The Widow Clicquot (29 page)

The two men, especially, did not get along
: Ibid., p. 35.

“My dear mother had such a weak character”
: Ibid., p. 30.

“life was not always easy”
: Ibid., p. 7.

“animosity reigned”
: Ibid.

Victor Fiévet’s
Madame Veuve Clicquot: Published at the specific request of Louis de Chevigné, who contacted the author after reading his earlier biography of Jean-Rémy Moët.

Alphonse Marie Louise de Lamartine
: French novelist and politician (1790–1869), author of
Histoire des Girondins
(Paris: Furne et Cie., 1847).

For a short while, there was a second republic in France
: Following the abdication of King Louis-Philippe and the end of his so-called July Monarchy in 1848. By 1852, Louis-Napoléon had assumed the title of Emperor Napoléon III, which he retained until the intensification of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

“Working women had emerged as a locus of tension and debate”
: Judith A. DeGroat, “The Public Nature of Women’s Work: Definitions and Debates During the Revolution of 1848,”
French Historical Studies
20, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 31–47, 32.

“Woman…was not made to manufacture our products”
:
L’Atelier
, January 4, 1841; quoted in DeGroat, p. 34.

sounds of low voices in the distance and the creaking wheels of donkey carts
: Vizetelly, p. 119.

the Clicquot-Werlé crushing rooms now had eight presses
: Ibid., p. 39.

vats large enough to supply the international market
: Tomes, p. 68.

known as “Consular Seal” champagne
: Advertised in
Harper’s Weekly,
July 25, 1868; Tomes, p. 62.

“
RHEIMS
printed conspicuously on the labels of a bottle of
Clicquot”: Ibid., p. 59.

“accumulated a fortune of four or five millions of dollars”
: Ibid., p. 87; $1.00 in 1850 was worth $21.11 in 2003; statistical details available at http://listlva.lib.va.us/cgibin/wa.exe?A2=ind0410&L=VAROOTS&P=3010.

80,000 francs…to establish a home for poor children
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, p. 103.

“Madame Clicquot…is queen of Reims”
: Prosper Mérimée,
Oeuvres complètes de Prosper Mérimée
, ed. Pierre Trahard and Edouard Champion (Paris: H. Champion, 1927); letter of July 26, 1853. This is an amount on the order of $700,000.

“Don’t ever accuse me of being jealous!”
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, pp. 73–74.

Édouard was appointed mayor of Reims
: Details available at www.reims-web.com/reims/champagne-reims-veuve-clicquot.html.

“an ardent imperialist”
: Tomes, p. 88.

“will do anything for his favorite wine-merchant but drink his champagne”
: Ibid.

“the shrewdest manipulator of the sparkling products of Aÿ and Bouzy of her day”
: Vizetelly, p. 21.

“made to suit the Russian taste, which likes a sweet and strong champagne”
: Tomes, p. 68.

her husband, Alexandre, another of Reims’s dabbling wool merchants
: Details here and following from “L’insertion de la maison Pommery dans le négoce du champagne,” available at www.patrimonieindustriel-apic.com.

“was just as equipped to run a government as a business”
: François Bonal,
Le livre d’or du champagne
(Laussane: Édition du Grand Pont, 1984), p. 66.

Veuve Pommery and Company into an immensely profitable and important business
: Raphaël Bonnedame,
Notice sur la maison Veuve Pommery, Fils & Cie.
(Épernay: n.p., 1892), quoted at www.patrimoineindustrielapic.com/documentation/maitrise%20piotrowski/partie%201%20chap%201.htm.

champagne in the style we still enjoy today as brut
: “In 1860, she [Madame Pommery] understood that sweet champagne, doux or demisec, will always remain a wine without a big future. She saw that bringing these wines to the market as
brut
wines, under the names
sec
or
extra sec
would lead to bigger growth in the Champagne. And after investigating, she finally decided to market wines
brut nature
to accompany any meal…the
brut nature
, with no added sugar, was commercially released in 1874”; Glatre, p. 95. Vizetelly adds: “To the extra-dry champagnes a modicum dose is added, while the so-called ‘
brut
’ wines receive no more than from one to three per cent. of liqueur”; Vizetelly, p. 60.

in the style of the noble British estates
: Helen Gillespie-Peck suggests a design based on Inveraray Castle and Mellerstain House; see Peck,
[email protected]
(Ely, UK: Melrose Books, 2005), p. 119. The domaine was built during the 1860s and 1870s.

cellars were adorned with great works of art in carved stone
: Louise Pommery commissioned sculptor Henri Navlet to decorate some of her more than ten miles of cellars with bas-reliefs on the theme of wine and Bacchus; promotional materials, Champagne Pommery.

her ancestors still run Champagne Henriot
: Promotional materials, Champagne Henriot, available at www.champagne-henriot.com/histoire.php.

“the largest and wealthiest of all” the local companies
: Tomes, p. 69. On Madame Jacques Olry, see www.maisons-champagne.com/bonal/pages/04/04-01_1.htm.

“
the high-class English buyer [who] demands a dry champagne”
: Vizetelly, p. 60.

“color of the egg yolks of the famous corn-fed hens of Bresse”
: Matasar, p. 29; see also Marion Winik, “The Women of Champagne,”
American Way,
March 1, 1997, p. 113. Although commonly considered a bright orange, the color is registered as “Clicquot Yellow.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: THE QUEEN OF REIMS

“Strangers and visitors were welcomed with an open hospitality”
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, pp. 90–91.

“the Château de Boursault was a must see on their list”
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, pp. 16, 98.

“every prince, czar, archduke, Roman cardinal, nabob, or lord mayor”
: Quoted in Gmeline, p. 36.

“delicate features and full of energy”
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, pp. 88–91.

Half the dukes of France and the king of Serbia were vying for her hand
: Gmeline, p. 43.

“I am going to tell you a secret”
: “Extrait du livret conçu pour l’exposition itinérante de 2005,” Champagne Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, quoted at www.reims-web.com/reims/champagne-reims-veuve-clicquot. html#.

captured not far from the ancient province of the Champagne in the Battle of Sedan
: Located some fifty miles northwest of Reims, the battle took place on September 1, 1870.

an important railway ran just below the outcrop
: Fiévet,
Madame Veuve Clicquot
, p. 16.

nearly $10 million in damages
: 400,000 francs; Poindron, n.p.

“I am an old man…and my life is not worth that sum”
: Ibid.

“I thank my granddaughter…for the joy that she brought to the family”
: Gmeline, p. 63.

through the phylloxera outbreak in the French wine country and the two world wars
: Henri Jolicoeur,
Description des ravageurs de la vigne: Insectes et champignons parasites
(Reims: Michaud, 1894); J. L. Rhone-Converset,
La vigne, ses maladies-ses ennemis-sa défense en Bourgogne et Champagne, etc.
(Paris: Châtillon-sur-Seine, 1889); also Don and Petie Kladstrup,
Champagne: How the World’s Most Glamorous Wine Triumphed over War and Hard Times
(New York: William Morrow, 2005).

AFTERWORD

“some of the largest commercial houses have women at their head”
: Linus Pierpont Brocket,
Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities
(Cincinnati: Howe’s Book Subscription Concern, 1869), p. 201; for a broader survey, see also Angel Kwolek-Folland,
Engendering Business: Men and Women in the Corporate Office, 1870–1930
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994).
Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts (1814–1906) was the youngest daughter of the influential banker Thomas Coutts (1735–1822), who inherited the business from an aging female relation in 1837; she was courted by Louis-Napoléon and was an intimate friend of France’s Louis-Philippe. Refusing all comers until 1881, she spent most of her life as a businesswoman, philanthropist, and celebrity. She eventually married, at the age of sixty-seven, her thirty-year-old secretary, William Lehman Ashmead Bartlett (1851–1921). Edna Healey,
Lady Unknown
:
The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts
(New York: Coward, McGann & Geoghegan, 1978).

“after my mother the most remarkable woman in the country”
: Brocket, p. 201.

“many women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries participated in commerce”
: Laura Cochrane, “From the Archives: Women’s History in Baker Library’s Business Manuscripts Collection,”
Business History Review
74 (Fall 2000): 465–476.

They ran plantations in the South and textile mills in the North
: On middle-and upper-middle-class businesswomen in nineteenth-century America, see, for example, Cara Anzilotti, “Autonomy and the Female Planter in Colonial South Carolina,”
Journal of Southern History
63, no. 2 (1997): 239–268; David L. Coon, “Eliza Lucas Pinckney and the Reintroduction of Indigo Culture in South Carolina,”
Journal of Southern History
42, no. 1 (1976): 61–76; Eliza Pinckney,
The Letterbook of Eliza Lucas Pinckney 1739–1762
, ed. Elise Pinckney (Chapel Hill: University of South Carolina Press, 1997).

seed merchant Carrie Lippincott or medicinal purveyor Lydia Pinkham
: See Cochrane, pp. 465–469.

“no single one has led to so much mischief”
: Charles Tovey,
Champagne Revelations
, pp. 32–33. On this issue of monopoly in the modern context, Jancis Robinson observes that “the central feature of geographical delimitation as it applies to wine is not just that it usually leads to an improvement in wine quality…it is [also] a legislative procedure whereby a privileged monopolistic position is created for producers within a demarcated area,” quoted in Michael Maher, “In Vino Veritas?: Clarifying the Use of Geographic References on American Wine Labels,”
California Law Review
89, no. 6 (December 2001): 1881–1925, 1922.

Amerine, Maynard A., trans.
Wines of Champagne and Sparkling Wines
. Paris: Encyclopédie Agricole, 1930.

Anonymous.
A Residence in France, During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794, and 1795; Described in a Series of letters from an English Lady
. Ed. John Gifford. London: T. N. Longman, 1797.

———. “The Comet.”
Robert Merry’s Museum
(November 1858): 137–139.

———.
A Glimpse of a Famous Wine Cellar, in Which Are Described the Vineyards of Marne and the Methods Employed in Making Champagne. Translated from the French.
New York: Francis Draz & Co., 1906.

———. “Entertaining the Son of the ‘Bourgeois King.’”
Bulletin of the Business Historical Society
3, no. 4 ( June 1929): 15–17.

———.
Rheims and Battles for Its Possession
. Paris: Michelin, 1919.

———.
London at Table: or, How, When, and Where to Dine and Order a Dinner, and Where to Avoid Dining, with Practical Hints to Cooks.
London: Chapman & Hall, 1851.

———.
Description de la fête patriotique, célébrée à Rethel le 14 Juillet 1790, & jours suivants
. Reims: Jeunehomme, Imprimeurs du Rois, 1790.

Anzilotti, Cara. “Autonomy and the Female Planter in Colonial South Carolina.”
Journal of Southern History
63, no. 2 (1997): 239–268.

Assier, Alexandre.
Légendes, curiosités et traditions de la Champagne et de la Brie
. Paris: Techener Librairie, 1860.

Assier, Alexandre.
Napoléon Ier à l’École Royale Militaire de Brienne d’après des documents authentiques et inédits, 1779–1784
. Paris: n.p., 1874.

Aston, Nigel.
The End of an Élite: The French Bishops and the Coming of the Revolution, 1786–1790
. Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Baines, Edward.
History of the cotton manufacture in Great Britain, with a notice of its early history on the East, and in all the quarters of the globe: A description of the great mechanical inventions, which have caused its unexampled extension in Britain: And a view of the present state of the manufacture, and the conditions of the classes engaged in its several departments
. London: H. and R. Fisher, P. Jackson, 1835.

Bakalinsky, A. T. “Sulfites, Wine and Health,” in
Wine in Context: Nutrition, Physiology, Policy: Proceedings of the Symposium on Wine and Health
. Eds. Andrew L. Waterhouse and R. M. Rantz. Davis, Calif.: American Society for Enology and Viticulture, 1996.

Barker, Hannah.
Business of Women: Female Enterprise and Urban Development in Northern England 1760–1830
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Barker, Richard J. “The Conseil General des Manufactures under Napoléon (1810–1814).”
French Historical Studies
6, no. 2 (Autumn 1969): 185–213.

Bercé, Yves-Marie.
Vignerons et vins, de Champagne et d’ailleurs, XVIIe-XXe siècle
. Reims: Université de Reims, Centre d’Études Champenoises, Departement d’Histoire, 1988.

Bésème-Pia, Lise.
Vignoble champenois: Lexique du paysan et du vigneron champenois
. Rethel: Binet Sarl, 1997.

Bidet, Nicolas.
Traité sur la culture des vignes, sur la façon du vin, et sur la manière de le gouverner: Ouvrage orné de figures, & en particulier de celle d’un pressoir d’une nouvelle invention
. Paris: Chez Savoye, 1752.

Bignicourt, Arthur Barbat de.
Les Massacres à Reims en 1792 après des documents authentiques
. Reims: n.p., 1872.

———.
Un salon à Reims en 1832
. Reims: n.p., 1879.

Black, Charles Bertram.
Guide to the North East of France, including Picardy, Champagne, Burgundy, Lorraine, and Alsace
. London: Sampson Low & Co., 1873.

Blayo, Yves. “La mortalité en France de 1740 à 1829.”
Population
(November 1975): 124–142.

Bonal, François.
Dom Pérignon: Vérité et légende
. Langres: D. Guéniot, 1995.

———.
Champagne Mumm: Un champagne dans l’histoire
. Paris: Arthaud, 1987.

———.
Le livre d’or du Champagne.
Laussane: Bonal Éditions du Grand Pont, 1984.

Bonnedame, Raphaël.
Notice sur la maison Moët et Chandon d’Épernay
. Épernay: Imprimerie de R. Bonnedame, 1894.

———
. Notice sur la maison Veuve Pommery, Fils & Cie.
Épernay: n.p., 1892.

Boralevi, Lea Campos.
Bentham and the Oppressed
. New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1984.

Bourgeois, Armand.
Le vin de Champagne sous Louis XIV et sous Louis XV
. Paris: n.p., 1897.

———.
Promenade d’un touriste dans l’arrondissement d’Épernay
. Châlonssur-Marne: Martin Frères éditeurs, 1886.

Briailles, Chandon, Raoul, de, and Henri Bertal.
Sources de l’histoire d’Épernay
. 2 vols. Paris: n.p., 1906.

Briailles, Chandon, Raoul, de.
Vins de Champagne et d’ailleurs: La bibliothèque de Raoul Chandon de Briailles.
Paris: Fédération française pour la coopération des bibliothèques, 2000.

Brennan, Thomas.
Burgundy to Champagne: The Wine Trade in Early Modern France.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.

Brocket, Linus Pierpont.
Woman: Her Rights, Wrongs, Privileges, and Responsibilities
. Cincinnati: Howe’s Book Subscription Concern, 1869.

Bruce, Evangeline.
Napoleon and Josephine: An Improbable Marriage
. New York: Scribner, 1995.

Buchan, William.
Domestic medicine, or, A treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases, by regimen and simple medicines: With an appendix, containing a dispensatory for the use of private practioners
. Philadelphia: Richard Folwell, 1797.

Buffenoir, Hippolyte.
Grandes dames contemporaines: La Duchesse d’Uzès.
Paris: Librairie du Mirabeau, 1893.

Busby, James.
Journal of a recent visit to the principal vineyards of Spain and France: Giving a minute account of the different methods pursued in the cultivation of the vine and the manufacture of wine.
New York: C. S. Francis, 1835.

Carmaran-Chimay, Jean, Princess, de.
Madame Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin: Her Life and Times
. Reims: Debar, 1956.

Carter, E. J. “Breaking the Bank: Gambling Casinos, Finance Capitalism, and German Unification.”
Central European History
39 (2006): 185–213.

Carter, Jenny, and Therese Duriez.
With Child: Birth Through the Ages
. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing, 1986.

Champenoises: Ecomusée de la région de Fourmies Trélon.
Trélon: Atelier-Musée du Verre Trélon, 2000. Exhibit catalog.

Chandler, Alfred D., Jr. “The Emergence of Managerial Capitalism.”
Business History Review
58, no. 4 (Winter 1984): 473–503.

Chaptal, Jean-Antoine, Comte de.
L’Art de faire le vin.
Paris: Madame Huzard, 1819.

Chateaubriand, François-René de.
Memoirs from Beyond the Tomb
(
Mémoires d’outre-tombe
, 1849–1850). Trans. A. S. Kline, 31:8, www.tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/Chateaubriand/Chathome.htm.

Choudhury, Mita.
Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture
. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2004.

Clark, Christopher.
Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600
–
1947.
New York: Penguin, 2007.

Cochrane, Laura. “From the Archives: Women’s History in Baker Library’s Business Manuscripts Collection.”
Business History Review
74 (Autumn 2000): 465–476.

Code Napoléon; or, The French Civil Code. Literally Translated from the Original and Official Edition, Published at Paris, in 1804
. Trans. George Spence. London: William Benning, 1827.

Conner, Susan P. “Public Virtue and Public Women: Prostitution in Revolutionary Paris, 1793–1794.”
Eighteenth-Century Studies
28, no. 2 (Winter 1994): 221–240.

Constant, Louis.
Mémoires de Constant, premier valet de chambre de l’empereur, sur la vie privée de Napoléon, sa famille, et sa cour
. Trans. P. Pinkerton. 4 vols. London: H. S. Nichols, 1896.

Coon, David L. “Eliza Lucas Pinckney and the Reintroduction of Indigo Culture in South Carolina.”
Journal of Southern History
42, no. 1 (1976): 61–76.

Craig, Béatrice. “Where Have All the Businesswomen Gone?: Images and Reality in the Life of Nineteenth-Century Middle-Class Women in Northern France,” in
Women, Business and Finance in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Rethinking Separate Spheres
. Eds. Robert Beachy, Béatrice Craig, and Alastair Owens. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2006.

Crestin-Billet, Frédérique.
La Veuve Clicquot: La grande dame de la Champagne
. Trans. Carole Fahy. Paris: Éditions Glénat, 1992.

Crouzet, François.
L’économie britannique et le blocus continental.
Paris: Economica, 1987.

Cuthell, Edith.
An Imperial Victim: Marie Louise, Archduchess of Austria, Empress of the French, Duchess of Parma
. London: Brentanto’s, 1912.

D’Arnould, Charles-Albert.
La vigne, voyage autour des vins de France, étude physiologique, anecdotique, historique, humoristique et même scientifique.
Paris: Plon, 1878.

Daniels, Walter.
Saint-Évremond en Angleterre
. Versailles: L. Luce, 1907.

David, Jacques-Louis, and Studio.
The Death of Marat
(La mort de Marat), ca. 1794, oil on canvas. Reims: Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Reims, gift of Paul David, 1879.

Davis, C. R., et al. “Practical Implications of Malolactic Fermentation: A Review.”
American Journal of Enology and Viticulture
36, no. 4 (1985): 290–301.

DeGroat, Judith A. “The Public Nature of Women’s Work: Definitions and Debates During the Revolution of 1848.”
French Historical Studies
20, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 31–47.

DeJean, Joan.
The Essence of Style: How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafés, Style, Sophistication, and Glamour.
New York: Free Press, 2005.

Delpal, Jacques-Louis.
Merveilles de Champagne
. Paris: Éditions de la Martinière, 1993.

Delpierre, Madeleine.
Dress in France in the Eighteenth Century.
Trans. Caroline Beamish. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Desbois-Thibault, Claire.
L’extraordinaire aventure du Champagne Moët et Chandon, une affaire de famille
. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2003.

Dexter, Elisabeth Anthony.
Colonial Women of Affairs: Women in Business and the Professions in America Before 1776.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1924.

Diderot, Denis.
Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers
. Neufchastel [
sic
]: Samuel Faulche, 1765.

Dion, Roger.
Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France
. Paris: n.p., 1959.

Dumbrell, Roger.
Understanding Antique Wine Bottles.
San Francisco: Antique Collector’s Club, 1983.

Etienne, Michel.
Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin, aux origines d’un grand vin de Champagne
. Paris: Economica, 1994.

Evelyn, John.
Sylva, or, A discourse on forest-trees, and the propagation of timber in His Majesties dominions. By J. E. Esq. As it was deliver’d in the Royal Society the XVth of October, MDCLXII…To which is annexed Pomona; or, An appendix concerning fruit-trees in relation to cider
. London: Joseph Martyn & James Allestry, 1664.

Fagan, Brian.
The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History.
New York: Basic Books, 2000.

Fauvelet, Louis-Antoine.
Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte
. London: Richard Bentley, 1836.

Fiévet, Victor.
Histoire de la ville d’Épernay
. Épernay: V. Fiévet, 1868.

———.
Jean-Rémy Moët et ses successeurs
. Paris: E. Dentu, 1864.

———.
Madame Veuve Clicquot (née Ponsardin), son histoire et celle de sa famille.
Paris and Épernay: Dentu, 1865.

Forman, Amanda.
Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
. New York: Random House, 1999.

Freeman, William G.
New Phytologist
6, no. 1 (January 1907): 18–23.

Gabler, James.
Passions: The Wines and Travels of Thomas Jefferson
. Baltimore: Bacchus Press, 1995.

Galeron, Edmond.
Journal historique de Reims depuis la fondation de cette ville jusqu’à nos jours, avec les synchronismes de l’histoire romaine et de l’histoire de France
. Reims: n.p., 1853.

Gandihon, René.
Naissance du champagne, Dom Pierre Pérignon
. Paris: Hachette, 1968.