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Hello. Some little things - which I suppose are easier to take for granted...

First: I somehow feel guilty asking this, since it's not very useful either way (yes, let me deprecate myself a moment more) - else I might have brought it up earlier as it's been bothering me vaguely for years - but since I'd like to finally strike it off my 'wtf' list, I'm just going to put it out there: I recall reading on this site (incidentally, is it gone?) that Desmoulins was a "rumored" bisexual. Since then I have found this addressed in all of one place: Mantel's novel. Somehow, a work of fiction and the internet just don't do it for me, so I was wondering if anyone here knows of any reference to Camille's sexuality coming from a legit source? Or anything that isn't fictional outright, at least? Or is it just something the author of that site might have absorbed from fiction? Or both?!

Second: Okay, maybe this is just silly. But can anyone tell me more about the lock of Robespierre's hair at the Musée Carnavalet? ...and why it's white?

By the way, I'd like to suggest that since this community has separate tags under "desmoulins" and "camille desmoulins" that they be merged together. (Of course I am stupid about such things.)

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I still haven't been to the Musee Carnavalet (and it was on TV for a couple of minutes tonight, just to remind me!) so I haven't seen the relic in question, but some colours are fugitive - the red in Victorian taxidermy squirrels and foxes and - er - kittens - goes white with exposure to light. I don't have any antique brown or reddish hair, but it may do the same! Other than that - powder? Wig?

I don't have the reference to hand, but I think it comes from a remark made by Danton, recorded by Robespierre and given to Saint-Just for his accusation: it's something like 'Danton's a false friend and accused him of a private and shameful vice' (but that could be any number of things!). My Desmoulins book is Claretie, and he's very prim (1870's), so there's nothing on the source for the shagging Lucile's mother story, or any mention of bisexuality, or if such rumours floated around in scandal sheets of the time - hopefully someone else with a more up-to-date biog can enlighten on that!

P.S. it may just be the way my mind works, or the way it's translated, but the opening line of this letter doesn't half sound suggestive! http://chnm.gmu.edu/revolution/d/397/

(This will sound even sillier, but where do we know Robespierre's natural hair colour from, anyway? - I think I've just absorbed it such that I've lost track.) I was wondering that - I have no idea how it works in hair. And of course the wig thing came up too, but it just seems silly that someone would take a clipping from his wig and call it a lock of his hair. However inseparable they apparently were. And it doesn't look like powder...
...bleach?

That was all I could think of, too - but it seems very vague! As you've said, that could mean anything. Not to mention the way it's relayed - "he said that he said that he said..."; well, you know, maybe Danton didn't say that, or maybe he did but he was making crap up. Alas.
I've just bought Gérard Bonn's biography, which was published only last year. I can't go back and check at the moment because it's already packed up (I made a brief effort to find it, decided it wasn't worth it, sorry), but I have to admit, I checked the index when I got it (okay, this point has been privately gnawing at me) and saw nothing of the sort - I don't know though if he says anything about this vice of Camille's. But anyway, I'm not sure how to take the book, since upon skimming the author comes across as a bit of a squealing fanboy (I read an entire! paragraph! where every! sentence! was punctuated with an exclamation point!) - well, he does say in the preface that he's not a writer or a historian.
I have yet to lay hands on a copy of Claretie's biography. :/ Prim or not, I'd love to see it eventually.

It really does. No, I don't think that would be the first thing I'd think of to write there, it had to be aiming at something...

It is worth noting that, at various points in history, prases that would seem extremely intement or suggestive now were not seen as such then.

Re Camille: I haven't seen much to support that claim and I don't think it's the sort of thing that would be heavily documented, the rest of his life being rather more interesting.

Re Robespierre: It's an interesting question. He was under a lot of stress--is it possible he'd developed some white hairs naturally from that?

I do realise that. Aha, when I said "aiming at something" I didn't necessarily mean something 'suggestive', just that with an opening phrase like that, it had to have been meant to evoke a particular reaction. (That is, even back then Camille was seen as an excellent dramatic device!)

But haven't you read Schama? There's nothing more interesting than Camille's personal life! ;D
Well, really, I just want to know how it emerged, and if there's no basis, why.

I don't know. If it happened to Antoinette - but you'd think they would have seized on the historical anecdote if it had...?

I don't know if there would be a historical anecdote about Robespierre's hair--seeing as he always had it powdered, any color change would probably go unnoticed. Out of curiosity, do we know at what point in his life the lock is supposedly from?

(Note: The hair going naturally white may just be a slight fixation of mine after finding this summer among my dark hair a strand of white that appeared to corespond in legnth to the ammount of time I'd been in college so far...)

I don't think it could go entirely unnoticed if it had - even if he was incredibly diligent about powdering his hair, I assume it would have been visible, if only, say, at his execution. I don't know anything about the lock - but I've just found this (http://books.google.com/books?id=jeAmWNkmpHUC&printsec=frontcover) (pg 78) on google books:

A lock of Robespierre's hair has just come into the hands of the keepers of the Musée Carnavalet in Paris, and will in future be exhibited in that place by the side of the portrait of the Terrorist painted in 1783 by Boilly. Robespierre in that picture . . . is represented as a young man with finely-chiselled features, blue eyes, carnation lips, and light chestnut hair . . . The lock of hair is of the same colour as that in Boilly's picture. It was enclosed in a locket or medallion, on which were engraved the word " égalité," the date of the "9th Thermidor," and the martyr's palms. The souvenir belonged to Robespierre's sister Charlotte, who, on the death of the Terrorist, was sheltered by one of his adherents, the Citizen Mathon. Charlotte Robespierre, in May, 1834, died in a garret in the Rue de la Fontaine, and left the relic to Mathon's daughter, from whom it passed into the possession of a '48 man named Gabiot, whose son has handed it over to the Carnavalet M.

So! That gives us a bit more information. Er - I'm not sure about the 'light chestnut hair' in the portrait (if it's the one that comes up when I search - incidentally, there is no portrait of Robespierre by Boilly in my big fat catalogue of the Musée Carnavalet, but I have a feeling I'm being way too dorky and should get back to the point), but either way, if in the 19th century the hair was supposedly that colour too, perhaps it supports the idea that it lost its colour over time? Also - I don't know if the "9th Thermidor" is there because the hair was clipped at the time of the execution, or just because it went with the theme of martyrdom, but perhaps it helps.

It can happen! My cousin's been ill for several months and her hair has suddenly turned grey at the roots (she's 38).

Re: Maxime's hair. Seriously, I was just there a day or two ago and I was like "Huh! It's white!" My only guess was that it absorbed the powder? Or that it wasn't really Robespierre's hair. Or that due to stress he went waaaaay prematurely gray.

Re: Camille. Fear not, I have reflected on this question a lot. It's not just that website and Mantel's book though, as he is portrayed as bisexual in "City of Darkness, City of Light" (I'm pretty sure, it's been a long time since I read the book), and then there's "The Danton Case" in which everyone has a kind of questionable sexuality (Robespierre-sexual?). The only historical evidence that Camille may have been bi comes from guesses based on his personality/behavior and a line in the notes Robespierre took on the Dantonists.

(Translated by me as part of my Desmoulins translation project, I don't have the original French with me at the moment.)

"Proof of Danton’s ungrateful and black soul: He had loudly applauded Desmoulins’ latest works; at the Jacobins he dared to call for freedom of the press when I proposed that they should have the honors of being burned. During the last visit I mentioned, he spoke to me of Desmoulins with contempt: He attributed his deviances to a secret and shameful vice that has no relation to the Revolution."

...Or like other people were saying up thread, the hair could have just lost its pigment or something.

So, bisexual or not, there was definitely *something* "deviant" about Camille.

I don't think I've ever come across a comment about his hair at execution, but that's not really the sort of thing anyone would comment on. Btw there's a reference in a review of an exhibition in New York 1989 of a sketch of him on the way to execuion - has anyone ever seen this, or know who it's by or if it's genuine?

I think in the circumstances Charlotte would have got his hair in his lifetime as a keepsake: peope wore hair in lockets, rings, bracelets etc. "Mourning jewellery' is made of hair from the corpse, but it doesn't seem likely that she'd have got it after death, unless there was a sympathiser involved in the disposal of the bodies (that brings you back to the death mask/life mask conundrum I was discussing earlier in the week!), though Napoleon's hair was kept after his head was shaved for his death mask - in more formal circumstances, though! The date may be a riposte to the fashion for gloating Thermidor medals - mourning the day he and the hope for a Jacobin republic fell, otherwise I'd have thought it would be dated the 10th if it was taken from his corpse?

Perhaps the Boilly portrait is now not believed to be of Robespierre (given the date)? I presume they acquired the more famous stripey portrait at a later date so that is now 'the' portrait. And it sounds like the hair has faded over time from being on display: a lot of museums now keep cabinets covered with pieces of felt you have to lift and press a timer switch for a lightbulb for items like clothing and paper. That reminds me - is the famous bloodstained call to arms, with the unfinished signature, still on display? I presume they still have it, but I'd have thought that would be light-sensitive, too! (though I'm not sure about the truth of the story that surrounds it, or why it's dated the 9th not the 10th!)

I've always been surprised that Danton would slag someone off for having a vice! Or is it some off-the-cuff comment he made that becomes a 'shameful vice' when filtered through Robespierre-consciousness? So it could be anything....!
It could, if he means deviances as applied to writing, be laudanum (look at his English contemporary, Coleridge, total junkie!) - Desmoulins was having health problems at the time...

I suspect Danton referred dismissively to Camille for something specific, which Robespierre, being himself, was far too prudish to actually write down. And you're right, it could be anything. He could have been bisexual, he could have been sleeping with Annette (incest in the 18th century definition of it), he could have been a junkie, who knows. But that is the historical origin for the bisexuality rumor.

I've got an 80's book but it's second-hand and stinks of tobacco smoke so I'm waiting a bit before I limp through it with my crap French (what's french for 'bisexual'?). There's a comment on Amazon that Claretie had Lucile's socks...(fanboy!) and is very - 'oh, camille, how could you write this violent stuff ?-oh, i can hardly bear it - but i must record it' - which I actually really like!

I'm surprised Ruth Scurr didn't even touch on issues of sexuality in her recent book (she took the idea that Robespierre had a mistress and ran with that, even though she herself said the source was dodgy!)

It makes me think of the end of "Gladiator'!

Hilary Mantel also has some innuendo about services rendered to the gay lawyer Desmoulins worked for - but I have no idea where she got that from (she apparently wrote and rewrote the book over many years so may have dug something up in an archive that regular historians ignore?). I haven't read Royalist / right-wing pamphlets of the period, but I presume they'd have gossip and innuendo in them (??). Maybe it's not too dissimilar to today, where you hear a lot of lurid stories about politicians that never make it into print (very lurid, in Westminster bars!). (Somewhat off-piste, but there was always a sense that Mandelson, now EU trade commissioner, fancied Blair, to whom he was fanatically loyal -which led to this long-running slashy sketch show: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEQMfIhffo4&feature=related )

A P.S. on the Napoleon's hair thing - there are several locks of his hair surviving from various stages of his life - these were tested because of the arsenic poisoning theory - arsenic had been found when testing the hair taken after death, but it was also found on the earlier locks, so it's presumed his regular hair pomade had arsenic in it (nice!).

Dude, I am so jealous about those socks. I'm not even going to try to hide it. (I wonder where they ended up, anyway? Or how he got ahold of them?)
Haha, that sounds fantastic, honestly. Sometimes the writers themselves are as fun as the history! (Hence my love for Carlyle, which I'm still not sure whether I should be ashamed of or not.)

I haven't read Ruth Scurr - I keep feeling like I should, if only because it's recent, but then everything I've heard about it has so turned me off! Maybe some day, if I have the opportunity not to pay for it.

I think that makes sense - I'm sure as his sister it wouldn't have been too difficult to obtain, anyway. I suppose we don't know when it was put into that case, either - it seems awfully impersonal for a family keepsake, so maybe that was added after the lock fell into someone else's hands.

I expect any number of things could have happened with the portrait in the past century or so, so I won't worry about it - I only got a bit confused because I don't recall ever seeing a portrait of Robespierre with any discernible hair colour ~~unless one counts Madame Tussaud's~~ (not that I'm so on top of these things). But I can tell you that they acquired the 'stripey' portrait in 1883 ~~okay, I'll stop cuddling the catalogue now. But after lugging it across the pond I must get some use out of it.~~

I didn't see the bloodstained call to arms, which rather distressed me. I don't think I would have just missed it, but I've no idea what might have happened to it.

Interesting!

...oh, but I'm going to be circular now that you've brought up Napoleon's hair: I've seen two or three locks of it in different places (which rather seems unnecessary, but there you go) and they all seemed to be the right colour - I mean how they would have been on his head. They wouldn't really be that much older than Robespierre's. Though I wouldn't be surprised if they were just better taken care of?

Oh! I haven't read City of Darkness, City of Light (funny, I've just never seen it anywhere), but that's interesting. I thought of The Danton Case but, well, what stood out more in my mind (okay, I must admit, not much of it stands out in my mind) was Robespierre toward Camille - but I do think your right. ("Robespierre-sexual"! It's an uncanny description of the plays as a whole.)

...that has no relation to the Revolution.
Why, why does that addition make it all so much ~~funnier~~ worse? XD Ah, it's too bad that whole passage is rather strange and obscure. But yes, that phrasing rather makes me wonder what was meant by "deviances" (i.e. deviating from the Republic, or just being deviant?) because clearly it was not the same as "vice".

Oh my gosh I am totally going to write an epic historical novel where Camille is an incestuous bisexual junkie who hires a manservant to spank him with a volume of Montesquieu while he masturbates to Royalist propaganda. I'm bound to get at least one of them right.

I'm sorry, that was not very virtuous of me. ;_;

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