PARIS 2e

The Grand SalonThe Bathroom

The following is a transcript of a book published in the UK about the Paiva:

Its architect was Pierre Mauguin; and for ten years he laboured at his creation. He organised what were virtually workshops in the ChampsElysees, where all the work was done in his presence, after his designs. Even the marble and onyx he ordered were carved on the site, as cathedral builders might have carved them in the Middle Ages. La Païva would often arrive, on her way back from the Bois, and inspect the building; once, it is said, she found a carpenter who had been happily settled in some obscure small room for five years. 'What!' she cried. 'You're still here! You must be God Everlasting.'

[...] The new hôtel stood in a Champs-Elysees which, at the end of the Second Empire, was still unspoilt by signs of plebeian commerce. There were no shops, but half-a-dozen nearby private hôtels dazzled the eye and imagination. There was Prince Napoleon's neo-Pompeian palace; there was Emile de Girardin's Roman palace, a scholarly reply to Pion-Pion's architectural paganism. There was the Gothic castle of the Comte de Quinsonas, the Tunisian chateau of Jules de Lesseps, the remarkable rose-coloured hôtel of the Duke of Brunswick. And, finally, among these grandiose pastiches, there was now the hôtel Païva (which alone remains, as The Travellers' Club, today). The hôtel Païva was mentioned in the guide to the sights of Paris. It stood out, like la Païva herself, as a symbol of the Second Empire; and whether or not one admired the intensity of its ornamentation, it represented, and that with splendour, the taste of the time.

The vast salon, lit by five tall windows, seemed a kind of temple dedicated to the worship of physical pleasure: it was hard to take ones eyes off the magnificent ceiling where Baudry had painted Day chasing Night away. The four quarters of the day were represented by mythological divinities: Apollo bending his bow, Hecate with her silver crescent preparing to wrap herself in her starry mantle, Aurora still asleep on her rosy cloud, Vesper melancholy and pensive. All the figures converged towards the centre of the oval vault, and they were connected by pairs of genii which symbolised the hours. Cabanel and Gerome had also contributed paintings, famous sculptors had carved the mantelpieces in the smaller rooms; but some critics thought that Baudry's ceiling (which would prepare him to paint his great frescoes in the new Opera) was alone worth all the other treasures in the hôtel. 'I want to have been the only person on earth to enjoy your delectable painting,' Mme de Païva had told Baudry. '{ think I have the right, since I paid you the price you asked for it. You must pray to God that I live!'

Yet what other treasures there were! The salons were hung with crimson damask, specially woven at Lyons for eight hundred thousand francs. The staircase, lit by a massive lustre in sculpted bronze, was made - steps, baluster and wall - entirely of onyx. Mrs Moulton, the American banker’s wife, seems to have heard some rumours of its splendour. She recorded that 'a lady, whose virrue is someone else's reward, has a magnifIcent and much-talked-of hôtel in the Champs- Elysees, where there is a staircase worth a million francs, made of real alabaster. Prosper Merimee said: "c' est par là qu'on monte à la vertu.’ (It was reported that Augier, the dramatist, asked to compose some lines in honour of the staircase, replied with the devastating quotation: 'Ainsi que la vertu, Ie vice a ses degres.') The first floor, to which the staircase led, was reserved for la Païva: for her bathroorn, bedroom and boudoir, and a room for Henckel von Donnersmarck. The bathroom, said Gautier, was worthy of a Sultana in the Arabian Nights. Its walls were onyx and marble, enhanced by Venetian ceramics, and by a ceiIing in the Moorish style. The bath was solid onyx, like the lavatory under the window; it was lined with silvered bronze, with gilt, engraved designs representing fleurs-de-lys. The three taps, sculpted and gilt, were set with precious stones. The bedroom insolently proclaimed the triumph of la volupté. The locks on the doors were said to be worth two thousand francs apiece. The bed, encrusted with rare woods and ivory, delicately wrought, stood like an altar in an alcove, under a ceiling on which Aurora, Goddess of the Dawn, hovered in the empyrean. It had cost a hundred thousand francs. 'Fifty thousand francs?' la Païva had cried, when she saw the original estimate. 'Do you want me to have fleas? Put a hundred thousand francs!' The visitor felt himself in the presence of a single idea: the defiant, obsessive idea of personal glorification.

Labels: Architecture shot, Art, Paris Mansions, Paris street stuff (NOT a TOILET)