Whimsy

Tags

18th century, Aristocracy, France, Nobility, Orléans, Saint Cloud

This painting was done for Prince Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orléans who is known to us as Philippe Egalité (1747-1793) he supported the Revolution in 1789, voted for the death of his cousin Louis XVI and was himself executed during the Terreur in 1793. A very modern presentation for the time.

The Duke of Orléans’s Gentlemen dressed in the frock coats of Saint-Cloud , original gouache painting by Louis Carrogis Carmontelle, 1770. The 6 gentilshommes are:

Monsieur le Chevalier de Gasq / Mr le Marquis de Perigny / Mr le Chevalier de St Mars / Mr le Chevalier d’Estrées / Mr le Baron de Tourrempré / Mr le Chevalier Desparts / Ils étaient tous Gentilshommes de Monseigneur le Duc d’Orléans grand -père, excepté Mr le Marquis de Perigny / ancien Président de la cour souveraine  à Rouen, et qui par son esprit et son amabilité était de la société intime du Prince. Ils sont représentés sous l’habit que le Prince avait adopté pour la campagne.

This painting was with the family of the Comte de Paris, (Orléans Family) until 2015 when it was sold at Sotheby’s for 531,000 EUROS, a nice sum of money.

 

On this 1 March

Tags

baroque, France, Louis XV, Rameau, Versailles

Sunday 1 March 2020, listening to this on Radio-Canada with Francis Reddy. Les Saisons de Francis has the best Sunday morning music always pleasant to set a good mood.

Rameau: Les fêtes d’Hébé / Act 2 / Scène 5 – La Victoire · Orchestre Les Arts florissants · William Christie Ombre de mon amant – French Baroque Arias with Anne Sofie Von Otter ℗ 2010 Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Berlin

Music on Mardi Gras

Tags

Architecture, art., Chateau, culture, France, life, Louis XV

On this Mardi Gras I was looking today at a documentary on the Château of Choisy-Le-Roy near the town of Choisy, this music was the background.  Concerto Comique no.14 La Choisy composed by Michel Corrette 1707-1795, who held many posts at Court and was a teacher.  These two pieces would have been composed for the Hunt, La chasse aux Cerfs which was done on horseback and packs of hounds. King Louis XV was an avid hunter and the woods of Choisy was his private domain. He did not like Versailles much and found life at Court tedious and boring with all its Official Protocol.

Unfortunately the Château and the domain were sold at the revolution and today nothing remains. Choisy in the last 30 years has made great efforts to save the park for the municipality and create public spaces on what was the domain. A rebuilt train station sits on what was once the grounds of the Château.

 

 

An interesting site

Tags

France, graves, kings, queens, Revolution, tombs

Well today was a stay at home day and eat your storm Chips day. Yes we got 30 cm of snow and blowing winds, so this morning around 7am it was announced that everything was shutting down for the day. There was no cars to be seen on the street and one or two people occasionally walking a dog. The City has not really cleaned anything yet so driving is difficult at best and the sidewalks have disappeared. So it is best to stay at home. Here is a photo of Queen street, a block from the water,  a veritable winter wonderland. 

Our two little ones Nicky and Nora did not want to go out at all. Though Nora loves to sample freshly fallen snow. I should ask her what it taste like.

There is a site on the Internet I have been following for some time, it is in French and comes from France, the author Marie-Christine Pénin does a lot of research on the sepulture of famous people and churches, cemeteries and catacombs which may contain the tomb of people who have made a mark in time. Her work takes her back often some 600 years or in some cases more recently in the last 90 years.

Reading her blog is fascinating, she researches all kinds of people, from Kings to actresses and even murderers. She gives background on the life of the person and how they died and were they are buried, in many cases the tombs may have disappeared because of urban renewal, demolition of churches or closing of cemeteries.

What I did not know was the amount of attacks on the dead perpetrated by the French Revolution or what Simon Schama like to call it, the French Civil War in his book Citizens.

Often Marie-Christine Pénin will write about a Paris neighbourhood and how it has changed in the last 400 years. The Paris of today has little to do with the Paris of pre-1870. She provides maps and the old former name of streets. Photos also of what the street or buildings look like today. It is fascinating to discover how the dead fared in the years after they were buried. Today she was writing about the famous church of La Madeleine in Paris, many thousand of tourist visit it each year. She started by telling us that the parish of Marie-Madeleine hence La Madeleine has existed since the year 800 AD. The current church we see is rather new and gave us a brief history of its construction and the people involved. But in that story she introduces the story of the Revolution and the guillotine and where the bodies of the victims of the summary revolutionary justice were buried.

There use to be 3 cemeteries in and around La Madeleine, during the revolution specifically 1792-1794 the years of La terreur (the terror) thousands of people from all walks of life were executed, simply being suspected of some kind of wrong doing and off with your head. The grave diggers could not keep up with the mass arrivals of dead bodies and heads to be buried, it was mayhem and the resident of the neighbourhood would complain of the terrible odour coming from the grave site, no coffins were used and bodies were quickly disposed of.

Each person who was guillotine was transported in a cart pele mele with other unfortunates. Once at the grave site, corpses would be unloaded, any personal object was taken and entered in a ledger to be given to a caretaker. Bodies were stripped naked and tossed into a common grave, heads and all. After the revolution, in 1815 at the Restoration of the Monarchy under Louis XVIII there was a search for missing members of the French Royal Family. Louis XVI and his wife Marie-Antoinette were found easily, they had been buried in a designated spot in one of the cemeteries and today you can see the Chapelle expiatoire built on the site of their original graves. However Madame Elizabeth, the sister of Louis XVI was executed in 1794 and buried in a common grave with hundreds of others, her body was never found.

Kings of France and Princes and Princesses and great Officers of the Kingdom were buried at Cathedrale of Saint-Denis. At the revolution mobs descended on the church and violated the tombs dragging the remains of the Kings and others and dumping the corpses into a common pit on the side of the Church. At the restoration in 1815 much work was done to recover the royal remains and place them back inside the church. A new mausoleum was erected for Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. They are now buried in St-Denis.  Another body that was never found was that of Philippe Duc d’Orléans known during the revolution as Philippe Egalité, he was the cousin of Louis XVI.

Philippe had a huge grudge against the King and voted at the trial for his execution, surprising Robespierre and others. However just to make sure 48 hours later a second vote was taken, the revolutionaries were not so sure they wanted to execute Louis who was not a bad fellow just a bumbler, again Philippe voted the death of his cousin. He himself was arrested later and executed buried in a common pit a few steps from his unfortunate cousin Louis and sister-in-law Marie-Antoinette.

If you are interested by French history here is the site link  http://www.tombes-sepultures.com/crbst_52.html    The site is in French.

Marly

Tags

Archeology, Chateau, France, history, life, Louis XIV

I love to watch YouTube videos about historical places. There are quite a few made on French chateaux like Versailles and the numerous renovations it is going through, currently the roof of the Chapelle of the Palace is being rebuilt, it has never been done since the construction of the Palace as we know it today in 1668.

There was another Chateau called Marly, not very far by carriage or horse ride from Versailles. Louis XIV love going there, it was very small and simple if compared to Versailles. Marly was an hermitage or refuge for the King from the daily State Ceremonial of Versailles. Marly was abandoned or neglected after Louis XIV death in September 1715.  At the revolution it was sold to a merchant who dismantled it and sold off the stones and wood of the building. Today what remains is the beautiful gardens surrounding the footprint of Marly and the great water works.

Extensive archeological work has taken place on the foundation of Marly and what has been discovered gives an excellent idea of what life was like. Much details of the building exist thanks to archival material and extensive architectural drawings. Louis XIV came to Marly to relax and only 100 persons could come by INVITATION only. An even smaller number could stay overnight in the small pavilion built on either side of the palace. You can count 6 pavilion on either side. The closer the pavilion was to the main house where the King lived the closer that person was considered to be to the King.

To bring the water to Marly as shown above was a feat of engineering and a huge pumping machine had to be built so that each day the hydraulics would pump enough water to feed the pools and let the fountains play. The cost alone annually was by today’s standard in the millions of dollars.

To be invited to Marly was an honour anyone at Court was willing to fight viciously over. To suggest to the King that you wanted to be invited, if he looked at you or said a few words, you could exclaim; A Marly Sire! ( take me to Marly Sire) and maybe Louis would take the hint and then maybe not.

In the course of all the archeological investigation, even the latrines were examined. Medical pathologists were brought in to study the general health of people living at Marly at the time of Louis XIV. It turns out that it made no difference if you were the King, a great aristocrat or a minor one, or just a servant, everyone had worms. To such an extent that excrements were alive with them. Doctors of the period would examine feces and make detailed notes, even drawings of the various worms infecting a person. Some of the drawings are fanciful, like little dragons or creatures. It appears that people would live with the condition because it was a common situation in society in general, sanitation was not a concern.

Louis XIV lived to be 76 years old and died of diabetes and gangrene. Others Courtiers lived to be in their 80’s.

If Versailles with thousands of Courtiers living there had no toilets and no bathing facilities, you did your business under the great staircases or in a corner. Marly had latrines, the King used chamber pots, a special chair was designed for this purpose and he would perform this natural functions surrounded by Courtiers who were given special access to observe. The person of the King was viewed as State Property by all, so the King and Queen were on stage 24/7, what a life!

This being an age where messages from the most mundane to the very important had to be written and sent with your seal to the intended party you can imagine the message traffic. If today we have gmail and some of us get a lot of emails each day, imagine getting on average 50 letters per day or more. What to do with all those billets? Paper then was not like today and did not have the same stiffness or acidity we have in our paper. So it could be re-used and so it was as toilet paper. You only kept the most valuable or important letters or billet and the rest was put to good use. The remnants of letters were discovered by the archeologists in the latrines of Marly.

In old age Louis XIV suffered from numerous health problems, he had lost all his teeth, a common condition then for anyone over 35 years of age. His palate had been perforated by his doctors, a mishap while trying to cure something else. He had gout, he also had diabetes and the disease was so advanced that in July of 1715 his doctors suggested amputating his leg. His advisors rejected that idea, the King was brought back to Versailles, everyone knew he was condemned, he declined quickly and he died in September. Having lost all this children to various diseases, his great-grandson Louis XV became King. 

This photo shows a square area which is the footprint of the Chateau of Marly with the surrounding forest and gardens with statues. The last pair of statues were installed in the presence of the King only 2 months before his death.

Portrait

Tags

France, NGC, Ottawa, salon de la paix, Versailles, Vigée-Lebrun

Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI had four children. They could not have been born at a more problematic time for the French royal family.

Marie-Thérèse Charlotte, known as Madame Royale was the only child, named after her grand-mother Empress Marie-Therese of Austria to survive the French revolution and reach adulthood. Eleven years old when the revolution erupted, in 1789, she was particularly close to her father the King.

Louis-Joseph, the first born son of the royal couple was spared the pains of revolution. He died of tuberculosis, at age seven, on the 4th of June, 1789. By all accounts a sweet child, the prince’s death added immeasurable grief to the lives of his parents the month before the revolution began.

After the death of his older brother, Louis-Charles, born in 1785 and sometimes referred to as Louis XVII, became dauphin. Subjected to the most cruel treatment by revolutionaries, the young prince was ten years old at his death in 1795.

Sophie-Beatrix was the family’s youngest child. Born in July of 1786, she died the following year – age eleven months – also of tuberculosis.

 

Because of the scandal of l’affaire du Collier, the ministers of the King ordered Vigée-Lebrun to do this propaganda painting, a tableau about family devotion and parental love. Though the Queen was cleared of any responsibility in the affair of the diamond necklace, the vicious press and a largely ignorant public hounded Marie-Antoinette. We know now that King Louis XVI brother, Prince Louis Stanislas Xavier, Comte de Provence  was also plotting against his brother, he was encouraging rumours and did little to help his unfortunate relatives. He was able to leave France with a false British Passport for a 23 year long exile around Europe, living on the charity of various Sovereigns. Returning to France in 1814 to become Louis XVIII.

This family portrait was painted at Versailles in what is today the Salon de la Paix at the end of the Galerie des Glaces, it was then a private salon used by the Queen. If you look closely at the painting you glimpse at the Gallerie des Glaces in the left corner. See picture below as it is today.

Le Salon de la Paix, the Queen is seated to the right of the door, she is surrounded by her children. Her eldest son is pointing to the empty crib of his sister Sophie-Beatrix who died a few months before this painting was done. He is already sick with tuberculosis and will be dead in just a few months after this painting is completed. Truly a painting of tragedy. The cabinet in the background to the left of the tableau represents a strong box keeping locked up the jewels of the Queen. This is a reference to the alleged extravagance of the Queen. Marie-Antoinette herself only wears a pair of pearl hearings. This piece of furniture is almost in shadow and tucked away, not very important to the tableau, another message in this composition.

The composition of this painting also refers to a famous story in Greek antiquity of another mother and her children, who is asked what is most precious to her. Despite being wealthy, she presents her children as a reply, this is my wealth. This is the obvious symbolism of this painting. There is no doubt that the Queen was devoted to her children this was her wealth and this message had an impact on the French public at large. However by the time this painting was shown, it was too late. In 1793 at the 2 day trial of the Queen, she did not stand accuse or charge with any crime, the tribunal was divided on what to do. The revolutionaries were well aware that it would be difficult to pass a death sentence on Marie-Antoinette 37 yrs old. So without proof it was decided that she was guilty of treason, a farce by any judicial standard.

She was a mother and the public was against executing the mother with small children. On the day of her execution as she was brought to her public execution the streets were very silent and the mood of the crowd was sullen. The troops on hand were nervous and feared violence against the tribunal and the revolutionary government.

1787, Château de Versailles, la Reine Marie-Antoinette et ses enfants.

By Court painter to the Queen of France, Louise-Elizabeth Vigée-Lebrun

Louise Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun (also known as Madame LeBrun) was the most-famous female painter of the 18th century.  So impressed was Marie Antoinette with Vigée Le Brun’s work that she had the artist create more than thirty portraits of the Queen and her family. This large painting, remained at the Palace of Versailles after the fall of the Monarchy and only left the Palace 4 years ago for the first time ever to travel to the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa for a retrospective exhibit of Lebrun’s paintings.

 

 

Petite Fleur

Tags

creole, France, Music, New Orleans, Radio Canada, Sidney Bechet

A great jazz piece by Sidney Bechet with Claude Luter And His Orchestra: Sidney Bechet (ss), Guy Longnon, Claude Rabanite (tp), Bernard Zacharias (tb), Claude Luter (cl), Christian Azzi or Raymond Fol (p), Roland Bianchini (b), Moustache (d) Paris, January 31 — March 12, 1952

 

Heard it last night on the radio show ”Quand le Jazz est là” with Stanley Péan on Radio-Canada from Montreal. Such lovely music, I find it very evocative.

Stanley Péan knows his audience and always plays the best of Jazz in its many forms. He knows the listeners are knowledgeable and adults and should not be treated like kids.

Bechet was born in New Orleans in 1897 to a middle-class Creole family. His older brother, Leonard Victor Bechet, was a full-time dentist and a part-time trombonist and bandleader. Bechet learned several musical instruments that were kept around the house, mostly by teaching himself; he decided to specialize in the clarinet.

In the 1940s, Bechet played in several bands, but his financial situation did not improve until the end of that decade. By the end of the 1940s, Bechet had tired of struggling to make music in the United States. His contract with Jazz Limited, a Chicago-based record label, was limiting the events at which he could perform. He believed that the jazz scene in the United States had little left to offer him and was getting stale. In 1950 he moved to France, after his performance as a soloist at the Paris Jazz Fair caused a surge in his popularity in that country, where he easily found well-paid work. In 1951, he married Elisabeth Ziegler in Antibes.

In 1953, he signed a recording contract with Disques Vogue that lasted for the rest of his life. He recorded many hit tunes, including “Les Oignons”, “Promenade aux Champs-Elysees”, and the international hit “Petite Fleur“. He also composed a classical ballet score in the late Romantic style of Tchaikovsky called La Nuit est sorcière (“The Night Is a Witch”). Some existentialists in France took to calling him le dieu (“the god”).

Souvenir from long ago

Tags

Augusta Holmes, Canada., France, long ago, Mathé Altery, Noël, operetta, Quebec

This morning we were listening to Radio-Canada programming from Montréal and the weekly show was playing music from the 1950’s and 1960’s. French singers who are well known and were the big names of their time with many hits. On the weekend Radio-Canada has a programming of Oldies but goodies, tunes anyone over the age of 45 will recognize. This programming of French musical hits is highly popular. This is the sort of music my Mom would listen too and often sing along, she had a nice singing voice.

One of the French singers was Mathé Altery,  a French soprano singer prominent in the 1950s and 1960s for singing operettas and French songs. She was my Mom’s favourite French singer and we had all her records at home. Altery came to Montréal and gave several concerts. My parents met her, she was staying at the hotel my father managed at the time.

Here she sings an old favourite, Noël, trois anges sont venus. This piece was composed in 1884 by French composer Augusta Holmès. It is so very nice to hear this music for its quality in composition and lyrics.

This brings back a lot of memories from my childhood and Christmas then. Altery who is 91 years old now, lives in France. Her singing voice and her French diction was impeccable. She was the French voice of Julie Andrews in the movie the Sound of Music which came out 53 years ago. She sang the well known musical score in French, it is just as charming as the English version.

 

The words to this Christmas song,

Trois anges sont venus ce soir

M’apporter de bien belles choses,

L’un d’eux avait un encensoir,

L’autre avait un chapeau de roses,

Et le troisième avait en main

Une robe toute fleurie

De perles d’or et de jasmin

Comme en a Madame Marie.

Noël ! Noël !

Nous venons du ciel

T’apporter ce que tu désires,

Car le bon Dieu

Au fond du ciel bleu,

Est chagrin lorsque tu soupires.

Veux-tu le bel encensoir d’or

Ou la rose éclose en couronne ?

Veux-tu la robe, ou bien encore

Un collier où l’argent fleuronne ?

Veux-tu des fruits du Paradis

Ou du blé des célestes granges ?

Ou comme les bergers, jadis,

Veux-tu voir  Jésus dans ses langes ?

Noël ! Noël !

Retournez au ciel

Mes beaux anges, à l’instant même ;

Dans le ciel bleu,

Demandez à Dieu,

Le bonheur pour celui que j’aime.

Augusta Holmès

 

Books I am reading

Tags

books, D'Ormesson, France, Paris

Yes it is that time again to talk about books I am reading. I have always enjoyed reading since a very young age. My Mom started me on it and apparently I take after my paternal grandfather whose name I have, he too was a reader but mostly crime novels, he was a Police detective.

I am waiting for the arrival by mail of the latest book I ordered,  it is entitled, Rome: A history in seven sackings by Matthew Kneale.

I am still reading Josephus: The essential works by Josephus Flavius, which is the most precise description of Rome under the Flavian Dynasty as observed by the Jewish Courtier and ex-rebel Josephus. It is also considered a companion book to the Bible and the four gospels since Josephus lived in the era of the destruction of the Temple by Titus and the revolt against Roman rule in Palestine. Reading Josephus who writes about the Tribes of Israël and their conquest of the area known today as Israël and Palestine, I was reminded of another book by the great Portuguese Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, The gospel according to Jesus Christ, a very funny book where God is portrayed as a wealthy Jewish Merchant with a sadistic streak. The God of the Old Testament was one who ordered anyone not worshipping him to be killed. Josephus is clear in his description that Yahveh, God tells the Jews it is quite ok and good to kill all their enemies because they do not belong to the chosen people. And Yahveh is always willing to forgive the people of Israël if they forget him momentarily because he has only one chosen people. Strange on again off again relationship. Josephus also describes what it is like to live at the Court of the Emperor of Rome on the Palatine Hill and observe the goings on.

The other book I am struggling to finish reading is by the late Dean of the French Academy Jean D’Ormesson, the book in French is entitled Je dirai malgré tout que cette vie fut belle. D’Ormesson died last December in Paris at the age of 92 and was given a National funeral, with full honours at Les Invalides in the presence of the French President and past presidents.

For many years I saw him on French television, he spoke very well, cultivated the art of conversation and knew almost every well known person in France or Europe.  The book is about his family and his life and all the great people he knew. Written in the style of a trial in a French Court were the Judge asks questions of the accused in this case D’Ormesson details how he lived. I find it tedious to read, the style is mondain and full of reference to his very famous friends, dinner parties, vacations in Italy or Greece and always accompanied by famous friends. He sailed through life without any great difficulty, it is a life on another level far removed from the mundane or the ordinary.

Jean Bruno Wladimir François de Paule Le Fèvre d’Ormesson was a French novelist born in 1925. He was the author of forty books, the director of Le Figaro from 1974 to 1979, and the Dean of the Académie française. He received the Grande Croix de la Légion d’Honneur and his family owned 2 Chateaux, though through financial difficulties managed to loose them but nonetheless always maintained a good address in fashionable Paris.

D’Ormesson was from an old French noble family, Grandfather and father both Ambassadors, went to the great schools, a life of privilege, D’Ormesson became Secretary-General of the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies at UNESCO. He was a conservative Catholic philosopher, a recipient of the Ordre National du Mérite for his achievements in civilian life.

What I always liked about him was his elegance and how he could speak so well with a wonderful vocabulary, he was a pleasure to hear, even when you disagreed with him, you still liked him. Even in this book there is a great generosity of spirit, the sign of a great mind. No doubt that he had some influence in France in the political and social sphere. With his death an era has closed.

 

An air for Spring

Tags

1752, France, J.J.Rouseeau, operette, Spring

Today is such a wonderful day, full of sunshine and flowers everywhere, despite the cold breeze. Nothing better than to listen to this operette by Jean-Jacques Rousseau of 1752 to put you in the mood, so let’s all go into the garden  dansez sous les ormeaux!

 

Allons danser sous les ormeaux,
Animez–vous jeunes fillettes :
Allons danser sous les ormeaux,
Galans prenez vos chalumeaux.
Les Villageoises répetent ces quatre vers.

Colette.

Répétons mille chansonnettes,
Et pour avoir le cœur joyeux,
Dansons avec nos amoureux,
Mais n’y restons jamais seulettes.
Allons danser sous les ormeaux, &c.

Les Villageoises.

Allons danser sous les ormeaux, &c.

Colette.

À la Ville on fait bien plus de fracas ;
Mais sont–ils aussi gais dans leurs ébats ?
Toujours contens,
Toujours chantans ;
Beauté sans fard,
Plaisir sans art ;
Tous leurs Concerts valent–ils nos musettes ?
Allons danser sous les ormeaux, &c.