Cake and conversation: The Women Jour in Parisian high society, 1880-1914

French History

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 342-363

  MacKnight, Elizabeth C ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

BEHAVIOR; BEVERAGE; CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY; DAILY LIFE ACTIVITY; ECONOMICS; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FEMALE; FOOD; FRANCE; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY; HOSPITAL SERVICE; HUMAN RELATION; LEGAL ASPECT; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; REVIEW; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIOECONOMICS; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

ACTIVITIES OF DAILY LIVING; ANTHROPOLOGY, CULTURAL; BEVERAGES; FOOD; GENDER IDENTITY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; HOUSEKEEPING; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; PARIS; POWER (PSYCHOLOGY); SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL IDENTIFICATION; SOCIOECONOMIC FACTORS; WOMEN; WOMEN'S HEALTH; WOMEN'S RIGHTS;

EID: 62849097506     PISSN: 02691191     EISSN: 14774542     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/fh/cri034     Document Type: Review

References (144)

1. The Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, quoted in A. de Fouquières, Cinquante ans de panache (1951), p. 49.
2. J.-Y. Tadié, Marcel Proust: a life trans. E. Cameron (2000), pp. 113,118, 142.
3. Many of the women who entertained Edward VII were rumoured to have been his mistress. B. Masters, Great hostesses (1982), pp. 38, 42-3, 87.
4. J. Margadant, ed., The new biography: Performing femininity in nineteenth-century France (Berkeley, 2000).
5. M. L. Roberts, Disruptive acts: The new woman in fin-de-siecle France (Chicago, 111., 2002).
6. J. Margadant, Madame le professeur: Women educators in the Third Republic (Princeton, N.J., 1990);
7. K. Schultheiss, Bodies and souls: politics and the professionalization of nursing in France, 1880-1922 (Cambridge, Mass., 2001);
8. L. Clark, The rise of professional women in France: gender and public administration since 1830 (Cambridge, 2000);
9. B. Smith, Ladies of the leisure class: The bourgeoises of the Nord in the nineteenth century (Princeton, N.J., 1981), pp. 123-61;
10. A. Martin-Fugier, La bourgeoise: lafemme au temps de Paul Bourget (1983), pp. 212-20;
11. S. Hause with A. Kenney, Women's suffrage and social politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton, N.J., 1984);
12. S. Hause, Hubertine Auclert: The French suffragette (New Haven, Conn., 1987);
13. S. Hause with A. Kenney, 'The development of the Catholic women's suffrage movement in France, 1896-1922', The Catholic Historical Review, 67 (1981), 11-30;
14. C. Sowerwine, Sisters or citizens? Women and socialism in France since 1876 (Cambridge, 1982);
15. C. Sowerwine and C. Maignien, Madeleine Pelletier: une féministe dans l'arène politique (1992).
16. Roberts, Disruptive acts, pp. 64-5, 69, 165, 202, 204, 217, 247.
17. Archives Nationales, Archives Privées (hereafter AP) Gramont 101 (II)/H8;
18. AP Murat 31/92;
19. AP Astruc 409/35.
20. See also G. Astruc, Le pavillon des fantômes (1987), pp. 135-6, 218-21;
21. C. Prochasson, Les années électriques (1880-1910) (1991), pp. 16-25;
22. J. Gallois, ed., Musiques et musiciens au faubourg Saint-Germain (1996), pp. 89-101;
23. L. Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Oxford, 1989), pp. 280-2.
24. S. Hause and A. Kenney suggest the meshing of Republican and Dreyfusard sympathies with French feminism alienated many noble women. When the Duchesse d'Uzès was persuaded to join the leadership of the Union Francaise pour le Suffrage des Femmes (UFSF), Jane Misme described the breakthrough as 'cornering the clerical and royalist party'. Other noble women joined the Ligue Patriotique des Francaises and the Ligue des Femmes Franchises. These two organizations were conservative Catholic women's groups whose primary objective was 'the rechristianization of France, not the emancipation of women'. Noble women who joined these organizations were responding to the crisis of French Catholicism, and had little in common with what Dr Madeleine Pelletier, a socialist feminist, called the 'Judeo-Protestant coterie' of the UFSF. Hause with Kenney, Women's suffrage, pp. 62-3, 110, 113, 115-16, 122;
25. Hause with Kenney, 'The Catholic women's suffrage movement', 11-30;
26. S. Hause and J. Waelti-Walters, ed. Feminisms of the belle époque: A historical and literary anthology (Lincoln, Nebr., 1994), pp. 42-57;
27. Sowerwine and Maignien, Madeleine Pelletier, ch. 4.
28. See W. Silverman, 'Gyp et l'Affaire Dreyfus', Modern and Contemporary France, 43 (1990), 5-16;
29. W. Silverman, The notorious life of Gyp: Right-wing anarchist in fin-de-siècle France (Oxford, 1995);
30. A. Millstone, 'Gyp, enfant terrible of the French right 1880-1905', WSFH Proceedings, 8 (1980), 382-89;
31. J. Landes, Women and the public sphere in the age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, N.Y., 1988), pp. 17-18.
32. B. Farrell, Elite families: class and power in nineteenth-century Boston (New York, 1993), p 79.
33. C. Harrison, The bourgeois citizen in nineteenth-century France: Gender, sociability, and the uses of emulation (Oxford, 1999), pp. 8-9.
34. 'Boundaries' may be established on moral, socio-economic, racial, or cultural grounds. See M. Lamont, Money, morals, and manners: The culture of the French and American upper-middle class (Chicago, 111., 1992), pp. 4-13;
35. M. Lamont and M. Fournier, ed., Cultivating difference: Symbolic boundaries and the making of inequality (Chicago, 111., 1992);
36. M. Lamont, ed., The cultural territories of race: Black and white boundaries (Chicago, 111., 1999);
37. M. Lamont, The dignity of working men: Morality and the boundaries of race, class, and immigration (New York, 2000).
38. Harrison, The bourgeois citizen, pp. 8-9.
39. E. Bender, ed., Livre d'or des salons: adresses à Paris et dans les châteaux 2 vols. (first published 1888);
40. C. Grange, Les gens du Bottin mondain: y être, c'est en être (1996);
41. R. Brandon, The dollar princesses: the American invasion of the European aristocracy 1870-1914 (1980).
42. On the origins of Parisian Society, see A. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante ou la fomation du Tout-Paris 1815-1848(1990).
43. The term 'active symbiosis' was coined by Joseph Schumpeter. See A. Mayer, The persistence of the Old Regime: Europe to the Great War (New York, 1981), pp. 11-12.
44. For responses to Mayer's thesis, see A. Cardoza, Aristocrats in bourgeois Italy: The Piedemontese nobility, 1861-1930 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 1-12;
45. J. Cruz, Gentlemen, bourgeois and revolutionaries: Political change and cultural persistence among the Spanish dominant groups 1750-1850 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 3-15, 172.
46. On the American upper class, see S. Beckert, The monied metropolis: New York City and the consolidation of the American bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge, 2001);
47. M. Cable, Top drawer: American high society from the gilded age to the roaring twenties (New York, 1984).
48. D. Higgs, Nobles in nineteenth-century France: The practice of inegalitarianism (Baltimore, Md., 1987), p. 102;
49. N. Petiteau, Elites et mobilités: la noblesse d'Empire au XIXe siècle (1808-1914) (1997).
50. Because distinction was manifest through the body, there were different codes for each sex. See P. Bourdieu, Masculine domination, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge, 2001), p. 25.
51. On the French bourgeoisie's fascination for the aristocracy, see P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste, trans. R. Nice (2000), p. xi;
52. T. Zeldin, France 1848-1945 vol. 1 Ambition, love, and politics (Oxford, 1973), p. 17.
53. On 'bourgeois' as a pejorative term see B. Le Wita, French bourgeois culture (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 26-7, 53-6.
54. L. Davidoff, The best circles: Society etiquette and the season (1973), pp. 41-6;
55. D. Pool, What Jane Austen ate and Charles Dickens knew: From fox hunting to whist-the facts of daily life in nineteenth-century England (New York, 1993), pp. 66-9.
56. 'Cutting' could also occur later in the relationship, see Mme Leroi's behaviour toward Mme de Villeparisis in Proust, The Guermantes way, trans. C. Scott Moncrieff and T. Kilmartin, revised by D. Enright (1996), pp. 212-13. All subsequent references to À la recherche du temps perdu are drawn from this Vintage edition.
57. AP Astruc 409/35.
58. For a presentation to take place, the person of higher social status had to give their permission. See Davidoff, The best circles, pp. 25, 52, plate 5;
59. Pool, What Jane Austen ate, pp. 70-1;
60. Baronne d'Orval, Usages mondains: guide du savoir-vivre moderne dans toutes les circonstances de la vie 3e éd. (1901), pp. 127-8.
61. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, pp. 47-9;
62. Orval, Usages mondains, pp. 127-8;
63. A. Meyer, Ce que jepeux dire (1912), p. 60;
64. E. de Clermont-Tonnerre, Au temps des équipages (1928), p. 2.
65. A. d'Uzès, Souvenirs de la duchesse d'Uzès née Mortemart (1939), pp. 22-3.
66. 'Liste des maisons recommandées' in Livre d'or (1900), pp. 765-86.
67. M. Chabot, Histoire de Jean et Yvonne domestiques en 1900 (1988), pp. 56-7;
68. A. de Noailles, Le livre de ma vie (1976), p. 133.
69. Chabot, Histoire, pp. 56-7.
70. C. de Bartillat, Histoire de la noblesse française: de 1789 à nos jours, vol. 2 Les nobles du Second Empire à la fin du XXe siècle (1991), p. 95.
71. AP Astruc 409/ 34-5.
72. Bibliothèque Nationale (herafter BN), NAF 17394, Fonds Bulteau, 2 Nov. 1896. Augustine Ricard (née Bulteau, 1860-1922) reverted to her maiden name following divorce from her husband, Jules Ricard, in 1896. She was a novelist and a reporter for major Paris dailies, hosted a literary salon, and was a close friend of the Comtesse Anna de Noailles and the Princesse Hélène de Caraman-Chimay. Her extant diary, kept over three decades, remains unpublished.
73. BN NAF 17394, Fonds Bulteau, 4 Dec. 1896. For titles and addresses of these people see Livre d'or (1896), pp. 53, 62, 89, 146, 170, 273, 286, 295, 314, 415, 478, 543, 570, 575, 580, 605-6.
74. Astruc 409/33- The list included Madame Jules Porgès, the Princesse Winnaretta de Polig-nac, the Baron and Baronne Henri de Rothschild, the Baron and Baronne Gustave de Rothschild, the Comte and Comtesse Jean de Castellane, the Prince and Princesse Murat and Monsieur and Madame Maurice Ephrussi.
75. AP Astruc 409/ 34-35;
76. Astruc, Le pavilion, pp. 218-21.
77. BN NAF 17554, Fonds Bulteau.
78. J. Pouquet, 'Le salon de Mme de Caillavet', in Les salons de la Troisième République: extraits du cahiers de Radio-Paris, 15 Sept. 1936.
79. P. Bourget, Un coeur defemme (1890), pp. 88-99.
80. AP Thiers-Albufera 77/l.
81. The Baronne de Pierrebourg lived at number 1 bis avenue du Bois; Paul Hervieu lived at number 7. Clermont-Tonnerre, Au temps, pp. 206-7.
82. AP Mackau 156(I)/308.
83. BN NAF 17405, Fonds Bulteau.
84. AP Maréchal Berthier 173 bis/426.
85. Meyer, Ce que je peux dire, p. 96.
86. For recipes see S. King, Dining with Marcel Proust: A practical guide to French cuisine of the Belle Epoque (1979), pp. 110-33, 148-50.
87. Noailles, Le livre, pp. 93, 133.
88. Proust, The Guermantes way, p. 632.
89. In 1891 Madeleine Lemaire painted Five o'clock tea. In this canvas the hostess sits in relaxed fashion on a couch, talking with a female visitor, whilst another woman, who stands with a cup of tea in hand, is perhaps the helper for she seems to be serving the animated gentleman in front of her. The pair are watched by a woman seated behind who peers at them through her lorgnette. See R. Hahn, 'Le salon de Madeleine Lemaire', in Les salons de la Troisième République: extraits du cahiers de Radio-Paris 15 Sept. 1936;
90. Proust, Essais et articles ed. P. Clarac and Y. Sandre (1994), pp. 153-60;
91. Comtesse de Gencé, Code mondain de la jeune fille (1909), pp. 257-73.
92. Gencé, Code mondain, pp. 5-16.
93. It is possible, although I have found no evidence of it happening, that a hostess could purposefully withhold advice on the placement of a hat. One can imagine a man's discomfort wondering what to do with his wretched piece of headwear. Proust makes some marvellous observations regarding men and hats, see The Guermantes way, pp. 241, 670.
94. See also S. Landes-Ferrali, 'Letraitement de l'hospitalité chez Proust: points de rencontre et paradoxes', in A. Montandon ed. Espaces domestiques et privés de l'hospitalité, (Clermont-Ferrand, 2000), pp. 117-32.
95. P. Offenstadt, Jean Béraud 1849-1935: la belle époque, une époque rêvé (Cologne, 1999), pp. 189, 192.
96. P. de Pange, Comment j'ai vu 1900 (1962), pp. 32-7, 42-9.
97. Pouquet, 'Le salon de Mme de Caillavet', in Les Sclens de la Troisième République.
98. 'Article de Paris', La Vie Parisienne, 21 Dec. 1901;
99. Fouquières, Cinquante ans, pp. 61-2, 66, 70, 80;
100. AP Gramont 10l'(II)/150, 27 Dec. 1889.
101. Article de Paris', La Vie Parisienne, 21 Dec. 1901.
102. J. Daudet, Souvenirs autour d'un groupe littéraire (1910), pp. 178-9;
103. Silverman, The notorious life, pp. 66-68.
104. AP Murat 31/69.
105. A. Germain, Les fous de 1900 (1954), p. 154.
106. On the arts of conversation and seduction practised by women before the nineteenth century, see C. Roussel, 'Courtoisie et féminité: le jeu des dames', in Du goût, de la conversation et des femmes Études rassemblées et présentées par Alain Montandon (Clermont-Ferrand, 1994), pp. 149-165;
107. B. Craveri, L'âge de la conversation trans. E. Deschamps-Pria (2002).
108. Article de Paris', La Vie Parisienne, 26 Oct. 1901.
109. Article de Paris', La Vie Parisienne, 12 Oct. 1901.
110. Pange, Comment j'ai vu, pp. 67-8.
111. 'Article de Paris', La Vie Parisienne, 21 Dec. 1901.
112. F. Dawes, Not in front of the servants: a true portrait of upstairs, downstairs life (1984), ch. 1;
113. T. McBride, The domestic revolution: the modernization of household service in England and France, 1820-1920 (1976).
114. W. S. Haine, 'Privacy in public: the comportment of working-class women in late nineteenth-century Parisian proletarian cafés', WSFH Proceedings, 14 (1987), 204-12;
115. W. S. Haine, The world of the Paris café: Sociability among the French working class, 1789-1914 (Baltimore, Md., 1996).
116. Mayer, The persistence, p. 329.
117. Proust, Time regained, pp. 61-3.
118. In the twentieth century, many sumptuous hôtels in the eighth and sixteenth arrondissements passed out of private ownership. See G. Rousset-Charny, Les palais parisiens de la Belle Epoque (Alençon, 1990). The Camondo and Jacquemart-André residences were converted into museums that can be visited today.
119. D. Holmes, French women's writing, 1848-1994 (1996), p. 110;
120. J. McMillan, Housewife or harlot: The position of women in French society (New York, 1980), pp. 117-23;
121. S. Reynolds, France between the wars: Gender and politics (1996), ch. 4.
122. M. L. Roberts, Civilization without sexes: reconstructing gender in post-war France, 1917-1927 (Chicago, 111., 1994), chap. 4;
123. Holmes, French women's writing, pp. 113-14;
124. Sowerwine and Maignien, Madeleine Pelletier, ch. 10.
125. Roberts, Civilization without sexes, chs 1-3. J. McMillan argues that the literature of sex education in the 1920s provides evidence for 'the persistence of traditional ideals' rather than 'the emergence of a new order of sexual mores'.
126. See McMillan, Housewife or harlot, pp. 167-9.
127. Bartillat, Les nobles, pp. 154-61, 172-4;
128. A. de Cossé Brissac, La comtesse Greffulhe (1991), pp. 252, 259;
129. G.-L. Pringué, Trente ans de dîners en ville (1950), pp. 106-13;
130. Gallois, ed., Musiques et musiciens, pp. 94-5;
131. L. Benaïm, Marie Laure de Noailles: la vicomtesse du bizarre (2001).
132. For a case study, see Benaïm, Marie Laure de Noailles, ch. 5.
133. See also Roberts, Civilization without sexes, p. 6;
134. D. Desanti, La femme au temps des années folles (1985);
135. J. McMillan, France and women, 1789-1914: gender, society and politics (New York, 2000), chs 11-12;
136. Hause with Kenney, Women's suffrage, chs 7-8;
137. A. Cova, Maternité et droits des femmes en France (XlXe-XXe siècles) (1997);
138. A. Cova, 'Au service de l'église, de la patrie et de la famille': femmes catholiques et maternité sous la IIIe République (2000).
139. L. Rièse, Les salons littéraires parisiens du Second Empire à nos jours (Toulouse, 1962), pp. 181-260;
140. M.-T. Guichard, Les égéries de la République (1991), pp. 187-96. 9 Proust, Time regained, pp. 387-96.
141. E. Charles-Roux, Chanel (1979);
142. M. Etherington-Smith, Patou (1983);
143. R. Brandau, ed., de Meyer (1976).
144. Higgs, Nobles in nineteenth-century France, p. 217.