Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals
A sparkling panorama of “La Belle Époque”: Its gilded society, irrepressible wits and splendid courtesans
by Cornelia Otis Skinner
About a year ago, I went to see Paris 1900 at the Frist Art Museum. I was captivated by the world brought to life by the exhibition – the elegant women travelling by horse, carriage, and even bicycle down the streets of Paris; the theatre and the nightlife; the art nouveau interiors and architecture, the paintings and sculpture; the grand inventions on display at the World’s Fair, with the striking and controversial Eiffel Tower as its centerpiece. I went looking for something to read that would bring this world even more to life for me, and I found Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals by Cornelia Otis Skinner.
Skinner was an actress and writer who fell in love with Paris while studying theatre at the Sorbonne in the 1920s and developed a particular interest in La Belle Époque, that dazzling time from the latter part of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century in Paris, when flaneurs strolled the streets, writers, artists, and intellectuals ruled the cafes and le gratin ruled the clubs and drawing room salons, and the Grand Horizontals ruled the nights. She began to study the period while working on a show set during the time, and her fascination took over. She conducted research in Paris, at the great libraries and grand drawing rooms of surviving Belle Époque figures.
The result of this combination of research is a book that is intelligent and well-informed, but also gossipy, clever, and fun. It reads like an oral account of the era, at times hopping blithely along tangents before returning to the story at hand, rather than like a textbook or dry historical analysis. It is lively and entertaining, concerning itself more with individual characters and drawing-room politics than with national politics and war accounts.
It does describe some of the major events of the era, including the divisive Dreyfus affair and the calamitous Charity Bazaar Fire, but they serve more as backdrops for the lives of the eccentric cast of characters than centerpieces of the book. Though Skinner begins by reminding the reader of the less glorious aspects of late nineteenth century Paris, she moves swiftly to the gilded world of the rich, famous, and infamous. From great society ladies and disinherited royalty to journalists and playwrights, and all the way to the scandalous kept women and courtesans, Skinner describes the people who made news, whether in the theatre reviews or the society pages. Perhaps that is what is so captivating about this work; in its light wit and frivolous accounts, it draws the reader into the feeling of reading a gossip column from a Paris newspaper of the time, and witnessing the scandals and glories along with the characters described.
Skinner brings the characters delightfully to life through anecdotes such as dandy and would-be poet Robert de Montesquiou’s obsession with portraiture (of himself, of course), the forced work regimen that salon leader Léontine de Caillavet instated to transform Anatole France into one of France’s greatest writers, and the nightly champagne-fueled revels of the great courtesans and their admirers at that Belle Époque institution, Maxim’s.
Elegant Wits and Grand Horizontals is an ideal read for anyone who wants to get a feel for La Belle Époque without diving into a long, dry historical text. Readers who want a detailed account of the events of these decades at the end of the nineteenth century would do better to turn elsewhere, but if you want to know the feeling of living in (or near) the society of this delightful time, check libraries and used bookstores for a copy of Skinner’s effervescent account.
