The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection (46 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W
e want to express our appreciation and thanks to Lyn Nosker and Ellen Hoobler, for their work translating certain books and documents for us. Our thanks also to Dick Nosker, for explaining scientific concepts to us, and to Yohann Thibaudault, for his assiduous research in the Paris Préfecture de Police Museum.

Clearly, we have drawn on the works of many authors, whom we have listed in our bibliography. We owe a particular debt, however, to Dr. Benjamin F. Martin of Louisiana State University and Dr. Edward Berenson of UCLA, whose works have informed our writing of
chapter 9
; and to Richard Parry, whose comprehensive book on the Bonnot Gang provided the basis of our research for
chapter 7
.

Our thanks to the staffs of the New York Public Library, the Avery Library, and the Butler Library of Columbia University.

We owe more than we can adequately express to our editor, Geoff Shandler, who initially conceptualized this book and provided many insights and suggestions, and to his assistant, Junie Dahn, who as always was the god in the details.

Finally, our gratitude to our agent, Al Zuckerman, whose support for our work has been unwavering.

NOTES

THEFT

1
. There were an estimated 275,000 works in the museum’s possession, not all of which were on display.

2
. It began as a fortress constructed by Philip Augustus around the year 1190, but many alterations and additions had been made since then.

3
. Lawrence Jeppson,
The Fabulous Frauds: Fascinating Tales of Great Art Forgeries
(New York: Weybright and Talley, 1970), 44.

CHAPTER ONE: THE CITY OF LIGHT

1
. Vincent Cronin,
Paris on the Eve: 1900–1914
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 36.

2
. Ibid., 35.

3
. Malcolm Gee,
Dealers, Critics, and Collectors of Modern Painting: Aspects of the Parisian Art Market between 1910 and 1930
(New York: Garland, 1981), 158.

4
. Theodore Dreiser, “Paris,”
Century Magazine
86, no. 6 (October 1913): 910–11.

5
. Norma Evenson,
Paris: A Century of Change, 1878–1978
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), 1.

6
. Susan Quinn,
Marie Curie: A Life
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 91.

7
. Joshua Zeitz,
Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2006), 129.

8
. Theodore Zeldin,
France, 1848–1945: Taste and Corruption
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 23.

9
. Nigel Gosling,
The Adventurous World of Paris, 1900–1914
(New York: Morrow, 1978), 18.

10
. Zeldin,
France,
358.

11
. Mary Ellen Jordan Haight,
Paris Portraits, Renoir to Chanel: Walks on the Right Bank
(Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1991), 108.

12
. Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale,
Misia: The Life of Misia Sert
(New York: Knopf, 1980), 41.

13
. Ibid., 42.

14
. Johannes Willms,
Paris: Capital of Europe; From the Revolution to the Belle Epoque,
trans. Eveline L. Kanes (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1997), 335–36.

15
. Frankfort Sommerville,
The Spirit of Paris
(London: Black, 1913), 62.

16
. Ellen Williams,
Picasso’s Paris: Walking Tours of the Artist’s Life in the City
(New York: Little Bookroom, 1999), 56.

17
. Samuel L. Bensusan,
Souvenir of Paris
(London: Jack, 1911), 51–52.

18
. Its name came from the lavender and white lilacs that grew outside.

19
. Patrice Higonnet,
Paris: Capital of the World,
trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002), 68.

20
. Carolyn Burke,
Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1996), 80.

21
. Charles Douglas,
Artist Quarter: Reminiscences of Montmartre and Montparnasse in the First Two Decades of the Twentieth Century
(London: Faber and Faber, 1941), 140.

22
. Gino Severini,
The Life of a Painter: The Autobiography of Gino Se-verini,
trans. Jennifer Franchina (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 25.

23
. Christopher Green,
Art in France, 1900–1940
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 150.

24
. Cronin,
Paris on the Eve,
275.

25
. Jules Bertaut,
Paris, 1870–1935,
trans. R. Millar (New York: Appleton-Century, 1936), 186.

26
. Cronin,
Paris on the Eve,
284.

27
. Ibid., 285.

28
. Quinn,
Marie Curie,
137.

29
. Cronin,
Paris on the Eve,
20.

30
. William Fleming,
Art and Ideas,
6th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), 403.

31
. Bergson’s wife was a cousin of Proust’s.

32
. Bernice Rose, “Picasso, Braque and Early Film in Cubism” (notes for exhibition at Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York City, 2007).

33
. Jean-Paul Sartre,
The Words,
trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Vintage, 1981), 119–25.

34
. Fleming,
Art and Ideas,
400.

35
. The Bourbon monarchy; the First Republic established by the Revolution; the Directory; the First Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte; the restoration of the monarchy in 1815; the 1830 revolution that gave France a constitutional monarchy under the Citizen King, Louis-Philippe; the short-lived Second Republic in 1848; and the Second Empire under Napoleon III.

36
. Alexander Varias,
Paris and the Anarchists: Aesthetes and Subversives during the Fin-de-Siècle
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), 41–42.

37
. Jay Robert Nash,
Encyclopedia of World Crime: Criminal Justice, Criminology, and Law Enforcement
(Wilmette, IL: CrimeBooks, 1990), 633.

38
. Richard D. Sonn, “Marginality and Transgression: Anarchy’s Subversive Allure,” in
Montmartre and the Making of Mass Culture,
ed. Gabriel P. Weisber (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2001), 130.

39
. Charles Rearick,
Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn-of-the-Century France
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 199.

40
. Martin P. Johnson,
The Dreyfus Affair: Honour and Politics in the Belle Époque
(Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1999), 6.

41
. Jean-Denis Bredin,
The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus,
trans. Jeffrey Mehlman (New York: Braziller, 1986), 68.

42
. Ibid.

43
. Ann-Louise Shapiro,
Breaking the Codes: Female Criminality in Fin-de-Siècle Paris
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 2.

44
. Sanche de Gramont,
The French: Portrait of a People
(New York: Putnam’s, 1969), 390.

45
. The French pronounce the term
apache
as “ah POSH.”

46
. Daniel Gerould,
Guillotine: Its Legend and Lore
(New York: Blast Books, 1992), 179.

47
. Mel Gordon,
The Grand Guignol: Theatre of Fear and Terror,
rev. ed. (New York: De Capo Press, 1997), 22.

48
. Agnes Peirron, “House of Horrors,”
http://www.GrandGuignol.com/history.htm
.

49
. John Ashbery, “Introduction of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre’s
Fantômas,
” in
Selected Prose,
ed. Eugene Richie (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), 185.

50
. Ibid.

CHAPTER TWO: SEARCHING FOR A WOMAN

1
. Jürgen Thorwald,
The Century of the Detective,
trans by Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1965), 85.

2
. Seymour Reit,
The Day They Stole the Mona Lisa
(New York: Summit Books, 1981), 78.

3
. Francis Steegmuller,
Apollinaire: Poet among the Painters
(New York: Farrar, Straus, 1963), 188–89.

4
. Milton Esterow,
The Art Stealers
(New York: Macmillan, 1966), 107.

5
. The French version of
La Gioconda,
an Italian name for the
Mona Lisa,
referring to the fact that the subject of the painting is thought to be the wife of Francesco del Giocondo.

6
. Molly Nesbit, “The Rat’s Ass,”
October
56 (Spring 1991): 13–14.

7
. Steegmuller,
Apollinaire,
188.

8
. Aaron Freundschuh, “Crime Stories in the Historical Landscape: Narrating the Theft of the Mona Lisa,”
Urban History
33, no. 2 (2006): 281.

9
. E. E. Richards,
The Louvre
(Boston: Small, Maynard, 1912), 96.

10
.
Los Angeles Times,
August 26, 1911.

11
. About twice the annual wage of a skilled worker at the time.

12
. Esterow,
Art Stealers,
101.

13
. Donald Sassoon,
Becoming Mona Lisa: The Making of a Global Icon
(San Diego: Harcourt, 2001), 174.

14
. Freundschuh, “Crime Stories,” 286.

15
. Barbara Gardner Conklin, Robert Gardner, and Dennis Shortelle,
Encyclopedia of Forensic Science: A Compendium of Detective Fact and Fiction
(Westport, CT: Oryx Press, 2002), 282–83.

16
. Esterow,
Art Stealers,
117.

17
. Steegmuller,
Apollinaire,
187–88.

18
. Freundschuh, “Crime Stories,” 287.