The Queen's Caprice: Stories

NOTES

Nelson

1. The War of the Second Coalition (1799–1802) was waged by the conservative European monarchies (led by Britain, Austria, and Russia) against revolutionary France, where Napoléon had taken charge as first consul late in 1799. When Russia pulled out to form the League of Armed Neutrality with Denmark-Norway, Sweden, and Prussia, the British saw this as a threat to their naval supremacy and vital trade advantages. On April 2, 1801, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson led the main attack in the first Battle of Copenhagen against a Danish-Norwegian line anchored just off the city, and after an extremely hard-fought engagement, he carried the day. Command of the British fleet was transferred to Lord Nelson, who became Viscount Nelson of the Nile. In March 1802, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Amiens, temporarily ending hostilities between them and bringing peace to Europe for fourteen months.

2. The origin of the phrase to turn a blind eye is often said to arise from an incident during the first Battle of Copenhagen, when the commander of the British fleet there signaled Nelson to withdraw if he felt it advisable. Lifting his glass to his blind eye, Nelson turned toward the signal flags, announced “I really do not see the signal,” and fought on to victory.

3. After Trafalgar, the British Admiralty honored John Pollard, a midshipman on the HMS Victory, for avenging Lord Nelson’s death. In The Life of Nelson, Robert Southey relates that Pollard and another midshipman, Francis Edward Collingwood, had returned fire at the French ship Redoutable. When only two snipers remained alive in her mizzen-top, Pollard shot one, then both Pollard and Collingwood shot the other after an old quartermaster, who’d recognized the Frenchman’s distinctive hat and garb, identified him as the man who’d shot Nelson.

Southey mentions Guillemard in a footnote, for the matter of Nelson’s death took a startling turn with the publication in Paris, in 1826, of the Mémoires de Robert Guillemard, sergent en retraite, suivis de documens historiques, la plupart inédits, de 1805 à 1823, a supposed autobiography of the French sniper who shot Nelson. The narrator recounted a life of such astonishing incident that the book aroused interest not only in France but in England and Germany as well, but it also met with skepticism because of many errors and grandiose, Zelig-like assertions. The author claimed, in particular, to have witnessed the assassination of Vice Admiral Pierre-Charles-Jean-Baptiste-Silvestre de Villeneuve, supposedly at the orders of Napoléon, in retaliation for his dismal performance in command of the French fleet at Trafalgar. Four years later, one J.A. Lardier confessed that he was the real author of the book and had invented Guillemard: “Lettre de l’auteur des Mémoires du sergent Robert Guillemard, publiés en 1826 et 1827, qui déclare que tout ce qu’il a raconté sur la mort du vice-amiral Villeneuve est une fiction, et que Guillemard est un personnage imaginaire,” Annales maritimes et coloniales, 1830, 2ème partie, tome 2, pp. 185–87.

The Queen’s Caprice

1. A little place called Le Pirli, village of Argentré, Laval district. (Author’s note.)

2. Septentrion is an obsolete term meaning the “northern regions” or, simply, the “north.”

Twenty Women in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Clockwise

1. For pictures of each statue and a brisk review of the lives of these remarkable women — and they are, all of them, even the mythical ones, remarkable women — consult the Internet to visit the site “ladies-of-luxembourg-garden.html.” The statues are elegant and peaceful; the life stories behind many of them beggar description.

Civil Engineering

1. The brotherhood of the Fratres Pontifices was supposedly founded in the late twelfth century by Saint Bénézet, who, inspired by a vision, built the famous bridge over the Rhône at Avignon between 1177 and 1185. Saint Bénézet was a historical personage, but medieval scholars have essentially discounted as a romantic fiction the idea of a monastic order devoted to the pious work of helping pilgrims by building bridges, hospices, and ferry landings. Such work was almost always performed by lay organizations of masons and stonecutters hired on an ad hoc basis, but hagiographic works about Saint Bénézet popularized his legend and inspired early authors to elaborate upon these “brotherhoods,” until historians of the late eighteenth century began correcting the record.

2. A voussoir is a wedge-shaped unit in an arch or vault. All such units are voussoirs, but the center piece at the apex or crown of the arch is the keystone. At the base of each side, or haunch, of the arch sits the lowest wedge-shaped unit, the springer. This piece “springs” up to begin the curve of the arch and itself rests on the impost, the top unit of the abutment supporting the haunch.

3. “Hej, Sloveni,” naturally enough, means “Hey, Slavs!” and is an anthem dedicated to all Slavic peoples.

4. Nattier blue, a “moderate azure,” is named after Jean-Marc Nattier, who became popular as a portrait painter at the court of Louis XV, specializing in allegorical — and flattering — depictions of ladies in classical mythological attire.

Nitrox

1. Chimaeras, like sharks, are cartilaginous fish, but they branched off from those relatives about 400 million years ago, during which time they morphed into some very bizarre-looking creatures indeed. The “real” Chimera, after which they are named, was a fire-breathing monster composed of a lion, a goat, and a snake that was eventually killed by Bellerophon and the winged horse Pegasus. That immortal horse was sired by Poseidon out of the gorgon Medusa, from which comes the French word for jellyfish, méduse, so when Echenoz evokes méduses, chimères, daphnies, and so on, he is delicately skimming the abundance of mythological referents swimming around in the ocean.

Three Sandwiches at Le Bourget

1. This last story, a deceptively low-key affair, is full of dutifully noted street names mapping the narrator’s peregrinations. France has been around for a long time and tends to avoid “Elm Street,” etc., in favor of more robustly evocative names that often mean nothing to foreigners but offer instant backstory to the French. Such stories provide a valuable dimension to this text, so here is a bit of background for some of the more important street references, marked in the text by asterisks.

MAUBEUGE: Inhabited since about 256 A.D., this place has had a tumultuous history, passing in and out of various hands until landing in French ones for good in 1678. Maubeuge was besieged and taken by the Germans in 1914, who returned in 1940 to firebomb more than 90 percent of it — including the historic city center — into ashes.

DUNKIRK: Originally a fishing village on what is now the English Channel, Dunkirk was for centuries the plaything of Vikings, counts, kings, popes, dukes, archdukes, pirates, and various European nations. In May — June 1940 it was the scene of the Miracle of Dunkirk, in which more than 900 vessels evacuated some 340,000 Allied forces threatened by a German advance. During the German occupation, Allied bombers destroyed most of the town.

LA COURNEUVE: This small medieval village close to Paris eventually became a fashionable country retreat for the gentry, with two notable châteaus. In the 1960s, with immigration from former French colonies pressuring the expanding population of Paris, the construction of public and low-cost housing boomed in many suburbs of the capital, and the population of La Courneuve essentially doubled. Emblematic of La Courneuve’s proud industrial past and turbulent history of working-class struggles, the Mécano factory, opened in 1914 and specializing in precision tool manufacturing, was finally forced to close in 1978 but will reopen as a multimedia and administrative center.

FRANCIS DE PRESSENSÉ (1853–1914): Born in Paris, Pressensé fought in the Franco-Prussian War (the War of 1870) and had distinguished careers in public service, the diplomatic corps, journalism, and politics. As a socialist he fought for the separation of church and state. During the Dreyfus affair (1894–1906), his support of Alfred Dreyfus and of Émile Zola’s fiery campaign on his behalf cost Pressensé his membership in the National Order of the Legion of Honor, the highest French order of merit, the motto of which is Honneur et Patrie (“Honor and Country”). He does, however, now have the honneur of a few streets to his name in the patrie.

JEAN JAURÈS (1859–1914): Another defender of Alfred Dreyfus, Jaurès began as a moderate republican and wound up a socialist and antimilitarist and one of the most important writers and figures of the French Left. The founder of the (originally) socialist paper L’Humanité, he tried to help head off the Great War and was assassinated for his pains by a French nationalist at a Parisian café, now called Le Taverne du Croissant, marked by the traditional commemorative plaque.

DIVISION-LECLERC: It is impossible to overstate the affection and esteem in which Philippe François Marie Leclerc de Hauteclocque is held in France. Posthumously named a marshal of France, he is commonly known simply by his nom de guerre: Leclerc.

Born in 1902, this aristocratic soldier first fought the invading Germans in 1939, then went to French Equatorial Africa on the orders of General Charles de Gaulle in Britain. In 1943, Leclerc’s force was reequipped by the Americans as the French Second Armored Division, the 2e DB, often called La Division Leclerc or Leclerc’s Army. The 2e DB was shipped to Britain to participate in Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of northern France, and landed at Utah Beach in Normandy in 1944 as part of General George S. Patton’s U.S. Third Army. After liberating Paris, the 2e DB fought on the western front and in the final battles in southern Germany.

With the European war over in May 1945, Leclerc took command of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps and was France’s representative at the surrender of the Japanese Empire on board the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay. Leclerc’s mission was to regain control of French Indochina, but he soon realized that the situation demanded a diplomatic solution, and he warned the French and American politicians arrayed against Ho Chi Minh that nationalism, not communism, was the issue. He is said to have advised them to negotiate at any cost, in which case he was prescient indeed. He was replaced as commander of the French forces in 1946, and on November 28, 1947, he died with his staff in a plane crash in French Algeria.

DANIEL–CHARLES TRUDAINE (1703–69): This French administrator was a civil engineer of genius. One of the chief architects of the French road system, he is well known for the Trudaine Atlas, a monumental work (1745–80) of road maps and attendant features in astonishing cartographic and topographic detail: more than three thousand plates in sixty-two volumes, individually embellished with watercolor, showing actual and planned roads, waterways, the nature of the terrain, castles, houses, churches, cemeteries, ruins, plus designs for bridges, canals, and other civil engineering projects. Look up “Atlas de Trudaine — Wikipédia” to see a few of these lovely plates, the satellite photos of their day, and “L’atlas de Trudaine — YouTube” will bring you a French video about the book.

8 MAI: At three o’clock on May 8, 1945, Victory in Europe Day, church bells rang throughout France to mark Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender to the Allies of World War II. General Charles de Gaulle paid his respects at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier under the Arc de Triomphe, and all around the world there was, naturally, dancing in the streets.

2. Erik Satie (1866–1925) was a French composer, pianist, writer, and eccentric whose unconventional compositions were much admired by his contemporaries in the Parisian avant-garde, including Mallarmé, Verlaine, Breton, Man Ray, Cocteau, and Picasso. Debussy, Milhaud, Poulenc, Ravel, and Stravinsky were among those influenced by his ideas, which presaged such later artistic movements as musique concrète, indeterminacy, and minimalism. The youthful anarchist Satie became a socialist and in 1914, after the assassination of Jean Jaurès, joined the French Section of the Workers’ International. He never invited anyone home to his bleak studio without water or electricity in the southern suburbs of Paris, where after his death his friends found scores of umbrellas, several identical backup suits of gray velvet (his customary attire), and two tied-together, out-of-tune pianos full of unopened letters.

3. A French singer-songwriter and poet, Jean Ferrat (1930–2010) was known for singing poems, particularly the work of Louis Aragon. When his Russian-born father was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, Ferrat left school to go to work. He released his second single, “Ma Môme,” in 1960. Googling “Paroles Ma môme de Jean Ferrat, Clip Ma môme” will bring up a video of the song and provide the text of the French lyrics, the gist of which is “My girl’s not stuck-up, doesn’t act like a movie star, doesn’t wear dark glasses, and she works in a factory in Créteil”—a town in the southeastern suburbs of Paris.

4. Ordering French sandwiches separates the wheat from the chaff. Requesting un sandwich au jambon will get you a ham sandwich — made of bread and ham. If you want that sandwich with butter, you order un jambon beurre, a “ham butter.” A ham-and-cheese sandwich is not a “ham sandwich with cheese” (un sandwich au jambon avec du fromage), but a “ham cheese” (un jambon fromage). Which does not include butter! Un saucisson sec means a salami, a “dry sausage,” and if it’s a sandwich order, it means salami and bread, period. No butter. To get that, you order un sec-beurre: a “dry butter.” Go figure.

5. Elected by universal male suffrage to draw up a constitution after the overthrow of the monarchy, the Convention Nationale governed France from September 20, 1792, until October 26, 1795, a crucial time for the French Revolution. The Convention’s internal power struggles are the stuff of legend, and the most famous of its avatars is the Committee of Public Safety, a triumph of Orwellian doublespeak. Created to defend the fledgling republic against internal rebellion and foreign attack, this committee essentially ruled France during the Reign of Terror (1793–94). As internal repression accelerated, an antireligious campaign to dechristianize society — through execution if necessary — culminated in a celebration of Reason in Notre Dame on November 10, 1793. The intransigent Maximilien de Robespierre, however, denounced this cult and sent many of its practitioners to the guillotine. In June 1794 he announced his own establishment of a new state religion, the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being. This cult, too, was short-lived, however, for it died with its creator on July 28, 1794, when Robespierre, who had sent so many of his former allies to the guillotine, followed them to the scaffold.

6. In 1815 the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France, but when Napoléon escaped from the island of Elba on February 26 and returned to rule in Paris, Louis XVIII fled the country. The French defeat at Waterloo on June 18 led to Napoléon’s abdication and exile on Saint Helena, the return of Louis XVIII, and the Second Treaty of Paris, which finally ended the Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815) and made peace between France and her adversaries Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia.

7. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck goaded the French into declaring war on Prussia on July 19, 1870, thus drawing the other German states to his side in the Franco-Prussian War. Soundly beaten, France not only lost most of Alsace and some parts of Lorraine but witnessed the unification of Germany under Wilhelm I of Prussia, crowned kaiser of this new and threateningly powerful German state in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles on January 18, 1871. Fueled by anger over France’s humiliation and the monarchist sympathies of the Assemblée Nationale, a revolutionary uprising broke out two months later in Montmartre, but the socialist government of the Paris Commune held power in the capital for only two months and was crushed by the French army in a week of carnage during La Semaine Sanglante (May 21–28).

8. Google “gueules cassées” and click under “Images”; the injuries are stunning.