Chez Duplay

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

My first day living in Paris and the first thing I did was make a little side trip to la Maison Duplay.  The plaque is still in fine shape, the patisserie Les Délices de Manon is still going strong next door.  There was a man from Les Délices who noticed me standing there looking up at the plaque and said I could go inside the courtyard, so I did.  It was all alone in there and it was so quiet.  The courtyard opens onto a giant window for the restaurant of Les Délices de Manon, so I spent some time contemplating the metaphysical space of the Duplays' living room.

I remember in the book The Way of the Tumbrils there was a little map of the courtyard, and maybe in some other books as well?  I was wondering if anyone had a map so I could orient myself a little more when I inevitably head back.

Comments

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s213/cautopates/duplay-house01.jpg
http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s213/cautopates/duplay-house02.jpg
These were under Bettylabamba's picspam. I've got the Way of the Tumbrils somewhere if you need more details at some point - if I remember from his account, the glass window was put in postwar, and the door - if it's still there - had a city protection order put on it.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Wow, and from that, Robespierre's room seems to have been 4m by 2!

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that... Could you post some details from Way of the Tumbrils though? I seem to recall he was obsessing over the door that he thought was the original door to Robespierre's staircase? Where was that? Was he even right about that? Cause I remembered that and there was kind of a door to the side off in the corner that I *thought* was the place he was talking about, but the door didn't look all THAT old. So unless it got replaced between then and now (sad)...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I can't scan pictures in at the moment (I don't know why, but I don't have a paid account which could be the problem) but the door had big square panels on it (or cut into it) and a small grille at the top - I need to find the book to look at the drawing: if the door was protected, I suppose whatever the french equivalent of 'english heritage' or the Musee Carnavalet might know of its fate if it was replaced? Maybe the group that do the annual 10 thermidor commemoration in the courtyard might know.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v334/183/27/7501986/n7501986_30607722_9102.jpg

Like this?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the baby! Is it still there? (It's a really odd design - like panned salt crystals - I suppose even if they rebuilt the house when they added the extra floors it would save money to reuse what would then have been a perfectly good door!).

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

As of noon today, when that photo was taken, yes. :-)

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

http://photos-e.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v334/183/27/7501986/n7501986_30607660_2981.jpg

http://photos-f.ak.facebook.com/photos-ak-sf2p/v334/183/27/7501986/n7501986_30607661_3388.jpg

Here are the other two photos I took today, the front of the building and the courtyard.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Thank you so much for posting these! :) I suppose Robespierre's palatial room was one of those two up there (I love the Mark Steel comment about him running the country from a bedsit!). I'll dig out the Tumbrils book tomorrow (it involves a bit of mountaneering bookcasewise- I live in chaos...). I think he was horrified in the book because it had been painted white or pink or something camp like that, but added that this would preserve it, and it looks like it has!

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

You can't really see his room in the photos I took. In the full on one of the court, it's on the left side up above the overhanging grill/shade thing.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I suppose, from the plan, it'd get sunlight! What would the 'cabinet' be on the plans, though? Just storage? Polite euphemism for chamber pot room (though I don't think 18thc houses had a dedicated area for that)? MTV Cribs style walk-in wardrobe for the legendary two coats? (Where does that story come from? He must have had more, surely!)
Btw, what an excellent way to spend your first day in Paris! What did the man from the cafe think of you? They mention Robespierre on their website so I suppose they're sympathetic.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Given its location, I'd say it probably was an outhouse. "Cabinent d'aisance" indeed.

Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to go back and talk to the man and thank him for telling me I could get through the door to the courtyard (it looked very locked and forbidding) because when I came back out a huge group of people were lining up for pastries.

However, looking at that plan, I realize that the spiral staircase is still there too.

Question though. In Way of the Tumbrils, the author says when he finally got a look behind the door it was nothing more than a janitor's closet. That implies it was not very big, I wonder if big enough for a staircase. In the Conciergerie they have that ladder that they say was the "wooden staircase" built for Robespierre's separate entrance. However, I've never heard it described as a ladder and that seems a little odd to me. Do you think it was just a really tiny staircase? That the dimensions of the area behind the door were changed? That "wooden staircase" really meant "the ladder in the Conciergerie"?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It isn't really clear, but he describes the barman showing him the door from the inside, via the bar - it's just a closet with a washbasin (no mention of toilet), and a towel rail is attatched to the back of the door. The ladder sounds correct, though - my friends once had an 18thc stone house in wales and the staircase was simply a near vertical and really quite scary ladder with flat rungs, and in small 19thc 'two up two down' houses the fitted staircases are so steep that with my size 5 feet in pointy shoes I have to walk up slightly sideways (my friend fell down hers and knocked herself unconscious at the bottom because the base was right next to the wall!). If they were adding a staircase for Robespierre I suppose that would be the simplest way to do it without major restructuring.
I find his description of going round the house really confusing, though! He uses Lenotre as a guide (a title like 'revolutionary paris'), but there's also an early 19thc book called the 'maison de Robespierre', though I don't have either - maybe you can find them in a library while you are there? When he visits, the shop on the Rue and the bar are seperate entities (I think - still can't make head nor tail of it!), so I presume the room he describes as then being a flour store room is now part of the patisserie/restaurant.

btw, the artist Ian Hamilton Finlay did this neon piece, Matisse Chez Duplay, a few years ago (he's dead now) http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2007/apr/10/art.jonathanjones - as mentioned here, he fell out over the commission for the bicentennary because his first proposal of what to have to commemorate the revolution was "a revolution", the second, put a german tank in the Champs Elysees, didn't go down well...(he had an 'interesting' sense of humour).

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I love Ian Hamilton Finlay. I hope that I'll be able to make it over to Little Sparta sometime next summer.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

They did a small feature on it a few weeks ago on an arts programme here (and never mentioned the words 'French Revolution'!)- they flew over it by helicopter, too - it looks amazing!

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I have lots of books with floor plans and the like, but I unfortunately lack a scanner. It's really something to be there in person though, isn't it?

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

What really struck me was the quiet of the courtyard after coming in off the Rue St. Honoré.

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

You're lucky you got to go in; I've only ever looked into the courtyard from the outside. At any rate, it would have been even more quiet in the 18th century, being bordered on one side by a large convent-garden.

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is so quiet. I've stood there and looked up at M.R.'s window for quite a while at a time. It's so amazing seeing this thread here. I thought maybe I was the only person who ever went there and tried to reconstruct it by imagination!

Chez Duplay

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

I was over te point to faint when I've read your comment about Duplay's house. So, you had been THERE! When I visited at 20 years old, people couldn't go that far inside the house as you did...I wish I could visit again to make the little trip you did, LOL...

And, hey people; I'm profiting the writing of this message just to warn you that I can't post my article about Hanriot HERE but that I could do it at my journal page, here at Live Journal...So, if you want read it and watch some Hanriot's images, please visit my journal page.

HanriotFran (Vanesa)

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

...what. What! I thought I pretty well scoured the area and I saw no plaque, nothing. (Of course being ignorant I also was not entirely sure what I was supposed to find there.)

It would be hilarious if I was having my fits of ecstasy on the wrong street. (angst! and! woe!)

the sign

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

The marble sign would be smashed or painted over every few months when I was living in Paris. This was actually done by monarchists. Seriously. Nice to see the picture here.

Chez Duplay

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

I have spent many happy evenings dinning at the Duplay house when it was a family-run restaurant called "le Robespierre." The Robespierrst group Les Amis de Robespierre used to have dinners their. Have you met them? They are endless sources of information and are very generous to us foreigners with a love for their revolution. They all speak only French, but I assume you do? They have a website:
http://www.amis-robespierre.org/

Re: Chez Duplay

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I have not met them. I admit, I'm a little nervous to track down groups like that, being a 20-year-old American student. I feel I might be kind of out of place. Also, are they associated with the group L'A.M.R.I.D.? Is that the same thing or something else?