#du ponceau

[livelaughlovelams]

Just saw a source saying that Baron Von Steuben showed up all bedazzled as we know with his doggo and "secretary"...

"SECRETARY"?!

The QUOTATIONS!?

Oh damn you better tell me about this "SECRETARY" he had...wowwwwww

😭😭😭😭

Anygays, woohoo! Tags.

[ptashenka]

retreading some familiar ground with this portrait of pierre-étienne du ponceau 🖋

shout out to this french dork for getting me to care about linguistics

[yr-obedt-cicero]

Platonic communal sleeping in the American colonies

Platonic bed-sharing was actually quite common custom in the colonies, especially during time's of need, after all, space and privacy were a luxury of the wealthy. It didn't necessarily have to be intimate either, it was not uncommon for sometimes even complete strangers - often travelers or soldiers - of the same sex to share a bed together at an Inn if there was little space, and needed room. Samuel Pepys, an 18th century diarist, often slept with male friends and wrote about the conversations they would have at night. [x]

Rotundo also explains that; “It is not too much to suggest that in an era before central heating, the body warmth of an already beloved bedmate may have been so welcome as to be a source of emotional as well as physical pleasure.” And implies that while it was most of the time done out of necessity, it was also oftentimes simply a warming act of affection, romantic or platonic; “This was, after all, a culture that fervently contrasted the secure and cozy warmth of home with the coldness of a cruel and heartless world outside… A bed, when shared with a special person, could become a nest of intimacy, a place of casual touch and confidential talk.” [x]

Additionally, during the days before central heating was truly a common thing (Especially if you weren't royal or wealthy), bedmates were also seen as warmth. Oftentimes servants even slept alongside their mistresses. This was also how many sicknesses would spread, as bedbugs and lice were transported from person to person in the colonial period usually when sharing bunks or close quarters.

Even notable figures took part in this custom, like Robert Troup and Alexander Hamilton, as Chernow writes how the two shared beds while studying law together at King's College; “At King's, Troup wrote, ‘...they occupied the same room and slept in the same bed’” [x]

Which also leads to a humourous story about when John Adams slept with Benjamin Franklin in a New Jersey tavern during the fall of 1776. Just ten days prior, Washington and his men had barely escaped capture on Long Island after a suffering defeat to the British. The Continental Congress had debated for days about what was to be done. The British had captured General John Sullivan during the Battle, Earl Howe and his brother William Howe paroled Sullivan so he could take a message to Congress, as they wanted a talk peace. Eventually, Sullivan went to Philadelphia and spoke to Congress about the peace talks, to which the Congress decided that they would send a three-man committee to Staten Island. Which was composed of; Benjamin Franklin, Edward Rutledge, and Adams. The men represented the northern, middle and southern colonies. The three had set out on September 9th, Franklin and Rutledge each in a two-wheeled chaise, Adams on horseback. Later, the three men arrived in New Brunswick, and unfortunately had found the Inns all too crowded. Which led to Franklin and Adams having to share a tiny room, barely bigger than the bed, without a chimney, in the Indian Queen Tavern. Which then began an interesting debate, as they prepared to retire;

The window was open, and I, who was an invalid and afraid of the air in the night, shut it close. “Oh!” says Franklin, “don't shut the window, we shall be suffocated.” I answered, I was afraid of the evening air. Dr. Franklin replied, “The air within this chamber will soon be, and indeed is now, worse than that without doors. Come, open the window and come to bed, and I will convince you. I believe you are not acquainted with my theory of colds.” Opening the window, and leaping into bed, I said I had read his letters to Dr. Cooper, in which he had advanced, that nobody ever got cold by going into a cold church or any other cold air, but the theory was so little consistent with my experience, that I thought it a paradox. However, I had so much curiosity to hear his reasons that I would run the risk of a cold. The Doctor then began a harangue upon air and cold, and respiration and perspiration, with which I was so much amused that I soon fell asleep, and left him and his philosophy together, but I believe they were equally sound and insensible within a few minutes after me, for the last words I heard were pronounced as if he was more than half asleep. I remember little of the lecture...

Source — The Works of John Adams, Volume 3, by John Adams

Especially during time of war, when the revolution was rough, and means were low. Or as some day; “These are the times that try men's souls”. If the army was running low on space, or even beds, many - if not most - men resorted to sharing the same bed. Although this particular custom was not as accepted by many European visitors who came to the colonies, this cultural difference was often completely condemned by them. Pierre Du Ponceau - an aide of Baron von Steuben's - wrote of a particular dispute between a Virginian and a Frenchman about the subject in his autobiography;

One evening at an Inn in Virginia, a Frenchman and a Virginian were discussing about the manners of their respective countries. The American exclaimed violently against the horrid custom of the French of kissing one another at meeting and parting. The Frenchman made no answer, but as it was late, he took his candle and went up to bed. He was soon followed by the Virginian who after undressing came to take his place in the same bed with his companion “Stop, Sir,” said the Frenchman, “that won't do—I shall kiss you as much as you please, but by Jupiter, I'll not sleep with you.”

Source — Autobiographical Letters Of Peter S. Duponceau

It seems like this custom was almost exclusively English/Colonial, as David Montagu Erskine wrote to his father in 1799 of the living arrangements he and his companions encountered among the transient inhabitants of Washington, DC;

Each of us have a bed room to ourselves, if we chuse, but people in this country seem to think so lightly of such an indispensable comfort as I consider it, that I believe there are but three of us, who have rooms to ourselves.

Source — Menk, Patricia Holbert. “D. M. Erskine: Letters from America, 1798-1799.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Volume 6.

Edward Thornton, secretary to the new British minister to the United States, wrote to his former employer in 1792;

Mr. Hammond's rank may possibly secure him from some of the inconveniences, which others, rendered fastidious by the style of travelling in England, are loud in their complaints of, such as [...] fellow lodgers in the same room and not infrequently in the same bed.

Source — Jackman, S. W. “A Young Englishman Reports on the New Nation: Edward Thornton to James Bland Burges, 1791-1793.” The William and Mary Quarterly, Volume 18

This custom was even common after the revolution and the war of 1812—As Lieutenant John Le Couteur, a British army officer from the Isle of Jersey, traveled through New York in 1816 accompanied by Captain George Thew Burke. Le Couteur and Burke arrived at an Inn one day after dinner had been served and cleared, and they were hard-pressed to convince the hostess to bring out more food, “But this was not the last grievance.” Le Couteur recorded in his diary and concluded;

There was only one spare bed, a small one, which of course I insisted Burke should take. The Yankee Landlord wished me to take half of it as a matter of course but I said: “we Britishers were particular on that pint.’ “Then,” said mine host, “I guess if you don’t chuse to take half a bed with some one, you’ll jist sleep in a cheer [chair] or by the kitchen fire’

Source — Male-Male Intimacy in Early America: Beyond Romantic Friendships, by William E Benemann

[bigmommycommie]

du ponceau: welcome to von steuben's pantsless party! no bottoms allowed

hamilton: *pouts and goes back to aide quarters*

[john-laurens]

In honor of @depressedrevolutionariesinlove giving us an A+ cinnamon roll Du Ponceau in their art - here’s an actual picture of elderly Du Ponceau on display in the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia

[yrs-forever-pavis]

Guys, I need your help! I saw many artists mentioning Pierre Du Ponceau's autobiography and I really want to read it, but i couldn't find it anywhere! so I thought about asking you guys, where do you read it?? Do you have it digital?? Could you share it with me? I would be forever gratefull if you help me! Love u xx -pavis

[littlewritingrabbit]

i just read something that referenced pierre as steuben’s “pretty young french secretary” and his “plaything while traveling to america” and that does not sit right with me at all

Yeeikes, yeah, that's sketchy -_-

[parisies]

Promeneur qui cherche l’ombre,

Il est dans la ville des lieux

Où tes pas iront dans un courant d’air délicieux.

Ombre fraîche de la pierre, mais ombres nostalgiques du temps aussi.

Les spectres du passé croisent les hommes du jour.

Passages de Paris.

[walker-diaries]

[chic-a-gigot]

La Mode illustrée, no. 18, 4 mai 1863, Paris. Amazone vue de face. Ville de Paris / Bibliothèque Forney

Habit d'amazone

Deux dessins sont consacrés à ce costume, vu de face et de dos. Il est fait en étoffe de laine unie, gros bleu; le gilet, en cachemire blanc, est entr'ouvert, et laisse voir une chemisette à jabot, avec col droit entouré d'une cravate ponceau. Ce gilet est maintenu autour de la taille par une ceinture de cuir gris, à boucle d'acier uni, soutenant un petit sac du même cuir. La veste, à revers, est échancrée au-dessus de la ceinture, et se termine par des basques, sur les côtés et par derrière; les manches sont à larges revers, bordés comme la veste, avec une étroite ruche de ruban noir, en taffetas; les boutons sont en acier poli, les sous-manches en nansouk épais. Les gants ont de larges manchettes. Le chapeau (paille ou feutre) est orné d'un nœud en velours gros bleu, fixé par une boucle d'acier et retenant une plume noire ; grand voile gros bleu.

—

Two drawings are devoted to this costume, seen from the front and from the back. It is made of plain woolen fabric, big blue; the waistcoat, in white cashmere, is half open, and reveals a frilled shirt, with a straight collar surrounded by a ponceau tie. This waistcoat is held around the waist by a gray leather belt, with a plain steel buckle, supporting a small bag of the same leather. The jacket, with lapels, is indented above the belt, and ends in basques, on the sides and behind; the sleeves have wide lapels, edged like the jacket, with a narrow ruffle of black ribbon, in taffeta; the buttons are in polished steel, the under-handles in thick nansouk. The gloves have wide cuffs. The hat (straw or felt) is adorned with a big blue velvet bow, fixed by a steel buckle and holding a black feather; big blue sail.

[livelaughlovelams]

I say I wanna meet Von Steuben but in reality with how broken my French and German are, I'd probably just freak out and since I basically only learn these languages to write fanfiction I'd know only the most inconvenient words so I'd probably just be like "uh...embrasse les garçons oui?" And he'd probably either be like hell yeah or like wtf and Du Ponceau would be there BC ofc he'd be and then either way I'd just start crying after a while and uh ruh roh that would suck, do your French lessons kids.

Maybe I'd show him some art that he'd either love, or that would make him cry, too.

Anyways, tags go (Aaron) Brrrrrrrr and save me from this post

[charmemma]

[pilferingapples]

Les Miserables Daily: 5.2.4, Details Ignored

Today in the chronological read-through of Les Miserables,we’re finishing up with Bruneseau’s adventures in 1805!  Be sure to join us for the next chapter in 2032, when we’ll meet Bishop Myriel!

The visit took place. It was a formidable campaign; a nocturnal battle against pestilence and suffocation. It was, at the same time, a voyage of discovery. One of the survivors of this expedition, an intelligent workingman, who was very young at the time, related curious details with regard to it, several years ago, which Bruneseau thought himself obliged to omit in his report to the prefect of police, as unworthy of official style. The processes of disinfection were, at that epoch, extremely rudimentary. Hardly had Bruneseau crossed the first articulations of that subterranean network, when eight laborers out of the twenty refused to go any further. The operation was complicated; the visit entailed the necessity of cleaning; hence it was necessary to cleanse and at the same time, to proceed; to note the entrances of water, to count the gratings and the vents, to lay out in detail the branches, to indicate the currents at the point where they parted, to define the respective bounds of the divers basins, to sound the small sewers grafted on the principal sewer, to measure the height under the key-stone of each drain, and the width, at the spring of the vaults as well as at the bottom, in order to determine the arrangements with regard to the level of each water-entrance, either of the bottom of the arch, or on the soil of the street. They advanced with toil. The lanterns pined away in the foul atmosphere. From time to time, a fainting sewerman was carried out. At certain points, there were precipices. The soil had given away, the pavement had crumbled, the sewer had changed into a bottomless well; they found nothing solid; a man disappeared suddenly; they had great difficulty in getting him out again. On the advice of Fourcroy, they lighted large cages filled with tow steeped in resin, from time to time, in spots which had been sufficiently disinfected. In some places, the wall was covered with misshapen fungi,--one would have said tumors; the very stone seemed diseased within this unbreathable atmosphere.

Bruneseau, in his exploration, proceeded down hill. At the point of separation of the two water-conduits of the Grand-Hurleur, he deciphered upon a projecting stone the date of 1550; this stone indicated the limits where Philibert Delorme, charged by Henri II. with visiting the subterranean drains of Paris, had halted. This stone was the mark of the sixteenth century on the sewer; Bruneseau found the handiwork of the seventeenth century once more in the Ponceau drain of the old Rue Vielle-du-Temple, vaulted between 1600 and 1650; and the handiwork of the eighteenth in the western section of the collecting canal, walled and vaulted in 1740. These two vaults, especially the less ancient, that of 1740, were more cracked and decrepit than the masonry of the belt sewer, which dated from 1412, an epoch when the brook of fresh water of Menilmontant was elevated to the dignity of the Grand Sewer of Paris, an advancement analogous to that of a peasant who should become first valet de chambre to the King; something like Gros-Jean transformed into Lebel.

Here and there, particularly beneath the Court-House, they thought they recognized the hollows of ancient dungeons, excavated in the very sewer itself. Hideous in-pace. An iron neck-collar was hanging in one of these cells. They walled them all up. Some of their finds were singular; among others, the skeleton of an ourang-outan, who had disappeared from the Jardin des Plantes in 1800, a disappearance probably connected with the famous and indisputable apparition of the devil in the Rue des Bernardins, in the last year of the eighteenth century. The poor devil had ended by drowning himself in the sewer.

Beneath this long, arched drain which terminated at the Arche-Marion, a perfectly preserved rag-picker's basket excited the admiration of all connoisseurs. Everywhere, the mire, which the sewermen came to handle with intrepidity, abounded in precious objects, jewels of gold and silver, precious stones, coins. If a giant had filtered this cesspool, he would have had the riches of centuries in his lair. At the point where the two branches of the Rue du Temple and of the Rue Sainte-Avoye separate, they picked up a singular Huguenot medal in copper, bearing on one side the pig hooded with a cardinal's hat, and on the other, a wolf with a tiara on his head.

The most surprising rencounter was at the entrance to the Grand Sewer. This entrance had formerly been closed by a grating of which nothing but the hinges remained. From one of these hinges hung a dirty and shapeless rag which, arrested there in its passage, no doubt, had floated there in the darkness and finished its process of being torn apart. Bruneseau held his lantern close to this rag and examined it. It was of very fine batiste, and in one of the corners, less frayed than the rest, they made out a heraldic coronet and embroidered above these seven letters: LAVBESP. The crown was the coronet of a Marquis, and the seven letters signified Laubespine. They recognized the fact, that what they had before their eyes was a morsel of the shroud of Marat. Marat in his youth had had amorous intrigues. This was when he was a member of the household of the Comte d'Artois, in the capacity of physician to the Stables. From these love affairs, historically proved, with a great lady, he had retained this sheet. As a waif or a souvenir. At his death, as this was the only linen of any fineness which he had in his house, they buried him in it. Some old women had shrouded him for the tomb in that swaddling-band in which the tragic Friend of the people had enjoyed voluptuousness. Bruneseau passed on. They left that rag where it hung; they did not put the finishing touch to it. Did this arise from scorn or from respect? Marat deserved both. And then, destiny was there sufficiently stamped to make them hesitate to touch it. Besides, the things of the sepulchre must be left in the spot which they select. In short, the relic was a strange one. A Marquise had slept in it; Marat had rotted in it; it had traversed the Pantheon to end with the rats of the sewer. This chamber rag, of which Watteau would formerly have joyfully sketched every fold, had ended in becoming worthy of the fixed gaze of Dante.

The whole visit to the subterranean stream of filth of Paris lasted seven years, from 1805 to 1812. As he proceeded, Bruneseau drew, directed, and completed considerable works; in 1808 he lowered the arch of the Ponceau, and, everywhere creating new lines, he pushed the sewer, in 1809, under the Rue Saint-Denis as far as the fountain of the Innocents; in 1810, under the Rue Froidmanteau and under the Salpetriere; in 1811 under the Rue Neuve-des-Petits-Peres, under the Rue du Mail, under the Rue de l'Echarpe, under the Place Royale; in 1812, under the Rue de la Paix, and under the Chaussee d'Antin. At the same time, he had the whole net-work disinfected and rendered healthful. In the second year of his work, Bruneseau engaged the assistance of his son-in-law Nargaud.

It was thus that, at the beginning of the century, ancient society cleansed its double bottom, and performed the toilet of its sewer. There was that much clean, at all events.

Tortuous, cracked, unpaved, full of fissures, intersected by gullies, jolted by eccentric elbows, mounting and descending illogically, fetid, wild, fierce, submerged in obscurity, with cicatrices on its pavements and scars on its walls, terrible,--such was, retrospectively viewed, the antique sewer of Paris. Ramifications in every direction, crossings, of trenches, branches, goose-feet, stars, as in military mines, coecum, blind alleys, vaults lined with saltpetre, pestiferous pools, scabby sweats, on the walls, drops dripping from the ceilings, darkness; nothing could equal the horror of this old, waste crypt, the digestive apparatus of Babylon, a cavern, ditch, gulf pierced with streets, a titanic mole-burrow, where the mind seems to behold that enormous blind mole, the past, prowling through the shadows, in the filth which has been splendor.

This, we repeat, was the sewer of the past.

[yr-obedt-cicero]

“The party stopped for a meal at one such inn in the village of Manheim. Nailed to a wall inside the tavern was a “paltry engraving… on which was represented a Prussian knocking down a Frenchman in great style,” accompanied by the inscription “A Frenchman to a Prussian is no more than a mosquito.” Steuben noticed it and “enjoyed it exceedingly”; he grabbed [Peter Stephen] Duponceau and pointed it out excitedly to the teenage secretary, flashing him a sly and knowing smile.”

— The Drillmaster of Valley Forge: The Baron de Steuben and the Making of the American Army, by Paul D. Lockhart

[philip-hamilton-official]

ooc: oh cool!! any historical figures that haven't been done that you suggest? :D

Ooc: many have already been done, and you can always an OC if you want to but some that I can think of are;

Richard Kidder Meade, John Hancock, Marquis de Lafayette (or his son or wife), Thomas Jefferson, Pierre Du Ponceau, Baron Von Steuben, (any of the laukids that aren't the main five), James Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, Horatio Gates, Elizabeth Schuyler, (any of the Schuyler siblings), etc, etc...

[littlewritingrabbit]

Merry Run-Away-From-Boarding-School-to-Work-as-a-Translator-in-Paris Day!