Louis Rœderer’s castle to hypnotism

Octave Pelletier was born on 24 February 1878 at Bemecourt in Normandy. His father was a gardener at Souvilly Castle which belonged to Louis Rœderer, director of the famous Champagne company. Octave Pelletier spent three years teaching French to the children of Fraulautern’s mayor in Germany. He attended hypnotism performances there, learnt how to hypnotise and published his handbook L’Hypnotiseur pratique in 1899.

A dandy in London

Octave Pelletier moved to St Paul's Road, Islington in 1902 for a two-year stay. From no. 109 onwards: Mr Taylor’s Hen and Chickens, a bassinet maker, a laundry, a fruiterer, coffee rooms and house furnishers. At no. 91, where he lived, 13 residents staying in a 4 room working class building. Among them, in a particularly overcrowded space, his landlord M. Frederick Bolton, a clerk, his wife and their daughter, their son-in-law, an 18-year-old milliner and other members of the same trade: a 64-year-old needle woman and a master tailor!

Today’s Hen & Chickens has turned into a North London venue with a rich history of stand-up comedy and 91 St Paul's Road is now a supermarket.

From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, the relative low cost of photographs led to a general rise in the popularity of portrait photography. Among London’s famous photographers at the time was George Emberson (1833-1905), whose studios could be found at 83 Gracechurch Street and 179 Regent Street. His portrait of Octave Pelletier shows a dandyish 24 year old man with a quiff and a magnificent moustache. Were Octave’s clothes custom-made by his brand-new neighbours?

Olive oil dealer in Nice

In 1903 Octave Pelletier became an export manager for Société des Huiles d'Olive de Nice making the most of his ability to speak French, German, English, Italian and Spanish. In 1907, he founded his own company. He edited two Leon Sarty travel guidebooks. Under that male pseudonym hid Countess Berthe de Sauteiron de Saint-Clément (1850-1926), an opera singer, an actress, a hiker and the director of an artistic, scientific and literary newspaper.

Octave Pelletier won a Gold Medal at Toulouse’s International Exhibition in 1908 and another in Amsterdam. He supplied olive oil to Her Majesty the Queen Mother of the Netherlands and moved to more spacious premises at 27B Gioffredo St, Nice.

Back to Islington

Gold medal winners were often invited to join international exhibition juries. Octave Pelletier became a jury member three times in 1909 : in Paris, Milan and London.

The Grocery, Provision, Oil and Italian Warehouse & Allied Trades’ 17th annual exhibition, held at London’s Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington, proved to be an opportunity for manufacturers, new firms and various food providers to come together and show thousands of customers and distributors how provisions were collected from all parts of the world. All the different sections of the grocery trades were represented, including retail, manufacturer and wholesale, in all departments, whether of utility or luxury, taste or ingenuity.

Among the products on view were jams, pickles, potted meats, condiments, combustibles, polishes for cleaning kitchen utensils and carpet-cleaning soaps, fresh, dried and preserved fruits, wheat, tallow, tinned meats, honey, wines and brandy from South Australia. Ireland also played its part with a display of butter, bacon, eggs, cream, honey, and even cigarettes, pipe tobaccos and cigars.

But the most amazing attraction was provided by the Brazilian State of San Paulo and the government of Greece. Forest-clad mountains; swarthy natives, amid palm trees, engaged at work; a street in a flower-decked, marble-built city of South America unexpectingly facing the city of Athens: an occasion to show the various processes of growing, gathering, drying, and preparing the currants and Fazenda coffee for market.

Many competitions were organised. Prizes were awarded to encourage efficiency in canvassing and effecting sales, dressing windows, parcel wrapping, writing advertisements, bacon slicing, and boot polishing.

Crossing the path of celebrities

From 1909 to 1934, Octave Pelletier published many advertising postcards and pamphlets, working with Nice’s famous photographer Jean Gilletta and graphic artist Efff d’Hey. Etablissements Octave Pelletier sold pure huiles d’olive de Nice, unrefined salad oil, soap and even olive oil-based motor oil!

His ‘noble qualities’ were rewarded with the Tunisian Order of Glory (Nichan Iftikhar) by Naceur Bey in 1911. He joined the 18th Territorial Infantry Regiment in 1915. On 25 October, his regiment paraded for review before the French president Poincaré, George V, the Prince of Wales, the French Minister of War and several British and French Generals. On 11 February 1916, he became a multilingual military censor at Dieppe’s Postal Censorship.

From 1930 to 1933, Pelletier had a famous neighbour when Albert Barnes proposed a mural commission for his foundation to Henri Matisse who rented a former garage next to Etablissements Pelletier. Not satisfied with the first version, Matisse invented a system of pieces of coloured paper cut out and pinned to the canvas. Three versions of the work La Danse exist: The Uncompleted Dance, La Danse de Paris and The Dance II in Philadelphia.

In 1934, Octave Pelletier bought a 16-room villa in Cimiez, Nice and soon renamed it Dreamland. He died in Nice on 21 January 1943. His company bore his name until its permanent closure in 1993. Because his burial plot in Nice’s East Cemetery was not renewed, his grave was taken back by the city in 2008 and his remains put in the ossuary. Next to him lies Prince Mehmed Orhan (1907–1994), grandson of Sultan Abdulhamid II, exiled at the age of 15. If reigning, he would have been styled Sultan Mehmed VII.

Further sources

You can watch a video about Octave Pelletier with more images on YouTube. If you would like, or if you have, any further information please contact : octavepelletiernice@free.fr

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the British Association for Local History (BALH). Any content provided by our contributors is of their own opinion and is not intended to malign any individual, group, organisation, or entity.