Plus ça change
TIM BLANNING enjoys an exhilarating whirl through the culture shifts of 19th-century Europe, centred on the closely entwined lives of an intriguing ménage à trois
The French poet Charles Péguy was one of the earliest victims of the First World War when he died on 5 September 1914, shot through the head by a German sniper. One of his last recorded observations was that the world had changed more since he started going to school in the 1880s than since the fall of the Roman empire. In this exhilarating whirl through 19th-century Europe, Orlando Figes demonstrates why Péguy felt the ground was shifting beneath his feet. Mapping material change can be a draining experience, but here it is given a human face by being viewed through the closely entwined lives of an intriguing ménage à trois: opera singer Pauline Viardot (1821–1910), her complaisant husband Louis (1800–83) and the Russian writer Ivan Turgenev (1818–83).
Not the least of many beneficial changes they all experienced was a revolution in transport. The opening of the railway line between Paris and Brussels in 1846 slashed the journey time from two days to 12 hours. A decade later, it was possible to get from Paris to Marseille (c750km) in less than a day. A generation after that and our three protagonists were travelling all over Europe more quickly, comfortably and cheaply.
This new ease of travel also had some unexpected cultural impacts. The ability of middle-class patrons to nip in from the suburbs for evening music recitals and performances affected the repertoire selected. Among many other things, it brought an end to the craze for Rossini, who would only travel by horse and carriage and whose music, as Figes puts it with characteristic flair, “was firmly rooted in the world before railways: it was small-scale, it went along with the light clip-clop of a horse and carriage”. He is contrasted with Giacomo Meyerbeer, the first great composer of ‘grand opera’, who loved to compose while travelling on the railways so much that “you can hear their pulse in his music”.
Another technological innovation to benefit Pauline Viardot in particular was photography. André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri’s invention in 1854 of a way of mass-producing portraits – she was number 69 in his gallery – brought her closer to her hordes of fans. By the early 1860s, around 400 million photographic cards of celebrities were being sold every year in Britain alone.
This substantial but always entertaining book should enchant anyone interested in the cultural revolutions of the 19th century. The only discordant note is struck by the author’s determination to cram these changes into the concept of the “cosmopolitan culture” of the sub-title. His own evidence demonstrates that the material changes did not foster pan-European attitudes but rather intensified nationalist passions, even among the highly educated. He quotes with approval the globe-trotting Mark Twain’s optimistic observation that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness”, but also the equally peripatetic Turgenev’s expostulation: “I cannot tell you how deeply I hate everything French and especially Parisian.”
Tim Blanning’s books include The Pursuit of
Glory: Europe 1648–1815 (Allen Lane, 2007)