|
NOTES ON ISSUE 15: GLOSSARY
PART 2 OF 2
“I don’t care an English
Twopence for myself.”
An English twopence is a silver coin of very small denomination
– worth two pennies, a sixth of a shilling, and a mere
fraction of a pound (12 pence make a shilling, and 20 shillings
make a pound). Miss Pross’ insistence upon the Englishness
of the coin is appropriate to her general refusal of things
French; it also suggests that, ready to sacrifice herself for
Lucie, she will do so only on her own terms.
“…and I pray for bodily strength to keep
you here while every minute you are here is worth a hundred
thousand guineas to my darling,” said Miss Pross.
A guinea, especially compared to a twopence, is a large amount
– slightly more than a pound, at 21 shillings. A hundred
thousand guineas would be 2,100,000 shillings, or 12,600,000
twopence. In Miss Pross’ estimation, then, Lucie is worth
12,600,000 times more to her than her own life.
In crossing the bridge, she dropped the door key in
the river. Arriving at the cathedral some few minutes before
her escort…
Traveling from the Quartier Saint Germain, on the south side
of the Seine, Miss Pross is probably crossing onto the Ile de
la Cité – on which Notre Dame is located –
by the Pont Neuf (the westernmost bridge connecting the island
to the banks of the river). As we can see on the portion of
the Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période Révolutionnaire,
1790-94 below, the distance is not great: The Saint
Germain quarter, named for the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés,
is at the left side of the map, and can be roughly located according
to the position of the Abbey. (The Abbey is the large
dark building above the Rue Marguerite and under the dotted
square labeled “Jardin de l’Abbaye.”)
The Pont Neuf is the westernmost bridge leading onto the Ile
de la Cité. Miss Pross, from the Quartier Saint
Germain, would merely have to walk northeast to the Pont Neuf
and cross onto the Ile de la Cité, bearing eastward along
the quays to the cathedral.
Click on
map for larger view
Along the Paris streets, the death-carts
rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day’s
wine to La Guillotine.
The tumbrils, setting out from the Conciergerie on the Ile de
la Cité with their “batches” of condemned
prisoners, typically left the island for the north bank of the
Seine by the Pont Neuf or Pont au Change, and crossed to the
Rue Saint Honoré (on the far side of the Louvre and the
Jardin National). Following the Rue Saint Honoré
westward to the Rue de la Révolution, the tumbrils then
turned left and continued straight into the Place de la Révolution
(where the guillotine stood) (Maxwell 481). One can trace this
route on the portion of the Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période
Révolutionnaire, 1790-1794 below. (The Ile
de la Cité is at the lower right; the Place de la Révolution
is at the upper left.)
Click on
map for larger view
In front of it, seated in chairs as in a garden of
public diversion, are a number of women, busily knitting.
The knitting women described here – of whom Madame Defarge is one – are
the famous citoyennes tricoteuses of revolutionary Paris.
Dickens introduces them, early in A
Tale of Two Cities, as the female compatriots of Madame Defarge;
Carlyle, in The French Revolution,
introduces them in a scene of party rivalry in 1792 – a scene in which
the Jacobins object to the clemency of the Girondins:
To which the Jacobin Society
answers with angry roar; – with angry shriek, for there are Citoyennes
too, thick crowded in the galleries here. Citoyennes who bring their
seam with them, or their knitting-needles; and shriek or knit as the
case needs, famed Tricoteuses, Patriot Knitters. (580)
These knitting women appear again, in The French Revolution, when the
National Convention debates whether or not to execute King Louis XVI:
The Patriots,
in Mountain and Galleries, or taking counsel nightly in Section-house,
in Mother Society, amid their shrill Tricoteuses,
have to watch lynx-eyed; to give voice when needful; occasionally
very loud. (586)
Finally, having attended numerous
executions in the Place de la Révolution, these women, after the
fall of Robespierre in 1794, are vanquished in the last gasp of Jacobin
resistance: “The female Jacobins, famed Tricoteuses with knitting-needles,
take flight; … are hooted, flouted, hustled; fustigated, in a
scandalous manner …; – and vanish in mere hysterics” (756).
One of the most remarkable sufferers by the same
axe – a woman – had asked at the foot of the same scaffold, not long
before, to be allowed to write down the thoughts that were inspiring
her.
This “remarkable sufferer” is Madame Roland, a prominent member of the
revolutionary Girondin party (defeated by the Jacobins), and the wife
of Girondin Minister of the Interior Jean Roland:
Arriv[ing]
at the foot of the scaffold, she asked for pen and paper,
“to write the strange thoughts that were rising in her”:
a remarkable request; which was refused. Looking at the Statue
of Liberty which stands there [the large terra-cotta statue
set up in the Place de la Révolution where the statue
of Louis XV had been torn down], she says bitterly: “O
Liberty, what things are done in thy name!” For Lamarche’s
sake [a man sent to the guillotine at the same time], she
will die first; show him how easy it is to die: “Contrary
to the order,” said Samson [the executioner]. –
“Pshaw, you cannot refuse the last request of a Lady”;
and Samson yielded. (Carlyle 682)
If he [Carton] had given any
utterance to his, and they were prophetic, they would have been these:
“I see Barsad, and Cly, and Defarge, The Vengeance, the Juryman, the
Judge, long ranks of the new oppressors who have risen on the
destruction of the old, perishing by this retributive instrument,
before it shall cease out of its present use.”
From the phrasing of this passage, it is not clear whether this moment
of prophetic foresight belongs to Carton as he approaches his death, or
whether it is the prophesy of the novel’s narrator. In either case, the
prophecy came true: The guillotine did, as Carlyle puts it, “verily
dev[our] its own children” (718). After the first waves of the
aristocracy (royalty, nobles, and other alleged traitors to the
Republic) had been killed, those who condemned them were themselves
condemned: The Girondin faction fell to the Jacobins after the
execution of the King; Danton, the Jacobin leader, fell to the
accusations of his own party; and Robespierre himself was finally
toppled in the “reaction” of 9th Thermidor (July 27, 1794), and
guillotined on July 28, 1794. His death put an end to the Reign of
Terror. As Carlyle remarks, “All Anarchy, all Evil, Injustice, is, by
the nature of it, … suicidal, and cannot endure” (733).
“I see him, foremost of just
judges and honoured men, bringing a boy of my name, with a forehead
that I know and golden hair, to this place – then fair to look upon,
with not a trace of this day’s disfigurement – and I hear him tell the
child my story, with a tender and a faltering voice.”
After the Revolution, in 1795, the name of the Place de la
Révolution was changed to “Place de la Concorde”; in 1814, it
reverted to its original name, “Place de Louis XV”; and in 1826, it
became the “Place de Louis XVI,” and was meant to receive “an expiatory
monument … to the memory of that monarch” (Baedeker 155). The monument,
however, was never erected; in 1830 the Place was again named “Place de
la Concorde,” and the city sought a monument which would bear
…no
reference to political events. An opportunity of doing this
was soon afforded by the presentation to Louis Philippe by
Mohammed Ali, Pasha of Egypt, of the Obelisk of Luxor….
A vessel was dispatched to Egypt in 1831 for the purpose of
bringing home the pasha’s gift. The task, however, proved
so difficult that the vessel did not return with its costly
freight till August, 1833, and the erection of the obelisk
in its present position was not accomplished till 1836, under
the direction of Lebas. The expense of the whole undertaking
amounted to two million francs. (Baedeker 153-5)
The Obelisk of Luxor still stands in the Place
de la Concorde today, “constantly circumnavigated by traffic”
(Baillie and Salmon 92). The illustration below, from Dumas’
Paris (1889), shows the Place de la Concorde
“fair to look upon, with not a trace” of the disfiguring
Revolution.
Bibliographical information
|
