When France Adored Us

AP Photo In an excerpt from her new book, Jill Jonnes shows Paris on July 4, 1889—with cowboys firing guns in the air, raucous Champagne bashes, and Old Glory flying atop the brand new Eiffel Tower.

For years, all the best Americans in 19th-century Paris celebrated the Fourth of July at Bella Rosa, the magnificent mansion of Dr. Thomas Evans, longtime dentist to the nobility of Europe. One of the American colony’s leading lights, Dr. Evans had arrived in Paris from Philadelphia in 1847 at age 24 with his wife Agnes. Within five years, his pain-reducing services secured him the job of official court dentist to Emperor Louis Napoleon III. The dentist adopted certain French customs: He was an ardent royalist and kept a mistress, the Paris grande horizontale, Méry Laurent, a red-haired "laughing beauty with arched eyebrows and a wide-eyed gaze…Her mouth was sensual, her bosom formidable.” (Méry had become famous for emerging nude from a large silver shell at the Châtelet theater.)

“Altogether,” the New York World correspondent observed, “Paris and America are on exceedingly good terms with one another.”

But the Fourth of July of 1889 promised to be something very different from those of the past. Americans in Paris would see the Stars and Stripes flying atop the brand new Eiffel Tower, which loomed over the wondrous Exposition Universelle. Buffalo Bill Cody and his Wild West troupe—one of the sensations of the World's Fair—would be on hand to lend a unique frontier flavor to the day's many patriotic events, including the American colony's long-awaited presentation to France of a smaller version of Bartholdi's beloved Statue of Liberty. And the new U.S. minister, not Dr. Evans, would host the big party.

Out at the Wild West camp in Neuilly, the Glorious Fourth got off to a rousing start as all the cowboys and Indians rose early to festoon their teepees and tents with French and American flags. The Cowboy Band played sprightly versions of “Yankee Doodle” and “Hail Columbia,” manager Nate Salsbury declaimed the Declaration of Independence, "Guillaume Bufle" weighed in on liberty, the cowboys fired their guns, and the 20 bison looked on.

Then Cody, wearing his best buckskins, raced to the 12th arrondissement, where by 10 a.m. he jammed into the tiny Rue de Picpus with the new U.S. Minister Whitelaw Reid (publisher of The New York Tribune), 30 U.S. Marines, and several hundred other Americans carrying bouquets and wreaths. All filed into the high-walled cemetery attached to the Convent of the Sacred Heart, past the common grave of almost 2,000 guillotined aristocrats. They gathered round the simple tomb of General Lafayette, French hero of the American Revolution. Soon the gravestone disappeared under all the floral tributes. Minister Reid spoke, added his wreath to the pile, Senator Edmond de Lafayette thanked the Americans (in English), the Marines shot several volleys, and the ceremony concluded with mournful bugling.

After lunch, the Fourth of July observances shifted to the Pont de Grenelle at the Isle de Cynes on the Seine, where the summer breezes blew gently. Minister Reid, Buffalo Bill, Chief Rocky Bear, and the American colony, now almost a thousand strong, cheered along with hundreds of French officials as the cover came off the bronze statue cast from the original model of Bartholdi’s famous Liberty Enlightening the World. This gift from the Americans in Paris to the Third Republic was one-fifth the size of its New York sister.

“Altogether," the New York World correspondent observed, "Paris and America are on exceedingly good terms with one another.” Looking up, the Americans could see the novel sight of their flag flapping atop the Eiffel Tower, where it had been hoisted at 2 and would remain til 5 p.m.

But the tombs and the statue were mere ceremonial preludes. What the Americans of Paris were most avidly anticipating was Minister Reid’s Fourth of July bash at his new home, a legendary private mansion rented from the Duc de Grammont. That evening, carriages clogged the cobblestone porte cochere entry, while Mrs. Reid of Gold Rush wealth wore an eye-popping diamond necklace glittering on a black-and-white striped silk gown. The Hôtel Grammont did not disappoint either with its four mirrored Louis XV drawing rooms and a crimson-brocaded dining room (seating 24).