Politics and Perfume in nineteenth century Grasse

There are streets and schools all over France named Carnot. In fact, it’s the fifth most common street name of all, and the third after ‘Victor Hugo’ and ‘Gambetta’ if ‘Eglise’ and ‘Mairie’ are excluded. Grasse has a boulevard and a collège by that name, but who was Carnot?

In full, he was Marie-François Sadi Carnot. He was an undistinguished president of France from 1887 to 1894, who is commemorated really only because he came to a bad end.

Sadi Carnot (1837-1894)

He was one of the victims during a wave of political assassinations of the time which included two presidents (Carnot and McKinley of the USA), an empress (Elisabeth of Austria) a king (Umberto I of Italy) and two prime ministers (of Spain).

Born in Limoges, Sadi Carnot was by profession an engineer, but he had a strong indirect link with Grasse through the Chiris family.

Léon Chiris

The Antoine Chiris family perfume business, established in 1768 and passing directly from father to son for six generations until 1967, rode a tide of success to become Grasse’s largest enterprise by 1880. It employed 350 locally (excluding many seasonal workers for harvests) and perhaps more than ten times that number worldwide. The head of the fourth generation, Léon (1839-1900), having grown his father’s business by successfully embracing new technologies, decided to enter national politics.

Léon Chiris as a young man, sporting a remarkably modern hair style!

Leon did have political connections – he was the great-nephew of the nationally significant revolutionary, Maximin Isnard, and his wife was a niece of the then President of France – but it’s likely that protecting the ongoing success of his large business, much of it sourced from France’s colonies, was a significant part of his motivation.

French republican government 1870-1914

The Third Republic was established after the loss of the war against Prussia in 1870. It bore a superficial resemblance to today’s system, with a President who appointed a Prime Minister, a Senate and Chamber of Deputies. But actually it was a long way from the de Gaulle-designed system of an all-powerful, directly elected presidency. Real power lay with the parliament, where local notables (landowners as well as industrialists and also lawyers) could dominate. They, not the populace, elected the president – that was how Sadi Carnot got the job in 1887.

So if Leon Chiris wanted to look after his own interests, parliament was the place to be. He was elected as deputy for the western Alpes-Maritimes in 1876 and cemented his position by becoming Senator (through an electoral college of local councillors, not direct suffrage) from 1882 until his death. He was one of the first industrialists in France to go into national politics, and his career lasted twenty four years in all. He was linked to Sadi Carnot through politics and later by marriage as well.

Chiris and Carnot

Carnot’s family had been prominent in France since revolutionary times. His grandfather, Lazare, was known as the ‘organiser of victories’ for his role in conscripting the armies which saved the régime in the mid-1790s and set the scene for Bonaparte’s dominance.

Lazare was an admirer of a Persian poet, and he called his younger son Sadi in his honour. Sadi Carnot was a great scientist – he effectively created the physics discipline of thermodynamics. After his death at a young age (36), his brother, Hippolyte, who was himself distinguished as a reforming minister for education, included the name in that of his son, the future president, who was born in 1837. It stuck to the younger man in later life.

Léon Chiris and Sadi Carnot were centre-left so-called ‘Opportunist’ republicans, who opposed the monarchist right of the church, landowners and the army (a split which eventually exploded into the Dreyfus affair). But any progressive tendency on Léon’s part was by modern standards quite paternalistic: perhaps on today’s spectrum, we might see him as a right wing Democrat.

Chiris and Carnot, close contemporaries as they were, became quite extraordinarily strongly related via no less than three marriages. Chiris’ two daughters married Carnot’s two sons and Carnot’s grand-daughter married Chiris’ son Georges. Carnot’s abrupt death in 1894 must have been a real blow to Chiris.

Marriage links between Chiris and Carnot

Political gains for Grasse

Grasse and its perfume industry certainly benefited from Léon’s political influence.

He was instrumental in getting the Foulon canal (see my blog here) and the Chemins de Fer du Sud railway approved in Paris. One was an important source of water for the flower fields as well as for the town and the other provided east-west access for inbound materials such as coal as well as fast outbound transport for Chiris’ and others’ products. The canal remains a crucial water supply to the town. Fourteen years after Léon’s death, the town installed a monument to him, which still stands on bd Fragonard.

One member of the Carnot family also left a legacy locally: Francois, the grandson of both Sadi Carnot and Léon Chiris in 1918 bought the badly neglected Hôtel Clapiers-Cabris on rue Mirabeau and created what is now the Musée d’art et d’histoire de Provence (MAHP).

The Chiris family left other legacies: this plaque, which appears on a house on bd Fragonard once owned by the family, commemorates the grand-daughter of both Sadi Carnot and Léon Chiris. See translation here*.

Politics and industry

There is an exchange sometimes cited in France between two politicians of the time. Jules Ferry was another opportunist republican like Chiris and a great secularist education reformer, while Jean Jaurès was a socialist leader who was assassinated just before the Great War. Ferry is supposed to have said 'My goal is to organize humanity, without God and without king.' 'But not without a boss,' was Jaurès’ response.

Léon Chiris would no doubt have agreed with both of them!

*'To the memory of Madame Georges Chiris, born Emilie Cunisset-Carnot, who created the charity of Assistance for Young Children in memory of two infants whom she lost, to allow other Mothers to keep theirs.'