NOTES ON ISSUE 13: GLOSSARY
…Miss Pross threaded her way along the narrow
streets and crossed the river by the bridge of the Pont-Neuf…
The Pont Neuf, which connects the Ile de la Cité (the island on which
Notre Dame, the Palais de Justice, and the Conciergerie stand) with the banks
of the Seine, was begun in 1578, but not completed until the beginning of the
17th century. Tronchet’s Picture of Paris (c. 1818) gives the
following description of its original construction and characteristics:
The length of the bridge is 1020 feet, and its breadth 72 feet, which is sufficient to admit of five carriages passing abreast. It is formed of twelve arches, seven of which are on the side of the Louvre, and five on the side of the Quai des Augustines, extending over the two channels of the river, which is wider in this place, from their junction. In 1773, the parapets were repaired, and the footway lowered and narrowed. Soufflot, the architect of the church of St. Genevieve [now known as the Pantheon], availed himself of the opportunity to build, on the twenty half moons which stand immediately above each pile, as many rotundas, in stone, to serve as shops. On the outside, above the arches, is a double cornice, which attracts the eye of the connoisseur in architecture, notwithstanding its mouldering state, on account of the fleurons in the antique style, and the heads of sylvans, dryads, and satyrs, which serve as supports to it, at the distance of two feet from each other. As the mole that forms a projection on this bridge, between the fifth and seventh arch, stands facing the Place Dauphine, which was built by Henr[i] IV, it was chosen for erecting to him a statue, which was the first public monument of the kind that had been raised in honor of French kings. (173-4)
Unfortunately, during the Revolution, French kings of every
description became unpopular, and in 1792 the statue of Henri IV was melted
down and “converted into cannon” (Baedeker 219). Thus, the statue
would not have been standing when Miss Pross crosses the bridge in late 1793
or early 1794. It was replaced, however, in 1818, such that the bridge recovered
– at the beginning of the 19th century – something of its pre-revolutionary
appearance. Further restored in the early 1850s, the Pont Neuf of Dickens’
time would not have been quite the same bridge crossed by Miss Pross –
“The slopes were very much lessened, the arches were partially reconstructed,
and the footpaths and parapets were altogether renewed” (Dickens’s Dictionary of Paris
40-1).
From the 17th century onward, the Pont Neuf was an especially lively part of
Paris – most 19th-century guidebooks make reference to it as a kind of
popular gathering place. The Picture of Paris (c.1818) notes that
The Pont Neuf is to the town what the heart is to the body; that is, the centre of life and circulation. The passing and repassing of the inhabitants, as well as of strangers, so incredibly throngs the bridge, that to find any one whose place of abode you cannot come at, you have no more to do than walk there for a short space of time every morning. The government police practice this, and, at the expiration of some days, if they meet not the man they look after, they pronounce him not to be in Paris. (173-4)
Further, Baedeker’s Paris and Its Environs (1878) remarks that the Pont Neuf was a “favourite rendezvous of jugglers, showmen, loungers, and thieves. Any popular witticism in verse was long known as ‘un Pont Neuf’” (220). And Dickens’s Dictionary of Paris (1882) notes that
During the 17th and the 18th centuries the Pont Neuf was the scene of much gaiety and merriment. It was there that mountebanks loved best to exercise their calling; there charlatan surgeon-dentists established themselves; and there quack doctors of all sorts found patients innocent enough to entrust themselves to their care. “Le Pont Neuf c’est Paris” ["The Pont Neuf is Paris"] was long a proverb among the populace…. (40-1)
The illustration of the Pont Neuf below, taken from Tronchet’s Picture of Paris (c.1818), shows the bridge before its renovation in the 1850s, and thus (with the exception of the equestrian statue of Henri IV) much as it would have appeared when Miss Pross crosses it in the 1790s.
It is amusing to note, in connection with the re-erected statue of Henri IV,
that it was “procured by melting down a couple of statues of Napoleon
and one of General Desaix” (Handbook to Paris 162). The statue
still stands today; and the Pont Neuf (“New Bridge” in English)
is now the oldest bridge in Paris (Baillie and Salmon 71).
Miss Pross’ route, from the Saint Germain quarter on the south side of
the Seine, over the Pont Neuf at the west end of the Ile de la Cité,
is visible on this portion of the Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période
Révolutionnaire, 1790-1794. (The Saint Germain quarter, named
for the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, is at the lower left, 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.)
…the barges were stationed in which the smiths worked, making
guns for the Army of the Republic.
Dickens takes this detail of the barges from Carlyle’s description, in
The French Revolution, of the French resolution to repulse foreign
invasion:
Accordingly, alongside of these bonfires of Church-balustrades, and sounds of fusillading and noyading, there rise quite another sort of fires and sounds: Smithy-fires and Proof-volleys for the manufacture of arms.
Cut off from Sweden and the world, the Republic must learn to make steel for itself; and, by aid of Chemists, she has learnt it. Towns that knew only iron, now know steel…. Two-hundred and fifty-eight Forges stand in the open spaces of Paris itself; a hundred and forty of them in the Esplanade of the Invalides, fifty-four in the Luxembourg Garden: so many Forges stand; grim Smiths beating and forging at lock and barrel there. The Clockmakers have come, requisitioned, to do the touch-holes, the hard-solder and file-work. Five great Barges swing at anchor on the Seine Stream, loud with boring; the great press-drills grating harsh thunder to the general ear and heart. (702-3)
After peeping into several wine-shops, she stopped
at the sign of The Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity…
Although it is possible that the “Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity”
is Marcus Junius Brutus, who assassinated Julius Caesar, it is more probable
that the Brutus commemorated in the name of the Parisian wineshop is Lucius
Junius Brutus. This latter Brutus rebelled against King Tarquin (the last Roman
king), and helped to establish the Roman Republic. As a Republican figure –
revolutionary and anti-monarchical – he became a kind of classical model
for the French revolutionaries (Maxwell 474). He was commemorated by Jacques-Louis
David in “The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons”
(1789, oil on canvas). (David was a prominent figure in the French Revolution,
and a well-known painter; Carlyle, for instance, continually invokes him simply
as “Painter David” in The French Revolution.) David’s
painting of “The Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons”
depicts Brutus’ condemnation of his two sons, who were executed for conspiring
to restore the monarchy. The painting can be viewed, together with a number
of David’s other works, at www.abcgallery.com (search for David under D).
As the name of Dickens’ wineshop implies, “classical” figures
and motifs were popular with the French Republic (which, in its own view, modeled
itself after the Roman one), and a modified classical costume was often adopted
by good Republicans. As Fairholt’s History of Costume in England
(1860) notes,
The modern-antique style of dress, an attempt to engraft a classical taste in costume, … appeared [in the late 18th century]; [this was] the result of the French Revolution, when every brawler believed himself a Cato or a Brutus…. The rough-cropped head then fashionable was termed “a Brutus” by the French, after the great hero of antiquity, whom they especially reverenced…. [A]nd an air of ghastly burlesque was cast over scenes of blood at which humanity sickens, by a misplaced assumption of classic patriotism. This modification of the antique habit had good effect, [however,] inasmuch as it encouraged simplicity; and the female costume up to 1800 was, in truth, unpretending and lady-like. (Fairholt 330)
Carlyle likewise, in The French Revolution, records the popularity of the “modern Brutus’ head” (266) in France, and describes how, when the Terror ended (with Robespierre’s execution), the revolutionary garb of Parisians gave way to a classical costume indicative of a shift in political feeling:
All Sansculottic things are passing away; all things are becoming Culottic. Do but look at the cut of clothes; that light visible Result, significant of a thousand things which are not so visible. In winter 1793, men went in red night-cap; Municipals themselves in sabots, the very Citoyennes had to petition against such headgear. But now in this winter 1794, where is the red night-cap?… Your moneyed Citoyen ponders in what elegantest style he shall dress himself; whether he shall not even dress himself as the Free Peoples of Antiquity. The more adventurous Citoyenne has already done it. Behold her, that beautiful adventurous Citoyenne: in costume of the Ancient Greeks, such Greek as Painter David could teach; her sweeping tresses snooded by glittering antique fillet; bright-dyed tunic of the Greek women; her little feet naked, as in Antique Statues, with mere sandals, and winding-strings of riband, – defying the frost! (749)
At the time of Miss Pross’ visit to the “Good Republican Brutus of Antiquity,” the Terror still reigned, and the red woolen “cap of Liberty” would still have been in vogue.
…not far from the National Palace, once (and
twice) the Tuileries…
The Palais des Tuileries was renamed the “National Palace” (or “Palais
National”) during the Revolution. It had remained the Palais des Tuileries
as long as it was still a royal residence, but it was no longer so after Louis
XVI and his family were removed (on August 13, 1792) and incarcerated in the
Temple, pending execution. Carlyle discusses the “void Palace of the Tuileries,
now void and National” (511) in The French Revolution, and notes
that the National Convention began to use the palace as a meeting-place in May
of 1793: “[W]e shift, on the Tenth of May, from the old Salle de
Manége into our new Hall, in the Palace, once a King’s but now
the Republic’s, of the Tuileries” (Carlyle 632). After the Revolution,
the palace was again named the Palais des Tuileries when it became the residence
of Emperor Napoleon (Sanders 150).
The following portions of the Plan de la Ville de Paris en 1789 and
the Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période Révolutionnaire, 1790-1794
show the changing name of the Palais.
…attended by her cavalier.
A cavalier was originally a horseman, a horse-soldier, or a knight; more generally,
a cavalier is a gallant (Oxford English Dictionary). The description
of Mr. Cruncher as Miss Pross’ “cavalier” suggests, appropriately,
that he is her faithful protector; it also suggests, somewhat ironically, that
he is a gallant one.
…the popular, high-shouldered shaggy black spencer…
Dickens draws his description of the “popular, high-shouldered, shaggy
black spencer” from Carlyle’s description of a popular revolutionary
outfit during the Terror:
The suspect may well tremble; but how much more the open rebels; the Girondin Cities of the South! Revolutionary Army is gone forth …; six thousand strong, “in red night-cap, in tricolor waistcoat, in black-shag trousers, black-shag spencer, with enormous moustachios, enormous sabre, – in carmagnole complète…. (685)
According to Fairholt’s History of Costume
(1860), a spencer is “A short jacket, or body-coat, said to have originated
in an accident to Lord Spencer in hunting ([in the time of] George III) by which
his coat-tails were torn off” (585-6).
What was said … would have been as so much Hebrew or Chaldean
to Miss Pross and her protector, though they had been all ears.
Both Hebrew and Chaldean are appropriate to the venue – the “Good
Republican Brutus of Antiquity” – to the extent that they are “antique.”
Most of the Old Testament was composed in Hebrew, and, according to the OED,
references to Hebrew in the New Testament are usually to “the vernacular
language of the Hebrews of the time” – Aramaic or Syriac, both of
which are alternate names for Chaldean. Proverbially, Hebrew and Chaldean suggest
“unintelligible speech” (OED), like the modern expression
“It’s all Greek to me”; and such, indeed, seems to be Miss
Pross and Mr. Cruncher’s experience of French.
…Miss Pross, exploring the depths of her reticule…
A reticule is a small bag, “usually made of some woven material, for carrying
on the arm or in the hand, used by ladies as a pocket or workbag” (OED)
– an especially practical kind of purse.
“I wish for your sake Mr. Barsad was not a Sheep of the Prisons.”
Sheep was the cant word of the time for a spy, under the gaolers.
The term “Sheep of the Prisons” is apparently adapted from “mouton,” which means “sheep”
in French and is sometimes used in English to refer to “a spy quartered
in a prison with an accused person with the aim of obtaining incriminating evidence”
(OED). Dickens’ “sheep,”
as an Anglicized version of the “cant word for spy,” may have been
inspired by Honoré Riouffe’s description, in Mémoires
sur les prisons (an account of the French prisons during the Revolution),
of being locked up with a man who was “comme mouton, c’est à dire espion”
(“as a sheep, that is to say a spy”) (Sanders 151). However,
Dickens may well have been familiar with the use of the word mouton in English, and certainly would have
noted Carlyle’s use of it in The French Revolution (e.g., “…turnkeys
and moutons fallen from their high
estate [after the end of the Terror], look mute and blue” [743]; or, “Turned
are the tables: Prisoners pouring out in floods; Jailors, Moutons … going now whither they were
wont to send!” [747]).
There were apparently between 300 and 1,000 moutons
in the Paris prisons during the phase of the Revolution represented in this
portion of A Tale of Two Cities. Most of them were incarcerated themselves,
and turned spy – informing on alleged plots – in hopes of gaining
their own freedom (Maxwell 475).
Inference clear as day in this region of suspicion, that Mr. Barsad,
still in the pay of the aristocratic English government, is the spy of Pitt,
the treacherous foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom, the English traitor
and agent of all mischief so much spoken of and so difficult to find.
Pitt, or William Pitt the Younger, was Prime Minister of England during the
French Revolution – in office 1784-1801 and again 1804-1806 (Arnstein
9). Since England had declared war on France after the execution of Louis XVI
in January 1793 (Carlyle 600), “Pitt” (standing for English government
and politics at large) was in active opposition to France at this period, and
a confirmed enemy of the Republic. Mr. Barsad’s position within the French
prisons could thus quite easily be construed as that of “the treacherous
foe of the Republic crouching in its bosom.” Dickens’ metonymic
use of “Pitt” – as a figure for the whole English government
or English nation – may derive from Carlyle, who uses the same figure
of speech in The French Revolution (e.g., “That Pitt
has a hand in it, the gold of Pitt: so much, to all reasonable Patriot men,
may seem clear. But then, through what agents of Pitt?” [604]).
…and that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery
in furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him.
“Tergiversation” is reneging – forsaking a former position
of allegiance (OED). Barsad, as a turncoat of many descriptions, is
a tergiversator. The “reigning terror” he furthers is of course
the famous Reign of Terror, which commenced in 1793 and lasted until the execution
of Robespierre (head of the terrible Committee of Public Safety) ended it on
July 28, 1794 (Carlyle 744). Carlyle describes the onset of the Terror
thus: “Terror has long been terrible: but to the actors themselves
it has now become manifest that their appointed course is one of Terror; and
they say, Be it so. ‘Que la Terreur soit à l’ordre du
jour’ [that Terror be the order of the day]” (675).
He had since seen her, in the Section of Saint Antoine, over and over
again produce her knitted registers…
In 1790, Paris, previously organized into sixty municipal districts, was reorganized
into 48 Sections, one of which was the Section of Saint Antoine. Carlyle, in
The French Revolution, describes the Sections of Paris as “the
life-circulation of Jacobinism” (665) – bodies of revolutionary
patriots ready to fight for “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, or Death,”
and to do the administrative work of the Terror. In 1793, the Sections met twice
a week, and were a forum for the denunciation of “suspects” (665).
It is thus that Madame Defarge “produce[s] her knitted registers”
in Section, to “denounce people whose lives the guillotine then surely
swallow[s] up.”
“…I’d catch hold of your throat and choke you for
half a guinea.”
Mr. Cruncher’s “liberal offer” of choking for half a guinea
is – since a guinea is worth slightly more than an English pound, at 21
shillings – an offer to do so for 10 shillings and 6 pence.
There might be medical doctors at the present hour, a picking up their
guineas where a honest tradesman don’t pick up his fardens – fardens!
no, nor yet his half fardens – half fardens! no, nor yet his quarter.
A “farden” – Jerry’s pronunciation of “farthing”
– is a coin worth a quarter of a penny, and proverbial for a very small
amount (OED). Jerry divides this very small amount even further, however,
asserting that for a medical doctor’s guinea, an “honest tradesman”
would not receive even half a farthing (an eighth of a penny), “nor yet
his quarter” of a farthing (which would amount to a sixteenth of a penny).
A guinea, worth slightly more than a pound, is composed of 21 shillings –
252 pence, or 1,008 farthings. In Jerry’s most conservative estimation,
a doctor makes over a thousand times more than an “honest tradesman”
out of a cadaver’s resurrection. The farthing was legal tender until 1961
(OED).
Then, wot with undertakers, and wot with parish clerks, and wot with
sextons, and wot with private watchmen (all awaricious and all in it)…
Undertakers manage funeral arrangements; a parish clerk is usually a “lay
officer of a parish church, who has charge of the church and precincts, and
assists the clergyman in various parts of his duties”; and a sexton –
whose job is sometimes part of a parish clerk’s – is a person connected
with the church who is in charge of ringing the bells and digging the graves
(OED). These individuals, together with “private watchmen,”
are deemed “awaricious” (avaricious) by Mr. Cruncher to the extent
that they impede the commerce of “resurrection men” like himself.
He wore the white riding-coat and top-boots, then in vogue, and the
light of the fire touching their light surface made him look very pale, with
his long brown hair, all untrimmed, hanging loose about him.
In the illustration below, from Fairholt’s History of Costume
(1860), the figure on the left is dressed like Carton, in, as Fairholt expresses
it, the “true Parisian taste” of 1793, with riding-coat and top-boots.
However, Fairholt notes that top-boots were “the delight of the ‘bucks
and bloods’ of the latter half of the eighteenth century,” and describes
how “[a] pride was felt in its bright polished leg and its snowy top”
(395-6). Although Carton is dressed stylishly, he is not dressed with the dandyish
care that top-boots might imply. Sanders, in his Companion to A Tale of
Two Cities, notes that his slovenliness may have helped him blend in in
revolutionary Paris, where “anti-aristocratic modes” such as natural
hair (in place of wigs, powder, and even ties or ribbons) were popular (152).
You mean the Guillotine…. Sixty-three today. We shall mount to a hundred
soon. Samson and his men complain sometimes, of being exhausted. He is so droll,
that Samson. Such a Barber!
Samson, the executioner in charge of the guillotine (the apparatus elsewhere
referred to as the “National razor” of the French Republic) is a
barber in at once a pejorative sense, an allusive sense (connected with the
story of the biblical Samson), and through an etymological connection between
those who cut hair and those who cut flesh: Barbers, though always hairdressers,
originally also included surgeons and dentists. The “Company of Barber-surgeons”
was incorporated in England by Edward IV in 1461; under Henry VIII the name
was altered to the “Company of Barbers and Surgeons,” whereupon
barbers were limited to dentistry; and in 1745, barbers and surgeons were divided
into distinct corporations (OED).
Dickens probably draws his account of the exhaustion of Samson and his men from
Carlyle’s account of the speedy execution of Girondin supporters, provincial
and Parisian alike (the Girondin party was the moderate revolutionary party
defeated by the rival Jacobin faction for control of the French Republic): “Little
children are guillotined, and aged men. Swift as the machine is, it will not
serve; the Headsman and all his valets sink worn down with work, declare that
human muscles can do no more” (685). The head-count of the executed did
indeed increase over the course of the Terror – “The Guillotine,”
writes Carlyle, “gets always a quicker motion, as other things are quickening.
The Guillotine, by its speed of going, will give the index of the general velocity
of the Republic” (667). Elsewhere, he notes, “Swift and ever swifter
goes Samson; up, finally, to three score [sixty] and more at a Batch”
(724). On June 10, 1794, at the height of the Terror, the Revolutionary Tribunal
was extended into four tribunals, in the hopes of “overtak[ing] the work”
of execution. A “Guillotine ... of improved velocity” was developed
to accommodate the larger batches of victims anticipated (Carlyle 730).
Go and see him when he has a good batch.
Victims of the guillotine were tried and executed in “fournées”
– “batches.” Such was the actual terminology of the Revolutionary
Tribunal’s Prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville: “Fouquier chooses,”
writes Carlyle in The French Revolution, “from the Twelve Houses
of Arrest what he calls Batches, ‘Fournées,’ a score
or more at a time” (724).
…much dirtier than usual, for the best public thoroughfares remained
uncleansed in those times of terror…
During the Terror, according to Carlyle,
The streets lie unswept; the ways unmended. Law has shut her Books…. Crimes go unpunished; not crimes against the Revolution. “The number of foundling children,” as some compute, “is doubled.” (711)
“You will be careful to keep them separate,
citizen? You know the consequences of mixing them?”
Carton is apparently buying chemicals which, when combined, produce ether –
an anesthetic used surgically only beginning in the 19th century, but familiar
in the 18th. The Dictionary of Daily Wants (1859) makes the following
remarks about the uses and properties of ether:
AETHER, a volatile liquor, obtained by distillation from a mixture of alcohol and a concentrated acid. It is used for a variety of medical purposes, both externally and internally. Burns and scalds are rendered cool and less inflammatory, by a piece of linen rag dipped in aether being applied to them. It relieves headaches when rubbed upon the part where the pain is situated. Its application to the face in cases of toothache considerably alleviates the pain; and in an attack of spasms, relief is almost always afforded by doses of from fifteen to twenty drops being administered in a wineglassful of water at short intervals. As an agent for producing insensibility by means of inhalation, aether was formerly in great repute; but in the present day when this effect is desired to be produced, chloroform, a still subtler spirit, is generally used. As aether rapidly evaporates under ordinary circumstances, this waste should be prevented by keeping the bottle that contains it in a cool place, and by having stoppers which fit the bottle exactly.
Caution. – Aether is a highly inflammable spirit, and when mixed with common air is liable to cause an explosion; when any escape of aether is apprehended, therefore, no lighted candle should be suffered to approach. (13)
...in the distant burial-places, reserved, as they
wrote upon the gates, for Eternal Sleep…
The secularization of France under the Republic extended even to the cemeteries.
There, by decree, references to heaven gave way to references to “Eternal
Sleep.” Carlyle remarks that
Unity, Indivisibility, Brotherhood, or Death, did indeed stand printed on all Houses of the Living; also, on Cemeteries, or Houses of the Dead, stood printed, by order..., Here is Eternal Sleep. (676)
But the theatres were all well filled, and the people
poured cheerfully out as he passed, and went chatting home.
Carlyle, in The French Revolution, remarks that
Neither shall the Reader fancy that it was all black, this Reign of Terror: far from it. How many hammermen and squaremen, bakers and brewers, washers and wringers, over this France, must ply their old daily work, let the Government be one of Terror or one of Joy! In this Paris there are Twenty-three Theatres nightly; some count as many as Sixty Places of Dancing. (678-9)
This statistic concerning the number of open theatres seems
to have impressed Carlyle as much as it seems to have impressed Dickens, for
he reverts to the same matter again somewhat later in his history, reiterating
that “nightly Theatres are Twenty-three; and the Salons de danse
are Sixty; full of mere Egalité, Fraternité and Carmagnole”
(710).
The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water
as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque
confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the
day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky.
Carton is probably standing, at this point, on the Pont Neuf, though this is
only one of several bridges which connect the Ile de la Cité (an island
in the Seine) to the banks of the river. The earliest Parisian settlements were
located on the Ile de la Cité, on which Notre Dame (the cathedral shining
in the moonlight) is located. In the 18th century, the island was crowded with
narrow streets and buildings, many of which had existed since the medieval period.
These were cleared in the mid-19th century under the direction of Baron von
Haussmann, who lay out and executed new plans for Paris when he was appointed
Préfet de la Seine in 1853 (Baillie and Salmon 70-1). Thus,
the Ile de la Cité of Dickens’ time and our own is less cluttered
with buildings (the open plaza in front of Notre Dame, for instance, is the
result of Haussmann’s demolitions). In the 18th century, as Tronchet’s
Picture of Paris (c.1818) points out, Notre Dame was “so surrounded
with houses that there [was] no spot from which it [might] be seen with advantage”
(227).
The places Carton visits in the course of his walk are visible
on this portion of the Plan de la Ville de Paris, Période Révolutionnaire,
1790-1794. The Saint Germain quarter, where he begins (at Mr. Lorry’s),
is at the lower left; La Force is in the upper right corner (the dark outline
of buildings labeled “Maison de la Force”); the Ile de
la Cité, where the cathedral stands, is in the middle (the cathedral
itself bears its revolutionary name, the “Temple de la Raison”);
and the Seine – upon the bank of which Carton finally falls asleep –
runs through the city (and the map).
