Spirit of Lost Angels (23 page)

The leaves of the tree-lined street already showed the first tinges of autumn colour. They rippled with birdsong and the afternoon breeze, as if the sparrows and blackbirds were competing for centre-stage with the hammering and shouts of workmen, the creak of carts and the rhythmical
walop, walop
of horses’ hooves.

As the coach set me down in the rue d’Artois, I glanced over my shoulder, up and down the line of elegant homes. In this peaceful residential quarter, laid out beyond the Boulevards less than ten years ago, I was not afraid. I could relax the heightened awareness with which I walked the city streets since the second wave of riots that summer of 1788.

Everybody was on guard in the city. People watched each other, sometimes out of simple curiosity, but more often out of malice. Two people could not whisper together without a third craning his neck to hear them. Spies haunted the alleys and arcades, stood in the long lines for bread, eavesdropped on
poissardes
and prostitutes, and followed the prices of sugar and soap. I also knew I had been lucky to escape death from one bullet; I surely would not survive a second.

A maid opened the door and admitted me into the home of Madame Sophie Gilbert. In the centre of a stylish drawing room, surrounded by a group of women, Sophie reclined in a milk bath.

This was very different to the traditional salons I’d heard of — the assortment of liberal anglophiles, their glamorous wives and mistresses, and ambitious young men meeting to discuss the latest books, plays, affairs, and above all, politics.
Chez
Madame Sophie Gilbert, there was neither the whiff of an aristocrat, nor a male, in sight.

‘Ah, our star has arrived.’ Sophie smiled and beckoned me closer. ‘The Scarlet Enchantress. Sit down, relax, Rubie.’ She gestured around the room of women, who all seemed to boast the easy bourgeois friendliness and confidence of philosophical thought. From the way they perched on the edge of their chairs though, there seemed too, an air of uneasy discontent and restrained energy about them.

‘Feel free to say what you want, Rubie,’ Sophie said. ‘Whatever burns inside your breast.’ She laid a palm in the cleft of her own, naked breasts, rising from the white bath like islands in a sea of milk. ‘We are safe from censure here, and spies too, who have become so virulent as to poison even the most private and friendly of gatherings.’

She raised a leg from the milky water, resting her ankle up on the edge. ‘We prefer a more relaxed atmosphere,’ she said. ‘Freedom from the binds of whalebone stays encourages open speech and thought,
n’est-ce pas
, Olympe?’

The woman she referred to as Olympe laid a hand on Sophie’s cheek and stroked the pinked flesh.

‘Metaphorically and literally,’ Olympe said. She moved back from Sophie, handed me a glass of wine from a tray and patted a place beside her on the sofa. ‘I for one am thankful those ridiculous corsets are finally going out of fashion. How barbarous to wear something that impedes a woman’s breathing and deforms her chest.’

‘My sister lost a child because of tight stays,’ a dark-haired girl, Manon, said. ‘The midwife said the corset squeezed the life out of the infant.’

‘So you believe we should all follow the advice of Rousseau — that prophet of naturalness, of sensibility?’ said a tightly-stayed woman with a hooked nose and such an array of feathers spilling from her hat she looked like some great bird perched atop the tapestry armchair. ‘And have our children run around wild, barefoot, and half-naked?’

‘Rousseau rightly said it is better for our children to wear loose clothes so as not to constrict their growing bodies,’ Olympe said. ‘Even if the man did dare to argue women should be educated for the pleasure of men!’ She rolled her eyes.

Manon pursed her lips in mock-concern. ‘And, of course, if the corset were banned, that would eliminate the moral problem of displaying one’s bosom so prominently.’

I laughed along with the others, hoping I appeared as relaxed as they seemed. We drank more wine and helped ourselves to sugared cakes the maid placed on a glass table.

‘Enough of corsets, I’d like to learn more about our new guest.’ Manon leaned towards me. ‘Our successful Scarlet Enchantress.’

I blushed, staring at my gloved hands. Even though the women here were all commoners, like me, and Jeanne’s rose-perfumed salve had worked wonders, I still preferred to hide my peasant-girl hands. ‘I never expected my plays to be so popular. It’s as much a surprise to me.’

‘I loved your second one —
Nuit Tranquille
— wasn’t it?’ the bird-woman said. ‘About the peasant boys crouched by the Count’s pond, bashing those noisy frogs to death. You certainly portray the quaint peasant life so cleverly, Mademoiselle Charpentier.’

‘
Merci
, madame.’ I bowed my head, wondering if my brother, Grégoire, and the other boys of Lucie thought it quaint when they were forced to stay out in the cold night, killing all the frogs so the count and his noble entourage might enjoy a croak-free slumber.

I drank more wine and kept the smile pasted on my lips.

Olympe frowned at the bird-woman, some distant relative of Sophie’s apparently, visiting Paris. ‘In my cousin’s village,’ she said, ‘the peasants
are
forced to perform such ridiculous tasks for their lords.’

The bird-woman laughed. ‘Oh surely not, Olympe, your cousin’s been telling you stories!’

‘Don’t you understand?’ Olympe went on. ‘Plays such as
Les Barreaux de la Liberté
and
Nuit Tranquille
are celebrated for their social messages. That’s why the aristocracy are shocked, and why we cheer so.’

The bird-woman sniffed, her whole face deepening to the same shade as her rouged cheeks.

Olympe gripped my forearm. ‘But you must be careful, Rubie, not to overstep the limits. I have heard murmurs of threats against you. Nobles hate to be teased. They feel it is their right alone, to make fun of commoners.’

‘I appreciate your concern, Olympe,’ I said. ‘But I have no reason to be afraid. My works are purely light entertainment. Nobody can claim any direct attack upon their person.’

Sophie laughed. ‘The perfect satire,
n’est-ce pas
, my dears? So what else are you working on, Rubie?’

‘I have an idea about a boy who catches a rabbit on the land of a baron and puts it in a hutch to amuse his dying sister,’ I said. ‘The boy is then imprisoned.’

‘But the peasant child should know it is illegal to catch game on the baron’s land,’ the bird-woman said. ‘It’s obvious the bailiff would imprison him.’

‘The problem is,’ I said, ‘the rich and poor view each other as utterly alien beings. The rich see the poor as barely human — savage beings for whom it is certainly not worth stopping one’s coach if they’d had the bad luck to be run over — while the poor view the rich as frivolous, mannered and cruel.’

‘These attitudes must be stopped,’ Olympe said, ‘as must the unfair privileges of the nobles and clergy, if we are ever to exist in harmony.’

‘I have another idea too,’ I went on, ‘for something concerning the Church — an affront to its political power and wealth, and its suppression for the exercise of reason.’

‘Oh, I can’t wait,’ Sophie said, smoothing milky liquid along an outstretched leg. ‘But surely that’s a direct attack on the Church?’

‘People should be free to follow whatever their heart, and head, tells them,’ I said. ‘Without fear of reprisal or punishment.’

‘Well, we commoners certainly are making our claims heard,’ Olympe said. ‘Rioting against the privileges of the nobles and clergy this summer gone, from Brittany right down to Pau. It’s vital we have a more rational and efficient government.’

‘The Estates-General meeting, where these grievances booklets from all over the country are to be presented, will get us out of this dire political and financial crisis,’ Sophie said, shifting in her bath.

‘The rantings of illiterate villagers are not likely to have much influence,’ the bird-woman said, sniffing again.

‘The grievances booklets certainly will
be heard, madame,’ Manon said. ‘They’ll expose the unfair advantages of the aristocracy and the clergy, and suggest remedies for their representatives to implement.’

‘What infuriates me,’ Olympe said. ‘Is there will be no women present at this Estates-General meeting — we who, in this time of general revolution, should have so much to say, so many abuses to combat, yet we dare not raise our voice in defence of our cause.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Olympe,’ the bird-woman said. ‘Women have never been admitted to the council of Kings and republics. It’s an inconceivable and pretentious thought.’

Olympe shook her head. ‘So you are satisfied with the woman’s motto — work, obey and shut up?’

‘Surely today’s enlightenment has demonstrated the absurdity of that?’ I said to the bird woman. ‘A system of centuries of ignorance, when the strongest made the laws, subordinating the weakest?’

‘Besides, we’ve seen that women can hold the reins of government with skill and wisdom,’ Olympe said. ‘Look at Elizabeth, Queen of England, Tsarina Catherine II, and Marie, Queen of Portugal. Why not in our country, too?’

‘But
women
are
involved in the pursuit of this limitless hope of happiness which grips our nation,’ the bird-woman insisted.

‘Perhaps,’ Manon said. ‘But only on behalf of our husbands, brothers, lovers and sons. Women, in fact, have no real voice.’

‘That is because we are not educated,’ I said. ‘Women need an education if they are to have a credible voice.’

‘It’s a shame you weren’t here for our last meeting, Rubie,’ Sophie said. ‘We spoke about a conduct book:
Letters on the Improvement of the Mind
by Hester Chapone, in which she argues for a programme of study for women.’

‘She also emphasises that women should be considered rational beings and not left to wallow in sensualism,’ Olympe said.

‘I’m certain,’ Sophie said to me, ‘as your works deal more and more with the rights of the female, it will greatly interest you, as will a similar one, of which I propose we speak today:
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters
, by another Englishwoman, Mary Wollstonecraft.’

‘
Thoughts
is excerpted in this English language magazine,’ the bird-woman said, holding up a copy. ‘Oh, but maybe you’re unable to read English, Mademoiselle Charpentier?’

‘My private tutor says I am becoming quite proficient,’ I said and, ensuring my smile was full of grace, added, ‘perhaps you’d like me to read it to everyone?’

The bird-woman shuffled her wide bottom, pursed her crimson lips, and handed me the magazine, from which I read, albeit haltingly.

‘
Thoughts
is a conduct book encouraging mothers to teach their daughters analytical thinking, self-discipline, honesty, and marketable skills in case they should need to support themselves,’ I read. ‘Her aim is to educate women to be useful wives and mothers because it is through these roles that they can most effectively contribute to society. Much of the book criticises what Wollstonecraft considers the damaging education usually offered to women: artificial manners, card playing, theatre going, and an emphasis on fashion. She endorses breastfeeding — ’

‘
Oh là là, quelle horreur
!’ the bird-woman exclaimed. ‘That’s what wet-nurses are for.’

‘So you don’t mind your husband using you as a receptacle for his self-gratification?’ Olympe said. ‘Impregnating you every year, wearing your body down little by little with one pregnancy after another? Why even the poorest of the poor are inherently intelligent enough to realise breastfeeding stops pregnancies, thus preserving their health as far as possible.’

The bird-woman shuddered. ‘The very idea of an infant suckling one’s nipple doesn’t bear worth contemplating.’ She stood. ‘Now, please excuse me, ladies, but I must depart early.’

As she kissed our host, still in her bath, and the maid saw her out, I thought nothing more of the bird-woman — Sophie’s distant relative whose name I’d not even learned.

‘But while conduct books such as these have helped develop a specifically bourgeois ethos challenging the primacy of the aristocratic code of manners,’ Olympe went on. ‘They also constrict women’s roles. They encourage us to be chaste, pious, submissive, graceful and polite.’ She spread her arms. ‘Where, I ask you, is the individual, thinking woman in all of that?’

‘Exactly,’ I said, finishing my cake and wine. ‘The educated, thinking woman — that is what we must address.’

Sophie emerged from the bath, glorious in her pink-scrubbed flesh. This was evidently a sign the salon was over, as the women stood and began pecking each other on both cheeks, as Sophie wrapped a gown around her nakedness.

I lingered a moment after the others left. ‘Thank you for an enjoyable afternoon,’ I said.

‘I hope you’ll come again, Rubie,’ she said with a smile.

I nodded to the maid as she let me out the door, stepping into the twilight of the rue d’Artois. The five o’clock after-meal din had calmed — the moment the entire city seemed gagged by some invisible hand. A strangely quiet moment, it was also notoriously the most dangerous time of day when thieves and muggers skulked in the darkening streets before the night watch was about.