In Search of Mary (16 page)

“Wollstonecraft’s arrival pretty much coincides with the start of the Reign of Terror, doesn’t it?”

“OK – so the Terror is very specific, and it starts after the monarchy falls. The King is arrested in August 1792, after a dramatic invasion of the Tuileries. But the Republic isn’t declared until September. Meanwhile a rumour spreads that the prisons of Paris contain foreign conspirators. A group of
sans-culottes
go into the prisons, and they just slaughter over a thousand trapped prisoners. It’s extraordinarily bloody and totally bizarre. And it’s dreadful. There’s no way of justifying it: it’s dreadful.”

We sit.

“And this is when we get the stuff from Dickens: the guillotine, the knitters, the countless tumbrels – and all the time they’re hacking people’s heads off willy-nilly?”

“Yes.” Hannah says quietly. “Literally thousands of people have their heads chopped off.”

Madame la Guillotine
. Funny they didn’t mind allowing gender in there. The machinery is female. As is the statuesque embodiment of la Liberté. Idealized abstract females are celebrated – but real, actual women popping up and demanding stuff? Er – no, we’re all right, thanks.

We’ve wandered at meandering Will-speed between hedge-rows of the Tuileries, and now, sitting on the grass, we’re cold. Hannah suggests a coffee. We capture Will, and like the women bread marchers bringing the King on a cart back to Paris, take him to the nearest café. Hannah opens the door, and the warm air meets us. We sit down inside; my nose is dripping and my microphone hand has frozen. Will’s cheeks are red, and he’s hungry. The welcome glory of coffee and a cheese omelette arrives at the table. Over the noise of cutlery and sweeping waiters, Hannah summarizes:

“Women in the Revolution were deemed to have this special sympathetic power that can civilize men. The emerging sense is that home is the women’s domain. It’s the woman who is full of love and care, the woman who is the source of virtue and morality—”

The omelette wolfed, Will starts reaching out for things to grab and pull towards him, like a human whirlpool. He throws a spoon and the menu as we hastily move the Dictaphone, the salt and pepper, then our phones, and then our coffee away from his angering reach.

“But when women start taking action,” she goes on “saying: ‘All people are born equal’ and joining in and taking part, the Jacobins become startled and say: ‘What are you doing here?!’ – and they just ignore them—”

Will rubs his eyes, then suddenly starts to sob. “I know – can you
believe
those Jacobins?” I say emphatically. He doesn’t think it’s funny. He’s put up with a lot today: the omelette was my last trick. With no other distractions it’s time to call it a day. I’m grateful that Hannah spoke so quickly, that we could fit so much into the time we had. We hug warmly and say our goodbyes. I load Will into his buggy, blanket him up and lie him down flat for his well-earned sleep, and we set off back down the Rue de Rivoli.

I’m stunned and aroused by this gale-force encounter. A respectful love for Paris surges inside me. They may not have baby chairs in restaurants, but modern civilization began right here. The keys to history are all around us as we hurry along, weaving through glossy shoppers and tourists. I breathe it in and feel small. Here on these streets, among the history-drenched symbols and monuments. A nod to the statue of Joan of Arc, wielding her golden flag in the air. I gaze up, indulging a daydream that one day, maybe one day, there will be a statue of Wollstonecraft.

Passing yet another Starbucks, I’m struck by a rueful thought. Not only did we enjoy an insolent American breakfast this morning, I’ve also just done the French Revolution with an American, albeit a Francophone one. It feels remiss. We need to boost the intake of proper Frenchness. Luckily I’ve found a source of
appellation d’origine contrôlée
. He is an expert in the Revolution from the University of Paris, and he’s suggested we meet in a café on the Quai de Loire, near to his campus.
Allons-y
. Will and I catch the metro to Stalingrad in the 19th Arrondissement.

Professor Marc Belissa is in his fifties, with dark hair. He’s tall and smokes roguishly. He does that French thing of being more attractive than he actually is. How do they do that? We sit down to black coffees with Will pulled up between us. I stir my coffee with the plastic thing that isn’t a spoon, and get the recording equipment ready. It’s kind of him to come and meet us, but from the outset he’s quite sniffy about Wollstonecraft. He says there’s not much interest in her in France, adding vaguely: “They probably do like her in the US and the UK, though.”

He delivers this snub so enchantingly that I find myself smiling along. Maybe it’s his accent. Then he asks me if I know much about the Revolution. I flash back to my head-spinning time with Hannah, and tell him I’ve learnt there are no short cuts, but that I’m keen to discover how life would have been for a foreigner living here during Revolution, and especially during the reign of Terror.

“Ah,” he intones. “You have to make the distinction between the first three years of the French Revolution, 1789 to 1792, and the so-called period of Terror, which I call the period of the Revolutionary Government. Because that is the real name of this period. I don’t call it ‘the Terror’. The word Terror, it’s not very precise. What is Terror? Is it a series of practices? Is it a programme? If you look carefully, you see that the Terror was never proclaimed – there was never a law. There was not a ‘Reign’ or ‘regime’ of Terror!”

“Oh, come on, all that blood-letting,” I say, “and the general state of paranoia?”

“It’s not paranoia when it’s
real
,” he insists, calling to mind a Hollywood blockbuster. “And as for the blood? That was also
there in 1789, and you don’t call 1789 the Terror. France was very isolated – France was at war with nearly everyone: she fought her neighbours because they had declared hostility to her. It was war! The radicalization of the French Revolution
cannot
be understood without the context of the war – it’s a
European problem
.”

“But what about the machinery of Terror – I mean, literally a machine for publicly chopping off lots of heads?”

“
Non
.” Professor Belissa decapitates my question. “Terror is not a machinery: it’s a slogan. It’s not a regime and it’s not a philosophy. You have to think of the Terror as also the most democratic period of the Revolution: you have to think at the same time of both democracy and Terror, which is quite difficult.” He utters the word distinctly, and it’s definitely Terror with a capital T.

“During the Terror, slavery was abolished in France. During the Terror, the right to existence was proclaimed in the 1793
Droits de l’Homme
. During the Terror, the widows got pensions from the state. The poor and the women without husbands got social legislation – that was all during the Terror. So if you see it uniquely in terms of bloodshed, then you don’t understand all the social advances.”

Right. This isn’t giving me much of an angle on how it was to be Wollstonecraft, arriving just as Wordsworth scuttled back to English safety. I try to steer us back to being a foreigner coming here in 1792. How might you be treated?

“That depends which country you’re from. If you’re American it’s OK. If you think in terms of who was farthest away on the scale of liberty, at the bottom was the Spanish. For
the French, even before the Revolution Spain was considered backwards. It was a place where priests dominated. Italy also, because of the power of the Pope. The Belgians, they had a revolution at the same time as us, but it was ended in 1790 by Austrian repression and the Hapsburg monarchy. But to be English was maybe the worst you could be. And this is not because they were the worst enemy.
Non
. This is because they were seen as the people who
should have been
the natural allies of the Revolution. They knew about the
Rights of Man
, they had a limited monarchy, they had political parties and the English liberty – so those people should have been sympathetic. And so the Revolutionaries saw the English as the worst enemies of all, because they betrayed us.”

I note the word “us”. And the disdain for the English. But Professor Belissa is impossible to dislike. I persist: “Wollstone-craft’s boyfriend is American and has certain privileges, and for her safety he registers her as his wife even though they’re not really married. So at what point did it become a danger to her life to be English rather than just an affront to people?”

“Your country was at war with my country, remember. The legislation passed a law that all citizens of countries at war with France had to be watched. English people were banned from Paris and from border and port towns. For Tom Paine there was of course an exception: he was naturalized. But at one point the French thought it was necessary to expel all foreigners – Paine included. And when Paine came out of jail, he said: ‘I understand these measures – even if they were harsh, I understand it was necessary.’ So people like Paine and Wollstonecraft were considered suspect in terms of being
foreigners, but not really as criminals. People think: ‘Ah, Paine was in jail, so France must be chauvinistic.’ But it’s not true.”

Far from Hannah’s account of the French political paradigm being all about consensus, Professor Belissa is relishing this debate, and the more I question his Revolution, the more he enjoys himself.

“Are you defending the Revolution?”

“No. I’m defending complexity. There is no neutral language. We must see that the term ‘Reign of Terror’ was invented in 1795, after the Terror, by the people who killed Robespierre and blamed everything on him. He was a scapegoat. He was not bad – all of them were… It’s a complete misunderstanding.”

“Are you saying Robespierre wasn’t guilty of crimes?”

“But were they crimes? Is it a crime to execute people for being counter-revolutionary, in a Revolution? It’s only three thousand—”

“
Only
three thousand?!”

I go into Gallic gesticulation overdrive, nearly falling off my chair. Professor Belissa is unruffled: “You have to compare it to the thousands and thousands of French dying in the armies along the way. And all those dying of hunger? Not during the Terror. During the Terror the price of bread was protected and no one died of hunger. There was famine
after
the Terror; in 1795 the Seine froze over, a lot of people died, bread was very expensive and crops failed. What about these deaths, ah?”

Will starts to wrestle around in his buggy, and I am quite relieved. For once his timing is welcome, as there’s nowhere else to go. It’s come down to head-chopping: for or against. So I ask if we can walk around outside to distract Will. Professor
Belissa doesn’t mind at all: he jumps up and gallantly holds the door open for us. As we step outside, I ask a question that is probably rather pointless at this stage. But I can’t help myself:

“What about the women of the Revolution?”

“Obviously it’s complicated,” he says. Well fancy that. “You can see this period as a moment when women took the power to speak, to say things, and to demand things.”

“But they didn’t seem to get them. Or even if they did, it was rolled back afterwards, like the divorce laws.”

He executes a perfectly delicious French shrug and ignores this, continuing: “But you can also see it as a period in which the women were excluded from political life. Some historians, especially the Americans and feminists, they see it in this way.”

“And those ‘Americans and feminists’, are they right or wrong?”

“Both!” he says with delight.

Chapter Eleven

How Not to Betray the Light?

This slightly maddening encounter has provoked more questions than answers. The defence of complexity is worthwhile in principle, but the struggle for simplicity strikes me as a whole lot more useful. Professor Belissa lights a cigarette and walks us to the Metro, exuding elegant smoke and chatting away merrily. I’ve enjoyed meeting him very much, but can’t help wondering what he made of it. But then… a British Wollstonecraft fanatic with a baby. What did he expect?

Later on I am still reflecting on Professor Belissa and his apparent ease in accepting the price of the Revolution. Perhaps he’s right that the blood-soaking and distracting violence has stopped me from seeing the good that happened. Wollstone-craft is harrowed by the violence: she publicly cries out at the sight of the blood-stained street. She makes such a fuss that she herself is at risk: concerned bystanders hurry her away to safety. Her once-pumped enthusiasm now tempered, she writes:

Every political good carried to the extreme must be productive of evil.

But then, she is right here at the heart of it all, escaping the old ways and traditions. Here at the decapitation of the Ancien Régime, the birth of the values of modern civilization.
Unprecedented freedom is springing up all around her. And freedom has unforeseen consequences: it is also freedom for your enemy. William Blake, the Enlightenment’s own illustrator, knows this when he says of Milton’s
Paradise Lost
that Milton is “of the devil’s party without knowing it”.

And maybe it’s bloody, but what’s the alternative? Back home Wollstonecraft has some powerful enemies. England, so recently the scene of that magnificent ding-dong between Wollstonecraft and Burke, is now in full backlash mode. The suspicion she arouses as a foreigner in France pales beside the hostility she would face if she returned. She’s not welcome in England. The vibrant debate of 1792 is annihilated in repressive measures bearing names like the Aliens Act and the Treason Trials.

The 1793 Aliens Act is the government’s response to the thousands of refugees (or émigrés, for your posh refugees: several noted Marquises and Chevaliers become waiters and window cleaners in their new English lives) fleeing the Revolution in France. This legislation requires all arrivals from France to register with the authorities, and failure to do so means imprisonment without trial. On top of the suspension of habeas corpus, prohibitive taxes are imposed on pamphlet publishing, and large public gatherings are banned. Anything to squash public interest in the shockwaves emerging from France.