Mmm, interesting discussion. "Tiger" is a strong archetype, usually related to a kind of subversive power exactly at the opposite as suggested by the royal patriarchal connotation of "lion"... If "lion" archetype recalls order, blood aristocracy and hierarchies, "tiger" one recalls the matrifocal earthly powers of wilderness and chaos from which construction and distruction do come out. And equality too, because tigers are much more individualist than lions and don't live in groups. I have read about Billaud's "tiger" wig, but I don't remember exactly where. On the biographical note I linked to this page I read he had black hair (as we can see in most of his portraits) but he also used to wear a red wig (made with natural hair and unpowdered, I suppose...). I had the impression it was considered very typical of him and quite kitsch from his contemporaries ! :D I also read about his "puce coat" on some account related to the massacres of September - if my memory doesn't fail (the weather is so hot and so wet that all my intellectual skills and not are k.o. !). Could it be in some work of an English historician like Macaulay or Carlyle ?
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timeasmymeasure
Re: Billaud-Varenne
Date: 2008-08-23 05:19 pm (UTC)I have read about Billaud's "tiger" wig, but I don't remember exactly where. On the biographical note I linked to this page I read he had black hair (as we can see in most of his portraits) but he also used to wear a red wig (made with natural hair and unpowdered, I suppose...). I had the impression it was considered very typical of him and quite kitsch from his contemporaries ! :D
I also read about his "puce coat" on some account related to the massacres of September - if my memory doesn't fail (the weather is so hot and so wet that all my intellectual skills and not are k.o. !). Could it be in some work of an English historician like Macaulay or Carlyle ?