Dawn of the Belle Epoque Quotes

“Rodin was on the brink of a grand passion. But unlike Bernhardt’s, his lover would become the greatest inspiration of his career. Her name was Camille Claudel, and if she was not pretty in a conventional way, she was as beautiful and alive as quicksilver. She was also an extraordinarily gifted sculptor in her own right.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“In the meantime, he anxiously awaited visitors, and on occasion even attempted some visits of his own—including one to his nearby Bellevue neighbor, the charming and notorious courtesan Valtesse de la Bigne. Red-haired and beautiful, Valtesse de la Bigne had brought several rich and titled men to financial ruin. She had also captivated some of the most sophisticated men in town, including Manet, who referred to her as “la belle Valtesse” and had painted her the year before. Born Louise Emilie Delabigne, Valtesse de la Bigne was sufficiently intelligent and charming to draw an entourage of admiring writers and artists such as Manet. Zola also paid court to Valtesse—although in his case from a desire to get the characters and setting right for his upcoming novel Nana. Flattered by his journalistic interest, Valtesse even agreed to show him her bedroom—until then off-limits to all but her most highly paying patrons. Zola (who seems to have limited his visit to note taking) used her over-the-top boudoir as the model for Nana’s bedroom. Even if the fictional Nana was nowhere near the sophisticated creature that Valtesse had become, the bed said it all. It was “a bed such as had never existed before,” Zola wrote, “a throne, an altar, to which Paris would come in order to worship her sovereign nudity.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Manet, however, was enthralled; he proceeded to give the title Nana to his painting of the courtesan Henriette Hauser, naming it after the daughter of the alcoholic laundress Gervaise Lantier in L’assommoir. Zola had not yet even begun to write his novel Nana, but the references in Manet’s painting were clear. When the Salon (presumably scandalized) rejected it, he brashly showed it in the window of a shop on the Boulevard des Capucines, virtually on the doorstep of the Opéra Garnier, where it created a succès de scandale. Zola, of course, appreciated the value of scandal in promoting his novels and was adept at creating it.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Death would soon carry off Zola as well, although in his case the suspicion existed, and still exists, that he was murdered. No concrete evidence was ever produced to prove this, and yet the circumstances of his death were sufficiently odd to encourage speculation.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“addition to Debussy, Ravel had begun to attract the interest of patrons such as the Princesse Edmond de Polignac, to whom he dedicated the Pavane pour une Infante défunte, and Misia Natanson, who became a lifelong devotee.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“the time of World War I, the Eiffel Tower provided the basis for communication with Berlin, Casablanca, and North America, and allowed the army to intercept enemy messages, including the famous intercept that led to the arrest and conviction of the German spy Mata Hari.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Esterhazy’s nephew Christian, unexpectedly showed up. Esterhazy had bilked Christian of large sums, and Christian was eager to spill the beans on his reprehensible uncle.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Renoir, as it turned out, was also deeply anti-Semitic.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Degas, the most conservative of the group, was adamantly anti-Dreyfus and adamantly anti-Semitic as well.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Many prominent families were affected by this disaster and would in time build the beautiful chapel of Notre-Dame-de-la-Consolation on the spot, as a memorial to their lost loved ones.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“In his Remembrance of Things Past, Marcel Proust would model his Baron de Charlus on Montesquiou, just as he would base the Princess Yourbeletieff and Madame Verdurin on Misia, the actress Berma on Sarah Bernhardt, and elements of the character of Bergotte on Prince Edmond de Polignac (although more on Anatole France).”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Pioneers do not as a rule settle for the comfortable corners of life, and Maria Sklodowska was no exception.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“ever since Eugène Poubelle had become prefect of the Seine and issued strict laws governing street cleaning and garbage collection (thus giving his name to the French trash can).”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Escoffier reduced the number of courses, developed the à la carte menu, introduced lighter sauces, and eliminated the most ostentatious of the food displays. He also simplified the menu and completely reorganized the professional kitchen, integrating it into a single unit. Women approved, and he approved of them, creating dishes for some of his most famous diners, including Sarah Bernhardt (Fraises Sarah Bernhardt) and the Australian singer Nellie Melba, who garnered two creations in her honor—Peach Melba and Melba Toast.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Le Chat Noir’s clientele were looking for good times, to be sure, but their idea of a good time was a convivial (and well-lubricated) evening based on shared intellectual and cultural interests.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“When the struggling young painter Rodolphe Salis opened Le Chat Noir in 1881, he had no idea that he was about to make history.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“leaving a searing impression of a brilliant, emotional, and deeply caring woman—one who, with a startling degree of selflessness, poured her considerable passion into helping the downtrodden.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“La Samaritaine and the Cognacqs were also thriving.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“1883, Printemps achieved the distinction of being the first department store in Paris to be lit electrically. Zola,”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“incensed Clemenceau angrily denounced Ferry for dragging France into this mess, which he charged that Parliament had not properly authorized. China, Clemenceau warned, had an “inexhaustible reservoir” of men, and fighting such a power would sap France of its manpower for years to come.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Raising a child, managing a household, and being a good wife, all the while focusing on expressing herself in ways that had never been done before, took an enormous toll on Morisot”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Théodore Vacquer,”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Le Figaro’s Albert Wolff,”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Degas, who did not seem to have taken much personal interest in any of these girls except as models for his paintings, was endlessly interested in their lives, including the older men who hovered so possessively over them. These men, termed “lions,” appear again and again in his paintings, sometimes adjusting a costume or sometimes simply watching. Degas”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“La dame aux camélias.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“As for alcoholism among the poor, there had been no one who had dramatized the problem more graphically than he, but he saw alcoholism as a result, not simply a cause, of the social evils that the poor suffered.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“they did not yet have control of the Senate. But elections for one-third of the Senate’s members were coming up in early 1879. And despite the Senate’s reputation as a bastion of conservative power, the republicans intended to win.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Instead of a coup d’état, MacMahon’s associates risked a general election—a daunting prospect given the amount of opposition that they now faced. With little appreciation for the nature of that opposition, they put off the elections for many months, during which they embarked on a series of actions that amounted to mass arm-twisting—prosecuting newspapers, threatening owners of republican meeting places, dismissing “unreliable” local officials, and forbidding circulation of opposition circulars and propaganda while conducting their own massive propaganda campaign. Their actions, which betrayed more than a whiff of desperation, merely united the previously fragmented opposition, of which Gambetta now took command.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“Goncourt observed in a rare compliment, although he felt compelled to add that the dinner included “some grouse whose scented flesh Daudet compared to an old courtesan’s flesh marinaded in a bidet.”14”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends

“the Bièvre had once been a bucolic stream where, according to legend, beaver thrived (possibly giving the watercourse its name). For centuries it meandered through a countryside dotted with ancient watermills and rustic villages.”
― Mary McAuliffe, Dawn of the Belle Epoque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and Their Friends