(no subject)

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

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.)

Comments

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

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 )

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I always figured that was fictional (as far as we know!), just part of establishing Camille's fictional back story and the fact that he swung both ways.