BENOIST-MECHIN Stanislas (EN)
Biographical article
Possessed of a comfortable family fortune, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin was able to spend part of his life embarking on long journeys to exotic countries. A former student of the Collège Louis le Grand (Anonymous, 1883, p. 378), Stanislas benefited from his title as baron, inherited from his mother, Marie-Élisabeth Berthe Benoist née Méchin (1832-1873), the granddaughter of the politician Alexandre Méchin (1772-1849), who in 1809 became a member of the nobility of the Napoleonic Empire (the family possessed an 1876 certified copy of the Méchin family’s certificate of ennoblement: Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 11). His elevated social position opened many doors for him around the world and ensured that he was received at the highest possible level in all the countries he visited. In 1873-1874, when he was still very young--he had barely reached the age of nineteen--, Stanislas embarked on his first initiatory ‘Grand Tour’ of India, Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka), Java, Malacca, and China. The relaxed and convivial journey, which he made in the company of two friends, the Vicomte Gouy d’Arsy and Guillaume Jeannel, was well described by another traveller, Victor Meignan (1846- ?): for purely coincidental reasons, they all arrived ‘in Peking on the same day and almost at the same time, without planning to do so and after following very different directions’, and were then received by Louis de Geofroy, Minister Plenipotentiary at the French Delegation in China (Meignan, V., 1875, p. 364), at the beginning of May in 1874. Comparing their travels to his own very difficult journey through Siberia and Mongolia, Meignan wrote: ‘In order to go from Paris to Peking, these three young French travellers had not braved the hardships of a Siberian winter, or the monotony of travelling on a sledge or in a Chinese vehicle; and yet their adventures were as interesting as mine. They had been through India; they had been received in the palaces of the nabobs of that country, far more attractive I should say than those of the gold hunters of the North; they had hunted wild beasts in Ceylon and Java, chased the elephant in the virgin forests of Malacca (…)’ (Meignan, V., 1875, p. 361-362). Having acquired a taste for daring journeys, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin visited the same destinations again four years later, in December 1878; but this time he was accompanied by the Duc de Blacas (probably Louis Casimir de Blacas d’Aulps, the third Duc de Blacas, 1847-1866 ?) and the Comte Humbert Adrien de Mailly-Chalon (1853-1921). The latter, who only joined his friends in Ceylon (Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 5), became his travel companion for the next five years, until the end of 1884. The friends travelled very pleasantly, were happy to do so, and had no obligations; they explored the mountainous labyrinths of Asia without the burden of conducting scientific studies. Together, they travelled through India (1878-1879), Ceylon (1879), and Indochina (1879), where their main activity was hunting exotic animals; they then sojourned in Canton. De Blacas subsequently returned to France, while the two explorers went to Japan, where they settled for two years (1880-1881); in Tokyo, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin was cultural attaché at the French Delegation (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 11). After travelling the width and breadth of the country (‘After living in Japan for two years we have almost become natives; we have travelled across every part of this enchanting country, by foot and on horseback’ : Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 5), they decided to return to France, in July 1881, by crossing Asia from east to west, which was little known at the time. They arrived in Peking in August 1881, and, thanks to the intervention of the French Minister to China, Albert Frédéric Bourré (1838-1914), they obtained special travel permits from the Chinese government, complemented by special passports, enabling them to visit the area extending from Manchuria to Vladivostok, with an escort of Chinese soldiers and an order requiring the French travellers to be treated with the greatest possible respect (Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 6). On 15 September, after having assembled a caravan of twenty people, including two ‘French servants, Messrs Causit and Yvon, twelve saddle horses and nine carts, each of which was drawn by three strong mules’, they left the Chinese capital and headed to Manchuria. In reasonably comfortable conditions, they travelled to Niou-Chouang (Changchun) and Mukden (Shenyang), crossed through Kirin (Jilin) province on 28 October, and then journeyed up the Songhua River and back down the Tumen River, which--after a journey of 1,400 km in seventy-three days--enabled them to reach Vladivostok, where the expedition arrived on 21 December 1881; they arrived with several wonderful gifts, such as tiger skins and silk fabrics, which had been given to them by Chinese administrators they met along the way (Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 22). Their itinerary then took them across Russian Siberia via Khabarovsk, Nertchinsk, Blagoveshchensk, Chita, Irkutsk, and Tomsk, where they became involved with the local population in an evening of entertainment in Nertchinsk in 1882 (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 12). After crossing the ‘Kirghiz’ (now Kazakh) steppes to reach Verny (present-day Almaty) during the summer of 1882, they went hunting in the Tian Shan mountains, at the gates of Kashgar and Kuldja, at the very point when the Russians handed the province of Ili back to the Chinese. It was here that they were granted the authorisation from the Russian Governor General Mikhail Tchernayev to cross the Russian Turkestan. They spent six weeks in Tashkent, the country’s capital, during which they had many discussions with Tchernayev about all the development projects of the new colony, particularly the project to construct a new railway line (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 38–39). This stay was also marked by Mailly-Chalon’s participation in a horse racing competition, in which he won a prize for having ridden an ‘indigenous’ horse over a distance of 2 versts (around 2.134 km) in 4 minutes and 10 seconds (Anonymous, 1883, p. 378). They then headed to Samarkand, which they left on 8 January 1883 to travel to Teheran, with the regret that they would no longer see ‘the Russian official’s green greatcoat (...), their last link to civilisation’. Furthermore, the Frenchmen felt that ‘the indigenous peoples of Central Asia did not consider the Russians to be foreigners (…). The Russian soldier lived on an equal footing with the Sarte (…). This is where real Russian power lies; when one or two generations of Cossacks and Sartes have grown up side by side, we will then be able to say that Russia owns Central Asia […]. The Russians have accomplished a task [that …] deserves (…) the recognition (…) of all civilised peoples’ (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 26, 40–42). They continued their journey in the extreme cold and under the constant surveillance of a Bukhariote guard, crossed Shahr-i-Sabz (originally Kesh) (at the end of January), Karshi and Bukhara (6–17 February), which were part of the Emirate of Bukhara, reduced de facto to the status of a Russian protectorate due, amongst others, to the fact that the Russians had seized control of the Zerafshan River. Emir Muzaffar, whom they visited, was considered by the Frenchmen as a real ‘prince who had suffered misfortune, but had not been humbled; and we could see that, although his days of glory and power were long gone, we were not in the company of burlesque royalty like that of a negro king, when we were in the presence of the Emir […], but indeed in the company of the representative of a great race, the direct descendant of Timur and Abdullah Khan’; the very city of Bukhara gave the impression of being ‘the most Muslim city’ in the region (Benoist-Méchin S., 1885, p. 29, 33–34). Then, crossing the desert, ‘in the shifting sand dunes’, they crossed the Amou Darya River, ‘Alexander’s Oxus’, which was covered with ice, ‘on foot’ and travelled through Tchardjoui ruled by ‘one of the Emir’s sons (…) who (…) looked just like a prince from The Thousand and One Nights’. From there, they descended the Amou Darya River until they reached the Russian fort of Petro-Alexandrovsk (today’s Turtkul, in Uzbekistan) (12 March), and lived for fifty-two days in Khiva, the capital of the eponymous khanate and second Russian protectorate (Benoist-Méchin, 1885, p. 34–35, 43). The Khan of Khiva, who ‘has dyed hair, wears make-up and a golden robe, and lives in a palace filled with courtesans, obeying laws of the strictest etiquette, truly represents the descendant of an Asiatic Louis XIV. [… he is], tall, strong, and exudes bonhomie (…), a warrior chief from the Middle Ages, whose civilisation has not yet improved people’s morals or manners’ (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 37). On the next stage of their trip they travelled with a caravan of eighty-five camels and 140 or 150 Turkmen and Khivan horse riders (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 43). They crossed the Russian Empire’s Transcaspian region, going up the Amou Darya River to Kungrad (Qoʻngʻirot) (11 May), and entered the Karakum Desert in an ‘unbearable’ heat, and on 21 May, ‘after seventeen gruelling days’, arrived in Merv, a place they wished to reach ‘at all costs’ and where, before them, a single Frenchman, Henri de Coulibœuf de Blocqueville (1800-1860/1861?), had ‘sojourned’ as a prisoner. During the twenty-two days they stayed in the city under the protection of Karakul Khan, one of the most powerful leaders of the Tekke Turkmen, they existed exclusively on camel’s milk and barley bread (Anonymous, 1883, p. 378; Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 25, 45-47; and Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 6). According to their impressions, in a letter sent to Tchernayev, the Turkmen population was so weary of the instability of the political situation ‘that the oasis of Merv would surrender without a fight, relatively quickly’ (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 48). Here, they purchased eight horses of a ‘local race’ (the Akhal Teke, or horse from Turkmen), which they dispatched directly to France. In Merv they also bought a Turkestan royal eagle, which they took with them to Saint Petersburg accompanied by a ‘Tatar’, Mogamed-Sadyk Feyzuf, whom they brought back from Bukhara (Anonymous, 1883, p. 378). The most dangerous part of the trip from Merv, which they left on 13 June, was the crossing of the Khorasan to the valley of Tedjen, then the fortress of Sarakhs, and lastly, Meched, where they were received on 24 June by Steward, the English consul based in the city. The crossing of the frontier that separated the Russian possessions from the British sphere of influence immediately prompted discussions about the issue of the ‘Great Game’ (Benoist-Méchin, S., 1885, p. 49–52). Arriving in Teheran, on 13 July, they were warmly greeted by the French Ambassador René de Chavigné, Comte de Balloy (1845– ?). After celebrating the crossing of ‘the whole of Asia from east to west and north to south’ over ‘a distance of more than 4,000 leagues’, they set off for Russia, across the Caspian to Astrakhan, then sailed up the Volga via Tsaritsin (Volgograd), before reaching Moscow in around October 1884, and then Saint Petersburg, where they were greeted with pomp as great French explorers. The Russian review Universal Illustration reported that ‘without being impeded by material means, the young travellers assembled during the voyage a collection of antique Chinese and Japanese objects of a rare quality, which are believed to be worth 500,000 francs, according to the experts’. The article also explained that as soon as the travellers returned to France they would ‘classify the collections they had assembled and publish a description of their travels’ (Anonymous, 1883, p. 378). However, no detailed description of their journey was published and their only known literary contribution was restricted to two travel accounts, drafted deliberately in a single report that the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie de Paris published in 1885 (Mailly-Chalon wrote about Manchuria and Benoist-Méchin wrote an account of the crossing of Turkestan: Mailly-Chalon, H., 1885, p. 6). It is known, however, that, despite the fire that destroyed all the family archives at the beginning of the twentieth century, certain documents survived, as attested by the contents of the archives of Jacques Benoist-Méchin, Stanislas’s son, which were auctioned in 2007 by the Hermann Historica auction house in Munich with an unpublished account of the journey. In a relatively large volume (‘more than 200 handwritten pages’ with ‘around 170 large-format pages’, as well as a 70-page (medium-format) autograph manuscript entitled ‘Note sur le voyage à travers la Chine du Comte de Mailly-Chalon et du Baron Benoist-Méchin attaché à la legation de France à Tokyo’), this account ‘recounted his five-year trip ‘across Asia and Russia in the company of the Duc de Blacas’, and was full of ‘anecdotes evoking Asia at the end of the nineteenth century, [in particular] his visit to the Emperor of China’ (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 4 and 11, lot no. 5446). The same lot also included other family documents (see the section on the collection below). On 23 November 1887, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin married the Baronne Vera de Zaltza (1870–?), a Russian aristocrat whom he divorced on 15 April 1897. His second marriage, this time to Marie-Louise Pauline Gatel (1869–1966) on 6 July 1898 in Bordeaux, seems to have been a happier one. Towards the end of Stanislas Benoist-Méchin’s life virtually nothing remained of the large family fortune. Jacques Benoist-Méchin (1901–1983), the youngest of his two children, born from the second marriage, was well known as a historian, musicologist, politician, journalist, and Arabist; after having openly demonstrated his support for Nazism, the latter resumed a long and active career as a scientist after the war.
The collection
Most of Stanislas Benoist-Méchin’s collection of Asiatic art was very probably purchased from Monseigneur Favier (Pierre Marie Alphonse Favier-Duperron, 1837–1905), Archbishop of Peking, as attested by the correspondence between the two men found with the family documents sold in Munich (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 11, lot no. 5446). This correspondence comprises amongst others, a document of around fifty pages with a list drawn up by Monseigneur Favier of all the objects sold and the contemporary prices, as well as the cost of the crates and the shipping, and sometimes even interesting articles about the objects. According to the Russian review Universal Illustration, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin’s collection comprised ‘Chinese and Japanese antiquities of a rare quality, which are estimated to be worth 500,000 francs’. Later, Stanislas Benoist-Méchin bequeathed this collection to the Musée Guimet, where it was subsequently integrated into the collection of Chinese ceramics assembled by Ernest Grandidier (1833–1912). In the same lot sold in Munich, mentioned above, there were also ‘travel maps, photos taken in Tokyo of [Stanislas] Benoist-Méchin in 1880, including one in a rickshaw, a Russian passport, a certificate from Tsar Alexander III, and a certified copy of the award to [Stanislas] Benoist-Méchin of Knight of the Order of Saint Stanislas of the 2nd class by Alexander III; signatures on a strip of red rice paper of Chinese dignitaries at the end of the nineteenth century (the Prefect of Police, the inspector general of the Ministry of the Interior, the vice-president of the Ministry of Finances, the Minister of State, Prince Kong, etc.), an autograph manuscript comprising 70 pages […, see above], and a Russian journal recounting Gabriel Benoist-Méchin’s visit to the Tsar (1884); a two-page autograph letter signed by General Tchernayev and sent to [Stanislas] Benoist-Méchin warning him of the dangers he faced in travelling to Merv (16 April 1883), an autograph copy of the response from [Stanislas] Benoist-Méchin, and a Licence to Shoot Elephants granted to Gabriel Benoist-Méchin.’ (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 11, lot no. 5446). Other objects belonging to Benoist-Méchin were also sold in Munich, including a lacquered writing box from the first Meiji period (1868–1912), from the collection of Monseigneur Favier, Archbishop of Peking (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 4, lot no. 3050). Another lot contained a silver cigarette case given to him during a ‘voyage in the company of the Comte de Mailli-Chalons and the Prince de Lisle-Montréal [?] across China and Russia’, inside of which were official Russian stamps; on the inner part of the cover are engraved the different stages of the trip and both faces of the case are inscribed with a baronial crown, as well as signatures inscribed in Russian and in French (Hermann Historica München, 2007, p. 12, lot no. 5735).
