making one’s way through the streets of Paris. She lodged with Aline Fillietaz, the newly married daughter of a schoolmistress acquaintance from London. The Fillietaz house was on the rue Melée in the Marais, which put it not only in the heart of one of the most militant revolutionary districts of the city, seething with clubs and pikes, but also directly along a main route from revolutionary prisons to one of the places of execution.
So, whether she wanted it or not, Mary had a ringside view of the drama of mass death and retribution. A few weeks after her arrival she saw Louis XVI being taken to his trial and, astonished at the dignity of his composure, confessed to Joseph Johnson that ‘I can scarcely tell you why, but an association of ideas made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes.’ But the letter shook with trepidation.
Nay, do not smile, but pity me; for, once or twice, lifting my eyes from the paper, I have seen eyes glare through a glass-door opposite my chair, and bloody hands shook at me. Not the distant sound of a footstep can I hear … I wish I had even kept the cat with me! – I want to see something alive; death in so many frightful shapes has taken hold of my fancy. – I am going to bed – and for the first time in my life, I cannot put out the candle.
This was not the revolution, nor the life, Mary had expected. By the spring of 1793, Britain and France were at war with each other. French military reverses in the Netherlands and the defection of generals prompted the inevitable accusations of betrayals from within. The apparatus of summary ‘revolutionary’ justice was established. The fatal rhythm of denunciations, arrests and beheadings began. And it was precisely those republican politicians with whom the White’s Hotel crowd had the closest relations – Condorcet and the moderate group known as the Girondins, many of whom had voted against condemning Louis XVI to death – who were now identified by the Jacobin revolutionary government as false patriots, enemies in fact to the
patrie
. By extension the British – whether they liked it or not, natives of an enemy country – were now, starting with Tom Paine, deeply suspect.
The most famous vote cast against the execution of the king was indeed Paine’s, and many of those who wanted clemency actually invoked Paine as an example since, as he had said himself, his republican credentials were impeccable. Nonetheless Paine – who expressed the wish that the French Republic would abolish the death penalty altogether, perhaps the summit of his unrealistic optimism – argued eloquently that Louis ‘considered as an individual’ (rather than an institution) ‘was beneath the notice’ of the Republic; and that the Revolution owed compassion to its enemies as much as to its friends. To the Jacobins this was so outrageous an apostasy that their most militant spokesman, Jean-Paul Marat, shouted that the interpreter must be mistranslating Paine’s words. When they were indeed confirmed, he declared that since Paine was ‘a Quaker’ and thus opposed to the death penalty on principle (his parentage was indeed Quaker), he ought not to be allowed to vote.
Paine voted anyway, but after the revolutionary government and the apparatus of the Terror was established in the summer of 1793, Paine found himself in the unusual position of being demonized as an enemy of the state in both monarchist Britain and republican France! The British Club had broken up shortly after the king’s trial, but once its French patrons and friends had been purged from the National Convention, imprisoned, put on trial and executed, it seemed only a matter of time before the Britons would share their fate. One of Paine’s fellow-lodgers, William Johnson, became so unhinged at the prospect that he attempted to commit suicide on the staircase of their hotel, stabbing himself in the chest and rolling operatically down the steps. After the British navy took Toulon in late
So, whether she wanted it or not, Mary had a ringside view of the drama of mass death and retribution. A few weeks after her arrival she saw Louis XVI being taken to his trial and, astonished at the dignity of his composure, confessed to Joseph Johnson that ‘I can scarcely tell you why, but an association of ideas made the tears flow insensibly from my eyes.’ But the letter shook with trepidation.
Nay, do not smile, but pity me; for, once or twice, lifting my eyes from the paper, I have seen eyes glare through a glass-door opposite my chair, and bloody hands shook at me. Not the distant sound of a footstep can I hear … I wish I had even kept the cat with me! – I want to see something alive; death in so many frightful shapes has taken hold of my fancy. – I am going to bed – and for the first time in my life, I cannot put out the candle.
This was not the revolution, nor the life, Mary had expected. By the spring of 1793, Britain and France were at war with each other. French military reverses in the Netherlands and the defection of generals prompted the inevitable accusations of betrayals from within. The apparatus of summary ‘revolutionary’ justice was established. The fatal rhythm of denunciations, arrests and beheadings began. And it was precisely those republican politicians with whom the White’s Hotel crowd had the closest relations – Condorcet and the moderate group known as the Girondins, many of whom had voted against condemning Louis XVI to death – who were now identified by the Jacobin revolutionary government as false patriots, enemies in fact to the
patrie
. By extension the British – whether they liked it or not, natives of an enemy country – were now, starting with Tom Paine, deeply suspect.
The most famous vote cast against the execution of the king was indeed Paine’s, and many of those who wanted clemency actually invoked Paine as an example since, as he had said himself, his republican credentials were impeccable. Nonetheless Paine – who expressed the wish that the French Republic would abolish the death penalty altogether, perhaps the summit of his unrealistic optimism – argued eloquently that Louis ‘considered as an individual’ (rather than an institution) ‘was beneath the notice’ of the Republic; and that the Revolution owed compassion to its enemies as much as to its friends. To the Jacobins this was so outrageous an apostasy that their most militant spokesman, Jean-Paul Marat, shouted that the interpreter must be mistranslating Paine’s words. When they were indeed confirmed, he declared that since Paine was ‘a Quaker’ and thus opposed to the death penalty on principle (his parentage was indeed Quaker), he ought not to be allowed to vote.
Paine voted anyway, but after the revolutionary government and the apparatus of the Terror was established in the summer of 1793, Paine found himself in the unusual position of being demonized as an enemy of the state in both monarchist Britain and republican France! The British Club had broken up shortly after the king’s trial, but once its French patrons and friends had been purged from the National Convention, imprisoned, put on trial and executed, it seemed only a matter of time before the Britons would share their fate. One of Paine’s fellow-lodgers, William Johnson, became so unhinged at the prospect that he attempted to commit suicide on the staircase of their hotel, stabbing himself in the chest and rolling operatically down the steps. After the British navy took Toulon in late
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