British and French Print Media's and the Death of Marat

On this day in 1793 a young French woman named Charlotte Corday sought a meeting with the prominent French revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, promising information on an future uprising.  After being turned away in the morning, Corday was admitted in the evening to Marat's bathroom, where he conducted business now due to a debilitating skin disease that kept him submerged in his bathtub.  Corday recited the names of dissidents while Marat wrote them down, proclaiming that they would soon be guillotined.  This was Corday's cue; she drew out a kitchen knife hidden in her clothing and stabbed Marat in his chest, killing him almost instantly.  She then calmly waited for the police to apprehend her and was guillotined four days later.

Corday hoped that this act of violence would put an end to the violence of the French Revolution which she felt was now out of hand.  She blamed Marat for the excessive and repulsive bloodshed and she was not alone in this sentiment.  A search in the British Museum's collection of prints reveals a stark contrast in how France and Britain interpreted the assassination. 

Anonymous, 1793

Paul André Basset, 1793

Corday is often portrayed in French prints as a savage (though well-dressed) beast of a woman.

Isaac Cruikshank, 1793

William Holland, 1793

Whereas in British prints she is often depicted as a pretty young woman stabbing a buffoon.  One example is my favourite image of Corday, by James Gillray which portrays her with the dignity and grace of an eighteenth-century heroine. 

There are many depictions of the event by French and British printmakers that survive and of course, not all of them can fit within these two categories.  Notably this French print which is thought to have been printed a few years after the dust had settled and seems to give an accurate representation of Corday's arrest.  She sits patiently, next to victim while men rush in to apprehend her.

Jacques Swebach-Desfontaines, c. 1793-8

Cereal and the French Revolution

These poor fops...not even the Scarlet Pimpernel can save them now!


Kind of a grim topic for breakfast cereal, no?

Hannah More on Marie Antoinette's Charges

When news reached England of Marie Antoinette's trial, British citizens, despite their quarrels with the French, were absolutely disgusted.  The opinionated Hannah More, like most women, was especially disgusted when charges were brought against the queen for incest,

"It is so diabolical, that if they had studied an invention on purpose to whitewash her from every charge, they could not have done it more effectively."

Another Great Act of Scottish Female Heroism

It wasn't just Flora McDonald who was a proud daughter of Scotland with a knack for hiding aristocrats, Miss Grace Dalrymple Elliott also risked her life to do the same almost 50 years later.

France 1792, the Terror was in full force and the siege of Tuileries Palace was underway. The governor of the palace was the Marquis of Champcenetz and he escaped the blood-thirsty mob by playing dead and hiding under other dead bodies. When the coast was clear Champcenetz made his getaway, slipping out from under his gruesome hiding place, despite being barely alive himself.

Meanwhile Grace Dalrymple Elliott receives word from a friend that her help is needed. She rushes into the heart of Paris to find the help is helping save Champcenetz, someone Grace knew of but did not know personally. What Grace did know is that her ex whom she was on good terms with, Philippe Egalite (the Duc d'Orleans) despised this man. The friend had been hiding Champcenetz in the attic but frequent army visits to the home was complicating the safety of both parties. Grace's home wasn't much of an improvement. Many of her servants were loyal to the revolution, specifically her cook, and therefore wouldn't hesitate to snitch on their mistress. Champcenetz had to be hidden even from the house's servants, the situation made Grace a virtual prisoner in her own home.

Knowing that her house would probably be searched, Grace quickly came up with a plan. She sent her cook away to get a chicken from the market, and used the time to hide the Marquis between her mattresses. Grace then got into her nightgown and played sick in bed, the same bed Champcenetz was wedged between. She even invited her cook to sit on her bed to talk to her.

In the middle of the night municipal officers entered Grace's home looking specifically for Champcenetz. They turned the place upside down, checking all the servants' bed and sticking bayonets in the mattresses. Ironically it was the cook who tells them to get out of the house because her mistress has nothing and no one to hide. Grace on the other hand, charms the men and they allow her to stay in bed (for decency's sake) while they search every part of it, except between the mattresses. The officers leave, empty handed.

Champcenetz continued to stay, and recover in Grace's home. She again was able to smuggle him out and bring him to her home outside Paris where he would leave to hide in a different person's home. Grace got away with the crime which would have cost her her life if she was caught. Although she would come to narrowly escape the guillotine, it wasn't for saving Champcenetz's life. Grace's heroism helped the marquis live to the ripe old age of 68.

Happy New Year!

Well...sort of. Elyse reminded me today that it is the first day of the French Republican Calendar. After the end of The Terror, the elitist republicans decided to make their own calendar which, they thought, was more logical. The result was complicated and didn't mesh with the rest of the world's method. Elyse has broken down the complexities of this calendar which I highly recommend you checking out. Bonne Annee!

Quotables

"I often think that this cannot be the 18th C in which we live at present, for ancient history can hardly produce anything more barbarous and cruel than our neighbours in France."

-Queen Charlotte

Happy Bastille Day!

What a funny holiday! Well, not funny but peculiar. It is more symbolic of the start of the French Revolution than the actual storming of the Bastille which resulted in freeing mostly old men and pedophiles. Vive le France! My sick sense of humor aside, the storming was a frightening event. An event that Georgiana just narrowly missed being a part of.

The Devonshire clan had been visiting in Paris but on July 8, 1789 the Duke of Devonshire had tired of the city and decided they should move on. Before they left, Georgiana paid a visit to Versailles to say goodbye to two of her dearest friends, the Duchesse de Polignac and Marie Antoinette. Tensions were high in France but none of the women expected that these could be their final goodbyes to each other.

The party was in Brussels on July 14th when they received word of the storming of the Bastille and the horrors of the riots. Georgiana recorded that the Duke weeped in fear that his daughter Charlotte (from his mistress Charlotte Spencer) who was living in Paris would be harmed in the frightening events. Charlotte wasn't the only bastard of his he feared for in Paris, his daughter with Bess, Caroline St. Jules was also there. By July 18th, Georgiana's friend James Hare had written that Charlotte was safe and gave her a full account of the horrors he was seeing in Paris.

Although the Whig party was supportive of the French Revolution, being so close to it frightened Georgiana even as an "Englishwoman." Her premonition proved accurate when the mob soon turned on anything British due to Marie Antoinette's anglophilic tendencies. The British embassy was one of these victims. Georgiana was safe but she feared for her French friends, especially Marie Antoinette, who insisted her friends escape while she stayed behind to face her people.

Gossip from France: Charlotte Corday

Without getting into too much detail, because this is another post with babble-potential, I'd like to touch upon the imagery of Charlotte Corday, who definiately wins the prize for "Most Spartan" Frenchwoman. But I'd like to look at it from the English perspective. To review, Charlotte was the broad who took matters into her own hand when the executions in the French Revolution became too numerous. Placing blame on Jean-Paul Marat for the out of control killing sprees, Charlotte assassinated Marat with a butter knife in his bathtub. Well, maybe not a butter knife, but she she did buy a kitchen knife right beforehand to do the job. She was of course punished with the original execution of death by guillotine.


This of course this made her a martyr. The French despised her for her actions. A man even lifted her freshly severed head from the guillotine basket to slap her cheek. The English, on the other hand, idolized the murderess. As can be seen in this Gillray print, Corday is one of the few women to be portrayed in a positive light by the satirical artist. Her depiction is very similar to those of Britannia, a rare compliment for those not of English origin. Don't you just love how in this depiction Charlotte address the assembly as "Wretches," plus I doubt Gillray ever put so much time into making a hairdo look nice as he did with this print. It should also be noted how incredibly un-French Charlotte looks, she looks more hmm...British? Her depiction is notably in the British vogue.

The British, who have a tradition of enjoying a good rebellion (unless it was against them) felt France crossed the line with the execution of Louis XVI. Charlotte became, for them, a symbol of liberty; the exact thing France was fighting for. The French disagreed with this viewpoint, and felt it was Marat, the guy who died taking a bubble bath, who was the true martyr.

Tart of the Week

As some blogs tend to do, The Gossip Guide will begin to feature some weekly hotness. Although these sexy ladiez have been in the ground a couple of centuries, that doesn't mean they don't deserve their place to be ogled in the blog sphere. The tart who receives the first honor of this position is one close to my heart.

Grace Dalrymple Elliott

Yeah, I know, at first glance she looks kind of like your grandma; but once you get past the interesting shade of powder and the charcoaled eyebrows, Grace was like a supermodel, or at least tall enough to be one. During the height of her celebrity she was known as Dally the Tall. Unlike most supermodels today, she was not crazy and a smart cookie. She was a child bride of this fat ugly doctor in London who divorced her after, it is alleged, he caught her sleeping with a hot rake. Meow! She went on to have affairs with The Prince of Wales (who hadn't really) and the Duke d'Orleans among others. She spent most of her life in France and gave us some of the most reputable accounts of the French Revolution which she saw first-hand. Grace narrowly escaped the guillotine after months in French prisons, even having her hair sheared off in preparation. Although she was arrested just to be arrested, she was a firm royalist and had helped Marie Antoinette with correspondence during the Revolution and may have even met the future Empress Josephine during her imprisonment. So obviously she also had strong connections with other hot tarts! Plus you kind of have to like her just based on the fact that she wore low cut gowns for her formal portraits.