LET'S DO THE REVOLUTION ANOTHER DAY

IT'S ALL IN THE COSTUMES.

Marie Antoinette’s hameau at Versailles.

I’ve been asked most questions about France but one posed last week threw me. Could I suggest someone to give a tutorial on the French Revolution?

So what was so surprising?  Well, that anyone expressed an interest in the Revolution at all. Because almost nobody does, even though it’s been called the single most important event of the modern era – and for the world, not simply for France.

But it’s complicated. The factions, the personalities, particularly of the revolutionary leaders Danton and Robespierre; two men as different as one can imagine. Not to mention the intricacies of the feudal monarchy they brought down.  Even the little I wrote in A Year in Paris about Fabre d’Eglantine and the plan to redesign the calendar admitted a regiment of fascinating personalities; more than one short book could handle.

One would expect the average tourist to visit at least a few revolutionary sites. Unfortunately the French have done a thorough job of erasing them. The Bastille, where the first blow was struck, is just an outline in the paving of the Place de la Bastille, which you visit at the risk of being run down by a taxi. The house where the guillotine was invented still stands, but the plaque explaining its significance is placed high on a wall and the gilded text is almost impossible to read. Danton has a statue but on a plinth so high you would need to be on the top level of a double decker bus to see it in any detail. To commemorate Maximilien de Robespierre, generally regarded as the villain of the piece, there’s a bust in the satellite town of St Denis and, in Paris, only a very short rue Robespierre and a shabby metro station in extremely declassé Montreuil.

Danton’s statue.

It's so much easier to ignore the Revolution altogether and head for Versailles, the former palace of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.  That’s what most people do anyway, in their hundreds of thousands each year, queueing for hours to get in, and paying whopping fees for a golf cart to get around the gardens. But pomp and circumstance never lose their appeal. Everyone loves the costumes and jewels, the little hameau or hamlet of the Petit Trianon, where Marie Antoinette and her ladies played at farming, with cows chosen for their pulchritude, and buckets of Sèvres  porcelain into which to milk them. So much more elegant than the Revolution. All that blood and violence - and my dear, the people…

The two most popular themes for tourist walks around Paris are:  1. Ernest Hemingway, and 2. The Occupation of World War II. Hemingway I can understand. But Nazis?  It must come down to the Look. Those uniforms; the death’s head insignia, and the daggers. So chic. That’s where the revolutionaries lost out. No class. They weren’t called sans culottes for nothing. They didn’t even wear proper trousers; just some things that looked like pajamas. No sense of style.

Sans Culottes with list of victims for the guillotine.

In the ‘thirties, the British…well, Hungarian, actually…producer Alexander Korda lived on what was called Millionaires’ Row in London – in the same building as a man who’d lost a fortune investing in his films.

“What happened when they met on the stairs?” I asked.

“Oh,” my friend said, “he was always hoping Alex would invite him to lunch.”

Style. It wins every time.