The Admiral and the Ambassador Page 19

  Porter sent Ricaudy’s report, attached to his own, to Secretary Hay in Washington, referring to the June reply by Vignaud that Jones’s body was most likely beyond recovery. “I am now in a position to inform you that the place where he was buried has been found and that I have also procured a copy of the burial” record, Porter wrote. He credited Ricaudy for the research and added that Ricaudy “believes that he could locate within eight or ten yards the spot where the body was interred.” Porter also oddly passed along Ricaudy’s suggestion that a committee be formed to raise the funds for the project, an idea Porter didn’t support. And Porter also seemed to miss the point that Jones had been buried in a lead coffin, telling Hay that it “was in all probability [made] of wood, and unless there was a metal plate bearing the name of the deceased, or a sword or some article, not perishable, it might be difficult to identify whatever may be left of the body.” Porter then tossed the decision on how to proceed to Hay, saying he would “cheerfully cooperate in any action having to do with the removal to the United States of the body of Paul Jones.”18

  By the time Hay received Porter’s letter, newspapers in France, England, and the United States had reported that the former war hero’s remains were within potential reach. In Paris, proposals were made to persuade the French government to turn the spot into a park in time for the Exposition the next year, which would offer another draw for American tourists. Others urged the site be excavated, despite the buildings, so Jones’s body could be found and transferred to the United States. New York Tribune correspondent Charles Inman Barnard had followed the search—he wrote later that he joined Ricaudy in his visit to Père Lachaise and on other research jaunts—and his reports were the most detailed in the American papers.19 They fanned significant public interest in recovering the body if possible. Members of the US Congress introduced a joint resolution to pay the costs of digging up Jones and reburying him in Arlington National Cemetery, one of several locales that began lobbying for the privilege of hosting Jones’s permanent grave. (The measure died after being referred to the House Committee on Naval Affairs.)

  Porter was among those who thought Jones’s body should be exhumed and moved to the United States. Though he had hoped to work outside of the public spotlight, it was too late for that as photographers took pictures of the site and news columns were filled with speculation about what would happen. Porter decided to approach Mme Crignier, who owned the property, and the tenants to see if they were interested in selling or would at least let the Americans buy access to the site to try to unearth Jones’s coffin. He soon discovered, though, that there was a very good reason why Ricaudy knew the terms for purchase could be “advantageous.” During his visits to the site, Ricaudy had secured options on the land himself.

  Porter found himself negotiating with the man he had hired to find the burial spot.20 The talks went nowhere. Porter was angry and wounded by the duplicity but, ever the diplomat, blamed public exposure of the project “through the indiscretion of persons who had been consulted on the subject. Self-constituted agents immediately began to busy themselves with circulating fantastic stories regarding the fabulous prices that were to be paid for the property, the whole of which it was said was going to be bought by a rich government.” He didn’t identify Ricaudy publicly as the person behind the “indiscretion” in his reports on the search. He was more direct a few years later in a private letter when Ricaudy was pressing a claim against the US government over payments for his research work. In a letter to Bailly-Blanchard written after Porter had retired from his post, the ambassador wrote that Ricaudy had delivered a “garbled” account of the burial and initially omitted the key detail about Jones having been buried in the Protestant cemetery. “He got this from Charles Read’s assertion, no doubt, and we knew of this ourselves—you, I think, ascertained that fact before Ricaudy’s report.” Porter said Vignaud had told Ricaudy at the time that he would be paid nothing for his work because of his duplicity, and Porter now urged Bailly-Blanchard to ensure Ricaudy received no money other than possible expenses.21

  But in November 1899, with the body within potential reach after more than a century, Porter decided that “there was but one course to pursue, however reluctantly, which was to drop the matter entirely for a couple of years, in order to let the excitement subside…. This was altogether the most discouraging episode in the history of the undertaking.” Once again, though, Porter dissembled. The public excitement had little to do with his decision to postpone the project. Ricaudy’s options on the property were for two years. Jones’s body wasn’t going anywhere. And neither was Porter.

  The ambassador—and the recovery—could wait.

  12

  Dreyfus, the Exposition, and Other Distractions

  THE EXCITEMENT OVER THE discovery of Jones’s likely burial ground faded as it became clear that the body would not be dug up. Media accounts blamed uncertainty for the decision; the cemetery might have been tracked down, but the expense of trying to find one body in that buried haystack was formidable, and the odds of success long. Eventually, public discussion about buying the site and turning it into a public square faded away too.

  Porter was happy to let the talk die down. Smothering his disappointment and his anger at Ricaudy, Porter focused on other parts of his job, including preparations for the Exposition Universelle opening in April 1900, diplomacy tied to the disintegrating situation in China that gave rise to the Boxer Rebellion, and the looming reelection campaign of his friend and patron, President McKinley.

  There had been some political changes for Porter to wrestle with as well, beginning with the death of his friend Félix Faure, the French president. The former leather merchant who had risen to the presidency of the Third Republic was notorious for his appetite for food and women. In late 1898, the married Faure had begun an affair with Marguerite Steinheil, the wife of artist Adolphe Steinheil, who had painted a portrait of Faure. The president and his mistress met regularly in a secluded room at the Palais de l’Élysée, sessions that Steinheil wrote in her autobiography were private meetings in which she worked with the president on his memoirs. Steinheil didn’t admit to the sexual affair but painted a picture of such secrecy—she’d enter the palace by a little-used side door under prearrangement—that it’s hard to believe there was nothing more than memoir-writing at hand, especially since she had no notable literary expertise. On the afternoon of February 16, 1899, Faure called Steinheil and asked her to meet him at the palace that evening. They retired to the private room, and, a short time later, one of Faure’s aides heard Steinheil calling for help. When the aide entered the room, Steinheil was rearranging her clothing, and Faure was dead on a couch; he had suffered a fatal stroke mid-act.1

  Faure was succeeded by Émile Loubet, whom British journalist Walter F. Lonergan summed up as “a dumpy little man … known as a plain, practical politician, nowise brilliant, but a ready speaker, versed in the law, experienced also in other ways, and there are no scandals about him.”2 There was speculation that one of the contributing factors to Faure’s fatal stroke was the relentless stress from the Dreyfus affair, which Loubet had inherited along with the job. At first, it was unclear where Loubet stood. Some believed he was sure of Dreyfus’s guilt and would take as hard a line as Faure had. Anti-Dreyfusards sensed a softening and feared he would side with Zola and the left intelligentsia against the military. So Loubet was a target for all. As his carriage took him from Versailles to the Palais de l’Élysée, onlookers tossed eggs. When the gathering for Faure’s funeral broke up after the burial at Père Lachaise cemetery, Faure’s longtime friend and former aide Paul Dérouledè sought to instigate a coup. It was poorly planned and quickly collapsed when the military officials he was counting on returned to their barracks instead of storming the Palais de l’Élysée. Dérouledè was eventually exiled.

  So Loubet was facing his own circle of stresses, which increased less than four months after he took office, when the appeals court threw out Dreyfus�
��s conviction and ordered a new trial, convulsing France with a fresh round of protests. At the Auteuil horse race track a few days after the decision, a fight broke out between Dreyfus’s supporters and those who believed him guilty; Loubet was present, and one of the anti-Dreyfusards struck him over the head with a cane.

  Within a few weeks Dreyfus was returned to France from Devil’s Island. Malaria and malnutrition had taken their toll during his five years of mostly solitary confinement in the tropical island prison. Dreyfus’s face bore a permanent flush, and his gums were swollen, red, and painful. Wiry to begin with, his muscles had wasted away to the bones and sinew. His thinning hair, though he was only thirty-nine, had gone white. Living in near total silence had robbed his voice of its resonance; he spoke in soft rasps and hisses. The career military man was a physical wreck.3

  The new trial took place in Rennes in August 1899, as Porter was directing the search for Jones’s burial spot in Paris. Despite evidence of forgeries, another verdict of guilty was inevitable given the military’s closed ranks and fear of exposed wrongdoing. Loubet, citing Dreyfus’s medical condition, granted a pardon, which Dreyfus accepted with the proviso that he could continue to try to prove his innocence. Dreyfus was finally exonerated in 1906, though the affair would percolate through French society for years to come.

  Where the Dreyfus affair laid low France’s international reputation, the Exposition Universelle of 1900 was the nation’s chance at redemption. It was the fifth world’s fair to be hosted by France; the first had taken place in 1855, just four years after the first international expo was held in London’s Hyde Park. The most recent French expo had come in 1889, marking the centennial of the French revolution. That gathering introduced the world to Gustave Eiffel’s magnificent tower near the Seine, but overall the exposition was more French than universelle and thus a bust. The problem was the concept. Celebrating the overthrow of Louis XVI and the monarchy might have appealed to the French, but other royalty-led nations—from Russia to Arab sheikdoms—saw little reason to celebrate the kind of transition they didn’t particularly embrace.

  Ostensibly the expositions brought together in one setting the best the industrial world had to offer. In reality, they were massive marketing programs that heralded the rise of modern consumer society. The previous exposition, hosted by Brussels in 1897, was a lackluster affair focusing on automobiles; it drew 7.8 million visitors. The one before that was the 1893 “White City” of the World’s Columbian Exposition in south Chicago, a massive event that drew more than twenty-five million visitors and introduced the world to the Ferris wheel, displayed the versatility of electrical power, exhibited a series of gas-powered carriages, and involved the first use of spray paint in construction of the massive fair site. It was an international success for American consumer products, and Porter was anxious to ensure that American businesses were front and center at the upcoming Paris exposition. He feared, though, that the war with Spain might have dampened European enthusiasm for American products and dissuaded American businessmen from making the trip to display their goods. “I trust our people will not prevent our merchants and manufacturers and farmers from being represented at the Exposition of 1900,” he wrote to William R. Day, then secretary of state. Attending and exhibiting a wide array of American products would be “in their own interest, for I am convinced that the effects of an important exhibit here will increase very largely the American export trade to all Europe, for all Europe will attend and have an opportunity to see and admire our superior production.”4

  The previous French expositions had, for the most part, been privately financed by business groups seeking markets for their products. The Exposition Universelle 1900 would be different. Expositions were usually announced a year or two before they were to be held, but this time the French government invited foreign nations to take part eight years ahead of time, partly to trump plans by the Germans to hold a similar gathering. And it would be a government-run affair, an effort to reclaim some lost luster. France, while still one of the world’s leading nations, had seen both its power and its cultural standing erode over the previous few decades. In the mid-1800s, France had been the richest nation in the world; by the end of the century, it had fallen behind the United States and other industrial powers. Its colonial reach was not on par with some of its European rivals, such as Great Britain, and it had suffered embarrassing military defeats at the hands of the Prussians. With the Dreyfus affair tearing at the country’s domestic fabric, a national malaise had settled in. It was hoped that the Exposition Universelle—bigger and bolder than the previous gatherings—would revive France’s fortunes and spirits, and usher in the new century with Paris at its symbolic center.

  Stripped of the revolutionary subtext and with industrial powers seeking ways out of a persistent economic depression, the Exposition Universelle received early exhibit commitments from more than forty nations. The grounds would cover both sides of the Seine, stretching northwest and southeast from the Eiffel Tower, then northeastward along the river. As the opening neared, French officials announced that they expected sixty million visitors, more than twice the number drawn to Chicago in 1893 and an eightfold increase over Paris’s last expo in 1889.5

  The exposition almost didn’t get off the ground. Parisian officials intended to use the event to introduce the first stretch of its planned Metropolitan subway system, a project that was fraught with problems. Rather than tunneling below ground, engineers designed a project that involved digging wide, deep ditches, laying the track bed then building the tube to encase it, and filling in the remaining ditch. The first stretch of line was to travel beneath Rue de Rivoli on the Right Bank, linking an auxiliary exposition display area near Porte de Vincennes with the main exposition grounds. Construction problems, including collapsing walls along the ditch, added delays. “The whole Rue de Rivoli, from the Concorde to the Rue Castiglione, caved in in different places,” Elsie Porter noted in her diary. “At the Etoile I walked out one fine morning to find a huge hole in front of a private house—all caved in, taking a tree and men along between the Champs Elysèe and Avenue de Friedland. Everything was barred off and full of dust and dirt.”

  Organizers, who had set April 14 as the day for the opening ceremonies, saw no reason to change the date, even though the fairgrounds were still a work in progress when it arrived. Landscaping was hurriedly emplaced for the opening, but most of the buildings were far from finished. The Art Palace, one of the centerpieces, had yet to get a roof, and only half of its grand staircase was in place. The Pont Alexandre III bridge linking the Grand Palais on the Right Bank with the manufacturing pavilion on the Left Bank—a bridge already four years in the making—was barely done in time. That didn’t much matter, since neither of the exhibition spaces was ready either. The whole affair was a jumble of chaos, and it would be late May before the exhibits were ready, though the Americans were ahead of most of the other exhibitors. Even though there would be little to see—leading to wide frustration—some fifty thousand people had arrived in Paris from around the country and the world to celebrate the opening at the dawn of the new century.6

  One of the few large spaces ready for use was the massive Salle de Fêtes at the southern end of the Champs de Mars, surrounded by halls that would exhibit advances in mining, metals, transportation, and other industries, including the brilliantly lit hall devoted to innovations in electricity. The Salle de Fêtes was a circular room within a square building, topped by a glass dome and with a sweeping staircase at one side. Organizers invited fourteen thousand people to the opening ceremonies, and Paris, for the most part, was closed as if on holiday. President Loubet, to mark the occasion, pardoned scores of military men in jail on minor offenses, and ordered an extra ration of wine for the nation’s troops. But his main role that day was to deliver the opening speech.

  The president left the Palais de l’Élysée by carriage and was carried to the Salle de Fêtes through thronged streets framed by bunting-clad bu
ildings, as though leading a short parade. It was a cold and windy but clear-skied spring day, and traffic on nearby streets was snarled for hours, exacerbated by a maze of carriages abandoned by those rushing to get to the ceremonies on foot lest they miss them. Loubet’s path was clear, though, and he entered the Salle de Fêtes with a grand fanfare. A volley of artillery was fired outside the hall as large, red velvet—covered doors swung open. Loubet, dressed in a dark suit with the wide red sash of the Legion of Honor, strode in as the Republican Guard band struck up “La Marseillaise.”

  Ambassador Porter, his wife, and his daughter were among the sea of diplomats, exposition officials, and grandes dames et messieurs of Parisian society that flowed across the open floor and out into the open air of the Champs de Mars, with the Eiffel Tower beyond. While most of the Europeans were in conservative business suits and evening gowns, the wardrobes of the world added splashes of color, from green-and-red Hungarians to white-clad Arab sheiks to red-cloaked Cossacks and Chinese representatives in fine silk. The speeches were mercifully short; Loubet spoke of Europe and his hopes that the international cooperation that had made the exposition possible augured a lengthy peace in a region that had seen so much war. “I am convinced that, thanks to the persevering affirmation of certain generous thoughts with which the expiring century has resounded, the twentieth century will witness a little more fraternity and less misery of all kinds, and that ere long, perhaps, we shall have accomplished an important step in the slow evolution of the work towards happiness and of man toward humanity,” Loubet told the crowd, which erupted in a prolonged outburst of cheers.7