Citoyenne la traductrice jacobine

So, in an article of Hilary Mantel's, her first one, I believe, on the subject, she says the following: "'Eléonore thought she was loved,' said a fellow-student, 'but really she only scared him.'" (Him, being, of course, Maxime.) Now, I happen to know that, though a British historian uses this quote in the same way, they're both taking it rather out of context.

The entirety of the said student's writing (the accuracy of which Lenôtre himself admits is tenuous at best) on the subject of Éléonore is reproduced in Lenôtre's Paris révolutionnaire:

"Éléonore se croyait aimée, elle n'était que redoutée," says the student ("Éléonore believed herself to be loved when she was but feared"), but indeed, by whom? Why the other (supposedly royalist) students, of course! She continues: "Excepté quatre ou cinq élèves, chacun s'empressait de lui plaire, de la consulter, de prévenir ses désirs; les petits soins qu'on lui prodiguait contrastaient singulièrement avec la fierté aristocratique de quelques-unes de nous." (In translation: "With the exception of four or five students, everyone tried to please her, to consult her, to foresee her desires; the little cares extended toward her contrasted singularly with the aristocratic pride of some of us.")

In other words, she's not talking about Éléonore's relationship with Maxime at all, and logically so, for, whatever Mantel might think, it would make no sense for her to frighten him. An ignorant girl of aristocratic sensibilities, on the other hand, might persuade herself that Éléonore was to be feared (although not necessarily even in such a case, obviously).

This might not be quite so bad if Mantel had not based her entire theory of Éléonore's character on the line, but since she did, and since she used it to paint a rather slanderous picture of her, and in particular her relation to Maxime, not to mention the fact that this is not the first time she's taken such a line out of context, it reflects very badly indeed.

(I'm thinking one of three things must have happened: one, Hilary Mantel has a very minimal knowledge of French and thus she misunderstood what the "fellow student" was trying to say, two she deliberately took the line out of context and warped its meaning (which, considering, I wouldn't put past her), or three, she read Carr's biography of Maxime and didn't bother to check the original source, in which case one of the first two would have to apply to him instead, but one can still berate Mantel for sloppy research in the latter case.)

In any case, in order to keep this entry from being a complete waste, here's my translation of Lamartine's account of a meeting with Élisabeth Le Bas, also quoted in Paris révolutionnaire:

"I found in Mme Lebas, a woman of the Bible after the dispersion of the tribunes of Babylon, retired from the commerce of the living on a high floor of a fashionable apartment building on the Rue de Tournon, conversant with her memories, surrounded by portraits of her family..., of her sisters, of whom Robespierre was to marry the most beautiful, of Robespierre himself in all those elegant suits with which he boasted to present a contrast upon his person with the vest, the bonnet rouge, sabots, sordid signs, ignoble flattery by the Jacobins of equality and of the poverty of the masses. A magnificent portrait in pastel, of natural grandeur, of Saint-Just, the Barbaroux of the terrorists, the Antinous of the Jacobins, was displayed in a dusty gold frame against the wall between the bed-curtains and the wall, the object of a young girl's cult of memory for the most seductive of the disciples of the tribune of death. [Lamartine, in case you hadn't noticed, likes to be rather overly melodramatic and this leads him to many inaccuracies; I do apologize.]

"The young girl had become a wife, a mother, a widow; she had grown old in years and in face, with no trace of her former beauty in her features, but with no sign of age or senility. A fixed thought, sad by not at all disconcerted, gave to her strongly pronounced features a sort of lapidary petrification in a sole idea and sentiment, an abstract idea, a firm sentiment, but not at all strict.

"She welcomed me securely... she accorded me free access to her retreat, and let me flip through, page by page at my leisure, her present memoirs, inexhaustible and passionate on all the interior and exterior details of Robespierre's private and public life.

"Saint-Just also played a large role in these memoirs. I imagine that before marrying Lebas the young daughter of the entrepreneur Duplay, Robespierre's host, had thought for a moment to become the wife of the young and handsome proconsul, fanatical follower of this Mahomet of the mezzanine [reference to a Voltaire play], when the Revolution would finally come to a close by that sentimental sheepfold that Saint-Just and his master believed they were establishing in the place of the leveled inequalities and abolished scaffolds... Every time Saint-Just's name came up in our interviews, Mme Lebas's tone softened, her physiognomy was visibly touched, and she raised a glace of retrospective enthusiasm from his portrait to the ceiling like a silent reproach to the heavens for having taken some sweet perspective by the axe of 1794, with that exterminating angel's head upon the bust of a twenty-seven year-old proscriber."

...Lamartine has the strangest ideas, assuredly. Even Lenôtre, says, concerning the last bit: "I have long sought that which could have made this indiscreet and inexplicable supposition take hold in Lamartine's mind; Saint-Just loved, it is said, Henriette Lebas, his colleague's sister. [...] It would be possible, but improper and unjust to draw from this reticence [on the part of Le Bas--'we are currently very good friends, Saint-Just and I,' etc.] any conclusion in the direction indicated by Lamartine."

And one more thing, in case you missed it a couple of posts ago: do check out my new drawings on deviantart, won't you? I've added quite a few, especially in scraps. Merci d'avance. ♥