After two hours spent in the company of the brilliant Romain Duris who plays a melancholy, determined and somewhat gruff Gustave Eiffel at the height of his career, and the dark Emma Mackey who portrays a fantasized, touching and dazzlingly beautiful Adrienne Bourgès, I wished to return to this little-known aspect of the life of Gustave Eiffel :his relationship with women and his love life . Because if this film released on October 13, 2021 in cinemas is (in my opinion) a cinematographic success thanks to its breathtaking images, its plans that are both poetic and grandiose and the exquisite acting of its two main actors, the liberties taken with reality are very crude and the scenario lacks depth.
We therefore find Romain Duris who portrays a Gustave Eiffel in full glory, just finishing his collaboration in the construction of the monumental Statue of Liberty. After this worldwide success, however, he lacked inspiration for the Universal Exhibition of 1889 which is being prepared and for which the city of Paris has requested it. Widower of his wife Marguerite , he then met for the first time in twenty years his childhood sweetheart Adrienne Bourgès . This resurrected passion then gave all his genius back to the great engineer, who imagined a gigantic steel tower. An A-shaped tower , like an immortal symbol of his love for the beautiful Adrienne… A vision that is both romantic and a bit cutesy of the construction of this steel monster that caused a lot of ink to flow in its time, between fierce opponents and fervent admirers.
Twenty years away from each other… Twenty years of mystery, because the story does not say if the two lovers have seen each other again. Screenwriter Caroline Bongrand rushed into the breach. So anything is possible! Besides, why wouldn't that be an A for Alice? Eiffel and women
Alice:the first emotions of Gustave Eiffel
The birth of Gustave Eiffel, which occurred in 1832 in Dijon, was not synonymous with joy for his parents. Heiress to a family of timber merchants, his mother Mélanie Eiffel born Moneuse has business in her blood. She manages with an iron fist (yes, it was easy…) the family business which is based on the development of coal and industry, hardly taking the time to take care of her son. While the father of the newborn, Alexandre Eiffel, a former hussar in the Napoleonic army, assisted his wife in her colossal daily tasks, Gustave was raised by his maternal grandmother. He does not have very fond memories of those months spent in an apartment in Dijon, with the sole company of an infirm, austere and unloving old lady, this "Maman Moneuse" who does not hesitate to use a whip to fix it.
So Gustave looks forward to the summers in Gilly-lès-Citeaux, with his maternal aunt Viard. He joins his cousin Alice, orphan of Bertrand Moneuse, the brother of Mélanie Eiffel, who died when the girl was only nine years old. His mother Tullie Moneuse sends him every year on vacation to aunt Viard to take his mind off things. The two cousins can't wait to get together to go on an adventure together in this idyllic natural setting in Burgundy.
They fish, walk barefoot in the river, and the last days, before returning, they take part in the Clos-Vougeot grape harvest.
The true life of Gustave Eiffel
Throughout his adolescence, Gustave lived only for Alice. Ready to do anything to please this young girl five years his senior, he picks her the ripe fruit from the garden, compliments her on her pretty blond curls... and takes her to climb the low walls and the roofs of the surroundings. Because Alice is an adventurer, like him! In the summer of 1842, tragedy struck. Insisting on climbing onto the roof with Gustave, she slips and falls. For a moment, we thought she was dead. But the young girl ends up opening her eyes. Her hip broken, she had to stay in bed for several weeks. Eiffel and women
An accident which, at the age of nine, suddenly brought Gustave out of childhood, convinced that he could have caught up with her, prevented her from climbing... In short, it was his fault. Even if the common holidays in Gilly-lès-Citeaux come to an end with this fall, he redoubles his adoration for his dear cousin, dreaming of the day when the age difference will no longer count and where he will be able to ask his mother Tullie for her hand. . Meeting her at all the family events, he constantly checks in on her and looks for her as soon as he knows she is around.
Does Alice maintain Gustave's love for her, also secretly dreaming of uniting with her cousin, or is she having fun with this enamored adolescent whom she still considers a child and of whom she does what she does she wants ? Hard to know. Still, in the summer of 1848, Alice married Professor Émile Amiel.
Deeply marked by this heartache, the fifteen-year-old teenager then devoted himself more seriously to his studies. A dissipated high school student, he obtained his baccalaureate then went to Paris to prepare for the École Polytechnique, at first certainly attracted to the capital by the presence of Alice who settled there for a time with her husband. While Alice returns to Dijon with her new little family, Gustave fails at Polytechnique and enters the Central School of Arts and Manufactures in Paris. Freshly graduated in 1855, he followed his mother's wise advice and turned to the metallurgy sector. This is the beginning of success. He then forgets his cousin Alice, maintaining many female relationships until he falls in love with Adrienne Bourgès. Eiffel and women
Adrienne Bourgès:thwarted love
Favored by Charles Nepveu, a Parisian entrepreneur specializing in metal construction, Gustave multiplied the railway sites before getting closer to the Pauwels, Belgian industrialists who allowed him to direct his first major project in 1858:a metal railway footbridge in Bordeaux, long 510 meters.
It was there that he met Adrienne Bourgès, the youngest daughter of a great Bordeaux merchant, owner of the workshops rented by the Pauwels company for the construction of the bridge. He is twenty-eight, she is eighteen. Both young and mature, intelligent and virtuous, she seems to have all the qualities required to become the bride of the young Gustave Eiffel's dreams:
She is evidently an intelligent girl, of simple tastes, of a gentle and affectionate disposition, and capable of great tenderness but not of passion, and above all profoundly honest; finally a reliable wife and a woman of good advice on occasion. As an external nature, she is a very beautiful girl who will become above all and who will remain for a long time a very beautiful woman, of robust health and capable of fulfilling maternal functions to the best of her ability.
In October 1860, the marriage seemed decided and Gustave came to see his future parents-in-law every day. The father decides to postpone the date of the wedding a little, which annoys the fiancé but does not move him unduly. A little patience is not expensive paid to access the object of his desire:
I would rather wait three months for a beautiful girl whom I love and who loves me than to marry immediately another who would be indifferent to me.
While Adrienne's trousseau took shape, revealing the initials A.E. (for Adrienne Eiffel) embroidered on her dresses and shirts, Gustave received a letter from Monsieur Bourgès on November 13, 1860, which shattered all his dreams. The marriage will not happen. The young man was flabbergasted and immediately sought an explanation for this sudden and incomprehensible reversal.
The result of his desperate investigation is very muddled. The father confides to him that it is Madame who does not want the marriage. His wife immediately protests. But who then? Could it be the husband of the eldest daughter Bourgès, Mr. Troye, who takes a dim view of the arrival of a competitor? Gustave understands that he will never know the truth. At best, we used him. When the construction is finished, the Bourgès no longer need him and have no interest in seeing their daughter bond with a family of upstarts. Because Gustave's mother got rich very quickly. Too fast. A fortune probably too recent to be respectable. The esteem that Gustave Eiffel held until then for Mr. Bourgès plummeted:
His conduct is a mixture of weakness and falsity and inspires me on my account the deepest contempt; he may be an honest merchant, but as a man he is a scoundrel worthy of the reprobation of honest people. For the whole house I have nothing but contempt; they are very small people, very proud of their wealth, great gossip-makers and certainly constantly speaking ill of others.
It is certain that Gustave's pride has been badly shaken. Overwhelmed by anger that takes precedence over sadness, he interprets Adrienne's silence as cowardice:
I personally cared a lot about it and I think she cares about me; but she didn't have the courage to face the situation and doesn't deserve my fighting for it.
Gustave immerses himself in business to drown his sorrows. He may feel contempt for the Bourgès family and disappointment with regard to Adrienne's behavior, nostalgia holds him. At the beginning of 1861, he confessed to his mother that he had stolen a photograph of the young girl from his photographer:“She looks like her and I want to keep her as a souvenir… » Eiffel and women
The Eiffel Tower:the ghost?
Thwarted passion (this reminds me of Emperor Joseph II and the Princess of Liechtenstein) wounded pride, historical monument whose form lends itself to lucubration… What if Gustave Eiffel had never really forgotten Adrienne Bourgès? In any case, it is around this love of youth rediscovered years later that the film Eiffel embroiders. Making her reappear in 1886, when Gustave apparently never saw Adrienne again after her departure from Bordeaux, he suggests that it was for the beautiful eyes of this young girl who had never married that the engineer lost interest in the Paris metro which then became passionate about devoting himself to the construction of a spectacular A-shaped tower. One of the most famous monuments in the world built for love! Isn't that the most romantic of scenarios?
The most romantic but also the most improbable. In fact, it was not Gustave who decided on the shape of the tower. It was his two closest collaborators who came up with the idea for a 300-meter-high metal tower. At first, the engineer is not convinced. Eiffel and women
But rather than dismiss the project, he asks Koechlin and Nouguier to review their copy. Three months later, the two men return with the same project, but completely redesigned by architect Stephen Sauvestre. The tower is no longer a bridge pier or a common pylon. The base has been expanded. Monumental arches connect the four uprights and the first floor. This time, the tower does not lack pace. And how better to celebrate technical progress than by building an all-metal building?
A love of the Eiffel Tower
After disdaining the project, Gustave ends up letting himself be seduced and gets caught up in the game, despite the violent opposition that is flourishing throughout Paris. Thanks to the support of the Minister of Trade and Industry as well as his charisma and his exceptional interpersonal skills, Gustave ended up winning the support of the City of Paris and the “heavenly nail” (Charles Garnier), thanks to the perseverance of Gustave and his talents as an innovative engineer, was indeed inaugurated for the Universal Exhibition of 1889!
Let's get back to his affairs of the heart. In reality, Eiffel is recovering quite quickly from his painful breakup with Adrienne Bourgès. In mid-1861, he fell in love with a young musician who made his head spin with her distinguished manners and great wit. But the marriage does not take place either. Running from one disappointment to another, Gustave begins to lose patience. Eiffel and women
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Marguerite:the choice of reason
In January 1862, Gustave Eiffel made a distressing observation:“This is at least my sixth failed marriage. His fear of ending his life "as an old bachelor chasing the damsel ridiculously makes him revise his ambitions downwards. On January 22, 1862, he wrote to his father:
I would need a good housewife who wouldn't make me too angry, who would deceive me as little as possible and who would give me beautiful, healthy children who would be mine. With a woman who would present these conditions, I would pass on everything else, fortune, figure, spirit, etc...
The Eiffel parents immediately set off on the hunt. Mélanie Eiffel unearths the ideal suitor in the person of Marie Gaudelet, seventeen years old, granddaughter of her partner Édouard Régneau. A choice that seems to suit Gustave perfectly. Marie appears to him as a docile young girl “with any background “, so young that he will easily have the upper hand over her. In short, a woman who will not cause him any hassle and will be content to be a loving wife and a prolific mother, much like Queen Marie Leszczynska and her many children !
And it is exactly this role that Marie will play during her short life. She married Gustave in Dijon on July 8, 1862, swapping her name for that of Marguerite because there was already a Marie Eiffel in the close family:Gustave's younger sister. The young eighteen-year-old bride gave her husband a first child on August 19, 1863:a pretty little girl named Claire. On October 16, 1864, the parents celebrated the birth of Laure. In April 1866, Édouard was born, followed by Valentine in 1870 and finally Albert in 1873. Eiffel and women
To settle his household, Gustave chose Levalois-Perret then in full expansion, while to enjoy the countryside during the summer, he rented a house in Marnes-la-Coquette. He himself joins his wife and their children there when business gives him a little respite.
A fulfilling family life then seems to be on the horizon. But at the beginning of 1877, Marguerite contracted bronchitis which dragged on. In May, she still keeps the room, watched over by her mother Fanny Gaudelet. While Gustave worries about the political crisis between Mac-Mahon and Gambetta, his wife loses her last strength. Suddenly seeming to realize the seriousness of his condition, he wrote to his parents on August 5:
Marguerite is suffering from a chest disease that leaves no hope. […] For the past month the disease has made terrible progress. Marguerite is no more than a shadow of herself, she is extremely thin, almost speechless and half the time in the grip of a terrible fever that nothing can calm.
Marguerite Eiffel died on the night of September 7 to 8, 1877, after a sudden internal haemorrhage. Gustave was really attached to this little bit of woman who had offered him his dream family life. He is badly shaken by his disappearance :
I am stunned and I cannot get used to the idea of this horrible misfortune. What a future for my poor children and for me.
This deep affection, if not loving, at least friendly, towards the wife of his children, is suggested several times in the film Eiffel. A welcome reminder. Eiffel and women
Claire Eiffel:the beloved girl
After many romantic disappointments, a marriage of convenience and the premature loss of this devoted mother, Gustave Eiffel rests on the two pillars of his existence:his work and his children. In particular, he forged very strong ties with his eldest daughter Claire Eiffel. And we can say without exaggeration that she was the real woman of his life.
From her first months, the eldest of the Eiffel offspring seems to devote to her father an adoration that he returns to her a hundredfold. wanna. Very early on, therefore, a close relationship was born between the father and his daughter, an attachment that was further reinforced by the sudden death of Marguerite.
Gustave, who has always been very involved in his family life, is counting on Claire to take over from his mother. It is now up to her to assist him. At fourteen, the girl becomes the new mistress of the house.
For the time being, Gustave entrusts the youngest to their aunt Marie while he himself undertakes a trip to Portugal, where he wishes to attend in person the inauguration of one of his bridges. He takes Claire with him:“I count a lot on her to soften the sadness of the long hours of travel. Passing through Madrid to take the train that was to take them to Porto, Gustave and Claire settled in the hotel in San Lazaro Square on October 8, 1877. As soon as they arrived, they went for a walk on the banks of the Douro to admire the work of the engineer. Claire is immediately fascinated by her father's creation. She writes to her aunt Marie:
How beautiful ! Never has the hand of man made something more majestic, more important!
Both in mourning for her mother and eager to cheer up her father, Claire struggles to take it upon herself:
I love daddy very much and don't want to give him any trouble, on the contrary, only act in a way that makes him happy and contented.
Desiring only his daughter's happiness in return (as long as she stayed with him), Gustave thought of marrying her off in 1884. In search of the ideal son-in-law, he introduced her to Adolphe Salles, a brilliant polytechnician and engineer, slightly taciturn. And Eiffel knows his twenty-two-year-old daughter well because he likes the young man immediately. The young people married in February 1885, accepting Father Eiffel's only condition:to stay with him. Market concluded with happiness, because Adolphe appreciates as much as Claire to gravitate in the entourage of Gustave. He even asks to work alongside his stepfather, who happily accepts. The couple therefore moved to the home of Monsieur Eiffel, in his luxurious Parisian hotel on rue Rabelais. Eiffel and women
After the inauguration of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, Gustave was at the height of his career. Covered with honors and decorations, he is solicited all over the world for projects more grandiose than the others. If he treats his employees with great respect, the money goes to his head and he buys without counting:antique furniture, paintings, villas in Switzerland and on the Côte d'Azur... not to mention pearls, coquetry whose loves his daughter. She also helps him organize the sumptuous receptions with musical interludes and theatrical performances which he likes to entertain his friends, especially for his successive birthdays. Eiffel and women
Claire Salles has truly become indispensable. It is Gustave Eiffel's reason for living. The complicity that binds them is all the more striking as the relations of the pater familias with her other children are much more complicated. No doubt they are a little jealous of his special relationship with Claire.
Present in her intimacy on a daily basis, the young woman is also an enlightened support for her business. He relies more and more on his initiatives as the years pass. Not a project that he does not submit to him before final validation to collect his opinions and advice! She is as active as her father in the 100 square meter offices on the third floor of the Eiffel Tower, where they get used to receiving the beautiful people and conducting their experiments. Female influence today welcomed by the presence of a model representing her alongside her father in a part of the old offices still visible and open to the public.
This graceful young woman, as solid as she is elegant and delicate, at the same time intelligent, piquant and reasonable, is for Gustave the very symbol of the Woman with a capital F. He told her so on the occasion of the Saint -Claire (second important festivity after her own birthday), celebrated the next day August 12, 1911:
I have already often praised your high qualities as daughter, wife, mother and friend. You are for us the true model of woman, because to the qualities of the heart you add a judicious spirit, whose beneficent influence spreads over us all.
"You have made yourself the most intimate companion of my life and you have associated yourself with all my great works for the preparation and general progress of which your advice, so wise and so judicious, has often helped me. most valuable utility exclaims Gustave again on the eve of his ninetieth birthday, paying a vibrant tribute to his beloved Claire. Eiffel and women
Struck by a stroke from which he recovered painfully in June 1923, Gustave Eiffel died on December 27 of that same year. Already deeply bereaved, Claire must immediately face the death of her husband Adolphe. Like a strange sign of fate, the two men in her life died two days apart... Largely favored in her father's will (she notably inherited the hotel on rue Rabelais) Claire Salles, born Eiffel, appears as the unknown shadow of the great man, constantly at his side during more than forty years of intense activity. Unbelievable luck! (Adele Hugo will not be entitled to the same consideration from his father…)
I regret that the film Eiffel, which nevertheless shows the closeness between the father and his daughter, did not focus more on this beautiful filial story rather than inventing a romance ultimately without much interest!
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Sources:
The Real Life of Gustave Eiffel by Christine Kerdellant
Michel Carmona's Eiffel
A love of the Eiffel Tower
Gustave Eiffel, the iron man on France Culture