1.2.1-Marsmeadow

Club Ninety-Three 1.2.1: Angleterre et France mêlées
In this chapter, everything’s in disguise. The Claymore, the artistocratic man in peasant’s clothing, the agent whose name Hugo changed to avoid reminding the Villambre family that their ancestor was a revolutionary double agent…

And, as the chapter title indicates, everything’s English and/or French. The events take place on the Channel, in-between, on an English ship manned by French sailors. There’s a Lord Balcarras, govenor of Jersey, another in-betweener.

Mêlée usually means “mixed”, but it can also mean, well, melee. Or chaos. Or, figuratively, a conflict of interest (!). (Or, less relevantly but more usually, it refers to some rugby thing.) So England is mixed with, but possibly also opposed to, France.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? Well. Um.

I’ve seen some great comments urging us to look for countryside-vs-city and Paris-vs-regions in order to get at what Hugo thinks France and the Republic is, and should be. Here, we see France mixed and contrasted with England, a constitutional monarchy very much aligned with the Ancien Regime.

A constitutional monarchy was what the revolutionaries wanted, at first? But now the royalists are aligned with THE ENGLISH ENEMY, the traditional antithesis to everything French. Is this a no to constitutional monarchy? But THE ENEMY, perfidious Albion etc. etc., doesn’t appear except through French intermediaries. Hmm. On top of this, deception is a major theme in this chapter. Hmmm. Hmm.

Damn, but I’m in over my head on this.

Names! The notes had two interesting things to say about the Claymore. Firstly, that one of the cannons the Commune used against the Versaillais was a namesake. Secondly, that Hugo usually views the sword as the honorable weapon of the father. A claymore sure is a nicely ancestral weapon! But the Claymore is hardly acting very honourably at the moment.

Also, concerning the viviandiere Houzarde, her name may be an adaptation of hussard? That’s nice and soldierly.

Commentary
Shirley-keeldar OH okay that’s what’s up with our friend the spy, that’s why I couldn’t research him effectively. How … not actually that delicate of Hugo, really.

I especially like the contrasts thing considering how recently absolute monarchy France helped fund the American war against the British…

Lifeisyetfair Ooh, interesting stuff. Who were the Villambres and why did Hugo not want to offend them? Is “claymore” the name of the type of cannon or do individual cannons have names? Anyway, thankyou for this post!

Marsmeadow (reply to Lifeisyetfair) Gelambre, who’s in contact with both the royalists and the revolutionaries (the two notes have the same handwriting!) is inspired by the real double agent Villambre, according to the footnotes. Hugo wrote in his manuscript that he didn’t want to remind the family of his shameful behaviour, so he changed the name.

A claymore is a huge Scottish sword!

Actually, I messed up the translation of cannoniere, which is a gunboat. (And not a huge cannon, as I mistakenly thought. Also, if they’re big enough, individual cannons do get names!) The Commune had a gunboat called La Claymore, is what I should have written.

Lifeisyetfair (reply to Marsmeadow's reply) Ah, thanks! So here we have the royalists linked to the communards by the name of their boat.