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Faiths, Fortunes and Feminine Duty: Charity in Parisian High Society 1880–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2007

ELIZABETH C. MACKNIGHT
ELIZABETH C. MACKNIGHT
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Aberdeen, King's college, Aberdeen AB24 3FX, Scotland; e-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

On 4 May 1897 more than a hundred Parisians – mostly women of high society – perished in the Charity Bazaar fire. The records of this terrible accident reveal much about the charitable practices of the nobility in France of the Third Republic. This article explores the place of religion in upper-class charity within the context of republican anticlericalism. It focuses especially on issues of inter-faith collaboration and the role of aristocratic women in supporting the work of the Catholic Church.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , July 2007 , pp. 482 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 Le monde or le Tout-Paris was a set of noble families that owned property in Paris and the countryside. The women of this elite were known as ‘mondaines’; in this article ‘mondains’ is used to refer to both men and women of high society. For names and addresses see E. Bender (ed.), Livre d'or des salons: adresses à Paris et dans les châteaux, Paris 1888. On the origins of Parisian high society see Anne Martin-Fugier, La Vie élégante ou la formation du Tout-Paris, 1815–1848, Paris 1990, 102, 109–12.

2 Henry Blount came up with the idea for a charity bazaar in 1885. For the history of the event see Jean-Paul Clébert, L'Incendie du Bazar de la Charité, Paris 1978, 39–45. For the list of stalls, invitation replies and receipts for catering and electricity see AP 156 Mackau (I)/117.

3 Figures on the death toll vary between sources because some bodies were unidentifiable. A list of victims appears in François Coppée and comte Albert de Mun, Notre-Dame de Consolation, Paris 1900. For recollections of the tragedy see Gustave Schlumberger, Mes Souvenirs, 1844–1928, Paris 1934, 75–7; comtesse Jean de Pange, Comment j'ai vu 1900, Paris 1962, 156–60; Anne de Cossé Brissac, La Comtesse Greffulhe, Paris 1991, 142–9; Simone Lheureux, Vies et passions d'Anne de Crussol, duchesse d'Uzès, Nîmes 1989, 126–7; and Ernest A. Vizetelly, Paris and her people, New York 1971, 228–9. For newspaper reports see Le Figaro, 5–21 May 1897; ‘Cérémonie funèbre à Notre-Dame pour les victimes du Bazar de la Charité’, L'Illustration, 15 May 1897. The subscription raised 1,218,015 francs for charities participating in the bazaar.

4 ‘L'Adieu’, Le Figaro, 8 May 1897.

5 On the victims' ‘martyrdom’ and parallels drawn with Joan of Arc see ‘Nos Gravures’, L'Illustration, 15 May 1897, and Clébert, L'Incendie, 321–6. On bourgeoises and charity see Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the leisure class: the bourgeoises of northern France in the nineteenth century, Princeton 1981, 126–7, 139–45; Barbara C. Pope, ‘Angels in the devil's workshop: leisured and charitable women in nineteenth-century England and France’, in Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (eds), Becoming visible: women in European history, Boston 1977, 296–324; Dorice W. Elliott, ‘The angel of the house: women's philanthropy and the redefinition of gender in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England’, unpubl. PhD diss. Johns Hopkins 1994; and John T. Cumbler, ‘The politics of charity: gender and class in late nineteenth-century charity policy’, JSH xiv (1981), 99–111.

6 In 1899 the Paris bulletin Annales de la charité was renamed Revue philanthropique: Jacques Donzelot, The policing of families, trans. Robert Hurley, New York 1979, 67. Parallels between the notion of bienfaisance and the notion of France's mission civilisatrice toward the indigenous populations of its colonies are discussed in Lee Shai Weissbach, ‘The nature of philanthropy in nineteenth-century France and the mentalité of the Jewish elite’, JH viii (1994), 191–204. On charity and consumption see Thorstein Veblen, The theory of the leisure class: an economic study of institutions, New York 1934, 60–87, 192–217.

7 For charitable institutions in 1897 see Office Central des Oeuvres de Bienfaisance, Paris charitable et prévoyant, Paris 1897. Noblewomen's activities remain undifferentiated from those of bourgeoises in Anne Martin-Fugier, La Bourgeoise: la femme au temps de Paul Bourget, Paris 1983, 203–20; Smith, Ladies, 135–49. ‘We have no in-depth study of women's charity in France from the eighteenth century to the twentieth, but there seems little doubt that noblewomen were increasingly at the forefront of efforts undertaken’: David Higgs, Nobles in nineteenth-century France: the practice of inegalitarianism, Baltimore 1987, 175.

8 Clébert, L'Incendie, 87.

9 Barbara Diefendorf, From penitence to charity: pious women and the Catholic reformation in Paris, Oxford 2004, 160–1, 209–11, 234–5, 246.

10 Arno Mayer, The persistence of the old regime: Europe to the Great War, New York 1981, 11–12; Carlo Bitossi, ‘Riches and charity: the duke and duchess of Galliera’, JEEH xxiii (1994), 397–409.

11 When Henri d'Orléans, duc d'Aumale, was informed by telegram that his niece, the duchesse d'Alençon, had perished in the fire, he suffered a fatal heart attack at his villa in Sicily: ‘Les Funérailles de la duchesse d'Alençon à Dreux’, and ‘Les Funérailles du duc d'Aumale à l'Eglise de la Madeleine’, L'Illustration, 22 May 1897; Lheureux, Vies et passions, 127–8; Henri, comte de Paris, Mon Album de famille, texte de Michel de Grèce, Paris 1996, 96. As with charity, the formation of patronage committees to raise funds for and to promote the performing arts was common practice in le monde. A good example of such a body was the International Patronage Committee for the construction of the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées: AP Gramont 101 (II)/153; Gabriel Astruc, Le Pavillon des fantômes, Paris 1974, 221–2.

12 In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries ambitious clerics were able to advance their careers through the family connections of noble patrons; Cardinal Richelieu is a case in point. By holding the position of abbess an aristocratic woman could influence younger female relatives to become nuns. See Sharon Kettering, ‘The patronage power of early modern noblewomen’, HJ xxxii (1989), 817–41.

13 AP Murat 31/105; ‘Allocution prononcée le 17 janvier 1890 devant l'Assemblée Générale du Comité Departementale des Landes par M. le vicomte de Pelleport-Burète’, AP Durrieu 229/3; Julie Siegfried, La Guerre et le rôle de la femme: conférence faite à Paris au Musée Social le 13 janvier 1915, Cahors 1915.

14 Gérard Rousset-Charny, Les Palais parisiens de la belle époque, Alençon 1990, 56–7, 92, 102, 120, 124, 221–2; Pierre Assouline, Le Dernier des Camondo, Paris 1999, 180–1, 196; Ruth Brandon, The dollar princesses: the American invasion of the European aristocracy, 1870–1914, London 1980. Sources on French Protestant mondaines are slim. The Monods, perhaps the most famous French Protestant family because of their charitable activity, had some contacts in le monde (Gabriel attended the Protestant marquise Arconati-Visconti's salon) but they were not members of high society. See Schlumberger, Mes Souvenirs, 214; Sarah Monod, Souvenirs d'une belle journée: notre centenaire de famille, 1808–1908, Nancy 1908; and Gaston Migeon, La Marquise Arconati Visconti: notice lue à l'Assemblée Générale Annuelle de la Société des Amis du Louvre le 16 janvier 1924, Paris 1924.

15 Clébert, L'Incendie, 259–65. Mme Lebaudy and the baron de Mackau corresponded daily in the weeks after the fire: AP Mackau 156 (I)/117.

16 ‘Courrier de Paris’, and ‘Cérémonie funèbre à Notre-Dame pour les victimes du Bazar de la Charité’, L'Illustration, 15 May 1897. The text of the sermon is reproduced in Clébert, L'Incendie, 274–9. Its political nature is discussed in Francesco Alafaci, ‘Catholic antisemitism under the Third Republic in France, 1870–1914’, unpubl. MA diss. UNSW, Sydney 2000, 155.

17 Higgs, Nobles, 159. Most studies of how religion affected charity work in nineteenth-century France have come from historians of Jewish charity: Weissbach, ‘The nature of philanthropy’, 191–204, and ‘Oeuvre industrielle, oeuvre morale: the Sociétés de patronage of nineteenth-century France’, FHS xv (1987), 99–120; Nancy L. Green, ‘To give and receive: philanthropy and collective responsibility among Jews in Paris, 1880–1914’, in Peter Mandler (ed.), The uses of charity: the poor on relief in the nineteenth-century metropolis, Philadelphia 1990, 197–226.

18 Caroline Ford, Divided houses: religion and gender in modern France, Ithaca 2005, 1, 6–7; Stone, Judith F., ‘Anticlericals and bonnes soeurs: the rhetoric of the 1901 Law of Associations’, FHS xxiii (2000), 103–28Google Scholar.

19 On ‘solidarism’ and the welfare state in France see Weiss, John H., ‘Origins of the French welfare state: poor relief in the Third Republic, 1871–1914’, FHS xiii (1983), 47–78Google Scholar; Nord, Philip, ‘The welfare state in France, 1870–1914’, FHS xviii (1994), 820–38Google Scholar; Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, ‘Womanly duties: maternalist policies and the origins of the welfare states in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920’, AHR xcv (1990), 1076–108; and Rachel G. Fuchs, ‘Morality and poverty: public welfare for mothers in Paris, 1870–1900’, FH i–ii (1988), 288–311, and Abandoned children: foundlings and child welfare in nineteenth-century France, Albany 1984.

20 Mgr Mermillod, quoted in Pauline d'Haussonville, La Charité à travers la vie, préface par l'abbé de Bibergues, chanoine honoraire supérieur des missionaires diocésains de Paris, Paris 1912, 98. Mgr Mermillod wrote a number of books for Christian women including La Femme du monde selon l’évangile.

21 Ralph Gibson, A social history of Catholicism, 1789–1914, London 1989, 180; Sylviane Grésillon, ‘Catéchiste volontaire, une vocation féminine’, and Geneviève Gabbois, ‘“Vous êtes presque la seule consolation de l’église”: la foi des femmes face à la déchristianisation de 1789 à 1880’, in Jean Delumeau (ed.), La Religion de ma mère: le rôle des femmes dans la transmission de la foi, Paris 1992, 301–25, 327–42; Claude Langlois, Le Catholicisme au féminin: les congregations françaises à supérieure générale au XIXe siècle, Paris 1984. On devout Catholic male identity see Paul Seely, ‘O sainte mère: liberalism and socialization of Catholic men in nineteenth-century France’, JMEH lxx (1998), 880–91.

22 Martin-Fugier, La Bourgeoise, 216–17; AP Mugnier 258/2.

23 The stall in question was for the princesse de Metternich's Home Français des Gouvernantes à Vienne. Félicie had rather more influence over her granddaughter, Élaine, Élisabeth's daughter: Cossé Brissac, La Comtesse, 143–5, 187.

24 Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 101; Steven M. Beaudoin, ‘“Without belonging to public service”: charities, the state, and civil society in Third Republic Bordeaux, 1870–1914’, JSH xxxi (1998), 671–99; Sanford Elwitt, ‘Social reform and social order in late nineteenth-century France: the Musée Social and its friends’, FHS xi (1980), 431–51.

25 AP Gramont 101 (II)/162.

26 Following Cardinal Lavigier's toast in 1890, the comte Henri Greffulhe, like other nobles including Arenberg, Vogüé and Oisel, joined a committee for the Republican right in support of Ralliement: Christian de Bartillat, Histoire de la noblesse française de 1789 à nos jours, II: Les Nobles du Second Empire à la fin du XXe siècle, Paris 1991, 222.

27 Cissie C. Fairchilds, Poverty and charity in Aix-en-Provence, 1640–1789 (1976), quoted in Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 105; Higgs, Nobles, 150–4, 157–75.

28 Claire Biquard, ‘Piété et foi dans le Faubourg Saint-Germain au XIXe siècle’, HES xii (1993), 299–318; Adeline Daumard, ‘Une Enquête sur la noblesse à Paris au xixe siècle’, CCRH iii (1989), 27–38; Higgs, Nobles, 157–75, 202–7; Bartillat, Les Nobles, 217–30.

29 Diefendorf, From penitence, 210–11, 234–5, 246.

30 Stone, ‘Anticlericals’, 111–17; Weiss, ‘Origins’, 51–2. See also Charles Brunot, Réponse aux observations sur le projet de loi relatif à la surveillance des établissements de bienfaisance privés: extrait de la Revue philanthropique, 10 Dec. 1901, Paris 1901.

31 Diefendorf, From penitence, 211. I know of only one Parisian noblewoman who became a nun in the late nineteenth century. The baronne Mathilde de Mackau joined the third order of St Dominic in 1881, whilst married: Père Boulanger, Extrait de l'année dominicaine: Mathilde Maison, baronne de Mackau, 1837–1886, Grenoble 1912. The government's survey of the third order in connection with the 1901 Law of Association is discussed in Stone, ‘Anticlericals’, 117–25. Higgs cites some other rare examples of married noblewomen entering religious orders early in the nineteenth century: Nobles, 166–8. On the growth of religious orders see Gibson, A social history, 83, and Langlois, Le Catholicisme, 631–2.

32 Whitney Walton, Eve's proud descendants: four women writers and republican politics in nineteenth-century France, Stanford 2000, 35–7. There is an important literature on female religiosity and the convents of ancien régime France. In addition to Diefendorf's From penitence see Elizabeth Rapley, A social history of the cloister: daily life in the teaching monasteries of the old regime, Montreal 2001, and The dévotes: women and Church in seventeenth-century France, Montreal 1990; and Susan E. Dinan, ‘Spheres of female religious expression in early modern France’, in Susan E. Dinan and Debra Meyers (eds), Women and religion in old and new worlds, New York 2001, 71–92.

33 Colette Cosnier, Le Silence des filles: de l'aiguille à la plume, Paris 2001, 145–50.

34 On post-1870 battles against depopulation see Véronique Antomarchi, Politique et famille sous la IIIe République, 1870–1914, Paris 2000, 188–95. Literature provided anticlericals with ammunition against celibate nuns: see discussion of Denis Diderot's novel, La Religieuse (1780) and government rhetoric in Stone, ‘Anticlericals’, 103–8, 116–17, 120, 124.

35 AP Mackau 156 (I)/314.

36 AP Mugnier 258/1–5; AP Gramont 101 (II)/1; Christine Sutherland, Enchantress: Marthe Bibesco and her world, New York 1996, 65–6; André de Fouquières, Cinquante Ans de panache, Paris 1951, 126–9.

37 Comtesse Greffulhe to Mme Lebaudy, 8 Sept. 1909; abbé Mugnier to comtesse Greffulhe, 12 Sept. 1909; Eugénie Bérard to comtesse Greffulhe, 26 Sept. 1909, in AP Gramont 101 (II)/199. On relics and the cult of saints see Gibson, A social history, 18–21, 136–7, 151–2.

38 Higgs, Nobles, 171–2; Bartillat, Les Nobles, 220–30.

39 See receipts for adoration perpetuelle in AP Gramont 101 (II)/162; Higgs, Nobles, 206–7; Weissbach ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 104–5; and Gibson, A social history, 256–7.

40 Sr Marie to the princesse Cécile Murat, 28 Feb. 1900; princesse Cécile to Sr Marie, 5 Mar. 1900, AP Murat 31/ 05. The princess told a white lie in her letter for she did raise funds for other charitable causes: AP Murat 31/ 105.

41 Undated letter to the princesse Cécile, signature illegible; Sr Marie to the princesse Cécile, 14 Jan. 1902, 27 Jan. 1905; préfecture to the princesse Cécile, 9, 28 Feb. 1905, AP Murat 31/105. The princesse Mathilde was patron of Notre-Dame-de Sept-Douleurs, a home for incurable girls to which she bequeathed 100,000 francs. She visited and took great personal interest in the girls. See Pages from the Goncourt journal, ed. and trans. R. Baldick, Oxford 1988, entry for 17 Mar. 1875, at p. 215.

42 Baronne de Mackau to Constance Bautte de Favau, 16 Feb. 1873, AP Mackau 156 (I)/314.

43 A. de Belbeuf, De la Noblesse française en 1861 par un maire de village (1861), trans. in Higgs, Nobles, 151–2; Berlanstein, Lenard R., ‘Growing up as workers in nineteenth-century Paris: the case of the orphans of the prince imperial’, FHS xi (1980), 551–76Google Scholar.

44 Léon Léfébure, L'Organisation de la charité privée en France, trans. in Weiss, ‘Origins’, 53–4.

45 Notice in AP Murat 31/105.

46 Office Central, Renseignements confidentiels, 26 Feb. 1904, AP Murat 31/105. Many établissements hospitaliers provided long-term care for the aged and infirm as part of their activities: Weiss, ‘Origins’, 51–2.

47 Mme Triquart to the princesse Cécile, 1 Mar. 1904, AP Murat 31/105.; Weiss, ‘Origins’, n. 26.

48 AP Murat 31/105.

49 Blindness did not compromise Mme Furtado Heine's passion for flowers: ‘her serres (glasshouses) surpass all that imagination can picture, and her orchids are famous throughout the world’: Gentlewoman, 9 Jan. 1897. Mme Furtado Heine intended her Crosic estate to become a hospital for children; the convalescent home for officers was formerly her villa at Nice. The children's hospital (rue Delbert) was founded in 1884 with a perpetual annuity (a model of it can be seen in the Musée d'Orsay) and the crèche (rue Jacquier Montrouge, near to the trade school) was founded on 7 June 1896. Among the other religieuses appointed to the Legion of Honour were la veuve Brulon in 1815, Augustine Drevon (canteen officer at Magenta) and Rosalie Cahen (services in the Franco-Prussian war): see press articles including La Croix, 10 Dec. 1896, AP Murat 31/ 448.

50 Boni de Castellane, Mémoires, Paris 1986, 12–13; Brandon, The dollar princesses, 75–103; Mary Cable, Top drawer: American high society from the gilded age to the roaring twenties, New York 1984, 29–30, 36; Frederic Cople Jaher, A scapegoat in the new wilderness: the origins and rise of antisemitism in America, Cambridge, Ma. 1994, 1, 5–9, 181, 204, 243.

51 Weissbach, ‘The nature of philanthropy’, 191–204; Clermont-Tonnerre, Au Temps, 221–2; Derek Wilson, Rothschild: a story of wealth and power, London 1994, 269–73. Élisabeth's stepmother was Marguerite de Rothschild, daughter of the Baron James de Rothschild of Frankfurt.

52 Weissbach, ‘The nature of philanthropy’, 200; Green, ‘To give and receive’, 197; Clermont-Tonnerre, Au Temps, 222. On ‘moralisation of the masses’ see Peter McPhee, A social history of France, 1780–1880, London 1992, ch. xii.

53 Donzelot, Policing, 9–95; Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 107–9; Antomarchi, Politique, 15–26, 51–80, 99–170; Shapiro, Ann-Louise, ‘Housing reform in Paris: social space and social control’, FHS xii (1982), 486–507Google Scholar; Rachel G. Fuchs, ‘The right to life: Paul Strauss and the politics of motherhood’, and Mary Lynn Stewart, ‘Setting the standards: labor and family reformers’, in Elinor A. Accampo, Rachel G. Fuchs and Mary Lynn Stewart (eds), Gender and the politics of social reform in France, 1870–1914, Baltimore 1995, 82–105, 106–27.

54 Elwitt, ‘Social reform’, 431–51.

55 Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 101.

56 AP Murat 31/ 05; H. Prague ‘Chronique de la semaine’, Archives israélites (1885), quoted in Weissbach, ‘Oeuvre industrielle’, 111; Alexandre Westphal, La Bienfaisance protestante au XIXe siècle: étude sur l'activité intérieure du protestantisme français présentée a Nantes à l'occasion des fêtes du troisième centenaire de l’Édit, Nancy 1899, 10.

57 Westphal, La Bienfaisance, 21; Frank Puaux (ed.), Les Oeuvres du protestantisme français au XIXe siècle, Paris 1893, 216–17, 285–6.

58 Unfortunately the Frenchwomen on the committee for this oeuvre are not named: Puaux, Les Oeuvres, 421–2. The concept of morality through recreation, to make a healthy body and a healthy mind, was also manifest in the establishment of Protestant colonies de vacances: Westphal, La Bienfaisance, 12–13. On philanthropy in the United States see Cable, Top drawer, 163–74.

59 Also interspersed with the names of French nobility on the committee lists are the Princess Metternich, wife of the Austrian ambassador, and the wives of several Eastern European aristocrats: F. Gille, La Société de Charité Maternelle de Paris: origine, fonctionnement et marche progressive de l'oeuvre de 1784 à 1885, Paris 1887, 174, 182. For donations see p. 197. An example of an inter-faith all-male committee is the 1904 council for the Alliance d'Hygiène Sociale composed of government ministers such as Jules Siegfried and Emile Cheysson, as well as Jean Casimier-Perier (president) and four Rothschilds: Elwitt, ‘Social reform’, 441.

60 Gille, La Société, 252–3.

61 AP Gramont 101 (II)/199; Clébert, L'Incendie, 255, 392–6.

62 Clébert, L'Incendie, 394; Le Figaro, 6 June 1897. A copy of the land sale document is in AP Mackau 156 (I)/121. The duchesse de Mortemart's mother, the comtesse d'Hunolstein, died in the fire. The duchesse de Vendôme escaped; she had been at stall 16, for the Petits-Hopitaux Provisoires.

63 Baron de Zuylen to the comtesse Greffulhe, n.d., AP Gramont 101 (II)/199.

64 Westphal, La Bienfaisance, 21.

65 In the interwar decades, balls as well as ballet, theatre and opera galas were often organised as charity fundraisers by upper-class women: Bartillat, Les Nobles, 157; Fouquières, Cinquante Ans, 180–7. On volunteer war work and international relief networks see Hannah Pakula, The last romantic: a biography of Queen Marie of Roumania, New York 1984, 200–3, 207–8, 221–3, and Eleanor Dwight, Edith Wharton: an extraordinary life, New York 1994, 179–210.

66 Siegfried, La Guerre, 4. Siegfried's view that women's actions should be informed by science rather than religion contrasts with Bonnie Smith's argument for the gendering of science and religion among bourgeois men and women of the Nord: Ladies, 93–122

67 Ibid. 7.

68 Ibid. 10. The sentiments of this speech resemble those expressed by the baronne de Mackau three decades earlier: letter, 27 Aug. 1870, AP Mackau 156 (I)/314.

69 On the LPF and LFF see Gibson, A social history, 183; and Hause, Steven and Kenney, Anne, ‘The development of the Catholic women's suffrage movement in France, 1896–1922’, CHR lxvii (1981), 11–30Google Scholar, and Women's suffrage and social politics in the Third Republic, Princeton 1984, 63–6, 84–5.

70 Weiss, ‘Origins’, 47–78; Linda L. Clark, ‘Bringing feminine qualities into the public sphere: the Third Republic's appointment of women inspectors’, in Accampo, Fuchs and Stewart, Gender, 128–56; Jo Burr Margadant, Madame le professeur: women educators in the Third Republic, Princeton 1990.