![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
montagnarde1793) wrote2008-07-19 11:57 pm
1 Thermidor CCXVI
Since today--soon to be yesterday--is (was) the first day of that fatal month mentioned in the subject of this post, I thought I'd cheer myself up by seeing a couple of movies I had been wanting to see for some time. This was probably a bad idea, as these movies happened to be WALL-E and Le hussard sur le toit, neither of which is particularly uplifting. I found them both to be very good movies--in extremely different ways. The first, ironically for an animated film requiring so much suspension of disbelief, was much more depressing than the second. This is probably because it's a given that lots of people died of cholera in 1832, whereas the nightmare vision of a future in which the earth is destroyed and everything is controlled by a giant corporation is (I hope!) still not inevitable. -___-;
In any case, I did notice some lovely Maxime and Saint-Justian parallels in Le hussard sur le toit, which were absolutely adorable. And the movie does have rather a lot of amusing lines. Though I'm almost sorry I've seen it already now, oddly: I'll never be able to see it for the first time again. D:
...I realize this post is near incoherency already, but I'd like to use this opportunity to decry the US movie rating system. Le hussard sur le toit is rated "R" under this system, which is the highest possible rating that a movie can get and still be marketable. Why? "For a scene of nudity." My Supreme Being! It wasn't even sexual! Sure, there was sexual tension between the protagonists, but that was as true of their (fully clothed) conversation as the scene in question. I mean, WTF, seriously. If you want to get upset about exposing children to something in that movie, at least make it the horrible deaths of cholera. The nude scene may have been the emotional climax of the movie, but that doesn't mean it wasn't tame compared to a lot of the other imagery. There's just no good reason that movie should be rated "R." None. /rant
But since I did promise I would continue with That Book About Le Bas in this post...
Beside Duplay and his family were groups a few guests of lesser importance than Robespierre and still others who only stepped over the threshold of the house a few times.
Lamartine, in the first edition of his Girondins, expressed it thus:
“A very small number of Robespierre and Duplay’s friends were admitted by turns into this intimate circle: the Lameths sometimes; Le Bas, Saint-Just, always; Panis, Sergent, Coffinhal, Fouché, who loved Robespierre’s sister and whom Robespierre did not like; Taschereau, Legendre, Le Boucher, Merlin de Thionville, Couthon, Péthion [Pétion], Camille Desmoulins, Buonarotti, Roman patriot, emulator of the tribune Rienzi, one named Didier, Duplay’s friend; some workers and assiduous Jacobins, finally Mme de Chalabre, rich and noble woman, enthusiast of Robespierre, who devoted herself to him like the widows of Corinth or Rome to the apostles of the new religion, offering him her fortune to serve the popularization of his ideas, and capturing the friendship of Duplay’s wife and daughters to merit a glance from Robespierre.”
On the placard corrected by Le Bas’ widow and son, all the words in italics are erased and replaced by these: “…The Lameths and Péthion at first; Legendre, Merlin de Thionville, Fouche, who loved Robespierre’s sister and whom Robespierre did not like, rarely enough; Taschereau, Camille Desmoulins, Piault, often; Le Bas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon, Buonarotti, always.”
Why does Lamartine, giving this modified text in his Histoire des Girondins (book XXX, § 13), nevertheless reproduce the names of Coffinhal, Panis, and Sergent, after that of Taschereau, and indicate, contrary to all truth, that Camille Desmoulins came “every evening” with Le Bas, Saint-Just, David, Couthon, and Buonarotti?
* * *
To these names of friends and devotees, must be added some forgotten names: that of Robespierre the younger especially[1] and those of Henriette (Le Bas’s sister) and Charlotte (Robespierre’s sister), temporary guests who received no less a cordial welcome from the Duplays.
I have remarked the affection that Henriette Le Bas had inspired in Saint-Just; her name was pronounced, we have seen, in the exchange of letters between Lamartine and Philippe Le Bas.
Charlotte Robespierre has occupied opinion more. M. Lenotre [Lenôtre], in his last volume,[2] consecrated an entire chapter to her, and the Conventionnel Le Bas’s son has traced her biography in a few lines that destroy, by their severity, the credibility of an anecdote once recounted by Jules Simon in le Temps:
“One day when I was dining in the home of my history professor, M. Philippe Le Bas,” said Jules Simon, “I saw an old maid, well preserved, with upright carriage, dressed, very nearly, as under the Directory, without luxury, but with particular cleanliness enter the salon. Mme Le Bas, his mother, (formerly Mlle Duplay) and M. Le Bas treated her with deference, almost as a queen. She spoke little during the meal, politely, with gravity: ‘What do you think of her? M. Le Bas asked me when we were alone in his office. – But who is she? –What? I didn’t tell you? She’s Robespierre’s sister.’ I was then a first year student at the École Normale.”
The first year student at the École Normale since became an eminent man, a remarkable philanthropist, and yet he came to lack indulgence for those of his former professors who had welcomed him, however, with kindness: his heart being excellent, I like to believe that the fault lay in his memory alone; unsurprising that it could have served him ill as he wrote his chronicle.
“Charlotte Robespierre,” said Philippe Le Bas in his Dictionnaire encyclopédique de l’Histoire de la France, “did not blush to receive a pension from her brothers’ assassins, which, 6,000 francs at first, then successively reduced to 1,500, was given her by all the successive governments until her death (1834). She has left Memoirs, which contain curious information, but where the false is too often mixed in with the true.”
I do not think that the conscientious savant who wrote those lines ever treated Mlle Robespierre like a “queen”: it is “solicitor” that Jules Simon meant to write.[*]
In any case, Charlotte Robespierre’s only interest for me is in the letters and memoirs where she spoke of her brother Maximilien, and, on this point, the document reproduced by M. Lenotre has the greatest interest, because it dissipates the misapprehensions copiously utilized by certain writers; it is the testament here, conserved in the archives of Me Dauchez,
“Wishing, before paying nature the tribute owed her by all mortals, to make known my sentiments towards the memory of my eldest brother, I declare that I always knew him for a man full of virtue; I protest against all letter contrary to his honor that have been attributed to me, and, wishing next to dispose of what I will leave upon my decease, I institute, as my universal heir, Mlle Reine-Louise-Victoire Mathon.
“Made and written by my hand, in
“Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte DE ROBESPIERRE.”
One can hardly discuss the sincerity of those who are about to die.
[1] The personality of Augustin-Bon-Joseph Robespierre, Maximilien’s younger brother, is too well known for it to be necessary to plot his biography; we will content ourselves with reproducing three of his letters further along, which Mme Le Bas left us in her papers. He was a friend of the Duplay house: he loved the house’s hosts and his affection for his brother was limitless: “He possessed family virtues,” Baudot said, “he was a good brother; he sincerely admired Maximilien and regarded him as the most virtuous of men.” (Notes historiques de la Convention nationale, page 2.) He lived long at the Duplays’; a letter addressed to him by Deshorties on 30 Messidor Year II, bears the following curious inscription: “To the citizen Robespierre the younger, house of the citizen Duplay, on the first floor front. Rue Saint-Honoré, Paris.” (Arch. Nat., F., 74433: batch of documents offered by M. Barbier.)
[2] Vieilles maisons, vieux papiers (1900).
[*] Translator's note: Concerning this incident, J. Lucas-Dubreton writes, in La royauté bourgeoise: 1830, that "When Jules Simon, just newly arrived from his Bretagne, was received for a lunch at the house of the same Mme Le Bas, he saw an old person before whom everyone bowed down in the place of honor: Éléonore Duplay, Robespierre’s fiancée.[1]” I find this assessment of the situation more likely than that given here. Jules Simon could very easily have mistaken the woman he had seen for Charlotte Robespierre, even – or perhaps especially – long after the fact. (One way this could have happened, for example, is that, if he recalled having been told that the woman was Robespierre’s fiancée but was not aware that Robespierre had ever had one – and knew he had a sister – he could easily have assumed he had misremembered what he had been told.) It would have been much more difficult, it seems to me, to forget his hosts’ attitude towards the woman in question than to forget her exact identity, since it is the former and not the latter that makes up the substance of his recollection.
[1] Jules Simon mistakenly believed he found himself facing Robespierre’s sister. – I owe this rectification to the obligingness of M. G. Lenotre.
no subject
Eeee, Le hussard sur le toit! ♥
Yay, more Book About Le Bas! The anecdote recounted by Simon does seem to make a lot more sense if you look at the woman as being Éléonore rather than Charlotte. The way the whole thing is described, and yeah, because you'd be more likely to forget exactly who someone was than their manner and they way everyone treated them. I think Charlotte might have gotten a slightly different reception...-_-
“Wishing, before paying nature the tribute owed her by all mortals, to make known my sentiments towards the memory of my eldest brother, I declare that I always knew him for a man full of virtue; I protest against all letter contrary to his honor that have been attributed to me, and, wishing next to dispose of what I will leave upon my decease, I institute, as my universal heir, Mlle Reine-Louise-Victoire Mathon.
“Made and written by my hand, in Paris, on 6 February 1828.
“Marie-Marguerite-Charlotte DE ROBESPIERRE.”
...Well, at least she attempted to redeem herself slightly at some point...?
no subject
♥, indeed. There really needs to be more movies like it.
Yes, I'm sure Stéfane-Pol was at least right to say that they would have treated Charlotte Robespierre like a sollicitor. I can't imagine they had too much contact post-Thermidor though. And the scene, as Simon describes it, does fit very well with Philippe Le Bas fils's depiction of Éléonore in his encyclopedia article.
That's true. It's more than one can say for certain betraying painters, at least. *cough*
no subject
What did you see too? What did you see?? *bounces* :D :D :D (Just wants to know, for random. XD;)
What annoys me mostly about this version of Le hussard sur le toit imported in America isn't just the rating -- which is quite stupid, I admit, but I hadn't noticed -- but that I cannot get the damn subtitles off. It's irritating. Especially that I'm in Québec. >.>
no subject
Oh, really? They tend to do that for VHS tapes. Is that what you have? Because the American DVD version has removeable subtitles. (Nevertheless, I'm afraid I had to use them anyway, because my mother, who understands very little French, wanted to watch it too. >.>)
no subject
I don't really have much to say about The Book About Le Bas this time, except that Charlotte's letter is awesome. ;-;
no subject
Yes, indeed. A bit on the depressing side though. :/
no subject
;-; I know. At least she tried, though.
no subject
That's true. Better late than never, as they say.
no subject
I'm sure she had her reasons. :(
no subject
It's possible, though one can't help wondering what exactly they were. Still, I won't disrespect her memory be attempting to argue otherwise.
no subject
;-;
no subject
No, I'm sure she was sincere when she wrote it, in any case.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I know that feeling D: I guess one could always read the novel it's based on as well - but it's not the same.
As far as the rating goes, I'll just reply with a lengthy "AAAARGH". I've completely given up trying to understand those rating systems.
This Film Is Not Yet Rated can be found at sidereel.com, if anyone is interested.
no subject
The American rating system is probably the world's most arbitrary--neither the organization nor its ratings seem to be based on anything.
Thanks for the link, though I've already seen the movie.