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Cette fusion annuelle: cosmopolitanism and identity in Nice, c. 1815–1860

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2013

ELAINE CHALUS
ELAINE CHALUS*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Cultural Industries, Bath Spa University, Newton Park, Newton St Loe, Bath BA2 9BN, UK
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Abstract

Between 1815 and 1860, Nice became one of Europe's leading health and leisure resorts, annually hosting an international wintering population of thousands. During a period marked by the rise of the nation-state and national sentiment, Nice was celebrated as ‘une ville cosmopolite’. This article suggests that while geographic, historic and economic factors provided preconditions for cosmopolitanism, Nice's emergence as a peculiarly cosmopolitan town in the first half of the nineteenth century owes much to a combination of forward-looking urban developments and long-established traditions of face-to-face elite sociability, directed and shaped largely by women.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 41 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 606 - 626
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

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2 The term hivernant, now more commonly used to describe these wintering visitors, was not yet in use in the first half of the nineteenth century; contemporaries referred to them as étrangers. Both terms will be used here.

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4 Marie de Solms (Laetitia Maria Studehelmine Bonaparte-Wyse, 1833–1902), later Madame Rattazzi, was a writer, journalist and salonnière, the grand-daughter of Lucien Bonaparte. Her numerous books on Nice (1854 – c. 1870) are published under a number of different titles and in different countries. They reprise, modify and extend her initial work, published in 1854: e.g. Nice ancienne et moderne (Florence, 1854); Nice, 3rd edn (Florence, 1854); Nice (Nice, 1854); Nice la belle (Nizza la bella) (Paris [c. 1870]).

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6 De Solms Rattazzi, Nice, 91.

7 Ibid., 91–2; de Solms Rattazzi, Nizza la Bella, 46, 85–6.

8 John Walton has noted that by this time, ‘Nice was becoming cosmopolitan in a way that British resorts have never been able to match, dependent as they remained to an overwhelming extent on home demand’: Walton, J.K., ‘The seaside resorts of western Europe, 1750–1939’, in Fisher, S. (ed.), Recreation and the Sea (Liverpool, 1997), 49Google Scholar.

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28 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood (London, 1859), 15. For recent work on the transition from port to resort, see Borsay, P. and Walton, J.K. (eds.), Ports and Resorts: European Seaside Towns since 1700 (Bristol, 2011)Google Scholar, esp. the co-written ‘Introduction’ and Peter Borsay's essay on Tenby, ch. 6.

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34 Kanigel, R., High Season in Nice (London, 2002), 15–22Google Scholar.

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36 Nelson, Queen Victoria and the Discovery of the Riviera, xi; Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 107.

37 Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 107. Alain Bottero provides a more detailed list of the English at Nice in 1784; however, he appears to mistake the children of the duke and duchess of Gloucester, William and Sophia, aged nine and eleven, for their cousins, George III's children of the same names. Bottero, ‘La présence Britannique à Nice sous l'ancien régime’, 12.

38 Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 107. Examples of her work exist in both the British Museum and the Bibliothèque de Cessole, Nice.

39 Bottero, ‘La présence Britannique à Nice sous l'ancien régime’, 12. The villa still stands. Now No. 61 on the Promenade des Anglais, it is better known as the Villa Furtado-Heine after its late nineteenth-century owner, Cécile Furtado-Heine.

40 Négrin, É., Les promenades de Nice ([Nice], 1867)Google Scholar. For example, Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 103. Boyer notes that the lack of an official list of étrangers in Nice prior to the Revolution makes it difficult to ascertain numbers. He refers instead to Arthur Young's figures of 57 English and 9 French families in Nice during the winter of 1788–89 (the English therefore forming 90% of the visitors): Boyer, L'hiver dans le Midi, 38; ‘Journal, 17 Sept. 1789’, Young, A., Travels during 1787, 1788 and 1789, 2nd edn (London, 1794), vol. I, 201Google Scholar.

41 15 hardy or, more likely, desperate English families took immediate advantage of the Peace of Amiens and spent the winter of 1802–03 in Nice: Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 103, 110. Lord Glenbervie and his wife were similarly part of the English colony at Nice at the beginning of the Hundred Days, Mar. 1815: Bickley, Francis (ed.), The Diaries of Sylvester Douglas (Lord Glenvervie), 2 vols. (London, 1928), vol. II, 141Google Scholar.

42 Ruggiero, A., La population du comté de Nice de 1693 à 1939 (Paris, 2002), 73Google Scholar.

43 Isnard, ‘Les Anglais à Nice’, 110.

44 de Tourtoulon, A., Lettres sur Nice et ses environs (Montpellier, 1852), 51Google Scholar.

45 In descending order: English, French, German, Italian, Swiss, Polish/Russian, American, Spanish, Belgian, Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian, Danish, Moldavian. Compiled from the four-part ‘Liste générale des étrangers séjournant à Nice pendant l'hiver 1855–56’ published over two weeks in (14, 19, 21, 24–5 Dec. 1855).

46 Ibid., L'avenir de Nice (14, 19, 21, 24–5 Dec. 1855). This official list is preceded by a cunning advertisement from the Hotel Victoria on 9 Nov., which takes the form of a list of all the étrangers staying at the hotel from its opening (3 Oct. – 7 Nov. 1855). The English predominate, followed by Americans, Germans, Spanish and French: L'avenir de Nice (9 Nov. 1855).

47 Walton argues that Nice proved exceptional in retaining wide-ranging European royal patronage into the twentieth century: Walton, ‘Seaside resorts of western Europe’, 49.

48 In 1858–59, Nice hosted 803 visiting families, 43% of which were English, far outstripping the French and Russians, their nearest rivals: Latouche, R., Histoire de Nice: des origines à 1860, 3 vols. (Nice, 1951), vol. I, 145–6Google Scholar. Rattachement in 1860 resulted in a temporary dip in numbers of étrangers, but there were still 704 visiting families: 252 English (36%), 172 French (24%), 128 Russian (18%), 37 German (5%) and 22 American (3%): Isnard, ‘Les anglais à Nice’, 111.

49 ‘Liste générale des étrangers séjournant à Nice pendant l'hiver 1855–56’, L'avenir de Nice (14, 19, 21, 24–5 Dec. 1855).

50 Archives municipales de la Ville de Nice: Journal de l'Abbé Joseph Bonifassi, kept daily 1792 to 1820. See also citations in Dyer, C., ‘Hivernants et habitants sur la riviéra française: Nice et Cannes jusqu'à l'arrivée du chemin de fer’, Récherches regionales Alpes-Maritimes et contrées limitrophes, 143 (1998), 22Google Scholar; and Boyer, L'hiver dans le Midi, 40, who uses the French version of his name, i.e. ‘Bonifacy’.

51 Tourtoulon, Lettres sur Nice et ses environs, 11.

52 ‘The étrangers, for the Niçois, replace workshops and factories. They are the geese that lay the golden eggs, the wealth of the country.’ Burnel, Nice, 118.

53 For Bath's response to similar demands in the eighteenth-century, see Borsay, P., The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town, 1660–1770 (Oxford, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also idem, The Image of Georgian Bath: 1700–2000 (Oxford, 2000); Davis, G. and Bonsall, P., A History of Bath: Image and Reality (Lancaster, 2006)Google Scholar; Neale, R.S., Bath: A Social History, 1680–1850 (London, 1981)Google Scholar.

54 Ruggiero, A. (ed.), Nouvelle Histoire de Nice (Toulouse, 2006), 167Google Scholar.

55 Escribe, D., ‘Nice au temps des frères Gautier, 1825–1910’, Nice Historique, 106 (1994), 67Google Scholar.

56 ‘. . . a colony of different nations. It's the quartier of choice for the étrangers. There, everything is varied: language, lifestyle, clothing, manners; luxury, liveried servants and elegant carriages at every door. In winter, it's a continuous bustle, a life of activity and pleasure in lemon- and orange-scented gardens, or in heated salons resplendent with lights’: Tourtoulon, Lettres sur Nice et ses Environs, 14.

57 Ibid., 10; Haug, C.J., Leisure and Urbanism in Nineteenth-Century Nice (Lawrence, KA, 1982), 13Google Scholar; ‘Le consiglio d'ornato créateur d'une Nice moderne, 1832–1860’: www.nice.fr/Culture/Centre-du-patrimoine/Les-Fiches-Patrimoine-et-autres-publications/Le-consiglio-d-Ornato-createur-d-une-Nice-moderne-1832–1860 accessed 30 Nov. 2011.

58 Steve, M., ‘L'architecture à Nice entre 1850 et 1860’, Cahiers de la Méditerranée, 74 (2007), 74Google Scholar.

59 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 15–17.

60 Ibid., 16–17; Conseiller du touriste à Nice et dans ses environs, par de Carli (Nice, 1864), 15–19; É. Negrin, Les promenades de Nice (c. 1867), 32–3, 58, 149; Joanne, A., Les villes d'hiver de la Méditerranée et les Alpes Maritimes (Paris, 1864), 225Google Scholar; Lee, E., Nice and its Climate (London, 1854), 31–3Google Scholar.

61 Roux, P.T., La promenade des Anglais: History and Reminiscesnces (Nice, 2006), 10–12Google Scholar; Boullée, A., ‘La Croix-de-Marbre: souvenirs de Nice’, Revue du Lyonnais, 19 (1844), 226Google Scholar: books.google.co.uk/books?id=EEMWAAAAYAAJ&dq=villa%20avigdor&pg=PA3#v=onepage&q=villa%20avigdor&f=false accessed 18 Nov. 2011.

62 Burnel, Nice, 17–18.

63 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 17, 23.

64 Brewster, M.M., Letters from Cannes and Nice (Edinburgh, 1857), 144Google Scholar.

65 Burnel, Nice, 35, 231–4; A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 23. Provision had clearly improved from 1827, when the Guide des étrangers à Nice (1827), 68, had complained of the lack of fiacres in Nice and advised visitors to hire their horses and carriages from the post office. As late as 1841, Farr still noted the want of hackney carriages, despite commenting that the town abounded with moderately priced transportation. A horse for a morning ride cost 4–5 fr.; a carriage and pair for a month 250–300 fr.: Farr, W., A Medical Guide to Nice (London, 1841), 155–6Google Scholar.

66 See Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance.

67 A Few Words about Nice, 18.

68 Farr, A Medical Guide to Nice, 134–5. Roubadi put the annual number of visitors at between 1,500 and 3,000 for the same period: Roubadi, Nice et ses environs, 8.

69 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 21.

70 Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle, Journal, 26 Oct. 1855. Special thanks to Betsy and Iain Duncan Smith, Lord and Lady Cottesloe and the Fremantle Trust for permission to consult Elizabeth Wynne Fremantle's diaries. Extracts from the early diaries were published as Fremantle, Anne (ed.), The Wynne Diaries, 3 vols. (London, 1935–40)Google Scholar. All references here are to the original manuscript journals and are given by date.

71 Brewster, Letters from Cannes and Nice, 114.

72 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 19.

73 See, for example, the advertisements in the Afterword in Burnel, Nice (unpaginated), or those in L'avenir de Nice.

74 Brewster, Letters from Cannes and Nice, 103, 105. She was staying at the Hôtel Chauvain on the quai St-Jean-Baptiste, enlarged and modernized in 1855 to 105 rooms: Boyer, L'hiver dans le Midi, 231. In 1864, the Guides-Joanne lists it as one of the oldest of Nice's grand hotels, ‘un des plus vastes du continent’, with about 600 beds: É. Reclus, Les villes d'hiver de la Méditerranée et les Alpes maritimes (Collection des Guides-Joanne, Paris, 1864), 191.

75 Fremantle Journal, 12 Nov. 1855.

76 See any number of contemporary guidebooks: e.g. A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood; Burnel, Nice; Guides-Richard Itinéraires européens à l'usage des voyageurs par Richard, Ad. Joanne, Quetin, Hocquart etc. (Paris, 1854); Lee, Nice and its Climate.

77 See, e.g., L'avenir de Nice; Burnel, Nice. Lady Fremantle hired a grand piano, apparently from Gautier's at the port, almost as soon as she arrived in Nice in 1855: Fremantle Journal, 27 Oct. 1855 (misdated 26 Oct. in journal).

78 Brewster, Letters from Cannes and Nice, 108.

79 Roubadi, Nice et ses environs, 45.

80 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 24; Olivier Vernier, ‘La restauration sarde (1814–1848)’, in Ruggiero (ed.), Nouvelle Histoire de Nice, 161.

81 A Few Words about Nice, and its Neighbourhood, 24–5. It offered special membership deals for couples or families: 40 fr. for two people, and 50 fr. for a family of three or more: Vernier, ‘La restauration sarde’, 161.

82 Roubadi, Nice et ses environs, 44.

83 ‘Then the markets, the shops, the hotels and the restaurants become animated: everything takes on a new life; activity and affluence are everywhere . . . Clubs and society meetings, parties, concerts, and balls follow each other throughout the winter in the villas of the étrangers, at the governor's palace, in the concert room at the Philharmonic and in the drawing-rooms of some of the local residents. Among these, madame la comtesse de Ste Agathe must come first. She has all the amiability of her sex combined with that exquisite grace, that knowledge of the world, which is the charm of Parisian gatherings.’ Roubadi, Nice et ses environs, 44–5.

84 Horace Rumbold provides a rare criticism. He claimed (from the vantage of Nice in the Belle Époque) that Nice in 1847–48 had been ‘the dullest and most neglected of Sardinian cities’: Rumbold, H., Recollections of a Diplomatist, 2 vols. (London, 1902), vol. I, 71Google Scholar.

85 As early as 1815, Lord Glenbervie had ended a day of p.p.c. visits (pour prendre congé) by attending Madame Ste Agathe's conversazione: ‘28 Mar. 1815, Genoa’, in Glenbervie, Diaries of Sylvester Douglas (Lord Glenvervie), ed. Bickley, vol. II, 142. Rumbold, a rather self-important young diplomat in 1847–48, remarked that she was ‘a remarkable old lady of illustrious descent, . . . Her receptions in the Rue du Pont Neuf were attended by the more distinguished foreign visitors – her daughter, Madame de Cessole, then a very pretty woman, helping to do the honours of the house’: Rumbold, Recollections of a Diplomatist, vol. I, 73.

86 Frances (née Winckley) Shelley (1787–1873), diarist and widow of Sir John Shelley. Unfortunately, Lady Shelley's printed diaries skip over this period in Nice: Edgcumbe, R. (ed.), The Diary of Frances, Lady Shelley, 1787–1873, 2 vols. (London, 1912–13)Google Scholar.

87 Fremantle Journal, 22 Nov. 1855.

88 Dyer, ‘Hivernants et habitants sur la riviéra française’.

89 Her social set included, most notably, the families of the comte de Céssole (Niçois), marquis de Massingy (Sardinian) and comte d'Aglié (Sardinian); the comte Urbain Garin de Cocconatto (Niçois) and marquis de St-André (Niçois); General and comtesse de Calliano (Sardinian); the duchesse de Sagan and her son the duc de Dino (German and French, respectively); the duc and duchesse de la Trémouille (Trémoille-Tarente) and their son the prince de Tarenti (French); the marquise de Terzi (French); Prince and Princess Schaumburg-Lippe (German); and, of the British, Lady Shelley; Lady Caroline (née Bertie) and her husband Charles Baillie-Hamilton; and Alexander Baillie Cochrane (cr. 1st Baron Lamington 1880) and his wife Annabella (née Drummond). In 1856–57, the Baillie-Hamiltons were joined by their daughter Emily, comtesse de Geneys.

90 Other ladies in the quadrille included the duchess of Hamilton, Mrs Cavendish, Lady Suffield, Princess Schaumberg and the two Mlles Cessoles: Fremantle Journal, 5 Feb. 1856.

91 Ibid., 7 Jan., 5 Feb. 1856.

92 The exception to this being the organization of picnic excursions to locations hours away from Nice, which appear to have been organized by men.

93 Fremantle Journal, 11 Mar. 1856. Constance Cochrane (aged ten) was the daughter of the Baillie-Cochranes: Rubinstein, W.D., puts her father's rent roll at nearly £12,000 in Men of Property: The Very Wealthy in Britain since the Industrial Revolution (London, 1981), 211Google Scholar. Edward Edgcumbe (aged eight) was the son of the diplomat, Hon. George Edgcumbe, and his wife Fanny-Lucy, Lady Shelley's daughter: Burke, J., Peerage and Baronetage of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1839), 940Google Scholar. The Hamiltons’ sons, William Lord Douglas (aged eleven), later 12th duke of Hamilton, and his younger brother Charles (aged nine), later 7th earl of Selkirk, were the Hervey boys’ playmates: Debrett's Illustrated Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom and Great Britain and Ireland: 1864 (London, 1864), 104.

94 Roubadi, Nice et ses environs, 45.