Category Archives: Aristocracy

Salons: Paris in 1900, persistance of the “grand monde”

Alice Bernard’s recent dissertation, La persistance du modèle aristocratique : mode de vie et sociabilité du grand monde parisien (1900-1939) catalogues the attendees of Parisian salons in the year 1900 by counting mentions of notables in the pages of Le Figaro‘s supplement on the grand monde. Among her findings: le grand monde was alive and well in 1900, dominated by a small group of nobles, issued from old regime families.

Networks remain tight and centered around the grandes familles. As Bernard writes, the family remains at the center of the “système-Monde.”

Family Relations in Paris 1900

Likewise, the mondains remain clustered in a small area of Paris around the Place de l’Étoile, the right bank.

Apartments of Mondains in 1900

The 19th-Century Networks database contains Bernard’s full dataset on the Parisian grand monde in 1900. Her dissertation contains a complete demographic profile of the Parisian notables mentioned in Le Figaro.