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NOTES ON ISSUE 10: GLOSSARY
PART 1 OF 4
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The short, rather plump wife of a
starved grocer, and the mother of two children withal, this lieutenant
had already earned the complimentary name of The Vengeance.
During the French Revolution, patriotic abstractions such as
“The Vengeance” did indeed replace personal names.
This renaming, demonstrating support for the revolutionary cause
and affirming the end of traditions associated with the ancien
régime, extended to public buildings, streets,
plazas, etc. For example, the Place de Louis XV in Paris became
the Place de la Révolution; the Jardin des Tuileries
became the Jardin National; the Palais des Tuileries became
the Palais National; and so forth. We can compare the pre-revolutionary
names visible on the Plan de la Ville de Paris en 1789
with the succeeding names of the revolutionary period on the
Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période Révolutionnaire,
1790-1794.
Click
on map for larger view
Click
on map for larger view
Defarge came in breathless, pulled off the red cap
he wore, and looked around him.
The red cap worn by Defarge is the so-called “Phrygian cap” worn by
French patriots during the Revolution. The Phrygians were an ancient
Asian people, living in what is now Turkey; their conical caps became
“caps of liberty” when the style was adopted by freed Roman slaves (as
headgear symbolic of their liberation) (Tricolor and Phrygian Cap).
In Carlyle’s French Revolution (Dickens’ chief historical
source), the red “Phrygian cap” is emblematic of patriotic fervor –
especially the Jacobin patriotism which, in its desperation and
vengefulness, led to the Reign of Terror:
Note too how the Jacobin Brethren
are mounting new Symbolical headgear: the Woolen Cap or Night-cap, bonnet
de laine, better known as bonnet
rouge, the colour being red.
A thing one wears not only by way
of Phrygian Cap-of-Liberty, but also for convenience'-sake, and then
also in compliment to the Lower-class Patriots and Bastille-Heroes; for
the Red Night-cap combines all the three properties. (455)
The red Phrygian cap, or bonnet
rouge, was a soft one, made of wool, with the peak bent over at
the top. Fairholt’s Costume (1860) shows us the shape of this
patriotic headgear, and the stiffer classical hat it was based on.
“Does everybody here recall old Foulon, who told
the famished people that they might eat grass, and who died, and went
to Hell?”
Old Foulon is Joseph-François Foulon (1715-89), a government
minister under Louis XVI (Sanders 121). His remarks concerning
the starvation of the people are recorded in Carlyle’s French
Revolution:
Already
old Foulon, with an eye to be war-minister himself, is making
underground movements. This is the same Foulon named âme
damnée du Parlement [roughly, “henchman of the
Parliament” –
the Parliaments were courts of justice under the ancien régime which
registered (or refused to register) the edicts, declarations, and
ordinances of the monarch (OED); the Parliaments, of
which the Parliament of Paris was the most powerful, were abolished in
1790 (Carlyle 254)]; a man grown grey in treachery,
in griping, projecting,
intriguing and iniquity: who once when it was objected, to some
finance-scheme of his, “What will the people do?” – made answer, in the
fire of discussion, “The people may eat grass”: hasty words, which fly
abroad irrevocable, – and will send back tidings! (95)
The “tidings” sent back by Foulon’s
words were the tidings of his death outside the Hôtel
de Ville. He was, however, supposed dead shortly before the
fall of the Bastille. Carlyle describes this supposed death:
As
for old Foulon, one learns that he is dead; at least “a sumptuous
funeral” is going on; the undertakers honouring him, if no other will.
Intendant Berthier, his son-in-law, is still living; lurking …; and is
now fled no man knows whither. (171)
The implication of this false death
seems to be, according to both Carlyle and Dickens, that it was
conducted in lieu of emigration – that, instead of flying the country
with the first wave of frightened gentry in the “First Emigration,”
Foulon staged his burial. As it is expressed by the patriots of A
Tale of Two Cities, “He feared us so much – and with reason – that
he caused himself to be represented as dead, and had a grand
mock-funeral.”
Wretched old sinner of more than threescore years
and ten…
Threescore and ten is (since a score is twenty) seventy years. In 1789,
Foulon (born in 1715) would have been about seventy-four years old.
…and winnowing of many bushels of words…
A bushel is a unit of measure (roughly equal to four pecks or eight
gallons) used to designate amounts of grain or produce (Oxford
English Dictionary). It is thus appropriate that the metaphoric
“bushels” of words are metaphorically “winnowed,” for winnowing is “a
process performed by the aid of wind, by which the chaff of corn is
separated from the grain” (Philp 1114). There is an echo in this
statement of the expression “separating the wheat from the chaff.”
…and acted as a telegraph
between her and the crowd outside the building.
The telegraph, in the modern sense of the electric telegraph, was not
invented until the early 19th century; however, the word “telegraph” is
not necessarily anachronistic here. The OED describes a
telegraph as
An
apparatus for transmitting messages to a distance, usually by signs of
some kind. Devices for this purpose have been in use from ancient
times, but the name was first applied to that invented by Chappe in
France in 1792, consisting of an upright post with movable arms, the
signals being made by various positions of the arms according to a
pre-arranged code. Hence applied to various other devices subsequently
used, operating by movable disks, shutters, etc., flashes of light,
movements in a column of liquid, sounds of bells, horns, etc., or other
means.
Thus, when the men outside act as a
“telegraph” for Madame Defarge’s sentiments, the word is used in the
generic sense of signal-transmission. It is interesting to note,
however, that the earliest telegraph was developed in revolutionary
France (Carlyle describes Chappe’s invention – detailed in the passage
from the OED above – in The French Revolution
[709]). Though the word “telegraph” does not seem to have appeared in
English usage until about 1794 (a few years after Chappe’s invention),
and certainly not until well after the moment described in this chapter
of A Tale of Two Cities (which occurs in 1789), Dickens’
usage may of course be attributed to the Victorian narrator of the
novel rather than to the historical moment narrated.
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