He bought his first bicycle, a penny-farthing when he was 28, in 1881. In that year he became the founding secretary of Les Cyclistes Stéphanois. The club held its first meeting at 1 rue des Arts, St-Étienne, on 23 October 1881. The address was the home of a member, A. Jourjon, and became the club's address when it was registered as a new organisation at the préfecture on 11 March 1882. Evidence that de Vivie was a reasonably prosperous man is shown in a club rule that allowed membership only to amateurs, a definition which excluded ordinary working men. Further evidence is the writer Jean-Pierre Baud's calculation that a bicycle cost 200 francs or 56 times the daily wage of an everyday worker.