Some people build model ships...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

But this man.... http://boisdejustice.com/Home/Home.html
Hmm...!
If you can lightly skip over his take on the Revolution (he knows a lot about guillotines, but evidently not much about the 1790's!) the history page has a pre-1925 fire photo of the Paris guillotine blade and lunette. There was a fire in 1925 that destroyed Madame Tussauds in London, including, sadly, most of the Revolution and Napoleon artefacts, but the blade survived, though damaged - I don't know what became of the lunette (I last went when I was 5 or 6!). I suppose you have to take their word for it that it's the one: it's now billed as 'the blade that killed Marie-Antoinette' (and I bet they were tempted to add 'like in the movie'?), but if that's the case parts, if not all of it, must also have been used to kill - well, pretty well everyone that everyone here is interested in...which is a weird and horrible thought...
http://boisdejustice.com/History/History.html
(btw in case you didn't know, Tussaud also allegedly took Robespierre's 'death mask' -the Parisian place that makes copies believes it was actually taken in life, which is plausible - Washington had his cast in life, as did many politicians, poets etc. - but billing it as taken at the foot of the guillotine sounds more dramatic! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/dec/01/france.art )
Gosh, I'm morbid today!

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

According to the historian Antoine de Baecque, the death mask in Mme Tussaud's could not have been made from life, as has often been asserted--a rather persistent legend. This is because the Thermidorians expressly prevented it from being made: "Contrary to the legends that were spread, not only was no death mask of Robespierre taken in wax, before or after the execution, but we also find in the archives of the two committees, the Committee of Public Safety and the Committee of General Security, an order of 10 Thermidor 'relative to the disposing of the conspirators." It recommends "the acquisition of a great quantity of time,' of which, it then says, "a substantial layer will be spread over the remains of the tyrants to corrupt them and prevent them from one day being deified." A series of measures is thus taken in the immediacy of events. The final disappearance of the corpses of the Robespierrists must be hastened, the Incorruptible corrupted: decomposition of the bodies is accelerated, the communal ditch of the Errancis closely guarded, as well as the Rue du Rocher, which leads to it, to avoid any theft of "relics," and a death mask is prohibited, setting this apart from other famous victims of the guillotine, executions in the course of which the executioners were less scrupulous." (de Baecque, trans. Charlotte Mandell, Glory and Terror pp. 150-1)

As to its having been taken in life, well, it's possible I suppose. But it's no less possible that it was made from memory with his portrait as a guide.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I've seen some of 'Glory and Terror', and apparently Hector Fleischmann also makes a case against it, though I don't know in which book or what the case is. Thompson refers to several different death masks, though most I've seen appear to be the same cast, differently made up, and if attributed at all, attributed to Tussaud....(except one, that looks like Alain Delon with a shot jaw!) but...I still don't think it would have been impossible to make the cast, with a bit of bribery! I've seen references to the auction of Robespierre and Saint-Just's possessions, several months later, including two (sometimes three!) 'bloodstained' coats allegedly belonging to the brothers and allegedly worn on 9/10th Thermidor, and sold for 800 livres - they'd have been more relaxed about selling relics by that point, but it does suggest that the order to obliterate Robespierre wasn't strictly followed in all quarters.

However, it doesn't have a jaw wound, and it isn't swollen, as you'd expect after 17 hours or so of injury.
This is odd because, if it was sculpted- rather than cast- posthumously for a post Thermidor exhibit, you'd expect them to make much of the world- famous injury, and make it look satisfyingly hideous and contorted with pain.
Having your life-mask made was fashionable (Washington had his done while alive, and whilst it was uncomfortable a lot of people went through with it to be immortalised!) and I'd expect it's possible Tussaud may have requested to make a cast from life, and then embellished the story to the gorier severed-head version when she moved to London.
To add to the confusion, though, I've also come across a reference to a 'date unknown' life mask of Robespierre by Jean-Antoine Houdon. It was Houdon who took the plaster cast of Washington, whilst making a scuplture of him, and made life and death masks and sculptures in Paris during the revolution, though I've never seen a picture of his life mask of Robespierre - does it exist? Did it survive? Maybe Tussaud 'borrowed' it, and that's the one, Houdon's, with added blood and bandages, on the spike in various Chambers of Horrors?

This one, which is the one I've seen billed as the 'Tussaud' one http://oocradio.blogspot.com/2008/01/death-mask-tuesday-enemies-within-ed.html (that photo seems to have been done with a wide angle lens!) does seem to be a cast of a face - the eyelids shut (in death, or to keep out the plaster? - surely a clay sculptor would model them open if working from a sitter or a sketch), the eyebrows are messy, rather than neat as you'd expect from a head modelled in clay, there are pockmarks,etc. and the bone and muscle structure correspond closely to the famous stripey Carnavalet portrait...it would be interesing to project a slide over it to see if it matched! - though that also leaves the question of the source and date of the anonymous oil portrait! (What if one was done from the other!?) I've read that one of their portraits came from David D'Angers' estate, and he was given it by Souberbielle, who was given it by Robespierre - great story if true...but nothing's ever certain in this field!

So, after that very messy theorising...I think life mask, but I wouldn't stake my life on it!

Have you come across the story that Danton had his wife dug up so one of the Deseine brothers could make a clay model of her face? If it's true, does the model survive?

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Additional thought! I did once think maybe it could have been made by David D'Angers from the oil, if he had the oil in his private collection - he had the skill and the sympathy - but I presume the mask first appeared long before he was active, and why make a sculpture with closed eyes, or a fake death mask with no wound? Tussauds have (or had - there was a ww2 blitz bomb after the '25 fire) the mould 'matrix', but that could be a cast from a cast, and unless it could be forensically examined for eyebrow hairs or blood (after the fire?) I suppose there's no way of knowing...though it would be fun to try...

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

I would suggest that the chance of a death mask or a life mask ever having been made is almost nil. The market for artifacts has always been lucrative. So much so, that it's actually a wonder that there aren't more alleged masks, bloodied garments, locks of hair, etc. The people who are in such trade (including those who made death and life masks for a living) are in the business of believing that such items exist and passing on that belief to a paying public. Whether they are scam artists, merely duped by others, or a little of both, I don't know. But since the only claims for such things comes from people connected to making money off of them, I can't buy into any of the masks, coats, etc. One more reason: remember how urgent the need to obliterate the Robespierrists was. It would have been serious business to assert that it would be a good idea to make a mask. That would not have amused any of the Thermidoreans. As for a life mask, I can't picture Robespierre undergoing such an indignity without every one of his enemies screaming about it as soon as it was done. Yet only postmortem tales of masks exist. The only reason for believing such tales is resorting to "it's not impossible." That's just not convincig enough for me.

And yet, I've been told at the Carnavalet Museum that the lock of hair has very good evidence supporting its authentcity. I also asked why it was white and was told that it was the powder used to render hair fashionably white. My comment was something to the effect that they must have stuck that powder on with something nasty because it sure looks completely and totally white. I was told that's how it was. My natural inclination is to be very skeptical and I'm still not convinced that that hair is Robespierre's. The Carnavalet did not produce the convincing evidence they have, so I can't judge for myself. I should probably just trust their expertise on it--as I trust their expertise on believing the other artifacts in other places are hooey.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Whilst it's no proof of authenticity, the 19thc newspaper account on the acquisition of the hair says it was brown when it first went on display. Generally, fabrics and paper are now displayed in rooms with no natural light. Rather stupidly, when I was a student, I had a pair of 1860's stuffed ginger kitttens on my desk by a window (goth alert!) and they turned white in just a year! I presume the staff member was just ignorant of textile conservation issues.

As far as I can gather, Fleishmann's argument that the death mask is fake (pamphlet 'Masque Mortuaire de Robespierre') is that there wasn't the opportunity to make it after death, assuming the govt order was carried out to the letter: but (according to Bindman) the story that it was cast at the foot of the guillotine first appeared in 1838, in Tussaud's probably ghostwritten memoirs, and the story that they were taken after execution is first recorded as being mentioned in 1822, when they were moved to a seperate early version of the Chamber of Horrors - before that, I'm not clear if they were exhibited as life or death masks, but they were just exhibited (London 1802) with biographical details, and no lurid stories. Tussaud's uncle had run the Palais Royal waxworks all through the revolution, and seems to have been politically 'left'. Another thing to it pointing to it's not being a death mask is that it has no wound, and as I've mentioned in an earlier post, if you were going to make a fake death mask, why miss out the one feature that everyone wants to see, the broken jaw and the wound? Why make the 'monster' look so serene? So, maybe it's a life mask?

This was a great era for death and life masks and souvenirs (the Victorians replaced them with deathbed photographs!), and in Britain death masks were also frequently taken of murderers - presumably for phrenology or just souvenirs (also skin, in one case in Edinburgh!). There's a mention of a life mask of Robespierre taken by Houdon - as Houdon did Washington alive and Mirabeau and Rousseau dead, Robespierre would be joining an illustrious list of clients, and the terracotta bust by Deseine was sculpted, rather than cast, from life, actually made in the Jacobin club, according to Cockburn (I'd need to get French art books for more info, though - they're not well known names here). There were certainly dozens of sketches, paintings, busts, plates medals etc. made of him in life, so it's not implausible he'd have been asked for and sat for a mask. and the cast itself looks incredibly like him - assuming the Carnavalet portrait and the glasses on forehead sketch are lifelike - and doesn't look sculpted (why make a sculpture with the eyes shut?). It's impossible to be 100% sure of anything from this era, though, and I haven't read Fleischmann's case against - before the pamphlet, in 1911, they were assumed to be kosher - now when the mask's pictured , it's often with the words 'supposed' or 'alleged'.

(I once did a thesis on waxworks, taxidermy and photography - and my tutor told a BBC producer friend of his about it and he nicked one of my stories and went off and made a documentary on one of my subjects (a dead outlaw whose embalmed body turned up in an arcade) for the history slot! Seriously!)

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

Hair turning white when exposed to sun. Hmmm. I had no idea.
You're on top of art in a way I'm not. It just seems that the best argument for the mask being authentic is still "it's not impossible" and that leaves me very cold. If there were any contemporary (i.e., 1794) account of a mask being made, that would be intriguing. Without it, it sounds like someone selling tickets to her waxworks. I don't blame them, I just don't trust them.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting subject (it's where a lot of my interests in art, history, politics and the macabre meet!) - but Tussaud was in showbiz and they're notorious for embellishing their stories to make them as grisly as possible! She says, for example, she took the cast of Marat's face while he was still warm! But, then again, she was local, and it's not impossible - she also says Robespierre actually gave her his clothes for their figure of him, which doesn't tally with the Robespierre-had-very-few-clothes story, but then, the 'he only had two coats' may be a myth, too! That's actually one of the things I love about this whole period, and has kept me interested for years: the inexhaustible supply of alternative and often contradictory accounts that you have to sift through - other periods are interesting, too, but people didn't write memoirs in earier centuries and little survives except archaology - and of course that the politics of the period are still a live issue in a way the politics of the 15thc are not!

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

Ew. I just visited the site victoriavandal links in her initial post here. What an amazingly creepy hobby. Am I intolerant and hyper-judgmental in thinking this is a very twisted person? Ew.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I know someone who restores vintage buses - maybe he's just into the engineering challenge..? There are thousands of male tank and gun enthusiasts - makes an interesting change for a man to be into something so loaded with castration symbolism!

[marieclaire08.livejournal.com]

LOL! Yes, the gentleman is clearly very secure in his masculinity to have this as his weapon of choice--hadn't thought of that. Well, the gun enthusiasts make me say "ew" too. As I live in the rural southwest USA, I say "ew" a lot.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

There was a discussion on maelicia's page recently about jokes in pamphlets about 'cutting off the queue' on the guillotine - that being both hairstlye/ponytail and slang for penis - so the Freudian connotations evidently entered the minds of people at the time, too!
Yes, to a British person, the American gun lobby come across as barking mad - though gun crime is going up here (handguns are illegal but, it seems, easy to import. Actually, it's knives that are 'fashionable' - there's an epidemic of teen stabbings! - but you don't see 'bikini babes with knives' like you see American calendar girls stroking machine guns!)

1790's and guillotine

[boisdejustice.livejournal.com]

Interesting comments regarding my hobby. I assure you that I am not as weird as my interest in the French National Razor makes me sound (of course that is a matter of opinion). My interest is more a fascination with the purpose and design of the machine, rather than with the gore/horror aspect of it.

I was curious as to the comment about my lack of knowledge of the 1790's. I actually consider myself quite knowledgeable on the subject, having lived in Paris for 20+ years and studied the History of the French Revolution quite a bit. Of course, in the context of the History of the Guillotine, the portion about the French Revolution is a bit over-simplified on my website, as it only serves as the backdrop for the birth of the main actor. But I am always open to suggestions on what I might improve.

Are there any direct errors in what I have written?

On a related subject, I do have a B&W photo of the "so called" death mask of Robespierre which appears to have a jaw wound, however it is not a very convincing one. Other death masks of people that were guillotined in the early 1800s are much different in expression from those of "famous people" at Madame Tussaud's which makes me doubt that they are actually death masks.

Re: 1790's and guillotine

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I was wondering if you'd ever come across this page! Ok, I am not one to criticise strange hobbies - right now I'm sitting in a room full of Victorian stuffed birds, animal skulls, an Emu (oh, yes, full size), and the cat's asleep on top of a pile of 1790's Moniteurs, next to a repro English Civil War Roundhead hat...and my first choice of Lj name was Lunette- sadly, taken. And, yes, I'll admit I have books on guillotines....I'm still curious to know how you got into it, though! Guns, tanks and battle reenactments are more usual!

I know you're trying to pack a lot of history into a couple of paragraphs, but unfortunately it comes across to me (I'm a hairy old lefty) as a 19thc / Simon Schama 'take' - Robespierre as 'master of the Terror', etc., killing left right and centre in a sort of delerium - the irony of his downfall is that amongst the plotters of the coup are extreme terrorists whose fear of being called to account for atrocities in the provinces leads them to kill before they are killed - then write themselves up as whiter-than-white heroes afterwards. Nor do I think the early ideals are 'replaced' - if anything, the idealism increases, in the sense of a vision of perfect society when the promised land is reached: what goes horribly wrong is the day to day stuff on the ground, and the reasons for that are as I'm sure you know extraordinarily complex and different in each individual case, often fraught with ironies and paradoxes and all manner of external pressures, overt and covert (that's why I've been obsessed with this period in particular for decades - you can never exhaust it!).

I wonder to what extent you can 'blame' the guillotine itself for the death toll? It made killing easy. If each execution had taken 30 mins like those at Tyburn, or worse, been like the horrific ones of the Ancien Regime, I'd imagine John-Tuturro-in-Millers-Crossing-like scenes on the scaffold would have made the executions less tolerable to audience, victim, executioner and regime alike. Then again, I've just finished 'War and Peace' (at last!) - 80,000 dead in one day, and all concerned are regarded as national heroes...! (a thought - a book I've got called something like 'a dictionary of modern history' has as its cover image that Thermidor cartoon of Robespierre executing the executioner on one side, the atom bomb on the other...so it defines the modern era as bookended by clean modern weapons of death!)

On the 'death mask' - a lot of the 'different' heads look to me like the same head differently made up. Tussaud's uncle's waxwork show in the Palais Royal/Egalite had a model of Robespierre made in his lifetime (she claims he donated some clothes for it, but like everything she says it's impossible to know the truth!), and it seems likely that it was this one that was swiftly altered after Thermidor (quick, chop its head off and stick some paint on it!) - but it was the practice of sculptors, even ones who worked with a sitter, to take a cast for reference, so the 'death mask' may well be a 'life mask': it's the straight-off-the-guillotine story that seems doubtful. The heads of Hebert and Fouquier-Tinville have part-open eyes, but I've only seen the waxworks of those, not the unadorned plaster casts themselves, so I've no idea if that's a grisly detail added on afterwards for extra yuk in the Chamber of Horrors.

Yes, I am morbid...!

Re: 1790's and guillotine

[boisdejustice.livejournal.com]

To answer your question on how I got into this hobby... 1972, a 15-year old kid living in the suburbs of Paris innocently came across an article in the newspaper talking about the execution of two criminals, Buffet and Bontemps, in the Sante prison in Southwestern Paris, a place he was quite familiar with. Further reading revealed that these fellows had been DECAPITATED with a mysterious machine called a "guillotine" although there were no pictures. A frantic search of many other sources yielded an article in L'Express and a large front page drawing of the awesome apparatus. Not only did this kid not know, before that day, that his country was still executing people, but the idea that they were cutting their heads off in a machine was just overwhelming to him. The next year, to the horror of his parents, the kid built his first guillotine model, a crude rendition of the magical apparatus (for extra credits in his history class). After successfully repressing the urge for 30 years, I was overcome be the need to see if I could do it again, this time with proper documentation, better tools and more refined carpentry skills... and it turns out that the machine has quite a following and there is a small, largely un-met, demand for such models. So until my enthusiasm runs out I will continue building them. The macabre aspect of it has worn off over time and I only see it as a tool designed for a specific purpose. I still admire the design and feel great pleasure in achieving a better and better semblance of the real thing.

I too collect books on the guillotine, most of them in French. I also collect photographs, news articles and historical information. When I read about reactions to my website I am often surprised to find how the subject appears to others... I guess I have grown calloused to those pictures and the information surrounding them. Spending three days this summer going over every inch of a real Berger guillotine that had actually been used, felt to me like I was visiting an "old friend". Every part of it seemed so familiar although it was the first one I had ever seen in person. I am very squimish when in comes to other gory photos/information. For example I wouldn't go on a site like oggrish-dot-com because I know it would make me sick. On the other hand, guillotines seem no more gory to me than a kitchen slicer...

Not to worry I also have more "normal" hobbies like collecting handguns, re-enacting Civil War battles and restoring WW-2 armored vehicles - Just kidding - but I do have a keen interest in Civil War and WW-2 history.

You are correct that my depiction of the French Revolution's descent into madness is grossly oversimplified for the purpose of explaining how the guillotine developed and where the multitude of 1792 machines came from. There is however a sense of loss of direction and ideals when the leaders, after advocating Liberty, Equality and Brotherhood, writing a Bill of Human Rights, emancipating slaves, promoting women, casting down privileges and capricious laws, promoting freedom of speech and religion start repressing ideas, start killing off people in a mass-paranoia for exercising their newly gained liberties... going on to repress religion, start killing eachother for political gain... They use mock trials to sentence anyone to death if they deem they "might" not agree with them.

The ease of the death by guillotine may have been a contributing factor to the bloodshed of "The Terror" but one must not forget the tens of thousands that were sommarily shot, drowned or executed by cannon in the ruthless repression in the provinces. Those victims by far exceed the number of those that were beheaded. I see Robespierre as a man with noble ideas (he first proposed that the death penalty be abolished) that got caught up in the cause and completely lost sight of the purpose, bending all principles in the pursuit of power. I cannot forgive him for having Danton and his followers executed for personal political gain. I have always regarded Danton as the greater mind and the more humanitarian side of the Revolution that might have tempered it.

Re: 1790's and guillotine

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I once baked a 17th century cake rather than write a school essay, but I never did anything like that! The death penalty was abolished here (Britain) in the late 60's: it was only a few years before I was born, but it seems like something that belongs in the distant past. I find it very shocking when I get an ebay item from the USA with newspaper packaging discussing executions!

Which Civil War? We had a village Fete here a few years ago, with a Civil War theme - but when the re-enactors turned up, they were in Covered Wagons and dressed as Union and Confederate: the village organisers had booked the wrong Civil War! I suppose we'll get some Napoleonic re-enactments in 2012 and 2015, which I'm looking forward to because I love the uniforms...

Strangely, in the popular image of the Revolution (outside France), the deaths at Nantes and Lyon are ignored - it's always Paris and the guillotine that is emphasised, and with wildly exaggerated death tolls. I presume it is because of the incongruity of the idea that the 'Age of Reason' should produce something as paradoxical as a 'humane' machine for killing human beings! Meanwhile, we seem blasé about deaths by bullet or cannon fire...that's somehow regarded as 'natural'!

I think it's unfair to blame Robespierre for Danton's death: on 9th Thermidor Robespierre was accused of both killing Danton AND of defending him (!!) - he had earlier defended him at the Cordeliers, and tried to defend Desmoulins at the Jacobins, and was reportedly defending Danton against demands for his arrest within the Comité de Salut Public until the last minute - then helped to draft their accusation (!). Danton and co. must have thought he was still inclined towards them, as they called for him twice as a witness at their trial, to no avail. I don't think it was about personal gain - of all the existing members of the CSP at that time, had Danton attempted to defend Fabre and brought the government down (his motives still seem unclear), Robespierre would probably have survived such a coup. I think it was a matter of maintaining government stability, striking Left and then Right, regardless of the human cost to people who were once personal friends. It is very much in the Roman / Spartan civic spirit believed to be 'noble' at the time - like David's painting of Brutus with the bodies of his sons - but from a human point of view, chilling.

I think it's tragic that the Indulgents didn't wait until the spring to launch their campaign: their timing was bad: even friends like Freron were warning Desmoulins that, living in Paris, he failed to appreciate the difficulties on the front line. I know what you mean about Danton and Desmoulins (who I particularly like) being more warmly 'human', but it was perhaps easier to be humane in the semi-retirement, with families, they were both living in at the time, far harder when living the incredibly stressful 24/7 atmosphere of government, when nerves must have been stretched to breaking point - I always wonder how they managed to function at all under so many stresses, national and personal.