(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]

The London museum with the stolen gun was the Sir John Soane - it's in Holborn, not far from the British Museum, and still has its original 18th/19thc display layout, so it's basically a museum of a museum, the private house of a mad collector, with every bit of wallspace in a tall 18thc house covered! Really worth seeing if you're in London - and the Pitt Rivers in Oxford is stunning, too- it's inside the Oxford Natural History Museum, and features in Philip Pullman's books. They had to repatriate the aborigine penis and the mummified tatooed maori heads, though! And up the road is the Ashmolean, where Marat allegedly nicked some items!

[misatheredpanda.livejournal.com]

Ah! I want to see that. It sounds lovely. (I've been to the ones in Oxford - but what is this about Marat? Why is that man so damned cool?)

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

He seems to have led a very bizarre life before the revolution ('seems' - some dates tally, for others there's just rumour) - including ending up in a Great Expectations/Magwich style prison hulk for that theft! I hope the stories are true - if so, he was also a french teacher at the Warrington Academy that used to exist down the road from me (the idea that there was once the need for a french teacher in Warrington - it's just an industrial wasteland these days!)