Renoir's Dancer

by Catherine Hewitt

  Madeleine was lucky. When the roads which had paralleled the old fiscal wall had fused creating the Boulevard de Clichy and the Boulevard de Rochechouart, business-minded landlords spotted an opportunity to increase their assets.41 Cheap studios and apartments began to spring up on either side of the boulevard. And it was here, on the Boulevard de Rochechouart, that Madeleine eventually found modestly priced lodgings in one of the newly constructed tenement buildings.

  Running along the southern edge of Montmartre, the Boulevard de Rochechouart catered to all Madeleine’s needs. There, she could enjoy the reassurance of being close to the traditional way of life which characterised Montmartre, while still tasting all the colour and vibrancy that had initially tempted her to Paris. Throughout the siege, the Boulevard de Rochechouart remained a lively street. There was always something happening: movement, people, the rumble of carriage wheels, voices – life. Just a short walk from the apartment was the Elysée-Montmartre, a popular dance hall, where, at only 1 franc entrance, the ‘eccentric clientele’ included hordes of young bachelors and a good helping of the quartier’s grisettes (low-paid, working-class girls who turned to casual prostitution to make ends meet).42 Even during the siege, and despite the constraints imposed on public entertainment, the Elysée-Montmartre remained active, serving as both a workshop for producing the balloons used to fly post out of the capital, and as a hospital.43 It was also the site of many ostensibly ‘non-political meetings’, as was the nearby Folies-Bergère, where crowds had gathered in the middle of September 1870 to listen to a stirring speech by General Gustave Cluseret.44 There may have been little dancing in the music halls, but the street was bustling and full of people. ‘Since Paris has become a prisoner, it lives on the boulevard,’ commented Juliette Lamber Adam.45 ‘The whole boulevard is like a fair,’ seconded Edmond de Goncourt.46

  For Marie-Clémentine, it was an extraordinary time to discover her country’s capital. And as Madeleine, to her relief, finally found work as a charwoman, and the heady draw of city life and boys kept the teenage Marie-Alix otherwise disposed, the concierge became Marie-Clémentine’s intermittent supervisor, and the street her playground. ‘The streets of Montmartre were home to me,’ she recalled many years later. ‘It was only in the streets that there was excitement and love and ideas – what other children found around their dining-room tables.’47

  Not yet six, Marie-Clémentine was already an assured tomboy. Small and impressively agile with her unkempt, cognac-coloured hair and her huge, wide-set blue eyes, she turned heads as she darted about the street. Those enormous eyes coupled with her broad forehead gave her an appealing look of innocent sweetness. It was deceptive. She was a wilful child and ran barefoot whenever possible, revelling in the dirt of the streets and doing just as she pleased. The little girl was always getting up to mischief, though mostly preferred to conduct her escapades alone. She was a sensitive child and found solace in her vivid imagination, inhabiting a world of which only she seemed aware. Notwithstanding, she talked to strangers unselfconsciously, and was perfectly at ease sharing her opinions and advice in a matter-of-fact manner quite in advance of her years. However, when displeased, she was in possession of a fearsome temper, and had been known to fling stones or scratch when consumed by one of her rages. Neighbours called her ‘the little Valadon terror’, though few could suppress a respectful tone when they did.48

  Marie-Clémentine’s wild behaviour was hardly surprising. A naturally headstrong child left to discover new surroundings in a city which was itself in chaos was bound to grow even more unruly. Meanwhile, the capital was no closer to seeing order restored.

  Finally, at the end of January 1871, the Prussians’ bombardment of the city forced France’s president, General Trochu, to concede that he must ask Bismarck for an armistice.49 France had to surrender Alsace and Lorraine, and pay 50 billion francs of war indemnity. But by far the most painful loss was that of national pride.

  Towards the end of the siege, the government had established an artillery park of over 200 guns at Montmartre, weapons which were funded by public subscription.51 When the government now asked for the guns to be returned, they met with vehement opposition. At the end of February, detachments of the National Guards seized the guns, and when loyal French Army troops tried to reclaim them at the end of March, their opponents fought back viciously. The breaking point came when, in a courtyard in the Rue de Rosiers, the National Guards lynched and shot two elderly generals. The case of the Montmartre guns was a final straw to topple an already overloaded beast of burden. Suddenly, the whole balance of power was upset. Paris was no longer fighting the Prussians – it was fighting itself.

  Revolutionaries set up a rival regime in Paris which assumed the title of the Commune de Paris. The Commune united disgruntled members of a number of different parties. There were Jacobins, radical feminists, Proudhonians, veterans of the revolutions of 1851, 1848 and even 1830. The interests varied, but they shared a single grievance: all were deeply unsatisfied with the government of Paris. The Commune set up its headquarters in the Hôtel de Ville. Immediately, in Versailles, Thiers’ party began planning the reconquest of Paris. And then there broke out one of the bloodiest civil wars France had ever seen.

  Still smarting from the Prussian siege, citizens watched in horror as the streets of Paris were again reduced to a scene of devastation. Thiers’ private house was demolished. The Vendôme column, erected by Napoleon Bonaparte to celebrate the victories of 1805, was torn down. Violence swept across the city. Barricades were erected and buildings mercilessly burned to the ground. Paris was in chaos. Finally, Thiers’ army succeeded in entering the capital, and for a week which became known as ‘la semaine sanglante’ (the bloody week), a horrific confrontation played out.

  Just streets away from the Valadons’ home, the radical feminist Louise Michel, dressed in a National Guard’s uniform, headed the Women’s Battalion as it confronted the Versaillais Generals de Ladmirault and Clinchant.52 The Rue des Rosiers was again the scene of bloodshed when around 50 Communards were shepherded together and shot. One evening, Parisian blood ran cold when people noticed the sky lit with a furious glow and realised the cause: it was the burning edifice of the Tuileries Palace. Wild pétroleuses (lower-class, female supporters of the Commune and arsonists) hurled fireballs through the windows of bourgeois homes; Parisian turned on Parisian. Then came one of the most sickening acts the Communards had yet committed: the Archbishop of Paris, who had been taken hostage, was executed.

  Thiers’ army eventually emerged victorious against the Communards and by the end of May, the conflict was over. But the toll was horrifying; some 20,000 Parisians lost their lives and the city’s landscape was unrecognisable.

  The Paris that Madeleine beheld in 1871 was as far removed as could be imagined from the ideal she had anticipated. Buildings were in ruins. In the smoking, barricade-littered streets, the sounds were alarming. Edmond de Goncourt described ‘frightening noises: fusillades and collapsing houses’.53 Paris was a pitiful shadow of the marvellous city it had been. ‘In the wind this evening the Commune’s notices, which have been pulled off the walls, make a sound like dead leaves chased by an autumn whirlwind on the pavement,’ de Goncourt observed. But from the ashes of the Commune, the seeds of hope were undeniably breaking through, for amid the moans of a haggard city, ‘you hear the stiff flapping of brand-new tricolor flags.’ Paris was bruised, but it was not beaten. Soon, the capital’s emigrants were flooding back. ‘Parisian life […] is being reborn,’ triumphed de Goncourt on 29 May 1871.54 All at once, the streets were filled with Parisians, ‘taking possession of their city once again’. Life and energy were being breathed back into the glorious city. Parisians had returned, defiant and proud.

  Madeleine was not a politically minded woman. In Bessines, politics was something that got the men fired up and occasionally caused a heated dispute in the café. There, Madeleine’s life had a more immediate and practical focus: how many beds needed changing
that day? Was it so cold that morning that she would have to break the ice off the surface of the river, only to feel the ache and chill of the glacial water on her fingers as she rinsed the clothes? And most of all, where would the next meal be coming from?

  By contrast, in Paris, it seemed impossible to escape politics. As Napoleon III strode across the battlefield at Sedan, on street corners, workmen muttered about flawed military strategy. As the Prussians were planning their next move, the women in the queue outside the butcher’s offered a commentary on the action. When word spread along the Boulevard de Rochechouart that innocent blood had been shed in a street just like Madeleine’s, when barricades obstructed the route to work, when the grocer was asking ten times the usual price for a bag of potatoes and milk was unavailable, politics suddenly seemed very real and very tangible indeed.55

  Madeleine was utterly dismayed by the Paris she had discovered. Even before the atrocities of the Commune – unimaginable for a woman raised in the small rural community of Bessines – she had found the employment situation far less utopian than she had been led to believe. An experienced linen maid was a valuable asset. It was an estimable skill. And Madeleine had years of experience. But acquiring such a position in Paris required good interpersonal skills and the ability to promote oneself; Madeleine boasted neither. She was overqualified to take the job that she did. Cleaning and scrubbing offices was demeaning.

  Marie-Alix had adapted admirably to her new life. She had attracted the attentions of a young man named Georges; there was already talk of marriage.56 Madeleine had no cause to worry about her eldest daughter. But in all other respects, Madeleine was feeling demoralised, disenchanted, betrayed.

  With heavy heart, Madeleine discovered that neighbourhood gossips thrived as much in Paris as they did in Bessines. Before long, Madeleine’s name was being whispered in immoral connection with a number of local widowers.57 Several swore they had smelled alcohol on her breath as she passed them on the boulevard. That Madeleine Valadon was simply crazy, children hissed, a village fool, come to Paris thinking she could make a fortune. And nobody could recall ever having seen her express affection towards Marie-Clémentine, nor respond kindly to the youngster’s approaches. People felt certain that, behind closed doors, the mother must issue the most terrible beatings. It was little wonder, neighbours concluded, that the daughter behaved so badly. For many, Madeleine was as far removed from the maternal ideal as could be imagined.

  It seemed everything in Madeleine’s conduct gave rise to suspicion. In the wake of the Prussian siege and the Commune, Parisians harboured a profound distrust of that which could not be seen. And Madeleine was quiet, docile and discreet.58 She worked steadily and kept her opinions – and her disappointment – to herself. Physically too, she was a pitiful figure.59 Her body was hunched, her shoulders stooping, and her furrowed brow gave her a permanently fraught expression. Her centre-parted hair was swept back and severe, while her heavy-lidded, blue-eyed gaze seemed designed to keep the world at a distance. And though she was just 40, work had now given her once-supple body the appearance of one half that again.

  Marie-Clémentine’s unruly behaviour was a burden too many. It was not that Madeleine lacked maternal empathy. Though the mother appeared a sour-faced and embittered contrast to her vigorous daughter, the pair shared a complex bond, both invisible and indivisible. More than once, Madeleine had had the opportunity to deny her daughter. She could have given her up as a baby or abandoned her and gone alone to Paris. Every time, she had recognised her responsibility towards the youngster and stood by her, quietly, assuredly, claiming her as her own. Years later, few could deny that Madeleine was probably the only human being who truly understood the will-o’-the-wisp, elfin creature she had given birth to.60

  But now, Madeleine had seen the very worst side of Parisian street life. She could not work and supervise her daughter as well. More than anything, she had seen only too clearly how miserable a woman’s life could be when she lacked appropriate skills. If Marie-Clémentine was to be spared the same fate, she must have what Madeleine had been denied: structure and a formal education.

  So it was that Marie-Clémentine made her first encounter with an institution.

  CHAPTER 3

  Testing the Line

  L’un ne po pa tropà lo luno en là den.

  (You can’t catch the moon with your teeth.)

  OLD LIMOUSIN PROVERB1

  ‘A woman’s greatest error is to attempt to be a man,’ proclaimed the late 18th- to early 19th-century moralist and Christian philosopher M. de Maistre, ‘and wanting to be a man is wanting to be wise. A woman should not pursue any knowledge which interferes with her duties; a woman’s merit is to make her husband happy, to raise her children and to make men […] as soon as she seeks to emulate man, she is no more than a monkey; women have never produced any great works in any genre […] there are few things more dangerous for a woman than science […] It is far easier to marry off a tart than it is a wise woman.’2

  While de Maistre’s opinion was not universally held in such an undiluted form in the 19th century, his principle was widely accepted: women were physiologically, intellectually and emotionally different from men, and for many, that meant inferior. In the 1870s, French society was underpinned by a deep-seated gender bias. Conservative social discourse maintained that female brains were smaller (ergo substandard), more prone to emotion and sentiment, and that women were therefore best suited to bearing and raising children, no more. To develop a woman’s intellectual faculties was to jeopardise her breeding capacity – a school of thought which found keen endorsement in the fields of science and history.

  In such a climate, few issues caused blood to boil more fervently than that of female education. Even those considered more liberal thinkers were inclined to agree that a woman’s place was in the home, that her proper role was that of wife and mother, and that academic and serious artistic pursuits were neither her priority nor her strength. ‘What is a man’s vocation?’ asked philosophical writers Jules and Gustave Simon, before answering: ‘to be a good citizen. And a woman’s? To be a good wife and a good mother. One is called into the outside world; the other is retained inside.’3 Few disputed social theorist Paul Janet’s view that: ‘in the life of men, instruction plays an important role’ but that ‘for girls, learning is far less important. […] besides, let us not forget, where is a woman’s place? In the domestic interior. […] A young girl is raised for the family. Does it not follow that she should be taught at home?’4

  It had not been until the 17th century that concern had started to be raised about girls’ education, and then only because it was decided that it might be practical for a woman to have a basic grasp of arithmetic if she were expected to run a household and keep accounts.5 Schools for girls had not been at all common until the 19th century.6 The Guizot law of 1833 relating to primary education failed to deal with girls.7 Eventually, it was decided in 1850 that communes of more than 800 people should provide a school for girls, and in 1867, the criterion to qualify for that facility was reduced to communes of more than 500.8 But it was still a paltry gesture.

  However, as the 19th century unfolded, the case for women’s education gathered momentum. It was conceded that the ability to add and subtract and make intelligent conversation might assist a woman in her primary role as wife and mother. But the real question remained: just what should she know, and more importantly, how much was safe for her to know?

  ‘I do not ask that women be wise,’ clarified Archbishop Félix Dupanloup, ‘but rather intelligent, judicious, attentive, well-informed in everything that it is useful for them to know, as mothers, mistresses of households and women of the world.’9 ‘I am quite in agreement that a woman should not know too much,’ seconded Janet, ‘I do not think that it is necessary for a young girl to learn a lot, the important thing is to learn it well.’10 But while such vagaries circulated, there was still no such thing as compulsory secondary education for girls, and wh
ere girls’ primary schools were established, the emphasis remained firmly on homemaking skills such as needlework, music and cooking. For among champions of female learning, one view remained virtually uncontested: ‘the basis of women’s education should be domestic economy’.11

  Madeleine was no stranger to society’s inherent gender bias. ‘A woman who knows Latin will never make a good end,’ one Limousin proverb declared.12 ‘The written word is for men, the spoken word, for women,’ maintained another.13 But Madeleine had seen the admiration literate women received in rural society. She had felt that frisson of pride whenever she had the chance to demonstrate that she could sign her name; women who could not never quite fostered the same degree of respect. There was no school for girls in Bessines when Madeleine was young.14 Any teaching girls received was issued on a casual basis by a knowledgeable relative, a family friend or a sympathetic elder. How different things might have been for Madeleine had it been otherwise. But there was another reason Marie-Clémentine’s education was important now: language.

  Until the 19th century, it was accepted that rural communities would communicate in their local dialect or patois. However, from the Revolution, schools were made to encourage the use of French, and from the 1870s, patois speakers would become the quarry in a veritable linguistic witch-hunt.15 Nonetheless, Limousin had remained the main form of social communication in Madeleine’s region in the mid-19th century, and 105 defiant communes in the Haute-Vienne still functioned primarily in patois.16 But in Paris, speaking in patois was the ultimate betrayer of rural archaicism and social inferiority. ‘We tried to transform our pronunciation,’ recalled migrant Martin Nadaud; ‘to speak coarsely, without our natural accent, seemed the height of distinction.’17