Please help me welcome Catherine Delors to the Ball. Catherine’s first novel, Mistress of the Revolution is a scrumptious historical set in the French Revolution, the cover alone made me swoon Welcome Catherine!
An environmental nightmare: Paris in the 18th Century
When Deb Eileen told me that the theme for my post here would be Earth Week, and that I should, if at all possible, make it relate to my book. I was a bit perplexed. Not that I don’t care about environmental issues, far from it, but at first I couldn’t think of a way to link them to my novel, Mistress of the Revolution, which is set during the French Revolution.
Though many political topics raised – and fought over – during the Revolution remain current to this day, I couldn’t find any discussion of environmental issues at the time. But then I thought again: there was problem that was of concern to many people at the time. It was the availability of water, and in particular drinking water, in Paris in the 18th century. I had found my topic!
A reader told me that what she liked in my novel is that I did not only depict the glamorous aspect of aristocratic life before the Revolution, and that I also showed Paris as it really was: an overcrowded, smelly, dirty city. The Parisians of the time complained bitterly about it.
The Seine River was everything to Paris. Barges brought essential merchandises from distant provinces. Often they went no further than in Paris, to be dismantled in the spot and sold as wood. One embankment specialized in the commerce of wheat, another was dedicated to the wine trade. The embankments were not the paved, clean ones we see now. At the time, they were muddy or sandy, depending on the location. Indeed the Roman name of the city, Lutetia, is said to be derived from the Latin lutum, “mud.”
In summer people went swimming in the river. They did it to exercise, and for many it was the only time of the year when they could enjoy a bath. With the onset of the Revolution, morals became more puritanical, and the Municipality of Paris passed an ordinance making it illegal to bathe nude in the Seine.
For those who could afford it, bathing establishments, installed on barges moored along the embankments, offered private cabins and showers. The poor were left with the option of bathing in their shirts or not at all. In any case, they washed their clothes in the river.
The Seine also served as an open-air sewer and garbage dump. The streets of Paris were only cleaned when it rained, and the runoff naturally flowed into the river. People also threw their solid waste in it since there was no organized garbage collection. In particular all of the detritus from the nearby slaughterhouses of the Chatelet district were dumped into the river. Contemporary accounts mention a pinkish scum floating on top.
People and animals often drowned in the Seine, and it provided the “safest” means of disposing of the corpses of murder victims. The bodies were sometimes recovered downstream, robbed of any remaining possessions and buried unceremoniously in the mud of the banks. Those corpses fished from the river within Paris were taken to the Morgue, also in the Chatelet district, where relatives could identify and claim them.
Within city limits fountains were rare and often enclosed within the private gardens of convents or mansions. Most were therefore inaccessible to the public. That left – you guessed it – the Seine! Water carriers filled their buckets in the river and for a few sols brought the water up many flights of stairs (six-story buildings were frequent within the city.) And yes, people drank it.
The rich, of course, could afford to have spring water brought from the suburbs. They also drank excellent wines, much the same as our best modern French wines. Poor people drank “wine” as well, or rather a liquid by that name, but it often had nothing to do with fermented grape juice. It was a toxic mix of various chemicals and purple dye. From a health standpoint, it would have been a difficult choice between Seine water and fraudulent wine.
At one point in Mistress of the Revolution, my heroine, Gabrielle, is arrested and imprisoned because of her former association with Marie-Antoinette’s Court. The turnkey brings her a bottle of cloudy water and, upon her question, confirms that indeed it comes from the river. Gabrielle, spoiled, sheltered, had never before swallowed “a liquid into which 700,000 people emptied their chamber pots and garbage,” as she puts it. The turnkey is not a bad man and seeks to reassure her. “Don’t worry about it, Citizen” he says. “Some say it loosens your bowels, but I drink it everyday, and I’ve never suffered anything like that. But then I let it stand for a while. That way the filth settles at the bottom. If you do the same, you’ll be fine.”
And I did not make this up! I read this advice in a book written by a contemporary. A helpful reminder that we often take for granted what may be our greatest luxury: clean drinking water.
April 26th, 2008
| Posted by Eileen | France, Paris, guest author, research, the past
| 11 Comments
I used to be thoroughly mystified by people who had trouble with things ending.
Whether it was the end of a play date, summer, movie, camp or school year, I always felt as if whatever it was had more than run its course. I loved my grammar school but didn’t understand the wracking sobs of my friends as they hugged me and didn’t let go. On the last day of camp, I’d be excitedly thinking about the coming school year and not clutching counselors and shrieking about how unfair it was that it was all over.
This, of course, changed. The first time I felt devastated by an ending was when I got to the end of my junior year in college, which I had spent in Cambridge, England. I’d gone there because I’d wanted to go abroad and felt too lazy to get my French up to speed or learn an entirely new language, and was loathed to discover how different the English educational system was from what I was used to.
“Go off then and read this,” the Cambridge tutor said during my first week there, motioning to our copies of Jane Eyre. The next class, a different tutor handed us Beowulf and said essentially the same thing. My third class was the only other class I was enrolled in. Essentially, I was told that I’d be in tutorials for six hours a week and the other 162 hours were to be spent however I’d like — so long as I got Jane Eyre and Beowulf read.
I was horrified — and terrified. I’d always fancied myself something of an independent person, mostly because I seemed to have trouble with authority, and it was humbling to realize how safe I’d always felt in school because all of my time was regimented into pockets that never left me enough time to examine my life or myself. I didn’t seem to click with any of the other students — American or British — and I was as lonely as I’d ever been.
I remember crying to my mom and receiving letters from her about how we were all born alone and died alone and that it was good for me to finally know what being alone felt like (letters that usually made me cry harder). And then one day I got off my ass, started reading what I was assigned, and stopped complaining and started reaching out to people I never would have before. I got a bike and made my way around the utterly charming town. I moved out of the house with the Americans and in with some Brits. I got in a play that performed in a theater where Audrey Hepburn supposedly made her debut. I got a job in a pub. And I felt so incredibly proud of every move toward independence that I made because I’d done each thing on my own and had conquered massive fears I’d never before acknowledged even having to do so.
By the time that I’d decided I might want to stay and live in England for the rest of my life, the year was over and I was on a plane back home. And as I sobbed on the plane, thinking of my British friends and my independence and the fact that I’d finally gotten excited about learning and studying because I was so inspired by the way I was taught, I’d felt great satisfaction — that I was just like everyone else, and actually got sad when things ended.
Since then, I’ve been devastated by many endings — the end of relationships with men I’ve loved, the end of a book (I could read London Fields literally forever), the end of my book party (I was so overwhelmed that I only started to realize how amazing it was at about 3 pm the following day), the end of innocence on so many different friends. I actually think I may still be trying to process the fact that college ended and that was quite some time ago.
How do you deal with endings?
July 16th, 2007
| Posted by Anna | Anna David, France, Jane Austen, Love, childhood, college
| 4 Comments
I had no idea what to write about today, since, like Anna, I don’t spend much time pondering men’s receding hairlines.
Then my 14-year-old son came home and asked for help with his French project. He had to summarize a black-and-white-illustrated lesson book and needed help translating into English. Here’s the story. Two baby-faced French-Canadian boys, Paul and André, travel to Europe, buy Eurailpasses and wind up in France. André loses his passport on the train and the pair—both of whom are sporting stone-washed, ankle-length Mom jeans—head over to the Canadian consulate in Marseille to replace the document. So far, so normal.
It’s at the consulate that things start to get exciting. The boys bump into an old guy in the waiting room, a fellow Canadian called Monsieur Boisvert who is—you guessed it—balding. M. Boisvert is nothing special to look at…bad posture, droopy paunch, long sideburns and pleated pocket khakis.
When the boys get outside, M. Boisvert starts to look more appealing. He saunters over to his convertible Rolls and shouts to the boys, “Embarquez, mes amis,” as he offers to drive the young boys to Nice.
Okay, at this point my motherly instincts are clanging in alarm. I pause the translation to lecture my son that he’s never, ever to set foot in some 50-year-old stranger’s convertible, no matter how unthreatening his bald little head might be.
Things go from iffy to worse. M. Boisvert invites the lads for a “float on his boat.” It is at this point we get a really good eagle-eye view of Boisvert’s meager combover, and also at this point my son and I start to suspect Boisvert of having unholy thoughts about our two young protagonists. Boisvert invites them to stay on for a night or three. Paul and André are suspicious at first, but poor André lost half his money along with his passport, and apparently, does not know how to wire home for cash.
Even when we consider Paul’s child-bearing hips and his PTA-mom glasses, my son and I can see this situation is bad, bad, bad.
Things go from worse to utter crap. Two raccoon-faced toughs wearing undershirts pull up in a speedboat and quietly threaten M. Boisvert as our two innocent Canadians look on, agog. It’s at this point that even Boisvert starts to perspire. It’s also at this point my son points out that Boisvert fits the physical profile of the middle-aged pedophile perfectly. I cannot argue.
(Ninth grade was never this fun when I was a kid.)
So now, creepier things start to happen. Boisvert starts skulking around in dark alleys with packages “de la drogue.” And his sideburns get even longer. Suddenly he speaks of a dead wife who “est tombée par-dessus bord.” Fell over board.
Uh-huh.
We fear for Paul and André. They’re too Canadian for their own good.
It’s all I can tell you for now. We have two more chapters to finish tomorrow night. But, so as not to leave you hanging, gentle reader, we scanned through the remaining pictures. We’ll let you decide for yourselves how it ends.
Photo A – The toughs return, this time with dangerous-looking beards and t-shirts with actual sleeves. M. Boisvert cranks up the sweating. His sideburns threaten to grow down his neck.
Photo B – An even prissier Paul and a newly roguish-looking André trip a “drogue”-wielding thug with a skipping rope, causing the thug’s hat to fall off and his hair to stand on end. This turn of events takes place on the boat deck, where a mysterious mustached man emerges from below deck with a pistol. Boisvert is nowhere to be seen. I’d like to think he’s showering.
Photo C – Boisvert, Paul and André are soaking up some rays at a café “dans le port de Nice.” The atmosphere looks relaxed, happy. Boisvert, whose previously menacing sideburns seem to have returned to normal, is offering Paul what I can only hope is drogue-free lemonade and André has a paper umbrella in his cup. Most importantly, our pasty Canadian boys look as if they just might have toughened up. Slightly.
Mon dieu.
December 12th, 2006
| Posted by Tish | Canada, France, Tish Cohen, children's books
| 11 Comments
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