Illumination (46 page)

Authors: Matthew Plampin

BOOK: Illumination

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‘What is happening, Monsieur Besson?’ Hannah asked.

‘They are checking papers again,’ he replied. ‘It is unnecessary. I believe the Prussians enjoy demonstrating their control over us.’

‘And this is the city in which we have left my son. Who knows what these tedious occupiers might decide to do next?’ Elizabeth laid down her pencil. ‘Monsieur Besson, are you absolutely positive that he could not be brought to the embassy?’

Besson had been asked this twenty times at least in the past day, but he showed no vexation. This was how he dealt with Elizabeth; she found it utterly exasperating. ‘The ankle was badly broken, Madame. Transporting him would have been difficult, and would surely have drawn the notice of the reds. I judged it too dangerous to risk. Your son is being well cared for, though. You need not worry. He will be safe.’

Elizabeth gave an exaggerated sigh and closed her notebook. Besson sat down, glancing across at Hannah; she hid her smile behind her hand and turned to the window.

Tiny raindrops stippled the glass; a porter shouted something further up the train; and Hannah had an impulse she hadn’t felt for weeks, not since the cellar at Gagny. She made a quick survey of the compartment. Her mother and the
aérostier
were at opposite ends of their seat, wrapped in scarves and heavy jackets, four feet of empty upholstery between them. Both were sitting up straight, hands folded in their laps, looking off in different directions. A timetable, out of date and useless, lay on the cushion beside her, its back page blank. Angling it on her thigh, she took a stub of pencil from the pocket of her embassy-supplied coat and started to draw.

Author’s Note

Although a work of fiction, much of
Illumination
is based closely on the historical facts of the Prussian siege of Paris during the winter of 1870–71. Mrs Pardy’s ‘Leopard of Montmartre’ was partly inspired by the cult that sprang up around Sergeant Ignatius Hoff, a soldier from the Alsace who attained legendary status among the besieged population for his stealthy slaughter of Prussian sentries – only to be suspected of spying when he vanished during the battle of Champigny (Hoff later reappeared, however, and was exonerated). Hard evidence is unsurprisingly scant, but figures like Jean-Jacques Allix certainly existed. The siege was the culmination of one of Bismarck’s most intricate plans; the Iron Chancellor is believed to have flooded the French capital with his operatives many months in advance. It’s very difficult to study the calamitous Parisian defence and not conclude that a number of well-placed citizens were deliberately engineering their own downfall.

The
Aphrodite
and her tenacious
aérostier
are inventions, but the wartime Balloon Commission is not. Managed by Félix Tournachon (known as Nadar), Eugene Godard and Wilfrid de Fonvielle, the Commission established a number of factories and workshops across Paris, principally in its disused railway stations. Between 23 September 1870 and 28 January 1871, sixty-six balloons carried out at least 176 passengers and pilots, five dogs, 381 pigeons and around eleven tons of dispatches, including nearly three million letters. It was, as Besson warns Clem, a dangerous business. Two balloons were lost at sea; five were captured by the Prussians, their crews held until the end of the war under sentence of death for spying, although no executions actually took place. At the mercy of the winds, several landed in unexpected locations, such as Holland, Prussia itself and even, in the case of the
Ville d’Orleans
, the heart of Norway – an unintentional journey of almost nine hundred miles. A monument to the
aérostiers
by Auguste Bartholdi, sculptor of the Statue of Liberty, was erected at the Port des Ternes in 1906, but was melted down during the next conquest of Paris by the German army: the Nazi occupation of 1940–44.

Hannah Pardy’s circumstances share some similarities with those of the American painter Mary Cassatt (1844–1926). Impatient with mainstream art and the patronising attitudes of a male-dominated art world, Cassatt relocated from Philadelphia to Paris in the 1860s, where she was heavily influenced by the radical naturalist movement that would come to be known, after an 1874 exhibition in Nadar’s studio, as Impressionism. The path of her career is basically that which Hannah dreamed of for herself: after a number of successful submissions to the Paris Salon, she was approached by Edgar Degas and began exhibiting with the Impressionists in the late 1870s. Cassatt was no runaway, though; her wealthy stockbroker father did not approve of her chosen vocation but allowed her to pursue it, and both her parents and her sister came to live near her at various times. Unlike Hannah, she managed to remain respectable, residing in the central arrondissements and staying away from the artists’ cafés, and she returned to America for the duration of the Franco-Prussian War.

Many other books informed
Illumination
; all errors and distortions are my own. Essential primary sources were the numerous siege diaries kept (and later published) by imprisoned English residents, particularly those of the journalists Henry Labouchere and Felix Whitehurst; the multitude of contemporary English guidebooks to Paris, ranging in tone from impeccably upright to openly salacious; and the novels of Emile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, which provide a detailed, unsparing portrait of the Second Empire in all its debauchery and desperation. The full list of secondary sources is too long to be included here, but mention should be made of
Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life
Under Siege
by Hollis Clayson,
Airlift 1870: The Balloons and Pigeons in the Siege of Paris
by John Fisher,
The Fall of Paris
by Alistair Horne,
The Siege of Paris
by Robert Baldick,
Early Impressionism and the French State
by Jane Mayo Roos,
The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers
by T.J. Clark,
Impressionism
by Robert L. Herbert and
Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism
by Peter Marshall.

Thanks are due to Louisa Joyner, Katie Espiner and Euan Thorneycroft, whose expert advice and guidance shaped the novel; Cassie Browne, Alice Moore and the team at HarperCollins; the staff of the British Library; my family and friends, for their continued support and enthusiasm; Kester, for the best writing breaks; and Sarah, of course, for everything.

About the Author

Matthew Plampin was born in 1975 and lives in London. He completed a PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art and now lectures on nineteenth-century art and architecture. He is the author of two previous novels,
The Street Philosopher
and
The Devil’s Acre
.

Also by Matthew Plampin

The Street Philosopher

The Devil’s Acre

HarperCollins
Publishers

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First published by HarperCollins
Publishers
2013

Map © Illustrated London News Ltd / Mary Evans

Matthew Plampin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Source ISBN: 9780007479085

Version: 2013-09-10

FIRST EDITION

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

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