Dawn of the Belle Époque: The Paris of Monet, Zola, Bernhardt, Eiffel, Debussy, Clemenceau, and their Friends (review)

Mary McAuliffe’s book is a charming and detailed meander through the lives of the writers and artists who lived and worked in Paris between 1871 and 1900. Each chapter describes a year in the life of the French capital, during which the author depicts the major Parisian events and provides a fascinating variety of anecdotes, little-known facts, and background detail that any connoisseur of the city will relish. She retells history descriptively rather than analytically, and the result is an informative and evocative guide to late nineteenth-century Paris that would be an ideal accompaniment to a stay in the capital. Against this overarching historical narrative, McAuliffe plots her literary and artistic biographies. It is in her affectionate and intimate evocations of the daily lives and loves of figures such as Louise Michel, Sarah Bernhardt, and Berthe Morisot that she is at her most beguiling. As the years progress, we return again and again to a handful of key characters and are given remarkably detailed insights into how they dressed, what they ate and spent, and into their thoughts and actions. McAuliffe writes in an informal, even chatty register, drawing the reader into the gossipy tales and scandalous secrets she recounts, in a manner that at times suggests a combination of soap opera and the historical novel. At the end of each episode, through the inclusion of a knowing aside, she artfully whets the reader’s appetite for the next instalment. McAuliffe’s references to street names (for which she always gives the modern equivalent) are particularly interesting, and I found myself, Emma Bovary-style, tracing the various dwellings of Sarah Bernhardt on my own map of Paris. In fact, the book would have benefited greatly from the inclusion of a map: McAuliffe clearly knows Paris extremely well, but her passing references to different arrondissements and quartiers might confuse a reader less familiar with the city’s idiosyncrasies. The book is relatively short on footnotes; instead, the notes for each chapter begin with a list of the primary sources consulted, which include a vast array of novels, letters, and memoirs. However, McAuliffe is not always precise enough about where her information is taken from, and, despite some useful references to secondary sources, she fails to acknowledge adequately the various interpretations of the Belle Époque offered by other historians. It is a pity, too, that the French originals of quotations are not included, and there are a few inaccuracies along the way (such as the description of Gervaise and Coupeau drinking absinthe in Zola’s L’ Assommoir). Nevertheless, this book is a most entertaining and readable account of a fascinating era and will be useful to both students of Paris and visitors alike.