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Notes on Contributor
Caroline Ferraris-Besso is Assistant Professor of French at Gettysburg College. Her research is concerned with the ways in which literature, painting, and photography have been used to shape racial, social, and sexual minorities in France and in the French Colonial Empire.
Notes
1 The blog post states that the poster had been “placardée sur les murs de Paris autour de 1850” “par un ouvrier” (“posted on the walls of Paris in 1850” “by a worker”). That same poster had already been referred to in blog posts dated March 2013 (“En 1848, la France révolutionnaire renvoyait les savoyards [sic] chez eux,” http://humeursmondialisees.blogspot.fr/2013/03/en-1848-la-france-revolutionnaire.html) and February 2010 (“Haro sur les Savoyards,” http://www.lavoixdesallobroges.org/histoire/146--savoyards-a-paris). The February 2010 posting includes a photocopy of a contemporary history book in which the poster is referenced. In an attempt to trace the origin of the poster, in February 2016 I contacted two regional historical societies, the Académie Salésienne, which is referenced in the Médiapart blog post, and the Salévienne, a regional historical society. The Académie Salésienne had no idea where the poster was from, as for the Salévienne, a spokesperson responded: “j'avis [sic] pris ce texte dans la revue d'histoire de Passy qui doit s'appeler de mémoire Vatassium [sic] et qui publiait ce texte; malheureusement il n’ y avait pas de référence précise, même si le texte est authentique.” (“I took this text in the Passy history journal, which from memory must be named Vatassium [sic] and that published the text; unfortunately there was not a precise reference, even though the text is authentic.”). In the text presenting the poster in Vatusium, the bulletin of the association “Culture, Histoire et Patrimoine de Passy,” “une gravure représentant la République, en mère de famille, lavant la face d’un petit ramoneur” (“an engraving depicting the Republic, as a mother, washing the face of a little chimneysweep”) (48) is referenced, which seems strikingly similar to the Cham engraving I discuss at the end of this essay. According to Vatusium, the text of the poster followed this engraving in a journal; however, in the issue of L’Illustration where the Cham drawing was initially published, no such text appears.
2 Several of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s works are set partly or wholly in Savoy, among which the autobiographical texts Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (published posthumously in 1782) and Les Confessions (published posthumously in 1782 for the first part and 1789 for the second part). Rousseau’s education treatise, Émile ou De l’éducation, published in 1762, also famously included the controversial “Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard,” whose main character was based on two ecclesiastics from Savoy Rousseau had met in his youth. Alphonse de Lamartine’s celebrated poem “Le Lac” refers to the Lac du Bourget. It was published in 1820 in Méditations poétiques. Additionally, Chateaubriand, Stendhal, and George Sand, to name but a few, traveled to and wrote about Savoy before the 1840s.
3 The first “cry” is at the bottom of an anonymous sixteenth-century “Ramoneur” figure from a Cris de Paris series; the second accompanies a “Ramoneur” drawn between 1640 and 1650 by Abraham Bosse; the last is from a 1726 engraving by Jean-Baptiste Bonnart. All emphases are my own.
4 Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné, is known for her thirty-year correspondence with her daughter, Françoise-Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan.
5 Such depictions still endure in the twenty-first century: a popular souvenir from Savoy is a tiny ramoneur figurine, clad in black with a red scarf and hat and a ladder, which bears a label reading “Petit ramoneur: je serai votre porte-bonheur” (“Little chimneysweep, I will be your lucky charm”). Cf. http://www.lectura.plus/expositions/savoie/zoom.php?p=affichage&gal=gal_chap6&img=img05
6 Jacques Grandjonc writes: “Allemands, Belges, Suisses, Savoyards, Anglais, Italiens, Espagnols, etc. constituent une main d’œuvre à bon marché […] et entrent en conflit avec les ouvriers français, aux moments de crise” (“Germans, Belgians, Swiss, Savoyards, Englishmen, Italians, Spaniards, etc. are a cheap workforce and collide with French workers in times of crisis”) (1974, 62). Citing Georges Duveau’s La vie ouvrière en France sous le Second Empire, he mentions in particular the 1848 outcry of Parisian workers: “À bas les Savoyards! À bas les étrangers!” (“Down with the Savoyards! Down with the foreigners!”) (Grandjonc Citation1974, 85, citing Duveau Citation1946, 64).
7 In 1837, in their Biographie des hommes du jour, Germain Sarrut and B. Saint-Edme repeat Quérard’s claim and add that “Ce succès était légitime […] c’est sans contredit à ce petit poème [Élégies savoyardes] que M. Alexandre Guiraud est le plus redevable de sa réputation littéraire” (“This success was deserved. It is without a doubt to that little poem that Mr Alexandre Guiraud owes his literary reputation”) (1837, 274).
8 There are other similarities between the two poems: both du Bellay and Guiraud mention the “village” and the “fumée” coming out of the chimney. Additionally, both evocations of the “fumée” contain an anteposition: “de mon petit village fumer la cheminée” in du Bellay; “du toit aigu sort un peu de fumée” in Guiraud. Both poets insist on the simplicity of the environment: “mon petit village,” “ma pauvre maison”; “son village,” “sa chaumière,” which they compare to Rome and Paris, respectively.
9 The city is mentioned four times in the sonnet, once directly (“palais Romains”) and three times through metonymies (“le Tybre Latin,” “le mont Palatin,” “l’air marin”). Each mention is accompanied with one referring to Anjou: “le sejour qu'ont basti mes ayeux,” “mon Loyre Gaulois,” “mon petit Lyré,” and finally “la doulceur Angevine,” which closes the sonnet. In du Bellay’s sonnet, the poet, who is likened to Odysseus and Jason, longs for his natal Anjou during a much anticipated, but ultimately disappointing stay in Rome. His stay in Rome verges on exile rather than voyage as he concludes the humble Anjou is the place he likes the most, his home.
10 An example of the overrepresentation of Savoyards among “commissionnaires” was their de facto monopoly on the Union des Commissionnaires de l’Hôtel des Ventes (UCVH), based at the Hôtel Drouot auction house, which lasted from approximately the 1860s to 2010, when the UCVH was effectively dismantled after law enforcement discovered the UCVH had organized the theft of works of art. But before that, for a century and a half, Commissionnaires had to have ties to Savoy to be hired: “L’embauche […] s’effectue essentiellement par cooptation sur recommandation d’un proche, parent, ami ou voisin dans les vallées alpines de Savoie et de Haute-Savoie” (“Hiring is largely done based on cooptation through recommendations from close friends, relatives, friends or neighbors in the Alpine valleys of Savoie and Haute-Savoie.”) (Arpin Citation2010).
11 The phrase mère patrie is particularly apt here, as it combines the maternal and the paternal: the child from Élégies savoyardes goes back to his mother; André becomes the pater familias.
12 Léon Curmer published the collection from 1840 to 1842. It comprises a total of nine volumes: the first five are dedicated to Parisians, the next three to the province and colonies, and the last one, entitled Le Prisme, was a gift to subscribers.
13 Paul de Kock wrote a chapter of the fifth volume, entitled “La Première Amie” (“The first woman friend”), but he also made other contributions to panoramic literature (cf. O’Neil-Henry, 2012, 107-108). Arnould Frémy was a writer and journalist. He authored four entries of Les Français peints par eux-mêmes: “Le Ramoneur” and “La Revendeuse à la toilette” (first volume), “L’enfant de fabrique” (sixth volume), and “L'Habitant de Versailles” (seventh volume).
14 Several nineteenth-century engravings, in which young ramoneurs are seen holding their hats out in begging in the foreground while swarms of other panhandling young boys crowd the background, echo Frémy’s sentiment. See for example George Emmanuel Opitz, “Le Savoyard.” (After 1813. Etching. Série de 4 estampes intitulées Tableaux de Paris, Gemälde von Paris. Musée Carnavalet); George Emmanuel Opitz, “Tableau de Paris. / Boulevart Montmartre, la marchande des modes, les petits ramoneurs, au Petit Palais, pauvre père de famille” (Circa 1814-1831. Drawing. Album de 29 dessins intitulé Tableaux de différents mœurs et costumes. Musée Carnavalet); or Frédéric Bouchot, “Un p'tit sou, mon beau Mossieu!” (Circa 1838-1840. Lithograph. N°14 of a series of 20. Musée Carnavalet).
15 He is not alone in his view that Savoyards are responsible for the woes of their children. On March 16, 1862, the abbé Bugniot, from Châlon-sur-Saône, became so alarmed at the living conditions of little Savoyards that he sent a petition to the Sénat asking “1° qu’il fût interdit à tout Savoyard, parent ou patron, d’emmener en qualité de ramoneurs des petites filles vêtues d’habits de garçon ; 2° que tout père, parent ou patron, dont l’enfant, le parent ou le pupille serait surpris mendiant ou vagabond, fût déclaré responsable et passible au moins d’une amende” (“1° that it be forbidden to any Savoyard, parent or boss, to take on as chimneysweeps little girls dressed as boys; 2° that any father, parent, or boss, whose child, parent, or ward would be caught begging or wandering, be held responsible and liable to a fine”) (Lovie Citation1963, 322).
16 Patrick Peccatte notes that in the United States, chimneysweeps were often young African-Americans. He highlights the parallel and overlap between chimneysweeps and African-Americans, or even, in the colonies, with young Africans, as can be seen for example in a comic strip entitled “Le Nègre et le Ramoneur,” dating from 1913. Déjà vu, 2013. https://dejavu.hypotheses.org/1538
17 The concept was theorized in a 1985 book directed by Jean-Yves Le Gallou, La Préférence nationale: réponse à l’immigration. It advocates prioritizing French citizens in the areas of employment and unemployment benefits, housing, as well as social security benefits. The authors of La Préférence nationale contend that nineteenth-century and early-twentieth-century immigrants came from Italy, Belgium, and Poland, and that “[la France] les a dans l’ensemble bien assimilés” (France has overall assimilated them well”) (16). They distinguish this “immigration of yesterday” from modern immigration. Even though Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese migrants which composed the “first wave” in the 1950s “se fondent dans le paysage culturel et humain de la France ou […] repartent dans leur pays d’origine” (“merge into the cultural and human landscape of France or go back to their country of origin”) (19), the same cannot be said of later “waves,” in particular, according to Le Gallou and his co-authors, of Maghrebi immigrants who started coming in the middle of the 1960s and are not “fongible (“fungible”) (20): “s’il y a de nombreuses naturalisations dans les statistiques, il y en a peu dans les esprits et dans les cœurs” (“if there are many naturalizations according to statistics, there are few in minds and in hearts”) (20).
18 “Paris et même la plupart des provinces ne produisent guère de ramoneurs” (“Paris and even most of the provinces do not produce many chimneysweeps” (Les Français 1840, 147).
19 By contrast, Piedmontese chimneysweeps benefit of patriotism even in their work, as when they arrive in Paris they benefit from a “patronage patriotique” (“patriotic apprenticeship/sponsorship”) (Les Français 1840, 148), under the form of tutelage from older Piedmontese workers.
20 The annexation was the subject of a few illustrations in the Parisian press. See http://www.lectura.plus/expositions/savoie/chap2-2.php for examples.
21 Charles-Albert Costa de Beauregard (1835-1909) was an historian and politician, and a member of the Académie française starting in 1896. The Costa de Beauregard family is a noble Savoyard family.
22 In the original edition, the text of the poem was spread over twelve pages, with one plate at the beginning of the volume. In the 1896 edition, the text was spread over twenty pages and the volume comprised a total of twenty illustrations (two of which were repeated). A few of the pictures made use of tropes that had become common: on page 7, a ramoneur is seen begging with his marmotte by his side, as in Les Français peints par eux-mêmes. On page 9, another engraving, which shows a ramoneur on a bridge, is reminiscent of Charles Nègre’s photographs of ramoneurs taken in the early 1850s.
23 Patrick Peccatte has done extensive research on the topic. See “La noirceur du petit ramoneur.” Déjà vu, 2013. https://dejavu.hypotheses.org/1538