The Admiral and the Ambassador (28 page)

The ambassador—and the recovery—could wait.

T
HE 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 buildings, 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.”