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Avenue Kleber Postcard Front
Avenue Kleber Postcard Front
Ward, Lock & Co’s Paris and Environs guidebook
Ward, Lock & Co’s Paris and Environs guidebook

In1911, as the Majestic celebrated its third anniversary, the hotel was full and business brisk. According to the famous Ward, Lock & Co’s Paris and Environs guidebook Tauber’s hotel was ranked as a Series I hotel (“most luxurious and expensive”) alongside The Ritz and Meurice, both of which were much older, The Ritz having opened in 1898. The Meurice welcomed its first guests in 1815 and The Ritz was created from the renovation of a building that began life as a private house in 1706.

Joining the Majestic in this illustrious company were Hotel de Crillon, which opened in March 1909 and the Hotel Plaza Athénée, which was inaugurated in 1910. The short hotel section in Paris and Environs, which occupies less than four pages, records that rooms at the Majestic cost from 150 to 200 French Francs in 1911, which would have been US$39 at the time, or US$975 to US$1,800 in today’s money, depending on which standard of living measure is used.

The prices did not seem to deter guests and the hotel hummed with activity. That the Majestic was able to establish itself so quickly in the front rank of Parisian hotels (Tauber’s other property, the Regina, was only ranked as a Series II hotel) is a testimony to its fine facilities, especially the accommodations and level of service. The latter established a reputation for being definitively five-star almost before the paint had dried on the walls of the grand salon.

The early 1900s were the postcard age, with the medium being used for the same function that Facebook and Twitter perform today. Travelers in Europe, especially Americans, would spend considerable amounts of their leisure time writing cards and it was not uncommon for a diligent tourist with many friends to send dozens. The Majestic was a popular subject for postcards because the exterior of the hotel was imposing and picturesque, plus it could be depicted with the Arc de Triomphe in the background, providing a more sophisticated expression of Paris than a standard view of the iconic arch.

The Majestic was a popular subject for postcards
The Majestic was a popular subject for postcards

The United States government held a monopoly on domestic US post card production until May 19, 1898, when Congress created a new law, which allowed private printers to produce postcards. Even with this liberalisation people were still compelled to write on the front of their cards and were forbidden to use the address side until 1907.

Many Parisian postcards of the era have the legend Certains pays etrangers n’acceptant pas la correspondence de ce cote[1] on the address side, and writing over the card’s image was a habit that some found hard to break. In 1912 one American visitor sent a card home with a message scrawled over a photograph of the Majestic’s façade. “Pretty hard to summarise Paris on a card,” he wrote. “But modes and rouge prevail as ever. The town reeks of it! Men sit around and talk just like the women do.”

People were compelled to write on the front of their cards
People were compelled to write on the front of their cards
People were forbidden to use the address side until 1907
People were forbidden to use the address side until 1907

Such chatter would have been a feature of the Majestic’s Grand Hall or the Salon Louis XIV, where guests sat with friends or took time to write their cards and letters. The Majestic’s stationery featured pale blue paper of high quality with a dark blue crest and would have been found throughout the Salons on the Rue La Perouse side of the hotel, which house boutiques in the Peninsula Paris, the demands of commerce in the modern era countermanding the more refined pursuits of early twentieth century Paris.

An illustration in Tauber’s pamphlet Hotel Majestic Paris from 1910 shows a young woman seated in a high-back chair. She is adorned with a modish hat and a fur wrap and is concentrating on writing a letter with pen and ink. If she were alive today she would be no doubt be sending a Tweet and posting a selfie from inside one of the luxury shops, proof that civilisation does not always march forward.

The early-era postcards of the Majestic and its environs tell a rich story of life in 1910s Paris. Tramlines that run from the Arc De Triomphe to Trocadero divide Avenue Kléber. From dawn to dusk guests in the hotel would have been serenaded by tram bells and the clitter-clatter of metal wheels on iron tracks.

A 1911 postcard features a drawing of the hotel and it shows women strolling on the pavement outside the Majestic sporting the fashionable silhouette of the era, which was much more lithe and fluid than that of the 1900s.

Women strolling on the pavement outside the Majestic
Women strolling on the pavement outside the Majestic

When the Ballets Russes performed Scheherazade in Paris in 1910, a craze for Orientalism ensued with the couturier Paul Poiret as its high priest. He transformed his clients into harem girls with flowing pantaloons, turbans, vivid colors and exotic kimonos. The Art Nouveau movement was also taking flight. Its influence can be seen in the designs of many couturiers of the time, especially Jeanne Lanvin, who began her company in 1907 and first appeared in Vogue in 1909. Hats remained de rigeur but simple felt chapeaux, turbans, and clouds of tulle replaced the elaborate headgear of the 1900s.

The chic set of 1910s Paris did not buy their clothes from anything as down-market as a boutique. They expected a private visit to their suite. Both Poiret and Lanvin would have paid calls to wealthy clients at all the Series I hotels and the Majestic would undoubtedly have been included on their itinerary, especially as many of the hotel’s postcard writing guests had come to Europe expressly to buy the latest in French fashions.

Poiret's loose-fitting designs created an uncorseted, slim figure
Poiret’s loose-fitting designs created an uncorseted, slim figure

Women at the Majestic would have had every opportunity to prepare themselves to look chic and self-possessed before they descended to the hotel’s public rooms. The salles de bain in the main apartments were fitted with marble and hard wood and lamps in the Art Nouveau style illuminated the large mirrors over double sinks. In the style of toady’s best hotels, sweet-smelling potions and unguents line the shelf above the sink and each bottle was tied with a white silk bow.

The finest suites were outfitted with a toilette de dames in the Adams style with half a dozen mirrors all around, including a dressing table with side mirrors. A chambre a coucher in one of the large suites that occupied the end corners of the hotel on the Avenue Kléber side is replete with mirrors and closets, as if standing ready for Monsieur Poiret or Madame Lanvin to fill them with exquisite gowns.

Chambres à Coucher
Chambres à Coucher
Salle de Bains
Salle de Bains

For wealthy American families the Majestic became a preferred destination and in April 1912 there were many of them in the city, with quite a few no doubt writing home to express their excitement at being on the maiden voyage of RMSTitanic, which left Southampton on April 10, having grabbed the attention of the traveling world, not least because she had been described as “unsinkable”.

With a first class suite on the Titanic costing US$50,000 in today’s money it’s unsurprising that many of the North American passengers who had booked to join the ship at Cherbourg before she sailed for Queenstown, Ireland and then New York spent the last few days of their European tour at one Paris’s best hotels.

One such family was that of Mr. Walter Douglas, an American captain of industry who co-founded the Quaker Oats Company. He was with his wife Mahala and her traveling companion Berthe Leroy. Douglas was typical of the wealthy American guest seen by the Majestic and other Series I hotels. With travel to Europe made less arduous by the onset of beautifully appointed ocean liners such as the Olympic, Britannicand Titanic, men like Douglas could, for the first time, travel to Europe on a whim. The new ships were equipped with telegraphs to ensure contact with business back home and by 1912 journeys took less than a week.

he Hotel Majestic was the last abode of First Class passenger John James Borebank, who perished when the great ship went down.
The Hotel Majestic was the last abode of John James Borebank

Douglas had made his fortune by creating the  Quaker Oats cereal company and in April 1912, he and his wife took a trip to Europe, where they wanted to buy new furniture for their Lake Minnetonka house. The Douglases stayed at the Elysee Palace Hotel and had a ticket (number PC 17761) purchased at the Parisian offices of the White Star Line. At the same time JJ Astor, the richest man to die on the Titanic, was staying at The Ritz. And according to the US National Archives the Hotel Majestic was the last abode of First Class passenger John James Borebank, who perished when the great ship went down..

Borebank, known as Jack, was born 1870 in West Hallam, Derbyshire, but lived most of his life in Toronto, becoming an esteemed property broker. In 1911 Borebank embarked on an 11-month grand tour of Europe with his wife Isabel and eight-year-old daughter Eileen, visiting Rome, Venice and Paris, before he was forced to return home to attend to a business issue. Borebank boarded the Titanic with ticket No 110489. He planned to return to Canada while his wife stayed behind in Europe.

“I left the [Borebank] party in England and returned home last August,” said. Mr. Dissette, a friend of Borebank’s whom the Manitoban Telegram interviewed in April 1912. “Mr. Borebank after that, toured the continent, and last week only I received several cards from him dated from Rome and Venice. Mrs. Borebank and the little girl are still in England, where the child is going to school. It was partly to send the girl to an English school that the trip across the Atlantic was taken.”

Borebank perished with the Titanic, as did Walter Douglas and JJ Astor, but Mahala Douglas and Berthe Leroy both survived, Mahala being the first person taken aboard the Carpathia when the rescue ship finally arrived at 4am, four hours after the Titanic had sunk.

Igor Stravinsky was a frequent visitor to the Majestic
Igor Stravinsky(1882–1971) was a visitor to the Majestic

The sinking of the Titanic did nothing to stem the tide of travelers pouring back and forth across the Atlantic. In her diaries Leroy recorded that over the next three decades she would make the journey three dozen times. The lure of Europe in 1912 was irresistible, especially France and Paris. The popularity of the Impressionists was at its peak with Renoir and Monet still active and Americans in search of culture and refinement sought out hotels like the Majestic as bastions of civilization where culture could be absorbed as readily as sunlight.

By 1913 the guests at the Majestic would have all but forgotten about the Titanic, especially those who were artistically minded and lucky enough to be in residence during May of that year. On the 29th The Rite of Spring, with music by Igor Stravinsky (who) and choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky had its première at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris under the direction Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes.

The ballet’s modernism provoked one of the most famous riots in the history of classical music and on May 30th the Majestic’s terrase, dining room and Louis XVI restaurant would have rung with voices praising or condemning Stravinsky’s vision of a brave new future. If the world had continued on this course, the Majestic might still be in business today but history had put its own obstacle in the path of the hotel’s success, one that had a far more destructive power than the iceberg that sank the Titanic.

[1] Certain countries will not accept cards with correspondence written on this side