Dancing for the marquis, p.4
Dancing for the Marquis, page 4
On most evenings, the marquis could be found in one or other of these sanctums, dressed in an expensive suit with a decoration in his buttonhole. Enthroned in a leather armchair, he would light a fine cigar and hold forth to an approving audience about the need for France to colonise and his own intentions in this regard. His fellow clubmen would sit rapt, as if engrossed in a bedtime story being told by a creative parent.
‘Port Breton is an extraordinary place – ideal for a settlement, because immigrants can select their property based on their personal climatic preferences. They can live on the island’s flat plains or, if they desire a cooler atmosphere, they can live at one of several different elevations on its hills. All the land is productive in one way or another.’
While the clubmen fantasised about life on this remote island in the distant Pacific, Charles was explicit. ‘I will be the absolute head of the colony but this won’t mean despotic or arbitrary rule. My authority is based on the principles of a supreme order inspired by Christian sentiments and the Catholic Church.’
Those who were taking note smiled with approval. They were all conservatives and well to the right in their politics. They were not averse to absolutism. Moreover, they were instinctively supportive of the Church. They were as one in their estimate of Charles and would say to each other, ‘The marquis is so charming and knowledgeable, so self-confident and such a well-bred man of the world. Moreover, his ideas are magnificent.’
Charles rallied many of these clubmen to his cause, including those who had in quantity what he most lacked – liquid funds. Neither the income from his tenants nor the sale of the timber felled in the Quimerc’h forests was ever sufficient to match his regular expenditures, let alone finance a colonial settlement. His new devotees were willing lenders, because they trusted him as a similarly minded confrère.
With cash, Charles was able to start advertising that he had vouchers for sale representing parcels of land at Port Breton. Charles hoped the readers of Le Petit Journal, a popular Paris newspaper with a huge circulation, would be unable to resist his enticement: ‘A fortune can be secured quickly without even leaving this country.’
When Charles first placed this advertisement in July 1877, the clerk had taken down his words without paying much heed. When reviewing the copy, the typesetter asked, ‘Where on earth is Port Breton? I’ve never heard of it. Is it a real place? I hope we’re not abetting a swindle.’ Yet the newspaper was amenable to recurring revenue; the notice appeared regularly in issue after issue.
One of Charles’s new friends was Lucien de Puydt. He had once been an explorer himself, and was a fervent advocate for French colonisation. De Puydt was particularly susceptible to Charles’s visionary ideas, and willing not only to pay for advertising, but also to provide initial capital for his venture. One evening, the two men were having a drink together when de Puydt looked at him intently over the top of his spectacles, and enquired, ‘I assume this land in New Ireland has been surveyed and subdivided, and that the land vouchers represent actual territorial value?’
Although it was really essential for Charles to have his rich friend’s fullest trust, he prevaricated. He summoned a make-believe workforce to his aid.
‘My officers are at present designing a cadastral system, and this will be the basis for the allocation of hectares and the registration of ownership.’ He ignored entirely the question about land vouchers, and de Puydt was left to conclude that a team of surveyors was already in New Ireland busily at work with theodolites, measuring rods and chains.
Monsieur de Puydt could not know that his faith was misplaced. No surveys had been undertaken, and the purchasers of vouchers were simply buying a security backed by the notional value and productive capacity of as yet unseen and unexploited lands in the future colony. Charles refrained from telling his friend that the price per hectare was entirely a figment of his own imagination.
Although New Ireland was relatively small, Charles never implied that land might be a finite resource. This was because the remainder of his fanciful realm – all the other islands of New France – was vast. Similarly, he made no mention that much of New Ireland was covered with towering mountains limiting its arable areas.
While Bougainville’s description of Port Praslin’s ‘safe and convenient anchorage’ and its spectacular cascade had decided Charles on New Ireland as the principal site for his colony, he was still open to alternatives – Western Australia perhaps?
‘Absolutely not!’ The British authorities briskly shut down any further overtures on that proposal. Charles then addressed a letter to the French President, Patrice MacMahon: ‘I wish to request a land grant in New Caledonia for an agricultural colony.’
‘Your request is denied,’ was the prompt response.
Charles roared angrily to de Puydt, ‘Petty bureaucrats! Nobody with any foresight! – Only interested in the status quo! Well, damn them! I’m going to pursue my plans even if it means ignoring officialdom and its tedious restrictions.’ He went back to his charts and the navigators’ journals, and found himself freshly beguiled by a romantic depiction of the Port Praslin cascade. He may not have known but wouldn’t have cared that the painter, Antoine Chazal, had not seen the cascade himself; his Arcadian vision had been created from some sketches made by another artist, who had been aboard the Coquille on Duperrey’s voyage in 1825.
So that was that. ‘New France’ would be located in Oceania, and its capital would be at ‘Port Breton’ in New Ireland. Galvanised by his resolution, Charles then became feverishly busy arranging the printing of flyers and circulars and publicity pamphlets. He kept exhausting his funds, but Lucien de Puydt remained supportive.
‘If Port Breton is to succeed you’re going to need investors and they will want assurances that they’re dealing with a reliable organisation. You must have premises in central Paris.’ De Puydt offered to pay for the initial lease and setting-up costs, and Charles was soon able to announce that the headquarters of his colonial office were in la rue de la Ville-l’Évêque near the Place de la Madeleine.
With the inarguable solidity and respectability of bricks and mortar, the public began to show interest, and before long there were branch offices in other cities and a growing number of sales agents in places such as Belgium, Germany, and northern Italy.
As he drew close to achieving his objective, Charles looked ahead to the day when his settlers would arrive in the colony. His inclination for a martial and masculine Catholicism allowed him to envisage a triumphal mise en scène of conquest and claim. He pictured a wooden carrack with white sails emblazoned with the red Templar Cross, his very own La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción entering the emerald equatorial waters of Port Breton; a priest stepping into the shallows carrying a tall, silver crucifix and in his wake the colonists bearing aloft images of the Virgin and the saints on fluttering silken banners as they brought the Holy Catholic Church to New France. For Charles, Port Breton was already nothing less than a New Jerusalem, and so splendid in his mind’s eye that it might have been built with walls of precious stones and gates of pearl and streets of pure gold as if they were transparent glass. Gloria Domini!
Even with de Puydt’s support, Charles’s plans were perilously at risk from financial insufficiency. Charles was annoyed the Church was not forthcoming with any meaningful and material assistance.
‘Haven’t I always been exceptionally vocal in my support for the Church and our faith? Haven’t I always been explicit in stating my colony will be a base for missionary activities? What more does the Church want from me?’ Why does it duck and weave whenever I ask for funds? Well, I can’t wait on it forever. I’ll seek patronage elsewhere.’
And thus the noble marquis, Breton landholder and Paris clubman became an evening boulevardier, a frequenter of the café-concerts and brilliant salons where, in lovely rooms and mellow gaslight, the unreconciled Légitimists gathered to air their grievances, to give voice to their visceral hatred of the Republic, and to discuss their ambitions for a royal restoration under the fleur-de-lys, the true flag of France. Charles would engage the attention of fashionable women, gaze seductively into their sparkling eyes and mutter gallantries into their receptive ears. When they were thoroughly captivated he would purr, ‘If you will allow me, I could enrich you substantially,’ or ‘would you permit me increase your existing fortune?’ And when he confided with feline smoothness and apparent deference, ‘It is the beautiful half of the human race that carries good fortune into any endeavour,’ who were they argue? On the contrary, they were keen to pledge assistance to their suave and highborn admirer.
There were also other women in Charles’s Parisian life – the demimondaines who were so fascinating to Degas, Manet and Renoir. As the money from land voucher sales started to flow in, Charles allowed himself more than the occasional dalliance. From these encounters he derived approval, praise, and immediate gratification.
In la rue des Bons-Enfants, there was an hôtel de rendez-vous whose heavily curtained and sparsely furnished rooms could be rented by the hour with few questions asked. It was here that Charles conducted his liaisons. Despite the nature of her business, the efficient chatelaine, Marie Frisson, kept a sharp eye on all the comings and goings.
‘Bon soir, Monsieur du Breil, and which lady is to be your guest this evening?’ Madame Frisson would make her enquiries discreetly whilst simultaneously accepting an agreed payment and entering the details into the register she was obliged to keep by law.
Charles dealt with Madame Frisson as if he were confirming a business appointment rather than a tryst, ‘Tonight I will be seeing . . . and he would supply the appropriate name. He had several favourites who each had their own fanciful ideas about the arrangement.
‘My darling’, gushed Hélène de Paepe, who was silly enough to assume Charles was her inamorato and wrote him romantic and intimate letters, ‘Please let us meet somewhere else. Madame Frisson is too inquisitive and I don’t like her.’
Emiline Cannilier, a redhead, attempted to disguise her copious freckles by wearing a great deal of face paint. Perhaps this was off-putting to Charles because Emiline did not benefit from his largesse to the same extent as his other women. ‘He’s a miser,’ Emiline complained to Madame Frisson, ‘only ten francs a time’.
Louise Boutard presumptuously called herself ‘Madame Charles’ and would eventually become maîtresse-en-titre to the self-styled monarch of New France. She was a blowsy seamstress with auburn hair, a large bust and too much embonpoint for a woman of twenty-three. Her dresses were usually too brightly coloured and over-trimmed. She was something of a fabricator who claimed to be the Marquise de Secada and alluded vaguely to an (absent) husband being a diplomat in Cuba. She had no complaints about Charles’s generosity. ‘He’s so good to me,’ she would crow smugly, ‘he gives me banknotes and gold and we only ever drink the finest champagne.’ Charles’s gifts sometimes included jewellery and of one ostentatious necklace she boasted, ‘It cost two thousand francs.’ Her estimate was wildly exaggerated; the gaudy necklace was mostly paste. Madame Frisson noted with some amusement the cattish competition between the women for Charles’s favours.
By the beginning of 1879, Charles had rallied to his cause large numbers of disaffected clergy; Légitimists; the reactionary bourgeoisie; those who had modest means and were attracted by the opportunity to make a fortune; and professional speculators with no false illusions. A trickle of funds had turned into a flood. It was not long afterwards that Léon Roubaud fatefully invited Charles to Marseille.
* * *
Once his land vouchers began selling steadily, Charles arranged to buy the first of the ships that would carry immigrants to his colony. His initial purchase was a three masted, square-rigged barque of 682 tons, which, recalling the Nawab, he named Chandernagor. The ship needed additional passenger accommodation and other alterations. As these were to be undertaken in a dry dock at Le Havre in Normandy, Charles opened an agency there and then found the ideal person to run it – Stéphane Auxcousteaux, a man of character and civility.
‘Who is he?’ Lucien de Puydt asked Charles when he first heard of the appointment.
‘He’s currently the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper and he knows everyone who’s anyone in Normandy. I think he’ll inspire great confidence and I’m making him responsible for all my business in the province. He’s also going to oversee the modifications to the Chandernagor and to recruit the first colonists.’
Stéphane Auxcousteaux was flattered at having the confidence of the illustrious and charismatic marquis. He took to his tasks with zeal, though he did get rather caught up in the utopian romance. He regularly informed Charles of the progress he was making.
‘The central staircase you requested to connect the decks has been assembled and will be installed shortly. I am having all the finials engraved with the initials of your family. The officers’ cabins are being luxuriously appointed.’
Charles was gratified with the attention his agent was paying to the emblems of ownership. He was also gratified to hear his ship was attracting crowds of evening strollers who lingered by the dock to admire the handsome vessel.
Monsieur Auxcousteaux shortly began placing newspaper advertisements in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland. These announced:
FREE PASSAGES FOR SKILLED ARTISANS, AGRICULTURISTS, LABOURERS, & C, WHO CAN SPEAK FRENCH, AND ARE GOOD CATHOLICS. PASSAGE PAID FROM LE HAVRE TO PORT BRETON IN NEW FRANCE.
APPLY TO: M. AUXCOUSTEAUX, RUE DES PINCETTES, LE HAVRE, NORMANDY.
FOUR
While the Chandernagor was being fitted out for its role in the foundation of New France, a small family drama was taking place in an unpretentious stone house on the Klosterstraße in Eupen, a town near Germany’s border with Belgium. The householder and paterfamilias, Herr Heinz Fröhlich, a worthy but unimaginative middle-aged man, was becoming increasingly exasperated. The source of his vexation was his eldest son, Albert, who was seventeen and had recently completed his schooling.
‘How much longer do you think I’m going to tolerate your idleness? Since you finished at the oberschule you’ve done precisely nothing. This just cannot go on.’ Albert’s father could see clearly that his son had no plans for his immediate future, let alone for the rest of his life.
Heinz Fröhlich was a foreman at one of Eupen’s textile mills. He wanted his son to join him there and undertake an apprenticeship. He would say repeatedly, ‘You’ll have a safe, reliable job for life and learn all about the production of fine quality cloth using the latest machinery. You may not think it sounds exciting but a secure life has its own rewards.’ The words were a gentle but strongly meant defence of the bürgerlichen values to which Herr Fröhlich and his wife subscribed.
Albert was sick of hearing about working in the mill. He loved and revered his father but his reply was always the same, ‘I can see your viewpoint Father, but I’m absolutely positive it’s not something I want to do.’ To Albert, who reminded people of a frisky, leggy colt, the prospect of working in the mill was utterly demoralising. He was filled with the limitless hopes of youth, and was curious and energetic. He was also afflicted with wanderlust.
From not very long after he could first read properly, Albert had been spellbound by books such as Robinson Crusoe and The Coral Island, and the exciting stories of Jules Verne. Now that he was grown, he had his mind on intrepid endeavour – he yearned to be a man of spirit and daring in the mold of contemporary heroes such as Henry Morton Stanley or Richard Burton or John Hanning Speke. He believed foreign adventures would take him out of his everyday existence and give his life meaning. Albert wanted to test his masculinity. He was intoxicated by dreams of going to places where no white man had ever been before, of discovering new territories and rivers and landscapes, and of becoming celebrated in the manner of David Livingstone. He envisaged this future as a blank page waiting to be written, with a gripping story of his own. Yet he had no practical ideas on how he might accomplish his plans, and no money with which to travel.
Herr Fröhlich became increasingly irate, but the more he pressed his son to make a decision, the more Albert was disinclined to do so. He kept reading about intrepid adventurers, went to dances, and frittered away time with his companions. In June, when it was becoming nearly impossible to resist his father’s impatient urging, Albert spotted one of Monsieur Auxcousteaux’s advertisements. The opportunity was obviously heaven-sent, and he responded immediately. He was not deterred by the fact that he had none of the skills specified, or that he could scarcely speak any French. The advertisement quickened his long held desires and gave him a motivating focus.
Albert swaggered to his friends with anticipatory eagerness. ‘Just think! I’ll be seeing foreign lands. I’ll be taming a wilderness and helping to set up a colony in a new country. I’ll be an explorer.’ The girls he knew eyed him afresh. To sixteen-year-old Frieda Lenz, a favourite dancing partner with whom he was inclined to flirt, he became a figure of glamorous daring and bravado. He basked in her adulation.
‘I’ll try to write to you Frieda, but I’m sure you’ll understand that this might be difficult from the middle of a jungle.’
Frieda answered earnestly. ‘Oh of course; I do understand, – but I’m so intrigued by this exotic island, and when you get back I’ll want you to tell me all about it.’
To his male companions who questioned his experience, he blustered, ‘I bet I’ll be able to cope with any ordeal a sailor has to endure.’ He relished the prospect of an adventure that matched so closely the narratives he found engrossing.
