and allowed de Gaulle to establish leadership in what otherwise could have been a fractious battle for control. By providing a civil affairs agreement and recognizing de Gaulle as the de facto head of the French state, Eisenhower avoided the problematic issue of establishing administrative control over liberated France.

So we get back to that question about whether I had the same problems as General Eisenhower in learning French. In 3 months of daily lessons the General could supposedly read and write very well in French, but struggled to speak understandably. We know that he was renowned for his excellent memory and that he possessed extraordinary drive. For me (after 3 years), understanding the spoken French is the hard part. They seem to be able to understand when I speak. Still, if General and former President Eisenhower were to speak French to me, I don’t think I would have any complaints about his accent.

Filed Under: History, Sight Seeing Tagged With: eisenhower, World War II

Visit to the Swedish Club

January 17, 2016 by Hugh Nelson Leave a Comment

Our group “meet up” at Lili et Riton in Montparnasse

Last week we received an invitation from an acquaintance to go to a mixed French and English group get together at a local Paris cafe, Lili et Riton in Montparnasse. It was followed by a light dinner and jazz music fest at a place called Cercle Suédois (Swedish Club). Brenda and I showed up at the cafe well after the get together had started. Brenda sat down across from me and started speaking in English and French with the man next to her. Another man arrived, still bundled in wool coat, scarf, and hat and sat down next to me.

His name was Didier, and he was most interesting. We had a wide ranging conversation – first me telling him in French about our lives and how we ended up moving to Paris, then him telling me about being a Parisian who moved to paradise, which for him was the west coast of Florida near Naples. He said in passing that his life with women in Florida was thus far a disaster. His French breeding was somehow holding him back. He spoke about nuances of French language – what words you choose and how you present yourself are very important. He noticed that I still had the price sticker on my 2 euro notebook – sign of a person who doesn’t pay attention to appearances. He pointed out that if you say, “je suis à la retraite” (I am retired), people will think you are old and living on a state pension, whereas if you say, “j’ai pris ma retraite” (I have taken my retirement), it conveys that you were able to retire by choice when you were younger. He asked me whether the requirement to be appointed to West Point or the Naval Academy by a Senator or Congressman meant that only the sons and daughters of aristocrats could go to those schools. I assured him that that wasn’t the case. We talked about currency exchange rates. His opinion was that the value of the dollar was largely dependent upon the strength of the US Military. Think about that. When he departed I thanked him and wished him well. He asked me to convey his goodbyes to the others so he wouldn’t have to interrupt their conversations – yet another sign of good breeding in France. After he left, others in the group asked me who he was. Nobody knew him.

Short video of Jazz ensemble at the Cercle Suédois

Enjoying the evening at Circle Suédois with jazz group playing in the background

The group conversation went on some time longer, then we all departed for the Swedish Club, located on the 2nd floor of a building on Rue Rivoli between Place de la Concorde and Place Vendome, one of the tonier neighborhoods in Paris. On Wednesday nights the club has live jazz and serves light fare for dinner, all for a very reasonable price. Our host Frederick helped our group of 10 crowd around a table near the band. The food, conversation, and music were delightful. A grand evening out.

There was something else about the Swedish Club – a door to another room with the label plate “Nobel.” Someone in our group told me that Alfred Nobel used to have an office there where he awarded Nobel prizes. I took a photo of the room (which looked like a dining room) and the label plate. I did some research and found there was much more to the story.

Site of Nobel’s former Paris house on Avenue Raymond Poincaré

I finally found out that Nobel’s Paris house on Avenue Raymond Poincaré had been torn down to build this now famous art nouveau building

Nobel was a very rich Swedish industrialist and entrepreneur. Over his lifetime he became one of the richest men in the world. Though born in Sweden, Noble’s family moved to St Petersburg, Russia, when he was 9. His engineer father moved his business there, invented the rotary lathe used in the manufacture of plywood, and the underwater mine. He also started a profitable factory making explosives in Russia. Alfred and his 3 brothers received a first class education -learning several languages, poetry, chemistry and physics. Because his father wanted him to work in the family business Alfred was sent to Europe and the US for further training in chemical engineering. Alfred met an Italian chemist, Ascanio Sobrero, who invented nitroglycerin, a highly volatile and explosive material. For many years Alfred tested compounds to mix with nitroglycerin in order to make a stable, usable explosive. In 1867, he succeeded, patenting the material under the name dynamite. Yes, Alfred Nobel invented dynamite! The new explosive coupled with other inventions at the time drastically reduced the cost of major construction and could be readily applied to military weapons technology. Nobel became rich and extremely busy founding factories and laboratories in 90 different locations in 20 countries.

Nobel loved Paris. In 1875 he moved there and bought a house at what is today 59 avenue Raymond Poincaré. The original house was completely rebuilt in the Art Nouveau style by a subsequent owner. In 1876 Nobel advertised for a personal secretary, and hired an Austrian woman named Bertha Kinsky. She only worked for him a short time before deciding to return to Austria and marry Count Arthur Von Suttner. In spite of this Alfred Nobel and Bertha von Suttner remained friends and kept writing letters to each other for decades. Over the years Bertha von Suttner became increasingly critical of the arms race. She wrote a famous book, Lay Down Your Arms, and became a prominent figure in the peace movement.

Nobel’s last will and testament was signed in this room at Cercle Suédois

In 1890, Nobel was accused by the French government of treason for selling advanced explosives to Italy. He decided to leave Paris and move to San Remo on the Italian Riviera. In 1895 he returned to Paris, and on November 27th composed his last will and testament before four Swedish witnesses at the Swedish Club in Paris, in the very room where I took the photo. The will was a paragraph just 300 words long. No lawyer was involved. In that document he directed that upon his death all his assets would be converted to cash, invested for a safe return, and the capital would be used to fund annual prizes to those who contributed the most to benefit mankind in the preceding year. The equal shares were to be distributed in following categories: physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and the promotion of peace and the fraternity of nations. It is believed that his choice of the last category was influenced by his long relationship with Bertha von Suttner. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1905.

Upon Nobel’s death in 1896, the will specified that his wealth was to be given to a foundation that did not yet exist. His executors, two engineers he trusted, did not know they had been so named. It took the Swedish Academies and the Norwegian Parliament (assigned in the will to grant the various awards) two years of debating before they formed a foundation. Then there were a great many challenges to this will from the governments of France and Sweden, various family members, and academies within Sweden. Eventually all questions were resolved, and in 1901 the first prizes were awarded.

There is also an annual Nobel Prize in Economics, though this was not part of Nobel’s original will. The prize was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden’s central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, on the bank’s 300th anniversary. Although it is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895, it is referred to along with the other Nobel Prizes by the Nobel Foundation. Winners are announced with the other Nobel Prize winners, and receive the award at the same ceremony. In 2001, Nobel’s grand nephew Peter Nobel asked the Bank of Sweden to differentiate this award from the original five categories by declaring it “in Alfred Nobel’s memory”.

And lastly, if you’re in the Naples, FL area and meet a nice French man named Didier, there’s more to him than meets the eye.

Filed Under: Dining, History, Living Tagged With: Alfred Nobel, Cercle Suédois, Swedish Club

Bartholdi and his Statue of Liberty

The Statue of Liberty:

Bartholdi’s Early Life

The Egyptian Lighthouse

Bartholdi’s Decides to go to the United States

Bartholdi’s First Visit to America

Design and Construction of the Statue

Fundraising in France

Gustav Eiffel Joins the Project

The Statue is done but the Americans Need Funds

America’s Struggle to Complete the Pedestal

The Link to Immigration

Pulitzer’s Fundraising Campaign

Finishing the Pedestal

Unveiling the Statue of Liberty

Epilogue

“The Third Man” needed help from Peoria

Need help with sleep – read Balzac

King Lear

Le Père Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

Improving my sleep

Love in the Time of Coronavirus

A Tale of Two Cities – Part 1

A Song of Egypt

Travel to Egypt

Touring out in town – security concerns

Learning to Appreciate Egyptian Art and History

Columbus Day

The Assumption of Mary

Eisenhower in Paris

Visit to the Swedish Club

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Latest Posts

Much Ado About Paris

The Statue of Liberty:

Bartholdi’s Early Life

The Egyptian Lighthouse

Bartholdi’s Decides to go to the United States

Bartholdi’s First Visit to America

Design and Construction of the Statue

Fundraising in France

Gustav Eiffel Joins the Project

The Statue is done but the Americans Need Funds

America’s Struggle to Complete the Pedestal

The Link to Immigration

Pulitzer’s Fundraising Campaign

Finishing the Pedestal

Unveiling the Statue of Liberty

Epilogue

Share this:

Share this:

King Lear

Le Père Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

Improving my sleep

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Travel to Egypt

Touring out in town – security concerns

Learning to Appreciate Egyptian Art and History

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Latest Posts