Bellies, Bowels and Entrails in the Eighteenth Century

‘Bringing together high-calibre essays from a wide range of disciplinary fields, the volume manages to be as consistently absorbing and enlightening as it is entertaining, amusing and affecting.’ Colin Jones, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London This collection of essays seeks to challenge the notion of the supremacy of the brain as the key organ of the Enlightenment, by focusing on the workings of the bowels and viscera that so obsessed writers and thinkers during the long eighteenth century.  These inner organs and the digestive process acted as counterpoints to politeness and other modes of refined sociability, drawing attention to the deeper workings of the self. Moving beyond recent studies of luxury and conspicuous consumption, where dysfunctional bowels have been represented as a symptom of excess, this book seeks to explore other manifestations of the visceral and to explain how the bowels played a crucial part in eighteenth-century emotions and visions of the self.The collection offers an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspective on entrails and digestion by addressing urban history, visual studies, literature, medical history, religious history, and material culture in England, France and Germany.

Rebecca Anne Barr is Lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon is Maîtresse de conférences at Université Paris 8 Sophie Vasset is Maîtresse de conférences at Université Paris-Diderot

Cover image: Intestins, four-colour print by Jean Robert after the method of Jakob Christof Le Blon, 1742. Private Collection, photographic credits ©BnF

ISBN 978-1-5261-2705-1

Barr, Kleiman-Lafon and Vasset (Eds)

The book is aimed at postgraduate students, researchers and specialists working on eighteenth-century studies conceived broadly, as well as those working on the history of science and medicine, cultural and literary history.

Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century

‘Any reader interested in the eighteenth century, or in medical humanities generally, will find this excellent volume crucial to their understanding of the practicalities and metaphorics of this most fundamental (forgive the pun) area of human experience.’ Clark Lawlor, Professor of Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University

Bellies, b owels and entrails in the eighteenth century Edited by Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon and Sophie Vasset

Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com

9 781526 127051 www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century

Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies General Editor Anne Dunan-Page Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies is a collection of the Société d’Études Anglo-Américaines des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles promoting interdisciplinary work on the period c.1603–1815, covering all aspects of the literature, culture and history of the British Isles, colonial and post-colonial America, and other British colonies. The series welcomes academic monographs, as well as collective volumes of essays, that combine theoretical and methodological approaches from more than one discipline to further our understanding of the period and geographical areas. Previously published Radical voices, radical ways: Articulating and disseminating radicalism in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Britain Edited by Laurent Curelly and Nigel Smith Frontiers of servitude: Slavery in narratives of the early French Atlantic Michael Harrigan The challenge of the sublime: From Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry to British Romantic art Hélène Ibata English Benedictine nuns in exile in the seventeenth century: Living spirituality Laurence Lux-Sterritt

Bellies, bowels and entrails in the eighteenth century Edited by

Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon and Sophie Vasset

Manchester University Press

Copyright © Manchester University Press 2018 While copyright in the volume as a whole is vested in Manchester University Press, copyright in individual chapters belongs to their respective authors, and no chapter may be reproduced wholly or in part without the express permission in writing of both author and publisher. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 5261 2705 1 hardback First published 2018 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire

Contents

List of plates List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgements

vii ix xi xvii

Introduction: entrails and digestion in the eighteenth century – Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon, Sophie Vasset

1

PART I Urban congestion and human digestion 1 2 3 4

The belly and the viscera of the capital city – Gilles Thomas The intestinal labours of Paris – Sabine Barles and André Guillerme Digesting in the long eighteenth century – Ian Miller The soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century – Micheline Louis-Courvoisier

23 43 62 80

PART II Excremental operations 5 6

Sawney’s seat: the social imaginary of the London bog-house c.1660–c.1800 – Mark Jenner Eighteenth-century paper: the readers’ digest – Amélie Junqua v

101 128

Contents

7 8

‘Words have no smell’: faecal references in eighteenthcentury French théâtre de société – Jennifer Ruimi The legibility of the bowels: Lichtenberg’s excretory vision of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress – Anthony Mahler

145 159

PART III Burlesque bellies 9 10 11 12

Parodies of pompous knowledge: treatises on farting – Guilhem Armand Potbelly, paunch and innards: variations on the abdomen in Marivaux’s L’Homère travesti and Le Télémaque travesti – Clémence Aznavour Desire, disgust and indigestibility in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb – Rebecca Anne Barr Rotund bellies and double chins: Hogarth’s bodies – Frédéric Ogée

191 209 227 252

PART IV Visualising the viscera 13 14 15

Iconography of the belly: eighteenth-century satirical prints – Barbara Stentz Visceral visions: art, pedagogy and politics in Revolutionary France – Dorothy Johnson The saints of the entrails and the bowels of the earth – Jacques Gélis

Select bibliography Index

273 294 311 332 339

vi

Plates

List of Plates

1

2

3 4 5

6

Underground map of Montparnasse cemetery, extracted from the atlas drawn and supervised by Eugène de Fourcy, Atlas souterrain de la ville de Paris (Paris: Mourgues Frères, 1859). Collection Mines-ParisTech ‘Life among the dead!’ (published in May 1822), one of the twenty-one coloured engravings of scenes from real life drawn by George Cruickshank for Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O’Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis (London: printed for John Cumberland, 1828). Collection of Tristan Timpaneau Sawney in the Bog-house, 1745. British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Satire 2678 William Hogarth, Francis Matthew Schutz in his Bed, c.1755–60. Oil on canvas, 63 × 75.5 cm. Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery James Gillray, Un petit Souper, à la Parisienne; – or – A Family of Sans-culotts refreshing after the fatigues of the day, 1792. Hand-coloured etching. British Museum. Trustees of the British Museum Anonymous, Le Dégraisseur patriote, 1789. Handcoloured etching, 14 × 23 cm. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Copyright BNF vii

List of PLates

7

8 9

10

11 12

Anonymous, Un monstre à trois têtes désignant les trois états de l’aristocratie, anonymous, 1790. Coloured etching. British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum. Gautier d’Agoty Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps … (Marseille: Vial, 1759), anatomical plate Albrecht Dürer, self-portrait, sick, 1509–11. Drawing, 118 × 108 mm. Inv.-N° Kl. 50. Courtesy of Kunsthalle Bremen, Department of Prints and Drawings. Photo: Copyright Kunsthalle Bremen – Karen Blindow – ARTOTHEK Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, La Mort de Caton d’Utique. Colour plate, 1797. École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Photo: Gérard le Gall Art Resource, New York Dieric Bouts, Triptych of St Erasmus, 1464. Museum M. Leuven St Mammès, eighteenth-century plaster statue. Museum of Pithiviers, Loiret, France. The intestines and their circumvolutions have been cropped by a moralist priest Copyright J. Gélis

viii

Illustrations

List of Illustrations

0.1 Jacques de Vaucanson, automaton of a digesting duck 1.1 5.1 6.1 6.2 6.3 8.1

8.2 8.3 8.4

created in 1738 and presented for the first time in the Palais Royal in 1744 4 The ossuary and mineralogy cabinet of the Catacombs at the end of the nineteenth century. Anonymous photocard. Collection of Claude Huguet. Association PICAR 36 The City Foulers – Mark! engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after Henry William Bunbury, Metropolitan Museum, New York 59.533.591 (1799) 108 William Hogarth, Beer Street (1751). Engraving (detail) 132 William Hogarth, Beer Street (1751). Engraving (detail) 133 Cover of A Sequel to the Dunciad (1729) 137 Detail of the advertisement in Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen’s etched copies of William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, plate 5. All the images in this chapter are reproductions from G. C. Lichtenbergs ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche mit verkleinerten aber vollständigen Copien derselben von Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen (Göttingen: Joh. Christ. Dietrich, 1794–1835), plates 7–12. Reproduced with permission from the Öffentliche Bibliothek der Universität Basel, Henr 21 Taf. 160 The ambiguous corner with chamber pots in plate 5 168 Lichtenberg’s structural interpretation of plate 5 169 The purgative idols of the hypochondriac from plate 5 173 ix

List of iLLustrations

8.5 A grotesque display of disrespect to the law from plate 4 8.6 Glasses for elderly men with erectile dysfunction from plate 3 12.1 William Hogarth, frontispiece to Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759) (detail) 12.2 William Hogarth, ‘The Reward of Cruelty’, plate 4 of The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751). Engraving, 320 × 380 cm. Private collection 12.3 William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug (1745). Engraving. Private collection 12.4 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (1753), plate 1; and detail 12.5 William Hogarth, O the Roast Beef of Old England (The Gate of Calais) (1748). Engraving. Private collection 13.1 Anonymous, Paul Butterbrodt. Etching, 32.8 × 24 cm. Strasbourg, Collections of the Institut d’Histoire de l’Art. Copyright Institut d’Histoire de l’Art, Strasbourg 14.1 Les formes acerbes. Etching attributed to a drawing of Lafitte after Poirier de Dunkerque, 1795. Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris 15.1 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Martyrdom of St Eramus, 1506. Metropolitan Museum of Art 15.2 St Mammès as the dean of his church, carrying a ducal crown, seventeenth-century stone statue. Rivière-lès-Fosses, Haute-Marne, France. Copyright J. Gélis 15.3 St Mammès holding the gospel against his open belly, fifteenth-century stone statue. Douet-Artus church, Heugon, Orne, France. Copyright Archives de l’Orne (3 Fi. AOA 205) 15.4 St Erasmus, one of the fourteen intercessory saints, eighteenth-century stone statue. Vierzehnheiligen church sanctuary, Bavaria, Germany. Copyright J. Gélis 15.5 The martyrdom of St Mammès. Guild picture, print, anonymous, c.1776. Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France. Copyright J. Gélis x

176 178 253 259 261 262 265

278 298 316

317

319

321 327

Contributors

List of Contributors

Guilhem Armand is Lecturer in French Literature at the Université de La Réunion. He is a member of EA 7387 DIRE, for which he supervises the research group on ‘Thought, Knowledge (Re-)Writing and (Counter-)Discourses’. He is the author of Les Fictions à vocation scientifique de Cyrano à Diderot: vers une poétique hybride (Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013). His research focuses on the relations between fiction and the sciences (mainly astronomy and the natural sciences) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in order to study how modern science was inscribed in French literature after the revolution inspired by Copernicus and Galileo. More generally, he works on the question of knowledge in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literature. Recently his work has focused on didactic and scholarly treatises, parodies and drama. Clémence Aznavour is currently completing her PhD in French literature at Université Rennes 2, where she is also a teaching and research assistant. She is studying the body in Marivaux’s works and has already published several articles and book chapters on the subject: ‘Prendre la main, prendre par la main: polysémie et narrativité du geste dans La Vie de Marianne’, in Florence MagnotOgilvy (ed.), ‘Une dangereuse petite fille’: nouvelles lectures de la vie de Marianne de Marivaux (Classiques Garnier, 2014); ‘Les corps marivaudiens: hypotheses d’un oubli, pistes pour une redécouverte’, in Hiromi Matsui, Delphine Mulard and Ken Daimaru xi

List of Contributors

(eds), Construction et definition du corps, a special issue of Cahier multicultural de la Maison du Japon (Les Éditions du Net, 2015). Sabine Barles is Professor of Urban Studies and Planning at Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1). She has published extensively on the history of urban spaces from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, underground spaces, urban metabolism, urban ecology and urban socio-ecological evolutions. Among her publications are L’Invention des déchets urbains, France, 1790–1970 (Champ Vallon, 2005); La Ville délétère: médecins et ingénieurs dans l’espace urbain (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles) (Champ Vallon, 1999); ‘La Ville gisement de ressources, fin XVIIIe – fin XIXe siècles: excreta urbains, agriculture et industrie’, in R. D’Arienzo and C. Younès (eds), Recycler l’urbain: pour une écologie des milieux habités (Métis Presse, 2014); and ‘History of Waste Management and the Social and Cultural Representations of Waste’, in M. Agnoletti and S. Neri Serneri (eds), The Basic World Environmental History (Springer, 2014). Rebecca Anne Barr is a lecturer in English at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her research focuses on fictional form, masculinity and sexuality in the eighteenth-century novel. She has published articles and essays on the work of Samuel Richardson and his circle, Daniel Defoe’s Complete English Tradesman and masculinity in eighteenth-century Irish fiction. With Sarah-Anne Buckley and Laura Kelly she is the editor of Engendering Ireland: New Reflections on Modern Irish Literature and History (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). She is co-editor (with Justin Tonra) of Ossian Online, a website presenting editions of James MacPherson’s Ossian poems published between 1760 and 1773. Jacques Gélis is Professor Emeritus in Early Modern History at the Université Paris 8 (Saint-Denis). He has written numerous books on the history of pregnancy, midwifery, childbirth and reproduction. His book History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Birth in Early Modern Europe (Polity, 1996; L’Arbre et le fruit in French) has been translated in numerous languages. Jacques Gélis has a specific focus on the history of the body, exploring folk cultures, the bodily practices of rural communities and their relationship with religious traditions and ideologies. xii

List of Contributors

André Guillerme is Professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, Paris, where he holds the chair in the history of technology and the UNESCO chair of ‘Mémoire et métiers vivants’. He is a specialist in France’s urban history and of the history of urban and industrial environments. Among his numerous publications are The Age of Water: The Urban Environment in the North of France, A.D. 300–1800 (Texas A&M University Press, 1988),  which won the prize of the American Society of History of Public Works in 1989; with A. C. Lefort and G. Jigaudon, he is the co-editor of Dangereux, insalubres, incommodes: paysages industriels en Île-de-France (XIXe–XXe siècles) (Champ Vallon, 2005). His book La Naissance de l’industrie à Paris: entre sueurs et vapeurs, 1780–1830 (Champ Vallon, 2006) won the prize in epistemology and history of science of the French Académie des Sciences in 2010. Mark Jenner is Reader in Early Modern History at the University of York. His publications include Londinopolis: Essays in the Cultural and Social History of Early Modern London c.1500–c.1750 and Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c.1450– c.1850 as well as articles in American Historical Review, Historical Journal, Journal of British Studies, Past & Present and other books and journals. He is completing a monograph on the history of early modern notions of cleanliness and dirt, and has other projects on early modern London, on civic print culture, the cultural history of medicine and the history of the senses. Dorothy Johnson is Roy J. Carver Professor of Art History at the University of Iowa, where she specialises in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French art. She has published articles on Chardin, the Romantic child, botany and visual culture, Rousseau and landscape painting, myth in French art, David d’Angers, Delacroix and Jacques-Louis David. She is also the author of Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis (Princeton University Press, 1993), JacquesLouis David: The Farewell of Telemachus and Eucharis (Getty Publications, 1997) and David to Delacroix: The Rise of Romantic Mythology (University of North Carolina Press, 2011), and editor and contributing author of Jacques-Louis David: New Perspectives (University of Delaware Press, 2006). She is currently working on a book on art and anatomy in France from 1750 to 1830. xiii

List of Contributors

Amélie Junqua is Lecturer in English at the Université de PicardieJules Verne. Her research focuses on British material history and literature in the eighteenth century. With Sophie Vasset and Ariane Fennetaux, she has co-edited The Afterlife of Used Things: Recycling in the Long Eighteenth Century (Routledge, 2014). Among her recent publications are also ‘La Figure de John Locke, le masque de l’auteur, les personnages des lecteurs: y a-t-il un philosophe dans la prose de Joseph Addison?’, in Alexis Tadié (ed.), La Figure du philosophe dans les lettres anglaises et françaises (Presses universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2010), and ‘Surfeits of Words  – How to Survive Lists in Tristram Shandy’, in Anne Bandry-Scubbi and Peter de Voogd (eds), Hilarion’s Asse: Laurence Sterne and Humour (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013). Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon is Lecturer in English literature at the Université Paris 8 (Saint-Denis). Her current research focuses on eighteenth-century British literature and on the use of literary forms in scientific discourse, with an emphasis on medical treatises. She has recently published a critical edition of Bernard Mandeville’s Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730) (International Archives of the History of Ideas; Springer, 2017). Micheline Louis-Courvoisier is Professor of history at the Université de Genève. Her research focuses on the history of disease in the eighteenth century, especially the experience of melancholy in the written correspondence between patients and doctors, and she has published extensively on the subject: La Médecine des Lumières: tout autour de Samuel-Auguste Tissot, written with Vincent Barras (Georg, 2001); Les livres que j’aimerais que mon médecin lise (Georg, 2008); ‘L’Univers physiopsychologique des maladies au XVIIIe siècle: “une pratique” du sensible’, Études Épistémè, 31 (2017). Anthony Mahler is an instructor and editor for researchers publishing in English as a second language at the Language Centre of the University of Basel. His research focuses on Enlightenment dietetics and German literature. He has published on Goethe, Nietzsche, parrhesia, Jesuit drama and philology and has also translated scholarship from German into English in the fields of literary studies, art history and philosophy. xiv

List of Contributors

Ian Miller is a lecturer in modern British and Irish history at Ulster University. He is the author of a number of monographs including A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800–1950 (Pickering & Chatto, 2011), Reforming Food in Post-Famine Ireland: Medicine, Science and Improvement, 1845–1922 (Manchester University Press, 2014) and, most recently, A History of Force-Feeding: Hunger Strikes, Prisons and Medical Ethics, 1909–74 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Frédéric Ogée is Professor of British Literature and Art History at Université Paris Diderot. His main areas of research are eighteenthcentury aesthetics, literature and art, on which he has published several volumes and articles, including two collections of essays on William Hogarth. In 2006–7, he curated the first ever exhibition of William Hogarth’s works for the Louvre. Some of his recent publications include Diderot and European Culture: A Collection of Essays (Voltaire Foundation, 2006, re-issued 2009) and J. M. W. Turner: les paysages absolus (Hazan, 2010). He is currently editing an anthology of British artists’ writings, and in 2019 will curate an exhibition on the British portraitist Thomas Lawrence (the first in France). Between he was a member of 2014 and 2017 of Tate Britain’s Advisory Council. Jennifer Ruimi is a specialist in eighteenth-century theatre and a senior research fellow at the Université de Lausanne. She is the author of La Parade de société au XVIIIe siècle: une forme dramatique oubliée (Honoré Champion, 2015). Jennifer is currently preparing a monograph on the theatrical practice of Voltaire in society (Les Petits Théâtres de Voltaire) as part of the research programme ‘Théâtres de société, des Lumières au Second Empire’ directed by Valentina Ponzetto of the Fonds National Suisse and the Université de Lausanne. She is also a lecturer at the institute of theatre studies at Université Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3). Barbara Stentz completed her doctorate in art history at the University of Strasbourg in 2012. Her research focuses on the representations of pain in eighteenth-century visual arts. She has written numerous articles on pain in caricature, religious iconography and medical illustration, and she has co-edited, with Valérie Etter, a volume entitled Les Monstres qui parlent (L’Harmattan, 2014). xv

List of Contributors

Among her more recent publications are ‘La Maladie en récit et en images dans La Vérité des miracles de Louis-Basile Carré de Montgeron’, in Raconter la maladie, special issue of Dix-huitième siècle, 47:1 (2015), 291–310; ‘Exprimer la douleur au XVIIIe siècle: récits et figurations’, in Martial Guédron and Isabelle Laboulais (eds), Littérature et sciences, Études sur le XVIIIe siècle (Université de Bruxelles, 2015); and ‘Ordres et désordres du corps sensible dans la mise en image des émotions’, in Lorenzo Rustighi and Julia A. Sienkewicz (eds), The Social Worth of Tears: Emotional Economy in the 18th Century (forthcoming). Gilles Thomas is an independent scholar whose historical and practical explorations of the undergrounds of Paris and France have been widely acclaimed. Among his numerous publications, his book on the history of the Parisian underground galleries, Les Catacombes: histoire du Paris souterrain (Le Passage, 2014), was awarded the Prix Eve Delacroix by the Académie Française in 2016. Sophie Vasset is Lecturer in the department of English and American studies at Université Paris-Diderot, where she began teaching in 2007. She works on eighteenth-century British medicine and literature and is currently working on a cultural history of infertility in Britain and in France. Her first book, Décrire, prescrire, guérir: médecine et fiction dans la Grande-Bretagne du XVIIIe siècle (Presse de l’Université Laval, 2011), won the English and American studies prize for innovative research (Prix SAES/ AFEA) in 2012. She is a member of the steering committee of the research project ‘La Personne en médecine ’ at Université Sorbonne Paris Cité and the director of the Fondation des États Unis at Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris. She has edited Medicine and Narration in the Eighteenth Century (Voltaire Foundation, 2013) and, with Alexandre Wenger, Raconter la maladie, a special issue of Dix-huitième siècle (47:1, 2015).

xvi

Acknowledgements

The editors of the present volume wish to thank Rémi Mathis (Bibliothèque Nationale de France), Chloé Perrot (École des Chartes), Bernadette Molitor (Bibliothèque Universitaire Santé), Alexandre Klein (Université Laval, Quebec, Canada) for their help in tracing illustrations and references. We extend our gratitude to Anne Dunan-Page and her colleagues at the Société d’Études AngloAméricaines des XVIIe et XVIIe Siècles for their invaluable guidance and support. This book would never have been published without the financial support of the research grant ‘La Personne en médecine’ funded by Université Sorbonne Paris-Cité, the additional support of Université Paris 8 (Saint Denis) and the Laboratoire de Recherches sur les Cultures Anglophones research group (UMR 8225 CNRS) at Université Paris-Diderot, and research leave facilitated by colleagues at the Department of English, National University of Ireland, Galway. The editors are particularly grateful to Fiona Little for the great care and precision with which she prepared the copyedited version of this volume. Chapters 1, 2, 4, 7, 9, 10, 13 and 15 were translated from the French by Margaret Rigaud. Unless otherwise stated, the quotations in these chapters were translated by Margaret Rigaud, and those in other chapters by the respective authors.

xvii

introduction: entrails and digestion in the eighteenth century Rebecca Anne Barr, Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon and Sophie Vasset

In 1769, a Bath stone carver now known as Thomas Parsons recorded a recent bout of fever in his diary: Feb 4th Very Wet – warm – I never remember such a pain in my stomach as last night – I found a pressure on my stomach – endeavouring to discharge I belched as usual but striving to belch occasion’d a motion like an ebullition in the good which was undigested – and that rose frequently pretty high and felt to me as if it had scalded the upper part of my stomach with its intense heat – my stomach was sore and if the food rose at any time in consequence of my belching it increased the pain to that degree that I could hardly bear it.1

The young man’s language describing his own stomach is precise and colourful: he defines his sensations minutely, with a clear identification of the motions and transformation of food inside his viscera, as well as the state of his own digestion. That a layperson of fairly low social origin could produce such a medically informed analysis and description of the inner process of digestion suggests that the science of digestion was an intrinsic part of the wide cultural framework of eighteenth-century Europeans. Clearly, the stone carver is used to reading his own body, and he parses a myriad of signs through which he can gauge the state of his internal organs: At last some of my dinner though this was 9 at night came up, with a very disagreeable taste, acid and bitter seemed the principal predominant flavours blended together – and with the heat of this

1

beLLies, boweLs and entraiLs in the eighteenth Century

my throat was made sore – I eat no supper, having no appetite, and being fearfull that any food wou’d only irritate my pain – I went to bed as usual between eleven and twelve and slept very well – when I awoke this morning, I found that I had a considerable cold – or else the consequence of the soreness of my throat and stomach was much the same as the offset of the Cold – I am hoarse and cough up a good deal of a dull greenish matter which comes up with some reluctance and pain in small bits as if tore by violent coughing from the parts to which it adhered.

As Christopher Forth and Anna Carden-Coyne explain in Cultures of the Abdomen, the interconnection of internal organs in the stone carver’s bodily self-representation derives from a long tradition of ancient medical thought that views the organs holistically. ‘The belly and sexuality were interlinked, even interchangeable in ancient thought’, they write, and a similar connection is found here between the respiratory and the digestive systems.2 Connecting the cold and stomach discomfort might not necessarily indicate a lack of anatomical knowledge, but might rather be the conclusion of a regime of acute self-observation where daily variations and changes in regular motions or sensations are attributed to internal processes of ingestion and digestion. This diary testifies to the close scrutiny of the internal organs by eighteenth-century individuals of all ranks. Eighteenth-century patients feared sickness of the internal organs much more than any external form of disease. The gout, for example, a chronic and non-lethal disease, was considered most dangerous when it took its ‘internal’ form in its later stages, that is, when it was thought to be attacking the organs instead of manifesting itself in painful extremities. Patients had therefore a multitude of strategies to monitor the state of their insides, and some, like the stone carver Thomas Parsons, recorded their self-diagnosis and speculations, as the increasing tendency to introspection and self-knowledge drew the attention of diarists and letter-writers to the materiality of the self. Understanding the viscera, mapping the movements of digestion and apprehending the chemistry of digestive juices and the transformation of food also led to a decisive progress in anatomical exploration. John Hunter’s experiments on the stomach,3 George Cheyne’s close observation of digestion and the effects of vegetarianism,4 and the plethora of treatises on dietetics and regimen that ranged from medical treatises to recipe books bear witness to the interest of early 2

introduCtion

modern science in the digestive process and its role in health. Such an interest stemmed from the continued tradition of Hippocratic and Galenic conceptions of health, channelled, on the one hand, through the more recent commentaries of Sydenham and, on the other, through a vibrant, competitive and co-operative network of anatomists and doctors that drew on each other’s works through debates, provocations and sometimes pure professional antagonism. This was the case in the dispute between Richard Mead and John Woodward on the role of the stomach in the body. In his infamous State of Physick and of Diseases (1718), the natural historian and physician John Woodward composed the following aphorism: ‘The great Wisdom and Happiness of Man … consists in a due Care of the Stomach and Digestion.’5 The statement instigated the most violent controversy in his career. Woodward’s principle was that, to recover a healthy balance in the body, the use of emetics, whether gentle potions or simply touching the throat with a feather, was therapeutic in most cases, including the early stages of the smallpox. Several doctors attacked him, and the ambitious Richard Mead penned a pamphlet entitled Don Bilioso De l’Estomac (1719), a parody of Woodward’s treatise written like the table of contents of a picaresque novel.6 The Mead–Woodward controversy acts as a macrocosm of the way in which differing disciplines and modes of understanding are stimulated and converge in the debate over the stomach. It shows how literature, medicine, history and visual satire participate in a medical quarrel over the cultural centrality and significance of gastric function. Similarly, the French inventor Vaucanson’s aspiration to create a digestive automaton, and the success of his famous ‘digesting duck’ – a machine that claimed to reproduce the digestive process – also highlight the general interest in the invisible workings of the viscera and their representations in eighteenth-century Europe (see Figure 0.1).7 Whether the digesting duck worked is another question: it was undoubtedly part of the materialist attempt at figuring out the digestive process, which was at the heart of the eighteenth-century obsession for the workings of invisible pipes.8 Such interest in delving into the mysterious interior can likewise be seen in the numerous ‘anatomical Venuses’ of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. These figures were kept in cabinets of curiosities as objects of learning, as moral reminders of the limits of life and beauty and as representations of the excavating anatomical gesture in itself. 3

beLLies, boweLs and entraiLs in the eighteenth Century

Figure 0.1 Jacques de Vaucanson, automaton of a digesting duck created in 1738 and presented for the first time in the Palais Royal in 1744

This collection of essays challenges the notion of the supremacy of the brain as the key organ of the Enlightenment, by focusing on the workings of the bowels and viscera that so preoccupied writers and thinkers during the long eighteenth century. It complicates the idea that discourses and representations of digestion and bowels are confined to the so-called consumption culture of the long eighteenth century, in which dysfunctional bowels are categorised as a symptom of excess. While digestive malfunction and self-analysis were often the preoccupations of the élite or middling sort, Thomas Parsons’s diary makes it clear that the preoccupation with gastrointestinal health cut across classes. This volume interrogates the ways in which the French, German and English middling sort understood their bodily economy, by recourse to recent scientific theories and fashionable fads, but also the ways in which the 4

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culture of the abdomen was manifested in folk culture and in the labouring ranks of society.9 It also seeks to explore more general manifestations of the visceral or gastric as a wider reflection on the materiality of the period’s intellectual, medical and artistic preoccupations. Thus, rather than confine itself to purely medical and scientific discussions of entrails or bowels, Bellies, Bowels and Entrails utilises a more capacious and metaphorical understanding of these terms. This volume derives from a 2014 conference at Université Paris-Diderot, where eighteenth-century scholars from Europe and the USA were invited to work together on the representations of viscera in eighteenth-century medical theory and practice, literature, architecture, religion and visual culture. Over the course of the meeting, it became clear that the representation of the bowels  and of the mysterious process of digestion acted as counterpoints to the external gestures of self-effacing politeness and other modes of refined sociability, drawing attention to the deeper workings of the self. Both the conference and this collection confirm that the academic interest in politeness, sociability, public space and opinion, sentimentality and reason that characterised the field throughout the twentieth century has given way to darker, dirtier and less glamorous subjects which complicate and enlarge the vision of a period too often reduced to the glamour of the rich élite and the progressive aspects of social progress. Scholarly focus has shifted to the darker side of the Enlightenment. Two recent works of social history and literary criticism exemplify such interest in the insalubrious elements of the period: Emily Cockayne’s Hubbub, which examines the materiality of the urban environment of eighteenth-century Britain, with its layers of dirt, filth and unwanted juices,10 and Sophie Gee’s Making Waste, which focuses on the mire, desolation and ways in which eighteenth-century culture feasted on ‘leftovers of the imagination’.11 Re-examining the eighteenth-century canon through the prism of waste allows Gee not merely to demonstrate the ubiquity of detritus in the literary canon but to show that these visions of refuse and the material by-products of modernity were closely related to the concept of ‘valuable abundance’.12 Literary representations of dirt, detritus and degenerated surplus were partly negotiations of questions of value, echoing contemporary philosophical and theological debates about knowledge and materialism. In a similar fashion, Peter 5

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Smith’s Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift amplifies Gee’s argument that waste and impure matter are key imaginative resources of the eighteenth century, providing a pre-history of Swift’s excremental verse.13 These studies flesh out what Peter Stallybrass and Allon White identify as one of the key paradoxes of the period; that while attempting to ‘cleanse the public sphere of impure and messy semiotic matter’, the eighteenth century imaginary fed ‘voraciously and incessantly from [such] material. It nourished and replenished its refined morality from the symbolic repertoire of the grotesque body, in the very name of its exclusion.’14 Bellies, Bowels and Entrails adds to these explorations of the murky eighteenth century by examining underlying structures of the body, which were both an object of fascination and a source of confusion, as well as an evolving paradigm through which contemporaries understood the underworlds of their own culture and society. This volume contributes to our sense of the ways in which the polite and impolite were woven together, by focusing on the figuration and understanding of the guts, entrails and digestion in medicine, material history, urban history, literature, art, comedy and science from England, France and Germany. Extending the insights of Ian Miller’s Modern History of the Stomach by focusing on the century preceding his study, the volume also broadens the conception of innards, entrails and digestion to include fictional, metaphorical and symbolic understandings of the terms.15 The essays in the volume examine the concept of the viscera in its historical, metaphorical and symbolic manifestations: explaining contemporary representations and understanding of the visceral organs, as well as metaphorical uses of the guts as parallel systems of evacuation, or invisible – perhaps disturbing – digestive structures underneath the surface of things. That the visceral space was both real and metaphorical at the same time is best illustrated by one of the passages of Tobias Smollett’s first novel, Roderick Random, written just after the author completed his medical training. Roderick and his servant companion, Strap, can afford only a cheap dinner in one of the open cellars of London, which are accessible only to those who know the city well enough: He accordingly conducted us to a certain lane, where stopping, he bade us observe him, and do as he did, and, walking a few paces,

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dived into a cellar and disappeared in an instant. – I followed his example, and descending very successfully, found myself in the middle of a cook’s shop, almost suffocated with the steams of boil’d beef, and surrounded by a company of hackney coachmen, chairmen, draymen, and a few footmen out of place or on board wages; who sat eating shin of beef, tripe, cow-heel, or sausages, at separate boards, covered with cloths which turned my stomach.16

In reaction to this infernal vision of what the lower orders eat, and where and how they have their dinner, Roderick is nauseated, his bodily sensations mirroring the urban space that surrounds him as he finds himself in the entrails of the city. As the poor eat offal (tripe, cow-heel and sausages made with the skin of intestine) that represent their function in the social body, the fumes mimic the constant wind that preoccupied the intellectual élite fretting about the movements of their own bowels. The cellars act as the entrails of the city, processing the unwanted meat from the houses and taverns above the ground. The first section of this volume, ‘Urban congestion and human digestion’, explores the metaphorical and symbolic connections between the entrails of the body and the bowels of the city or the labyrinthine tunnels of the mine. In a chapter of ‘subterranean revelations’, Gilles Thomas explores the Paris beneath Paris. The proliferation of underground spaces in the capital – sewers, catacombs and quarries – drove the administration of King Louis XVI to create an office of inspection to map and police this burgeoning underground city that was becoming increasingly well known through visitors’ accounts in French and European periodicals. Thomas sketches an archaeology of the Parisian underworld, ‘the hollow imprint of an endoskeleton now vanished’, and the alchemical processes of digestion, mummification and exhalations that emanated from the burial sites within the city itself. The gothic overtones of this City of Light are offset by a vertiginous sense of inversion as the ground beneath Parisian streets is repurposed for buildings which stretch into the sky. As Louis-Sébastien Mercier exclaims: ‘what we see in the air is what is missing beneath our feet’. Sabine Barles and André Guillerme also focus on Paris to analyse the fundamental connection between the bowels of city and the entrails of the body. Investigating the history of the French capital’s famous stench, this urban phenomenon triggers the anxiety and concern of doctors, architects, civil servants and other observers 7

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who attempted to diagnose the workings of the deepest recesses of the city. If Paris was treated as a patient manifesting symptoms of gastric distress, the civic corporation anxiously fretted about the very structure and dysfunction of its own lower regions. Prone to miasmas and putrid effusions, Paris became anthropomorphised and medicalised by its inhabitants. Barles and Guillerme show that the lower regions of the city and the vast amount of waste they produced were an intrinsic part of the healthy functioning of the whole corporation: an economy of repurposing excrement and innards that connected sewage and nightmen to merchants, musicians, politicians and doctors. Thus the ‘Parisian pedosphere was a thick layer perpetually enriched by the waste of the capital’, the very wealth of the city powered by the detritus of its inhabitants. Mirroring Gilles Thomas’s introductory perambulation through the intricate bowels of underground Paris, Ian Miller’s essay ‘Digesting in the long eighteenth century’ weaves its way through medical perceptions of the stomach. Miller explores human digestion and explains the ways in which the role of the stomach and of the workings of the inner body became pivotal to understanding larger patterns of interrelationship between the organs. If the dead and dissected stomach yielded some knowledge, the living and functional organism continued to elude complete comprehension. Building on his earlier work, Miller suggests that the changing understanding of digestion ‘encouraged deep anxieties to form around the gut’ and that these concerns produced and ‘underpinned a new set of therapeutic regimes designed to safeguard both dietary and bodily health’. The dethroning of the stomach in the bodily economy occurred slowly across the century, and Galenic, humoral understandings of the intestine co-existed with vitalism and iatrochemistry. A host of ‘profound philosophers’ were engrossed in gastric speculation across the century, yet digestion continued to be felt as an emotional as well as a material process. In ‘The soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century’, Micheline Louis-Courvoisier shifts the focus of medical history onto the subjective experience of illness. Her contribution marshals individual accounts of symptoms in the epistolary medical correspondence of the celebrated Dr Tissot. Analysing the semantics of description affords insight into self-conceptions of intestinal and emotional maladies and the nosological assessments made by their physicians. Louis-Courvoisier insists on the 8

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importance of crediting the ways in which patients perceived the relationship between their emotional and psychological states, between their melancholy and hypochondria and the workings of their bowels. The cases from Tissot’s correspondence add a new element to our sense of how eighteenth-century individuals understood their intestines: not merely in the terms of the humours, but using an atmospheric vocabulary: ‘terms of clouds, veils and vapours’ to evoke a ‘chaotic inner sensitivity’ as ‘elusive and shapeless as it is painful and stressful’. The second section of the volume, ‘Excremental operations’, illustrates the materiality of digestion by focusing on its byproducts – excrements and paper – and their satirical or epistemological manifestations. In ‘Sawney’s seat: the social imaginary of the London bog-house c.1660–c.1800’ Mark Jenner conducts a pungent ‘history from below’, which unravels the social and cultural meaning of the eighteenth-century ‘house of office’. Challenging commentators such as Lawrence Stone who cast the eighteenth century as an unsanitary precursor of toilet-trained Victorian hygiene, Jenner illuminates the complex and vital meanings of the bog-house in eighteenth-century urban culture. If the urban privy was relatively insalubrious and undeveloped it was nonetheless an effective means of managing faecal waste, and contained unclean ordure in a fashion that was clearly socially recognised and largely respected: eighteenth-century individuals were indeed offended by defecation in public zones and vigorously policed anti-social toilet practices. In Jenner’s detailed weaving of legal testimony, visual prints and cityscapes, he shows how eighteenth-century privies (both communal and domestic) were regarded with disgust given their dirt and stench, but were also sites of varied activity. Bog-houses were locations for illegal and taboo practices such as infanticide and sodomy, topoi of political satire and scatology and the terminus for much contemporary writing which ended up recycled as toilet paper or bumfodder. These social spaces, Jenner concludes, encapsulate a ‘paradoxical urbanity’ affording a provisional privacy and reminder of the base bodily functions shared by a sprawling populace. Amélie Junqua’s interest in paper reflects Jenner’s attention to the prints on the walls of Sawney’s bog-house. Junqua’s conception of digestion is both material and metaphorical as she depicts the recycling processes that surrounded paper. In ‘Eighteenth-century 9

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paper: the readers’ digest’ she provides a material-cultural history of the bumfodder discussed in Jenner’s chapter. Junqua explains the protracted process of papermaking from a pulp made of old rags, and the fate of paper once it has been read and discarded, into many forms of waste paper including hygienic paper. Such a long transformative – and digestive – process has epistemological ramifications for print and knowledge, which, Junqua argues, many writers of satire and periodicals were aware of and used in their own metatextual considerations. Jennifer Ruimi’s chapter on faecal references in eighteenth-century théâtre de société uncovers a seemingly paradoxical scatological pleasure in eghteenth-century drama: colic, diarrhoeas, haemorrhoids and clysters are part of a transgressive aesthetic enabled by the cloistered space of representation. These plays not only contain lurid toilet humour but seem to call for stagings of defecation and even coprophagy. Ruimi provokes the question of taste: how did society and the aristocracy understand their predilection for comedies of the basest humour? Rather than a simple burlesque, Ruimi argues, these plays deployed a deliberate aesthetic which became, at times, a political contestation: reminding the audience that the king, too, had to use the privy. Perhaps one of the most famous representations of the bowels in eighteenth-century visual culture is the final plate of William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, where the rake’s intestines slide from the dissection table directly into a waiting dog’s bowl: uniting ignominious death, punishment, filth and food in one serpentine and morbid movement. Anthony Mahler’s ‘The legibility of the bowels: Lichtenberg’s excretory vision of Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress’ re-examines Hogarth’s work via the notebooks of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, academic, aesthetician and Hogarth’s most influential German advocate. The essay explores constipation, both as a physical malaise and as a metaphor for the effects of study and learning in Lichtenberg’s work. Mahler shows that Lichtenberg’s analyses of Hogarth reflect not only the author’s obsession with excretion and expulsion, but also the ways in which such excremental iconography is representative of the period’s fascination with the bowels and their relationship to bodily and moral health. That preoccupation with the innards extends to hypochondria, which Lichtenberg understands ‘as a pathology of interpretation … the fearful imagination of causes and symptoms of disease where 10

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there are none’. Thus the ‘hermeneutics of hypochondria’ is a cultural tendency to overanalyse symptoms, to pathologically detail the minutiae of bodily and symbolic manifestations. Revealing the plethora of objects (enemas; anal bulbs; close stools) designed to hold the excretions and secretions of the human body, Mahler provides a surprising and convincing reinterpretation of this most ubiquitous of eighteenth-century prints. The third part of the volume, ‘Burlesque bellies’, expounds further on the burlesque motif of the innards as it is used to subvert areas of more serious knowledge, from medical treatises to epic literature or visual representation. A more bathetic wind blows through Guilhem Armand’s essay, in which flatulence is a kind of chronic comic condition in théâtre de société and comic tracts of eighteenth-century France. In ‘Parodies of pompous knowledge: treatises on farting’, Armand presents a panoply of excremental dramas and scientific burlesques which push the boundaries of representation. Armand’s study is thus a Francophone case study which parallels Simon Dickie’s work on the persistence of impolite jokes throughout the century and the ways in which eighteenthcentury culture accommodated (and enjoyed) what we might find obscene or cruel.17 These French texts have Swiftian overtones, satirising scientific discourses and insisting that pretensions to human dignity and encyclopaedic understandings of the material world be punctured by the involuntary eruptions from our nether regions. The farts in these texts have a power to humorously critique and liberate both body and mind: as one verse asserts, ‘The fart, unpent, that croons its air / Often foils death, dispels despair.’ Yet, as Armand suggests, these uncontrollable winds are ideological as well as playful: an instance of the potential for the bowels to deflate overweening Enlightenment rationalism. Similarly, Clémence Aznavour focuses on Marivaux’s less wellknown prose works L’Homère travesti and Le Télémaque travesti, showing the recurrence of the abdominal imagery otherwise almost totally absent from his theatrical works. In these works ‘Gastric disturbances invade the epic struggles’, as the burlesque reintroduces the fart or hiccup to unveil and emphasise impolite or hidden aspects of the body. The voracity of desire and the analogy between food and sexual longing renders the ‘belly … the material location of desire’. Aznavour’s ‘links between the pleasures of the stomach and the pleasures of the flesh’ are developed further in Rebecca 11

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Anne Barr’s study of John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb. This novel explores the interrelation of sexuality and digestive organs, and Barr’s reading reveals the ambivalence towards appetite in the works of a writer better known for his pornographic work Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. Cleland, Barr argues, was ‘fixated on the visceral compulsions of humanity’. By contextualising Coxcomb’s queasy amatory escapades with the author’s interest in preventive medicine, the oral and gastric elements of masculine desire are shown to be crucial to bodily health but deeply fraught. Cleland’s injunctions to obsessively clean the tongue with a whalebone to keep the mouth ‘religiously clean’ is echoed in his nauseated protagonist, who surfeits on vice while on a supposed road to virtue. Combining affect theory and the history of emotions with concepts of diet and regimen, this essay exposes ‘the visceral expulsions of disgust … [and] the vacillations of embodied subjectivity’ in its male protagonist. Culminating in a scene of perverse breastfeeding, Coxcomb suggests that the imbrication of appetite, desire and disgust has ramifications for the forms of the novel and the forms of self that the novel portrays. Echoing Mahler’s analysis of Lichtenberg’s Hogarthian obsessions, Frédéric Ogée offers an essay on the bellies and double chins of Hogarth’s robust, dynamic, de-idealised human figures. Hogarth’s desire for comprehensiveness and his refusal to correct nature led him to depict ‘all the “symptoms” of human life’ including ‘disease, vice, squalor, disgust’. The retching, sometimes abject, characters that populate his art express a conception of the body as a variable and transformable object capable of expressing moral and aesthetic pathology as well as beauty. Hogarth’s bodies, like those envisioned by the academicians, were intrinsically political too. The linearity of scrawny French peasants’ bodies offsets the rotund bellies of his English subjects, who even as they depicted the dynamics of excess in staggering, bleary-eyed inebriation or vomiting were suffering the much-preferable affliction of plenty. In A Midnight Modern Conversation, Ogée argues, the over-full gorges and ‘slack and flabby lines’ of the subjects are part of a visual arsenal intended to ‘provoke in the viewer a reaction of uneasiness, [as] physical as much as existential’. Following Ogée’s chapter on the visual impact of Hogarth’s ‘line of bellies’, the last section, ‘Visualising the viscera’, focuses on drawings, engravings and caricatures which used the bowels, 12

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viscera and entrails to articulate political protest, Revolutionary tensions and subversion through scatological aesthetics, or to expose those invisible organs. Barbara Stentz examines the ‘iconography of the belly’, whose protuberant lines were increasingly deployed in Revolutionary satire to depict the excesses and corruption of both the clergy and the aristocracy. Caricature reacted against the smooth lines of classical statuary and aesthetics, replacing the manly musculature of the torso with pathological adiposity and visceral monstrosity, exemplified by depictions of the voracity of Louis  XVI. In the rhetoric of Revolutionary and counterRevolutionary satire, ‘The physiological is … amalgamated with the political.’ Stentz’s analysis of the influence of medical knowledge on caricature is confirmed by Dorothy Johnson’s discussion of the intensified focus on dissection in pedagogy and its effects on neoclassical art in the 1790s. The renovation of teaching in the Académie des Beaux-Arts transformed traditional aesthetics with the material reality of viscera and entrails, just as the guillotine transformed the spectacle of execution, so that in Revolutionary art ‘form and corruptible flesh are conjoined and become prominent’. Drawing on the seminal work of Barbara Stafford and Daniel Arasse, Johnson traces the ways in which religious iconography, blood sacrifice, art and science, opened up the innards of humanity to a horrified yet entranced gaze. Whether in écorché, anatomical Venuses or neoclassical depictions of the auto-disembowelling of Cato, viscera were at the forefront of a new aesthetics of dissection. Returning to the influence of religion and folk memory, Jacques Gélis outlines the history and influence of the ‘saints of the bowels’ in eighteenth-century culture, connecting their representations to the representations of the underworld of the mine. These religious figures, whose entrails are exposed to the viewer in early modern sculptures and altarpieces, co-existed with the new scientific conceptions of the belly and viscera. At the frontier between the higher functions of the body and their lower orders, the belly was viewed as ‘a subtle but fragile alembic’ requiring safeguarding by supernatural powers. In their murky proximity, the womb, the bowels and the belly were linked by their cloacal properties. The curative powers of these saints were intimately tied to their inner organs, and their representations insist on the materiality of the body as well as their symbolic significance: thus these saints proffer and extend their bowels in their own hands and were worshipped by 13

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believers who suffered from various intestinal maladies. From childbirth to attacks of the gripe, the eighteenth-century faithful sought assistance in these symbols of gruesome evisceration and via material and symbolic practices. To Gélis, the evisceration of the saints echoed the excavation of the bowels of the earth, while the aching bellies of women and infants were linked by the healing rituals to the fertile womb of mother earth. The essays collected here provide a series of illuminating case studies of how the cultures of the period plumbed the depths of the human entrails and of the underground for a variety of purposes and with a variety of outcomes, as they tried to assimilate, rather than simply reject, their material essence in order to understand processes of incorporation and embodiment itself. Recurrent themes emerge across these essays. Scatology, the grotesque and the comedic are persistent Bakhtinian tropes. Whether being deployed against monarchical power (Ruimi) or to deflate the discourse of the new science (Armand) by returning the body to the hallmarks of its digestive processes, such humour pervaded all walks of life: not merely confined to a few shameful pamphlets or jokes behind closed doors, scatology operated even within absolute power or rigid hierarchy. As the recent work on the voluminous Saint-Aubin Livre de caricatures shows, the humour and significance of scatology is suffused with political implications as well as being historically contingent.18 This can be seen in Jenner’s discussion of the ways in which the Jacobite crisis percolated through to the scatological imaginings of Scottish incontinence; Sawney ‘taken short’ in Hanoverian English territory metaphorises Scottish defeat as bodily discomfort and social shame. That these figurations of the body also disrupt eighteenth-century gender norms is clear in Ruimi’s essay, where the scatological society parades are equally open to women as men. As well as a forerunner of political revolt, the dramas she analyses are largely an attack on the formal proprieties and proscriptions of the Théâtre-Français. Ruimi’s description of Le Remède à la mode – in which the noble heroine’s diarrhoea gives rise to a rare paean to the thrills of anal penetration – together with the preponderance of phallic innuendo in these texts, suggests that such depictions had a place in high society. Despite the universality of such humour, these essays show that the meaning of excremental representations is often context-dependent and requires knowledge of social and material history to make its humour legible. 14

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The understanding of the gut as an index of health and vigour of the bodily economy is in flux during this period of intensified modernity. The iconography of the period shows the shifting and culturally contingent appraisals of the stomach, as the soft underbellies of non-heroic bodies become part of the aesthetic repertoire of art as well as caricature. Johnson’s analysis of the impact of dissection as pedagogy and embodied practice (students not merely watching, but wielding the scalpel themselves) in Revolutionary art suggests the ways in which scientific and surgical precision not merely became ideological but also impacted aesthetics. In France, the impact of the medical pathologies, in which fat becomes less a signifier of wealth and comfort than one of inertia and moral turpitude, can be witnessed in visual representations. England, by contrast, appears to retain some positive valorisations of rotundity, as Ogée argues. However, belly-fat, with its connotations of ‘nutritive prosperity’,19 becomes pernicious when proliferating on female figures, as seen in Barr’s essay, where the body of the brothel madam engenders the pull of both curiosity and horror. The stomach, thin or flabby, is gendered. Much of the work here confirms the confluence of theories of illness, privilege and somatic disorder in the period.20 Thus The Lady’s Magazine calls hypochondria a ‘disease of people that are idle, or think themselves but ill entertained; and attribute every fit of dull humour, or imagination, to a formal disease’.21 Valetudinarianism and hypochondria have often been interpreted as a means for the weak or powerless to exert power over others or a diversion for weak minds.22 But somatic illness is also understood as an existential or psychological metaphor. As Allan Ingram and Stuart Sim have argued, these maladies are often deployed as signifiers of intelligence and refinement.23 Thus the hypochondriacal self-analysis of Lichtenberg is a wry expression of the obsessive practices and costive productions of the academic life: a means of expressing his academic abilities and splenetic genius. The spleen (that gloomy organ of imagination) was, after all, supposed to feed the stomach the refined blood required for digestion.24 Mahler’s essay suggests that in late eighteenth-century Germany intellectual over-delicacy was still being formulated as a digestive-gastric malady rather than as a ‘nervous disease’. Indeed, the scatological vigour of Lichtenberg’s writing conveys a gastric imaginary capable of (filthy) output even when the body is constipated. 15

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These essays show the variety of approaches to, discourses on, and understandings of the intestinal functioning in French and English culture. As Miller’s overview of the medical history of the stomach in the period shows, older forms of ‘scientific’ humoral understanding persisted long into the century of enlightenment, coexisting with more modern forms of analysis. If the élite patients in Courvoisier’s study seek medical advice partly through the forms of a ‘writing cure’ – analysing, evoking, taxonomising their ailments and surrendering themselves to the care of trained specialists  – members of folk culture externalise their ailments, concretising them in symbolic objects, seeking to control and cure by age-old practices such as prayers and rituals. Yet both groups try to negotiate the interfaces between the murky spaces of their innards and the ‘light’ of reason or God’s grace. Both groups likewise display agency in their attempts to seek relief: tea or folk practices may have provided a solace close to a placebo effect. Perhaps surprisingly, Bellies, Bowels and Entrails does not contain any female-focused case studies, an unintended aspect in a book co-edited by three female academics. The notable exception is Gélis’s discussion of the oven-like womb, childbearing pangs and the eighteenth-century Catholic Church’s attempt to separate the procreative function of the womb from the proximate activities of the viscera – ensuring that the former was sacred while the latter could be relegated to low function. This might suggest that  the   one-sex model of physiology persisted throughout the century, with far less differentiation being made between the stomachs and innards of women and men than might have been thought.25 Contemporary interest in spectacularly sexual and gynaecological artefacts such as the anatomical Venus may in fact result from, and reproduce, an anachronistic emphasis on difference. While the womb was part of the inner world of the body, it was merely one of a host of recalcitrant yet omnipresent organs exerting their influences on the bodies and consciousness of eighteenth-century individuals. Further research is needed on the ways in which the womb was understood as interacting with the viscera in this period, outside the gendered paradigms of the nervous system. Recent work by Lianne McTavish and Wendy Churchill shows that the intricate relationship between the womb (often simply called ‘the belly’) and viscera is being explored by scholars.26 16

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The variety of meanings and their differing permutations analysed here shows that even within a study limited to England, France and Germany there is a superabundance of material. Further studies on other countries and cultures will no doubt be equally rich. Europe’s perennial fascination with the stomach and its importance in the holistic understandings of human health can be seen in the recent efflorescence of popular work on the subject. The German scientist Giulia Enders’s book Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ not merely argued for the centrality of the gut but reinstated it into the popular imaginary.27 Her clear account of the function of the digestive system, the neuronal and microbial processes at work in our intestines and the impact of bacteria on our physical and mental health has had a major impact on our contemporary culture and modes of living. Likewise, Francisca Joly Gomez’s L’intestin, notre deuxième cerveau emphasises the stomach’s role in bodily equilibrium and health, granting its symptoms powers of prognosis for the entire organism.28 Modernity’s interest in our guts and digestion has returned our focus to the stomach and the abdomen. This volume has attempted to give a sample of the ways in which the eighteenth-century culture fixated on its belly. From expressions of gastric pain, nervous indigestion and the material culture of the bog-house to chronic or comic flatulence; from iconographies of the stomach transformed in the wake of political upset and medical discovery to the staging of scatological dramas and queasy fictional protagonists, the eighteenth-century history of bellies, bowels and entrails is not for delicate stomachs. Notes 1 Huntington Library, MSS HM 62593. The diary has been identified by S. Sloman, ‘An Eighteenth-Century Stonecarver’s Diary Identified: Eight Months in the Life of Thomas Parsons (1744–1813) of Bath’, British Art Journal, 7:3 (2006), 4–13. For further reading on the diary see L. E. Klein, ‘An Artisan in Polite Culture: Thomas Parsons, Stone Carver, of Bath, 1744–1813’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 75:1 (2012), 27–51. 2 C. Forth and A. Carden-Coyne (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). 3 J. Hunter, ‘On the Digestion of the Stomach after Death, by John Hunter, F.R.S. and Surgeon to St. George’s Hospital’, Philosophical Transactions, 62 (1772), 447–54.

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4 G. Cheyne, The English Malady; or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds, ed. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1991) and T. Stuart, The Bloodless Revolution: A Cultural History of Vegetarianism from 1600 to Modern Times (London: Norton, 2007). 5 J. Woodward, The State of Physick and of Diseases (London, 1718). The first one was triggered by his theory about the flood and the presence of the fossils of fish and sea shells on dry ground. On this controversy see C. A. Hanson, ‘Don Quixote and Medical Satire: The Mead–Woodward Quarrel’, in The English Virtuoso: Art, Medicine, and Antiquarianism in the Age of Empiricism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 135–40. 6 R. Mead, The Life and Adventures of Don Bilioso De L’Estomac. Translated from the Original Spanish into French; Done from the French into English. With a Letter to the College of Physicians (London, 1719). 7 Vaucanson gives the following description of the mechanism at play in his duck: ‘Un canard, dans lequel je représente le mécanisme des viscères destinés aux fonctions du boire, du manger, & de la digestion … l’aliment y est digéré comme dans les vrais animeaux, pas dissolution, & non par trituration, comme le prétendent plusieurs physiciens … La matière digérée dans l’estomac est conduite par des tuyaux, comme dans l’animal par ses boyaux, jusqu’à l’anus, où il y a un sphincter qui en permet la sortie.’ (‘A duck in which I have represented the machinery of the viscera devoted to drinking, eating, & digesting … The food is digested as it is in real animals, by concoction & not trituration, as many physicians have claimed … The matter digested in the stomach is pushed along pipes (as in the bowels of the animal) towards the anus, where a sphincter allows it to be expelled.’) ‘Lettre de M. Vaucanson, à M. l’Abbé D. F.’, in Le Mécanisme du flûteur automate … avec la description d’un canard artificiel (Paris: Jacques Guérin, 1738). 8 See for example J. Riskin, ‘The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life’, Critical Inquiry, 29:4 (2003), 599–633; Justin Pollard, ‘The Digesting Duck, the Musicians and the Silk Loom’, Engineering & Technology, 9:9 (October 2014), 98; Daniel Cottom, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Digestion’, Representations, 66 (1999), 52–74. 9 Chapters 1, 4 and 6 of the volume discuss non-élite manifestations of excremental culture, fat and prosperity, and religion and illness. For  an exploration of the ways in which illness was socially fashioned  and  negotiated in eighteenth-century culture see A. Ingram and L. W. Dickson (eds), Disease and Death in Eighteenth-Century Literature  and Culture: Fashioning the Unfashionable (London: Palgrave, 2016).

18

introduCtion

10 E. Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England, 1600–1770 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). 11 S. Gee, Making Waste: Leftovers and the Eighteenth-Century Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010). 12 Ibid., p. 8. 13 P. Smith, Between Two Stools: Scatology and its Representations in English Literature, Chaucer to Swift (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012). 14 Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 108. 15 I. Miller, A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine  and British Society, 1800–1950 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011). 16 T. Smollett, Roderick Random (London, 1748), p. 102. 17 S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011). 18 Colin Jones, Juliet Carey and Emily Richardson (eds), The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de caricatures’: Drawing Satire in Eighteenth-Century Paris, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 2012:06 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012). 19 S. Weir Mitchell quoted in S. L. Gillman, ‘How Fat Detectives Think’, in Forth and Carden-Coyne (eds) Cultures of the Abdomen, pp. 221–38; at p. 226. 20 See for instance, C. Lawlor, Consumption and Literature: The Making of the Romantic Disease (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), who discusses the aestheticisation of unpleasant diseases as socially ‘glamorous’ markers of sensibility. 21 W. Temple, ‘Of the People and Disposition of the Hollanders’, extract in The Lady’s Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (March 1781), 140. 22 G. S. Gross, ‘Flights into Illness: Some Characters in Jane Austen’, in M. Roberts and R. Porter (eds), Literature and Medicine during the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 190. 23 A. Ingram and S. Sim, ‘Introduction: Depression before Depression’, in Allan Ingram et al. (eds), Melancholy Experience in Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century: Before Depression, 1660–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), p. 5. 24 W. Cowper, in The Anatomy of Humane Bodies (London: Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1698), b2r–b2v, claimed that the spleen processed blood from the viscera before returning it to the stomach. 25 Thomas Lacquer’s influential model of sexual difference is articulated in Making Sex: Body and Gender From the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge,

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MA: Harvard University Press, 1990); for challenges to this narrative see M. Green, ‘Bodily Essences: Bodies as Categories of Difference’, in Linda Kalof (ed.), A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Medieval Age (Oxford: Berg, 2010), pp. 149–72 and 264–8. 26 L. McTavish, Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005) and W. D. Churchill, Female Patients in Early Modern Britain: Gender, Diagnosis, and Treatment (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012). 27 Giulia Enders, Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body’s Most Underrated Organ (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2014). 28 F. Joly Gomez, L’Intestin, notre deuxième cerveau: comprendre son rôle clé et préserver sa santé (Paris: Marabout, 2016). 

20

PART I Urban congestion and human digestion

1  the belly and the viscera of the capital city Gilles Thomas

The good city of Paris is known only on its surface; if the hand of God were to tear away the skin, bristling with houses, that covers the entrails of the ground within a circumference of twenty leagues, our eyes would be terrified by these subterranean revelations, these formidable arcana that the sun will never enlighten, these marvellous treasures stashed away by the miserly centuries, and that no eye can see, no hand remove. We walk, we laugh and we play on a carpet composed of remarkable things, things that no language has named and which will forever be nameless. Joseph Méry, Salons et souterrains de Paris1

It might all start with a simple stroll around the streets of the fourteenth arrondissement of Paris, wandering with no particular aim in mind. In wet weather, the numerous manhole covers (plaques d’égouts or rather tampons de regards, inspection hatches in official terminology) act like simple mirrors in the pavement to reflect our poor, meagre silhouettes lost in the middle of the noisy city, prey to a perpetual Brownian motion. Yet it becomes apparent that these hatches, although interchangeable in terms of their common diameter (apart from the one or two exceptions allowed by any self-respecting rule), have particular features that allow us to distinguish them according to family likeness. They are no more or less than doorways gaping open from time to time over the depths of the earth. When these urban eyelids are open, they allow us to see another universe, to enter another world, a world of galleries integral to the city and indispensable for its proper 23

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functioning. And indeed, the city has chosen to sanitise its everyday life by burying the fluids necessary for its life, like the dust that some sweep under the carpet, thus creating a dark underside to the City of Light. When we think of the underground galleries of Paris we think of the sewers (nearly 2,400 km: more or less the distance from Paris to Moscow) and the catacombes (nearly 300 km); and we must not overlook the Métropolitain and its equally extensive brother the Réseau Express Régional, or RER (200 km of tunnels and 260 km of interchange with the Métropolitain). But we should also add 470 km of tunnels and ducts devoted to urban heating (the Compagnie Parisienne de Chauffage Urbain heats the equivalent of 465,000 dwellings), more than 70 km for an air-conditioning system (the Climespace network, which is still being  developed),  120 km of galleries for the passage of electric cables and 50 km for the telephone (this refers to those specifically created for the purpose, as opposed to the dozen or so kilometres originally rented from the City of Paris, which ran through the passages of its famous catacombs). And this obviously does not take into account the network of compressed air which used to operate lifts as well as a great number of clocks (taken out of service in 1994), or that of the pneumatiques (pneumatic message service), which extended up to 467 km and whose last users, until 2004, were the governmental trio of the Journal officiel, the National Assembly and the Senate. In all there are no fewer than thirty different licence holders who occupy, work in and manage the Parisian underground, for there are also car parks, cellars and road and railway tunnels, as well as an underground canal, cable television, fibre optics and so on. Given everything that the city needed, and still needs, to enjoy modern life, we can imagine what it would be like if these technical networks did not exist: the city would not only suffer from the great log jam that is so much feared (every day 5.2 million trips are recorded for the Métropolitain and 1.7 million for the RER A and B networks), but also from a nauseating overflow if the urban intestines that are the sewers were blocked – not to mention a ‘great stink’ (similar to that experienced in London in 1858), total darkness (with no lighting) and a deafening silence with no telephone, internet or television: an end to our society of communication by screen. In fact, beneath the epidermis of Paris run all sorts of pipes and tunnels that are, quite simply, comparable to 24

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the ensemble of the circulatory, vascular, respiratory, digestive and nervous systems necessary for the life of any organism. All these tracheas, arteries, veins and vessels, if not exactly wrapped around a spinal column, do nonetheless envelop what constitutes the skeleton of the city, that is, nothing less than the architectural roots underlying the monumental grandeur of the capital, as shown on the map of underground Paris drawn in the nineteenth century by Eugène de Fourcy (see Plate 1). It is indeed in terms of an inverted skeleton that we now think of the old underground quarries, which are the deepest Parisian galleries. They are like the hollow imprint of a now-vanished endoskeleton, that is, an immense coelacanth (bearing in mind the etymology of the word, a hollow spine) of limestone, for if the city was able to be born and to develop in this place, it was because it was fertile, possessing in its depths the seeds for a prosperous birth and growth: water for the people to drink and stone with which to build shelter. So it is to a combination of specific factors that the city owes its birth. It is thanks to a fertile subsoil and a favourable environment that the city owes its origin: in the first place to the waters of the Seine, then to a water table at an acceptable depth (about ten metres on the right bank) and also the existence of easily exploitable beds of stone. In fact limestone is found principally in and beneath the countryside which was later to become the Left Bank, and gypsum exclusively on the Right Bank, as witness the names recording these geological features: mont (‘mount’ or ‘mound’ in English); butte and colline (‘hill’), which do in fact reflect their elevated sites: Montmartre, the Buttes Chaumont and the neighbourhood of Ménilmontant. Similarly, the sites known for the presence of easily exploitable limestone appear in their place names: Montparnasse, Montrouge, Montsouris, Butte aux Cailles (around what is now the Place d’Italie) and the Colline de Chaillot. From mother earth to mineral bowels ‘London and Paris rest on the same layers of clay, but the basin of London emerged from the waters before that of Paris and remained above water, whereas its neighbour sank and emerged several times, each time settling in a different position. And that is why Paris is a city of stone and London a city of brick.’2 Unlike its rival 25

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London, the French capital was built with material taken from what now constitutes the hole-ridden foundations of the city. This is the reason why, beneath its superficial tranquillity, Paris is at risk of ruin and collapse into its own bowels.3 The city of Paris, then, was born of a mineral wealth now found in the different layers of the modern city. In the immediate surroundings of the old city, all the minerals necessary for a lasting structure were to be found at a greater or lesser depth: the rough limestone in the south, extracted as stone for building, allowed walls to be erected; the gypsum exploited in the north, processed by dehydration and reduced to powder, gave plaster; clay, present in the fifteenth arrondissement, was transformed into bricks and tiles;4 and even chalk in the western suburbs (at the level of the anticline of Meudon and Issy-les-Moulineaux).5 The first open-shaft mining took place as early as the Gallo-Roman period along the valley of the Bièvre,6 which had exposed this mineral outcrop. It would take until the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth for the mining to move underground, because of both the pressure of housing and the exponential demand for the material necessary for the construction of numerous civil, military and religious edifices, from the cathedral of Notre-Dame to the École Militaire built during the eighteenth century.7 If we sometimes use a well-chosen metaphor in presenting the  successive enlargements of the surface of Paris as the growth of an overfed organism, whose supporting belt regularly exploded under the pressure of new buildings (which amount to the equivalent of ‘cells’ in a human body), it is with good reason: the city finally built new constructions over the cavities of the old quarries mined several centuries before. While these quarries had fallen into general oblivion because of a collective amnesia, they suddenly returned at the end of the eighteenth century to jog the collective memory and revive dull consciences with the collapses that they provoked. This would cause Louis-Sébastien Mercier to write: Everything that we see on the outside is essentially what is missing from the foundations of the city: whence the frightening concavities which are to be found under the houses of certain neighbourhoods; they are built over an abyss. It would not take a very great shock to send these stones back down to the place where they had been extracted with so much effort … What material for reflection it

26

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is, to consider how this great city was formed and sustained by such contradictory methods! These steeples, these bell towers, these church arches are so many signs which say to the eye: what we see in the air is what is missing beneath our feet.8

Mercier continues thus: ‘If we reflect on what this superb city rests on in parts, a secret tremor seizes us, and we fear the action of some centripetal force … And we drink, and we eat, and we sleep in edifices which stand on this fragile crust.’9 Under the surface: at the deepest depths of the Parisian epidermis When the royal council understood that the mineral roots of Paris had been transformed into bowels ready to ingest the Parisian monuments they had engendered, they tried to remedy this dramatic situation which was mortgaging the future by means of a new decree, issued on 4 April 1777 by King Louis XVI. This decree created an office for finding and reinforcing disused underground limestone quarries in Paris and its surroundings. Charles-Axel Guillaumot, architect to the king, was appointed head of this service on 29 April of the same year. History will undoubtedly remember him as ‘the man who saved Paris’ (from a much feared but seemingly inevitable and general collapse).10 Proof of the urgency of such a mission is that on the very day of his appointment, the house of the Marquise de Roncé was swallowed up into the belly of Paris, although it was supposed to have been secured in 1776 by underground reinforcements erected under the supervision of Antoine Dupont, a geometer and professor of mathematics.11 Guillaumot had started to probe a bottomless pit: The rot of the quarries has been setting in for several centuries; it cannot be repaired in a few short years. Neither my collaborators nor I will see the end result. Others will have this satisfaction; but I dare to believe that we will have shown them the way, and that they will see nothing to change in the system which I have adopted. For different reasons, and at different times, Messieurs Demoustier, chief engineer of roads and bridges, Duchemin, inspector-general of Paris street paving, and Bralle, hydraulic engineer, have been charged with the managing and directing of a great part of these works; and these distinguished artists have found nothing in the system that needed to be changed.12

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This was to be the case from 1777 to 1909, no matter what troubles history could devise: the French Revolution, the Terror, the Communes of 1830 and 1848, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, the Commune of 1871. It was a case of sink or swim for the ship of Paris: fluctuat nec mergitur.13 But, fellow citizens and legislators, on the one hand the Revolution has sometimes retarded and often suspended the works intended to consolidate the ground on which we live. On the other hand, the fight between despotism and liberty, the political travails and the cannons of free men have echoed through these vast underground vaults and have shaken the natural pillars which support the theatre of our memorable battles.14

After recalling that ‘during the first few years, entering the quarries was like going into the trenches’ (‘dans les premières années, aller aux carrières, c’étoit aller à la tranchée’), Guillaumot gives the following explanation: The previous director of works but one, M. Charpentier, was killed in Messidor year 6, on a site at Charenton; a clerk, Sieur Barthélémy, was killed last year in the workshop at the city wall, by the Maine barrier: M. Henry, one of the inspectors, and M. Bellet, who had succeeded M. Charpentier as director, also died, last year, from the consequences of a chest infection caught from the mephitis in the air that you breathe in these underground passages. And finally I myself have only just recovered from a similar illness which held me for a whole year on the brink of the tomb, and whose after-effects will inevitably lead me to lie there before the time when I would have been ready, were it not for this dangerous occupation, but at least I shall die with the consolation of having warded off even greater dangers than that, by my supervision and that of my collaborators.15

In parallel with the consolidating work of drawing up an inventory of the underground so as to determine where work was needed, and keeping these plans up to date by recording each of the reinforcements, maps were made, and these formed the basis of an exceptional atlas published at the end of the 1850s: It constitutes a true graphic tour de force at the same time as a good index of the mixture of anguish and fascination exercised by the underground world in the nineteenth century, with its tentative contours seemingly rampant beneath the buildings of the city. They make one think of worms or cultures of bacteria in the process of

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swallowing up whole neighbourhoods of the city. The fears evoked by the underground find a most graphic expression here, even if the intention of the cartography is to allay them.16

The worm was in the bud (as the rot was in the world) During the same period, the grumblings and rumblings arising from the underground found an echo, as it were, in a nauseating flatulence: the mephitic exhalations given off by the largest Parisian cemetery of the age, fouling its immediate surroundings. The cemetery of the Saints Innocents had for more than ten centuries received the dead from twenty-two Parisian parishes, the corpses from the morgue and the numerous dead from the Hôtel-Dieu. This hospital had, as Louis-Sébastien Mercier reports: all that it takes to be pestilential, because of its humid, airless atmosphere; wounds become gangrened there more easily, and scurvy and scabies also created ravages, if those afflicted stayed in the hospital. Even those maladies which are in principle most straightforward develop grave complications as an inevitable result of the contagious air; it is for this same reason that simple wounds to the head or the limbs are mortal in this hospital. Nothing confirms my argument better than the assessment of the numbers of the wretched who die at the Hôtel-Dieu in Paris and at Bicêtre; one fifth of the sick die; a terrifying sum and one that we contemplate with the most perfect indifference!17

This deleterious atmosphere, which was common in a hospital, was even more strongly felt in the cemeteries, which were then situated alongside the churches: ‘The cadaverous odour can be smelled in nearly every church … the sepulchral exhalations continue to poison the faithful.’18 This pestilence was insufficiently disguised by the generous use of incense in the churches. On 17 July 1793, a petition was raised, calling for an alternative site for the cemetery of La Ville-l’Évêque (where Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette were buried) since ‘the cadaverous and putrid odour has become unbearable for the citizens who live in the neighbourhood, and dangerous for the city of Paris’.19 The accumulation of complaints from the neighbours of the Innocents came to confirm, albeit in vain, those which doctors had already formulated in the sixteenth century against the insalubrity of the site, whose ground was as swollen as the belly of a corpse 29

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under the pressure of the gases of decomposition. In the houses close to the cemetery, soup and milk went off in a few hours, wine turned to vinegar, and it was risky to place a hand on the walls, which were impregnated with fatally infected dampness. It was estimated that the accumulation of bodies had provoked a rise in the level of the soil of nearly two and a half metres. The common burial pits could hold between 1,200 and 1,500 bodies, while there were not more than 200 individual burials per year. The last gravedigger, François Poutrain, estimated that he had buried nearly 90,000 bodies in less than thirty years.20 In 1779, a common pit destined to hold more than 2,000 bodies was opened, and a few months later another accident occurred, which was the last straw for the Parisians: in February 1780, the wall of a cellar in the rue de la Lingerie, running alongside the cemetery, gave way beneath the weight of the corpses.21 Thus the cemetery, having shown by this regurgitation that it was full to satiety, was no longer able to digest the human flesh that was offered up to it, whereas formerly the earth had had the reputation of consuming a body in less than nine days. The ban on burials in this cemetery was then pronounced without further ado, and the préfet de police, Lenoir, planned the transfer of the remains into the old quarries of the Montsouris plain. Thiroux de Crosne, lieutenant général de police of Paris from 1785 to 1789, expedited the procedure by ordering Guillaumot to prepare the site for this purpose. A herb and vegetable garden was to be planted on the site of the cemetery of the Saints Innocents. While the Saints Innocents was the first cemetery from which the remains were transferred to the new ossuary at La Tombe-Issoire,22 between December 1785 and 1814 seventeen further cemeteries took the same steps. Guillaume Lami, an employee of the octroi (a tax collection point located at the gates of the capital), summed it up when on 23 January 1810 he wrote in the register available for visitors the following brief history: ‘During their lives / They dug up the ground / After their lives / Their bodies prop up the same ground.’23 The open sore of the Innocents finally closed As a result of this decree, on 16 November 1785 Monseigneur Leclerc de Juigné, the Archbishop of Paris, issued a decree proclaiming ‘the 30

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suppression of the cemetery of the Innocents, its demolition and evacuation, ordering that the ground be dug down to a depth of five feet, the soil raked and sifted, that the bodies or remains found there shall be transported and inhumed in the new underground cemetery of the plain of Mont-Rouge’.24 Obviously enough, the first layers encountered when digging into the permanently active digestive system of the cemetery were unfortunately the most recent, and therefore those where the bodies were the least decomposed. They had to be moved elsewhere (into other working cemeteries) so that time could completely finish its work. Luckily this was all accomplished in the open air, but when summer came and the temperature rose, the exhumations had to be temporarily interrupted, as they were again the following year. In the end, the first transfers from the Saints Innocents lasted for fifteen months, with interruptions during heat waves; but remains of human skeletons were still being found as late as the middle of the 1970s, during the building works for the Forum des Halles and the interchange station between the Métropolitain and the RER. Dr Michel Augustin Thouret, studying the decomposition of the bodies by the earth, noted that this was not a simple digestive process making everything disappear.25 The changes in the corpses could proceed in three distinctly different ways: complete destruction, with everything reduced to dust; conversion into ‘fat mummies’, that is, with the bodies saponified by the production of adipocere (or ‘corpse wax’, the substance produced by the decomposition of bodies buried in earth or water); and conservation, through desiccation, in the form of fibrous mummies.26 Dr Thouret then made use of these studies to work on the adipocere and on the diverse transformations which the animal substances could undergo. He also used this occasion to acquire a collection of dry mummies found in the Saints Innocents: he conserved fifty to sixty specimens.27 During the Terror, the same Dr Thouret was confronted with a similar problem but this time in an underground environment: a quarry in the southern suburbs where the bodies of the unfortunate victims of the massacres of the prisons in September 1792 had been deposited.28 Two archival handwritten documents, both unpublished, give us an account of this.29 The first, dated the morning of 20 December 1792, is signed by one Quinot. He recalls that a citizen who was the owner of a quarry ‘complains 31

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that a prodigious quantity of bodies of prisoners massacred in the execrable days of 2, 3 and 4 September have been inhumed there; the tools of the workmen and several handcarts … have also been buried beneath the piles of the dead, nine foot of earth piled upon them has put the quarry out of use; the workmen would be disgusted to work there even if the corpses were removed.’30 This landlord, refusing the city’s offer to buy back his quarry by way of reparation, insisted on having the quarry returned to its original state: there was only one possible solution, to exhume the two hundred bodies that had been decomposing for several months. Thouret composed a memoir concerning the procedure needed to empty this quarry, which was situated at a depth of 100 feet (about 30 metres) and accessible through a well of 15 feet (4.5 metres) in diameter; it must be said that the situation was novel, for in addition to the presence of a cumbersome and nauseous population piled up under the ground, things were complicated by the ‘great quantity of earth and masses of stones (that had been) thrown over the bodies’.31 On 28 April 1789, a fight – which could be considered a prefiguring of the French Revolution – broke out in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine near M. Réveillon’s wallpaper factory between the workmen and the French and Swiss Guards, leaving a number of dead, who were exposed for five days at the ossuary of the Catacombs so that families could identify their kin. After the identification, the clergy of Saint-Hippolite celebrated a religious service on the same site and the victims were then buried directly in the Catacombs, which thus reclaimed a connection with an etymological origin which they had never really deserved.32 The Catacombs of Paris therefore took on the work of digestion normally reserved for the cemeteries; of which the most famous one associated with the Catacombs will always be that of the Innocents, because of its size and because it was the first to be evacuated: We have said that the cemetery of the Innocents, situated in the most populous neighbourhood, received nearly three thousand bodies a year. They had been burying people there since the times of Philippe le Bel. At least ten million corpses have dissolved in this small space. A market where herbs and vegetables are sold has been built over these remains of the human race. I cannot walk across it without reflection. Oh! What stories would emerge from these walls if only the dead could speak!33

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The osteopathological collection of the ossuary In the early days of what was to become the general ossuary of the City of Paris, visits were authorised only for important people, from French society or visitors to the capital, to show off the great cleansing operation that was under way. It was only in 1809, under the impulsion of Louis Étienne François Héricart de Thury, the second chief inspector of quarries (and the first to be a graduate of the Corps des Mines), that the ossuary was finally opened up to the public, and from then onwards it enjoyed a success that never flagged.34 But this tourist attraction ended with a ban on visits in 1830 because visitors had caused damage and had even got lost in the ossuary, and because of other problems too (see Plate 2). Two years later, the mayor of Montrouge (the commune to which the ossuary stricto sensu belonged at the time, before part of the the town was annexed to Paris), addressed a plea to the préfet de Paris, Rambuteau, to have it made accessible again; but the request was rejected. To a new request formulated the following year, the reply was: ‘It seems to me that it would be a sort of profanation to expose to public view the masses of bones arranged in such entirely embarrassing symmetry, and that it would perhaps be immoral to offer up to public curiosity such a spectacle unworthy of a civilised people.’35 It was only several years later that group visits would be allowed again, though they were initially restricted to four a year. Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the ossuary offered more than just a stroll between two stacks of bones punctuated by decorative and functional items (an altar for the Mass, a sepulchral lamp to purify the air, the Pillar of the Memento, the Fountain of the Samaritan Woman, the Sarcophagus of the Lachrymatory, etc.); it was also possible to visit a mineralogical cabinet, created there in 1810, which showed the natural layering of the different strata of the Parisian subsoil, rising from the deepest (and therefore the first to be formed) up to the most recent, thus making up the mineralogical cross-section of this exact place. There was also a second cabinet of curiosities, with a theme more directly inspired by this underground location since it was dedicated to human bones and presented only anatomical specimens. In his report on the Saints Innocents, Thouret clarifies: So many public works could only offer interesting results for scientists … Our eyes were confronted with this immense mass of

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bones, whether in vast deposits, where they were either exposed to or protected from all the vicissitudes of the air, whether scattered among the earth, or enclosed in ancient tombs; presenting incidentally, as we move from the most recent burials to those which appear to be the most ancient, a series of successive degradations – what an opportunity to see summed up, and visible in a single sweep of the eyes, every stage of the long, slow process of destruction of those elements whose duration seemed to be eternal! In addition, what a variety of distortions and diseases in their forms and textures we were able to notice! Such a source of observation could not be neglected, and with the help of some diligent helpers, we removed from this vast depository the greater number of rare pieces of such kind that we judged should not be removed without submitting them to a more scrupulous examination.36

Héricart de Thury had therefore thought of making a record of the most remarkable deformities in his rich collection of diseased bones, as well in as the precious collection of mummies that he had compiled. But after his death, none of the various specimens that he had assembled was found, and his collections were dispersed.37 With the same pedagogical intent and similar scientific attitude, Héricart de Thury collected within the Catacombs all the osteopathological pieces that the reorganisation of the diverse ossuaries could bring to light. In order to do this he took over a disused quarry and constructed, ‘between four pillars or consolidating walls, destined to support the ceiling of an old crossroads in the Catacombs, a special cabinet to contain and classify, as methodically as the place would permit, all the pieces that have been found during the rearrangement of the ossuaries’. He also devised a method of classification that he considered ‘the best and the most traditional of all those that have been offered to this day’, consisting of two orders: ‘I. The diseases of the bones themselves, or those of their substance and connections’ and ‘II. The diseases which attack their articulations, or their attachments’, each divided into several sub-sections.38 This then was the genesis of the ‘pathological collection’ (or osteological collection) of the ossuary. But the two cabinets of curiosities in the Catacombs, which all the guides to the capital described as essential tourist attractions for ‘foreigners and the curious’ (‘les curieux et les étrangers’), gradually died out like some dinosaur in a museum without engendering any offspring, before even reaching their centenary. All that remains of them is a few photographs. 34

the beLLy and the visCera of the CaPitaL City

Around 1892, the objects in the mineralogical cabinet were combined with those of the pathological cabinet, which then became the mineralogical and pathological collection. But a certain number of rare pieces had already disappeared by 1892, and, partly as a result of this, the museum lost a large part of its interest. At that time there still remained ‘specimens taken from all the strata of the plain of Montsouris between ground level and the plastic clay, pieces of petrified trees, several examples of calcareous concretion, stalactites and stalagmites which form in the galleries as a result of infiltration of water, two fragments of the Roman aqueduct of Arcueil and finally, a few bizarrely shaped skulls and long bones’,39 while in 1892, the collection was already closed to the public. Finally, in 1908, the cabinet was already almost totally in ruins as a result of a collapsed ceiling; it was then totally abandoned (see Figure 1.1). From the mid-nineteenth century: new networks for new phantasmagoria ‘Let the reader imagine the surface of Paris lifted off like a cover, the subterranean network of sewers, from a bird’s eye view, will outline on the banks a species of large branch grafted on the river. On the right bank, the belt sewer will form the trunk of this branch, the secondary ducts will form the branches, and those without exit the twigs.’40 This Hugolian vision of the network of Parisian sewers, when Jean Valjean lights his lamp to guide us through the intestines of Paris, came into effect only with the arrival of the préfet Baron Haussman and the engineer Eugène Belgrand. In 1370, only one covered sewer gallery had been laid, in the rue Montmartre, to flow into the stream of Ménilmontant (this would later become the ‘great belt’ sewer, under the direction of Turgot, after 1740). Previously, to facilitate the evacuation of waste water, Philippe Auguste had had the streets of Paris paved and had ordered drainage channels to be run down the middle of them. At the end of the eighteenth century (at the time when the Inspectorate of the Quarries was created and the first transfers of bones from the Catacombs took place), the total length of covered sewers was only 26 km, and in 1824 only 11 km more. It was only after 1850 that the present network of sewers was really to develop, allowing not only the evacuation of waste from Parisians’ apartments but also, through the same underground channels, the supply of water for drinking 35

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Figure 1.1 The ossuary and mineralogy cabinet of the Catacombs at the end of the nineteenth century. Anonymous photo-card

and other purposes, to all parts of the capital. From 600 km in 1878, further extensions brought the total up to the 2,400 km of the present network. After the Roman aqueduct which fed the hot baths of Cluny with spring water was abandoned, it was many years before the city rediscovered this wealth of precious drinking water, 36

the beLLy and the visCera of the CaPitaL City

and then only on occasion: in the twelfth century groundwater was tapped near Belleville and the Pré Saint-Gervais via barely 1 km of aqueducts from the Sources du Nord (the northern springs), providing 560 cubic metres of water per day, and it was tapped (1613–23) from the Sources du Sud (the southern springs) via the aqueduct of Arcueil, which provided 1,140 cubic metres per day. Other underground networks developed later: the pneumatic tube message service (from 1866 to 1984), compressed air (until 1994), electricity (from the late 1880s), urban heating (from 1927), the telephone, and the Métropolitain, whose first line was opened during the Universal Exhibition of 1900, but without an official ceremony because it had overrun its schedule. Some of these systems later fell out of use, but they remain hidden beneath the tarry shell of Paris; they are only between jobs, as it were, or in hibernation. Unlike those antediluvian organisms which permanently disappeared, here the same needs are still satisfied, but by calling on increasingly modern devices and different technologies, rather like those mycelial ramifications that are no longer nourished but replaced by younger ones. The abandoned galleries, however, are not destroyed, but remain in the condition of their last usage, and so opening an inspection hatch to descend below the city is like going backstage, for Paris resembles a theatre which has kept the traces of all the plays that it has previously staged. These disused networks are quite simply concealed by everyday life, which is careless of the underground mechanisms employed to assure its continuance. Notes 1 ‘La bonne ville de Paris n’est connue qu’à sa surface; si la main de dieu arrachait l’épiderme hérissé de maisons qui couvre les entrailles du sol dans une circonférence de vingt lieues, les regards seraient épouvantés de cette révélation souterraine, de ces formidables arcanes que n’éclaira jamais le soleil, et qui sont les merveilleux trésors ensevelis par les siècles avares, et qu’aucun œil ne peut voir, aucune main ne peut enlever. Nous marchons, nous rions, nous dansons, nous jouons sur un tapis composé de choses remarquables, des choses que ne désigne aucune langue et qui attendront toujours un nom.’ Joseph Méry, Salons et souterrains de Paris (Paris: Michel Lévy, 1890), p. 118. 2 ‘Londres et Paris reposent sur la même couche argileuse, mais le bassin de Londres est sorti des eaux avant celui de Paris pour n’y plus rentrer, tandis que son voisin s’est baigné et exondé à plusieurs reprises, gagnant

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3

4 5

6 7

8

à chaque fois de nouvelles assises. Et voilà pourquoi Paris est une ville de pierre et Londres une ville de briques.’ Louis Simonin, Les merveilles du monde souterrain (Paris: Hachette, 1868), p. 107. See M. Fort, C. Chaussé, N. Vanara and G. Thomas, ‘Paris and the Seine River: Antic Sites, Underground Resources and Risks’, in M. Fort and M.-F. André (eds), Landscapes and Landforms of France (Dordrecht:  Springer, 2013), pp. 3–15; Thomas Leroux, ‘Les Effondrements de carrières de Paris: la grande réforme des années 1770’, French Historical Studies, 36:2 (2013), 205–37. We find traces of this in toponyms such as the rue des Vieilles Thuileries, now the rue du Cherche Midi, and in the former Château des Tuileries, of which only the garden remains. These quarries became a subject of discussion in the whole country when on 1 June 1961 there was widespread subsidence as a result of excessive rainfall, affecting a surface area of 6 hectares. This dramatic disaster left ‘only’ 21 dead, 45 wounded and more than 273 homeless after twentythree blocks of flats were destroyed, for it included the stadium of IssyLes Moulineaux, which was by definition not a built-up area. The last stretch of the Bièvre visible in Paris was canalised and paved over in 1912. The construction of Notre Dame is generally agreed to have lasted from 1163 to 1272. For more on these constructions, see Comte Léon de Laborde, ‘Rapport de l’Académie royale d’architecture sur la provenance et la qualité des pierres employées dans les anciens édifices de Paris et de ses environs … ’, Revue générale d’architecture et des travaux publics, 10 (1852): 193–344; Denis Montagne, ‘Le chantier de construction de l’École royale militaire’, in Y. Brault, F. Jiméno, B. de Andia and D. Rabreau, (eds) L’École militaire et l’axe BreteuilTrocadéro (Paris: Action Artistique Ville de Paris, 2002). ‘Tout ce qu’on voit en-dehors, manque essentiellement dans la terre aux fondements de la ville: de là les concavités effrayantes qui se trouvent aujourd’hui sous les maisons de plusieurs quartiers; elles portent sur des abîmes. Il ne faudrait pas un choc bien considérable, pour ramener les pierres au point d’où on les a enlevées avec tant d’effort … Que de matière à réflexions, en considérant cette grande ville formée, soutenue par des moyens absolument contraires! ces tours, ces clochers, ces voûtes des temples, autant de signes qui disent à l’œil ce que nous voyons en l’air manque sous nos pieds.’ Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris, 12 vols (Amsterdam, 1782–88). These texts were collected and published with those of Restif de la Bretonne in a single volume: Michel Delon and D. Baruch (eds), Paris le jour, Paris la nuit: Par Louis Sébastien Mercier et Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, Bouquins (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1990). For this extract, see ‘Les Carrières’, p. 36.

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9 ‘[Si] l’on réfléchit sur quoi porte le sol d’une partie de cette superbe ville, un frémissement secret vous saisit, et l’on redoute l’action de la force centripète … Et l’on boit, et l’on mange, et l’on dort dans les édifices qui reposent sur cette croûte incertaine.’ Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ‘Plancher d’une partie de la capitale’, in Delon and Baruch (eds), Paris le jour, Paris la nuit, p. 110. 10 See Ludovic Mathiez, ‘Charles-Axel Guillaumot, architecte du roi’, unpublished MA dissertation, Université Paris-Diderot, 1992; Caroline Girard, ‘Charles-Axel Guillaumot (1730–1807), architecte et administrateur de la manufacture des Gobelins’, Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture, 8:1 (2004), 97–106. 11 See Charles-Axel Guillaumot, Mémoire sur les travaux ordonnés dans les carrières sous Paris, et plaines adjacentes; et exposé des opérations faites pour leur réparation (Paris: Marchant, an XIII, 1804), p. 9; Émile Gérards, Paris souterrain (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1908), pp. 227–8; Groupe Parisien de Recherches Souterraines (eds), Recueil de pièces manuscrites relatives à l’histoire des carrières de Paris (Paris: GRPS, 1989). 12 ‘Le mal des carrières est celui de plusieurs siècles; il ne peut donc pas être réparé dans un petit nombre d’années. Ni moi, ni mes coopérateurs n’en verrons la fin. D’autres auront cet avantage; mais j’ai lieu de croire que nous leur avons frayé la route, et qu’ils n’auront rien a changé au système que j’ai adopté. Divers motifs ont fait charger, à différens temps, de la conduite et direction d’une grande partie de ces travaux,  MM. Demoustier, ingénieur en chef des ponts et chaussées, Duchemin, inspecteur-général du pavé de Paris, et Bralle, ingénieur hydraulique; et ces artistes distingués n’ont rien trouvé à changer à ce système.’ Guillaumot, Mémoire sur les travaux, p. 41. 13 ‘She is battered by the waves, yet will not sink.’ 14 ‘Mais citoyens législateurs, la Révolution d’une part a quelquefois ralenti, souvent suspendu les travaux qui consolident le sol que nous habitons. D’une autre part le conflit du despotisme et de la Liberté, les tourments politiques, les canons des hommes libres ont retenti dans ces vastes souterrains et ont ébranlé les piliers naturels qui supportent le théâtre de nos mémorables combats.’ Le Directoire Exécutif, Pluviôse An 6, MS, Archives Nationales, Paris, F13/742. 15 ‘L’avant dernier entrepreneur de ces travaux, M. Charpentier, a été tué en messidor an 6, dans une carrière à Charenton; un commis, le sieur Barthélémy, a été tué l’année dernière à l’atelier de la barrière du Maine; M. Henry, l’un des Inspecteurs, et M. Bellet, qui a succédé dans cette entreprise à M. Charpentier, sont aussi morts, l’année dernière, des suites de maux de poitrine gagnés dans le méphitisme de l’air qu’on respire dans ces souterrains. Moi-même enfin, je relève d’une pareille maladie qui m’a tenu pendant une année entière au bord du tombeau,

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16

17

18 19

20 21 22 23 24

et dont les suites m’y entraîneront infailliblement, avant le moment où j’y serois descendu, sans ce dangereux travail, mais du moins je mourrai avec la consolation d’avoir prévenu de bien plus grands malheurs que celui-là, par ma surveillance et celle de mes coopérateurs.’ Guillaumot, Mémoire sur les travaux, pp. 40–1. ‘Il constitue un véritable tour de force graphique en même temps qu’un bon révélateur du mélange d’angoisse et de fascination exercé par le monde souterrain au XIXe siècle, avec ses formes indécises qui semblent ramper sous les immeubles de la ville. Elles font songer à des cultures de bactéries ou à des vers en passe d’engloutir des quartiers entiers de la capitale. Les craintes suscitées par le souterrain trouvent ici une expression graphique des plus nettes, même si la cartographie a pour fonction de les apprivoiser.’ Antoine Picon and Jean-Paul Robert, Un atlas parisien: le dessus des cartes (Paris: Éditions Picard, 1999), pp. 164–7. ‘tout ce qu’il faut pour être pestilentiel, à cause de son atmosphère humide et peu aérée; les plaies s’y gangrènent plus facilement, et le scorbut et la gale n’y font pas moins de ravages, pour peu que les malades y séjournent. Les maladies les plus simples dans leur principe, acquièrent des complications graves par une suite inévitable de la contagion de l’air; c’est par la même raison que les plaies simples à la tête et aux jambes sont mortelles dans cet hôpital. Rien ne confirme mieux ce que j’avance, que le dénombrement des misérables qui périssent tous les ans à l’Hôtel-Dieu de Paris et à Bicêtre; il meurt le cinquième des malades; calcul effrayant, et qu’on envisage avec la plus parfaite indifférence!’ Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ‘L’Hôtel-Dieu’, in Delon and Baruch (eds), Paris le jour, Paris la nuit, p. 139. ‘L’odeur cadavéreuse se fait sentir dans presque toutes les églises … les exhalaisons sépulcrales continuent à empoisonner les fidèles.’ Ibid., ‘L’air vicié’, p. 49. ‘l’odeur cadavéreuse et putréfiante devient insupportable aux citoyens qui l’avoisinent, et dangereuse à la ville de Paris.’ [Paul Fassy], Les Catacombes de Paris ou projet de fonder une chapelle funéraire à l’entrée des Catacombes (Paris: Gaume Frères and J. Duprey, 1862), p.  124. Louis Héricart de Thury, Description des Catacombes de Paris (Paris and London: Bossange et Masson, 1815), pp. 164–5. Ibid., p. 162. Following the decision taken by decree of the Council of State on 9 November 1785. ‘Durant leur vie / Ils creusèrent la terre; Après leur vie / Leur corps soutiennent cette même terre.’ Thury, ‘Registre des visiteurs, 1809–1813’, Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, MS 11. ‘la suppression du cimetière des Innocents, sa démolition et son évacuation, ordonnant que le terrain en sera défoncé à la profondeur de cinq

40

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25 26 27

28 29 30

31 32 33

34 35

pieds, les terres passées à la claie, que les corps ou ossements qui s’y trouvent seront transportés et inhumés dans le nouveau cimetière souterrain de la plaine de Mont-Rouge.’ Thury, Description des Catacombes de Paris, pp. 169–70 and 179. Thouret was one of the commissioners appointed by the Académie de Médecine to study the feasibility of the project, follow the operations and write of the report. Thury, Description des Catacombes de Paris, p. 177. The result of this research was published in two reports (one on the sewage works at Montfaucon in 1786; the other on the exhumations of the cemetery of the Saints Innocents) and in a memorandum on the nature of the substance of the brain and its conservation: M. A. Thouret, Mémoire sur la nature de la substance du cerveau, et sur la propriété qu’il paraît avoir de se conserver longtemps (Paris: Société Royale de Medicine, 1786). See also M. A. Thouret, Rapport sur les Exhumations du Cimetière & de l’Église des Saints Innocens (Paris: Denys Pierres, 1789), pp. 35–6. André Rayroles, ‘Les massacres de septembre 1792 et les carrières de Charenton’, Liaison SEHDACS, 8 (1988), 44–51. Thouret, ‘Rapport sur l’exhumation de la carrière de Charenton’. Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, MS 754, fols 255–6. ‘se plaint de ce qu’on y a inhumé une quantité prodigieuse de cadavres des prisonniers massacrés dans les journées excécrables des 2, 3 et 4 septembre; les instruments de ces ouvriers, plusieurs charettes … ont été aussi ensevelis sous ces monceaux de morts, neuf pieds de terre mise par dessus mettent la carrière hors de travail; les ouvriers répugneroient d’y travailler quand bien même on enlèvereoient ces cadavres.’ Ibid., fol. 255. ‘grande quantité de terres jetées, même avec des masses de pierre sur les corp.’ Ibid., fol. 256. Thury, Description des Catacombes de Paris, pp. 190–1. ‘Nous avons dit que l’on déposait dans le cimetière des Innocents, situé dans le quartier le plus habité, près de trois mille cadavres par année. On y enterrait des morts depuis Philippe le Bel. Dix millions de cadavres au moins se sont dissous dans un étroit espace. Quel creuset! Un marché, où l’on vend des herbages et des légumes, s’est élevé sur ces débris de l’espèce humaine. Je ne le traverse point sans réflexion. Oh! quelle histoire sortirait de cette enceinte, si les morts pouvaient parler!’ Mercier, Tableau de Paris, ‘Cimetière fermé’, in Delon and Baruch (eds), Paris le jour, Paris la nuit, p. 292. See Thury, ‘Registre des visiteurs, 1809–1813’. ‘Il me semble qu’il y aurait une sorte de profanation d’exposer ainsi aux regards les amas d’ossements rangés avec une symétrie tout à fait

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36

37 38

39

40

inconvenante, et qu’il serait peut être immoral d’offrir à la curiosité publique un pareil spectacle, peu digne d’un peuple civilise.’ Gérards, Paris souterrain, pp. 462–3. ‘Tant de travaux ne pouvaient manquer d’offrir des résultats pour la science … Dans ces immenses amas d’ossemens, offerts à nos regards, soit dans de vastes dépôts, où ils étaient exposés ou soustraits à toutes les vicissitudes de l’air, soit épars dans l’épaisseur du sol, ou renfermés dans des tombeaux antiques; présentant d’ailleurs, depuis les sépultures les plus récentes jusqu’à celles qui paraissaient les plus anciennes, une suite de dégradations successives; quelle occasion ne s’offrait pas de voir réunis et d’embrasser, d’un seul coup d’œil, toutes les traces, tous les degrés de la marche si lente de la destruction sur ces parties, dont la durée paraissait être éternelle! Quelle variété, d’ailleurs, d’altérations et de maladies, dans les formes et dans la texture, ne devait-on pas remarquer! Une pareille source d’observations ne pouvait être négligée, et, avec le secours de quelques aides intelligens, la plus nombreuse collection de pièces rares en ce genre est sortie de ces immenses dépôts, que l’on n’a pas cru devoir laisser déplacer sans les soumettre au plus scrupuleux examen.’ Thouret, Rapport sur les Exhumations du Cimetière & de l’Église des Saints Innocens, pp. 14–15. Thury, Description des Catacombes de Paris, p. 281. ‘entre quatre piliers ou murs de consolidation destinés à soutenir le ciel d’un ancien carrefour des Catacombes, un cabinet particulier uniquement destiné à y recueillir et classer, aussi méthodiquement que le permettait le local, toutes les pièces qui ont été trouvées dans l’arrangement de chaque ossuaire. … la meilleure et la plus ancienne de toutes celles qui ont été données jusqu’à ce jour … I. Les maladies des os euxmêmes, ou celles de leur substance et de leur continuité. II. Les maladies qui attaquent leurs articulations, ou leur contiguité …’ Ibid., pp. 281–3. ‘des échantillons de tous les terrains du plateau de Montsouris, compris entre la surface du sol et l’argile plastique, des morceaux d’arbres pétrifiés, plusieurs spécimens de concrétions calcaires, stalactites et stalagmites, qui se forment dans les galeries par suite des infiltrations d’eau, deux fragments de l’aqueduc romain d’Arcueil, et enfin, quelques crânes et des os longs bizarrement conformés.’ Gérards, Paris souterrain, p. 476. ‘Qu’on s’imagine Paris ôté comme un couvercle, le réseau souterrain des égouts, vu à vol d’oiseau, dessinera sur les deux rives une espèce de grosse branche greffée au fleuve. Sur la rive droite l’égout de ceinture sera le tronc de cette branche, les conduits secondaires seront les rameaux et les impasses seront les ramuscules.’ Victor Hugo, Les misérables, trans. Isabel F. Hapgood (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell and Co., 1887), vol. 5, book 2, ch. 2.

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2  the intestinal labours of Paris Sabine Barles and André Guillerme

After 1760, the flatulence of the capital became increasingly noticeable – evidence of a putrid fermentation which was spreading and intensifying. Paris stank of nitrate, while London gave off the sulphurous vapours of an infernal city. As Paris became more crowded, London sprawled. Here they wallowed in damp and vapours, there they coughed and choked in coal smoke: Paris clutched at its belly, London held its breath. Paris was constantly foul-smelling, although more or less critically so according to the season. When the ‘Aquilon’, or north wind, blew, the students at the École Polytechnique in the Latin Quarter were greatly inconvenienced by the emanations from Montfaucon, five kilometres to  the north. As Daniel Roche has shown, the eighteenth century saw the emergence of consumption associated with intense artisanal activity.1 ‘Le luxe & la profusion y [ont] augmenté dans un rapport plus sensible encore que le nombre de ses habitans’ (‘Luxury & profusion have increased even faster than the number of its inhabitants’), the Marquis of Courtrivon emphasised as early as 1747.2 This evolution intensified after the Seven Years’ War. Three areas of extreme stench surrounded the capital. The highest was the sewage plant at Montfaucon, with its four hectares of effluent extracted from twelve thousand cesspits for thirty-two thousand households. Methane and nitrous gases continuously rose out of the decanting ponds. Not far from Montfaucon were the gut factories that each year dried out ten thousand kilometres of intestines that were to become chorizo skins in Spain. Each year around twenty or 43

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thirty horses died pulling the carts that brought the cattle carcasses to and from the slaughterhouses. The lowest point was the mouth of the Bièvre. Incapable of reaching any agreement on the subject, the people living near the river had stopped scraping it clean in the middle of the century:3 Its arms and meanders were therefore filled with residues, organic (lactic acid, fat, hair) and mineral (lime), from the transformation of between five hundred and a thousand hides brought daily from the butchers’ shops of the capital. In 1794, however, this greasy water was said to do ‘half the work’ of the thirty-three tanners working by the river.4 The cellars, many of which dated back to the end of the Middle Ages, became increasingly interesting for the slow fermentation and elaboration of organic products: they afforded thermal inertia, a stable hygrometry and a nitrous atmosphere. From the end of the seventeenth century onwards, houses were no longer built with wooden ground floors. They were now built on underground cellars, using rubble stones and mortar or, for the most beautiful, limestone.5 The cellars allowed the air to circulate, but the dampness of the soil infiltrated the porous walls up to the second floor, bringing with it the heavy odour of saltpetre produced by the digestion of food. The entrails of Paris, and the work of the entrails within Paris, then became an object of general concern. Doctors, pharmacists, architects and other observers of the capital started to worry about their contribution to the general insalubrity and extreme urban mortality, while chemists, artisans and manufacturers extracted raw materials and their by-products, that is, wealth. Paris lived off – and yet was dying from – the pervasive putrefaction that played an ambiguous part in the life of the city. Omnipresent in the capital, it acted as a prism through which the urban environment had to be analysed and without which artisanal activity was unthinkable. The very rich vocabulary linked to putrefaction and decomposition bears witness to a keen interest in what would later be called metabolism, a word that started to be used only in the 1850s. The aim of this chapter, which is largely based on earlier publications,6 is to analyse the two faces of the intestinal workings of Paris; other historians have rarely studied these together, being interested either in the question of insalubrity in relation to mud and garbage, or in the original forms taken by the industrial revolution in Paris. 44

the intestinaL Labours of Paris

Miasmas and mephitic exhalations: the rotten entrails ‘It is too muddy in Paris to go on foot, for really the mud in Paris is beyond all description’, Mozart complained in 1778.7 The streets of the capital were largely composed of whatever came to hand, and when they were paved, the defective camber of the roads caused putrid ponds to form: the whole mixture resulted in the ferruginous mud characteristic of the capital and produced by the earth, the sand poured between the cobbles, the excrement and the unmentionable filth that they discard and leave to stagnate so unfortunately in the streets; by the stagnant water, by the very carts that are used to remove this filth but scatter it all around, as we witness every day: it is also produced by the defecation of the horses and other animals.8

This mud was laden with putrefying matter and was blamed for a fair proportion of the insalubrity of the capital, ‘the muddy soil of the big cities’9 giving the urban milieu all the attributes of a swamp, whose effects on health were so feared. Intermittent fevers (such as malaria) were then endemic throughout Europe; the inhabitants of those marshy neighbourhoods were prey to all kinds of diseases and usually died at an early age. Physicians and apothecaries saw cities as vast and extremely corrupted swamps, to the extent that in a memoir on diseases induced by stagnant waters, Jean-Baptiste Baumes, a physician, describes cities as examples of the various types of swamps and marshes.10 Fevers of all kinds were indeed common in Paris, as well as even stranger maladies, such as ‘nyctalopia’, or night blindness.11 Its main symptom is a drop in visual acuity between nightfall and sunrise. It was observed in Paris in 1781, in a boarding school of the Faubourg Saint-Germain: ‘When the nights grow cold, the pupils, all 150 of them, go up to the first floor of one of the outside buildings … It is when we experience this kind of overcrowding, between the months of September and October, that nyctalopia starts to affect several pupils at the same time. It ceases in winter, and recurs more widely in springtime, lasting until June and July.’12 The boarders lived cramped together, in an air that was all the fouler for the building having been built on pestilential ground: originally destined for cockfights and the burial of animals, and then for the treatment of venereal disease … The site is orientated from

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south to north, & its level is thus four or five feet lower than the paving of the street, whose overflow of water it receives, mingled with that running off the roofs, as well as the filthy waste from the kitchens, without enough adequate sewers or drains; so that as a result everything is flooded during storms, and the latrines, which are dug rather shallowly, overflow the level of the ground.13

More generally, medical treatises frequently mentioned the various diseases affecting the eyes of the Parisians, who also suffered from dysentery, scrofulous infections and/or cachexia. In medical theory, ‘The bowels of the earth are full of mortal forces’ (‘Le sein de la terre est plein de causes mortelles’),14 and these forces spread out in the atmosphere in the form of dry fumes – ‘dry corpuscles or dry effusions, which arise from the hard terrestrial bodies, either through the heat of the sun, or for some other reason’ (‘des corpuscules ou écoulemens secs, qui s’élèvent des corps durs & terrestres, soit par la chaleur du soleil, soit par l’agitation de l’air, soit par quelque autre cause’)15 – and could induce illness or death, as was often observed in the mines, or humid vapours. They were ‘created by the transpiration of the earth, & by that of the trees, which has been processed more, & is quicker to rot’ (fournie[s] par la transpiration de la Terre, & par celle des Arbres qui est plus travaillée, & plus prompte à se gâter’).16 The dry corpuscles or effusions were even more dangerous in ‘those inhabited pits that we honour with the name of towns’ (‘ces gouffres habités qu’on décore du nom de Villes’)17 and in Paris, ‘that enormous city whose sickly influence is so widespread and has such noxious effects’ (‘cette immense ville dont l’influence maladive a tant d’étendue & d’effets’),18 more than anywhere else in France. Miasmas, mephitis and ‘pernicious exhalations’ abounded.19 The Société Royale de Médecine and other societies encouraged works on the relation between mortality and morbidity on the one hand and the environment on the other.20 The results thus collected and published gave numerous examples of the role physicians ascribed to the soil in this equation.21 The air, very often treated by historians as the main cause, was considered to communicate the malignity of the dirt to the bodies of people and animals. In urban areas, those emanations were all the more corrupted as the putrefying matter was everywhere and very often mixed with ‘miasmas coming out of the bodies of men piled together’ (‘les miasmes sortis du corps de plusieurs hommes rapprochés’).22 46

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Some places were more dangerous than others because of the intensity of the intestinal movements that nourished them. In 1774 the Académie des Sciences thus asked Antoine Portal, the future physician of Louis XVIII and later the founder of the Académie Royale de Médecine (1820), to conduct new research into the effects of mephitic vapours, for: ‘there is never a year when these vapours do not deprive the State of some of its citizens, either in the cramped rooms & neighbourhoods inhabited by too many people, or in the exploitation of mines and quarries … Every day we see gravediggers & cesspit emptiers stifled in this way. These accidents are also frequent in places where wine is pressed and matured.’23 In Paris the mephitis of the cesspits, those underground reservoirs which collected human urine and excrement – either converted or dug for the purpose in the yard and partly waterproofed with a layer of beaten clay at the bottom – caused mitte simple (mephitic poisoning): ‘the infection first attacks the nose’ (‘le nez commence à être pris’), then gives ‘a pain at the back of the eye, which then spreads to the frontal sinuses; then the eyeball and eyelids … become red and inflamed’ (‘une douleur dans le fond de l’œil, laquelle se propage dans les sinus frontaux; le globe de l’œil & les paupières … rouges & enflammeé’).24 A return to the open air was enough to cure these symptoms. Mitte grasse (acute mephitic poisoning) was more serious: it cast a veil over the eyes of the cesspit emptiers and ‘plunged them for one or two days into absolute blindness’ (‘les jette pour un ou deux jours dans une cécité absolue’).25 Staying in bed and applying compresses enabled them to recover their sight. Worse still, if a emptier did not leave the pit when he felt the onset of mitte, he could fall victim to ‘plumbism’, of which medical doctors distinguished seventeen varieties: ‘Tightening of the throat, involuntary cries & sometimes wailing, which explains why the workmen say that plumbism makes them sing; convulsive coughing, sardonic laughter, delirium, asphyxia & death are the various accidents by which plumbism affects the emptiers.’26 The frequent accidents led to considerable improvements in their working conditions: ventilators were used, liquids were pumped out, and the areas were disinfected. Accidents were equally frequent in the vicinity of cemeteries, especially during inhumations, which often resulted in a temporary loss of consciousness and sometimes in the deaths of gravediggers, as was reported by Félix Vicq d’Azyr.27 Cemeteries certainly 47

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produced ‘foetid and volatile emanations … These vast vaults which ignorant, inhuman piety, ridiculous vanity or misguided interest have led us to dig in our towns, where corpse is piled upon corpse, and which we cannot open up without releasing torrents of corrupt and deliquescent matter, can be regarded as reservoirs permanently harbouring infection.’28 In Paris the mephitis of the cemetery of the Innocents, which had long been notorious, ‘was complicated by miasmas or by a sort of cadaverous and genuinely poisonous gas, whose principal effect is on the nervous system’.29 The situation was such that in 1785 the decision was taken to clean up this land ‘infected for the most part either with the remains of corpses, or by the filth from the neighbouring houses’.30 For six months, under the direction of the physician Michel Thouret, ‘over an area of two thousand square toises [8,000 square yards], more than eighty funeral tombs have been opened and searched: forty or fifty of the common burial pits have been excavated, down to a depth of eight or ten feet, some right to the bottom; & more than fifteen to twenty thousand bodies from every period in history have been exhumed, along with their coffins.’ According to Thouret the cemeteries contained ninety thousand bodies.31 On this occasion, the physician observed a previously unknown form of mummification, a ‘fat mummification’, as opposed to the better-known dry kind: The bodies themselves did not seem to have undergone any loss of volume … or deterioration. On breaking open the coffins and tearing the shrouds, we saw that the flesh had been preserved. The only change that we saw consisted in the bodies having been transformed as it were into a softish mass or matter, whose whiteness, highlighted all the more by their exposure to the light of day, seemed even brighter in contrast to the black colour of the earth.32

For Thouret the explanation was simple: This earth, ‘for so long overfed with funerals’ (‘depuis long-tems rassasiée de funérailles’),33 this ‘soil … saturated in every corner with animal matter, had for some considerable time ceased to have any effect on the bodies  with which it was deeply permeated’.34 Finally, ‘Only the total collapse of boundaries, & the extreme corruption of the large cities, could have brought about these extraordinary alterations.’35 The cemetery of the Saints Innocents was thus the last stage of the corruption of urban areas. And this corruption was such that 48

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the normal cycle of matter, considered so important by chemists, was interrupted. Some cellars were former ground floors that had sunk as the adjacent street level rose, particularly at the bottom of slopes: half-buried constructions with flooring formed by the substratum. Others were old quarries of as many as three levels deep, as in the rue des Lombards, in the Gallo-Roman crypts around Cluny and in underground passages such as those at the Saints Innocents; others again lay beneath convent buildings, aristocratic lodgings, prisons, hospitals, stores of fuel or victuals, stables, cattle sheds and so on. Cheesemakers formed their curds there; tripe merchants washed and cooked offal there; pork butchers stored their cured meat, and also the fat, which fermented and putrefied before being made into dubbin and suet. The rag-pickers piled up the textiles destined for the manufacturing of paper by fermentation, and also raised rabbits here and there. Bakers poured in the ashes still hot from the oven, to sell when cold to saltpetre merchants or laundrywomen.36 Innkeepers in their turn stored barrels of wine and cider. And finally, at the foot of the outhouse at the end of a yard, a few inches of soil would be scraped away to erect a cowshed or a stable. By the middle of the Enlightenment, these urban basements were widely occupied by artisans. The vignettes of the Encyclopédie … des arts et des métiers by Denis Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, like the plates illustrating the vast Description des Arts published from 1750 onwards by the Académie Royale des Sciences, often show these low-vaulted, windowless workshops. Most of the cellars were equipped with wells – dug at the base of a wall for maximum strength – where water could be drawn from the water-table for domestic or industrial purposes, or from the drains which channelled off residual surface water. This chthonian space was fairly harshly judged by religion: Christians believed the serpents of Evil lived there, or the souls tormented in Purgatory,37 while others, like Dante, saw it as the gateway to hell. The urban soil also contained treasure, bones and blocks of stone bearing inscriptions: everything led people to believe that the intestinal world of the royal city was inhabited by emptiness, ghosts and fabulous beasts. Above all, these urban underground spaces could absorb the worst vapours, those drawn from the canal dug from the sewage plant at Montfaucon to evacuate the waste water into the Marais. The city engineers paved over the long, putrid, dead branch of the 49

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Seine in 1775, and the stink ceased, but by then there was another even more morbid smell, this time a chemical one. The pioneering factory of chemical products founded by Anselme Payen in 1792 to treat rotting organic matter collected by rag-pickers, and to manufacture ammonium sulphate and empyreumatic acid, sent its liquids and vapours underground, to surface elsewhere and to ferment lawsuits by those dwelling nearby.38 Chaptal used the same procedure in manufacturing sulphuric acid at La Folie in Nanterre: the industrial underground was a chemical hell. But that was not the only cause: the white lead factory at Vaugirard had its main building constructed over underground passages in order to ensure better ventilation, and these passages served as cellars and sometimes also as vast storehouses.39 Numerous hat makers occupied nearly all the cellars of the Arcis neighbourhood, infecting it with mercury vapours:40 the felt hats made from rabbit skin had to be treated in a warm and humid atmosphere. This was a luxury industry, and Paris was its capital. Cellars were not counted as distinct spaces. They could not be rented separately and were always attached to flats. Whatever lay underground thus represented an important economic issue: for artisans it was cheaper work space, more easily accessible than the upper floors and cheaper to heat, thanks to its interesting thermal inertia. The underground spaces were thus occupied by small artisanal units, each one usually housing a single, generally poor family. The people who worked in them were often ill equipped and tended to move frequently between dwellings. The dreadful sanitary conditions allowed for important financial gains but also lead to an early death. The copper gilders, the hat makers and the goldsmiths inhaled vapours of mercury, while the leather curriers inhaled carbon oxides, the tinsmiths breathed in vapours of lead, and the smelters those of copper. Many modest cowsheds, half-buried shacks, also sheltered human misery. Whole families of peddlers, rag-pickers and chimney-sweeps lived in crammed cellars with the waste they collected. They managed to make a living out of their trades only because they lived – and sometimes also worked – underground for a very low rent. They collected and sorted out garbage to sell whatever they found: glass to be turned into bottles, rags to be turned into paper, paper to make cardboard, organic waste to produce ammonia, cinder to produce lye or bones to make phosphate. They cleaned the city and supplied the industries that 50

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turned waste into valuable products. This underground activity was a distinctive feature of capital cities: wealth and consumption were higher there than anywhere else, generating even more waste and allowing in turn tens of thousands of poor families to make a living and spend their money. The intestines of Paris at work Paris became the leading source of saltpetre in Europe during the last third of the eighteenth century. Twenty-five saltpetre works installed outside the city walls washed the plaster and rubble that came from demolition sites or from diggings in the soil of the cellars: 500 tons on average per year between 1780 and 1820, a third of the national output. Each Parisian produced seven times more saltpetre than her or his provincial counterparts. The walls of Paris were so rich in ammonium nitrate that every demolition had to be accompanied by the following public notice: It is incumbent on every individual, landlord or tenant of houses, architect, builder and mason to warn or make warning to the saltpetre makers of the quarters of the said city, faubourgs and suburbs of Paris, where any houses, walls and other buildings that they may wish to demolish are situated, of the day when the said demolitions will commence. We order that the said saltpetremen shall take and remove the saltpetre soil, plaster and stones, as promptly as possible, in order to avoid its wastage, without being bound to pay anything.41

The essential condition for the production of saltpetre was the presence of azotic organic matter.42 The denser it was, the more productive, particularly in the vicinity of cesspits (of which there were ten thousand below ground in Paris), sewers, abattoirs, gutters, stables, back yards and cowsheds.43 In short, wherever the earth is covered, impregnated with vegetable matter and animal urine or in the plaster, chalk and soft limestone which decompose easily: sheep pens, stables, dovecotes, sheds, cellars, storerooms and other low-level household locations, old and demolished buildings are natural, inexhaustible mines where saltpetre may be extracted as it forms and flourishes …44

Saltpetre appeared only up to three or four metres above ground, at which height the walls were generally dry. The humidity of the ground was thus fundamental to its formation. In the 1770s, 51

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the haphazard gathering of saltpetre efflorescence that had been going on since the Renaissance gave way to systematic mining, exploited  for the profit by the public authorities. Production was  sustained and even encouraged by the increasing need for, and  numbers of, beef and dairy farmers and producers of other bovine products, as well as cesspits. We may add to these the old walls of the cellars that were saturated with this stone salt – the salse petrus. Slurry and sludge also became an increasingly pressing matter.45 The first public bidding for the Parisian sewers dates from 1727, when Bize and Roquelin promised to improve the sewage plants:46 ‘as long as they may profit from matter already accumulated or to be deposited in the sewers, for eighteen years’.47 They intended to preserve and ripen the matter for at least three years; when dry it would produce poudrette, a fertiliser much sought after by farmers. The procedure, ancient but patented by Bridet on 3 Brumaire year V (24 October 1796), was implemented by this businessman in Paris in 1787, the year in which he bought the rights to exploit the sewers of the capital from the Compagnie du Ventilateur (Ventilation Company).48 He then set up his ‘stewpots from hell’ at the sewage farm of Montfaucon, which in 1781 had become the only sewage plant of its kind in Paris.49 The sewage plant had several decantation pools. Those higher up received the sewage: The solid, heavy matter falls to the bottom, where it forms a sediment from eight to ten feet deep; above it floats the liquid, which forms a layer from twelve to fifteen feet thick, which is soon covered by a crust of light solid matter two or three feet thick, which floats to the surface and hardens on contact with the air.50

When the separation was complete, the liquids were evacuated towards a lower basin while the solid matter was retained: ‘this matter is spread out to dry in the sun. It is turned over from time to time with spades, or with harrows drawn by horses … In three or four days it is completely dry.’51 It was then transported to a hangar; the fermentation took a few days, and the temperature could rise as high as 95 degrees Réaumur (about 60° C). The product was then passed ‘through a screen to separate out the foreign bodies, which are discarded, from the thicker masses, which are passed through a mill to grind them down.52 This was how the odourless poudrette was produced. Bridet’s factories achieved ‘great success’ 52

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and brought him ‘enormous profit from his products in Normandy, Brie and the Orléans district’.53 Eugène Belgrand estimated that the fertiliser produced at Montfaucon brought in 300,000 livres, while he paid a tax of only 3,000 livres to the city.54 The interest in solid sewage also increased. Suburban market gardeners had to take dung from the local nightsoil tips when these were full, even if they did not need it. In return, this fertiliser was free, and came from the last (and freshest) cartloads collected from the streets. In the 1770s a quarrel arose between the inhabitants of the suburbs, the street cleaning business and the police. The stakes were high: for some years now ‘the cleaning business [had] deemed it fit to sell the solid sewage and load it onto boats, and to take to the sewage farms only dirty liquid slurry unfit to fertilise the soil’;55 others ‘took away to their own land the dung which could be used as compost, and the sewage farms received only dirty liquid effluent, commonly called slurry’.56 They even started to sell the dung that they had stocked to the sewage farms. At the Vaugirard centre, the price was fixed at 15 sols per horse-cart load: much too high, according to the farmers. In fact for growing grain, ‘you need to lay sewage at a rate of twelve three-horse cart loads’,57 which meant a cost of 60 livres for transport; if in addition the dung had to be paid for, the total cost of manure could amount to 87 livres. Since vegetables required twice as much, the cost of the compost for them could reach between 120 and 174 livres.58 However, the lieutenant of police pretended not to hear the protests. Authorising the sale of dung – and therefore its appropriation by the cleaning business – allowed him in fact to reduce the cost of cleaning by having it borne by the growers. The business of selling excrement was later to turn into a lucrative business. Tripe and other animal by-products The intestines of pigs and sheep – edible when fresh – were prepared by tripe merchants, unlike the guts of cattle or horses, which were left on the farms or treated to make rope. At the royal factory of the Robert brothers, located on the Île des Cygnes near the Gros Cailloux, ‘they wash the intestines brought by the butchers, to cook them and distribute them to the tripe merchants’. In this first food-processing plant, where several tons of gut were treated daily, they also made gelatine, suet and ‘tripe oil, which is used 53

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for the lamps and lanterns of the city’.59 Around 1788, eight other tripe merchants were plying their trade on a smaller scale on the Quai de Guesvres and on Notre-Dame bridge.60 In 1823 more than 130 tripe merchants were in business in the capital. The flowering of the trade reflected the demographic expansion and a muchincreased exploitation of offal for various uses – glues, salts and polyphosphates. As one report stated at the beginning of the nineteenth century: ‘The art of the catgut maker is a useful one.’61 The eighteenth century used gut for knife-grinders’ rackets, surgical catheters, hygrometers and archery and crossbow cords, but also to make strings for musical instruments and above all to make the cords for the bows used to card wool and felt. The same organic process also served to make membranes for balloons and skins for gold beaters and for plaster casts. Horses’ innards were used to make the thickest cords, destined for the turners or used to ‘transfer the movement of one wheel over another in various manufacturing processes’,62 in which they competed with the leather belts that were used more often with pulleys. Oxen and cows produced thick cords, and calves, asses and pigs produced medium ones, while the guts of goats, cats and dogs were used for the finer ones. Eight master catgut-makers who specialised in strings for musical instruments were working in Paris around 1770: the small intestines of sheep were treated gently, for they needed to ‘keep intact this delicate membrane, which the slightest flaw renders useless … To reach the desired effect, the gut is bathed or washed repeatedly in warm or slightly alkaline water.’63 In 1775, however, a family from Barcelona settled in Paris and London to tap the gut market on a large scale. Once an item of low economic value, gut then became a source of substantial profit for tripe-merchants. The French product was used for the making of chorizos and dry sausages, which were much sought after in Spain and the Spanish colonies.64 To that end, the intestines were not twisted, dried and oiled, as was done for the manufacture of strings or cords: they had to be inflated in order to form the very thin chorizo skins. The Spanish family settled where water was available in sufficient quantities: first in the Faubourg Saint-Marcel, then in the vicinity of La Gare, and later (in 1798) near the slaughterhouse of La Petite Villette, along the road leading to Pantin and close to the sewage treatment plant. A second factory opened in 1795 but closed because of the war against Spain. Twenty years later, Paris 54

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became the first production centre for chorizo skins, exporting ten thousand kilometres of animal guts each year until 1830. Conclusion The situation in Paris in the eighteenth century was somewhat paradoxical; the city suffered from the proliferation of putrefying matter, but it also made a living out of it. The Parisian pedosphere was a thick layer perpetually enriched by the waste of the capital while containing the raw materials that contributed to its economic prosperity. It is omnipresent in the descriptions of Paris, if only because it contributed to ‘this atmospheric cesspool in which we swim & breathe’,65 while ‘the perspiration of Paris is felt everywhere’.66 At the end of the eighteenth century, however, disorder pervaded underground spaces. Cellars were no longer regarded as the gates of hell but had become holes where organic fires gave off thicker, smokier and more toxic new gases such as the one given off by skatole, produced by the empyreumatic acid used in the making of perfumes, poisons and medicines. All this shows that much more than a simple metaphor, there was a homothetic relationship between the transformation and the circulation of matter in the soil of the capital and the transformation and circulation of matter in the human body in the second half of the eighteenth century. The stagnant waters that digested the waste and mud of the city gave off a musty smell; under the foundations of buildings, the water table sustained the nitrobacteria that created efflorescence of saltpetre on the walls  and  gave their typical smell; the removal of cemeteries outside the walls of the city tore apart the ground surface already bloated by accumulated bodies. The belly of Paris was full, and its repletion was in turn responsible for the stomachic disorders of its citizens. Notes 1 D. Roche, Histoire des choses banales: naissance de la consommation dans les sociétés traditionnelles (XVIIe–XIXe siècles) (Paris: Fayard, 1997). 2 G. De Courtrivon, ‘Discours sur la nécessité de perfectionner la métallurgie des forges, pour diminuer la consommation des bois …’, Histoire et mémoires de l’Académie royale des sciences (1747), 289.

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3 J. N. Hallé, Rapport sur l’état actuel du cours de la rivière de Bièvre, read on 30 August 1790 (1790), pp. lxx–lxxxv, Bibliothèque Nationale de France. 4 J. de Lalande, L’Art du mégissier: description des arts et métiers faites et approuvée par Messieurs de l’Académie royale des Sciences de Paris (Paris: Delatour, 1775), p. 1. 5 Information given by the architects of the Commission du Vieux Paris. See Matthieu Fernandez, ‘Approche topographique historique du soussol parisien: 1800–2000. La ville épaisse: genèse et evolutions morphologiques’, PhD dissertation, Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, 2014, https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01223241 (last accessed 9 February 2018). 6 S. Barles, La Ville délétère: médecins et ingénieurs dans l’espace urbain, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1999); S. Barles, L’Invention des déchets urbains, France, 1790–1970 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005); A. Guillerme, La Naissance de l’industrie à Paris: entre sueurs et vapeurs, 1780–1830 (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2007). 7 Letter from Mozart to his father during his journey to Paris, 1 May 1778, in The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, trans. Lady Wallace, Project Gutenberg Ebook, letter 101, www.gutenberg.org/ files/5307/5307-h/5307-h.htm (last accessed 9 February 2018). 8 ‘Produite par la terre, le sable qu’on laisse entre les pavés, les ordures, les immondices, qu’on jette, qu’on dépose et qu’on laisse si mal-àpropos séjourner dans les rues; par les eaux croupies, par les voitures mêmes qui sont employées à enlever ces immondices, et qui les éparpillent de tous côtés, ainsi que chacun en est journellement témoin; elle est produite aussi par la fiente des chevaux et des autres animaux.’ P. Chauvet, Essai sur la propreté de Paris (Paris: chez l’auteur, 1797), pp. 25–6. 9 J.-B. Baumes, Mémoire … sur la question …: déterminer, par l’observation, quelles sont les maladies qui résultent des émanations des eaux stagnantes, et des pays marécageux …, et quels sont les moyens d’y remédier (Nîmes: C. Belle, 1789), p. 5. 10 Ibid., pp. 2–18. 11 The term ‘nyctalopia’ was used wrongly in many medical texts of the eighteenth century in place of ‘hemeralopy’, the name which usually designates this disease today. 12 ‘Lorsque les nuits deviennent froides, tous les élèves, au nombre de cent cinquante, remontent au premier étage d’un bâtiment avancé … C’est lorsque cette espèce d’encombrement s’opère entre les mois de septembre & d’octobre, que la nyctalopie commence à se manifester chez plusieurs sujets à la fois. Elle cesse en hiver, & reparoît plus en grand au printemps, jusque dans les mois de juin & de juillet.’ Chamseru,

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13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24

‘Recherches sur la nyctalopie, ou l’aveuglement de nuit, maladie qui règne tous les ans dans le printemps, aux environs de la Roche-Guyon’, Mémoires de la société de médecine (1786), p. 154. ‘destiné précédemment à des combats d’animaux & à leur sépulture, ensuite à un traitement populaire des maladies vénériennes … L’emplacement est incliné du midi au nord, & se trouve ainsi dans sa  superficie plus bas de quatre à cinq pieds que le pavé de la rue, dont  il  reçoit en partie les eaux jointes à celles des toits & aux immondices des cuisines, sans qu’il y ait d’égoûts ni de puisards suffisans; de sorte que tout est inondé dans les temps d’orages, & les latrines, creusées peu profondément, regorgent alors au niveau du sol.’ Ibid., pp. 153–4. J. B. Sénac, Traité des causes, des accidens, et de la cure de la peste … (Paris, 1744), part I, p. 59. D. Diderot and J. Le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 6 (Paris, 1756), art. ‘Exhalaison’. F. Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation où l’on recherche comment l’air, suivant ses différentes qualités, agit sur le corps humain … (Bordeaux, 1754), p. 52. P. Bertholon, De la Salubrité de l’air des villes, et en particulier des moyens de la procurer (Montpellier, 1786), p. 3. J. J. Menuret de Chambaud, Essais sur l’histoire médico-topographique de Paris … (Paris, 1786), pp. 8–9. Boissier de Sauvages, Dissertation, p. 4. For further details see Barles, La Ville délétère. The Société Royale de Médecine was founded in 1776 in reaction to the conservative teachings of the universities. See Jean Meyer, ‘Introduction: ‘l’enquête de l’Académie de Médecine sur les épidémies, 1774–1794’, Études rurales, 34:1 (1969), 7–69. Results appeared particularly in Histoire et mémoires de la Société royale de Médecine. Menuret de Chambaud, Essai sur l’histoire, p. 79. ‘il n’est point d’année que ces vapeurs n’enlèvent des citoyens à l’État, soit dans des chambres étroites & des lieux habités par trop de monde, soit dans l’exploitation des mines & des carrières … L’on voit tous les jours des fossoyeurs & des vidangeurs étouffés de cette manière. Ces accidens sont encore fréquens dans les lieux où l’on fait le vin.’ A. Portal, Observations sur les effets des vapeurs méphitiques dans l’Homme …, 6th edn (Paris, 1787), pp. 11, 5–6. L.-G. Laborie, L.-C. Cadet le Jeune and L.-C. Parmentier, Observations sur les fosses d’aisance, & moyens de prévenir les incoveniens de leur vidange (Paris, 1778), pp. 9–10.

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25 Ibid. 26 ‘Le resserrement du gosier, des cris involontaires & quelquefois modulés, ce qui fait dire aux ouvriers que le plomb les fait chanter; la toux convulsive, le rire sardonique, le délire, l’asphyxie & la mort sont les accidens par lesquels se diversifie l’action du plomb sur les vuidangeurs.’ Ibid., p. 12. 27 F. Vicq d’Azyr, Essai sur les lieux et les dangers des sépultures (Paris, 1778), pp. cxxviii–cxxxii. The roman page numbers refer to Vicq d’Azyr’s introduction to Piattoli’s Traité, which Vicq d’Azyr claims to have ‘published with a few changes’, so that it is often difficult to attribute any particular element of the text to its author or its editor. Published in 1774, the Traité was an indictment of burials in churches on historic and religious grounds. 28 ‘émanations fétides et volatiles … Ces vastes caveaux qu’une piété ignorante et funeste à l’humanité, une vanité ridicule, ou un intérêt mal placé, font construire dans les villes, où l’on entasse cadavres sur cadavres, que l’on ne peut ouvrir sans qu’il sorte des torrens de matières corrompues et exaltées, peuvent être regardés comme des magasins toujours subsistans de contagion.’ Thion de la Chaume, ‘Mémoire sur la question suivante …: Quelles sont les maladies qui règnent le plus souvent parmi les troupes, pendant l’été, et en général dans le temps des grandes chaleurs? …’, Mémoires de la société royale de médecine (1789), 397.  29 ‘se trouvoit compliqué de miasmes ou d’une sorte de gaz cadavéreux, qui lui donne le caractère d’un poison réel, & dont la principale action se porte sur le systême nerveux’. Cadet de Vaux, Mémoire historique et physique sur le cimetière des Innocents, read at the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1781, extract in Journal de Physique (June 1783), 4. 30 ‘infectée pour la plus grande partie, soit de débris de cadavres, soit par des immondices des maisons voisines’. M. A. Thouret, Rapport sur les Exhumations du Cimetière & de l’Église des Saints Innocens (Paris: Denys Pierres, 1789), p. 24. 31 ‘sur une étendue de deux mille toises quarrées; plus de quatre-vingt caveaux funéraires ont été ouverts & fouillés: quarante à cinquante des fosses communes ont été creusées, à huit & dix pieds de profondeur, quelques-unes jusqu’au fond; & plus de quinze à vingt mille cadavres, appartenans à toutes sortes d’époques, ont été exhumés avec leur bières’. Ibid., pp. 24–5. This is how some portions of the quarries of Paris came to be filled with bones. 32 ‘Les corps eux-mêmes n’ayant rien perdu de leur volume …, ne sembloient avoir éprouvé aucune altération. En déchirant l’enveloppe funèbre, on voyoit que leurs chairs s’étoient conservées; le seul changement que l’on apercevoit, consistant en ce qu’elles étoient comme

58

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33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41

42

43

changées en une masse ou matière mollasse, dont la blancheur, encore relevée aux lumières par la teinte noire du sol, paroissoit plus éclatante.’ Ibid., p. 42. Ibid., p. 18. ‘sol … saturé dans tous ses points de matières animales, n’avoit plus depuis long-tems aucune action sur les corps dont il étoit profondément pénétré’. Ibid., p. 6. ‘Il n’y avoit que le renversement total des formes, & la corruption extrême des grandes villes, qui pussent amener ces modifications particulières.’ Ibid., p. 110. The potassium contained in the cinders was used as washing powder and to manufacture potassium nitrate, which is the basic ingredient of gunpowder. Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1984). A. Guillerme, A. C. Lefort and G. Jigaudon (eds), Dangereux, insalubres, incommodes: paysages industriels en Ile-de-France (XIXe–XXe siècles) (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2005), p. 127. See Archives of the Préfecture de Police, Paris, Conseil de Salubrité, report dated 23 July 1811. There were at least twenty-six major manufacturers in 1808, according to the Manuel du négociant (Paris, 1808), pp. 174–6, and nearly 150, with two to three thousand workmen, in 1825, the peak year for the hatters. Paris’s hats made it the capital of male and female fashion. ‘Enjoignons à tous particuliers, propriétaires et locataires de maisons, architectes, entrepreneurs et maçons d’avertir ou faire avertir les salpêtriers des quartiers d’icelle ville, faubourgs et banlieue de Paris, où seront situées les maisons, murs et autres bâtiments qu’ils voudront  faire démolir, du jour auquel les dites démolitions devront être commencées. Ordonnons que les dits salpêtriers prendront et enlèveront les terres, plâtras et pierres à salpêtre, le plus promptement possible, pour en éviter le dépérissement, sans être tenu de payer aucune chose.’ ‘Ordonnance du lieutenant général de Police concernant les salpêtriers de la ville de Paris’, 4 August 1779, art. II, reproduced in H. Lenoir, Historique et législation du salpêtre: les pharmaciens et les ateliers révolutionnaires de salpêtre (1793–1795) (Paris, 1922). See Instruction sur la fabrication du saltpêtre publiée par le Comité consultatif institué près de la Direction générale du service des poudres et salpêtres de France (Paris, 1820), p. 15, reprinted in Dictionnaire des sciences naturelles … (Paris, 1825), vol. 35, p. 65, art. ‘Nitrate’. ‘Everyone knows how difficult and expensive it is to prevent the infiltration of urine through the walls and ground of cellars, as well as

59

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44

45 46 47 48

49 50

51

52 53 54 55

its contact with adjacent wells’, reported the Bulletin de la Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale, 18 (1819), p. 204, in a discussion of the ‘Fosses mobiles et inodores de Cazeneuve et Cie.’ ‘les terres sont couvertes, imprégnées de matières végétales et d’urine des animaux ou dans les plâtras, la craie et les pierres tendres et calcaires qui se décomposent facilement: les bergeries, écuries, colombiers, granges, caves, celliers, autres lieux bas des maisons, les vieux bâtiments et les démolitions sont les mines naturelles et inépuisables d’où l’on tire le salpêtre à mesure qu’il s’y forme et s’y régénère …’. A. Lavoisier, Oeuvres (Paris, 1892), vol. 5, p. 393. On all this, see Barles, L’Invention des déchets urbains. Sewage plants were places for the disposal and transformation of slurry or sludge, depending on what was available. ‘à condition qu’ils profiteraient des matières accumulées déjà ou qui seraient déposées dans ces voiries, pendant 18 ans’. M. Paulet, L’Engrais humain … (Paris, 1853), p. 118. The Compagnie du Ventilateur held the privilege since 1781 and used the same ventilator for extraction of material from the cesspits; it received the enthusiastic support of the Académie des Sciences for cleaning up the operation. See Laborit, Cadet le Jeune and Parmentier, Observations. Paulet, L’Engrais humain, p. 123. ‘Les matières solides & pesantes se précipitent au fond, où elles forment un sédiment de huit à dix pieds de hauteur; au-dessus surnage le liquide, qui forme une couche de douze à quinze pieds, & qui est bientôt recouverte par une croûte de deux à trois pieds d’épaisseur, de matières solides, légères, qui s’élèvent à la surface où elles se durcissent à l’air.’ M. A. Thouret, Rapport sur la voirie de Montfaucon, read at the Société Royale de Médecine on 11 November 1788 (Paris, n.d.), p. 4. ‘On étend ces matières pour les sécher au soleil. On les fait retourner de temps en temps à la pelle, ou avec des herses conduites par des chevaux … En trois ou quatre jours le dessèchement est complet.’ Ibid., p. 5. ‘à la claie pour en séparer les corps étrangers que l’on rejette, & les parties grossières que l’on soumet à l’action d’un moulin pour les broyer’. Ibid., p. 6. ‘d’énormes bénéfices par la vente de ses produits dans la Normandie, la Brie, l’Orléanais’. Paulet, L’Engrais humain, p. 129. E. Belgrand, Les Travaux souterrains de Paris, vol. 5: Les égouts – les vidanges (Paris, 1888), p. 269. ‘les entrepreneurs se sont avisés de vendre les boues, d’en charger des bateaux et de ne porter aux voiries qu’une eau sale et incapable d’engraisser les terres’. C. L. Chassin, ‘Second mémoire des habitants

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56 57 58 59

60 61 62

63

64 65 66

de la banlieue à l’intendant de Paris sur la vente des boues’ (1777), in Chassin, Paris hors les murs (Paris, 1889), p. 230. ‘ont porté dans leurs terres les boues qui peuvent tenir lieu de fumier, et [que] les voiries ne reçoivent que les eaux sales, communément appelées mélanges’.’ Ibid., p. 235. ‘il faut [y] mettre de la voirie jusqu’à concurrence de douze voitures à trois chevaux’. Chassin, ‘Premier mémoire des habitants de la banlieue sur leur droit aux boues’ (1776), in Paris hors les murs, p. 227. Ibid. ‘On lave les intestins qu’on apporte des boucheries, pour les faire cuire et être distribués par les tripiers’; ‘l’huile de tripe qui s’emploie pour les réverbères et les lanternes de la ville’. P. T. N. Hurtaut and Magny, Dictionnaire historique de la ville de Paris (Paris, 1779), vol. 3, art. ‘Île des Cygnes’. See I. Backouche, La Trace du fleuve: la Seine et Paris (1750–1850) (Paris: EHESS, 2000), p. 81. ‘L’art du boyaudier est un art utile.’ ‘Rapport du Conseil de Salubrité de la Seine’ no. 221, 10 February 1819, Archives of the Préfecture de Police, Paris. ‘transformer le mouvement d’une roue sur une autre dans diverses manufactures’. A. J. B. Parent-Duchatelet, Recherches et considérations sur l’enlèvement et l’emploi des chevaux morts, et sur la nécessité d’établir à Paris un clos central d’écarrissage tant pour les avantages de la salubrité publique, que pour ceux de l’industrie manufacturière de cette ville (Paris, 1827), p. 38. ‘conserver intacte cette membrane délicate, que la plus légère altération met hors d’usage … Pour atteindre le but cherché, on a recours à des bains d’eau tiède ou très légèrement alcalisée, et à des lavages souvent réitérés’. P. J. Robiquet, ‘Rapport … sur le concours du prix proposé pour le perfectionnement de l’art du boyaudier’, Bulletin de la Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale, 21 (1822), 333. Except in the larger cities, where there were important sausage manufacturers, sausage-making in Spain was mainly a family-run business. ‘cette cloaque atmosphérique dans laquelle on nâge & on respire’. in Menuret de Chambaud, Essais sur l’histoire, p. 29. ‘la transpiration de Paris est sensible’. C. Lachaise, Topographie médicale de Paris … (Paris, 1822), p. 46.

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3  digesting in the long eighteenth century Ian Miller

Roy Porter once described the stomach as a historically ambiguous organ; one awarded great significance in the bodily economy while subject at the same time to condemnation as a source of pathology, illness and degradation.1 This essay unravels these ambiguities. Historically, the workings of the human stomach and digestive system were mysterious. Hidden inaccessibly within the body, the living human stomach remained unseen and virtually unknowable until the nineteenth century. Eighteenth-century pathological anatomy had gleaned some insights into the dead stomach.2 Yet examination of the dead stomach could reveal only so much about human digestion. Historians have only recently subjected historical sciences of the stomach to dedicated analysis. Ian Miller, in A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800–1950, has explored shifting medical and diagnostic conceptions of the stomach in British contexts, providing insight into the nineteenth- and twentieth-century formation of a science of the abdomen.3 Emma Spary has explored the cultural influence of food sciences and expert thought on digestion in Enlightenment Paris.4 Christopher Forth and Anna Carden-Coyne’s edited volume Cultures of the Abdomen has investigated diet and digestion through the lens of cultural history while leaving medical and scientific conceptions of the stomach and digestion relatively unexplored.5 Building upon these foundations, this essay investigates the emergence and evolution of philosophical and scientific enquiries into 62

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the nature of human digestion in the long eighteenth century. It suggests that shifting perspectives on digestion encouraged deep anxieties to form around the gut. Ultimately, these concerns underpinned a new set of therapeutic regimes designed to safeguard both dietary and bodily health. The eighteenth century witnessed a discernible shift towards explaining bodily functions with scientific, in addition to theological, methods of investigation. As Porter observes, this development coincided with a new-found emphasis on gentility that raised the threshold of shame about the body and its conditions. In this context, stricter codes of bodily control emerged that were underpinned by rational knowledge of the body.6 In the eighteenth century, philosophers and scientists mostly dethroned the stomach from its prime position as the ‘seat of the soul’ (as described by Jan Baptist van Helmont) as they gradually came to agree upon consciousness and imagination as residing in the brain, not the belly.7 This encouraged scientific and medical writers to depict the stomach as a somewhat vulgar organ whose eructations, offensive rumblings and distasteful digestive processes were to be reviled and feared. The stomach came to be portrayed instead as a potent depository of fermenting, putrefying or dissolving food; the presence of which seemed to pose a distinct threat to bodily equilibrium and constitutional well-being. Yet, as this essay demonstrates, the corporeal importance of the stomach remained intact even as the philosophical and spiritual significance of the organ declined. In addition, it proved impossible to reduce the stomach to an organ whose ailments could be understood as exclusively physical, as opposed to emotional or even spiritual. Contemporaries continued to emphasise the complexity of the digestion system, the centrality of the stomach to bodily health and the interconnection of stomach disorder to an array of physical, mental and emotional conditions. Understanding the stomach During the long eighteenth century, a plethora of scientific ideas were in circulation that informed expert and lay conceptions of digestion. As the primacy of humoral theory in medical thought gradually lessened, philosophers and scientists began to conceptualise digestion in new terms. It came to be understood as mechanical, chemical, fermentative or nervous in origin, and often as a complex combination of these. Nonetheless, advocates of these 63

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competing approaches regularly clashed. Mechanical perspectives on the stomach were among the first to be disregarded. Since the mid seventeenth century, mechanical philosophers had forcefully challenged the pre-eminence of Galenic medicine by presenting the body as essentially machine-like, governed almost exclusively by the forces of heat and motion and made decipherable through the laws of physics and mathematical equations.8 Mechanical philosophers presented the stomach and other organs as items of machinery that shared similar physical properties with inanimate objects.9 Inspired by key intellectual figures such as the French philosopher René Descartes, eighteenth-century iatromechanists reduced bodily functions such as digestion to pure mechanics. Iatromechanism was a popular strand of philosophical and scientific thought whose proponents sought to understand the body using mechanical laws. The esteemed Italian mechanical physiologist Giovanni Borelli was particularly intent on demonstrating that stomachs simply crushed and pulverised ingested foodstuffs.10 For critics, the idea that digestion was entirely mechanical seemed somewhat improbable given the obvious presence of acids and fluids in the stomach. Surely these must serve some purpose in the digestive process? A number of scientists and philosophers certainly took issue with the unwieldy logic of iatromechanism by asserting that digestion was predominantly chemical in nature. In 1752, the French scientist René-Antoine Réaumur made a persuasive case when he established that only birds with strong gizzards mechanically digested food: creatures with muscular stomachs and the ability to digest indigestible objects such as stones.11 Réaumur did not deny that digestion had mechanical aspects but insisted instead that digestion was inherently complex. The cultural significance of mechanical perspectives on the body rested in the challenge that they posed to traditional conceptions of the relationship between soul and body.12 Most iatromechanists were far from irreligious, yet their ideas could sit uneasily with religious perspectives.13 Certainly, their portrayal of the stomach as an ugly, gnawing mechanism whose sole purpose was to relentlessly crush and obliterate its contents contrasted sharply with  the perspectives of those who venerated the complexity of the inner organs as firm evidence of God’s ingenuity. Numerous contemporaries highlighted the intricacy of digestion as proof in itself that an intelligent God existed. In 1711, William Derham, English natural 64

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theologian and canon of Windsor, promoting what he termed physico-theology, declared: What artist, what Being, but the infinite Conservator of the World, could so well adapt every food to all the several kinds of those grand devourers of it! Who could so well suit their stomachs to the reception and digestion thereof; one kind of stomach to the carnivorous, another to the herbaceous animals, one fitted to digest by bare mastication, and a whole set of stomachs in others to digest with the help of rumination!14

Similarly, in 1719 the Dutch philosopher, mathematician, physician and theologian Bernhard Nieuwnetijgt announced: ‘Can anyone then think that it [digestion] happens without the especial wisdom of God, that everything is found in the stomach adapted in the best manner to promote this purpose?’ and ‘can we therefore too, observe, how it has pleased our gracious creator, with great wisdom, to provide against the same [pain] by cloathing the innermost part of the stomach and bowels with a thick and tough slime’.15 Nieuwnetijgt concluded by asking: Can anybody now, considering what has been here said about the stomach, remain unconvinced that it was a Great Creator who, in order to display his wisdom and goodness to mankind, has produced all this in such a beautiful order? And can he, without scruple, ascribe this whole structure to ignorant causes; the rather, because any one of these circumstances failing, very dismal consequences, and even Death itself would sometimes follow.16

The majority of eighteenth-century philosophers and scientists refrained from penning such fervently passionate expressions of religious awe. Instead, they sought to gain an understanding of bodily processes using rational, empirical techniques. Nonetheless, a significant majority did make efforts to explain the relationship between the soul and body and to firmly re-establish spiritual aspects of human physiology in scientific models. Without denying that some aspects of the body operated mechanically, scientific philosophers such as Georg-Ernst Stahl sought to reinstate the primacy of the soul. Adopting an explicitly animistic and metaphysical approach, Stahl insisted that the soul governed human functions including digestion.17 Throughout the eighteenth century, animism provided an alternative framework to iatromechanism. Refuting body-machine perspectives, animists maintained that the human 65

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body was the agent of a soul or ‘anima’ that directed organic activity while still retaining a commitment to empirical investigation.18 Iatrochemists also concerned themselves with the concept of the soul. In the previous century, the alchemist and philosopher Jan Baptist van Helmont had attributed an energetic regulating spiritual principle (the archaeus) to each body part and living organ, although some dismissed his ideas as occult.19 As mentioned above, Van Helmont located the seat of the vital principle – the anima sensitiva or ‘animal soul’ – in the stomach.20 He reached this conclusion after experimenting with ingesting henbane. For two hours after swallowing a significant quantity of the plant, Van Helmont experienced a disagreeable sensation in his stomach so intense that his entire feeling and understanding came to concentrate solely on that organ: a period when he no longer had the free use of his mental faculties. This overwhelming gastric sensation induced him to place the seat of understanding in the stomach, that of volition in the heart and that of memory in the brain.21 Van Helmont’s theoretical biology subordinated the nervous system to the vital principle – the sensitive soul – that organised the body. His views remained influential until the eighteenth century.22 Vitalists also posited that an unknowable force, principle or power existed in the body that was governed by different principles to inanimate objects and which was detached from the mechanical laws of physics. In their view, living organisms contained a fluid or distinctive ‘spirit’ that infused bodies and gave life to them. For vitalists, this ‘spirit’ was not necessarily mystical or occult; it could be chemical.23 The Scottish surgeon John Hunter asserted that the ability of worms and other living organisms to reside safely in the digestive tract afforded proof of the existence of a living principle that could resist the powers of fermentation and digestion. However, when the living principle departed as these organisms died, they then became exposed to the digestive powers of the stomach. ‘If it were possible for a man’s hand’, explained Hunter, ‘to be introduced into the stomach of a living animal and kept there for some considerable time, it would be found that the dissolvent powers of the stomach could have no effect upon it. But if the same hand were separated from the body and introduced into the same stomach, we should find that the stomach would immediately act upon it’. Hunter added that ‘if the living principle was not capable of preserving animal substances from undergoing that process, the 66

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stomach itself would be digested’.24 This also allowed Hunter to explain why the gastric organs seemed to deteriorate and decay so rapidly after death, leaving few opportunities for anatomists to investigate them.25 Set against this context of competing perspectives, seemingly basic questions about digestion held broad significance. In the age of reason, philosophical discussions on the workings of the stomach tied in with broader debate on the relationship between soul and flesh and the extent to which metaphysical and spiritual concerns were compatible with rational scientific investigation. Nonetheless, eighteenth-century iatrochemical investigations tended to inadvertently demystify the stomach by reducing the organ to a simmering vat of putrid chemicals, ferments and vapours. Following the neurological investigations into the brain made by Thomas Willis, the gradual removal of the seat of the soul and consciousness from the gastric region to the mind further encouraged the stomach to be less favourably positioned in the bodily hierarchy: to be gradually transformed into an object of revulsion, not veneration. When the Scottish experimentalist David MacBride published his Experimental Essays on Medical and Philosophical Subjects in 1767, he presented the stomach as a vat in which ingested foodstuffs chemically fermented. MacBride firmly denied that food converted into fluid through mechanical grinding or dissolution alone. Convinced that digestion was chemical in nature, he experimented with heating mixtures of bread, mutton and water in phials on a sand furnace for a number of days. This allowed him to decipher three stages of digestion that seemed to occur as food descended through the body. The first involved the conversion of food into a sweet, but pungent, inebriating liquor; the second was a ‘sour stage’; and the third was a putrefied stage by which time ingested foodstuffs had lost their original characters of taste, colour and smell. All that remained at this last stage, MacBride suggested, was a fetid, rotten and offensive fluid.26 This substance emitted a vapour which MacBride believed would prove deadly and pernicious to the lungs if it was not safely passed downwards into the bowels.27 In Macbride’s model, this formed part of the digestive process of a healthy individual. For MacBride, individuals including the sedentary, the weak and the pregnant were at high risk of developing digestive problems should food be detained in the first digestive 67

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passages instead of passing normally through the body. In such instances, food continued to ferment in the higher digestive organs such as the stomach and oesophagus, producing an austere acid that caused heart-burning, vomiting and griping and ultimately failed to produce a nutritious chyle.28 MacBride concluded by ominously warning that: If the aliment, either from its own very putrescent nature, or from its too long stay within the confines of the smaller intestines, should ever proceed on to the third stage of fermentation, it will then become so offensive as to occasion immediate efforts to throw it off if the quantity of putrid matter be in any degree considerable. But if that should not be the case, it may then remain in the body and gradually insinuate itself into the mass of fluids, until it accumulates to such a height as to throw the system into a convulsion which must terminate either in the concoction and expulsion of the offending matter or in the destruction of life. For anything putrid is totally incompatible with the perfect well being of an animal body.

Similarly, the Italian Catholic priest, biologist and physiologist Lazzaro Spallanzani’s influential study of digestion hardly enhanced the repute of the stomach. Spallanzani’s Dissertations Relative to the Natural History of Animals and Vegetables confirmed the ‘astonishing force with which the stomachs of fowls and ducks pulverise empty globules of glass in the space of a few hours’.29 Spallanzani encouraged a range of animals to swallow metallic tubes, which were punctured with holes and contained foodstuffs such as cereals and grains. Upon killing each of these animals, Spallanzani cut open its body to retrieve the metallic tube and investigate the ways in which the stomach had acted upon its contents. Surprised by the extent to which the stomachs of gizzards, hens and capons attacked and ground the metal tubes, Spallanzani experimented by forcing these animals to ingest sharp pieces of glass and balls of lead with sharp needles projecting out of them. His results were consistent: the stomach had pulverised these dangerous objects with minimal internal damage, adding to a sense of the organ’s destructive potential.30 Yet, for Spallanzani, the animal kingdom appeared replete with different types of stomach. Creatures such as ravens and crows had an ‘intermediate stomach’; not entirely muscular but provided with thick, strong sides. These stomachs seemed to dissolve the contents of Spallanzani’s metallic tubes through acidic dissolution.31 Dissolution was a novel idea, one that added further weight to 68

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suggestions that digestion was primarily chemical in nature while also challenging ideas based on fermentation. Combined, these diverse experiments highlight the uncertain nature of eighteenth-century understandings of digestion. Moreover, the experiments demystified the once-revered stomach by reducing it to a simmering container of acids, ferments, putrefaction and mechanics. Towards the start of the century, the Irish writer and satirist and Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, Jonathan Swift, had praised the stomach, in spite of its many ailments, for making men ambitious, covetous, amorous, obsequious and time-serving. For Swift, ‘English feeding [was] the foundation of English bravery. And good claret, of fierté and French sprightliness’. Swift elaborated by asserting that man held his mind in his guts. ‘A writer’s stomach, appetite and victuals’, he elaborated, ‘may be judged from his method, style and subject as certainly as if you were his messfellow and sat at table with him. Hence we call a subject dry, a writer insipid, notions crude and indigested, a pamphlet empty or hungry, a style jejune, and many such like expressions plainly alluding to the diet of an author.’32 Yet by the end of the eighteenth century, the stomach, while still assuming bodily importance, was now reflected upon as a more uncertain organ. The stomach had, perhaps, never appeared particularly pleasant. Yet the corporeal dangers of the stomach had never seemed as evident as they had become by the end of the long eighteenth century. The dangers of the stomach Towards the end of the eighteenth century, theoretical speculation on digestion began to exert a perceptible influence on medical practice. However, developing understandings of the role of the brain in organising the nervous system by no means undermined the bodily importance of the stomach. The English pioneer of vaccination Edward Jenner wrote in his notebooks: ‘I want to do away with the whole stomach pathology at a sweep and to place the brain upon the top of the lofty pedestal allotted to it; to shew it as exercising a complete sovereignty over every vital action.’33 This fall from grace of the gastric region encouraged uncompromisingly corporeal perspectives of the stomach to emerge. Yet even despite this conceptual shift, numerous medical authors continued to find new ways of elevating the stomach in the bodily economy. 69

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The Scottish neurologist Robert Whytt privileged the stomach as a central body organ, adopting an approach heavily informed by concepts of nervousness. Whytt saw the stomach as an organ replete with nerve endings that connected it to other body parts. For Whytt, healthy eating stimulated and invigorated the gastric nerves, which, in turn, enlivened and strengthened the entire system via the nervous system.34 In 1795, the English physician Charles Webster asserted that ‘no animal can exist without a stomach’.35 In Webster’s view, the stomach was an animal in itself; as evidenced by the fact that oysters, the polypus and the hydatid seemed to do little else than digest. For Webster, these constantly digesting creatures represented the most basic life-forms. One medical author described the sponge as a creature consisting almost entirely of minute pores, ‘many little mouths which perpetually suck in the sea-water and the animalcules with which it abounds’.36 In this account, the sponge – a primitive life-form – appeared to do little else but digest. It was, essentially, a swimming stomach. Nonetheless, these authors simultaneously warned that the stomach’s pivotal position in the body imbued it with importance for bodily and constitutional health. Both Whytt and Webster allocated the stomach an important bodily function because of its unpredictability and volatility. Webster warned that the stomach was the receptacle of food, poison and medicine, the effects of which were propagated to all other body parts. When gastric energy diminished, all body parts lost their motion and sense, hunger and thirst affected bodily predisposition throughout the entire system, and muscular power rapidly diminished. For Webster, bodily health depended upon gastric health.37 Similarly, Whytt depicted the stomach as an epicentre of the nervous system, an approach that allowed him to implicate the organ for poor health throughout the body. Whytt believed that the stomach contained an innumerable amount of nerve endings that linked the organ to other bodily regions. Like Webster, he maintained that the symptoms of gastric disorder could unexpectedly manifest themselves, through nervous sympathy, in locations as diverse as the heart, mind, skin, bowels and lungs.38 The adoption of such views in medical practice nonetheless depended upon the extent to which early-nineteenth-century practitioners and theorists embraced localism. Nonetheless, such perspectives bore cultural relevance in early nineteenth-century Britain, a society increasingly defined as nervous.39 In this context, the stomach could 70

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be found being described as ‘the foundation or root of the complex apparatus’, ‘the great nervous centre or sensorium of organic life’ and even ‘the great abdominal brain’.40 Problematically, stomach complaints remained notoriously difficult to diagnose and treat, even as new perspectives on digestion evolved. The organ remained elusive and recalcitrant, mostly evading the diagnostic repertoires of physicians.41 Moreover, a bothersome stomach could cause years of agonising discomfort. English poet William Cowper constantly complained about his inconvenient stomach that refused to digest. In 1785, he wrote: I have indeed a most troublesome stomach, and which does not improve as I grow older. I have eaten nothing for some time past that it has not quarrelled with, from my bread and butter in the morning down to the egg that I generally make my supper. It constrains me to deny myself some things that I am fond of, and some that are in a degree necessary to health, or that seem to be so. Green tea I have not touched these twenty years, or only to be poisoned by it … less easy, however, do I find it to reconcile myself to an almost total abstinence from all vegetables which yet I have been obliged to practise for some time.42

Evidently, Cowper struggled to manage his stomach and resented being unable to consume foods that he had once relished; a personal concern that highlights the day-to-day lifestyle disruption caused by chronic gastric pain. Recounting the medical advice that he received, Cowper lamented: My stomach, he says, of which all my complaint is made, is in itself a very good stomach, and by no means in fault originally. But it has the misfortune of belonging to a habit, the juices of which are in an acrid and unhealthy state; that these juices occasion a little lurking fever, from which I am never free, and being transmitted into the stomach through the coats of it, make a regular digestion impossible.43

Kerr advised Cowper to wear flannel waistcoats, take weekly emetics, ingest tinctures, consume oatmeal gruel and avoid wine. Yet this failed to quell Cowper’s spasmodic stomach affections. He concluded, on the subject of his medical encounter, that ‘I have more fever and a more uneasy stomach than I had before.’44 Medical emphases on the internal significance of the unruly stomach encouraged physicians to develop therapeutic regimes designed to safeguard gastric (and bodily) health. It seemed that 71

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the capricious stomach needed to be soothed, calmed and kindly treated if pain, disease and disorder were to be prevented from erratically presenting throughout the body. The most enthusiastic proponents of monitoring gastric health were often prominent and well-respected individuals at the forefront of a rapidly changing medical science. Their writings make clear that even despite the challenge from ‘nervists’ and those favouring the brain as the seat of mind and emotion, many different ways were found to mix nervous and gastric pathology. In France, François-Joseph-Victor Broussais exerted a penetrative influence in the Parisian school of medicine. Broussais sought to salvage discussion of digestion from the speculations of iatrochemists and iatromechanism, arguing that physiology was ‘at first too mechanical, then too metaphysical’.45 In contrast, he stressed the importance of investigating how humans became diseased as an alternative to exploring how digestion worked in normal health conditions. Broussais posited that disease resulted from a general state of irritation (defined as nervous sensations not felt in the brain) caused by physical agents (such as food), upset passions and poor habits and behaviour. He convinced himself that virtually all disease stemmed from irritation or inflammation of a particular organ and traced the aetiology of most complaints back to the gastrointestinal organs. For Broussais, irritability was a primordial force that operated through the sympathetic interactions of different bodily parts, not through mechanical action.46 He maintained that all ingested foods irritated the stomach, and that this was normal. Nonetheless, excessive consumption produced excessive irritation and resulted in disease. An absence of food in the stomach was equally problematic. According to Broussais, hunger produced a nervous sensation in the stomach stimulated by a ‘want’ of nutritive materials. The stomach, if diseased and inflamed, failed to produce this ‘instinctive want’. In the absence of the sensation of hunger, stupor, delirium and convulsions occurred. In turn, the stomach failed to stimulate other organs, causing slow respiration, coldness, diminished secretions and a sense of emptiness and lightness in the body.47 Broussais rejected many standard contemporary treatments. In his opinion, emetic medicines failed to soothe the irritable stomach, only serving to deprave, pervert and permanently destroy digestion. He also insisted that mineral preparations disorganised and excited the stomach.48 As an alternative, Broussais recommended excessive 72

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bleeding for virtually all medical conditions; a programme that ultimately created a renewed, fanatical enthusiasm for leeching in post-Revolutionary France.49 Contemporaneously, the English surgeon John Abernethy made equally influential claims for the bodily primacy of the stomach. Abernethy rejected the excessive leeching advocated by Broussais and drew instead from Hunterian principles. Renowned for his blunt manner, eccentricity and obsession with the stomach, Abernethy attributed all physical complaints to digestive faults. No matter which symptom his patients presented to him – ranging from leg pain, toothache and poor eyesight to syphilis – Abernethy boorishly retorted that the root of the problem lay in the patient’s disordered stomach. In his Surgical Observations on the Constitutional Origin and Treatment of Local Diseases (1809), Abernethy asserted that disorders of the gastric region – the source of nervous sensation – affected the whole body, disordered the brain and weakened the muscular system.50 For Abernethy, the stomach was a portal into all of the other body organs, and its ailments the root cause of all physical and mental conditions. Abernethy, drawing influence from earlier English writers such as George Cheyne and Thomas Trotter, insisted that dyspepsia was an emblematic disease of civilisation; an inevitable outcome of man’s departure from a primitive existence when he had eaten simply and sparsely. In contrast, Abernethy saw himself as residing in a modern, civilising society where foods from across the globe were being eaten abundantly and excessively and where people no longer ate simply to sustain life. ‘Luxurious living’, Abernethy insisted, ‘is the chief exciting cause of indigestion.’51 In Abernethy’s model, excessive eating over-powered the capacities of the stomach to digest. Undigested food then fermented and became acidic, rancid and putrid, causing stomachs to reject its contents, the teeth to rot as the stomach expelled corrosive acid through the mouth and the throat to be burnt by the acrimony of rancid oil. ‘Civilised man fills his stomach and bowels with food which actually putrefies in these organs; he fills also his blood vessels till he oppresses them; and induces disease in them as well as in his heart’, warned Abernethy.52 Importantly, Abernethy’s grim depiction of the workings of the gut exerted a penetrative influence on nineteenth-century British medical thought on the gastric region. When Sir James Eyre published his The Stomach and its Difficulties in 1853, he dedicated it 73

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to Abernethy, ‘the profound philosopher’.53 In the same year, the Observer commented that Abernethy’s insights into the stomach was one of the greatest services ever rendered to mankind and one of the most valuable contributions to medical literature made since William Harvey’s discovery of the circulation of the blood.54 In 1870, the prominent American temperance leader and physical culture advocate Diocletian Lewis asserted that ‘it is my conviction that John Abernethy was the greatest man our profession has produced in modern times. And the one great use of his life was the calling attention to the important relations existing in our bodies between the digestive apparatus and all other parts.’55 Evidently, the stomach may no longer have been discussed as the seat of the soul, yet this failed to divest digestive problems of their importance.56 Disordered stomachs also had emotional significance. Nineteenth-century physicians routinely linked eating and digestion to mental disturbance, incorporating them into their understandings of neuroses and in therapeutic regimes such as moral treatment.57 In doing so, they confirmed the long-standing view (which stretched back to Hippocratic-Galenic medicine) that there was an intimate relation between the stomach and the psyche that was far from being laid to rest by mechanical models of the stomach or pathological systems that emphasised brain and nerves. The ongoing linking of poor gastric health with the mind, supported by Abernethy and others, provided a key resource for Romantic-period writers to comprehend and articulate the apparent complexity of their stomach pains. Although not spiritual in nature, concepts of nervous sympathy helped certain writers to make sense of the fact that gastric upsets were felt in areas other than the stomach and helped to reinstate the importance of noncorporeal aspects of digestive pain. The Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge placed great importance in the role played by digestion in health and developed a theory of dreams predicated on the state of his digesting gut at night.58 On one occasion, he dreamt that a giant pig was leaping towards him. This caused him to waken and draw his legs up suddenly. Reflecting on this nightmare, Coleridge recorded in his diary that his chronic stomach disorder had affected his nervous powers. Being unable to call Coleridge’s attention to its pain while asleep, Coleridge’s stomach had offered a stark reminder of its turmoil by producing a horrifyingly vivid dream via the nervous system.59 Similarly, the feminist 74

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philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft, afflicted with stomach pain, became obsessed for a number of days with the idea that she had tormented, perhaps killed, a small animal. ‘My bowels have been dreadfully disordered’, she explained, ‘and everything I ate or drank disagreed with my stomach; still I feel intimations of its existence, though they have been fainter.’60 Coleridge and Wollstonecraft presented their gastric problems as more than corporeal in nature by focusing on the emotional ramifications of their illnesses in addition to their physical pain. Their writings on the emotionality of the stomach provided a counterbalance to steadfastly materialistic constructions of digestion by stressing the existential and psychological dimensions of abdominal discomfort. The interconnectedness of brain and stomach could also be understood as reciprocal. When Napoleon’s St Helena physician Archibald Arnott made his diagnosis of terminal scirrhus of the pylorus, he informed Napoleon that this part of the body was predisposed to disease and that the depressing passions of the mind had acted as an exciting cause. It made sense to Arnott that the captivity and isolation of a man like Napoleon – an individual with unbounded ambition who had once aimed at universal dominion – would cause him to succumb to emotional and gastric disorder. Napoleon ordered that his stomach was to be dissected and analysed upon his death and the cause of death be communicated to his son in the hope that he might be persuaded to take steps to avoid an agonising death from a seemingly hereditary stomach complaint.61 Evidently, the stomach became deeply problematised towards the end of the long eighteenth century as medical authors developed medical rationales that coalesced around the digestive tract. In this context, the stomach metamorphosed into a bodily site marked by profound corporeal and psychological anxiety. Mostly divested of its spiritual qualities, the stomach became portrayed as irritable and nervous, as a key space within the body whence all manner of sensations, ailments and problems emitted. Prominent physicians such as Broussais and Abernethy presented poor dietary choices and the multitude of irritations and sensations that these created as bearing ramifications that extended far beyond the cavity of the stomach. Instead, gastric ailments threatened to weaken physical and mental vitality throughout the entire body via the nervous system. This allowed the stomach to take on new meanings; to transform into 75

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an organ that was feared and reviled while still remaining highly important. Yet the investigations of philosophers, physicians and scientists never fully detached the physicality of stomach pain from its emotional and psychological dimensions. To fully comprehend the stomach required a full understanding of its mechanics, chemistry, nervousness and bodily interactions. Conclusion In the long eighteenth century, ideas on digestion shifted dramatically. Nonetheless, the voluminous amount of literature produced on the subject in this period demonstrates that contemporaries persistently allocated the region, particularly the stomach, a pivotal role in the bodily economy. Throughout the period, the stomach was understood in various ways; as guided by mechanical, chemical and nervous forces and as intimately connected to a plethora of body parts. Its workings were also conceived from myriad perspectives that incorporated the spiritual, mechanistic and materialistic. The idea that poor gastric health was the source of various physical and mental ailments in many ways connected these multifaceted approaches and allowed medical authors to devote considerable attention to ensuring that citizens ate responsibly, moderately and sensibly, regardless of their particular views on how digestion worked. Yet materialistic approaches to digestion were not always reflected in literary and popular culture as authors continued to emphasise the emotional implications wreaked upon them by their disordered stomachs. Notes 1 R. Porter, ‘Biliousness’, in W. F. Bynum (ed.), Gastroenterology in Britain: Historical Essays (London: Wellcome Trust Institute for the History of Medicine, 1997), p. 7. 2 A. von B. Heller, First Lines of Physiology, trans. W. Cullen (Edinburgh: Charles Elliiot, 1779), pp. 328–45. 3 I. Miller, A Modern History of the Stomach: Gastric Illness, Medicine and British Society, 1800–1950 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011). 4 E. Spary, Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris, 1670–1760 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012).

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5 ‘Introduction’, in C. E. Forth and A. Carden-Coyne (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen: Diet, Digestion, and Fat in the Modern World (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 6. 6 R. Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900 (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), pp. 30–1. 7 J. B. van Helmont, De Lithiasi II, trans. J. Chandler (London, 1662), p. 838. 8 G. S. Rousseau, Nervous Acts: Essays on Literature, Culture and Sensibility (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 9 R. Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason (London: Allen Lane, 2003), pp. 30–1. 10 H. Bloch, ‘Man’s Curiosity about Food Digestion: An Historical Overview’, Journal of the National Medical Association, 79:11 (December 1987), 1223–7, at p. 1224. 11 F. L. Holmes, ‘The Physical Sciences in the Life Sciences’, in M. J. Nye (ed.), The Cambridge History of Science, volume 5: The Modern Physical and Mathematical Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 225. 12 Spary, Eating the Enlightenment, pp. 17–50. 13 See L. W. B. Brockliss, ‘The Medico-Religious Universe of an Early Eighteenth-Century Parisian Doctor: The Case of Philippe Hecquet’, in R. French and A. Wear (eds), The Medical Revolution of the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 191–221. 14 W. Derham, Physico-Theology, or, a Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God from his Works of Creation, 5th edn (London: W. and J. Innys, 1720), p. 324. 15 B. Nieuwnetijgt, The Religious Philosopher, trans. J. Chamberlayne (London: J. Senex, 1719), pp. 42–3. 16 Ibid., p. 45. 17 What precisely constituted the ‘soul’ was a complex issue. S. Moravia, ‘From Homme Machine to Homme Sensible: Changing EighteenthCentury Models of Man’s Image’, Journal of the History of Ideas,  39:1  (January–March 1978), 45–60, at pp. 49–51. For Stahl, see J. Geyer-Kordesch, ‘George Ernst Stahl’s Radical Pietist Medicine and its Influence on the German Enlightenment’, in A. Cunningham and R. French (eds), The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 67–87. 18 E. L. Haigh, ‘Vitalism, the Soul and Sensibility: The Physiology of Théophile Bordeu’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 31 (January 1976), 30–40, at p. 30. 19 Moravia, ‘From Homme Machine’, p. 55. 20 Helmont, De Lithiasi, p. 838.

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21 T. Thomson, The History of Chemistry, vol. 1 (London: H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1830), pp. 186–7. 22 W. Pagel, Joan Baptista van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 124. 23 Porter, Flesh in the Age of Reason, p. 53. 24 J. Hunter, Observations on Certain Parts of the Animal Oeconomy, 2nd edn (London: G. Nicol and J. Johnson, 1792), pp. 228–9. 25 Ibid., p. 229. 26 D. MacBride, Experimental Essays on Medical and Philosophical Subjects, 2nd edn (London: A. Miller and T. Cadell, 1767), pp. 8–9. 27 Ibid., p. 10. 28 Ibid., pp. 19–20. 29 L. Spallanzani, Dissertations Relative to the Natural History of Animals and Vegetables (London: J. Murray, 1784), p. v. 30 Ibid., pp. 13–23. 31 Ibid., p. 54. 32 J. Swift, The Works of Rev. Jonathan Swift, vol. 18 (London: J. Johnson, 1801), pp. 183–4. 33 J. Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner, vol. 2 (London: H. Colburn, 1838), p. 445. 34 R. Whytt, The Works of Robert Whytt (Edinburgh: T. Becket and P. A. Dehondt, 1768), p. 599. 35 C. Webster, Facts Tending to Show the Connection of the Stomach with Life, Disease and Recovery (London: J. Murray, 1795), p. 6. 36 S. Perrington, A Popular Treatise on the Stomach (London: C. and E. Layton, 1839), pp. 2–3. 37 Webster, Facts Tending to Show the Connection, pp. 6–14. 38 Whytt, The Works of Robert Whytt, p. 599. 39 For nerves and stomachs, see Miller, A Modern History of the Stomach, pp. 12–25. 40 G. Budd, On the Organic Diseases and Functional Disorders of the Stomach (London: J. Churchill, 1855), p. 17; W. Bradshaw, The Anatomy of Dyspepsia (London: G. Philip and Sons, 1864), p. 34; W. Bradshaw, Brain and Stomach or Mind and Matter (London: W. Philip and Son, 1867), p. 45. 41 Miller, A Modern History of the Stomach, pp. 40–1. 42 The Works of William Cowper, ed. R. Southey (London: Baldwin and Cradock, 1836), pp. 177–8. 43 Ibid., p. 206. 44 Ibid., p. 281. 45 F. J. V. Broussais, A Treatise on Physiology Applied to Pathology, trans. J.  Bell and R. La Roche (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea and Carey, 1830), p. 27.

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46 E. A. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology and Philosophical Medicine in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 168–9. 47 Broussais, A Treatise on Physiology Applied to Pathology, pp. 332–4. 48 Ibid., pp. 364–5. 49 R. G. W. Kirk and N. Pemberton, Leech (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), pp. 40–50. 50 J. Abernethy, Surgical Observations on the Constitutional Origin and Treatment of Local Diseases (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1809), pp. 71–3. 51 Ibid., p. 15. 52 Ibid., pp. 25–6. 53 J. Eyre, The Stomach and its Difficulties (London: J. Churchill, 1853). 54 ‘Memoirs of John Abernethy’, Observer (10 October 1853). 55 D. Lewis, Talks about People’s Stomachs (Boston: Fields, Osgood and Company, 1870), p. 79. 56 Porter, Bodies Politic, p. 113. 57 E. A. Williams, ‘Neuroses of The Stomach: Eating, Gender and Psychopathology in French Medicine’, Isis, 98:1 (March 2007), 54–79; E. A. Williams, ‘Stomach and Psyche: Eating, Digestion and Mental Illness in the Medicine of Philippe Pinel’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 84:3 (Fall 2010), 358–86. 58 G. Rousseau, ‘Coleridge’s Dreaming Gut: Digestion, Genius, Hypochondria’, in Forth and Cardon-Coyne (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen, pp. 105–6. 59 Coleridge’s Notebooks: A Selection, ed. S. Perry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 122. 60 M. Wollstonecraft, Memoirs and Posthumous Works of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin (Dublin: Thomas Burnside, 1798), pp. 27–8. 61 J. G. Lockhart, The History of Napoleon Bonaparte (New York: J. and J. Harper, 1830), pp. 324–5.

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4  the soul in the entrails: the experience of the sick in the eighteenth century Micheline Louis-Courvoisier

What did the experiences of the sick in the eighteenth century mean when they complained of disquiet around the navel, anxiety in the stomach or tension in the hypochondria, symptoms acute enough to disturb the patients’ reason and senses? The accounts written by those afflicted with melancholia, hypochondria and nervous diseases constitute a valuable field for the study of the way in which they articulate an experience which simultaneously affected the flesh and the mind. Throughout eighteenth-century Europe, epistolary consultations constitute an important archive in which to explore the experience of any illness in the Enlightenment. An educated person might write to a physician, usually a famous one, to get relief if they were suffering from multiple and long-lasting ailments that required the judgement of an expert and had consulted many other healers without success. Samuel Tissot, a famous physician practising in Lausanne (Switzerland) during the second half of the eighteenth century, received more than 1,300 such letters.1 A first reading of the epistolary consultations which form the basis of this research leaves a disturbing impression. There are so many expressions which are lexically foreign to the contemporary reader, despite their familiar vocabulary, so many disturbing grammatical constructions and, on another level, so many astonishing descriptions of symptoms which suggest that people perceived a profound unity, or at least an interaction, of the body and the mind which is difficult for us to reconstruct today. Indeed, our 80

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urge to find an increasingly refined nosological classification over the last two centuries, notably in the neurological and psychiatric domain, has given rise to a continual symptomatological reassessment, or even a fragmentation or dissolution, of the nosological categories of the  Ancien Régime. It is true that these notions were shifting, and often confusing, but they nonetheless remained largely recognisable  over a certain period of time. Witness the longevity of the medical term ‘melancholia’, which was used for several centuries until it disappeared fairly recently from a modern medical  dictionary such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.2 In addition, the increasing emphasis on interpretation in the psychosomatic domain has gradually removed sensory descriptions from the way in which certain diseases are expressed.  And finally, the drive towards measurement and objectification in the neurosciences has devalued the importance of linguistic expression in the perception and description of various complaints. These developments have deepened the divide between us and the sick of the eighteenth century, a divide which contemporary readers of their epistolary consultations will find difficult to cross, for these changes have reconfigured our contemporary mental, perceptive and linguistic framework, adding particular filters to our understanding of the experience of the period.3 A focused, precise and above all literal reading of this archive allows us to identify its disturbing aspects more easily. Foremost among them is a clear link between emotional and cognitive dysfunctions and what the patients and the doctors call the ‘lower belly’ (that is to say, the whole abdominal region from the ribs down). Could the experience of pain have caused them to discover their souls in their entrails? Or, to put it the question more helpfully, what are the semantic, lexical and explicative means used in the letters to describe melancholic, hypochondriac, nervous or vaporous suffering? What connections do they make between the loss of a cognitive faculty, a painful emotion and a visceral discomfort? In attempting to answer these questions, I shall start by sketching the overall layout of the philosophical and scientific landscape within which the patients described their experiences. After a brief description of the epistolary consultations and the conditions of their enunciation, I shall proceed with an analysis of the patients’ 81

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discourse, in order to show the diversity of the expressions they marshal as they draw attention to the link between their entrails and their soul. This analysis shows how much importance the patients attached to the element of air – beyond the ever-present winds. I will thus refer to the ‘aerial body’, not in opposition to but as a complement to the ‘humoral body’ and the ‘nervous body’, which have already been widely studied. My argument is that the patient’s description of their ailment is the result of a combining of sensation, self-observation and writing: that visceral sensations and emotional and cognitive problems co-exist in the same narratives, with or without a sense of causation; and that the patients actively evoke the aerial element in order to describe discomfort or distress. Before I explore the various expressions of melancholia, a brief summary of the humoral system will help to contextualise them. In the humoral philosophy of the body, as understood from Hippocrates until the eighteenth century, the body was composed of four humours: blood, lymph, yellow bile and black bile. Good health depended on maintaining the right balance among these humours and on the receptiveness of the body, which had to be capable of ingesting what it needed and of evacuating what was useless or harmful.4 It also depended on a healthy lifestyle, which involved adequate nourishment, restorative sleep to repair the tissues, the inhalation of an air suited to one’s constitution and temperament, the practice of moderate exercise and a harmonious management of the passions, that is the sentiments, affects and emotions.5 In this context, black bile (literally, melancholia) plays a crucial role in my argument. It was considered in various periods to be the only humour which could act on the intellectual and emotional faculties. Hippocrates’ definition clearly indicates that, for him, a withdrawal into the self and a profound malaise in the face of existence, when persistent enough to become internalised, was the product of the melancholic state.6 During the same period, Aristotle claimed that there was an obvious link between melancholia and genius: ‘Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy or politics or poetry or the arts are clearly melancholics, and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by the black bile?’7 This link was revived during the Renaissance by authors like Marsilio Ficino, who claimed that black bile provoked ceaseless intellectual demands that were 82

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potentially harmful to the health.8 This idea was later taken up by Robert Burton when he listed the ‘Causes of melancholy’ in The Anatomy of Melancholy.9 But according to Galen, black bile came from the liver and was purged by the spleen,10 a lasting physiological conception which is visible (literally) in a self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer, drawn for a physician he had consulted. Here the melancholic artist draws himself with one finger pointing to his spleen and a comment on the drawing stating: ‘Do wo der gelb fleck is und mit dem finger drawff dewt do is mir we’ (‘There, where the yellow spot is located and where I point my finger, there it hurts’) (see Plate 9).11 Black bile, the liver, the spleen and therefore the viscera were thus connected with the cognitive and mental functions for as long as the theory of the humours remained valid. The theory of the nerves, which co-existed with that of the humours for nearly two centuries, also links the physiology of the abdomen to intellectual and mental problems. The illustrations to books written by the physician Thomas Willis (1625–1675) clearly depict the nervous plexuses, locating them in the abdomen and showing them as linked to the brain by a network of nerves.12 Although the debate on the nerves during the eighteenth century was very lively and controversial, for many doctors of the early nineteenth century this network remained linked to the formation of thought and to mood, and the viscera played an important part in all this. Fouquet, for example, writes: Le plaisir, le chagrin, toutes les passions semblent se peindre dans le centre remarquable formé dans la région épigastrique par la quantité de plexus nerveux; et certes! il n’est point de combinaison difficile, d’attention bien forte, point d’effort de mémoire, qu’au préalable l’estomac et tout le centre épigastrique ne soient comme pressés d’un sentiment de mal aise qui dénote l’action de ces organes. (Pleasure, sorrow, all the passions seem to be depicted in the remarkable centre formed in the epigastric region by its concentration of nervous plexuses; and certainly there is no complex problem, no focus of attention, no effort of memory, where the stomach and the whole epigastric zone have not previously been, as it were, pressed by a feeling of malaise, indicating the action of the organs.)13

Thus, for Fouquet, intellectual agility, concentration and memory are activated by epigastric sensations, while for Hallé and Thillaye 83

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a little later, a purge has the power to restore a capacity for reflection, to pacify the soul and enlighten the mind: L’état des intestins influe aussi sur l’humeur; leur plénitude charge la tête, assombrit l’esprit, diminue son aptitude à la réflexion; leur dégorgement rend à l’âme sa sérénité, à l’esprit son aisance, et, si l’on en croit un propos vulgaire, au caractère son affabilité. (The state of the intestines also affects the mood; when full, they weigh down the head, cloud the mind, diminish its aptitude for reflection; decongesting them restores to the soul its ease, and, if we are to believe a popular dictum, restores the character’s affability.)14

Finally, in a long article on mental illness Moreau de la Sarthe devotes half a chapter to ‘l’influence des maladies nerveuses abdominales sur les opérations de l’entendement’ (‘the influence of abdominal nervous diseases on the functions of the understanding’).15 The experience of the sick, then, is set against a medico-scientific landscape, which emphasises the connection between the abdomen and the operations of the mind. Were the patients influenced by the medical theories, or were these theories themselves fuelled by the stories the patients told? This remains an open question, but the precision of the patients’ descriptions of their internal sensations suggests that the practitioners may well have used them as a source of inspiration to support their theories. This symptomatological precision is obvious in the epistolary consultations organised by Dr Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728–1797) of Lausanne.16 Thousands of pages are covered with descriptions of countless cases of strange and unclassifiable ailments. I have chosen to focus my attention on letters written in the first person singular and referring to melancholia, hypochondria, vapours and nervous diseases. These four terms were partially interchangeable or even synonymous at the time,17 and all denote a commingling of organic and mental symptoms, as much in the theoretical works of the period as in the descriptions supplied by the patients. They therefore constitute a valuable corpus in which to examine in detail the link between the mind and the body, grounded in the everyday experience of the patients. (I could also have added documents dealing with hysteria, but none are written in the first person singular, and so they are not dealt with here.) Seventy-nine patients wrote to Dr Tissot to ask for diagnoses of these ailments. A study of their letters reveals descriptions of symptoms that associate the abdomen with cognitive and emotional functions. 84

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Before detailing the contents of these letters, it is useful to emphasise the contexts in which they were written. Most of the authors had consulted several other healers or doctors unsuccessfully. Tissot represented their last chance, and was for some the only person they could trust. The authors of the letters describe genuine, concrete suffering, in some cases so severe that they were hoping for death: these letters are not bogus lamentations inspired by fashionable maladies.18 The references to hypochondria and hysteria imply that the patients had to find the right words in order to obtain a reply from the doctor, who would not necessarily reply to the letters he received. They therefore had to capture his attention, arouse his compassion and describe how they felt as accurately as possible. Not only do words relating to sensations and feelings constantly recur,19 but the authors use feeling as the driving force of their writing: ‘Voilà ce que je sens vivement’ (‘This is what I feel most acutely’), writes Madame Konauw at the end of a long letter;20 or again, ‘voilà la description minutieuse de ce que je sents’ (‘this is the detailed description of what I feel’), declares Abbé Bertolot.21 The patients peer into the deepest recesses of their bodies to catch sight of their impressions and sensations, and describe them in their own words with determined accuracy.22 Their writing thus emerges from an alliance of reason and sensation. The term ‘attention’ seems best suited to characterise their use of language to describe their experiences, as it has overtones suggestive of the psychological field that developed later. But here there is no emphasis on the ‘effort of a conscious mind to analyse its thoughts, its feelings, its states of mind, reflecting on them for purposes of psychological investigation’.23 For the patients do not look upon themselves as an object of study in these letters, but more as a bundle of sensations needing to be verbally untangled for the benefit of Tissot, who is expected in turn to extrapolate a diagnosis and a treatment. For the most part, the patients restrict themselves to recording and describing, while the doctor is expected to deliver the interpretation. In order to re-create the experience of the patients, it is useful to combine two approaches: one which takes into consideration the location and movements of the discomfort and pain, and another which focuses on one of the disruptive elements that are seen as the causes of disease, the word ‘element’ being taken here in its primary sense, since the patients consistently blame what they call aerial disturbances. 85

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The belly as a complex zone of movements and sensations Constipation is a symptom that all the patients share. It is a constant preoccupation, and for some it is linked not only to the intestines but also to the hypochondria:24 ‘Les selles sont rares sèches et douloureuses, après avoir satisfait ce besoin il me reste à l’hypocondre un sentiment d’irritation qui ressemble encore au même besoin et qui ne l’est pas, et à l’orifice du rectum un mouvement convulsif.’ (‘My motions are rare, hard and painful, and after satisfying my needs I still feel, in the hypochondria, a sensation of irritation which continues to resemble that same need, and yet is not that need, and I feel a convulsive movement in the orifice of the rectum.’)25 Monsieur Chillaud wrote three consecutive memoirs to Tissot. Receiving no reply, he became desperate and even hoped for a sudden death, so cruel was his suffering. He refers repeatedly to his constipation, noting that he has a motion only once every five or six days, and then only after receiving an enema. The patients are all anxious when they are unable to perform an evacuation, something which mattered so much in humoral medicine and was important for its influence on both the body and the mind: ‘j’ai été bien malheureuse jusqu’après cette époque, quand elle a été passée je me suis inventé d’autres inquiétudes. Elles onts finies par une évacuation considérable et j’ai été assés bien.’ (‘I was unhappy until this episode came to an end, and then, when it was over, I fell prey to further anxieties. They were concluded with a considerable evacuation, and then I was fairly well.’)26 Here the evacuation eliminates both toxins and anxieties in one and the same movement. ‘Stomach’ is a word that is often penned by the patients. One Monsieur Bouteille notes: ‘J’étais éveillé par une chaleur incommode, le battement des arteres temporelles et par des angoisses à l’estomac’ (‘I was awoken by an uncomfortable warmth, a beating of the temporal arteries, and by an anguish in the stomach’).27 In fact it seems that the term relates not so much to an organ in the modern sense as to a region including the diaphragm and the epigastria, which is a centre of considerable sensory acuity.28 Captain Montfort thus writes: ‘Si l’estomac n’est pas le siège de l’âme, il sert pour lui de touttes les sensations agreables et desagreables qu’il éprouve.’ (‘If the stomach is not the seat of the soul, it does procure for it all the pleasant and unpleasant sensations that it experiences’).29 Lieutenant Barbazan describes a more specific link: ‘depuis environ un an, lorsque je parle, j’éprouve 86

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quelques fois une douleur dans le creux de l’estomac et je ne puis le faire qu’avec peine, ce qui affecte mon imagination des plus noires idées’ (‘for about a year now, as I speak, I have from time to time felt a pain in the hollow of the stomach and I can perform only with pain, which affects my imagination with the most sombre ideas’).30 In several passages of his three letters to Tissot, he associates the hollow of the stomach with different states of mind: devastation, prodigious sadness, apprehension and, in the last quotation above, a difficulty in expressing himself and sombre ideas. These different passages echo what Bernard Mandeville wrote in his Treatise of Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases: ‘The Stomach, said he [one of the many physicians consulted by the patient] is the Conscience of the Body.’31 This association is not linked to a specific causality; it has more to do with noting ‘an immediate commerce’,32 which is revealed through experience. This explicit but unexplained link appears in a similar guise in the letter of Captain Charavel Delisle on the subject of his haemorrhoids: ‘ces hemorroïdes blanches me fatiguent beaucoup surtout la tête, lorsqu’elles fluent, je suis alors susceptible de crainte et de toutes sortes de sensations fâcheuses, et la veille de leur sortie j’ai la tête pleine, embarrassée et différents symptômes’ (‘these white haemorrhoids fatigue me greatly, especially in the head, when they flow, then I become susceptible to fear and all sorts of unpleasant sensations, and the night before they emerge I feel my head swollen and congested, as well as various other symptoms’).33 Here it is a physical malfunction, the flux of the haemorrhoids, that is noted as the apparent cause of an emotional state, fear. The kidneys are also sometimes the seat of pains, pulsations, attacks, colic, congestion and lassitude: ‘Je ressens en me couchant une lassitude dans les reins’ (‘When I go to bed I feel a lassitude in the kidneys’).34 In women, these sensations may be associated with their periods, but the link is not consistent. And in any case men also suffer in this region: ‘J’ai les reins lourds et embarrassés’ (‘My kidneys are swollen and congested’), complains Monsieur Claret,35 while Monsieur Barbazan specifies that before dinner ‘il semblait que mon estomac allât s’attacher contre mes reins’ (‘it seemed as if my stomach was going to stick to my kidneys’).36 A bleeding with multiple and dramatic consequences unleashed in Madame Fol, among other things, a sweating of the kidneys, whatever exactly she meant by this.37 Another, anonymous, woman suffered daily 87

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from this: ‘Les douleurs surtout le matin sont toujours les memes aux reins et aux epines du dos. Tous les matins depuis 10 jusques vers les 1 heures, une espèce de malaise et de melancolie me prend, pleurante et cherchant le noir partout. Les après-dinés je suis ordinairement mieux.’ (‘The pains, especially in the morning, are always the same in the kidneys and the bones of the spine. Every morning, from 10 until about 1 o’clock, a kind of malaise and melancholy takes hold of me; I weep and see blackness everywhere. After dinner I am generally better.’)38 There too, we find a juxtaposition of symptoms drawn from various registers. The hypochondria, also a very sensitive area which envelops the epigastria, are often painful, irritated, swollen, congested, heavy, distended by the vapours, wracked by wind. According to some, the dysfunction of the hypochondria leads to revulsion, inertia, lethargy and despair.39 The hypochondria do not have any particular function, but constitute the tissular or fleshly envelope of the digestive organs; they are made painful by belching, farting, the vapours and all the manifestations of the air generated by a defective digestive fermentation. It is a place through which discomfort passes, and where it will spread. ‘Je suis prodigieusement incommodé des vents, qui le long des hypocondres montent dans la poitrine, et me forcent quelques fois vers le soir d’ouvrir mon col’ (‘I am prodigiously upset by the wind which rises up through the hypochondria into the chest, and forces me sometimes towards evening to open my collar’), writes Colonel Pollet, who is relieved, he adds, when ‘le hasard ou le mouvement me fait lacher les vents, soit en haut soit en bas et ces vents n’incommodent personne car ils ne pûent point’ (‘chance or movement makes me release wind, whether above or below, and this wind does not perturb anyone because it does not smell’).40 The obstructions and congestions are the cause of numerous varieties of irritation, congestion and discomfort in the abdomen, but the winds are the worst. The hydropneumatic element as an instrument of mind-body suffering For many patients, the ‘frightful’ (‘affreux’) winds are a danger: ‘je crains les ravages des vents et leurs suites funestes’ (‘I fear the ravages of the winds and their sinister consequences’);41 ‘les vents me tourmentent’ (‘the winds torment me’);42 or again ‘cela finissait par 88

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une grande quantité de vents qui me suffoquaient jusqu’à ce que j’aie pu les évacuer’ (‘it finished with a great quantity of winds which suffocated me until I managed to evacuate them’).43 These winds are a threat while inside the body, and a source of relief whenever they can escape. It would nonetheless be reductive to restrict our observation to only those winds linked to the digestive organs, and we should broaden our study to embrace the aerial element in general, which is also composed of the vapours, ‘fog’, ‘clouds’ and breath, sensory realities which are difficult for us to convey today, but which were very real for these Enlightenment patients. This aerial element, in conjunction with the circulation of the humours and the pathways of the nerves, contributes to the formation of sensations. Thus Madame Contrisson de Villie’s vapours always rise from her stomach to her head after mealtimes.44 The term ‘vapour’ here and in the following quotation should be understood in its material and real sense, and not in the metaphorical sense usually used at the time to speak of nervous diseases in general.45 For some people, then, the vapours constitute ‘le produit ordinaire de digestions pénibles’ (‘the ordinary product of painful digestion’), the chemical and physiological result of the defective fermentation of food.46 Abbé Bertolot pictures an internal and three-dimensional movement by way of sophisticated aerial and vaporous pathways: Voici, Monsieur, la description minutieuse de ce que je sents, quand ce mal me prend: pendant tout le matin après être levé, je sents une inquiétude tout autour du nombril: peu à peu il me semble que des vents s’élevent, se logent peu à peu dans le bas-estomac avec un fracas sourd et continuel, il me semble que le ventricule s’enfle, et poussant soudainement l’enveloppe du cœur, il s’y éleve une palpitation très forte, qui me met quelquefois en sueur; il me semble aussi qu’en même tems il part du bas du spina dorsi une vapeur chaude qui se porte avec précipitation jusqu’à la nuque, d’où il me semble qu’on me tire un rideau sur les yeux et qu’on me serre le bas du crâne avec violence, cela est accompagné par une legere défaillance de forces, les pieds et les mains froides, quelquefois une pâleur au visage très visible, d’autres fois le contraire. (This, Sir, is the careful description of what I feel, when the pain takes hold of me: for the whole morning after rising, I feel disquiet around the navel: gradually it feels as if the winds are rising, collecting little by little in the abdomen with a dull and continuous rumbling, it seems to me that the ventricle is swelling, and suddenly pressing

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against the envelope of the heart, where there occurs a very strong palpitation, which sometimes brings on a sweat; It seems to me also that at the same time there comes from the base of the spina dorsa a hot vapour, which rushes up towards the nape of the neck, where it seems as if someone is drawing a curtain over my eyes and violently squeezing the base of my skull, this is accompanied by a slight decline in strength, by cold feet and hands, sometimes by a very visible paleness of the face, sometimes by the opposite.)47

Abbé Bertolot, whom Dr Tissot characterises as a hypochondriac, scrutinises himself, seeking out the most appropriate terms to describe his sensations. The discomfort starts with ‘une inquiétude’ (‘a disquiet’) focused on the navel (can we translate this sensation into contemporary language, and if so how?); this disquiet starts to move, with a rush of air which passes from the lower stomach to the envelope of the heart, without bothering to follow the prescribed humoral or nervous anatomical pathways. To this rush of air is added a vaporous movement, which rises through the dorsal part of the trunk as far as the neck, then blurs his vision, squeezes the base of his skull and is finally expressed in terms of weakness, accompanied by cold extremities and a pale face. The Abbé’s body is traversed, almost wracked, by a series of miniature storms in his innards, with many, various and unpleasant consequences. It is also by way of the air that Princess Talmond invites us to enter into the very folds of her flesh, and on the basis of her experience, she also establishes a link between stomach, wind, nerves and madness: lorsque mon estomac va mal … j’éprouve une viollente altération alors je souffre de toutes les manières des vens ils semblent s’attacher à mes nerfs et me crisper comme des petis poins piquans et brulants d’autre fois comme dans les temps humides ils me donnent du dégout de la flatuosité je suis triste malheureuse porté à la mélancolie … Je crois avoir des ebulitions entre cuir et chair les vens en m’attaquant les nerfs me rendent comme fole. (when my stomach is unwell … I feel myself brutally diminished and then I suffer from all kinds of winds, they seem to attack my nerves and stab me like sharp, burning little needles. Sometimes, in damp weather for instance, they make me feel revulsion, and cause flatulence. I am sad and unhappy, and prone to melancholy. I feel as if I have bubbles boiling between my skin and my flesh, and the winds, as they attack my nerves, drive me almost insane.)48

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The substance of the body is here represented as layers, such as the skin and the flesh, between which boiling bubbles insert their balloons or pockets of heated air. It also follows the pathways of the nerves, attracting the winds that finally generate pain, sadness and disgust. The aerial, or more precisely the hydropneumatic, element, is not limited to the abdomen. It is also evoked in the form of a fog of which the patients complain,49 a black cloud that obscures their vision,50 or a veil drawn over their eyes and their ideas.51 It attacks the body as well as the mind: ‘mon ame fut aussi vaporeuse que mon corps’ (‘my soul was as vaporous as my body’), writes Monsieur Vauvillier to Tissot.52 These examples indicate that the terms for clouds, veils and vapours belong to a semantic field which the patients find helpful in describing experiences that are as elusive and shapeless as they are painful and stressful. The terminology of the solid and the fluid is too basic, that of the obstruction and stagnation of the humours too static, and that of the pathways followed by the nerves too structured and predetermined: it is therefore the semantic field of the air which can represent the mobile and chaotic inner sensitivity of the flesh most accurately and fluently. My aim here is not to overemphasise the aerial element in the understanding and experience of the body in the Enlightenment. It is in fact not my intention to posit oppositions between a humoral vision, an (organically) nervous vision and a pneumatic vision of the body, but rather to draw attention to the accumulation of these diverse components in the experiences and expressions of suffering described by the sick, and to concentrate our attention for a moment on the last of these three elements. Indeed, these expressions linked to air are closely related to what Richard Sugg calls the grey vaporous zone,53 a spiritual zone at the intersection of body and soul, constituted by the animal spirits. These spirits are defined as microscopic corpuscles circulating either in the humours or in the nerves, depending on the author. They provide a link between the organs and the mind, and their existence is acknowledged by theologians as much as by philosophers and doctors.54 Bernard Mandeville, himself a physician, devotes lengthy portions of the three dialogues of his Treatise of Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases to the animal spirits.55 According to Sugg, the scientific revolutions of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries gradually diluted the belief in the tangible reality of the ethereal smoke of the soul, which had 91

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been given very real credence by Donne, Harvey and many others. In his book The Smoke of the Soul, based on medical, literary, philosophical and theological texts, Sugg describes the long and non-linear process of dematerialisation of the mind, or rather of the spirits. These debates were speculative, and formed part of an intellectual and abstract debate whose impact on the public at large is difficult to evaluate. We may wonder how far they influenced the authors of these epistolary consultations. The English-speaking patients who addressed letters to Dr W.  Cullen (1710–1790), a contemporary of Tissot, appropriated the notion of animal spirits in order to describe their experiences: ‘my spirits regain their former Spring and Vigor’,56 ‘the depression of the spirits’,57 or again ‘When my spirits were any way agitated’.58 On the other hand, Tissot’s patients do not refer to the animal spirits, although many doctors continued to make allusions to them in their works, with more or less conviction, during the second half of the eighteenth century.59 Might the French-speaking patients have ‘despiritualised’ the air, while still needing this formless and mobile element in order to depict some aspects of their experience? By resorting to a different terminology are the debates attempting to depict the concrete character of an impalpable suffering? A tentative answer could be that, as Sophie Neveux states, what is concrete is a mixture of material and immaterial reality,60 and that a concrete discourse refers to an experience, unlike an abstract discourse, which refers to something general. The vapours and wind, which cling to the nerves, pass through the hypochondria or go to the head, are  concrete realities free to circulate along whichever pathways are more appropriate for each patient. Even if the animal spirits are nowhere to be found in the vocabulary of Dr Tissot’s patients, the ‘vaporous zone’ is still present is and necessary for them to represent their malaise. More systematic research into the expressions used in the whole corpus of the letters sent to Dr Tissot would be necessary to measure the importance of the perception of the air in the body. The epistolary consultations fit into a specific enunciatory operation, in the sense that the patients, driven by despair, express extreme distress to a doctor in whom they invest their confidence. These consultations are the place and the moment of an encounter between formless suffering and a structure provided by writing. While the suffering they express may affect all the parts of their bodies, the visceral regions are particularly sensitive to the painful 92

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sensations linked to disquiet, sombre ideas, sadness, revulsion, fear, depression and despair. This link may be causal, consequential or simply a descriptive apposition. To represent the recesses of their inner selves and the course of their malaise, the patients appeal to the aerial element. It reconciles the material and the formless, and allows patients to escape from the humoral and nervous discourses, which map out pathways and designate points of organophysical intersection, but are inadequate to account for the singularity of the torments that circulate in the intimate depths of their flesh. The experience of pain among the ailing patients of the eighteenth century fits into a particular scientific and cultural context which strikes the attentive contemporary reader as strange. We are separated mentally and intellectually from the Enlightenment by a powerful current of rationalisation of thought, of objectification and measurement of the body. And yet ‘Une paresse intestinale, devenue mauvaise habitude, suffit parfaitement à faire d’un génie quelque chose de médiocre’ (‘Ever so slight a tendency to laziness in the intestines, once it has become a habit, is quite sufficient to make something mediocre out of a genius’), wrote Nietzsche;61 ‘mes idées m’ont toujours été dictées par mes organes’ (‘my ideas have always been dictated by my organs’), added Cioran,62 while for Pessoa: there are some deep-seated griefs so subtle and pervasive that it is difficult to grasp whether they belong to our soul or to our body, whether they come from a malaise brought on by pondering on the futility of life, or whether they are caused rather by an indisposition in some chasm within ourselves – the stomach, liver, or brain … My soul is sad today to the very marrow of its bones.63

These authors also express an ‘immediate commerce’ between body and mind. Their letters seem to indicate that a certain form of writing linked to experience has, since the eighteenth century, resisted the rationalist discourse of science, and this prompts historians to focus their research on the intermingling of the subject, her or his (written) language and her or his suffering, in a diachronic perspective. Notes 1 Over the past decade several historians have been working on epistolary consultations. See notably S. Pilloud, Les mots du corps: expérience de la maladie dans les lettres de patients à un médecin

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2 3

4 5

6

7

du XVIIIe  siècle: Samuel Auguste Tissot (Lausanne: BHMS, 2013); R. Weston, Medical Consulting by Letter in France, 1665–1789 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013); M. Stolberg, Experiencing Illness and the Sick Body in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); W. Wild, Medicine by Post: The Changing Voice of Illness in Eighteenth-Century British Consultation.Letters and Literature (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2006); L. Smith, ‘“An Account of an Unaccountable Distemper”: The Experience of Pain in Early Eighteenth-Century England and France’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 41 (2008), 459–80; J. Coste, Les Écrits de la souffrance: la consultation médicale en France (1525–1825) (Seysell: Champ Vallon, 2014); P. Singy, L’Usage du sexe au XVIIIe siècle: lettres au Dr Tissot, auteur de L’Onanisme (1760) (Lausanne: BHMS, 2014). The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a US psychiatric manual containing a standard classification of mental disorders. G. Bolens, ‘Continuité et transformation des logiques corporelles’, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 25 (2003), 471–80. On the feeling of strangeness generated by reading these consultations, see M. Louis-Courvoisier, ‘La Mélancolie dans les consultations adressées au Dr Tissot (1760–1797): spécificités et difficultés liées à cette forme de correspondance’, paper presented at the history of science colloquium ‘Down Below’, Le Mans, 5–7 June 2013, www.canalu.tv/video/ universite_du_maine_pole_resources_numériques_prn/la_melancolie_ dans_les_consultations_adressées_au_dr_tissot_1728_1797.14384 (last accessed 16 February 2018). For a summary of the history of the humoral body, see R. Porter and G. Vigarello, ‘Corps, santé et maladies’, in A. Corbin, J. J. Courtine and G. Vigarello (eds), Histoire du corps (Paris: Seuil, 2005–6), pp. 335–72. See P. Niebyl, ‘The Non-Naturals’, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 45:5 (Fall 1971), 486–92; A. Emsch-Dériaz, ‘The Non-Naturals Made Easy’, in R. Porter (ed.), The Popularization of Medicine (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 143–59. Hippocrates’ aphorism VI, 23 is generally translated as ‘if fear and sadness last too long, such a state is melancholic’. But Jackie Pigeaud and Patrick Dandrey each question this translation in their own way, restoring a semantic complexity that is lost in the usual translation. See P. Dandrey, Anthologie de l’humour noir: écrits sur la mélancolie d’Hippocrate à l’Encyclopédie (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), pp. 17–21; J. Pigeaud, ‘Prologomènes à une histoire de la mélancolie’, Histoire, économie et société, 3 (1984), 501–10. Aristotle, Problems, trans. W. S. Hett, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), vol. 2, problem XXX, 953a, pp. 10–32.

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8 See M. Ficino, De vita riplici (1489), trans. Charles Boer (Dallas: Spring Publications, 1980). 9 See R. Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621; New York: New York Review of Book, 2001), part I, mem. I, sect. 3, subsect. ii, ‘Symptoms or Signs in the Mind’, pp. 385–97. 10 Galen, On Black Bile, K v. 112. It has been translated into French by V. Barras, T. Birchler and A.-F. Morand (Paris: Gallimard, 1998). 11 On Dürer’s self portrait, see G. D. Schott, ‘The Sick Dürer: A Renaissance Prototype Pain Map, British Medical Journal (18 December 2004), 329 (7480), 1492. 12 Willis was an English doctor considered to be the founder of modern neurology. He was a founding member of the Royal Academy. See esp. Thomas Willis, Dr Willis’s pratice of physic (London, 1664). 13 H. Fouquet, ‘La sensibilité’, in Essai sur le pouls (Montpellier, 1818), p. 365. 14 Thillaye and Hallé, ‘Signe’, in C. L. F. Panckoucke (ed.), Dictionnaire des sciences médicales, vol. 51 (Paris, 1821). 15 L. Moreau de la Sarthe, ‘Médecine mentale’, art. IV, in Encyclopédie méthodique: médecine (Paris: Veuve Agasse, 1816), pp. 199–206. 16 For a historical and anthropological analysis of the corpus, which contains more than 1,300 letters and memoirs, see Pilloud, Les mots du corps. 17 See J. Pigeaud, ‘Délires de métamorphose’, Gesnerus, 63 (2006), 73–89. 18 Heather Beatty also notes the gravity and the intensity of the suffering of ‘ordinary’ melancholics and hypochondriacs in Nervous Disease in Late 18th Century Britain: The Reality of a Fashionable Disorder (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), esp. pp. 89–98. 19 On suffering and the displacement of the sensations, see M. LouisCourvoisier, ‘Rendre sensible une souffrance psychique: lettres de mélancoliques au 18e siècle’, Dix-huitième siècle, 47 (2015), 87–101, 20 Lausanne, Bibliothèque Cantonaire et Universitaire, Fonds Tissot IS 3784/II/144.02.03.03, letter of 26 January (1773). 21 Ibid. 22 Starting to draw a constantly shifting self-portrait, Montaigne writes: ‘Moi qui m’épie de plus près, qui ai les yeux incessamment tendus sur moi’ (‘I who spy on myself more closely, who have my eyes unceasingly intent on myself’). ‘Apologie de Raymond Sebond’, in Les essais, ‘book 2, ch. 12 (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), p. 302. For an English translation see The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. Donald M. Frame (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), p. 425. 23 According to the definition in the Oxford English Dictionary. 24 Before they were related to an imaginary disease, the hypochondria were firstly an anatomical area constituted by the two parts of the human abdomen lying on either side of the epigastric region.

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25 IS 3784/II/144.05.02.29, letter from Monsieur Chillaud, 1790. 26 IS 3784/II/144.03.05.04, letter from Mme de Chastenay, 9 September to 8 November 1784. 27 IS 3784/II/144.02.06.27, letter of 19 June 1775. 28 In his paper ‘L’Humeur des Anciens’, Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 32 (1985), 56, on the subject of the anatomy in antiquity, Jackie Pigeaud proposes speaking of a form rather than an organ, to avoid confusion. It seems to me that the term ‘organ’ in its contemporary sense is not appropriate for the description of suffering in the eighteenth century, and could be replaced by ‘region’. 29 IS 3784/II/144.04.06.21, undated letter. 30 IS 3784/II/149.01.04.17, letter of 1772. 31 B. Mandeville, A Treatise of the Hypochondriack and Hysterick Diseases (1730), ed. Sylvie Kleiman-Lafon (Dordrecht: Springer, 2017), p. 156. 32 Ibid., p. 92. 33 IS 3784/II/144.03.04.26, letter of 8 January 1784. 34 IS 3784/II/146.01.01.02, letter from Mme Contrisson de Villie, November 1783. 35 IS 3784/II/144.05.02.28, letter of 7 April 1790. 36 IS 3784/II/149.01.04.17, letter of 1772. 37 IS 3784/II/149.01.06.14, letter of 26 August 1766. 38 IS 3784/II/144.05.02.18, undated letter. 39 IS 3784/II/144.05.02.29, second memoir from Monsieur Chillaud, 1790. 40 IS 3784/II/144.01.07.31, letter of 20 April 1772. 41 Ibid. 42 IS 3784/II/144.02.03.29, letter from an anonymous woman, undated, but Dr Tissot’s reply is dated 23 February 1778. 43 IS 3784/II/146.01.01.02, letter from Mme Contrisson de Villie, undated, but Dr Tissot’s reply is dated 11 November 1783. 44 Ibid. 45 See for example the definition of the vaporous afflictions given by T.  Pomme, Traité des affections vaporeuses des deux sexes, 3rd edn (Lyon, 1657), pp. 20, 31–2, where vaporous affliction is attributed to the hardening of the nerves, and the author adds that the vaporous illnesses are synonymous with hysteria, hypochondria and melancholia. 46 IS 3784/II/144.01.07.02, letter from M. Bellefontaine, 25 November 1772. 47 IS 3784/II/144.04.04.02, undated letter. 48 IS 3784/II/144.05.04.19, letter from Princess de Talmond addressed to Dr Butini, [February 1792]. 49 IS 3784/II/.05.02.09, letter from M. Chillaud, 4 May 1790: ‘My eyes were constantly showing me fog’ (‘Mes yeux me représenterent sans cesse des brouillards’).

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50 IS 3784/II/144.01.07.43, letter from an unnamed man aged twentyfour, undated. 51 IS 3784/II/146.01.01.02, letter from Mme Contrisson de Villie, 1783. 52 IS 3784/II/144.02.04.26, letter from M. Vauvillier, 14 May 1774. 53 R. Sugg, The Smoke of the Soul: Medicine, Physiology and Religion in Early Modern England (New York and London: Palgrave, 2013), p. 4. 54 Ibid., passim, and esp. p. 133–63. This book clearly illustrates the need for contemporary historians to reconsider the function of the animal spirits, which played an essential part in the understanding of ‘fainting experiences’ (p. 7), and to gain a better understanding of the confusion, in the primary sense of the term, of physiology with psychology. On this question, see also E. Carrera, ‘Anger and the Mind-Body Connection in the Medieval and Early Modern Medicine’, in E. Carrera (ed.) Emotions and Health, 1200–1700 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), pp. 95–146; A. Gowland, ‘Medicine, Psychology and the Melancholic Subject in the Renaissance’, in Carrera (ed.), Emotions and Health, esp. pp. 194–7; P. Gouk, ‘Music and Spirit in Early Modern Thought’, in Carrera (ed.), Emotions and Health, pp. 221–39; C. Jacot Grapa, Dans le vif du sujet: Diderot, corps et âme (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009), pp. 95–125. 55 Mandeville, Traité, esp. pp. 85–98. 56 Quoted by Beatty, Nervous Disease, p. 78. 57 Ibid., p. 80. 58 Ibid., p. 83. 59 And especially Tissot, in his book De la santé des gens de lettres, ed. F. Azouvi (Geneva and Paris: Slatkine, 1981), pp. 37 and 92; the animal spirits are also the subject of articles V to VII of the first part of the first volume of Tissot’s Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies. 60 S. Neveux, John Donne: le sentiment dans la langue (Paris: E. Rue d’Ulm, 2013), pp. 46–8. 61 F. Nietzsche, Ecce homo, trans. Anthony M. Ludovivi (Minneapolis, MN: Dover Publications, 2004), p. 33. 62 E. Cioran, Oeuvres, (Paris: Gallimard, 1995), glossary, art. ‘Corps’, p. 1742. 63 F. Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, trans. Margaret Jull Costa (London: Serpent’s Tail Classics, 2010), p. 45.

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PART II Excremental operations

5  sawney’s seat: the social imaginary of the London bog-house c.1660–c.1800 Mark Jenner

In the mid-eighteenth century a Scotsman went to London. Entering one fine building, he ‘gaz’d with wond’ring Eyes’ and was proud to take a seat (see Plate 3). Then, down each Venthole thrust his brawny thighs And Squeezing, cry’d Sawney’s a Laird, I trow, Neer did he naably disembaage till now.1

As Sawney in the BogHouse reveals, this visitor had not grasped the cultural logic of a multi-seater privy. In his triumphant moment of lordly peristalsis he had soiled himself, the seat and the floor. This image, which is sometimes erroneously attributed to Hogarth, tapped into topical anxieties when it appeared in June 1745.2 Although Charles Mosley published it before the Young Pretender landed, the engraving of an uncouth, dirty-finger-nailed, plaid-clad, blue-bonneted Highlander, intruding, naked claymore to hand, into a metropolitan institution, coincided with, and encapsulated, growing concerns about the dangers of Jacobitism.3 Spreading his potent, martial thighs, and casting a faintly crownlike and decidedly phallic shadow, Sawney ejects over a synecdoche of the English family.4 The print transcended the occasionality of political satire, entering the image bank of Georgian England and contributing significantly to the emergence of a stereotyped figure of the ‘Scot’ in the nation’s visual culture.5 Other versions were produced in 1745.6 In 1762 Edward Sumpter published another, which fed 101

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and fed into anti-Scottish sentiments during Lord Bute’s ascendancy.7 In 1779 James Gillray transformed the image into an attack on Scottish agitation against the Catholic Relief Act, depicting a straining, tartan-clad Lord George Gordon (who co-ordinated the campaign) straddling a two-seater and gripping the ‘Act for establishing Popery’. Behind the gurning hybrid of barbarous Highlander and bigoted Covenanter is a graffito of Scotland’s motto, Nemo me impune laecessit (‘Nobody injures me with impunity’), and a thistle growing out of a crown.8 Five years later, a satire of Charles James Fox’s opportunism in being elected for the rotten borough of Kirkwall, Orkney, while the validity of his victory in the constituency of Westminster was being scrutinised, depended upon viewers’ familiarity with these prints. In The Political Bog-House Fox sits uncertainly, clad half in tartan and half in English clothes, half in and half on the double privy. He declares: ‘I have a Right to two Seates in the House, but damn me if I know how I shall get into the other.’9 However, The Highlander’s Mistake (as Sawney in the BogHouse was also known) did not only denounce and denigrate a succession of politicians; it also articulated an enduring vein of scatological humour and long-lasting national(ist) prejudice.10 Indeed, whereas Sawney in the 1740s and 1760s declared that he was shitting like a laird, Gillray’s Sawney evoked a national style: Tis a bra bonny Seat, o’my Saul, SAWNEY cries, I never beheld sic before with my Eyes, Such a place in aw’ Scotland I never could meet, For the High & the Low ease themselves in the Street.11

Such sentiments sustained the continued reproduction and diffusion of the image. In the 1780s Robert Dighton produced another version with a different verse: When first to the South sly Sauney came forth He was shewn to a place quite unknown in the North That he is mistaken you soon will explore Yet he scratches and S—s as no man did before.12

The print travelled as far as China, where it was transmogrified into decoration on porcelain punchbowls manufactured for export.13 Back in Britain such objects featured in rowdy rituals of bibulous masculinity;14 gentlemen doubtless enjoyed the transgressive frisson 102

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of drinking from a vessel which suggested substances that were not habitually consumed.15 Contained in the transnational recensions of this image was the conviction that national difference could be reduced to a contrast between metropolitan privy-users and Scots who ‘let their Cates fall to the ground’.16 Deriving in part from travellers’ responses to Highland mores and Edinburgh’s rudimentary sanitation and in part from the scatology of seventeenth-century English propaganda,17 this iconography endured into the nineteenth century. An 1804 satire on the misappropriations by Henry Dundas, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Alexander Trotter, paymaster of the navy, Making Away with Official Papers for Necessary Purposes, depicted the two squatting on a Scottish mountainside using bankers’ drafts to wipe their posteriors.18 There are clear parallels between the functioning of this stereotype and the ways in which nineteenth- and twentieth-century discourses and practices of hygiene legitimated European claims to imperial and racial superiority.19 As Roy Porter observed, ‘by sticking his legs into the holes’, Sawney ‘shows what a barbarian he is’.20 The engraving ipso facto rendered the bog-house – the focus of this chapter – an epitome of urbanity. This idea would have struck many as decidedly bathetic. The privy, convenience, necessaryhouse, bog-house, house of office (the proliferation of terms reveals the difficulties of accommodating it within polite society and civil conversation) belonged to the city’s ‘backstage’;21 it was a place to which one withdrew; it was emptied by a lowly, often stigmatised group – the nightmen.22 The century’s most detailed proposal for a public corporation to erect and maintain public ‘offices of ease’ across the metropolis recommended that these should be ‘be built Quadrangular, with Portland Stone’ and decorated with ‘Statues, Basso Relieves, and Sculpture … all design’d to express some Posture, Branch, or part of Evacuation’. It appeared in an avowedly Swiftian response to the physician John Woodward’s suggestion that ‘The great Wisdom and Happiness of Man … consists in a due Care of the Stomach and Digestion.’23 Linking privies and urbanity is even more unexpected today: the eighteenth-century bog-house has a poor reputation in popular ideas of the period. The water closet, by contrast, serves as a key marker of modernity. Ignoring its catastrophic ecological consequences, scholars often celebrate the first press advertisements for it 103

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in the 1770s and 1780s, implicitly endorsing the promotional puffs about ‘the excellency of [the] invention’ and the banishment of ‘any smell’, and thereby unquestioningly acceding to an externalising ideology and technology of ‘flush and forget’.24 Sanitary history still emplots earlier eras as unrelievedly filthy.25 Lawrence Stone influentially declared that in early modern England there was ‘almost total ignorance of both personal and public hygiene’, and that ‘[m]any houses, even palaces, lacked latrines’.26 Numerous commentators did indeed bewail the condition of the Restoration and Georgian capital. Annabel Grey reported in 1721 that she had not thought that ‘anything’ could exceed the ‘Durt … in London’ until she encountered Copenhagen one rainy November; half a century later a French visitor described the city’s thoroughfares as ‘eternally covered with dirt’.27 Nevertheless Stone’s account is profoundly misleading. Not only did the Improvement Acts of the mid- and late eighteenth century alter the condition of the streets, but throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries metropolitan life was marked by sustained efforts to maintain public salubrity.28 Moreover, most London residences, from palaces to paupers’ lodgings, had access to some kind of privy.29 Property surveys and plans regularly show houses of office, usually located in basements, under stairs, in gardens or in the corners of yards.30 Many discharged into watercourses and the Thames, even though this was contrary to City law and offenders were presented by the juries of commissions of sewers.31 The archaeological record reveals that many more emptied into brick-lined cesspits.32 Tenants in poorer neighbourhoods generally shared privies. In 1680 a common vault served the tenants of Skinners Rents; seventy years later Robert Poole recalled his childhood in Reindeer Yard, St Clement Danes, where several ‘persons Rented … Lodging Roomes … and used one Privy in common’.33 Such amenities might be designed to suit and seat every age. The 1762 inquest into the death of four-year-old Jeremiah Flarty heard that the lad fell ‘thro’ the Hole … for Children’ in ‘a publick … Necessary for the use of the Inhabitants’ of Pipemakers Alley, Westminster.34 That children were brought up to go to them rather than simply ‘cack against the Wall’ (as Pope put it in his imitation of Edmund Spenser) indicates just how routinely they were used.35 ‘There’s a House of Office in a public Yard where I live, and so at Night my Husband went thither to do his Occasions’, Elizabeth Bristow told 104

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the Old Bailey in 1732. Thomas Hutson, a servant in Savile Row, testified in 1810 how after completing part of his duties, he ‘went into the privy in the area’. Coming out, he saw William Begges absconding with some silverware.36 Servants emptied chamber pots into them. In 1794 Sarah Hunt described to a Westminster inquest how she went to empty a chamber pot into the vault of the Soho house where she lived, only to be told that it was full. 37 Efforts were sometimes made to deodorise them with lime.38 Ensuring their proper maintenance was an integral part of housekeeping, of oeconomy.39 Modern historiography instinctively sees the privy as liable to mephitic malfunction. It is not difficult to find examples of this. In 1719 ‘a Common … Privy’ was reported as annoying nearby houses and ‘Persons attending Divine Service’ in St Thomas’s Hospital chapel. In 1735–36 the ‘stench of a necessary house’ belonging to an alehouse next to St James’s Palace drove three princesses from their apartments.40 In 1808 the Paving, Watching and Cleansing Committee of the Clink Liberty, south London, presented Mrs  Beverstock for ‘continually suffering her necessary to be overflowing … thereby committing a great Nusance in the street’.41 But simply listing such incidents obscures how far eighteenth-century medics, especially those influenced by Hippocratic medicine, saw well-built, well-regulated privies as a sanitary solution.42 To prevent the diseases of the army, John Pringle urged in 1752 that penalties be strictly inflicted on every man who eased himself anywhere ‘but on the privies’, and moreover that, if the camp could not be moved regularly, the latrines should be made ‘deeper than usual’, and ‘a thick layer of earth’ thrown in every day.43 In the 1770s the York physician William White informed the Royal Society of experiments on ‘Air taken from within a privy’: it was as good as ‘common atmospheric air’. By contrast, fresh vegetables exhaled ‘noxious matter’.44 Two decades later, Thomas Munro declared that Bedlam’s health would be greatly helped ‘if an improvement were made in the Privies’.45 Revealingly Pringle was impressed by the state of London’s environmental health, noting that although ‘many things relating to these matters might be better ordered … yet some of the main points are well regulated, such as regard the privies, common shores [sewers], [and] the supplies of fresh water’.46 He was an influential advocate of medical police, arguing that collective health could 105

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be improved through the careful regulation and regimentation of society and that the imperatives of health should shape the forms of the polis.47 But London’s public spaces lacked the defecatory discipline of the military encampment. In the late seventeenth century John Aubrey told of the occasion when Sir Miles Fleetwood ‘was surprised in Cheapside with a sudden and violent Looseness’, and so ‘turnd up his breech, against the Standard’ (a public conduit). Walking through St James’s Park in the 1770s Casanova spotted ‘four or five people … attending to their needs’ squatting in the bushes ‘and showing their behinds to the passers-by’.48 Shrubbery supplemented a number of public facilities. Famously, in the 1450s Dick Whittington endowed a house of easement with sixty-four seats for men and sixty-four for women. This was rebuilt after the Fire of 1666 with six seats for each sex, but local residents complained repeatedly about its poor maintenance; by 1690 the lessee had apparently made it unusable; in the 1750s it was described as a nuisance.49 In the late seventeenth century the Chamberlain of the City paid for the emptying of public vaults in Blanch Appleton, just outside the walls, in the Guildhall and in Leadenhall;50 common houses of office were constructed in other City markets;51 and the bog-house in the Temple seems to have been available to many.52 Some neighbourhoods had access to several: when Marie Hobry dismembered her husband in 1687 she was able to put his head in ‘an house of Easement in the Strand’ and his arms and legs in the ‘Savoy house of Easem[en]t’.53 Such facilities enmeshed the imperatives of biology and bare life within the material structures of the polis and the norms of civility.54 But in Georgian London they were relatively few and far between. Consequently, persons away from home, especially mobile workers and the rootless poor, lacked socially sanctioned places in which to relieve themselves.55 Londoners therefore regularly sought out other sites. Inns and alehouses, which often had latrines for customers, were perhaps the most common resort.56 Pepys, in January 1666, ‘having need to shit … went into an Inne doore that stood open, found the house of office, and used it’. He recorded this only because while he was sitting there, he heard a dog barking and crept back to the coach with his sword drawn, leaving his belt behind. Almost exactly a century later, verses described Sawney wandering through ‘the inconvenient Town, / That would afford no private Friend, / To ease his tortured nether End’. Finally, he ‘step’d into an 106

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Inn’ and ‘ask’d the Landlord for a Place, / Where he might readily uncase’.57 Alternatively, the incommoded might, as one commentator noted, ‘fly to Shops, where, after cheapening something they have no need to buy … desire to speak to the Maid’.58 In addition many made use of any available outhouse – with or without residents’ permission. In 1726 Ferdinand Lanson, a lodger in Margaret Holiday’s house in Pall Mall, told the Old Bailey that he had ‘seen several People who did not belong to the House, go to the Vault … for there is an open Passage to it’.59 Two decades later, the court heard how two women ‘asked to go into the Yard to the Privy’ of a house in Chambers Street.60 Many householders were reluctant to accede to such requests, particularly from those who looked poor or shifty. Letting someone in might give them an opportunity to steal. When John Stocken and Dorothy Percival came for a drink at the house of Joseph Lever in Alhallows in the Wall in 1695, ‘Stocken pretended that he had an occasion to untruss a point [relieve himself], and Lever’s Wife told him that he must go up three pair of Stairs to the House of Office’. On the way up he stole clothes from their lodger. In 1714 a woman entered the room in which William Bruce was lodging, asked ‘the way to the Necessary house’, and absconded with his watch and buckles.61 Moreover, emptying a privy was expensive. The residents and property-owners who paid for it did not want it filled by freeloaders, and understandably sought to restrict access.62 When the Gresham sub-committee ordered workmen in 1666 to ‘sink a vault’ by the Royal Exchange and to ‘build houses of Office over the same’, they commanded (with striking social sensitivity) that one part of the facilities be reserved for the Gresham professors, one for shopkeepers and the third for the latter’s servants, and decreed that no one else should have keys.63 In the 1750s most of ‘the People that live in Old Round-Court in the Strand’ had a key to the ‘common necessary House’ provided for their ‘Conveniency’.64 At four o’clock one morning in July 1826, after an attempted theft from his kitchen, William Griffin found Robert Jones in the privy in a neighbour’s garden. He ‘asked him what business he had there … he said, he got over to ease himself. I told him there was no necessity for that as there was a large field at the back of the garden.’65 According to a cultural tradition stretching back to medieval stereotypes of the peasant as vilain and much exploited in the 107

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iconography of Dutch and Flemish prints and paintings, it was a sign of barbarity, of rootlessness and of the abjection of rural poverty to defecate in the open air.66 Henry William Bunbury’s The City Foulers – Mark! (1785), a satirical depiction of ‘cits’ inexpertly following rustic sports in the Georgian green belt, showed what happened when city-dwellers embraced and encountered manners of the urban margins (Figure 5.1). ‘[T]he warm scent assures’ (an ironic quotation from John Gay’s Rustic Sports) their dog that prey is near, but they will soon discover that foulness can disrupt fowling and that alfresco defecation characterises the authentic, unassimilated rural life of man and dog.67 As Simon Dickie has noted, Restoration and Georgian jestbooks describe many scenarios in which someone on horseback comes upon a social inferior squatting by a roadside or under a bush. Thomas D’Urfey’s verses encapsulated such prejudices: Underneath the rotten Hedge, the Tinker’s Wife sat shiting, / Tearing of a Cabbage Leaf, her shitten

Figure 5.1 The City Foulers – Mark! engraved by Thomas Rowlandson after H. W. Bunbury (1799)

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A– a-wiping.’68 And the attitudes of people like Griffin, who felt that the needs of the itinerant should be pushed to the metropolitan edgelands, imposed this vision of the social order.69 In the absence of public necessaries, such exclusions had enduring sanitary consequences, particularly at night. In 1681 a tenant ‘in the South Portico’ of the Royal Exchange, where the common vaults had locks, complained that ‘every morning when he comes to his shop’ the ‘little … Nooke’ by one of the columns was ‘like a Comon Jakes filled with nastinesse to his & others annoyances’.70 Around dawn in 1762 Jacob Moses, baker, walked into a City court ‘and went under a gateway in a posture to ease himself’.71 It was sufficiently common for Londoners thus to slip into the shadows in order to defecate, for criminals to pretend that this was all they were up to. When being pursued for alleged theft in 1792, Samuel Harris ‘stooped down, and pretended to ease himself’ in a West End mews; the following year James Spencer convinced the court that he broke down the pales of a Bagnigge Wells garden in order ‘to ease himself’, even though one watchman reckoned it ‘a comical way’ of behaving.72 The situation also had further-reaching social consequences. As scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth century have demonstrated, the presence or absence of toilet facilities shaped access to, and the use of, city spaces.73 For men, London had some recognised pissing places and posts;74 many urinated more generally against walls, thereby asserting both their upstanding masculinity and their ‘right’ to use public space to relieve their needs.75 In 1729 the musician John Grano, who was confined to the Marshalsea for debt, took part in a concert and then was ‘very Merry’ with fellow musicians and two other gentlemen. When they left in the small hours, ‘one of the strange Gentlemen and I making water at two different Houses I said I wonder’d who’s houses we were refreshing[,] to which he reply’d I am pissing against my own … quoth I[,] I wish I was’.76 In Ogle Court, Marylebone, John Cross was challenged: ‘what do you want here?’ ‘I am doing nothing only pissing against the wall’, he replied.77 Cross’s bravado was not shared by everyone, and especially not by women. Throughout the eighteenth century many Londoners employed euphemisms or apologised for mentioning such lowly matters when standing before magistrates or judges. Elizabeth Bristow explained how her husband had gone to ‘do his Occasions’, and nervously interjected, ‘and’t please you my Lord’. Telling the 109

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court that she had been coming back from Millbank and that her ‘child wanted to ease himself’, one mother humbly added ‘with respect to the court’.78 The social organisation of excretion materialised gender difference. Even though they, like men, apparently relished scatological humour, women were more liable to humiliation through bodily exposure despite the cover offered by long skirts.79 In 1667 Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys went to see Corneille’s Heraclitus. Elizabeth was taken ill; Samuel noted: ‘and so I was forced to go out of the house with her to Lincoln’s-Inn-walks, and there in a corner she did her business.’80 Pepys began to write ‘priv’, before striking it out and writing ‘corner’. His emendation captured the precarious nature of his wife’s position; that he accompanied her reveals her potential vulnerability. When Sarah Radshaw, charged in 1755 with stealing a watch, told the watchman who was accompanying her to prison that ‘she wanted to ease herself’, the constable repeatedly urged him ‘be modest, and let her sit down’.81 However, few men displayed Cross’s insouciance when defecating by a wall or in a corner. Squatting, breeches down, put one in a posture of submissive inferiority and awkward immobility. One July night in 1761 William Pool, a porter, told his wife to ‘go into the publick-house, and … went behind the pump, in Leadenhallmarket … to ease myself’. ‘[J]ust as I was putting up my breeches’, he continued, evidently recalling his discomfort, a man came up to him ‘with a stinking leg of ham in his hand’, looked in his face, and ‘said, Halloo, halloo, halloo’.82 Small wonder that picaresque narratives feature episodes in which men are robbed when found in this posture.83 Jests registered the potential discomforture of someone in Pool’s position (even if he was not, like Samuel Harris, mentioned above, also trying to escape with stolen goods). Aubrey’s tale of Sir Miles Fleetwood concluded with the knight bidding ‘his man hide his [Fleetwood’s] face; for they shall never see mine Arse again said he’.84 A miscellany published in the same year as Sawney in the BogHouse restaged this scenario: a ‘young Gentleman walking along Paul’s Church-yard … was taken so short that he must of Necessity exonerate either in the Street or his Breeches’. He turned ‘his Face to the Wall, and his t’other End … down Ludgate’. A ‘modish young Citizen … handing along a squeamish young Lady’ came by; she was ‘surpriz’d to be so impudently star’d at backward’. The citizen remonstrated with this ‘nasty Devil’ for his shocking behaviour. The 110

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gentleman replied suavely that ‘every Body knows my Face, and no Body knows my A—se’.85 Likewise when Casanova complained about defecators displaying their buttocks in St James’s Park, his companion reminded him that otherwise ‘people would recognise them and … certainly look at them, whereas showing their arses … they force us, unless we are especially interested in that part of the body, not to look in that direction’.86 Yet although sensitivities may have shifted in the late eighteenth century, at no point did householders regard the prospect of someone defecating near their doorstep with equanimity.87 The court declared that Pool deserved punishment ‘for that filthy behaviour … in a public market-place’, dismissively styling him one ‘of these fellows, that make such dunghills’.88 In 1680 Charles Bragg untrussed a point against a wall of Robert Hasel’s house in Southwark. Hasel not only objected but ‘came out and fell upon’ Bragg ‘Beating and Kicking him … and rubing his Orduer [sic] in his Face’. Bragg died of his injuries; Hasel ‘pleaded provocation’.89 A century later, Martha Kennedy came back to her house near Fleet Ditch at around a quarter past seven in the evening. As she ‘came in’ through the gate of the court she saw Benjamin Moore ‘sitting down at the door; I said it was an indecent place to ease himself in’.90 But the London privy did more than veil metropolitan arses.91 It was multi-valent. At around two o’clock in the morning on 4 March, Henry Gyles told the Old Bailey in 1743, he heard someone being let in to the house in St Gabriel Fenchurch Street where he slept in the shop. Footsteps padded softly down the stairs, whispers were exchanged; he discerned the rustling of a woman’s clothes. There was quiet. Then he heard ‘something squeak, which I thought at first to be a Dog, and then I heard the crying of an Infant several times’. After a while, he worked out that the noise was coming from the cellar and thought the woman had taken the child down to avoid disturbing the house. ‘[B]y and by’, he continued, ‘I smelt a prodigious Stench from the Excrement’. He realised that this was the stench of death. He told the court: ‘I did not get up, because I thought, if the Child was in the House of Office, I could not fetch it to Life.’ He continued to listen as the woman came upstairs, drew water and descended once more into the cellar.92 At first light, he went out and returned with a neighbour. They lifted a board 111

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but found nothing. A few days later he called in a nightman who inspected the vault. On the soil he ‘saw something … like a Bundle’ and drew it up with a drag.93 It was the body of a three-month-old girl who had been repeatedly stabbed in the head. Her mother, Sarah Wilmshurst, the woman admitted to the house early that morning, was found guilty of murder and hanged.94 Henry’s testimony, outlining what he had heard, what he had smelt and what he had not done – being, he claimed, ‘afraid to go out’ – becomes all the more chilling when one reads Sarah’s counter-allegations that the girl was his daughter and that she had left the child with him.95 True or perjured, the plausibility of his account in the jurors’ eyes reveals how in the imagination of early modern Londoners the privy was a site of infant death. Twenty years before, Cato, the narrator of Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon a House of Office, looked down ‘into a second Chaos of Matter’ lying beneath him, made out ‘the Leg of a human Child sprawling up in a perpendicular Manner’ and bewailed the ‘many innocent Babes’ buried there ‘as ignominiously as they were begotten’.96 Despite his Miltonic register, Cato articulated the horrid poignancy of infanticide. Such an association of child victim and the excremental, Ulinka Rublack has suggested, intensified contemporaries’ horror at the crime.97 In London, as in the Germany that Rublack describes, the nexus was material as well as mental. In 1679 a ‘wench’ confessed that she had put her illegitimate child into a privy, ‘and that it crying, she pusht it down with a stick’; Jane Crosse was said in 1684 to have killed her bastard child ‘by throwing it into a House of Easement, filled with Urine and other Excrements’; fifty years later Mary Dixon was said to have thrown her infant into a house of office ‘by which means it was suffocated’.98 However, in eighteenth-century London excremental horror was overlaid with a more pragmatic sense of why women might dispose of a dead child in a bog-house. In 1718 Jane Plintoff told the Old Bailey jury that she had miscarried after three months and that ‘she put it into the Vault being poor and not able to bear the expence of burying it’. Addressing the court almost a century later, Ann Wessen recounted how she discovered that her daughter had given birth to a stillborn illegitimate child. She explained that she had concluded that ‘the best way will be to hide the child, and nobody will know any thing about it, to hide the shame of the girl’. So she ‘took it from 112

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the room, and … put it down the privy’.99 In both cases the mother of the infant was found not guilty. Indeed a conflation of excretion and childbirth contributed to the growing acquittal rate in London infanticide trials during the long eighteenth century.100 As Samantha Williams has shown, almost exactly a third of the births described in Old Bailey accounts of such cases which specified the place of delivery occurred in a privy.101 In crowded metropolitan living conditions these spaces offered rare opportunities for temporary seclusion, and so mothers anxious to conceal their deliveries frequently retreated there. However, many women accused of killing their offspring told the court that delivery or miscarriage had come upon them so precipitously that the child dropped from them into the ordure. Ann Haywood was admitted to St Bartholomew’s Hospital in 1762; shortly after taking an emetic she was found in one of the necessary-houses ‘sitting on the seat of the vault’ with blood on the floor. When the attendant returned with a sister, Ann ‘was got up, and had put the flap of the vault down, and was turning round to come out of the vault’ but her arm was bloody, and the vault was ‘in a very bad condition, all the seat of the vault, the floor, and the funnel down the vault were bloody’. Ann was there for no more than ten minutes, and explained that she could not get off the vault for reason of the pain.102 For others, birth was even quicker. As Frances Palser told the Old Bailey in 1755, ‘I had occasion to go to the necessary-house … There … an uncommon pain took me, and the child dropt from me.’103 Such narratives regularly won the credence of the courts. Under cross-examination in Palser’s case, a midwife, a surgeon and an apothecary all agreed that women had a strong desire to pass stools when labour was imminent and that delivery could occur as rapidly as she had described. Whether through increasing sympathy for the mother, through distaste at the seventeenth-century legislation or because of understandings of delivery which emphasised the role of the muscles of the pelvic floor, it is clear that the collocation of baby and bog-house did not unduly prejudice eighteenth-century juries against the accused.104 Some men used this linkage to express aggressive misogyny. The Old Bailey, trying sixteen-year-old Mary Doe for infanticide in 1733, was told by the midwife that when Mary’s father (who witnesses agreed probably raped her) was told that she had ‘been delivered’, he quipped, ‘Deliver’d! … Ay, so she has – of a Sir-Reverence 113

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[a turd].’ The baby’s body was found in fields where the nightmen emptied their carts.105 In the minds of distressed single mothers, by contrast, it may have been dissociative, reinforcing their denial that the product of their womb had attained personhood, and confirming that, as Ann Haywood insisted, ‘it was only the apothecary’s stuff’.106 After all, all kinds of bodily matter were thrown into privies. The knowledge that illegitimate children were sometimes killed and disposed of in them meant that eighteenth-century urban necessary-houses afforded no certain privacy.107 Prying suspicions were projected onto and into them. Henry Gyles convinced the jurymen at least in part because they viewed the house of office as a space of criminal and murderous possibility. Neighbours, masters, mistresses and fellow servants wondered what was happening within it; they noticed who went there and how long female servants and unmarried women spent therein.108 Elizabeth Lucas told the Old Bailey in 1741 that Elizabeth Bennett had come to her Westminster lodging house and, saying she was ‘ill of the Colick’, ‘wanted to go backwards’. She returned, but ‘then went backwards a second time; and she staying longer than I expected, I followed her’. Ann Davis reported that she had been called in when passing by; she was told that Bennett ‘was gone backwards, and staid a little longer than ordinary; upon which’, Davis testified, ‘I went to see what she was doing.’ Lighting a candle, they found a baby face down in the filth.109 Neighbours also kept an eye on a privy’s condition, imagining that if someone suddenly washed the floor, then something untoward might have happened. When Jane Reading went to the pump in the yard of her suburban Middlesex house early one Sunday morning in 1750, she saw Jane Trigg sitting ‘upon the Seat in the Necessary House’; Trigg complained ‘it was a sad thing to have her Bowels so bad’. Later that day Reading saw that the necessary had been ‘clean washed’. She began to suspect that Trigg had given birth, and so looked ‘into the Soil of the Vault’ and saw a ‘Dead Child’.110 Fears and suspicions about these spaces revolved around theft as well as infanticide. When in 1732 Elizabeth Bristow’s husband discovered ‘as he was sitting on one Hole’ of the privy in the yard that ‘somebody was upon t’other’, he ran in to his wife. They concluded that this might ‘be one of the Rogues’ who had robbed from them a couple of weeks before, and so she went out and apprehended a boy 114

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there. When the constable arrived, he declared that the youth had stolen the cheeses that he had with him.111 Theft was not the only felony which might be revealed. In 1738 Mr Windham’s servant informed him as he was ‘shutting up Shop’ for the evening ‘that 2 Fellows had been in the Vault’ belonging to the court ‘about three quarters of an Hour. I thought’, Windham told the court, ‘they might be Thieves, so I took a Candle, and my Servant following me, I bolted (went hastily) into the Place.’ There he found two men having sex. They were condemned to death.112 These interiors were rarely as exposed to view as in Sawney in the BogHouse. Most commentators on the engraving have seen it as no more than ‘crude Hanoverian humour’, ‘a very crude example of hostility to the Scots’ or ‘lavatory humor’.113 They have ignored how the 1745 engraving is packed with references to print culture.114 Sawney is said to drop his ‘Folio Cates’ to the earth, using a remarkably bookish adjective even for a Scotsman’s turds; the walls are plastered with tattered but partly legible broadsheets (see Plate 3).115 Several themes jump out. The scene of Punch pushing a steaming wheelbarrow, watched by Harlequin and Scaramouche, lends a carnivalesque air. Some broadsides ring a visual tocsin. The bellman’s verses warning of criminal incursion fitted a time of potential invasion. Others have a martial character anticipating conflict. There is a soldier on the broadsheet below the bellman.116 On another to the left, one can discern cannon, drummers and a grenadier sergeant. Beneath is a sheet with the title ‘Take the Wars’, alluding to ‘De’il Take the Wars’, a tune which was included in Playford’s The Dancing Master from 1698 and accompanied various songs in miscellanies.117 It was also the opening line of the ballad An Excellent New Scotch Song. In it a Scottish girl lamented that despite her garter, new gown, petticoat and hose, her prospective lover had ‘rid to Towns, and rifled with Dragoons, / When he silly Loon might have plunder’d me’.118 Similar amorous themes recur on adjoining sheets. One features ‘Joan & Jocke’, a couple who appear in more or less bawdy ‘Scottish’ songs.119 The other, simply entitled Love, depicts a prone, presumably dead, female figure with a scythe-carrying man by her. It is one of the motifs of death and retribution surrounding Sawney. Under it is a sheet with skulls and crossed bones around two columns of verses. On the left-hand wall a last dying speech or account of an execution, with a gallows 115

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and a devil, anticipates the punishment of rebels and traitors.120 The vignette of equestrian pursuits on the upper right-hand side strikes a more humorous note: will viewers get the pun in a scene of horse and jock-ey? Below, a silhouette familiar from the advertisements of breeches-makers makes a jesting contrast with the Scotman’s bare thighs and loose attire.121 Identifying these allusions does not explicate the effect of this backdrop of text as a totality. Printed advertisements and announcements were pinned up in common (or commonly accessible) houses of easement. Redundant printed matter (bumfodder) was used as toilet paper: in 1767 the Old Bailey heard how a highwayman’s pistol had been hidden in ‘the place where they lay the paper in the necessary house’.122 But the artist did not need to include identifiable broadsides to evoke a house of ease. Rather, Sawney in the BogHouse is inflected by the themes and concerns of the genre of medley prints, which, through trompe-l’oeil depictions of a diverse range of textual culture seemingly scattered across the page, evoked, celebrated and condemned the confusing heterogeneity pouring from the presses of Augustan London.123 Indeed, in a manner sure to horrify Habermasians, a number of early eighteenth-century commentators, particularly those of Scriblerian sensibilities, found the common privy a helpful metaphor for the public sphere. In particular they highlighted how people in common necessaries consumed printed matter with little regard for generic hierarchy. ‘[G]ood Things are not always respected as they ought to be’, one editor noted in 1731, ‘I have … found some of the Spectator’s Works in a Bog-house, Companions with Pocky-Bills and Fortune-telling Advertisements’.124 This comically scandalous juxtaposition  (indeed the bills and adverts were designed to be read) developed The Spectator’s own fascination with the mutability of things and the peregrinations of paper. Addison evocatively detailed the ‘Changes that a Linnen-fragment’ underwent as it moved from service as ‘a Towel or Napkin’ to a rag on ‘a Dung-hill’ only to be transformed into white paper employed ‘in a Prince’s Cabinet’, wittily speculated on the identity of the works torn up to provide snow-effects for the London stage, and raged at the way in which printers’ piracies shrank the ‘greatest Poets … into Penny Books’ ‘in the same Character … with the History of Tom Thumb’.125 116

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Other critics tracked the movement of the book from this sort of bibliographical ignominy to cloacal oblivion. Gazing ‘into the  … odoriferous Gulf’ of a metropolitan house of office in 1723, Cato ‘beheld it enrich’d on ev’ry side, with scatter’d Reams of ancient and modern learning … Here lay a Passage of Tom Thumb, and there a Sentence in St. Austin’, ‘here a Scrap of a Ballad, and there a Fragment of Metaphysicks’.126 When Serious and Cleanly Meditations on a House of Office was republished in 1744, just one year before Mosley brought out Sawney, an equally diverse selection of literature could be discerned through the fetid steam: Pamela lay next to Duns Scotus, and a tragedy by Thomas Cooke rested alongside a comedy by Henry Fielding.127 Political polemic too sank, passion spent, into the ordure. In 1723 Bishop Edmund Massey’s sermon denouncing inoculation, published the previous year, and The Scourge, Thomas Lewis’s ultra-Tory periodical of 1717, had dropped into the vault;128 in 1744 the title pages of Manners, Paul Whitehead’s bitter 1739 satire on Walpole, and ‘The Battle of Dettingen’ (so celebrated in 1743) were now ‘rotting in this infamous Obscurity’.129 Tellingly, both Cato, whose persona evoked both Cato’s Letters and Bolingbroke (he bewails having ‘deserted the Cause of the Protestant Succession, to gain the poor Popularity of pleasing a Jacobite Rabble’), and Jeffrey Broadbottom, ‘author’ of the 1744 Serious and Cleanly Meditations and presumably one of the Broadbottom coalition which succeeded Walpole, each discern, in a moment of pungent revelation, their own works, ‘retired … to this stinking Asylum’ and perishing ‘in the same foul Mass’ as their ‘ignorant Antagonists’. Their ‘deceased Offspring’ now lay ‘buried in this ignominious Grave’ where the ‘Labours of the Learned and Unlearned’ were commingled.130 ‘There is a tendency to utilise underground space for the less ornamental purposes of civilization’, wrote H. G. Wells. And in recent years numerous studies have elucidated the cultural charge which built up around sewer systems and the other subterranean and sanitary spaces of the vertical city of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.131 Although the spatial symbolism and social situation of the privy in earlier centuries were very different, its cultural resonance was no less far-reaching – encompassing, as it did, a paradoxical urbanity, the opportunity for provisional and precarious seclusion, and service as the momento ani and thus the momento mori of literary and intellectual ambitions. 117

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Notes My thanks to Tom Almeroth-Williams, Catriona Kennedy, Robin Macdonald and Anna Reynolds, to the audiences in Hatfield, Paris and York who heard this as work-in-progress, and to Natasha Glaisyer and Emma Major for their comments. Thanks beyond words to Patricia Greene. 1 Sawney in the BogHouse, 1745, British Museum, Department of Prints and Drawings, Satire (hereafter BMS), 2678. 2 J. Nichols and G. Steevens, The Genuine Works of William Hogarth: Illustrated with Biographical Anecdotes, 2 vols (London, 1810), vol. 2, p. 10n. 3 The figure owes something to George Bickham’s engraved portraits of central protagonists in the 1743 mutiny of the Highland Regiment: R. Nicholson, Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Making of a Myth (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press 1982), p. 65; C. Le Corbeiller, China Trade Porcelain (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1974), pp. 94–5; J. Prebble, Mutiny (London: Secker & Warburg, 1975), ch. 1. 4 By depicting a privy with seats for two adults and one child the artist evoked a companionate marriage; ‘brawny thighs’ were a conventional attribute of the virile lower classes, such as the Countess of Castlemaine’s sweaty-footed servant paramour in Andrew Marvell’s ‘Last Instructions to the Painter’, and of soldiers: G. deF Lord (ed.), Poems on Affairs of State, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), p. 104; Lucan, The Civil War, trans. N. Rowe, ed. S. A. Brown and C. Martindale (London: Everyman, 1998), pp. 21 and 281. D. S. Mack, Scottish Fiction and the British Empire (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), pp. 89–91, comments on the print’s threatening side; M. G. H. Pittock, Poetry and Jacobite Politics in EighteenthCentury Britain and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 57, highlights discourses which emphasised the potency of the Highlander. 5 G. Pentland, ‘“We Speak for the Ready”: Images of Scots in Political Prints, 1707–1832’, Scottish Historical Review, 90 (2011), pp. 64–95. 6 BMS, 2979 and 2980. 7 http://imageserver.library.yale.edu/digcoll:549687/guestdd9 d 0 f0bef [email protected]/MTic_W2MhKW12lw85 L2665DajRk/1500.jpe?authroot=findit.library.yale.edu&parentfolder =digcoll:549687&ip=144.32.236.156 (last accessed 1 March 2018). For the wider context, see J. Brewer, ‘The Misfortunes of Lord Bute: A Case-Study in Eighteenth-Century Political Argument and Public Opinion’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 3–43.

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8 BMS, 5539. 9 BMS, 6626; Pentland, ‘“We Speak for the Ready”’, p. 85; L. Namier and J. Brooke, The House of Commons 1754–1790, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press,1964), vol. 1, p. 511. 10 On the former, see V. Gatrell, City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in  Eighteenth-Century London (London: Atlantic Books, 2006), pp. 178–209; on the latter, T. Clayton, Caricatures of the Peoples of the British Isles (London: British Museum Press, 2007). 11 BMS, 5539. 12 J. A. Pope, ‘Review of M. Beurdeley, Porcelain of the East India Companies’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 82 (1962), 602–3. 13 My thanks to the National Museum of Scotland, who allowed me to examine the one in their collection (A.1992.166). See M. Beurdeley, Porcelain of the East India Companies (London: Barrie & Rockliff, 1962), no. 70; F. Hervouet, N. Hervouet and Y. Bruneau, La Porcelaine des compagnies des Indes à décor occidental (Paris: Flammarion, 1986), p. 207; D. S. Howard, A Tale of Three Cities: Canton, Shanghai & Hong Kong: Three Centuries of Sino-British Trade in the Decorative Arts (London: Sotheby’s, 1997), pp. 120–1. 14 K. Harvey, ‘Ritual Encounters: Punch Parties and Masculinity in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present, 214 (2012), 165–203. 15 On early modern male bonding rituals involving urination and intoxication, see A. Shepard, ‘“Swil-Bols and Tos-Pots”: Drink Culture and Male Bonding in England, c.1560–1640’, in L. Gowing, M. C. W. Hunter and M. Rubin (eds), Love, Friendship and Faith in Europe, 1300–1800 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 110–30. 16 BMS, 5539. 17 M. Rackwitz, Travels to Terra Incognita (Münster: Waxmann Münster, 2007); R. Houston, ‘Fire and Filth: Edinburgh’s Environment, 1660–1760’, Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, n.s. 3 (1994), 25–36; A Modern Account of Scotland (London, 1679), pp. 4 and 6. 18 BMS, 10382. Pentland, ‘“We Speak for the Ready”’ shows how attacks on Dundas mobilised gratuitous anti-Scottish tropes. 19 e.g. W. Anderson, ‘Excremental Colonialism: Public Health and the Poetics of Pollution’, Critical Inquiry, 21 (1995), 640–69; B. Penner, Bathroom (London: Reaktion, 2013), ch. 1. 20 R. Porter, Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain, 1650–1900 (London: Reaktion Books, 2001), p. 237. 21 F. Childs, ‘Prescriptions for Manners in English Courtesy Literature, 1690–1760, and their Social Implications’ (DPhil dissertation, Oxford University, 1984); E. Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Doubleday, 1959), ch. 3.

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22 See M. Jenner, ‘A Polite and Excremental Trade? London’s Nightmen c.1660-c.1800’ (forthcoming). 23 The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating over an House of Office, Restor’d and Unveil’d; After the Manner of the Ingenious Dr. S—ft (London, 1726), p. 20; J. Woodward, The State of Physick and of  Diseases (London, 1718), p. 34, quoted in J. M. Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 12. 24 General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer (6 May 1779); Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette (13 September 1781). On the WC’s initial shortcomings, see L. Jackson, Dirty Old London (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 48–51; on its ecological and infrastructural costs, S. Jewitt, ‘Geographies of Shit’, Progress in Human Geography, 35 (2011), 608–26. 25 For critiques see M. S. R. Jenner, ‘Curare l’ambiente senza dottori? Igiene publica e governo dell’ambiente a Londra nella prima età moderna’, Storia urbana, 112 (2006), 39–64; C. Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013), ch. 1. 26 L. Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson: 1977), pp. 77 and 159. 27 Bedfordshire and Luton Archive, Bedford, L30/8/8/13; P. J. Grosley, A Tour to London, 2 vols (London, 1772), vol. 1, p. 33. 28 M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity (London: Guildford Press, 1998), ch. 3; M. S. R. Jenner, ‘Early Modern English Conceptions of “Cleanliness” and “Dirt” as Reflected in the Environmental Regulation of London, c.1530–c.1700’ (DPhil dissertation, Oxford University, 1991); R. Porter, ‘Cleaning up the Great Wen’, in W.  Bynum and R. Porter (eds), Living and Dying in London, Medical History, supplement 11 (London: Wellcome Institute 1991), 31–65. 29 For payments for emptying necessaries in royal residences, The National Archives, London, Work 5/67 (1779 passim). See also O. Fryman, ‘Making the Bed: The Practice, Role and Significance of Housekeeping in the Royal Bedchambers at Hampton Court Palace 1689–1737, (PhD dissertation, Kingston University, 2011), pp. 112–16 and 213–16. 30 e.g. London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA), CLA/8/EM/3/18– 9; Guildhall Library, London, MSS 12104, 30995/1; D. Cruickshank and N. Burton, Life in the Georgian City (London: Viking, 1990), p. 240. 31 e.g. LMA, WCS 45, p. 130; WCS 53, p. 48; WCS 59, pp. 77, 80 and 81; Y. Shirata, ‘The Provision of Sewers in West London, 1659–1761’ (MPhil dissertation, University of Leicester, 2000). 32 e.g. R. Taylor-Wilson, Excavations at Hunt’s House, Guy’s Hospital (London: Pre-Construct Archaeology, 2002), pp. 41–4; C. Harward,

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33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

48

N. Holder and N. Jeffries, The Spitalfields Suburb, 1539–c.1880 (London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2015), pp. 255–9. Guildhall Library, London, MS 30708/5, pp. 317–18 and 337; Westminster Archives Centre, MS B1175 p. 21, London Lives (hereafter LL), WCCDEP358110051 (last accessed 1 March 2018). Westminster Abbey Muniment Room, Westminster Coroners’ Inquests), 1762, 85/1 and 4, LL, WACWIC652020096 and WACWI C652020101. ‘The Alley’, in A. Pope, Minor Poems, ed. N. Ault (London: Methuen, 1964), p. 47. The Proceedings at the Sessions … for … London and … Middlesex … 19th April 1732 (London, 1732), 102; Old Bailey Proceedings, r LL, t18100606-21. Westminster Abbey Muniment Room, Westminster Coroners’ Inquests, 1794, 2567/4, LL, WACWIC652340600. S. Anthony, Medieval Settlement to 18th–19th-Century Rookery (London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2011), p. 30. C. Steedman, Labours Lost (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 99–104. See also Old Bailey Online (hereafter OB), t18160710-11. LMA, HO1/ST/A/1/6, fols 185v–186; H. M. Colvin and J. Newman, ‘The Royal Palaces’, in H. M. Colvin (ed.), The History of the King’s Works, vol. 5: 1660–1782 (London; HMSO, 1976), p. 244. Southwark Local Studies Library, London: MS 24, 29 June 1809. J. C. Riley, The Eighteenth-Century Campaign to Avoid Disease (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1987); A. Corbin, The Foul and the Fragrant (Leamington Spa: Berg, 1986), parts I and II. J. Pringle, Observations on the diseases of the army (London, 1752), p. 124. W. White, ‘Experiments upon Air, and the effects of different kinds of Effiuvia upon it’, Philosophical Transactions, 68 (1778), 201–2. J. Andrews et al., The History of Bethlem (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 223, n. 62. Pringle, Observations, pp. 352–3. S. C. Craig, ‘Sir John Pringle MD, Early Scottish Enlightenment Thought and the Origins of Modern Military Medicine’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 38 (2015), 99–114; L. Jordanova, Nature Displayed (London: Longman, 1999), ch. 9; P. E. Carroll, ‘Medical Police and the History of Public Health’, Medical History, 46 (2002), 461–94. K. Bennett (ed.), John Aubrey: Brief Lives with an Apparatus for the Lives of our English Mathematical Writers, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), vol. 1, p. 549; G. Casanova, History of My

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49

50

51 52

53

54

55 56

57 58 59 60

Life, trans. W. R. Trask, 12 vols in 6 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), vol. 9, p. 251. P. E. Jones, ‘Whittington’s Longhouse’, London Topographical Record, 23 (1972), 27–34; LMA, Repertory of the Court of Aldermen 95, fols 159 and 161v; Ward Presentments, 1691 and 1698 (Vintry); E. L. Sabine, ‘Latrines and Cesspools of Medieval London’, Speculum, 9 (1934), 303–21. LMA, City Cash Accounts, 1/11, fols 63 and 141v; 1/14, fols 60v and 227–227v; 1/26, fol. 77; B. R. Masters (ed.), The Public Markets of the City of London Surveyed by William Leybourn in 1677, London Topographical Society, 117 (London: London Topographical Society, 1974), plate VIII. Masters (ed.), Public Markets, 35; LMA, Comptroller’s City Lands Deed Box 40 (1). The Merry-Thought: or, the Glass-Window and Bog-House Miscellany Part I (1731), Augustan Reprint Society, 216 (Los Angeles: Augustan Reprint Society, 1982), p. 32; Public Advertiser, 22 April 1762; L.  F. Cody, ‘“Every Lane Teams with Instruction, and Every Alley is Big with Erudition”: Graffiti in Eighteenth-Century London’, in T. Hitchcock and H. Shore (eds), The Streets of London from the Great Fire to the Great Stink (London: Rivers Oram, 2003), p. 87. Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, MS V.a.469, fol. 9v; V.  McMahon, ‘Deconstructing Murder in Seventeenth-Century England’, in C. H. L. George and J. Sutherland (eds), Heroes and Villains (Durham: Centre for 17th Century Studies, 2004), pp. 123–37. H. Molotch and L. Norén (eds), Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing (New York: New York University Press, 2010); G. Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998). For an evocative overview of the homeless, see T. Hitchcock, Down and Out in Eighteenth-Century London (London: Hambledon, 2004), esp. ch. 2. On their role as quasi-public associational spaces, see P. Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 144–6. They also provided venues for sexual encounters: J. Black, ‘Illegitimacy, Sexual Relations and Location in Metropolitan London, 1735–85’, in Hitchcock and Shore (eds), The Streets of London. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, ed. R. Latham and W. Mathews, 11 vols (London: Bell & Hyman, 1970–83), vol. 7, p. 26; The Yorkshire Medley (Halifax, 1763), pp. 61–2. Grand Mystery, p. 17. OB, t17261012-8. OB, t17470909-11.

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61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78

79 80 81

OB, t16950828-7; OB, t17140407-17. On the cost, see Jenner, ‘A Polite and Excremental Trade?’ Mercers’ Company Archives, London, Gresham Repertory II, p. 265. OB, t17380222-5. It was often left unlocked. OB, t18160918-23. P. Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), ch. 6. BMS, 6883. Quoted in S. Dickie, Cruelty and Laughter: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), pp. 117–19. Compare J. Collins, ‘“But What if I Should Want to Defecate in Your Neighbourhood, Madame?”’, Cultural Anthropology, 23 (2008), 304–5. Mercers’ Company Archives, London, Gresham Repertory IV, p. 80. OB, t17620714-12. OB, t17921215-55; Proceedings, LL, t17930529–70. e.g. B. Penner, ‘A World of Unmentionable Suffering: Women’s Public Conveniences in Victorian London’, Journal of Design History, 14 (2001), 35–52; O. Gershenson and B. Penner (eds), Ladies and Gents (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009); B. Chalfin, ‘Public Things, Excremental Politics, and the Infrastructure of Bare Life in Ghana’s City of Tema’, American Ethnologist, 41 (2014), 92–109. See e.g. OB, t17590912-22; LMA, MJ/SP/1754/08/5, LL, LMSM PS50430; The Character of a quack doctor (London, 1673), p.  5. P. Simons, ‘Manliness and the Visual Semiotics of Bodily Fluids in Early Modern Culture’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 39 (2009), 331–73. Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Rawlinson D 34, fol. 249. OB, t17931204-43. Proceedings … 19th April 1732, p. 102; OB, t17820911-21. In 1725 the publisher of the Proceedings of the Old Bailey had to apologise for printing ‘shit’ when an Irish prosecutor said ‘sit’: T. Hitchcock and R. Shoemaker, Tales from the Hanging Court (London: Hodder Education, 2006), pp. 180–4. P. A. Brown, Better a Shrew than a Sheep (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2003); Gatrell, City of Laughter, pp. 236–7 and 346–61; Jackson, Dirty Old London, ch. 7. The Diary of Samuel Pepys, vol. 8, p. 422. More generally, see M. Burden, ‘Pots, Privies and WCs: Crapping at the Opera in London before 1830’, Cambridge Opera Journal, 23 (2011), 27–50. OB, t17550702-20.

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82 Proceedings at the Sessions … for … London and … Middlesex (21–6 October 1761), p. 444. 83 A. McKenzie, ‘Biting the Biter: Sex, Scatology, and Satiric Inversion in Augustan Highwayman “Lives”’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 76 (2013), 254–5. 84 Bennett (ed.), John Aubrey, vol. 1, p. 549. 85 The Merry Medley (London, 1745), pp. 17–18. 86 Casanova, History, vol. 9, p. 251. Vic Gatrell’s reading of this passage misses how it derives from a jest: The First Bohemians: Life and Art in London’s Golden Age (London: Allen Lane, 2013), p. 26. 87 How far attitudes to public defecation and notions of decency changed over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and whether they followed the arc sketched by Norbert Elias cannot be addressed here; see N. Elias, The Civilizing Process, rev. edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), esp. pp. 118–19; A. Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 100–6; P. Langford, ‘The Uses of Eighteenth-Century Politeness’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 12 (2002), 311–31. 88 Proceedings … for … London and … Middlesex (21–6 October 1761), p. 444. 89 The True Narrative of the Proceedings at Surry-Assizes … which began … the 19th … July (London, 1680), p. 2. 90 LL, t17790707–12. 91 Compare the exuberant survey of the poetics and politics of the Parisian posterior in the eighteenth century in C. Jones, J. Carey and E. Richardson (eds), The Saint-Aubin ‘Livre de caricatures’ (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012). 92 OB, t17430413-36. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid.; The Ordinary of Newgate, His Account … 13th, 14th, and 15th of April, 1743 (London, 1743), p. 6, LL, OA1743051843051 80006. 96 Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon a House of Office (London, 1723), p. 3, facsimile reprint in Eighteenth-Century British Erotica II, vol. 1, ed. J. Barchas (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2004). 97 Ulinka Rublack, The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 170–1. 98 OB, t16790430-13; OB, t16840515-15; LL, t17350911–88. 99 OB, t17180709-5; OB, t18160710-11. For very different responses in seventeenth-century Cheshire, see G. Walker, ‘Just Stories: Telling Tales of Infant Death in Early Modern England’, in M. Mikesell

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100 101 102 103 104

105 106 107

108 109 110 111 112

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and A.  Seeff (eds), Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern  Women (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2003), pp. 98–115. C. Hoffer and N. E. H. Hull, Murdering Mothers (New York: New York University Press, 1984), ch. 3. S. Williams, ‘The Experience of Pregnancy and Childbirth for Unmarried Mothers in London, 1760–1866’, Women’s History Review, 20 (2011), 67–86. OB, t17621208-26. OB, t17550702–21. D. Rabin, ‘Bodies of Evidence, States of Mind: Infanticide, Emotion, and Sensibility in 18th-Century England’, in M. Jackson (ed.), Infanticide: Historical Perspectives on Child Murder and Concealment, 1550–2000 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 73–92; M. Jackson, NewBorn Child Murder (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), esp. chs 2–3. Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 5th December 1733, p, 10, OB, t17331205-20. OB, t17621208-26. Compare L. Gowing, Common Bodies (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 141–8. Cf. C. Heyl, A Passion for Privacy (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2004), fols 126 and 201. On the multiple forms of privacy in Georgian London, see A. Vickery, ‘An Englishman’s House is His Castle? Privacies, Boundaries and Thresholds in the Eighteenth-Century London House’, Past & Present, 199 (2008), 147–73. Compare how, as Gowing shows, women examined other women’s bodies to determine whether they were pregnant: Common Bodies, ch. 4. OB, t17410514-7. LMA, MSP Sept 1750/33, LL, LMSMPS504050043; Proceedings, LL, t17500912–76. Proceedings … 19th April 1732, p. 102. Proceedings of the Old Bailey … 22nd February 1738, p. 7, OB, t17380222-5. I hope to discuss how these spaces were appropriated for sexual encounters in another article. Compare M. Houlbrook, ‘The Private World of Public Urinals: London 1918–1957’, London Journal, 25 (2000), 52–70. M. G. H. Pittock, ‘Jacobite Ideology in Scotland and at SaintGermain-en-Laye’, in E. Cruickshanks and E. T. Corp (eds), The Stuart Court in Exile and the Jacobites (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995), p. 120; S. Conway, ‘War and National Identity in the Mid-EighteenthCentury British Isles’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), 875; R. Porter, ‘Medicine, Politics, and the Body in Late Georgian England’,

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114

115 116 117 118

119 120 121

122 123 124 125

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in K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker (eds), Refiguring Revolutions (Berkeley: California University Press, 1998), p. 232. The one exception does not discuss how this affects readings of the image: S. O’Connell, The Popular Print in England (London: British Museum Press, 1999), p. 11. F. G. Stephens (ed.), Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum Political and Personal Satires, vol. 3:1 (London, 1877), pp. 539–40, identified many of the texts. BMS, 2678. In the tray by his right hand are letters which seem to be addressed ‘To Sr Ro’. Stephens (ed.), Catalogue, p. 540. J. Playford, The Second Part of The Dancing Master (London, 1698), p. 27; The Vocal Miscellany (London, 1738), p. 258. An Excellent New Scotch Song (1696), in The Pepys Ballads Facsimile, ed. G. Day, 5 vols (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer 1987), vol. 5, p. 269; John Playford, Wit and Mirth: or, Pills to Purge Melancholy, 6 vols (London, 1707–10), vol. 1, pp. 246–7; The Merry Companion (London, 1742), pp. 367–8; The Aviary (London, 1745), pp. 142–3. It was burlesqued on the London stage: L. Ryan, The Cobler’s Opera (London, 1729),  p. 8. A complete collection of old and new English and Scotch songs, 2 vols (London, 1735), vol. 2, pp. 67–8; The Lark (London, 1740), pp. 316–18; The Aviary (London, 1750), pp. 385–7. Cf. The Highlanders Medley (1746), reproduced in L. Colley, Britons (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), p. 78. See the tradecards and signs of James Potter and Peter Hoe: A. Heal, London Tradesmen’s Cards of the XVIII Century (London: Dover, 1965), pp. 68 and IV; A. Heal, The Signboards of Old London Shops (New York: Ayer Co., 1972), pp. 38–9. OB, t17620421-20. On these, see M. Hallett, The Spectacle of Difference (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 37–55. The Merry-Thought Part I, p. v. The Spectator, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 380–1 and vol. 5, p. 25; The Tatler, ed. D. F. Bond, 3 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), vol. 3, pp. 12–23. A. Junqua, ‘Unstable Shades of Grey: Cloth and Paper in Addison’s Periodicals’, in A. Fennetaux, A. Junqua and S. Vasset (eds), The Afterlife of Used Things: Recycling in the Long Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2014), pp. 184–98, explores this theme. Serious and Cleanly Meditations (1723), pp. 3–4. Serious and Cleanly Meditations upon an House of Office, in The Benefit of Farting Explain’d (London, 1744), p. 23.

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128 Serious and Cleanly Meditations (1723), p. 4. 129 Serious and Cleanly Meditations (1744), pp. 23–4. 130 Serious and Cleanly Meditations (1723), p. 4; Serious and Cleanly Meditations (1744), p. 24. 131 H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, ed. S. McLean (London: Penguin, 2005), p. 48; R. Williams, Notes on the Underground: An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination (Cambridge, MA.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1990); D. L. Pike, Subterranean Cities: The World beneath Paris and London (1800–1945) (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005).

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6  eighteenth-century paper: the readers’ digest Amélie Junqua

Paper circulates from hand to hand, from one social group to another. This passive surface is touched by skins, pens and wares,  absorbing ink, dirt and body waste. Fashioned by a long manufacturing process, it is read, consumed – in either case, metaphorically digested – and then excreted, cast away to be recycled or destroyed. I well remember that some of [my particles] were twisted up with a half-pennyworth of tobacco for a night-man, others soaked in brandy, and plaistered over the black eye of an hackney coachman, and a third portion of them pinned before a fat cook by way of a stomacher in a night cellar, while my poor poetical master was writing on one of my finer sheets, a moral essay in his garret, on the vanity of all human schemes and hopes.1

Unlike our immaculate, industrial batches of identical A4 sheets, eighteenth-century paper is eminently corporeal or sensory, individual in its colour, texture, shape and thickness. The lack of raw material – used rags – for paper mills in the long eighteenth century, combined with the expansion of the press and the ever-growing hunger of the reading public, drew the attention of writers to paper, and they promoted it as a literary object. This chapter examines the digestion of paper in the period from two angles. The trade and practices related to the sale and disposal of waste paper in England and France can help trace the varying fates of paper once it has been read. Then, to further the metaphor 128

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of digestion, we will highlight a most corporeal plight: that of hygienic paper, where expression and excrement meet. The consumption of waste paper Choosing waste paper as an object of study creates a peculiar quandary: there are few or no primary sources. Waste paper is, by its very definition, doomed to destruction or, at the very least, recycling. It is an object in absentia, one to be guessed at or reconstructed from witness accounts of daily practices in eighteenth-century workshops, account books, allusions in fiction, visual representations in engravings or paintings. The only material traces that have survived are to be found underground, as indirect archaeological traces, such as wax seals, as will be demonstrated in the second part of this essay, or in the storerooms of time-honoured libraries and venerable law firms, as linings inside archival boxes.2 Except when it has fortuitously escaped destruction as wrapping or lining paper, waste paper no longer exists because it has been consumed, digested as it were, by its users. As a result, texts that have survived reveal less information than those which are thought to have been destroyed. Eighteenth-century women’s writing, for instance, appears, like waste paper, to be a tenuous object. The introduction to the corpus assembled by Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing laments the loss of many a manuscript and commonplace book: Comparatively little of what women wrote has been preserved. Some  letters and personal writings survive for elite women, but families were more likely to keep those which reflected well upon the religiosity of their female members. Critical writings might be destroyed; Samuel Pepys tore up his wife Elizabeth’s account of her unhappy life.3

It may be useful first to categorise the types of paper that did not reach the pristine shelves of our national and institutional libraries.4 According to William St Clair, in the eighteenth century ‘the more common and less expensive a printed text was when it was produced, the greater its readership, the poorer its survival rate to the present day’.5 William H. Sherman provides the same observation from his survey of Renaissance books and devotional prints: ‘the more heavily a book was used, the more vulnerable it 129

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was to decay’.6 Thus the circulation of paper tended to hasten its consumption. Eighteenth-century boxes and books are material proof that printers’ waste and newspapers were a generous source of waste paper in our period.7 Defined as leftover, defective or damaged printed material, printers’ waste ranged from stacks of unstitched sheets (i.e. unsuccessful books) to manuscript fragments and surplus or spoiled sheets. Newspapers were relatively cheap to produce (at least before the restrictive 1712 Stamp Act) and easy to re-use. Used books must also have been recycled in some way, but, since no traces of them survive in the bindings of books or lining of trunks, it is difficult to account for the myriad volumes that were published, sold and disregarded – Latin texts, sermons or school books.8 Advertisements and ephemeral prints – posters, calendars, broadside ballads – also provided useful material for activities unrelated to reading, and have therefore rarely survived the test of time: ‘of the many hundreds of broadside ballads recorded as having been printed in the sixteenth century, only a handful have survived’.9 This disappearance is, as previously mentioned, a sign of relative worth, material if not literary. Throughout the period, and until the re-discovery of wood pulp paper, in the first half of the nineteenth century, the difficulties paper mills encountered in sourcing discarded rags kept the price of paper up, while the heavy taxation added to its cost; the consumption of white, virgin paper was not as casual as it is today. In ‘a world of penury’, as Kristian Jensen describes the period,10 paper was common enough to be found in most public places in the form of newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs or prints on the wall, but not cheap enough to be given away for nothing. Catalogues, books, periodicals and even pamphlets were not only vehicles of abstract discourse for their own authors, but also, and indeed principally, a business venture. Authors wrote and sold their manuscripts to publishers with the understanding that, should it fail to please the public, their work was to be used as arsewisp, wrapping or fuel. Swift thus sarcastically advises the anonymous author of a disastrous first poem: Your Secret kept, your Poem sunk, And sent in Quires to line a Trunk; If still you be dispos’d to rhime, Go try your Hand a second Time.11

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In a memorable essay, Joseph Addison, writing as Mr Spectator, reverses this pessimistic overview of eighteenth-century print culture. Sauntering unnoticed through the shops and streets of London, he draws a list of unlikely reading material – a pie mould, fragments of crackers, band-boxes, a hat case and a paper kite – that showcase the many types of paper recycling.12 In a similarly optimistic mood, Laurence Sterne has Parson Yorick, in his Sentimental Journey, find unexpected narrative sustenance from a pat of butter wrapped in a  ‘currant leaf’ and a half-torn manuscript, the other half serving to wrap a bunch of flowers.13 Whenever waste paper was employed as wrapping paper it was most often for the sale of food – pastries, cheese, sugar, tobacco and spice.14 Therefore what Addison and Sterne describe may be defined as the unexpected and doubly satisfying moment when one finds food for the mind as well as for the body. Intellectual value counted for little when faced with the requirements of commerce; it was only when book collectors began to sieve through the waste paper from shops that some of these books were eventually saved. Jensen mentions that as late as ‘the 1780s incunabula were sourced from people who used them as wrapping paper’;15 and St Clair provides a fount of surprising examples: In the American Revolution, most of the 3,000 copies of Saur’s 1776 German Bible were used to make cartridges for muskets. In Britain during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, when shipping was expensive and uncertain, many older books went to the grocers and cheesemongers.16

Thus in most accounts, waste paper remained closely associated with food. Book collectors and hunters of incunabulae often mention the figure of the ignorant grocer as their particular bane. Major William Stone, for instance, rescued ‘some two-thirds of James Boswell’s letters to William Johnson Temple’ between 1837 and 1839 from the busy hands of a Boulogne grocer: He was amazed to find that his provisions had been wrapped in an autograph letter from Boswell to Temple that had come from a parcel of waste paper which Mme Noël had bought from a hawker. Major Stone induced her to sell him the rest of the parcel, including another ninety-six letters from Boswell to Temple …17

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Other, more professional collectors were acutely aware of the consumption of waste paper taking place in the shops. In 1757, Samuel Paterson established his fame and ensuing prosperity thanks to his literary flair and his regular visits to the cheesemongers: The valuable collection of MSS. Belonging to the Right Hon. Sir Julius Caesar, knt. Judge of the Admiralty in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and, in the reign of James I. and Charles I. Chancellor and Under-treasurer of the Exchequer, had fallen into the hands of some uninformed persons, and were on the point of being sold by weight to a cheesemonger, as waste paper, for the sum of ten pounds; some of them happened to be shewn to Mr. Paterson, who examined them, and instantly discovered their value.18

But not all disappearances were to be regretted, and at times the use of literary material as waste paper was welcome. The sale of used books must also have been perceived as a positive, excremental trade. In Hogarth’s engraving Beer Street (1751) the re-use of paper is  regarded as a boon and a key to national strength, no less. Paper is prominent in the foreground, firstly through the presence of printed paper laid out near the beer-drinker’s lap (the king’s speech lauding the advancement of commerce, and the Daily Advertiser), the ballad held and sung by the two fish-sellers in the middle (extolling the prosperity of the ‘Herring Fishery’) and the basket of books to be carried as scrap to ‘Mr. Pastem, trunkmaker’ (see Figure 6.1).

Figure 6.1 William Hogarth, Beer Street (1751). Engraving (detail)

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The viewer might suppose that, as night gently falls on prosperous Beer Street, all types of paper will thereafter be parsimoniously re-used, pasted or burnt – the newspaper, the ballad and the books. The honest English workers thus derive a welcome distraction from paper that conveys an ideological incitement to work and provides useful material for other shops, especially when these ‘digest’ and destroy empty or dishonest literature: George Turnbull’s On Ancient Painting, John Hill’s Dissertation on Royal Societies, a volume of Modern Tragedies, a probably insipid opus entitled Politicks (‘vol. 9999’) and William Lauder’s Essay on Milton’s Use and Imitation of the Moderns in his ‘Paradise Lost’, which had been exposed as a fraudulent hoax by Bishop John Douglas in 1750 (Figure 6.2). Thus, whether lauded or criticised, spurred on by reformers or thwarted by book collectors, the waste paper trade endured, blithely ignorant of the content of books it circulated, fuelled by its buyers’

Figure 6.2 William Hogarth, Beer Street (1751). Engraving (detail)

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ravenous appetites. Jensen concurs rather elliptically: ‘it was impossible for paper to be available for free without being appropriated by people who had more basic needs than book collectors’.19 One such basic need may have been one that affected all, rich or poor. Satire, expression and excrement From 1984 to 1993, a large team of archaeologists led by Pierre-Jean Trombetta, comprising up to 250 individuals at a time, excavated the area where the glass pyramid of the Paris Louvre museum now stands. As expected, the many latrines peppering the site yielded puzzling and fascinating artefacts, some of which offered the certain proof that the eighteenth-century diplomatic personnel of the palace efficiently recycled their no doubt extensive daily correspondence, thus combining comfort and pragmatic filing: All the seals that were found (more than 700, and this only represents a small percentage of those that, upon opening the structures, appeared and crumbled into a fine red powder) come from the contents of the late seventeenth-century and (mostly) eighteenth-century cesspools, where they had been preserved by the remoteness of the place. These are precious evidence of correspondence, displaying the coats of arms of the great Lords of Orléans, Rohan, Nouailles, Penthièvre and Pardaillan de Gondrain, as well as those of highranking civil servants such as Colbert and Le Tellier … This may be a sign of the decisive improvement in personal hygiene when, after many more or less natural materials had been used, the preference for paper becomes demonstrable ….20

When exactly in the eighteenth century did paper become a commodity so common as to be used in a latrine? If the diplomatic staff of the royal palace had ample access to paper, and a salary that was generous enough to discourage them from recycling it for profit, how did the rest of the population fare? Is it possible to identify the moment when paper stopped being considered valuable? Words to signify the practice are abundant. ‘Arsewisps’, ‘tailnapkins’, ‘bunghole-cleansers’ and ‘wipe-breeches’ were mentioned in the translations of Rabelais by Thomas Urquhart in 1653 and 1693 and of Pierre Motteux in 1693–94. Yet these words rarely involved the idea of paper, instead designating an array of materials fit or soft enough to be used to that effect, as Gargantua convincingly showed his father in chapter 13 of the book of that title. 134

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Clues may be found in domestic accounts and inventories,21 but also in satirical literature. It is possible to track the occurrence of the now commonplace insult of using someone’s prose as wiping material. This particular gibe appeared quite early in the history of paper manufacture. If widespread use of paper may be said to have started with the first commercially successful paper mill in England (John Spilman’s mill in Kent, 1588), then it is certainly true that Thomas Nashe’s virulent Strange News (1592) and Have with You to Saffron Walden (1596) already introduce many references to prose in the context of excrement.22 The higher the value of paper, the more affronting the insult, one may suppose, since these occurrences lessened as the paper production soared in the eighteenth century. In 1682 John Dryden transformed this particular taunt into a more cynical metaphor to abase Thomas Shadwell in his satirical poem Mac Flecknoe: From dusty shops neglected Authors come, Martyrs of Pies, and reliques of the Bum. Much Heywood, Shirly, Ogleby there lay, But Loads of Sh— almost choak’d the way.23

The neat quatrain drags his opponent’s works into the foul streets of the city. Dust, food, excrement: the shops where authors metonymically come to their end are as the bowels of the literary market, wherein all dirt and matter are indifferently processed, then expelled. The playful use of a dash (line 99) allows the first two letters of Shadwell’s name to be either read as such or as a reminder of Dryden’s opinion of his works. The same device, by then an almost routine one appears in a quiet apophthegm of 1701 by Tom Brown. The satirical intent is here almost blunted, being evinced by the banality of the gesture. He that Writes abundance of Books, and gets abundance of Children, may in some Sense be said to be a Benefactor to the Publick, because he Furnishes it with Bumfodder and Soldiers. But t’is impossible he should bestow enough upon them to make them appear handsomly in the World.24

‘Bumfodder’ may be defined as ‘worthless literature’ The Oxford English Dictionary offers the Latin word anitergium (anus + tergeo, wipe) as a more polite synonym – one of many Latin words that 135

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came to designate realities that were considered indecent.25 Unlike its Latin counterpart, ‘bumfodder’ is a metaphor and has the advantage of including the lexical nuance of food, thus enhancing the idea of a corporeal consumption of paper. Should you read down the column devoted to the word ‘bum’, ‘bum-fiddle’ appears to be your next stop, with a similar sense: ‘c1560 Trag. Rich. II (1870) 42 To say I will teare this paper … or fowler words than that, as to say I will bumfidle your paper.’ That the dictionary should list two or more words for a single gesture is evidence of the commonplace nature of the practice. This practice may have become so widespread as to be omitted from common discourse. In the satirical play Three Hours after  Marriage, co-written by John Gay, Alexander Pope and John  Arbuthnot and performed in 1717, the author of a defiled hymn, the would-be dramatist Phoebe Clinket, exclaims, in a state of fury: Thou destroyer of learning, thou worse than a bookworm; thou hast put me beyond patience. Remember how my lyrick ode bound about a tallow-candle; thy wrapping up snuff in an epigram; nay, the unworthy usage of my hymn to Apollo, filthy creature!26

Here the defiling act is alluded to with an expletive to convey its obscenity (‘filthy’). Did the character’s squeamishness highlight the joke? Or was the fouled paper then too common or vulgar to be named on stage? A gradation of some sort is implied, since the bumfoddering act comes last, with the delectable collision of divinity and excrement; but the list of recycling activities performed by Phoebe’s servant hints at a trivial and natural process – the daily material consumption of a household, the unremarkable chores of servants and the production of refuse. However, one anonymous satirical poem, printed in 1729 in folio with a fictitious bookseller’s name (was it so shameful that the publisher aimed to protect his reputation?), reverses this trend and far exceeds the usual quota of references to excrement. That this particular work was not meant to reach as large an audience as a fashionable play and that it therefore claims the status of an oddity is clear from its title page, which reads A Sequel to the Dunciad; being the famous British Sh—rs. A Satire. What one may look forward to is clear, and the twenty-four pages do not disappoint, as they all concern shit – with a tasteful em-dash. 136

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In a unique annotated copy of this pamphlet in the Fellows’ Library of Winchester College, an eccentric owner has painstakingly filled (or attempted to fill) all the em-dashes in the text by hand, thus rendering the entire text several notches lewder than it was already intended to be. Brief marginal comments are added in the case of some authors (mostly female, e.g, p. 20), and there is one longer comment on Daniel Defoe (Figure 6.3). A single metaphor is pursued from beginning to end: writing equals shitting; turds, words. The parallel is steadfastly established

Figure 6.3 Cover of A Sequel to the Dunciad (1729)

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through repetitions and rhymes. ‘Do we not Sh—e for necessary Ease? / Do we not Sh—g aim t’instruct and please?’ (page 23); ‘T— ds should be rightly us’d, and only fall, / When Nature prompts, and just Occasions call’ (page 24). Most current and fashionable authors are mentioned or besmirched, and sometimes, as in the case of Milton, several times. As can be expected, the rhetorical device of the list grows somewhat tiresome: the opposition between matter (solid writing) and wind (empty prose), the first being lauded in Rabelaisianly style, the second derided. The names of most of the authors mentioned are withheld or emdashed; only the names of the dead are spelled out in full. For other words, a curious distinction is made. All nouns, verbs and gerundive forms derived from the words ‘shit’, ‘turd’, ‘arse’ and ‘fart’ are censored, but synonyms that might seem equally provocative are left standing, such as ‘fundament’, ‘excrement’, ‘dross’, ‘wind’, ‘dung’, ‘bedung’, ‘squitter’ (‘to void thin excrement, to spatter’: Oxford English Dictionary), ‘urine’ and ‘bum’. As the author of Holy Sh*t demonstrates, boundaries of taste, or taboo, are fluid.27 Only twice in the entire twenty-four pages does the author use the ‘bumfodder’ taunt, this surprising satirical restraint being perhaps explained by the fact that the insult may by then have been hackneyed. Blackmore’s a barbarously sh—g Thing, … He gives us purges, and he sh—s Essays; Yet in this Sh—r some Convenience lurks, His Paper serves us, while his Physick works. … Silvester, Quarles, and Heywood, also sh—t, With vast Profusion, but with little Wit; Of all their Sh—gs now the lib’ral Sum Is doom’d to Pies, Tobacco, and the Bum, Where first, or last, all mortal Sh—gs come. (pp. 14–15)

On the title page, a Latin epigraph from Horace, ‘Omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci’ (Epistula ad Pisones, line 343: ‘he that mingles profit with pleasure convinces everyone’), celebrates the ‘convenience’ of paper as bumfodder to expedite the excretion and annihilation of boring works. Naturally, eighteenth-century readers of the Sequel may have been tempted to repeat the same 138

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fate: that may be why only four copies of the pamphlet are extant. After all, it repeats the same joke and the same commonplaces: ‘Pies, Tobacco, and the Bum’. Thus, as polite discourse and new social norms gathered momentum in the literate society of the eighteenth century, paper bore the heavy, increasingly implicit taboo of bodily filth. I was torn into papers to screw up his curls at night, and the next morning thrown contemptuously into a certain convenience alike necessary to my lord and his gentleman. From thence, these my unhappy fragments were cast to the common sewer, where they lie at this instant sunk in filth and misery, in the form of the once despised thistle.28

For the fragmented hero of this it-narrative published in 1779, the passage to the euphemised ‘convenience’ represents a threshold, or point of no return, as is made clear by the expressions indicating weight (‘cast’, ‘lie’, ‘sunk’). Lord Chesterfield’s well-known advice to his natural son equally demonstrates that paper – as well as the words printed on it and, by metonymic association, their author – is indeed digested, materially and intellectually consumed.29 Paper becomes excrement, out of place, unwanted matter. Discarded outwardly and downwardly, burdened with rejection, it becomes a mock but heavily symbolic offering to the powers of the underworld. One way or other I shall be of public utility. I may some time or other have my papers useful in pastry-cooks shops, or in the yet more shining temple of that ever necessary goddess ’yclept Cloacina, if refused the desired admittance into the modern library of a more modern wit.30

The anonymous author of these 1785 ‘Memoirs’ follows the now well-beaten path. The author, like all writers of ephemeral prose, is aware of the fate or digestion that awaits it. By dint of antiphrasis and decorous words, this frank yet oblique acceptance of shit for the sake of ‘public utility’ is but a flamboyant celebration of the inevitable. Bumfodder occupies a key position in the eighteenth-century world of print. It pulls its own unique weight, as it were. In satire its appearance signals the desire to give serious offence or performatively damn an opponent to utter oblivion, at least until paper was 139

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produced in larger quantities and became more widely available at the beginning of the eighteenth century. But not only that; if waste paper lays down material landmarks by which a printed work may be judged, bumfodder delineates a final, spatial frontier – a given moment, or movement, in the literary viscera when desirable artefacts and useful materials are set aside from trash and dross. The consumption of paper, within the Leviathan-like social body, is like the act of eating, providing fuel and nourishment, but also discarding waste that in turns produces yet more lucrative materials – papier mâché paste, medicinal patches, board, wrapping material, blotters and other absorbent surfaces, cosmetics (patches and curling papers) and decoration for walls, boxes or linings. Paper evidences the movement of commerce in society, the rumblings of its appetites, the contradictory processes of its digestive system – the passing of matter through the huge body of the ‘commonwealth’. Notes Heartfelt thanks for allowing me to use the Winchester College Fellows’ Library copy of the Sequel to the Dunciad, as well as offering extensive reading material and sound advice for the present chapter, must go to the former Winchester librarian Dr W. G. Day. 1 From ‘Adventures of a Quire of Paper’, a periodical tale printed in three instalments signed ‘Rusticus’ and appearing in successive months from August to October 1779 in the London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer. See Mark Blackwell (ed.), British It-Narratives, 1750–1830 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), vol. 4, p. 37. 2 For photographs of lining paper inside deed boxes see Heather Wolfe’s excellent article ‘Filing, Seventeenth-Century Style’ (28 March 2013) in the Folger Shakespeare Library blog, The Collation, http://collation. folger.edu/2013/03/filing-seventeenth-century-style/ (last accessed 27 August 2013). The Fellows’ Library at Winchester College also houses exciting examples, which are reproduced in Ariane Fennetaux, Amélie Junqua and Sophie Vasset (eds), The Afterlife of Used Things: Recycling in the Long Eighteenth Century (New York: Routledge, 2014). 3 Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing (eds), Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England, A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 6. 4 Leah Price’s How to Do Things with Books in Victorian Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012) although devoted to the nineteenth century, is a relevant reference for this discussion. Lothar

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5 6 7

8

9 10 11 12

Müller, White Magic: The Age of Paper (Cambridge, Oxford and Boston: Polity, 2015) and Sophie Gee, Making Waste: Leftovers and the Eighteenth-Century Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) are also useful sources here. William St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 28. William H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 5. A late eighteenth-century trunk sold as American antique was described as follows: ‘The inside lid is covered with a 1795 Rhode Island College (Brown University) broadside printed in Latin. The bottom is lined with Newport Mercury newspaper.’ See www.etsy. com/fr/listing/120939662/antique-c-1790-wallpaper-covereddome?ref=shop_home_active&ga_search_query=trunk (last accessed 27 August 2013). Bookbinders recycled printers’ waste to laminate decorated papers, strengthen spines or create inside covers. An late eighteenth-century English binding appears on the Folger Shakespeare Library collection website: http://luna.folger.edu/luna/servlet/detail/ BINDINGS~1~1~11906~102340:Inside-front-cover-transparentprin (last accessed 27 August 2013). See also Heather Wolfe’s second comment in ‘Filing, Seventeenth-Century Style’. As Curator of Manuscripts at the Folger Shakespeare Library: she has ‘seen more examples of boxes lined with early eighteenth century newspaper or printers’ waste’ (29 March 2013 at 10.11 am). ‘If an account book of Ackers the printer had not fortuitously survived, we would probably not have guessed from the five extant copies of the  school textbook, Dyche’s Guide to the English Tongue, that 265,000 copies were printed during the years when Ackers held the printing contract.’ St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 27. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 27. Kristian Jensen, Revolution and the Antiquarian Book: Reshaping the Past, 1780–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 121. Jonathan Swift, ‘On Poetry: A Rapsody’, lines 143–6, in The Poems of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958), vol. 2, pp. 644–5. ‘I remember in particular, after having read over a Poem of an Eminent Author on a Victory, I met with several Fragments of it upon the next rejoicing Day, which had been employ’d in Squibs and Crackers, and by that means celebrated its Subject in a double Capacity. I once met with a Page of Mr. Baxter under a Christmas Pye. Whether or no the Pastry-Cook had made use of it through Chance or Waggery, for the

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13

14

15 16 17 18 19 20

Defence of that superstitious Viande, I know not; but upon the Perusal of it, I conceived so good an Idea of the Author’s Piety, that I bought the whole Book. I have often profited by these accidental Readings, and have sometimes found very Curious Pieces, that are either out of Print, or not to be met with in the Shops of our London Booksellers. For this Reason, when my Friends take a Survey of my Library, they are very much surprised to find, upon the Shelf of Folios, two long BandBoxes standing upright among my Books, till I let them see that they are both of them lined with deep Erudition and abstruse Literature. I might likewise mention a Paper-Kite, from which I have received great Improvement; and a Hat-Case, which I would not exchange for all the Beavers in Great-Britain.’ The Spectator, 85, ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), vol. 1, p. 361. ‘The Fragment. Paris. La Fleur had left me something to amuse myself with for the day more than I had bargained for, or could have entered cither into his head or mine. He had brought the little print of butter upon a currant-leaf; and, as the morning was warm, and he had a good step to bring it, he had begged a sheet of waste paper to put betwixt the currant-leaf and his hand.’ Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey, ed. Ian Jack (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 101. Paper, or rather papyrus, has been associated with the wrapping of spices since Horace (Epistles, book II, 1: 163), while its association with pastry can be dated back to Martial (Epigrams, book vi, 61), according to St Clair (The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 26). Jensen, Revolution and the Antiquarian Book, p. 121. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, pp. 26–7. James Boswell, The Correspondence of James Boswell and William Johnson Temple, 1756–1795, ed. Thomas Crawford (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), part 1, p. xxxi. John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century Comprising Biographical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer (London: Nichols and Bentley, 1812), vol. 3, p. 734. Jensen, Revolution and the Antiquarian Book, p. 121. ‘L’ensemble de cachets que nous avons retrouvés (plus de 700, et cela ne représente qu’un petit pourcentage de ceux qui apparaissaient à l’ouverture de ces structures et qui se résolvaient en une fine poussière rouge) provient du remplissage des fosses d’aisance de la fin du XVIIème et surtout du XVIIIème siècle, où ils avaient été préservés par l’inaccessibilité du milieu. Ils sont pour nous un témoignage précieux des correspondances échangées, nous livrant les armoiries de grands seigneurs, Orléans, Rohan, Nouailles, Penthièvre, Pardaillan de Gondrain, et de grands commis de l’Etat tels Colbert et Le Tellier … Peut-être faut-il y voir la marque d’un progrès décisif de l’hygiène intime, où

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21

22

23 24 25

26 27 28 29

après avoir utilisé moultes matières plus ou moins naturelles, le passage au papier devient une réalité.’ Pierre-Jean Trombetta, Sous la pyramide du Louvre: vingt siècles retrouvés (Paris: Le Rocher, 1987), p. 72. For the period pre-dating the use of paper, François Liger quotes domestic accounts (‘comptes de ménage’) to point out the regular purchase of wool, linen and hemp tows by well-off households, and of velvet or even lace by the aristocracy; see François Liger, Fosses d’aisances, latrines, urinoirs et vidanges (Paris: J. Baudry, 1875), p. 106. The increasing use of paper as wiping material must have necessarily reduced and replaced these purchases. ‘… sheets that serve for nothing but to wrap the excrements of housewifery in, Proh Deum, what a spite is it.’ The Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald Brunlees McKerrow, 5 vols (1904–10; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), vol .1, p. 258. ‘… what atheists are they that turn it to waste-paper and go to the privy with it, as to no other uses it is converted, it lying dead & never selling …’, Ibid., vol. 3, p. 14. John Dryden, Mac Flecknoe: A Poem. With Spencer’s Ghost: being a  Satyr concerning Poetry (1682; London: H. Hills, 1709), 5, lines 96–9. T. Brown, Apophthegm no. 124, in Laconics: Or, New Maxims of State and Conversation. Relating to the Affairs and Manners of the Present Times. In Three Parts (London: Thomas Hodgson, 1701), 118. ‘1653 T. Urquhart tr. Rabelais 1st Bk. Wks. xiii, Torcheculs, arsewisps bumfodders. 1753 Scots Mag. Apr. 208/1 (title) Bum fodder for the ladies’ (Oxford English Dictionary). For an explanation of how Latin came to be used as ‘the language particularly suitable for talking about things you didn’t want the majority of people to understand’, or understood ‘only by the few who wouldn’t get carried away reading about, say, penises’ see Melissa Mohr’s enlightening pages ‘From Profanity to Politesse’, in Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 52–4. John Gay, Alexander Pope and John Arbuthnot, Three Hours After Marriage (1717), in Burlesque Plays of the Eighteenth Century, ed. Simon Trussler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 101. Mohr, Holy Sh*t, pp. 189–90. ‘Adventures of a Quire of Paper’, in Blackwell (ed.), British It-Narratives, vol. 4, p. 37. ‘I knew a gentleman who was so good a manager of his time that he would not even lose that small portion of it which the calls of nature obliged him to pass in the necessary-house; but gradually went through all the Latin poets in those moments. He bought, for example, a common edition of Horace, of which he tore off gradually a couple of pages, carried them with him to that necessary place, read them first,

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and then sent them down as a sacrifice to Cloacina: this was so much time fairly gained, and I recommend you to follow his example.’ The Letters of the Earl of Chesterfield to his Son, ed. Charles Strachey and Annette Calthorp (London: Methuen, 1901), vol. 1, p. 192. 30 ‘Memoirs and Adventures of a Flea’ (1785), in Blackwell (ed.), British It-Narratives, vol. 2, p. 88.

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7  ‘words have no smell’: faecal references in eighteenth-century french théâtre de société Jennifer Ruimi

‘Who wants my shit? Money for my shit; freshly steaming’:1 this is how Gilles seeks to promote his fetid wares in Piron’s Le Marchand de merde, a society parade. Tricked by Arlequin, Léandre’s valet, Gilles believes that his new status as a ‘turd merchant’ will allow him to achieve the respectability he needs in order to marry the young Catin. Betrayed, beaten, banned, the character of Gilles le niais (i.e. the Simpleton) is then lectured by Arlequin to stop ‘cacking at the door of his neighbours’.2 Piron’s play, which was inspired by Teofilo Folengo’s sixteenth-century Histoire maccaronique de Merlin Cocaye, a work which Rabelais used as a model for his own writing, has been interpreted in various ways. Thus Martial Poirson gives a partly economic reading of the work,3 while Daniel Gerould understands it in light of ‘the problems of sanitation and waste disposal’.4 At the same time, the play also invites intertextual perspectives, which illuminate its debts to farce. However, what I wish to focus on here is the possibility that Gilles’s question ‘Who wants my turd?’ may have a metatextual character: might this query not be first and foremost a comment on the taste of théâtre de société audiences for plays teeming with scatological allusions and references to excrement? Although théâtre de société gave rise to the production of a vast number of works which cannot all be lumped together into a single category, this type of uncensored private theatre nevertheless saw the development of a strand of licentious drama which Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval, in Le Théâtre de société: un 145

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autre théâtre?, calls ‘erotico-scatological’.5 From a quantitative perspective, it is difficult to ascertain how many erotic and scatological plays were performed in the context of théâtre de société. The fact that some of these plays were also printed suggests that works of this type had their devotees, even if the majority of them were probably never put into print. How could cultured audiences who regularly attended the privileged theatres and enjoyed the classical repertoire and its rules of decorum take pleasure in these more or less overtly scatological forms of entertainment? This is a difficult question to answer because contemporary accounts of the subject are scarce: in particular, we do not know anything about those who watched these scatological plays. It is also important to distinguish between plays which merely contain faecal references and those which indicate that they included scenes of onstage defecation. However, concerning the latter, it is worth asking whether these plays were really performed or were simply texts which invited their readers to use their imagination. These are some of the performance-related questions associated with this type of theatre. Yet another question remains to be answered: what is the meaning of this emphasis on the ‘low’ body? Do faecal references and the performance of defecation merely have a burlesque function? I do not think so. Instead, I will show in this chapter that the faecal motif was part of an aesthetic, or even sometimes political, contestation. A pleasure for the cultured The first thing to bear in mind is that above all else, eighteenthcentury théâtre de société audiences were theatre lovers. They both performed plays at home and attended the privileged theatres (the Comédie-Française, Comédie-Italienne and Académie Royale de Musique) and the Opéra-Comique at the fairground. Some of the spectators were also an integral part of the official theatre circuit, and it is worth noting that the fashionable people who performed plays at home rubbed shoulders with some of the actors who acted in these private plays – Lekain and Mlle Gaussin frequented the Duc d’Orléans’s house, for example – as well as socialising with some of their authors, such as Grandval fils. In other words, cultural transfers between these two theatrical universes were a regular occurrence. It may seem a little surprising that the same audiences who watched tragedies at the Comédie-Française would also attend 146

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an opéra comique at the fairground or a parade. Yet what mattered to them was that these different spaces should each conform to a particular style of writing and theatre. It would have been inappropriate to see a character make obscene puns on the stage of the Comédie-Française: thus Beaumarchais’s Barbier de Séville was widely criticised on the grounds that some of its lines belonged in a society parade. Conversely, however, it would have been just as improper to expect to find the same aesthetic criteria in private plays as in the privileged theatres. There was no reason not to enjoy licentious or scatological plays, so long as they were performed in the appropriate setting. Faecal references in théâtre de société seem to have been associated with two distinct forms of enjoyment: the pleasure of recognition and the pleasure of impropriety. We shall focus here on two types of play, both of which were intended to be performed privately: parodies of tragedies and parades. Parodies can mock specific texts: Vessaire’s Caquire explicitly targets Voltaire’s Zaïre, for example.6 However, some parodies, such as Grandval’s Siropau-cul,7 do not have a specific hypotext. As for parades, they were based on the shows that were performed on balconies in fairground theatres and sought to imitate popular speech and behaviour. Often considered to be in very poor taste after the eighteenth century, this pseudo-popular form was also influenced by farce and, as such, emphasised the ‘low’ body. If audiences derived a pleasure of recognition from these plays, this was first of all because what they saw being performed on the stage contained elements from past works. Any reference to the belly and its disorders was in one way or another mediated by centuries of literary tradition. Society parades were packed with intertextual references: they imitated fairground shows, which were themselves based on works from the Italian repertoire (which is why these plays always feature the characters of Léandre, Isabelle, Cassandre, Gilles and Arlequin). More widely, parades were also part of an ancient comical tradition. In his article in the Encyclopédie on the subject of parades, the Comte de Tressan argues that they have their roots in the comedies of Roman antiquity – especially the ‘statariae’ and the ‘tabernariae’8 – and the carnavalesque traditions of the Middle Ages: The parade goes back a long way in France; it is descended from the morality and mystery plays and facéties that student law clerks

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(gathered in ‘basoches’), members of the Brotherhood of the passion, and the company of the Prince of Fools used to perform at crossroads and on market places – indeed often even during the grandest ceremonies, such as those organised for our kings, on the occasion of their entrances and coronation.9

He adds that there were parades during Scarron’s lifetime. One  might add that the literary parades that were performed for  fashionable assemblies were inspired by texts such as Rabelais’s – it is therefore hardly surprising to find that they contained scabrous puns on andouille sausages and countless allusions to cuckoldry. However,  eighteenth-century society parades were mostly indebted to Molière: from ill-fated love affairs to medical satire, and from lecherous pulse taking to the triumph of youth over age, almost all the motifs found in parades find an echo in Molière’s work. The pervasiveness of the body in these works should therefore be understood as a literary trait, or indeed as an indication of the carnavalesque: allusions to enemas, diarrhoea, haemorrhoids or wind re-inscribed a play within a theatrical tradition that audiences were familiar with and enjoyed. One might therefore say that faecal references coincided with a controlled and restrained form of transgression. Although it is hardly very proper to discuss loose bowels and constipation on the stage, and although such talk suggests a rejection of the rules of decorum enforced in official theatres, it nevertheless remains true that ‘words have no smell’, as parades liked to reiterate. In other words, one might sometimes allow oneself to laugh, just as the audiences of medieval farces once did, so long as this laughter was confined to a private theatre. The muses of privileged theatres did not have a ‘blocked nose’ when they performed at home10 – as opposed to in society – and if some words were banned from official theatres because of their obscene resonances, this was not the case in fashionable circles. However, attempts were made during the nineteenth century to widen access to these indecent texts by presenting them to select audiences beyond the confines of private theatres. In this spirit, the Commandant Vallée, outraged by the bold stance that the Théâtre-Libre d’Antoine was taking, decided to rehabilitate the ‘Théâtre-Libre Ancien’ for a period of time by staging a few 148

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parades, including Isabelle grosse par vertu and Le Marchand de merde. The point was to show to audiences – particularly those which extolled the burgeoning trend of naturalist drama – that the theatre had not waited for the nineteenth century to break with rules of  decorum and that these were already a subject of amusement in the eighteenth century. If the chuckles of their forebears  legitimated faecal references on the stage, then anything was possible. In fact, Thomas-Simon Gueullette, one of the most prolific authors of parades, only ever invoked this argument in defence of his work. According to him, parades made people laugh and this alone justified their existence, however distasteful they might seem. The licence to  break the rules of decorum which parades momentarily gave their audiences, creating a carnavalesque interval within a highly policed and tightly regulated society, produced the second source of pleasure mentioned earlier: the pleasure of impropriety. Improprieties were not confined to parades: they were perhaps even more common in scatological parodies and pseudo-tragedies. Just as it is clear that parades have a farcical element and that they are suffused with what Bakhtin called a ‘dense bodily atmosphere, the atmosphere of the great belly’,11 so one can only be startled and amused by the boldness which the authors of parodies of  tragedies showed in their works, which are very far removed from the tragic poems that were so widely acclaimed at the official theatres. This also created an effect of recognition. Théâtre de société  audiences were highly cultured: they would recognise a source text and a specific tragic style. Beyond these identifiable references, however, they were stunned by the scale of the changes made to a text which had been originally written according to the canons of the regular theatre. Thus, where Cucumane – Orosmane’s counterpart in Caquire – exclaims ‘Caquire, thou cackest?’ the audience would have heard ‘Zaïre, thou weepest?’12 Although such a burlesque effect may hardly come as a surprise in a parody, is the same true of the lines which are entirely devoted to turds and faeces, or of the strange alliance that Cucumane offers Caquire, who himself turns out to be the anus of the sultan’s grandfather?13 The text breaks every possible rule of decorum in its relentless quest for provocation: whatever pleasure this play afforded its audiences was perhaps therefore the result of this gleeful literary free-for-all. 149

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Bold indecencies The scatological allusions found in the works performed in théâtre de société had various degrees of impropriety. Fashionable parades performed in front of fairly large audiences which included ladies were the least improper: they would simply include a few almost incidental allusions to the ‘low’ body. This was for example the case in Isabelle grosse par vertu, where Léandre speaks in passing of suffering from a ‘most uncomfortable diarrhoea’,14 or in L’Eunuque ou la fidèle infidélité, where Léandre complains on the contrary of feeling a little ‘backed up’,15 that is, constipated. However, there were also bolder society parades such as Le Remède à la mode, where Isabelle seeks to marry Léandre unbeknownst to her tutor Cassandre. The latter manages to foil the lovers’ various manoeuvres until the moment when Léandre asks Isabelle to pretend she is suffering from acute diarrhoea. The woman agrees, and an apothecary is called in; this is none other than Léandre in disguise. Cassandre then exclaims: Poor creature! Such is my love for her that I am myself in the throes of colic and were I not waiting for the Apothecary, I would find a corner to relieve myself and alleviate the discomfort that Isabelle has started in my belly with her complaint … But God forgive me, here is the Apothecary. O sweet Cupid, if only thou couldst turn me into a syringe, I would relish penetrating … Oh what a voluptuous idea, I am beside myself.16

There is much that can be said about these lines. First of all, they attest to the freedom of tone of society parades, and show that théâtre de société was based on the cultural complicity that existed between the different members of the company. The combination of medical satire and erotic innuendo associated with the image of the syringe was not originally devised by the author of this parade, but draws, on the contrary, on a long and often iconographical tradition of licentiousness. The humour of the speech is also interesting: it starts by mocking the old man’s belly urges, which – in these plays at least – were a telltale sign of age; although impotence was the expected corollary of the old man’s condition, the end of the speech alludes to a form of desire that is highly unusual in a parade. The man’s barely veiled lust for sodomy and the excitement this fantasy 150

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clearly produces in him are an anomaly in fashionable parades, where anal sex does not feature at all. In contrast, parodies of tragedies could be more explicit, as in the case of those of Grandval fils. Thus, in Les deux biscuits, which has a similar premise to Le Remède à la mode, the young Abubef takes leave of the tyrannical Gaspariboul, retreating to the privy for an enema. Her lord then delivers a brief monologue: Jealous of my rivals, since she sets me apart, I would like to morph into a syringe cannon My mouth would find it most delightful To slip this broth between her two sisters.17

Twenty years after the first performance of Le Remède à la mode (1729), Les deux biscuits (1749) almost exactly repeats the scabrous motif of the syringe, even if the topos of the love story was more forcefully subverted in the earlier work. The explicit lines delivered in Les deux biscuits make the obscene character of the play perfectly clear. Whereas the parade resorts to an aposiopesis in order to leave the indecent allusion incomplete, the parody clearly states the nature of the character’s desires. Although the allusion to ‘sisters’ in the last line is not exactly obvious, Pierre Guiraud’s Dictionnaire érotique nevertheless explains that the word ‘soeurs’ designates the buttocks when it is used in the plural. The two female orifices also come to mind: in Le Remède à la mode, Cassandre, who is watching Isabelle through the keyhole as she is receiving an enema, discovers that Léandre has ‘mistaken’ one orifice for the other. The staging of these plays is also interesting and takes faecal references to a second level: the audience cannot see anything beyond a character looking at what cannot be shown. All that mediates this impossible spectacle is Cassandre, who is almost struck dumb by what he is seeing: lost for words, he can only mumble a few words about the adultery being committed behind the door. By contrast, although there is also nothing to see in Les deux biscuits, since the privy is located out of the field, as it were, the audience neverthless gets a quite detailed account of what happens as the enema is being administered. Thus, Vazipours, the heroine’s maid, exclaims: With her enemas, the Princess exasperates me, Always calling for the flute! Heavens! The remedy Goes in easily at first; everything is as I wished;

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I push softly; but an ill-fated wind rushes From her belly, and a terrible gale begins Nothing can stand in its way until it forces its way out, Pushing the cannon out and sending it flying. Unfortunately, my face was a little too close; I need not say more, you can smell the rest.18

A servant complaining of her mistress’s whims was hardly unchartered territory. However, it is rather startling that the object of her complaint is the frequency with which her mistress chooses to have enemas administered. This being said, the visual charge of this line is perhaps what is most significant: it shares all the stylistic characteristics of a hypotyposis. Still more troubling are the last words of the last line, ‘you can smell the rest’, since this suggests that the character does not merely make reference to excrement: she is pointing to its traces. In Sirop-au-cul, Grandval goes even further, achieving what might be described as a maximum degree of impropriety and indecorum. The play’s eponymous character suffers from severe bouts of diarrhoea, followed by worrying levels of constipation. The stage directions emphasise the need to stage the illness of King Sirop-au-cul in such a way that the audience can actually see its effects. Here are some of these stage directions: Sirop-au-cul shifts his backside, leans over the close-stool, the chamber-pot is carefully placed under him, and the four bespectacled physicians keep a close and attentive eye on the substance that is leaking into the pot. This creates a dramatic stage effect.19 Sirop-au-cul enters the stage with his hand on his backside as though trying to stop his bowels from opening until he can reach the chamber-pot, but nevertheless ends up soiling the theatre.20 All six of them kneel down to eat the turd that the Princess is holding in her hand; this creates a succulent stage effect, because everyone on the stage has a soiled face.21

I have quoted these stage directions in the order of their appearance in the play so as to give the reader or audience an idea of the play’s scatological build-up. The first describes a situation that was not usually shown on the stage but that was in fact perfectly acceptable: not only was it not unusual to see a monarch sitting on her or his close-stool – particularly for the king’s entourage of fashionable 152

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people, many of whom owned theatres – but the scene’s medical context legitimated its scatological content. The second stage direction is more startling. On-stage defecation would certainly have created a ‘dramatic stage effect’, to quote the text, and one wonders whether this direction was meant literally or metaphorically. How can a character enact severe diarrhoea? And what was actually shown on the stage? Although I have not found any accounts of this play by those who saw it, a note written by the author of Caquire, Vessaire – probably to be identified with a certain Bécombes (vesse meaning ‘fart’) – does provide us with a possible answer to these questions: writing on the subject of the young woman’s sudden soiling episode, he explains that this is done using ‘a phial of chocolate, which she flips over’.22 Did the actors who played in Sirop-au-cul also use cocoa as a prop? I don’t know. However, it is easy to imagine that this would have created a dramatic effect. As for the last of these stage directions, which describes an episode of coprophagia worthy of de Sade, what makes it so interesting is precisely the fact that it does not feature in a novel but in a play: rather than simply being evoked in a reader’s imagination, this act is actually shown to an audience. However, the ironic character of Grandval’s facetious allusion to the ‘succulent stage effect’ that such a peformance would create makes me wonder whether this play was actually meant to be performed on the stage. The reason for my hesitation is that this precision comes across less as a stage direction than as a quip for the amusement of the audience, or indeed the author himself. The CESAR database (Calendrier Électronique des Spectacles sous l’Ancien Régime) indicates that the play was performed in 1750 in Paris;23 however, it provides no further information, which makes it difficult to know anything about the way it was staged. As for published editions, it is unclear how many copies were printed and how they were distributed. However, a certain number of the metatextual features of Caquire – starting with its full title page, which translates as ‘Caquire, a Parody of Zaïre, Second Edition, Considerably Cacked Up and Printed in Cack at the Swallows Printing House, 1780’ – suggest that the publisher took care to make the printed text as improper as its performance. Be that as it may, the scatological theatre gave pride of place to wind and other bodily effluvia, forcing audiences to hold their noses.24 It also made excrement into something to be touched, 153

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watched and tasted. Calling on their audiences to hear, smell, touch and see them, these plays were a feast for the senses, so to speak. They achieved a sort of ‘total performance’ which shook the public by speaking directly to the senses. Fostering a new theatre: aesthetic revolt and ideological revolt Approaching the theatre as an artform capable of waking up its audiences and involving them so comprehensively was a startingly bold move. Although it is true that théâtre de société’s freedom from censorship meant that it could experiment with all sorts of  different genres, one would be hard put to describe the levels  of  violence  found in plays such as Sirop-au-cul as either ordinary or trivial. Going one step further, it seems to me that eighteenth-century scatological theatre rebels against several different things. Firstly, this form of theatre clearly rebels against the set of aesthetic rules which imposed notions of good taste and decorum on artworks. When they put dirty-looking characters on the stage, the authors of these plays distanced themselves considerably from the works that were being staged in the privileged theatres. This may seem rather odd: Grandval fils had a very successful life-long career at the Comédie-Française, for example. Indeed, he wrote Sirop-au-cul when he was at the height of his popularity: might it be that writing such a play was his way of letting off steam after the excessively regulated environment of the ThéâtreFrançais? It is hard to say. However, it is tempting to think that Grandval’s parodies of tragedies point to the erosion of eighteenthcentury theatre, and to the fact that the rules of seventeenth-century drama had run their course: audiences were no longer moved by plays that were so utterly disembodied. Similarly, it is possible to interpret the parodic impulse that lies behind the writing of Caquire as an attempt to highlight some of the weaknesses of Voltaire’s tragedy: parodies of original works often proceeded in this way, and sometimes paradoxically ended up being more orthodox than the source plays themselves. Thus Nathalie Rizzoni, who adopts a similar perspective on this question, has shown that the often foul-mouthed and scabrous character of Polichinelle can sometimes be a voice of literary contestation: repeated allusions 154

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to wind, turds and so on turn the lines that this figure from the commedia dell’arte delivers into ‘an efficient weapon in the aesthetic and – beyond this – ideological struggle that [Malézieu, a member of the Académie Française] led alongside Abbé Genest in order to preserve François Rabelais’s popular heritage … from the attacks of  an elitist clique which promoted the notion of a beau langage’.25 In other words, faecal references may be regarded as a weapon in an aesthetic struggle against an excessively solemn status quo: getting stuck in cack (or cocoa) may perhaps have been a way of going back to a time when nothing was fixed – that is, to what Michel Leiris (writing in a completely different context) called ‘the miraculous chaos of childhood’.26 Considered in his light, scatological authors seem to have sought a return to the origins of theatre, to a time when this artform was still living and full of movement and when language was still as crude as it was bold. This silent aesthetic revolution also had ideological implications, however, as Rizzoni remarks, and the question of the belly was also associated with the infighting that scatological plays dramatised. Thus, in Grandval’s Pot de chambre cassé, a character called l’Enfilé, speaking about another character (Propet) and claiming that his supporters – who are ‘odious muckrakers’27 – are heading for the palace, lauches into a speech based on lines from Morand’s Childéric, a tragedy that was part of the repertoire of the Théâtre-Français: They march there in a tumult of cries; Nothing will hinder their progress to the Palace; Your toppled Guards are handing you to their rage; They seek to avenge their slighted Master; By breaking your Pot into small pieces.28

In the same way, the diarrhoea and later the constipation of Sirop-au-cul are politically dangerous events in the eponymous tragedy: the king’s illness is the occasion of much political plotting. And when Sirop-au-cul at last produces a turd at the end of the play, this ensures that peace is restored. Putting the body of the king on the same plane as the body politic is a characterestic topos. However, can we not go a little further and argue that this motif makes a veiled allusion to what Philippe Bourdin, writing about Louix XV’s illness in 1744, calls ‘dangerous constipation’,29 155

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and which inspired Piron to write an Ode à l’occasion de la convalescence du Roi, L’Étron royal (‘Ode on the Occasion of the King’s Convalescence, The Royal Turd’)? Is it therefore not possible that faecal references may have discreetly served to challenge the fundaments – pardon the pun – of royal legitimacy? Although the writing of pamphlets differed from the writing of plays destined for the country’s aristoratic élites, this is nevertheless what the end of the last line of the play suggests when Sirop-au-cul, having just ordered his entourage of physicians and scholars to eat his turd, declares: Come Princess, let us give thanks to the Gods Whose celestial grace does all for the best. Let us go to the Altar and cement the Alliance That mercifully cured your King, And let them proclaim everywhere that the great Sirop-au-cul Who died liveth and no longer has a sore arse.30

The king’s resurrection, the (re-)affirmation that Syrop-au-cul’s reign was divinely ordained and the biblical reference to the ‘Alliance’ all unfailingly call to mind the notion of a divinely ordained absolute monarchy. Yet the last word of the play also reminds the audience that the king too has an arse. One wonders to what extent the emphasis that the play puts on the body of the monarch, which is all too human, does not to some extent challenge the notion that he is a sacred being. It is not helpful to read faecal references in théâtre de société in light of our own revulsions and cultural reflexes. Speaking of the belly and its by-products was more acceptable in the eighteenth century. This being said, it seems that the scatological theatre did include a form of provocation, in the best sense of the term. It sought to provoke a reaction and stir its audiences, inviting them to challenge assumptions and question certain uses of language and references to literary works and the State: that is to say, all the spheres of activity that were not open to challenge during the seventeenth century. As such, excremental references were part of a rebellious discourse, and the scatological theatre the sign of the rejection of a state of affairs. This chapter opened with Gilles’ question ‘Who wants my shit?’: in answer to this query, one may venture that those who enjoyed such obscenity may have sought it out knowing that there is money to be made in filth. 156

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Notes 1 A. Piron (?), Le Marchand de merde, sc. 10, in Théâtre des Boulevards ou Recueil de parades (Mahon: Imprimerie de Gilles Langlois, Enseigne de L’Étrille, 1756), vol. 1, p. 255. Although the title seems to suggest otherwise, these plays were not performed on the boulevards but in the private setting of society theatres. 2 Ibid., sc. 11, p. 258. 3 M. Poirson, ‘Économie des affects et mythocratie dans le Marchand de merde de Gueullette’, in F. Magnot-Ogilvy and M. Poirson (eds), Économies du rebut: poétique et critique du recyclage au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Desjonquères, 2012), pp. 108–33. 4 D. Gerould (ed.), Gallant and Libertine: Eighteenth-Century French Divertissements and Parades (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1983), p. 24. 5 Ibid. Marie-Emmanuelle Plagnol-Diéval, Le Théâtre de société: un autre théâtre? (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2003), p. 221. 6 B. Vessaire [Bécombes?], Caquire, parodie de Zaïre, Seconde édition, considérablement emmerdée (Chio, [Paris]: De l’Imprimerie d’Avalons, 1780). 7 Grandval fils, Sirop-au-cul, in Théâtre de campagne ou les débauches de l’esprit, new edn (London and Paris: Duchesne, 1758). 8 C. de Tressan, ‘Parade’, in D. Diderot and J. Le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné, des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 11 (Paris, 1765), p. 888. In the published article the word statariae is spelled platariae: it seems very likely that this was a publisher’s error. 9 Ibid. The ‘Confrérie de la passion’ was a Parisian guild of craftsmen and bourgeois founded in the Middle Ages, and the most famous theatre company of the time. 10 T. Folengo, Histoire maccaronique de Merlin Coccaie, prototype de Rabelais où est traité les ruses de Cingar, les tours de Boccal, les aventures de Léonard, les forces de Fracasse, les enchantements de Gelfore et Pandrague et les rencontres heureuses de Balde (Paris: A. Delahays, 1859), p. 131: ‘My muses kept my nose blocked … It is better to hear about this than to experience it.’ 11 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 221. 12 Voltaire, Zaïre, act IV, sc. 2, in The Works of Voltaire, vol. 10, trans. W. F. Fleming with notes by Tobias Smollett (New York: E. R. Dumont, 1901), http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/voltaire-the-works-of-voltaire-volx-the-dramatic-works-part-1 (last accessed 9 February 2018). 13 B. Vessaire, Caquire, act III, sc. 6, p. 43.

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14 Barthélémy-Christophe Fagan (?), Isabelle grosse par vertu, sc. 2, in Théâtre des Boulevards, vol. 2, p. 70. 15 Grandval, L’Eunuque ou la fidèle infidélité, sc. 5, in Théâtre de campagne, p. 35. 16 Salley, Le Remède à la mode, sc. 23, in Théâtre des Boulevards, vol. 2, p. 143. 17 Grandval, Les deux biscuits, act I, sc. 5, in Théâtre de campagne, p. 20. 18 Ibid., act I, sc. 6, p. 21. 19 Grandval, Sirop-au-cul, act I, sc. 1, in Théâtre de Campagne, p. 6. 20 Ibid., act II, sc.1, p. 16. 21 Ibid., act III, sc. 11, p. 48. 22 B. Vessaire, Caquire, note on p. 51. 23 CESAR database, www.cesar.org.uk/cesar2/ (last accessed 9 February 2018). 24 Ibid., stage direction, p. 48: ‘Foirine’ (‘holding her nose’). 25 N. Rizzoni, ‘Polichinelle chez la duchesse ou l’ombre de la Foire à la cour de Sceaux’, in M.-E. Plagnol-Diéval and D. Quéro (eds), Les théâtres de société au XVIIIe siècle, Études sur le 18e Siècle, 33 (Brussels: Éditions de l’Université de Bruxelles, ‘2005), p. 31. 26 M. Leiris, Manhood: A Journey from Childhood into the Fierce Order of Virility, trans. Richard Howard (London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 15. 27 Grandval, Le Pot de chambre cassé, sc. 8, in Théâtre de campagne, p. 35. 28 Ibid. 29 P. Bourdin, ‘Le Son du corps, ou l’âme en pet’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 361 (2010), ‘Entre scatologie et fantasmes sexuels, le cul et son imaginaire’, http://journals.openedition.org/ ahrf/11638 (last accessed February 9, 2018). 30 Grandval, Sirop-au-cul, act III, sc. 11, in Théâtre de campagne, p. 48.

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8  the legibility of the bowels: Lichtenberg’s excretory vision of hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress Anthony Mahler

Why Strephon, will you tell the rest? And must you needs describe the Chest? That careless Wench! No Creature warn her, To move it out from yonder Corner. [Swift], The Lady’s Dressing-Room1

At bottom centre in the penultimate plate of William Hogarth’s etched series A Harlot’s Progress, to the right of some writing and eating utensils that have fallen off a small tipped-over table, lies a piece of printed paper (see Figure 8.1). Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, whose renowned commentaries of Hogarth are the subject of this essay, identifies the paper as an ‘advertisement’ for anodyne necklaces, a medical panacea of the time.2 ‘The necklace itself is depicted on the bulletin’ and ‘the words anodyne, from right to left, and necklaces, from left to right, appear above and below’ the picture, although ‘necklaces’ is barely legible and not simply ‘difficult to read in the original’ as Lichtenberg suggests. The two words ‘are supposed to be curved [gekrümmt] around the form of the necklace’ – yet another claim hardly apparent in Hogarth’s print – ‘because they actually compose a circumscription [Umschrift], a kind of lace around the necklace, and are there really to render for the venture the service that the venture itself merely promises to the patient.’3 While the charlatan trinket falsely promises to heal the consumer, the inscription truly grants the trinket itself commercial vitality. 159

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Figure 8.1 Detail of the advertisement in Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen’s etched copies of William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress, plate 5. All the images in this chapter are reproductions from G. C. Lichtenbergs ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche mit verkleinerten aber vollständigen Copien derselben von Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen (Göttingen: Joh. Christ. Dietrich, 1794–1835), plates 7–12

Lichtenberg’s description of the discarded sheet does more than just explain the plate’s own message of medical satire: his remarks transform the advertisement into an allegorical emblem for the relation between his textual commentaries and Hogarth’s printed images. Just as the words of the advertisement give life to the venture, Lichtenberg’s commentaries seek, as he asserts in his programmatic preface, to revitalise the ‘perishable parts’ of Hogarth’s otherwise immortal prints for a geographically and historically distanced viewership. To make the prints ‘last at least a few years longer’,4 Lichtenberg’s commentaries must do more than just ‘state in brief and plain words what the things mean’; the commentaries must also be ‘thoroughly enlivened by a certain mood … and only in this mood is one capable of the great mental pleasure that these sheets can provide’. The commentaries seek to create this mood by saying ‘what the artist once drew … as he maybe would have said it, if he had been able to wield the pen the same way he wields the etching needle’.5 160

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‘Curved’ (gekrümmt) around the image of the necklace like the circumscription on a coin, the text of the advertisement emulates the necklace’s serpentine form just as Lichtenberg’s commentaries emulate the mood of the engravings. And this serpentine form is that of Hogarth’s line of beauty – in the eighteenth-century German translation of Hogarth, the ‘curved’ or ‘crooked line’ (krumme Linie) – which manifests his aesthetic values of variety, intricacy and liveliness.6 Thus, like the ‘curved’ (gekrümmt) text of the advertisement, Lichtenberg’s witty commentaries are themselves stylistically gekrümmt (a common descriptor of satirical prose in the eighteenth century) since they meander through digressions, figurative analogies, hypotheticals and the motifs of grotesque satire. It is only because his style is composed of such serpentine Umschrift (or periphrasis) that it is also an Umschrift or transcription of the mood in Hogarth’s engravings. For Umschrift also denotes a phonetic or orthographic transcription; an Umschrift renders the speech sounds or letters of one language into the alphabet of another. Composing an Umschrift of Hogarth’s images into text thus necessitates, for Lichtenberg, the use of Umschrift, of witty, periphrastic and grotesque prose. It requires such antics as co-opting an object from an image (the advertisement) and using it as a metaphor for the hermeneutic method applied to that very image.7 In this essay, I will argue that scatology is one of the grotesque motifs with which Lichtenberg composes such an Umschrift of the prints. If one is familiar with A Harlot’s Progress, this thesis may surprise. While the prints are manifestly grotesque – they are, after all, scenes from the life a London prostitute – scatological motifs are, at first glance, absent from them. Thus, by tendentiously (and with full self-awareness) projecting chamber pots and enemas into the images with an excretory vision that is no less obsessive than his ability to identify whores and gallows throughout Hogarth, Lichtenberg exposes a hidden motif that the viewer ‘would have … overlooked’.8 But Lichtenberg’s own use of grotesque and, especially, scatological motifs has also largely been overlooked by the scholarship. Indeed, there is not a single study focused on scatology in Lichtenberg, despite the fact that it plays a significant role in his commentaries on Hogarth and in his writing more generally. One of the reasons why his use of grotesque motifs has been neglected is that he employs a host of techniques that both conceal and reveal these motifs: tropes, analogies, double 161

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entendres, irony, cross-references and structural readings of the images are just some his ways to write around (umschreiben) the grotesque so that it is not immediately apparent but is still omnipresent barely beneath the surface. Many of these techniques belong, just like the motifs they conceal, to the tradition of grotesque satire. And, as I will show, the significance of the excretory accoutrements that Lichtenberg projects into Hogarth’s prints is that they, like the Umschrift on the advertisement for anodyne necklaces, become allegories for his hermeneutic method. In fact, they become allegorical for the very techniques that conceal and reveal them: chamber pots represent Lichtenberg’s structural readings of the prints; enemas stand for his Cynic principle of transposition; and excrement itself comes to refer to all the ways in which he projects things into the images using witty analogies and tropes. Before proceeding, a brief introduction to Lichtenberg, his commentaries of Hogarth and A Harlot’s Progress is in order.9 Lichtenberg spent most of his life in the university town of Göttingen, one of the academic centres of the late German Enlightenment. There he held a professorship in experimental physics and enjoyed success as a scientist, though not the fame he had hoped to achieve from a great invention or discovery. He was best known for his lectures, which he animated by conducting experiments in the classroom, a pedagogic innovation in his day that attracted large audiences. In addition to being a leading scientist, Lichtenberg was also an anglophile and tireless writer. His posthumously published notebooks, often called (by himself and in most current editions) Sudelbücher (‘wastebooks’), comprise well over 10,000 entries. Excerpts from these notebooks – which exhibit a witty, aphoristic style – belong to the canon of eighteenth-century German literature. During his lifetime, however, when Lichtenberg had no intention of publishing the notebooks as such, his name as a writer was associated with editorial activities and numerous essayistic and satirical pieces, especially his biting critiques of Johann Caspar Lavater’s physiognomy and his commentaries on Hogarth. From 1784 to 1796 he published brief interpretations of numerous prints by Hogarth in the ephemeral Göttinger Taschen Kalender (‘Göttingen Pocket Calendar’). Then, thanks to the success of these short interpretations, he composed and published, from 1794 until his death, ‘Lieferungen’ (instalments) of extended stand-alone commentaries under the title G. C. Lichtenbergs ausführliche Erklärung 162

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der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche (‘G. C. Lichtenberg’s Detailed Explanation of the Hogarthian Copper Engravings’). Lichtenberg engages with Hogarth’s six-plate series A Harlot’s Progress both in the first interpretations that appeared in the Göttinger Taschen Kalender and then later in the second instalment of the extended commentaries, which I treat here. As Lichtenberg notes, the series does not narrate ‘the entire life’ of the harlot Molly; rather, each print depicts a ‘scene from the period in her life’ in which she rapidly falls from being the chaste daughter of a rural clergyman to the corpse of a London prostitute who has died from venereal disease.10 These six scenes can be briefly summarised. In plate 1, Molly arrives in London and is immediately solicited to become a prostitute; plate 2 depicts the life of luxury she enjoys as the mistress of a wealthy Jewish merchant; in plate 3, she has become a common prostitute; plate 4 shows her serving a prison sentence; in plate 5, she is out of prison but on the verge of death from syphilis; and, finally, in plate 6, a party of London prostitutes has assembled at her wake.11 The hermeneutics of hypochondria Before he interprets each plate in order, Lichtenberg introduces his general understanding of the plates in a preface, which begins with an apology for the fact that this second commentary of Hogarth has appeared later than was ‘prognosticated’ in the ‘first instalment’. The reason for the delay was twofold: ‘a sickness that did not stomach engraving and a sickliness that did not stomach descriptions, at least not descriptions of works of this sort’. With the words ‘sickness’ and ‘sickliness’, Lichtenberg differentiates between the concrete, temporary disease that befell his etcher, Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen, and his own enduring proclivity to sickliness, his hypochondria. In contrast to Riepenhausen’s disease – whose remission is confirmed when one compares the etcher’s ‘copies side by side with [Hogarth’s] originals’ – the commentator’s hypochondria did not and never will entirely subside, meaning that it has inevitably tainted the commentaries: ‘But the sickliness! – One will find it, we fear, and perhaps justifiably, everywhere.’12 Lichtenberg thereby suggests that he has interpreted the images with what he calls, in a laconic notebook entry, ‘the hermeneutics of hypochondria’.13 Indeed, hypochondria consists in the 163

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self-deprecating realisation that one might be interpreting hypochondriacally. It is, by definition, the fear of finding, ‘perhaps justifiably’, ‘sickliness … everywhere’. And a reviewer of the commentaries, to whom Lichtenberg sends a copy before publication, responds by noting this very paradox: namely, that believing one has hypochondria means one has it: ‘Not your commentary, but rather your apologies, your much too modest self-perception, betray sickliness.’14 In his notebooks, Lichtenberg understands hypochondria as a pathology of interpretation, as the fearful imagination of causes and symptoms of disease where there are none. He describes his hypochondria as ‘the habit of sucking the greatest amount of poison for my own use out of any incident in life’; as a disease-finding ‘microscope’ that gives the hypochondriac ‘the satisfaction of being ill every day’; and as a ‘sickly sensitivity’ that allows one to make ‘subtle observations’ about the world, which are, however, often false, useless or even harmful.15 The ‘hermeneutics of hypochondria’ is thus an attention to meaningless ‘incidents’ that should just be disregarded as waste: waste not only in a metaphorical sense but also meaning literal human excrement, for hypochondriacs were obsessed with examining their feaces.16 They knew, as Lichtenberg writes, that the intestine is the ‘most important channel’ for our ‘subsistence’,17 not least because the intestinal disorders that arose from overeating were understood as the physiological counterpart to the psychological symptoms of their illness: ‘Transpiration, urination and bowel movements are the three general ways through which the emptying of our body occurs. The more well ordered these are, the more one will be free from hypochondriacal attacks.’18 Hypochondria was thought to be aggravated, in turn, by excessive intake: by eating more food than the intestine could digest or by trying to interpret more phenomena than the mind could order. Indeed, addiction to reading (Lesesucht) was viewed as a possible cause.19 Lichtenberg is concerned that hypochondria rears its ugly head in the commentaries when his excessive ‘description of details [Nebendinge]’ wilfully digresses into discussions of excretory accoutrements that are not to be found in the prints themselves. With regard to the objective lack of the motif in the prints, he writes: ‘Among all of his [Hogarth’s] works, these six pages are exactly those that contain the smallest quantity of actual so-called laughtermaking matter.’20 Lichtenberg’s worry, however, is not simply that 164

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he sees faeces or enemas that are not there; such overinterpretation can be perfectly legitimate or even necessary to achieve the stated aims of his commentaries.21 Nor is it a problem that his hermeneutic attention is focused on Nebendinge (literally, para-things or things-next-to), that is, the images’ excess or waste. On the contrary, Hogarth’s images invite such attention. His trepidation is due, rather, to the concern that his excretory vision has exceeded the limits of projecting into the Nebendinge, leading to the production of a parasitical noise (a parasite is literally the person who eats beside or next to) that drowns out the articulation of the image’s true nature.22 In other words, overinterpretation is acceptable as long as the interpreter has ‘not thought away or explained away something that is there’.23 More specifically, scatology becomes detrimentally excessive when, instead of provoking gay laughter and critical attention, it seems anxiously and artificially forced and so stifles the mood of the original work.24 Lichtenberg worries, in other words, that his humour has lost the naturalness of grotesque glee and has become a case of what was known as the civilised, and therefore artificial, disease: hypochondria.25 ‘Instead of smiling nonchalantly, he [the commentator] has stimulated himself into a very unnatural merriness through tickling.’ If his scatological humour is hypochondriacally forced, then it defies and defiles the naturalness he attributes to Hogarth’s prints as one of their defining characteristics. With these remarks, I do not intend to offer a psychoanalytical interpretation that pathologises Lichtenberg’s use of scatological motifs. Lichtenberg’s scatology should be first understood, just as scholars have shown in the case of scatology in Hogarth and the Enlightenment more generally, as contributing to the comical and critical aims of the satirical tradition.26 When I speak of Lichtenberg’s hypochondria, I am referring, rather, to his own self-diagnosis, which then actually becomes one of the targets of his scatological satire. In other words, Lichtenberg sees his hypochondriacal overinterpretation of the prints as pathological and uses scatological motifs to critique that obsession humorously. The chamber pots and enemas that he (sometimes erroneously) finds in the images come to be amusing and self-reflective metaphors for the dangers of interpretive excess. The scatological motifs are not just a product of Lichtenberg’s hypochondria; they are also a humorous and self-critical therapy for it: perhaps invoking the Cynic tradition of grotesque satire, Lichtenberg’s scatological motifs confront the 165

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interpreter with his humanity and make him reflect on the limits of human interpretation.27 Chamber pots (cross-references, structural interpretation, periphrasis) After introducing his fear that, in an anxious attempt to induce laughter, he has projected excretory objects into the images, Lichtenberg continues: the commentator ‘will not indicate the passages in which he particularly fears this to be true. The tasteful reader will easily find them by himself … For refuse is easily found as soon as one obiter knows where some is lying.’28 With the Latin obiter, meaning ‘approximately’ or ‘roughly’, this sentence from the preface invites the hypochondriacal projection of excrement into the sentence itself. Lichtenberg achieves this effect by deploying foreign words and neologisms to draw witty connections between moments in the commentaries. And some of these cross-references guide the reader to obscene interpretations. Upon a first reading, ‘refuse’ seems to be simply used in this passage from the preface as a metaphor for his excessive digressions into details. But when the reader begins searching obiter for the ‘refuse’ of the commentaries, her or  his eye is immediately drawn not to refuse but to the only other appearance of obiter: it is employed in the interpretation of the fifth plate to refer to a space where soiled objects are placed so that one is ‘roughly’ aware of their soiled state.29 Just as this spatial sorting allows the ‘approximate’ separation of dirtied and clean objects, obiter invokes the statement from the preface to mark the passage as a moment of hypochondriacal interpretation, as an example of Lichtenberg’s excretory vision. The double meaning of ‘refuse’ in the preface, as both the excess of interpretation and the literal excrement interpreted, is thus made apparent through the later use of obiter, to which the sentence in the preface refers. This instance of Lichtenberg’s employment of cross-referencing to reveal his excretory vision is more comprehensible if we familiarise ourselves with the fifth plate (see Figure 8.3 below). About to die from syphilis, the harlot Molly is seated in the upper righthand corner. Her maid, who stands next to her, is attempting in vain to gain control over a disastrous situation, while Molly’s son distractedly cooks his dinner. In the upper left, two charlatan 166

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doctors are fighting over the proper treatment, and a woman in the bottom left corner – who, Lichtenberg speculates, is probably the landlady – is already scavenging through Molly’s belongings to find out whether Molly will posthumously be able to pay her overdue rent. These three scenes provide the primary action of the image, but it is in the bottom right corner that Lichtenberg overindulges. Lichtenberg calls the corner and its objects ‘suspicious’, ‘dangerous’, ‘inexhaustible’ and above all ‘ambiguous’.30 It is a corner like the one in my epigraph from Jonathan Swift’s The Lady’s DressingRoom in which Strephon finds Celia’s chamber pot. In short, it is in this corner that Lichtenberg discovers a profusion of containers for Molly’s waste. At first sight, the corner seems to be filled with kitchenware and fireplace tools: various pots and pans, a shovel and coal, a cup, a pipe, a piece of paper and a large cylindrical trunk (see Figure 8.2). But Lichtenberg advances ‘a different interpretation, and this one appears to be almost, almost the true one, and that is exactly what makes this corner – so dangerous.’31 He begins with the large trunk, which is ‘more a chair than a trunk, or at least, or even better, more a trunk for sitting than a chair for containing something.’32 It is a ‘desobligeant (named so, like Yorick’s carriage, because of its single-seatedness) … which got its name from the goddess of the night.’33 With this periphrasis, Lichtenberg means to say that the object is a Nachttopf (literally, a night pot), or, as a friend identifies it for him in a letter, a close-stool: a trunk that held a chamber pot and could be sat on while relieving one’s bowels at night.34 ‘The chair presides’ over the corner, making the corner a ‘département’ for dirtied objects. By ‘shoving … in a hurry’ any dirtied object ‘a few hands past the border’ into the close-stool’s jurisdiction, one ‘at least’ knows ‘obiter where one’ is.35 Alongside the close-stool are a plethora of receptacles for human excretions and secretions. The corner thus presents a kind of excessive enumeration of chamber pots, which is a traditional poetic technique of the grotesque.36 To begin with, the ‘small metal vessel with a handle’ on top of the close-stool is ‘clearly’ a ‘little Dutch spittoon (quispedorje)’. ‘Directly behind it’ is what appears to be ‘a bowl for butter or lard’, but Lichtenberg asks, ‘what if … the thing … were simply something bigger of the same species, for example an archi-quispedorje’, a gigantic vat of human spit? And what if the ‘earthenware pan covered with a tin plate’ 167

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Figure 8.2 The ambiguous corner with chamber pots in plate 5

that rests on the ground and appears to be ‘a frying pan’ were ‘a mere companion of the chair in the same family?’, that is, a relative of the  close-stool?37 This proliferation of chamber pots seems ‘an extreme conjecture’ of the hermeneutics of hypochondria, an example of the ‘metastasis of his poetic gift’, his ability to see relations between phenomena, which has spread cancerously throughout his entire interpretation of the corner.38 ‘But, judging by a certain feeling, it [the alternative interpretation] is so much 168

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in Hogarth’s spirit that we are not possibly able to hold back the reasons for it from the reader.’39 It is by virtue of the structure of the whole image that Lichtenberg justifies interpreting the bottom right corner as the space where one obiter knows that every receptacle is full of human waste. That is, the meaning of this corner must be understood in relation to the other corners through something like a semiotic square (see Figure 8.3). The relations between the quadrants of this square are defined by analogies, oppositions and temporal metonymies – in short, the logic of hypochondria. First ‘we drew a line of comparison from the chair of the candidate for decay [Molly] to the travel luggage’, a ‘scene of death … admirably contrasted with a small scene of appropriation’.40 Not only do these two scenes contrast as one of loss and one of acquisition, but Lichtenberg notes that they are also related by temporal metonymies.41 It is the costume of the prostitute in the travel luggage – metonymies of her ‘hackabout’ activities (labelled P1 in Fig. 8.3) – that led to her current state (P2);  and the appropriation of her clothes is a metonymy for her

Figure 8.3 Lichtenberg’s structural interpretation of plate 5

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future death (P3). The line of comparison thus runs back and forth across a temporal trope from past to present to future. Now, if we apply the same comparative logic to the other two corners, the structure of the whole image comes into view. Here we draw ‘a line of comparison’ ‘from the chair of the candidate for the gallows [the fat physician] to a different chest’, ‘from the hangable quack and his colleague to this suspicious corner’. Another temporal metonymy provides the ‘reasons for comparison’:42 in the upper left are the charlatan doctors, who hold an unopened vial of ‘tooth powder made from human skulls’ and a canister of ‘edible deer pellets’, which, Lichtenberg claims facetiously, ‘would have been able to save’ Molly but ‘are still unopened’.43 Then in the lower right are ‘the old medications with their consequences … in a word: this corner contains in diverse forms the templates in which those medications … were violently overdone at a loss’.44 So on the left are the deceptive arts of medical quackery and prostitution; and on the right, the natural consequences of those perverted human arts; above, the human actors, and below, the equipment of their respective lines of work. Within this structure, it is apparent that the bottom right quadrant must contain the tools of medicine and the natural repercussions of the physicians’ art, the middle step (labelled E2 in Figure 8.3) between the previous cures (E1) and the current fight over a final one (E3). Furthermore, with the phrase ‘at a loss’ (‘mit Verlust’) and its strong mercantile connotation, Lichtenberg compares the organisation of the image with the organisation of a merchant’s journal in the system of double-entry book-keeping, which was central to his conception of note-taking in the Sudelbücher.45 The merchant’s journal has two columns, one of debit and one of credit. Similarly, the image can be divided into a left-hand column of ‘appropriation’ and a right-hand column of ‘death’ and ‘loss’. On the left, the landlady prematurely takes possession of Molly’s belongings to settle her past debts, her ‘rent and expenses’.46 In addition, the two charlatan doctors, also on the left, await a fee, and, as the ‘seconds of death’ in this duel with disease, they also expect Molly to pay with her life.47 Consequently, on the right are Molly’s deficits in the form of her dying body and her innards, which were purged ‘at a loss’. ‘Thus, to read absolutely everything from here (in one corner) that happens there (in the other one) requires’, as Lichtenberg states with regard to the fourth plate of Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, 170

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‘nothing more than eyes and a small knowledge of plus and minus, black and white’.48 Through this organisation, the characters in the image (and the viewer) ‘roughly’ know that anything in the bottom right corner of the room has been soiled by excessive purgation, while the reader knows, because of the obiter, that the commentary of this corner has been dirtied with hypochondriacal interpretation. That hypochondriacal interpretation also produces excrement is reinforced here by a double entendre that Lichtenberg uses to introduce his indecent subject matter: ‘So as not to stray from the matter [of interpreting this corner] so very quickly, which is dangerous in some kinds of business, and would be especially [namentlich] so in ours …’.49 This clause launches an extended digression into the classification of chairs to qualify and delay the impending grotesque discussion of chamber pots. The danger with this business of interpretation is that if one moves too quickly to it, then the reader may be offended by the directness with which the vulgar subject is broached, a directness that also destroys the ambiguity, variety and intricacy of Hogarth’s prints. Instead, the digression preserves that ambiguity by offering a rich, periphrastic background for the identification. Yet the sentence that introduces the delay of the debased topic also latently refers to it ‘by name’ (namentlich): it is the ‘business’ of excretion. And this business should also not be rushed, at least not if one wants to interpret associatively like Lichtenberg, since constipation was a symptom of the humoral dryness that defined a strong memory and associative capacity. For example, the prominent ‘philosophical physician’ Johann Georg Zimmermann laments, ‘Oh, how quiet all jealousy and all envy for people that have made their fortune in the world through any kind of ingenuity would become if it were known … how these supposedly fortunate people feel when they sit on the close-stool for hours in vain!’50 And Lichtenberg writes in his notebooks, ‘An honest man must not associate with people who, so as to amuse him, think themselves away [sich abdenken] between the inkwell and the sandbox so much that, when they die, they have no more fluids in them than a violin.’51 That writing, thinking and wit dry the body and depend on a dry body is also evoked in the comments on this plate when Lichtenberg refers to the ink that has spilled from the table as ‘black bile’.52 Black bile is the cold, dry humour that dominates the body of the witty melancholic; ink and black 171

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bile are thus the media of Lichtenberg’s and Hogarth’s wit, their capacity to draw connections between unrelated things. The business of commenting on nature’s business should thus not be done too quickly  so as to conceal sordid and offensive language; and nature’s  business should not be performed too quickly because a dry body and the ensuing constipation are the physiological preconditions for the witty euphemisms and digressions that permit one to speak around the business of nature. So instead of taking care of business, Lichtenberg’s digressive periphrases (Umschriften) around lurid passages are ‘a wise (sit venia verbo [pardon my French]) beating around the bush’, ‘a looking away with chosen direction’.53 Enemas and anal swabs (irony, transposition) The cause of the vast quantity of human waste filling the receptacles in the ‘dangerous corner’ was a purgative cure that included saliva stimulants and laxatives, emetics and enemas. The remnants of the purgative tools and medications are found in the corner, except for the ‘bulb of familiar form that stands above the fireplace’ but ‘actually belongs in this corner’ because of its purpose. The rectal bulb hangs above the mantelpiece because that is ‘the first place one looks’ in the room; it is where one finds the ‘ruling gods of the dwelling’ (see Figure 8.4), which include, most significantly, ‘the bird Ibis with its famous beak’ – ‘known to be the first ἐάυτον χλυστηρουμενος scil. ὸrniς [heauton timorumenos, a bird]’, the first self-tormentor, that is, self-enemiser – ‘in the form of an air-pump.’54 In addition to Menander’s lost comedy Heauton timorumenos (‘The Self-Tormentor’) and Terence’s Latin play of the same name, Lichtenberg is alluding here to Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis historia (‘Natural History’), which describes the Ibis’s mastery of medicine in its ability to use ‘the curve of its beak to purge itself through the part by which it is most conducive to health for the heavy residue of foodstuffs to be excreted.’55 Lichtenberg is thus casting the enema as the idol of the hypochondriac and perhaps, too, of his epoch, the ‘purged century’.56 Indeed, the Ibis still sometimes adorned the title pages of eighteenth-century medical publications, evidencing the continued medical imperative to purge the body. As we will see, Lichtenberg’s pen makes this plate a purged image. 172

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Figure 8.4 The purgative idols of the hypochondriac from plate 5

Lichtenberg ironically suggests that ‘with the deliberate elevation of this tool [the balloon enema] and the pouring forth of the connected dishware, Hogarth wanted to hint that the physicians should have ideally pursued the vomitive and lavement [enema] path. … But if he means to mock with them, then he does so very unjustly.’ Of course Hogarth intends to satirically mock the various treatments found in the print; Lichtenberg is well aware of this, and his dispute is actually an ironic affirmation of Hogarth’s intent, just as his suggestion that the doctors should have tried the purgative cure contradicts the fact that they obviously did, as he has just elucidated at length and confirms again a few sentences later: ‘That the girl died because of this [the purgative cure], what does that matter?’57 Such contradictory irony can make Lichtenberg’s commentaries at times confusing, but it is also a technique of their humorous language games. Along with the about-faces typical of aphorisms, irony belongs to Lichtenberg’s transpositional principle of purgation. Lichtenberg articulates this principle in the commentary on the fifth plate, directly before the denial that the physicians applied 173

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a purgative treatment. On the contrary, they purged Molly too aggressively, first using the mercury pills as the substance of the retort, and then with the retort itself. They [the doctors and maid] grabbed what was immediately at hand and treated one moment at end A [the mouth, with laxatives and saliva stimulants] and the next at B [the anus, with enemas] and, in a hurry, were content to remove temporarily the receptacles from their duty in the kitchen by shoving them a few hands past the border into that département where the chair presides.58

The pipe, which Lichtenberg refers to as a ‘retort’ because of the shape it shares with the laboratory glassware, is first used to smoke the mercury pills on the close-stool, and then it is employed itself as an enema.59 An object intended for use by the mouth is applied to the buttocks; the pots and pan from the kitchen follow suit. Lichtenberg calls this transpositional principle of purgation ‘geometrical’ because the ‘elegance’ with which its ‘advisability’ can be proved makes mocking it unwarranted. The proof is a famous one found in ‘a Voyage to the Houyhnhnms’ by ‘Dr. Swift, a wellknown physician for ill souls and governments’, which Lichtenberg summarises as follows: Since … all people who have become sick ate or took in until the moment when they became sick, in dubio [in case of any doubt], with the mouth, which we will call A, and took care of output with the opposite end B: so it is possible that, rebus sic manentibus [assuming that these conditions continue], disorder can be navigated and health can be restored. Again as clear as day. What then is to be done? This question answers itself: one must begin to eat with end B and transpose output onto end A, id est [that is to say], use lavements [enemas] and vomit. Nature stumbles, comes to its senses, turns around, and so what is required happens.60

The transpositional principle of purgation – that the anus momentarily becomes a point of input and the mouth one of output – belongs to the upside-down world of the carnivalesque as analysed by Mikhail Bakhtin.61 Lichtenberg’s commentary on A Harlot’s Progress is full of carnivalesque motifs: in addition to excrement, the commentaries feature drinking, the devilish figure of Herr Urian, and the wandering ‘Harlequin’ physicians, to name just a few of such motifs.62 And, in an excerpt from a popular medical journal, Lichtenberg ascribes the operation of transposition to 174

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the philosophical father of the carnivalesque: Diogenes the Cynic. ‘Diogenes is said to have ordered at his death … to be buried such that his head would go downward and his legs upward … since a huge transformation occurs when the highest is turned into the lowest.’63 In the upside-down world of Lichtenberg’s commentaries, instruments change their function, input and output switch between mouth and anus, and geometric proofs and Latin expressions become his disguised Billingsgate language, the grotesque language of carnival and the marketplace. In this respect, Lichtenberg follows Molly and speaks with a forked or double tongue: in the second plate, Molly speaks with the ‘double tongue’ of the devil so as to help hide the exit of another lover from her Jewish benefactor: ‘The mouth becomes double tongued – bilinguis – Billings – Billings gate – Billingsgate-language. Ten swearwords in one second.’64 As we have seen, unearthing and following the great abundance of Lichtenberg’s grotesque motifs also demands translating from ‘double tongued’ to ‘Billingsgate-language’ about ten times in one paragraph. Lichtenberg’s transpositional principle represents the way in which he hides these base motifs behind seemingly modest language. Another such transposition occurs in the commentary on the fourth plate, where one sees a ‘well-known post’ with the ‘title: the wages of idleness’ (see Figure 8.5). Directly below this post that ‘forbids rest’, a small female inmate ‘rests’: Not only that, but also, because her northern part is so much bent forward, her southern has turned itself evidently strongly against the law, which, I believe, is recognised as a sign of lack of respect among all peoples. For one knows that this end occasionally takes a beating, but that anyone ever read written warnings with it, of that one cannot easily find an example.65

But Lichtenberg’s commentaries are exactly such a rare example of reading with the other end. Indeed, to follow Lichtenberg’s commentaries requires such reading. Bear with me. First of all, the transpositional principle of the commentaries, in which the directions of input and output are switched, also demands that the commentary be read backwards: many of Lichtenberg’s obscene jokes are disguised, as we have seen, by words whose sordid meanings become clear only at a later point. For example, on the floor next to 175

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Figure 8.5 A grotesque display of disrespect to the law from plate 4

the advertisement for anodyne necklaces lies a feather pen, ‘saved from ruination’ by the ‘collar’ of the broken inkwell. But even ‘assuming that it is trampled in the tumult … it still has another end for another département. How beautiful it is, when one has a wiping end in addition to a writing end. If you can no longer teach as a writer, stilum vertas [turn your stylus around], then you can still sweep.’66 On first reading, the French département seems to refer to the purpose of the ‘wiping end’ in erasing poor compositions, a purpose Lichtenberg goes on to praise in the passage. But since the French département invokes, as we saw with obiter, the other grotesque uses of département in the commentary – including one on this same print where département refers to the jurisdiction of the close-stool – it also indicates that the feather of the pen serves as an anal swab.67 176

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And the quotation from a Horatian satire, ‘stilum vertas’ – the imperative to turn the stylus around and erase with its metal end so as to improve what you have written – also quickly leads the reader to grotesque motifs. For ‘Hogarth has largely erased away’ the word ‘cunnus’ on plate 5: ‘We don’t want to restore it again, understandably; rather we just want to note for the lover – of illegible inscriptions that they can find the Latin translation of it in the third satire of Horace’s first book.’68 Gerhart von Graevenitz has interpreted the erasure of this word as the recovery of infinite interpretability from the corrupting ‘fall’ of a single interpretation. The fall into a definitive interpretation, as well as the corruption of Molly, is represented by the fallen inkpot in plate 5 and foreshadowed by the ‘ominous’ pots about to fall in plate 1.69 But Graevenitz does not observe that the ominous pots in plate 1 are chamber pots being aired out for the day: ‘On the balcony, which should be noted in passing … one sees two upside-down pots. This seems to be their usual residence during the day so that they can draw some fresh air there; at night they dutifully return to the service of their families.’70 This passage and the one on the ‘wiping end’ of the pen thus present two methods for cleaning up a dirty, hypochondriacal interpretation. First, one can air out the pots, which is supposed to counteract the process of putrefaction referenced throughout the commentaries as the danger posed by time to works of genius (which Lichtenberg hopes to counteract with his commentaries) and to the harlot herself, who ‘rots’ over the course of the images.71 With regard to hypochondriacial interpretation, I take this airing-out to consist in submitting an interpretation to public discourse, for instance by discussing it with friends, as Lichtenberg does so often in his letters. It is dialogical discourse that keeps a text, thought, or image alive, revitalises it, and prevents the rotting of hypochondriacal interpretation. And a lack of this kind of airing-out or public support is certainly what, in Lichtenberg’s view, leads to Molly’s demise. In addition to airingout the chamber pots, one can also clean up the mess of interpretation by sweeping it up when the chamber pots fall, which would require using the ‘wiping end’ of the pen as a swab for excrement. And if the fall of the chamber pots represents the corruption of a dirty, hypochondriacal interpretation, then sweeping up the mess entails concealing that interpretation. More concretely, this means using the principle of transposition to erase the grotesque language 177

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of the commentaries: one turns the stylus around, scratches out the blatant vulgarities – represented by the scratched-out ‘cunnus’ – and then conceals them with all the techniques we have traced. But that is not the last word on the anal swab: the ‘sweeping’ action of the pen also refers the reader back to the ‘education-broom’ in the third plate (see Figure 8.6). After equating presbyopia (the myopia of old men) with the hypocritical moral blindness of presbyters (church elders), Lichtenberg wishes for ‘glasses for the other five senses’ and wonders if the broom is a pair of ‘glasses – for presbyters … that is not applied to the nose’ but rather to the buttocks of the prostitute’s elderly clients.72 (This is why, when Lichtenberg looks at the nose of the procuress in the first plate, he ‘cannot possibly resist thinking of the necessity for glasses [Brillenzwang] and snuff tobacco’, the second of which is a reference to the pipe in plate 5 that is used to smoke

Figure 8.6 Glasses for elderly men with erectile dysfunction from plate 3

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mercury in an attempt to cure Molly’s syphilis and then to purge her as an enema.73) Like these church elders with their flagellatory broom, the prison guard or ‘torturer’ in plate 4 wields his switch in a similar fashion to his likeness, Mr Thwackum, the scholarly tutor and enthusiastic divine of Tom Jones, who performs his duties in the ‘département of religion’.74 And, in one of his letters about the commentaries, it is this same prison guard whom Lichtenberg imagines ‘standing behind  him with the bull’s pizzle [Ochsenziemer]’, whipping up his  excretory and erotic vision of these plates.75 Thus, for Lichtenberg, the ‘southern’ end is a ‘reading end’: as it ‘takes a beating’ from the whip, is ‘tormented’ by purgation, and wiped up with the feather of the pen, it becomes the hypochondriacal lens through which Lichtenberg interprets Hogarth. But ‘I believe I have thus done my duty; I mean, I have commented so long on a passage of my author that I no longer understand myself, and this also – is everything that an honest commentator can do.’76 Interpretive excess In the final pages of his commentary to the third plate, which depicts Molly as a common whore on the verge of being arrested, Lichtenberg uses an interpretation of one of his precursors as an opportunity for an excursus on hermeneutic excess. The image depicts a canopy bed with a knot tied into the bed curtain. In this knot, the commentator John Ireland saw a face with similarities to Molly’s own. With its witty supposition of similarity between the forms of two objects, Lichtenberg finds this conjecture one of Ireland’s most ‘Hogarthian’. Nonetheless, Lichtenberg leaves pointedly ‘undecided’ whether or not the curtain resembles the face. He immediately continues, ‘we cannot, however, refrain ourselves at this opportunity from closing with a small observation about the little golden saying: Ne quid nimis.’77 One of the three Delphic maxims carved into the Temple of Apollo, ‘Do nothing in excess’, demands, in this situation, a limit to interpretative wit, a dietetic imperative that Lichtenberg is about to break with a digression that elucidates that very imperative itself. In his commentary on A Harlot’s Progress, haruspicy (divination from the intestines) and tasseography (divination from the grounds of coffee) are paradigmatic cases of such hermeneutic excess. For 179

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example, the danger Hogarth’s wit poses to the interpreter’s otherwise ‘healthy eyes … recalls the prophetesses of modern times who tease out the fate of listening girls from the coffee grounds in a cup’.78 While he repeatedly returns to tasseography as a kind of scare quotes to mark moments of his own interpretive excesses – ‘Oh! If the remark about coffee-grounds on page 772 were not already printed! This would be an opportunity to sell ink without effort for a great price! – like cinnamon oil’79 – Lichtenberg only once subtly alludes to haruspicy (perhaps because he employed it in his critique of physiognomy): ‘The assembly in which all of this [divination] occurs calls itself: Senatus populusque Romanus.’80 The Roman senate relied on the prophecies read by augurs in the intestines of sacrificed animals to determine whether or not a battle would be won and, therefore, whether it should be fought. By selecting this practice as a metaphor for his hermeneutics, Lichtenberg casts the interpretation of the bowels as paradigmatic for superstitious and unfounded interpretative claims. Yet ‘in actuality the outcome of the military campaign could be seen in the entrails of the slaughtered animal, but the augur (haruspex) did not see it, or the woman [the future in] the grounds of the coffee cup.’81 Lichtenberg does not dispute the idea that the future could be read out of entrails or coffee grounds: ‘no one will deny that, in a world in which everything is related by cause and effect, and where nothing occurs by miracles, every part is a mirror of the whole. … No one doubts this absolute readability of everything in everything.’82 With a Leibnizbased belief in a kind of butterfly-effect, Lichtenberg postulates that the form of the entrails is quite possibly etiologically connected to the outcomes of a war. The problem is thus not in the interpretability of the world, which is absolute, but rather in the interpreter. Whenever the hypochondriac attempts to interpret the bowels, he must remember that he also possesses them. Notes 1 [J. Swift], The Lady’s Dressing-Room: A Poem; By D---n S-----t; From the Original Copy, 3rd edn (Dublin: George Faulkner, 1732), pp. 5–6. 2 G. C. Lichtenberg, G. C. Lichtenbergs ausführliche Erklärung der Hogarthischen Kupferstiche, in Schriften und Briefe, ed. W. Promies (Munich: Hanser, 1967–92), vol. 3, p. 793. All translations from German are my own. All emphases are in the original. Some of Lichtenberg’s

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3 4 5

6 7

8

9

Hogarth commentaries, including that of A Harlot’s Progress (except for the preface), are translated in Lichtenberg, The World of Hogarth: Lichtenberg’s Commentaries on Hogarth’s Engravings, trans. I. Herdan and G. Herdan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966). Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 793–4. Ibid., p. 667. Ibid., p. 661. H. G. von Arburg’s seminal study of the commentaries elucidates Lichtenberg’s hermeneutics within a rich historical context: Kunst-Wissenschaft um 1800: Studien zu Georg Christoph Lichtenbergs Hogarth-Kommentaren (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1998). Arburg opens with a complete review of the previous scholarship. W. Hogarth, Zergliederung der Schönheit, die schwanckenden Begriffe von dem Geschmack festzusetzen, trans. C. Mylius (London: Andreas Linde, 1754), p. 23 and passim. In his brilliant semiotic reading of Lichtenberg’s commentary as elucidating the corrupting and perverting process of signification, G. von Graevenitz asserts that Lichtenberg self-reflectively treats ‘his own way of writing’ in commenting on this fifth plate more than anywhere else in his remarks on this series. G. von Graevenitz, ‘Schreib-Ende und “Wisch-Ende”: Lichtenbergs zeichentheoretischer Kommentar zu Hogarths Weg der Buhlerin’, in G. von Graevenitz et al. (eds), Zur Ästhetik der Moderne (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992), pp. 1–29, at p. 21. Arburg also points to similar self-reflective moments, especially in the commentary on plate 2, but also in the discussion of the bottom right corner of plate 5, which he calls ‘the vanishing point’ of the commentary’s ‘self-referential game’. Arburg, Kunst-Wissenschaft, pp. 290–1, 334–5. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 661. On Lichtenberg’s tendency to take any print at hand as an invitation to discuss whores and gallows, see E. Osterkamp, ‘Der Galgen und die Hure: Lichtenbergs Obsessionen’, Zeitschrift für Ideengeschichte, 5:3 (2011), 65–90. It should be noted that the German-speaking world lacked the scatological illustrations that the present volume so vibrantly evidences in France and England, so Lichtenberg’s commentaries surreptitiously introduce them. With ‘excretory vision’, I adapt an expression from N. O. Brown’s study of Swift’s scatology in Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (Middletown: Weslyan University Press, 1959), pp. 179–201. For an English-language biography of Lichtenberg, see J. P. Stern, Lichtenberg: A Doctrine of Scattered Occasions, Reconstructed from his Aphorisms and Reflections (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1959). In German, see especially F. H. Mautner, Lichtenberg: Geschichte seines Geistes (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968), which also

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10 11

12 13 14 15 16

17 18

outlines the  essential poetic and aesthetic aspects of the commentaries (pp. 326–33, 414–24). Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 732. Since superior reproductions of Hogarth’s prints are easily accessible online, I have abstained from reproducing them yet again here in indiscernible miniature in favour of cropped selections from E. L. Riepenhausen’s copies that highlight my arguments and the details I discuss. This decision is very much in the spirit of Hogarth and Lichtenberg: Lichtenberg attends particularly to details in the images and even had his etcher, Riepenhausen, copy specific figures removed from their surrounding context to make possible the observation of details in the small-format Göttinger Taschen Kalender. For these etchings and the shorter commentaries in the calendars, see Lichtenberg, Lichtenbergs  Hogarth:  Die Kalender-Erklärungen von Georg Christoph Lichtenberg mit den Nachstichen von Ernst Riepenhausen zu den Kupferstich-Tafeln von William Hogarth, ed. W. Promies (Munich: Hanser, 1999). Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 728. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, in Schriften und Briefe, vol. 1:2, J 770. The Sudelbücher are cited according to Promies’s alphanumeric system. Letter from J. J. Eschenburg to Lichtenberg, 1 June 1795, in Lichtenberg, Briefwechsel, ed. U. Joost and A. Schöne (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1983–2004), vol. 4, p. 459. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, K 22, J 693, B 25. On hypochondria in the eighteenth century, with attention to Lichtenberg in passing, see U. Nassen, ‘Trübsinn und Indigestion: Zum medizinischen und literarischen Diskurs über Hypochondrie im 18. Jahrhundert’, Fugen, 1 (1980), 171–86. According to Nassen, Lichtenberg understands the word ‘hermeneutics’ to refer to empathic understanding for another person. This is significant for the interpretation of A Harlot’s Progress because Lichtenberg believes that arousing such empathy for the harlot is a primary goal of the prints. Such empathy would become hypochondriacal if the imagination manifested someone else’s disease in one’s own body. On Lichtenberg’s understanding of his hypochondria as a pathological hermeneutics that he equates with the interpretive problems of physiognomy, see G. Mattenklott, ‘Lichtenberg als Charakterloge’, Photorin, 9 (1987), 39–49; and P. Requadt, Lichtenberg: Zum Problem der deutschen Aphoristik (Hameln: Fritz Seifert, 1948), pp. 42–51. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, Miszellen-Heft 19. [F. A. Kritzinger], Das goldne Buch für Hypochondristen und für hysterische Frauenzimmer, in Absicht auf ihre Gesundheit (1784), p. 102. Or, to take an example from a popular medical journal that Lichtenberg

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19

20

21

22

23 24 25

read intently: ‘One surely sees that the primary arena of this illness is the abdomen and that it [the illness] consists in nothing more than a depraved power of digestion in the stomach and the intestines, independent of whether it is due to excess blood or to a weakness of the nerves or to overeating, a lack of corporeal movement, and other causes that impede digestion.’ J. A. Unzer, ‘Fünf und zwanzigstes Stück’, Der Arzt: Eine medicinische Wochenschrift, 1 (Hamburg: G. C. Grunds Witwe, 1760), 385–99, at p. 389. On Unzer’s journal and Lichtenberg’s excerpts from it, see M. Reiber, Anatomie eines Bestsellers: Johann August Unzers Wochenschrift ‘Der Arzt’ (1759–1764) (Göttingen: Wallstein, 1999). On hypochondria as hyperactive semiosis, see M. Wagner-Egelhaaf, Die Melancholie der Literatur: Diskursgeschichte und Textfiguration (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997), pp. 144–53. On reading and hypochondria in Lichtenberg, see S. Goldmann, ‘Lesen, Schreiben und das topische Denken bei Georg Christoph Lichtenberg’, in P. Goetsch (ed.), Lesen und Schreiben im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert: Studien zu ihrer Bewertung in Deutschland, England, Frankreich (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1994), pp. 79–90. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 729. The adjective ‘so-called’ draws attention to the fact that Lichtenberg is using ‘laughter-making matter’ as a euphemism for excrement. Perhaps drawing on the same euphemism, Bakhtin calls urine and dung ‘gay matter’. M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 335. In other words, what is added must contribute to re-creating the image’s mood. See M. Schmitz-Emans, Die Literatur, die Bilder und das Unsichtbare: Spielformen literarischer Bildinterpretation vom 18. bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 1999), pp. 93–8. On the parasite as noise in a system or medium – a noise that not only disrupts but also makes the system possible – see M. Serres: The Parasite, trans. L. R. Schehr (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982). Serres repeatedly turns to excrement as an example of the parasite. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 665. On humour and criticism as the traditional goals of scatology, see J. R. Clark, The Modern Satiric Grotesque (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1991), pp. 116–30. On hypochondria as the disease of civilisation and especially of the Enlightenment, see H. Böhme and G. Böhme, Das Andere der Vernunft: Zur Entwicklung von Rationalitätsstrukturen am Beispiel Kants (Frankfurt am Main: Suhkramp, 1983), pp. 387–423.

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26 See, for example, P. Wagner, Eros Revived: Erotica of the Enlightenment in England and America (London: Secker & Warburg, 1988), pp. 182–91. 27 On Lichtenberg’s epistemological reflections on such limits and his own  unrestrainable hermeneutic desire to exceed them, including in those very reflections, see H. Blumenberg, Die Lesbarkeit der Welt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 199–213. 28 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 729–30. 29 As M. Douglas showed in her classic study, the organisation of clean and dirty matter into separate spaces is the foundational structural operation of hygienic culture. See Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Abingdon: Routledge, 2002). 30 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 791, 795, 797, 799–801. 31 Ibid., p. 800. 32 Ibid., p. 797. 33 Ibid., p. 799. 34 Lichtenberg consults multiple friends on the possible identities of the receptacles in this plate, and many aspects of his interpretation follow the suggestions from O. J. Arnemann, who wrote three letters on this plate to Lichtenberg within the course of two days. He begins his first letter by casting Lichtenberg as a seducer to interpretation, whose hermeneutic desire Arnemann will not be able to satisfy: ‘You have led me into a great temptation, and I fear very much that I am not capable of satisfying you completely.’ In other words, he recognises that he is being invited to acts of hypochondriacal overinterpretation. Arnemann then identifies all the chamber pots, diagnoses Molly with ‘Diarrhoea colliquativa’ (consumptive liquid diarrhoea) caused by the medications, presents multiple interpretations of the entire ensemble, and, most interestingly, suggests that Hogarth perhaps intended to arouse ‘disgust’ that the viewer was then to associate with the represented excessive cures, an emotive response to the image that is largely lost in Lichtenberg’s commentary. Arnemann to Lichtenberg, 12 March 1795  and 13 March 1795, in Lichtenberg, Briefwechsel, vol. 4, pp. 421–2, 424. 35 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 801. 36 See Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, p. 372. This enumeration also bears resemblance to the open-ended mode of thinking that M. Wilczek identifies with waste and the list in Lichtenberg’s notebooks in ‘Ab.  Lichtenberg’s Waste’, Germanic Review, 87 (2012), 305–24, at pp. 318–19. 37 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 799–800. 38 Ibid., pp. 800, 736. 39 Ibid., p. 800.

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40 Ibid., pp. 797, 795. 41 See Arburg, Kunst-Wissenschaft, pp. 284–6; and F. Burwick, ‘The Hermeneutics of Lichtenberg’s Interpretation of Hogarth’, Lessing Yearbook, 19 (1988), 165–90. 42 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 797, 800. 43 Ibid., pp. 789, 800–1. In extended backstories of the two doctors, whom he identifies as historical figures, Lichtenberg again selfreflectively describes his own commentaries but with great satirical bite. In the story, the tall doctor holding the deer pellets is eventually barred from practice and resorts to treating the rats in his home with his wonder drug. This ‘hunt for pests’ (‘Ungeziefer-Jagd’) is both ‘not that far beyond the jurisdiction of medicine’ (ibid., p. 790) and exactly what Lichtenberg himself is undertaking with his medical satire. For the hunt was often a metaphor for literary digression – later in the commentary Lichtenberg refers to Hogarth’s ‘pictorial hunts for the satyrs’ (ibid., p.  813), one of the namesakes of the genre of satire – and the wild game of Lichtenberg’s satirical hunt is also a pest: namely, the charlatan doctors themselves. The commentaries are thus a hunt for pests who hunt for pests. It is exactly such transformations of the objects of his satirical criticism into representations of his own tendences that characterise the strength of Lichtenberg’s writing. 44 Ibid., p. 801. 45 There is a host of excellent literature on Lichtenberg’s ‘book-keeping’ method in his notebooks (or the lack thereof). See especially: R. Campe, ‘Vorgreifen und Zurückgreifen: Zur Emergenz des Sudelbuchs in Georg Christoph Licthenbergs “Heft E”’, in K. Krauthausen and O. W. Nasim (eds), Notieren, Skizzieren: Schreiben und Zeichnen als Verfahren des Entwurfs (Zurich: Diaphanes, 2010), pp. 61–87. 46 Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 795. 47 Ibid., p. 790. 48 Ibid., p. 866. That the two columns of this plate can be interpreted as the book-keeping columns of credit and debit, plus and minus, is furthermore suggested by the matzo hanging above the left corner of Molly’s door, which Lichtenberg ties to her Jewish patron in the second plate. In his discussion of that plate, Lichtenberg offers the anti-Semitic suggestion that Molly distracts her Jewish patron from noticing another departing client by bringing up ‘something like debit and credit’ (ibid., p. 750), and that the obtrusive hand of the Jew, which tries to save the objects about to fall off the table, should have six fingers and the other four, giving him a ‘giving and taking hand’ (ibid., p. 753). 49 Ibid., p. 797. Arburg notes the latent meaning of ‘business’ here in Kunst-Wissenschaft, p. 334. 50 J. G. Zimmermann, Ueber die Einsamkeit, vol. 1 (Troppau, 1785),

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51

52

53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63

p.  157. And in Lichtenberg’s favoured medical journal on the life of the scholar: ‘The occlusion of the body and constipation are a common plague of those who lead an all-too calm life.’ Unzer, ‘Fünftes Stück’, Der Arzt, 1 (1760), 71–2. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, E  157. Wilczek notes how thinking and writing are conceived in this passage to waste away the body, but he does not mention that they do so by drying the body out or that wit is associated with dryness. See Wilczek, ‘Lichtenberg’s Waste’, pp. 318–19. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 793. On the problem of dryness and wetness of the mind for interpretation in Lichtenberg, see R. Campe, ‘Lichtenbergs Gehirnlandschaften: Die Unlesbarkeit der Welt und der Witz der Wissenschaft’, in N. Hass, R. Nägele, and H. J. Rheinberger (eds), Liechtensteiner Exkurse V: Das wilde Denken (Eggingen: Edition Isele), pp. 83–113. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 730. Ibid., pp. 801–2. Pliny, Natural History, vol. 3, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940), 8.41.97. P. Camporesi, The Exotic Brew: The Art of Living in the Age of Enlightenment, trans. C. Woodall (Cambridge: Polity, 1994), pp. 36–45. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 801. Ibid. Mercury pills share a name with the false etymological origin of hermeneutics (Hermes or Mercury), and they also share a similar goal with Lichtenberg’s hermeneutics. Playing on the fact that mercury was not only used to treat syphilis but also that, when ‘mixed’ (‘verquickt’) with other metals, it would make them fluid or ‘alive’ (‘lebendig’), Lichtenberg refers here, in a unique turn of phrase, to the ‘verquickte Patientin’ (ibid., p. 804), meaning that they are trying to enliven her with a mercury cure; specifically, she should return to her former state as an ‘image of mobility’ (ibid., p. 749), which Lichtenberg sees referenced in this plate in her shoes (ibid., p. 796). Lichtenberg similarly seeks to bring the images to life (ibid., p. 643), not only for a new audience, but also in the sense of transforming them into dramatic scenes. Sometimes, however, hermeneutics has, like the mercury in Molly’s case, costive instead of enlivening results. On syphilis and mercury, see Wolfgang Promies’s ‘Kommentar zu Band III’, in Lichtenberg, Schriften und Briefe, vol. K 2, p. 305 and p. 374. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 801–2. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, pp. 303–67. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 758, 811, 789. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, KA 13.

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64 65 66 67

68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 752. Ibid., p. 783. Ibid., p. 793. Département also thinly masks a lurid description of one of the prostitutes at Molly’s wake. The thing that ‘shines’ in her ‘beautiful mouth’ is ‘the most important piece among her instruments for swallowing, cursing, and bed. It/she [the antecedent is ambiguous] appears to be born for its/her département’ (ibid., p. 808). On the motif of the swab, see Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, pp. 113–14, 371–9. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 804. Ibid., p. 737. See Graevenitz, ‘Schreib-Ende und “Wisch-Ende”’. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, pp. 738–9. Ibid., pp. 775, 787. Ibid., pp. 764–5. Ibid., p. 746. Ibid., p. 778. Lichtenberg to Eschenburg, 10 May 1795, in Lichtenberg, Briefwechsel, vol. 4, p. 443. Lichtenberg, Ausführliche Erklärung, p. 765. Ibid., p. 771. Ibid., pp. 771–2. Ibid., p. 781. Ibid., p. 774. Lichtenberg, Sudelbücher, F 648. Lichtenberg, ‘Über Physiognomik; wider die Physiognomen: Zu Beförderung der Menschenliebe und Menschenkenntnis’, in Schriften und Briefe, vol. 3, pp. 264–5.

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PART III Burlesque bellies

9  Parodies of pompous knowledge: treatises on farting Guilhem Armand

‘It’s a story about a man eating a cassoulet …’ From antiquity to modern times there have been many anecdotes on this theme, whether they be stories cooked up to amuse an audience or historical indiscretions. But – with the exception of Metrocles’ wind which, as related by Diogenes Laertius, takes on an astonishing philosophical dimension – the fart nearly always belongs to a base register.1 And although a number of cynics in the Renaissance and the early seventeenth century returned to this theme, the move was deliberately provocative,2 for this was considered a vulgar topic that could not be mentioned in the Belles-Lettres, at least in France. Keith Thomas reminds us that in England, ‘In the seventeenth century, by contrast, the word “fart”, though indisputably vulgar, was used with much less inhibition and is ubiquitous in the literature of the time.’3 Did Montaigne not remind us, when explaining the custom of blessing those who sneeze, that among ‘the three types of wind’ (‘trois types de vents’) produced by man, ‘the one which issues from lower down is too dirty’ (‘celui qui sort par en bas est trop sale’)?4 The farts of Louis XIV may well have echoed even beyond Versailles when broadcast by his doctor, Fagon, but such winds, whether royal or common, were shameful for those who produced them, as well as for those who endured them.5 While the eighteenth century saw advances in knowledge and granted a renewed prestige to curiosity, making it possible to investigate all areas of knowledge, to what extent was this true of baser subjects such as our present topic? From a medical point of 191

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view, the scientific approach to the question of digestion reached a turning point at the end of the seventeenth century with the research of Sylvius and Van Helmont, who investigated the principle of the fermentation of food.6 The theories of the Ancients, which until then had been unchallenged – and were still taught in all the medical faculties – were abandoned by scientists, although they understood the role of gastric juices better than the digestive process itself. And it was indeed the eighteenth century which recorded the most important advances in this field. We will not rehearse here the debate which opposed the iatromathematicians to the iatrochemists and their discoveries, except to note that the latter obviously included flatulence as a symptom in their research.7 The real progress was in fact in other areas, such as the nascent field of gastronomy. Digestive problems and their olfactory manifestations constituted a leitmotif in cooking manuals, which started to borrow overtly from scientific discourse, or at least a sort of ‘paramedical’ discourse, when discussing pressing issues of diet and general health For instance, the moment for tasting fruit during a meal changed as a result of this research. As Michel Dominique observes, this was a genuine preoccupation that was already current in the seventeenth century: Although apples, when raw, provoke windiness, when they are cooked with sugar and aniseed, they soften the stomach. Although pears weigh heavily and windily on the stomach, if they are cooked in a good red wine with sugar and cinnamon, and spiked with cloves, they become sweet and beneficial.8

Similarly, the belated admission of the potato into the culinary patrimony of France was due to a considerable extent to its ‘windy’ properties. Venel, the author of the article on the potato in the Encyclopédie, even qualified it socially according to this characteristic: ‘But what is wind for the vigorous organism of the peasant or the workman?’9 The development of scientific knowledge did not therefore lead to any change in the social perception of the ‘nether’ wind. We might think of Voltaire’s fart as related by the Prince de Ligne: One fine night, when, after walking in his garden, I climbed onto a large rock, to see him in his bed, where he was writing, with the window open. He released a large fart, which was more like a navvy’s than a philosopher’s: and I took flight at top speed, so that he wouldn’t hear me laugh.10

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This was the century of refinement where individuals were easily offended by the merest trifle – and yet all the while capable of enjoying the basest bodily functions and extreme provocations. It was  therefore quite clearly in this spirit that PierreThomas-Nicholas Hurtaut and Claude-François-Xavier Mercier de Compiègne published respectively L’art de péter (‘The Art of Farting’) in 1751 and  L’Éloge du pet (‘In Praise of Farting’) in 1798. These two texts, which take roughly the form of scientific treatises, did of course inherit a whole Rabelaisian tradition. It is therefore impossible to take them quite as seriously as Antoine de Baecque, who argues that their aim is to find ‘in the dirty, the wind and the fart, the premise of a thing of beauty’ but nonethless explains the success of Hurtaut’s L’art de péter in terms of a deliberate parody of science: Republished several times in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century, this text rapidly became a classic of comic, scatological and pseudo-medical literature, whose most stimulating or crudest passages were sometimes read in salons after dinner, a form of society laughter and libertinage fairly typical of the age.11

By contrast, my hypothesis is that these burlesque eighteenthcentury works are part of the tradition of light provocative writing in the vein of Rabelais, but that they also partake of, and have a special relationship with, the Enlightenment; that they express, beyond a simple stylistic parody, an almost ideological reaction to the discursive excesses of their time. An air of lightness It is true that this corpus fits into a tradition which reasserted itself forcefully in the eighteenth century.12 The subject of flatulence was blowing in the wind, as it were, if we are to believe the fairly substantial bibliography established by Pierre Jannet in his Bibliotheca Scatalogica of 1850.13 The subject invaded the popular theatre, notably with Le Vuidangeur sensible (‘The Sensitive Shit-Shoveller’), a drama in three acts by Nougaret (1777), and above all the charade with the anonymous Le Pet-en-bec, parade en vers de huit sillables, trd. Sur un Ms. En langue punique (‘The Fart-Spout, a Charade in Octosyllabic Verse, tr. after a MS in the Punic Language’) published in 1744, Le Marchand de merde (‘The Shit-Seller’) published in 193

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1756 by Alexis Piron, Le pet à vingt angles (‘The Twenty-Angled Fart’) edited by Thomas-Simon Gueulette, and many others.14 Without reproducing here the whole 150-page catalogue, we should note that all genres are involved, and that the titles of Mercier and Hurtaut merely echo those of other works published at the time, of the type ‘The Art of …’ or ‘Ode to …’. Jannet even accused Hurtaut of plagiarism: In 1776, a boarding school master published an Art de péter …, which is quite simply the translation of the treatise which concerns us [De peditu ejusque speciebus, anonymous, 1628]. This plagiarist has the nerve to say that this subject had been neglected before him; he speaks of his discoveries … And yet Hurtaut has hardly written more than a few articles in his own name.15

But the work (dating from 1751 and not 1776) was republished seven times, the final edition appearing in 1832. ‘It has been plundered in its turn’ (‘Il a été pillé à son tour’), Jannet is reassured to say, which was proof of its success. This judgement is severe; L’Art de péter had indeed been plundered, especially the musical notation established in the five-page dissertation in Latin, but also, inevitably, it had been developed and reinvented. There is continuity too in the use of the genre: both Hurtaut and Mercier de Compiègne after him played with the epideictic register in burlesque travesty; in this they followed in the footsteps of Jonathan Swift’s Grand Mystery, which was translated anonymously into French as L’Art de méditer sur la chaise percée (1726) by Abbé Desfontaines.16 This burlesque dimension can be clearly read in the full titles of the works: L’Art de péter. Essai théori-physique et méthodique à l’usage des personnes constipées, des personnes graves et austères, des dames mélancoliques et de tous ceux qui restent esclaves du préjugé (‘The Art of Farting. A Theoretico-Physico Essay for the Use of Constipated, Serious and Austere Personages, Melancholic Ladies and all those who Remain Slaves to Prejudice’); and Eloge du pet. Dissertation historique, anatomique et philosophique, sur son origine, son antiquité, ses vertus, sa figure, les honneurs qu’on lui a rendus chez les peuples anciens et les facéties auxquelles il a donné lieu (‘A Eulogy of the Fart: A Historical, Anatomical, and Philosophical Dissertation, on its Origins, its Antiquity, its Virtues, its Configuration, the Honours Awarded it in Antiquity and the Jokes which it has Inspired’).17 The pompous style of 194

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these titles, imitating that of the most serious scientific treatises, is paradigmatic not only of the disciplinary angles from which the subject is treated, but also of a certain tone and a caricatural intention to elevate even the basest subject matter. Multiplying either the potential audiences (‘For the use of …’), or the scholarly epithets (‘historical, anatomical and philosophical’), these works insist on the inexhaustibility of their didacticism, aiming at a form of encyclopedism. The prefaces and notices to the reader set these texts in a burlesque register. Mercier, following the genre of the eulogy, broaches his theme with an emphatic tone characterised by anaphora and a duple rhythm: Nothing is so small in appearance as the heroic subject that I celebrate, since it is impossible to see it. But there is nothing so great and so powerful, since, like the north wind, and even God, which we feel and yet do not see, it constantly acts upon us, and on the whole universe.18

The aim is to uncover secret causes, but from the initial image of the hero to the grotesque hyperbole of its climax (‘the whole universe’), the epic plays on antithesis, and the reference to antiquity slips rapidly into blasphemy: the tone is set, and set far from good taste. In the three pages that follow, Mercier goes on to enumerate all the most unsuitable eulogies, from the eulogy to flies by Lucian to that of Swift. ‘The ambition to wish to mingle [his] name with that of all these famous writers’ closes this captatio benevolentiæ, which claims to excuse the author by establishing his illustrious literary and philosophical lineage.19 The same strategy is at work in Hurtaut: Farting is an art, and, consequently, a thing useful to life, as Lucian, Hermogenes, Quintilian and others say. It is indeed more essential than one ordinarily thinks to be able to fart appropriately. A fart we block and choke and stifle Will wrack our innards, and its strife’ll Often cause our death. To constipated mortals nearing Lethe, A fart in time may give new breath.20

Hurtaut’s verse (which was later quoted by Mercier de Compiègne)21 is characteristically heterometric and is in keeping with the literary 195

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fashion of the second half of the century; it may even carry a certain echo of these lines by Ronsard: The fart that holds its fetid breath, Unspent for many smacks of death; The fart, unpent, that croons its air Often foils death, dispels despair. If, then, the fart is good or ill, And if it can both spare and kill, Thus does the fulsome fart at length, Equal the King in power and strength.22

Mercier, like Hurtaut, seems to want to ennoble the nether wind. The two writers’ texts may be read as an enterprise of rehabilitation, expressed in terms of a sense of the common good, of an enterprise of public utility: ‘I have served my country well, and humanity in general, in teaching mankind such an easy way to bask in airborne peace and joy’, Mercier explains, commenting on Hurtaut’s verse.23 The enterprise of the latter, for example, takes on a philosophical air at the end of its first chapter ‘to speak of the ultimate cause of the fart, which sometimes is the health of the body desired by nature, and sometimes a delectation or a pleasure procured by art’.24 The intent is to confound ‘the enemies of the fart’ (‘les ennemis du pet’) by establishing distinctions between the true fart, crepitus in Latin, ‘sonorous but not odorous’ (‘bruit sans odeur’), the ‘puff’ (vesse) or feminine fart, which is silent but scented, and the ‘navvy’s fart’ (‘pet de maçon’), which combines the two characteristics.25 From this gendered and rank hierarchy flows a virtuoso musical classification of wind into around sixty different species. This differentiates between the ‘fully voiced’ (‘plénivocal’), including ‘diphthong farts’ (‘pets diphtongues’), and the ‘semi voiced’ (‘semivocal’): Hurtaut explains that the music produced is a ‘diachrony distributed in Pythagorean terms whose chromatic scale may be calibrated by clenching our teeth’.26 The reference to Pythagoras is not merely a pedantic college joke: it also allows the categorisation of those sounds in musical terms. For the Greek philosopher, ‘it is thanks to numbers and not to its meaningfulness that we must appreciate the sublimity of music’.27 In Mercier, the virtuosity is more ‘literary’. His text, written in prosimetric form, deploys multifarious genres and registers: after an official eulogy, ‘addressed to the Society of Freefarters’ (‘prononcé dans la société des Francs-péteurs’) – whose 196

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rules and regulations are announced at the end – he moves on to the ‘question of music’ (‘question musicale’), via a historical approach (‘L’Antiquité du pet’, ‘The Antiquity of the Fart’) and the question of chemistry, alternating between an argumentative style, trivial anecdotes like that of the flatulent beggar, verse tales (‘Les Deux Pets’, ‘The Two Farts’), songs and so on.28 His parodic energy easily encompasses the whole field of the Belles-Lettres, except for the theatre. The formulation of the title of the chapter ‘The Antiquity of the Fart’, for example, pastiches the captationes that base the legitimacy of their object on the evocation of a golden age, or at least a primitive age; he insists tautologically that ‘the first humans made use of the fart’ (‘les premiers humains firent usage du pet’). But Mercier also touches on the intentions of the Creator, and he blasphemes, explaining – albeit rationally enough – ‘that since Adam farted before he could speak, the fart is unquestionably older than speech’.29 If the text is a caricature of the scholarly treatises of the time, and a caricature of the Enlightenment more generally, the repeated blasphemies remain ambiguous. They may be related to a purely provocative vein of bawdy, but given that such combinations of pseudo-scientific demonstrations and biblical elements recur in texts which gave rise to controversies and condemnations, such as Benoît de Maillet’s Telliamed, this apparent playfulness may express a more ideological form of parody for both Mercier and Hurtaut. Starting with a taxonomy of digestive winds, Hurtaut lists a whole series of specimens – more satirical than truly moralising – ranging from the ‘provincial fart’ (‘pet de province’) to the ‘cuckold’s fart’ (‘pet de cocus’), via the ‘virgin’s fart’ (‘pet de pucelles’) and the ‘geographer’s fart’ (‘pet de géographes’); a taxonomy that Mercier reappropriated in 1798. The subject became increasingly fashionable in the eighteenth century, and provided opportunities for numerous puns and other jokes in the manner of the Marquis de Bièvre.30 However, in Mercier and Hurtaut it is more than a simple game of parody, acting instead as a pretext for mocking the pretensions of the thinkers of their time: the moralists, philosophers and men of science. This provocative dimension also adopts a posture typical of the Enlightenment: in order to combat prejudice – as in the case of Fontenelle – politeness must be redefined, since the topic forces the authors to refer to ‘an outcome that politeness forbids one to mention. But we hide nothing here: this 197

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phenomenon is manifested through the anus.’31 The two authors are united in the desire to see the establishment of a ‘Society of Farters’ whereby the Masonic rites are parodied.32 Le Corvaisier is said to have founded one such society in Caen in 1742, and in 1756 he published L’Esclavage rompu ou la Société des francspêteurs. The text was reissued as a supplement to the 1776 edition of Hurtaut’s book.33 An indigestible scientific discourse Beyond the amusements of their scatological vein, these two works are united, then, in a similar drive to pastiche the scientific discourse of the times. Science henceforth had the wind in its sails, but its opening up to the public, its ‘universalising’, had some perverse effects: scholarly works, often pseudo-scientific, flourished in every field, and now – well before positivism – there arose the claim to explain everything by means of the new physics. The sciences were everywhere, and Voltaire’s complaint on his return from England (before he himself became passionately interested in science along with the Marquise du Châtelet) is eloquent. Verse is hardly fashionable any longer in Paris. Everyone has started to become a geometrician or a physicist. People are starting to ratiocinate. Feeling, imagination and style are banished. A man who had lived under Louis XIV and returned to the world would no longer recognise the French: he would think that the Germans had conquered their country. Literature is perishing as we watch. It is not that I regret to see philosophy nurtured, but I would not wish it to become a tyrant excluding everything else.34

If the interest in science is still difficult to date precisely, the classical period was nonetheless marked by the rise of modern science, or more precisely by the importance of a genuine desire to diffuse both its spirit and its most recent advances in society.35 Fontenelle’s enterprise – rendered famous by the enormous success  of his Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes – consisted in spreading the ‘spirit of Geometry’ to every domain, whether in seeking the true or the beautiful.36 As a consequence of its ‘fashionableness’,  science  interested anyone who aspired to have the  slightest air of erudition. Even cookery manuals kowtowed to this fashion, to the point where they sparked off what Béatrice 198

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Fink has called ‘la querelle des bouffes’ (‘the food war’).37 A French cook working in England, Des Alleurs, rebelled against this fashion, attacking the ‘philosophical turn of mind which has invaded even our cooks’, banishing their ‘banter’ and their ‘libertine spirit’.38 Mercier’s and Hurtaut’s parodic texts formed part of this trend of stigmatising the excesses of the Enlightenment. For instance, among Fontenelle’s disciples in the Enlightenment was a certain Basset Des Rosiers, whose Entretiens sur les Comètes (1747) aims much more to elicit saucy double entendre than its model by Fontenelle, reminding us that the first aim of the dialogue was an enterprise of seduction, rather than a narrative strategy, which is what most of Fontenelle’s other disciples made of it.39 Thus was born a new vogue which pretended to make a scientific study of the most trivial and ‘disturbing’ subjects, under the guise of that false science  which Fontenelle and later Enlightenment philosophers  wanted to combat. Especially representative of this fashion  were subjects whose apparent seriousness could lead the reader astray, as in  Pierre Hunauld’s  Dissertation  sur les vapeurs (1756) or La philosophie des vapeurs (1772) by Claude Paumerelle.40 Mercier and Hurtaut go further in their misappropriation of the scientific treatise and the manual of etiquette. If the popular craze for science produced nausea in the reading public, Mercier and Hurtaut vomited back such indigestible jargon in parody. It is as though they had decided to be bold and speak of wind scientifically, since it seemed that one could speak of just about anything under cover of scientific discourse and deliver no more than a lot of hot air. Thus they sit in a particular strand of the Swiftian tradition initiated by the Scriblerus Club and by Pope’s Peri Bathous or the Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727), which redefined the ‘profound’ in a parody of Longinus’ sublime.41 The structure of the Traité du pet adopts some structural elements and topoi of contemporary medical treatises: the first part gives a ‘general definition of the fart’ (‘définition générale du pet); in the second the author investigates the ‘varieties of fart’ (‘divisions du pet’), before looking into the ‘effects of the fart’ (‘effets des pets’) in the fourth part and opening out onto the ‘social advantages of the fart’ (‘avantages des pets pour la société’) in the fifth, where he ponders – as though in a contemporary debate – a ‘musical question: do farts count as music?’ (‘question musicale: les pets sont-ils 199

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de la musique?’). He proceeds to give a pseudo-scientific definition of the phenomenon: The fart is therefore, in general, a wind enclosed within the lower belly, caused, according to medical opinion, by an overflow of warm Pituita, which a slight rise in temperature has loosened and detached, without dissolving it.42

The use of the word Pituita (the mucus covering the membranes of the stomach) has a more scientific ring to it than the definition given by the Encyclopédie, which also names the fart and its orifice in medical terms, in this case with no false modesty: Wind (Physiolog.) the winds which emerge whether from the mouth or the anus, are air which the viscera expel from their cavity, by creating a contraction strong enough to overcome the forces which resist the departure of the matter contained within its cavities. These forces are the two sphincters, one of which closes the upper orifice of the stomach, and the other the anus.43

The position adopted by L’Art de péter and suggested by its title might – with all due caution – be compared to the struggle of the science of the Enlightenment against prejudice. This is hinted at in the author’s notice to the reader, which follows the proper procedures of the captatio and presents the interest of the subject with all the pomposity of a scholar explaining his research to an ignorant audience: The matter which I bring to your attention today, analysed as accurately as possible, has been severely neglected until the present day; not that it was judged unworthy of being handled, but because it was not believed to be susceptible of a certain method and of new discoveries. They were wrong.44

Wind thus acquired a certain scientific dignity and became a ‘matter’, an object of analysis and of a discourse characterised by ‘accuracy’ and ‘method’. The parodic dimension is here underlined by the syllepsis of the word ‘matter’, which endows what is brought to the readers’ attention with a new meaning. The ‘new discoveries’ echoed the various discoveries which, from Leuwenhoeck to Réaumur, had revealed the marvels of nature that lay hidden behind the apparently insignificant; they also echoed those who popularised their discoveries, such as Abbé Pluche.45 The trope of unravelling mysteries and unveiling secrets is found in the scientific 200

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works that are here parodied. As a thoroughly interdisciplinary man, Hurtaut, like the scholars of the period, uses an analogy with grammar to negotiate the transition from a medical discourse to a musical perspective:46 Our pen-pushing grammarians divide the letters into vowels and consonants; these gentlemen generally only scratch the surface of the matter, but we, whose profession it is to make it felt and smelled as it really is, divide farts into the vocal and the silent, or the puff, as it is properly named.47

Pushing the puns even further with the verbs ‘feel’ and ‘smell’, Hurtaut adopts the sensitive writing of experimental science which was the trademark of some of Fontenelle’s other epigones, such as the physicist Algarotti or the naturalist Gilles-Augustin Bazin. But music, much more than the refraction of light or the life of insects, lent itself to the experience of the senses, and all the more so since it had become an object of scientific enquiry.48 The musicological treatment is no less burlesque than any other, and Mercier plagiarised him on this point and on others (he sometimes mentions ‘the author of L’Art de péter’). The question of the musicality of flatulence is posed by an anonymous German – the epitome of seriousness at the time if we believe Voltaire – and the answer to the question, despite being ‘difficult’ to assess, is attributed to an indecrotabile (uncleanable) Hortensius: ‘A German scholar has proposed in this case a question most difficult to resolve: to discover whether there is music in the fart? Distinguo: there is music in the diphthong fart, concedo; in the other farts, nego.’49 As well as satirising the style of the college pedant in this way, Mercier also takes things further, and his mixture of registers, oscillating between poetic exaggeration and scientific jargon, allows him to range from shorthand allusions to strange transferred epithets bordering on the absurd: ‘If we wish to detail the intellectual, cultural and spiritual faculties of the fart, we shall certainly find it well informed as to all the genres of the sciences and the liberal arts.’50 Later, he ponders the possibility of ‘distilling a fart and extracting its quintessence … to remove freckles’, as if it were the subject of a competition set by the Académie des Sciences.51 Although freckles were considered a flaw for which a cure had yet to be found, this is merely a pretext to introduce a short fable: he then narrates the story of an entirely fictitious chemist who 201

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managed the operation and tried it on several fishwives, who paid him in cute (in the flesh).52 The only aim of this chemical exposition is to provide the material for a short satirical libertine tale, as its ending shows: ‘We therefore hope that our beauties in blond wigs, with their Titus or Caracalla hairstyles, will make great use of this miraculous potion.’53 Mercier alternates between a rewriting of his predecessors and a poetical afflatus. The vanity of the works of his time claiming to be scientific inspires his satirical verve, which goes beyond the framework of the literary parody. Like Hurtaut, he satirises the pompous style, but the caricature is sometimes pushed to the extreme and reveals a criticism of the Enlightenment – of its famous methods and its rhetoric – which is never clearly articulated. Hurtaut offers a sort of stylistic analysis of the overweening pomposity which epitomises the scientific discourse of the eighteenth century. Parody, in those works on windiness, is of course a pretext for amusement, but is not merely a case of playing with words and sounds: the satirical attack is ultimately directed at the spirit of the times, which is definitely scientific, or rather, at a discourse bloated with scientific jargon, which wallows in pedantic phraseology and prefabricated structures. The treatises on and eulogies to the fart are finally designed to deflate the numerous scientific productions of the Enlightenment, to show that, very often, all is but a lot of hot air. The product of a paradoxical vein, the theme of the fart playfully underscores the century’s tendency to pomposity. Notes 1 See Jean Feixas and Raphäel Romi, Histoire anecdotique du pet, de l’Antiquité à nos jours (Paris: Ramsès et Pauvert, 1991). 2 In Béroalde de Verville, for example. On this point, see M. Clément, Le Cynisme à la Renaissance d’Erasme à Montaigne, Cahiers d’humanisme de Renaissance (Paris: Librairie Droz, ‘2005), esp. prologue, ‘Péter et philosopher’, pp. 11–12. 3 Keith Thomas, ‘Bodily Control and Social Unease: The Fart in Seventeenth-Century England’, in A. McShane and G. Walker (eds), The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 11. 4 Montaigne, The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. D. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), book III, ch. 6, ‘Of Coaches’, p. 685.

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5 Witness the humiliation suffered by Dorini, in Histoire comique de Françion, when he approaches Agathe’s behind and encounters ‘a certain southern wind which came to give him a noseful’: C. Sorel, Histoire comique de Françion (Paris: Gallimard, 1996), book VIII, p. 392. 6 The ‘new scientific spirit’ reached medical circles from the 1760s according to J. Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensée française au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Albin Michel, 1993), pp. 165–70. On Van Helmont see esp. René Taton, La Science moderne, de 1450 à 1800 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999). 7 On the experiments of Boerhaave, Haller, Réaumur and Spallanzani, see Taton, La Science moderne, pp. 624–7. 8 ‘Si les pommes crues créaient des ventosités, cuites avec du sucre et de l’anis, elles ramollissaient le ventre. Si les poires étaient pesantes à l’estomac et venteuses, cuites en bon vin rouge avec sucre et cannelle, lardées de clous de girofle, elles devenaient bonnes et profitables.’ M. Dominique, ‘Le dessert au XVIIIe siècle’, Dix-septième siècle, 217:4 (2002), 658. 9 ‘mais qu’est-ce que des vents pour les organes vigoureux des paysans et des manœuvres?’G. F. Venel, ‘Pomme de terre, Topinambour, Batate, Truffe blanche, Truffe rouge (Diète)’, in D. Diderot and J. Le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (Paris, 1751–80), vol. 1. 10 ‘Comme il faut que je dise tout ce que j’ai entendu de cet homme célèbre, voici ce que j’ouïs distinctement, pendant une belle nuit, qu’après m’être promené dans son jardin, je grimpai sur une grosse pierre, pour le voir dans son lit, où il écrivait, sa fenêtre ouverte. Il lâcha un gros pet, qui sentait plus le maçon que l’homme d’esprit: et je me mis à fuir de toutes mes forces, pour qu’il ne m’entendît pas rire.’ Quoted by N.  Cronk, ‘Le Pet de Voltaire’, in A. Tadié (ed.), La Figure du philosophe dans les lettres anglaises et françaises (Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2010), p. 125. On the philosopher’s digestive problems, see Christiane Mervaud, ‘La Gourmandise contrariée de Voltaire’, in La gourmandise entre péché et plaisir, special issue of Lumières, 11:1 (2008), 85–7, as well as her book Voltaire à table: plaisir du corps, plaisir de l’esprit (Paris: Desjonquères, 1998). 11 ‘Plusieurs fois réédité au XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècle, ce texte est rapidement devenu un classique de la littérature comique, scatologique et pseudo-médicale, dont les passages les plus stimulants ou les plus crus étaient lus, parfois, après les soupers des salons, forme de mondanité du rire et du libertinage assez caractéristique du temps.’ A. de Baecque, preface to Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. A. de Baecque (Paris: Payot & Rivages, 2006), pp. 26, 8.

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12 To understand the importance of these two works within the wider corpus  of works at the end of the eighteenth century, and the college  humour that characterises this particular vein, see U.  Dionne,  ‘“Ce sont amis que vent emporte”: le récit de la flatulence au  XVIIIe siècle’, in M. Moset-Verrey, L. Desjardins and C.  Turbide (eds), Le Corps romanesque: images et usages topiques sous l’Ancien  Régime (Quebec: Les Presses de l’Université de Laval, 2009), pp. 541–58. 13 Anonymous [P. Jannet], Bibliotheca Scatologica etc, Scatopolis, Chez les marchands d’Aniterges, l’année scatogène 5850 ([Paris, 1850]). 14 On this subject, see Jennifer Ruimi’s contribution to this volume. 15 ‘En 1776, un maître de pension de Paris fit paraître un Art de péter … qui est tout simplement la traduction du traité dont nous nous occupons [De peditu ejusque speciebus, anonyme, 1628]. Ce plagiaire ose dire que cette matière avait été négligée jusqu’à lui, il parle de ses découvertes … C’est à peine si Hurtaut a mis quelques articles de son cru.’ Jannet, Bibliotheca Scatologica, pp. 45–6. 16 L’Art de Méditer sur la Chaise percée par l’auteur de Gulliver l’Aîné, avec un projet de bâtir et d’entretenir des latrines publiques dans Paris (Dublin: De l’imprimerie du Docteur Swift, 1743) (the publication details are false). Another translation was published in 1729 by J. van Duren as Le Grand Mystère ou, l’Art de méditer sur la Garderobe. The text is available in a recent edition: Le Grand Mistère (Paris: Archange Minotaure, 2003). For the original text, see Jonathan Swift, The Grand Mystery, or Art of Meditating over an House of Office, Restor’d and Unveil’d; After the Manner of the Ingenious Dr. S—ft (London: J. Roberts, 1726). 17 Pierre-Thomas-Nicolas Hurtaut, L’Art de péter … Nouvelle édition augmentée de la Société des francs-péteurs (En Westphalie: chez Florent Q., 1776); Claude-François-Xavier Mercier de Compiègne, Éloge du pet. Dissertation historique, anatomique et philosophique sur son origine, son antiquité, ses vertus … (Paris: Favre, an VII). 18 ‘Rien de si petit en apparence que le héros que je célèbre, puisqu’on ne peut l’apercevoir. Rien de si grand et de si puissant que lui, puisque semblable aux aquilons, et même à Dieu, que l’on sent et que l’on ne voit pas, il agit sans cesse sur nous et sur tout l’univers.’ Mercier, Éloge du pet, p. iii. 19 Ibid., p. vi. 20 ‘Péter est un art, et, par conséquent, une chose utile à la vie, comme disent Lucien, Hermogène, Quintilien, etc. Il est en effet plus essentiel qu’on ne pense ordinairement de savoir péter à propos. / Un pet qui, pour sortir, a fait un vain effort, / Dans les flancs déchirés reportant sa furie, / Souvent cause la mort. / D’un mortel constipé qui touche au

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21 22

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32 33

sombre bord, / Un pet à temps lâché, pourrait sauver la vie.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque (2006), p. 36. Mercier, Éloge du pet, p. vii. ‘Le pet qui ne peut sortir, / A maints la mort fait sentir, / Et le pet, de son chant donne, / La vie à mainte personne. / Si donc un pet est si fort, / Qu’il sauve ou donne la mort, / D’un pet, la force est égale, / A la puissance royale.’ Pierre de Ronsard, Poèmes, vol. 3: Pièces retranchées ou non recueillies (Paris: Gabriel Bluon, 1578), p. 396. For the English text see Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsart, trans. Norman R. Shapiro and with an introduction by Hope Glidden (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002), p. 319. ‘j’aurai donc bien mérité de ma patrie et de l’humanité entière, en apprenant aux hommes un moyen si facile de se conserver en paix et en joie.’ Mercier, Éloge du pet, p. vii. ‘à parler de la cause finale du pet, qui, tantôt est la santé du corps désirée par la nature, et tantôt une délectation ou un plaisir procuré par l’art.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque (2006), p. 44. Ibid., p. 51. ‘une diachronique distribuée à la pythagoricienne dont on trouvera les chroma en serrant les dents’. Ibid., p. 67. ‘Pythagore’, in Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, vol. 13, p. 614. Mercier, Éloge du pet, pp. 1, 101, 82, 4, 57, 26, 60–4, 90–2. ‘qu’Adam ayant pété avant que de parler, le pet est incontestablement plus ancien que la parole.’ Ibid., p. 5. I am thinking especially of the Bièvriana: ‘In 1778, Louis XVI, surrounded by a group of courtiers, gave vent to indications of a windy affliction. Good shot, cried Bièvre, now at last we hear from Versailles, if not the wind of peace, at least a piece of wind [bruits de paix/pets]’. Marquis de Bièvre, Calembours et autres jeux sur les mots d’esprit, ed. Antoine de Baecque (Paris: Editions Payot & Rivages, 2000), p. 134. See also André-Joseph Panckoucke, L’Art de se despoiler la rate: sive de modo C … prudenter: en pregnant chaque Feuillet pour se T. le D.: entremêlé de quelques bonnes choses, 2 vols (1754; Venice: Antonio Pasquinetti, 1788). ‘une issue que la bienséance empêche de nommer. Mais nous ne cachons rien ici; cet être se manifeste par l’anus.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. Baecque (2006), p. 41. Mercier, Éloge du pet, pp. vii and 1014 (‘Règlement provisoire de la Société des Francs-péteurs’); Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. Baecque (2006), pp. 22–4. Pierre-Jean Le Corvaisier, L’Esclavage rompu ou la Société des francspéteurs (À Pordè-Polis [Paris]: à l’Enseigne du Zéphire-Artillerie [A.-M. Lottin], 1756); Hurtaut, L’Art de péter (1776).

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34 ‘Les vers ne sont plus guère à la mode à Paris. Tout le monde commence à faire le géomètre et le physicien. On se mêle de raisonner. Le sentiment, l’imagination et les grâces sont bannis. Un homme, qui aurait vécu sous Louis XIV, et qui reviendrait au monde, ne reconnaîtrait plus les Français; il croirait que les Allemands ont conquis ce pays-ci. Les belles-lettres périssent à vue d’œil. Ce n’est pas que je sois fâché que la philosophie soit cultivée, mais je ne voudrais pas qu’elle devînt un tyran qui exclût tout le reste.’ Voltaire, letter to M. de Cideville, written from Paris, 16 April 1735, in Voltaire, Correspondance, ed. Theodore Besterman (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 1562. 35 See G. Armand, Les fictions à vocation scientifique, de Cyrano à Diderot (Bordeaux: Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux, 2013), esp. ch. 1 (‘La Rupture galiléenne’) and ch. 2 (‘L’Enthousiasme pour la science’), pp. 36–90. 36 ‘A Geometrical Genius is not so confin’d to Geometry but that it may be capable of learning other Sciences. A tract of Morality, Politicks, or Criticism, or even a piece of Oratory, supposing the Author qualified otherwyse for those Performances, shall be the better for being composed by a Geometrician.’ ‘A Translation of Part of Monsieur Fontenelle’s Preface to the Memoirs of the Academy at Paris, in the Year 1699, treating of the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning’, in Miscellanea Curiosa Containing a Collection of Some of the Principal Phænomena in Nature … (London: R. Smith, 1708), vol. 1, https:// archive.org/stream/miscellaneacurio11708hall#page/n23/mode/2up (last accessed 15 February 2018). 37 See B. Fink (ed.), Les liaisons savoureuses: réflexions et pratiques culinaires au dix-huitième siècle, Lire le dix-huitième siècle (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1995). 38 Guilhem Armand, ‘Science culinaire et patrimoine national au XVIIIe siècle’, in Sylvie Brodziak and Sylvie Catellin (eds), Le Patrimoine en bouche: nouveaux appétits, nouvelles mythologies, Questions alimentaires et gastronomiques (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2016), pp. 21–44. 39 On the relation between fiction and science see G. Armand, ‘Fictions et sciences: questions de compatibilités à partir de l’ère moderne’, in Fictions et Sciences, TrOPICS (e-journal of Contacts de Culture, de Littérature et de Civilisation), 1 (December 2013), 5–15. 40 The second is less scientific and is given as a compendium of advice from an old marchioness to a young countess who has to enter society. The two texts are both edited in La Philosophie des vapeurs, suivi d’une dissertation sur les vapeurs et les pertes de sang, ed. Sabine Arnaud (Paris: Mercure de France, 2009). 41 Alexander Pope, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (Richmond, Surrey: Oneworld Classics, 2009), p. 11.

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42 ‘Le pet est donc, en général, un vent renfermé dans le bas-ventre, causé, comme les médecins le prétendent, par le débordement d’une pituite attiédie, qu’une chaleur faible a atténuée et détachée sans la dissoudre.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque (2006), pp. 40–1. 43 ‘Vent (Physiolog.) les vents qui sortent soit par la bouche, soit par l’anus, sont de l’air que ces visceres chassent de leur cavité, en se mettant dans une contraction assez forte, pour surmonter les puissances qui s’opposent à la sortie des matières contenues dans ces cavités. Ces puissances sont deux sphincters, dont l’un ferme l’orifice supérieur de l’estomac, & l’autre l’anus.’ Jaucourt, art. ‘Vent’, in Diderot  and  D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, vol. 17, pp. 17–24. See also  anonymous, art. ‘Pet’, in ibid., vol. 12, p. 459: ‘PET, s. m. air which separates out in the intestines, & which escapes noisily from the anus. It depends on the digestion, the quality of the food, the heat or cold, etc.’ 44 ‘Cette matière que je vous offre aujourd’hui, analysée avec toute l’exactitude possible, avait été extrêmement négligée jusqu’à présent; non pas qu’on la jugeât indigne d’être maniée, mais parce qu’on ne l’estimait pas susceptible d’une certaine méthode et de nouvelles découvertes. On se trompait.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque, p. 35 (my emphasis). 45 On this question, see G. Armand: ‘Le Spectacle de la nature ou l’esthétique de la révélation de l’Abbé Pluche’, Revue dix-huitième siècle, 45 (2013), ‘La Nature’, ed. Colas Duflo, pp. 329–45. 46 Being a man of many parts, Hurtaut had published, among other things an Essai de médecine sur le flux menstruel et la curation des maladies de la tête (Paris, 1754), as well as Coup d’oeil anglais sur les cérémonies du mariage (Geneva, 1750). 47 ‘Les grimauds de grammaire divisent les lettres en voyelles et en consonnes; ces Messieurs effleurent ordinairement la matière, mais nous qui faisons profession de la faire sentir et goûter telle qu’elle est, nous divisons les pets en vocaux, et en muets, ou vesses proprement dits.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque, p. 48. 48 Ibid., p. 48. We have only to think of D’Alembert’s research into the sensitive strings, or of scientifico-philosphical works on the subject; the corpus is vast and the studies on the subject are numerous. See esp. André Charrak, ‘La Musique entre physique et mathématique’, in Sciences et techniques, special issue of Dix-huitième siècle, 31 (1999), 33–44. 49 ‘Un savant allemand a proposé ici une question fort difficile à résoudre; savoir s’il peut y avoir de la musique dans les pets? Distinguo: il y a de la musique dans les pets diphtongues, concedo; dans les autres pets, nego.’ Hurtaut, L’Art de péter, ed. de Baecque, p. 65.

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50 ‘Si nous voulons détailler les facultés intellectuelles du pet, et la culture de son esprit, nous le trouverons certainement très versé dans tous les genres de sciences et d’arts libéraux.’ Mercier, Éloge du pet, p. 15 (my emphasis). 51 ‘distiller un pet et d’en tirer la quintessence … pour enlever les taches de rousseur’. Ibid., p. 57. 52 On freckles, see ‘Rousseur’, in Diderot and D’Alembert, Encyclopédie, vol. 14, p. 414: ‘Rousseur, s. 1° ou tache de Rousseur, lentigo, est une maladie ou difformité de la peau. Cette rousseur se dissipe avec le lait virginal, avec l’huile d’amandes douces mêlées avec le cédrat ordinaire.’ (‘A skin disease or deformity that can be cured with virgin’s milk or a mixture of almond oil and citron.’) 53 ‘On espère donc que nos beautés en perruque blonde, en coiffure à la Titus, à la Caracalla, feront une grande consommation de ce merveilleux spécifique.’ Mercier, Éloge du pet, p. 58.

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10  Potbelly, paunch and innards: variations on the abdomen in marivaux’s L’Homère travesti and Le Télémaque travesti Clémence Aznavour

While Marivaux is renowned for his abstract language and precious style, he is less well known for the material or even frivolous approach to the bodies of some of his characters. If we think of the belly in Marivaux’s works, we are likely to think only of the character of Harlequin,1 his doubles such as Frontin or Trivelin and their offspring, and Jacob in Le Paysan parvenu (‘The Fortunate Peasant’). And yet, if there are indeed bellies and innards in Marivaux, they are first and foremost in his youthful parodies: Le Télémaque travesti (‘Telemachus Travestied’) and L’Homère travesti (‘Homer Travestied’) do clearly give pride of place to their heroes’ abdomens. After the first ‘Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes’,2 which preoccupied the Republic of Letters at the end of the seventeenth century, there was a revival of the conflict at the beginning of the eighteenth century. For Noémi Hepp, this second phase, from 1714 to 1717, was exclusively concerned with Homer and his two epics and mainly revolved around the publication of Mme Dacier’s translation and La Motte’s adaptation of this translation.3 Le Télémaque travesti and L’Homère travesti played a part in this new quarrel. Le Télémaque travesti, although published in 1736, had been written in 1714, and L’Homère travesti had been printed in 1716. As their titles indicate, both works are ‘travesties’, or parodies.4 ‘Travesties’ means, to quote Marivaux’s sweeping definition in his preface to Le Télémaque travesti, works which ‘disguise a serious author’ in order to present him in such a way as to amuse the reader.5 The parody in these two works is not exactly the same. L’Homère travesti follows 209

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the tradition of burlesque parody inaugurated by Scarron and his Enéide travestie (‘The Aeneid Travestied’). According to the definition offered by Genette in Palimpsests, Marivaux ‘rewrites a noble text, by preserving its “action”, meaning its fundamental content and movement (in rhetorical terms, its invention and its disposition), but impressing on it an entirely different elocution, or “style”, in the classic sense of the term’.6 Agamemnon, Achilles, Ulysses and  the other heroes are all present, but their actions lack the nobility of their epic models. Le Télémaque travesti on the other hand follows the tradition inaugurated by Cervantes’s Don Quixote. For Genette it is ‘a singulative antiromance – i.e., one with a single hypotext’, and therefore with a predetermined plot.7 Thus Brideron and Phocion consider that they are living out lives analogous to those of their models, Telemachus and Mentor. What authorises the comparison between these two works by Marivaux is the existence of one or more hypotexts that we may call noble, but which are treated in a burlesque register. In the case of Le Télémaque travesti, the primary hypotext is Fénelon’s Les aventures de Télémaque, published in 1699, which was itself inspired by Homer’s Odyssey. In the case of L’Homère travesti, the relationship is more complex. As Françoise Rubellin remarks: ‘L’Homère travesti est du point de vue de sa genèse le résultat d’un développement complexe que l’on pourrait résumer en un titre imaginaire: l’Homère traduit par Mme Dacier, adapté par La Motte, travesti par Marivaux’ (‘As for the genesis of L’Homère travesti, it is the result of a complex process which we might sum up in an imaginary title: Mme Dacier’s translation of Homer, adapted by La Motte and travestied by Marivaux’).8 Before they were parodied by Marivaux, Homer’s texts had therefore been filtered by Fénelon in one case and adapted by La Motte in the other. At the very heart of this rewriting we find the intrusion of the belly, the paunch, the potbelly and the innards (le ventre, la panse, la bedaine and les boyaux in French), which later disappeared from Marivaux’s works. I would like to delve into this strange development, in order to show how it plays a part in the desacralisation of the hero and a return of realism. The belly of the hero: a new battlefield Marivaux’s parodies follow the burlesque tradition, which is particularly characterised by the traditional procedure of inversion. 210

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What is noble becomes base, and the noble style disappears in favour of a more colloquial vocabulary. The abdominal part of the body is no exception. In Le Télémaque travesti and L’Homère travesti, the use of ‘potbelly’ and ‘paunch’, instead of ‘belly’, provides an example of this inversion. ‘Potbelly’ (bedaine in French), according to Furetière’s dictionary, is a ‘colloquial term’,9 which, as the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française of 1694 further remarks, ‘is used only with comic intent’ (‘ne se dit qu’en raillerie’). It designates a fat belly and constitutes a synonym of ‘paunch’, ‘a fat, protuberant belly’ (‘un ventre gras et trop gros’),10 and is ‘used only in the colloquial style’ (‘il n’a d’usage que dans le style familier’).11 Far removed from the image of the athletic bodies of the epic heroes and the muscular abdomens of the ancient warriors, these nouns enable the creation of paunchy, podgy heroes, that is to say, anti-heroes. To this colloquial vocabulary is sometimes added a medical metaphor, which underlines the scatological dimension of Marivaux’s texts. Gastric disturbances invade the epic struggles. In book VIII of Le Télémaque travesti, while the Huguenots are preparing to attack Oménée and his servants, one of them refers to his intended method of attack: ‘I’ll deliver him such an enema up his potbelly with my rifle that he won’t need any Diafoirus to purge him.’12 In order to dissuade him, Phocion-Mentor points out the futility of this attack: ‘You say that you want to use your rifle as a syringe to purge his belly? But look, will that help you open your bowels more often?’13 The recycling of this medical procedure as a military stratagem and the parallel between the rifle and the clyster-pipe unite to create a comic effect, all the more so since this ‘remedy’ had already been copiously exploited in the comic theatre of the seventeenth century.14 These two parodic works revel in the outrageous and the trivial. Jean Emelina has shown the links between the burlesque register and the body.15 According to him, ‘digestive and sexual functions’ are one of the ‘favourite topics’ of the burlesque register: it ‘says what should not be said, does what should not be done, transgresses deliberately what is forbidden. It is the opposite of modesty, allusion, euphemism, and litotes.’16 It is probably this excess which explains the poor reputation of L’Homère travesti even in the eighteenth century. We only have to think of D’Alembert’s remarks in his Éloge de Marivaux (‘Eulogy for Marivaux’).17 211

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The colloquial vocabulary and the frivolous comparisons go hand in hand with the creation of new targets for heroic assaults, targets that Marivaux selects because they are definitely less noble than those of Fénelon’s Aventures de Télémaque and La Motte’s L’Iliade. In La Motte’s L’Iliade, the warrior’s arms, shoulders, chest and legs are the targets of the attacks. The term ‘belly’ never appears in the context of combat, while in Marivaux, the belly, apparently unprotected, becomes the target of the warriors and their weapons.18 The aim is to tear out ‘in battles / the foe’s tripes and intestines’.19 During the fight between Paris and Hector, Ajax’s lance homes in on the Trojan’s paunch: Pâris prend un dard et le lance, Et s’écrie: Gare la Panse! Ah! vous visez la bedaine, Lui dit alors ce capitaine. (Paris then his dart did launch, crying out, ‘Take that, you paunch!’ ‘Ah, you want my baser part’, came the reply, with high Greek art.)20

The rhymes of lance with Panse and bedaine with capitaine desacralise the epic combat and the heroes involved. Similarly, during the fight between Pindar and Diomède, the belly is presented as a baser target than the heart. Diomède, who is far from corresponding to the traditional heroic image,21 ‘is desirous to pierce Pindar’s paunch’.22 But Pindar seizes the initiative and manages to pierce Diomède’s arm, which, as a symbol of strength and power, is the epic member par excellence. Diomède then decides to rise to the level of his enemy, to reply in kind by attacking his arm, but his stratagem fails: Là-dessus, malgré son scrupule, Il lui perça le ventricule (But he mistimed his thoughtful blow, And hit the ventricle, below)23

Despite his scruples, it is the belly that Diomède, a low-class epic hero, smites.24 Just as the noble style becomes base, so the heroic targets move down from the upper body to the lower. In Le Télémaque travesti, the rewriting of book XV of Fénelon’s 212

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Aventures de Télémaque, and in particular the combat between Adraste and Pisistrate, also places the belly at the heart of the parody. In Fénelon the words ventre and entrailles occur only once in relation to the human body,25 precisely in connection with this epic combat: Pisistrate thrust his lance so violently at Adraste that the Daunian would certainly have fallen, but he slipped aside; and while Pisistrate, shaken by the failure of his lunge, picked up his lance, Adraste sliced through the middle of his belly with his javelin. Straightway his innards issued forth in floods of blood …26

This striking, concrete image, a symbol of epic violence, is taken from Homer. Yet what was a hapax legomenon in Fénelon did not escape Marivaux, who was delighted to ridicule it. It is Nestor first who, just before this episode, ‘attempts, but in vain, to whet [his rusty sword] in the innards of his enemies’.27 But above all Pisistrate (rechristened Pistratte by Marivaux) sees the wound to his abdomen reduced to comic proportions: ‘Pistratte was to die, and miss election to the Academy, for Adraste sliced his navel with his sword.’28 Nestor then immediately comes to help his son: Nestor had retired a little away from the battlefield, to take the time to bandage his dying son’s navel, but the son expired before there was time to cut up an old shirt to strap round his wound.29

This insistence on the wound and its location enters fully into the spirit of burlesque comedy. But we should note that, in parodying the epic as passed down by Fénelon and La Motte, Marivaux paradoxically returns to Homer, for in Homer’s epic the navel is indeed a potential target. It happens to have been removed by the adaptors, probably because it seemed to be a part of the body rather too ignoble to mention. Noémie Hepp thus emphasises the ‘modesty which leads Mme Dacier to gloss over the anatomical details of certain wounds’.30 It is important to investigate this modesty. Digestive revelations The frivolous approach does not only serve to overturn systems of values and produce comic effects. It would seem that for Marivaux the challenge is to say out loud what is left unspoken in the epic 213

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text, in order to restore physiology to its rightful place. This is no doubt an attempt to make a stand against an abstract, modest and decorous representation of the body. By mentioning the digestive problems of certain characters, Marivaux says things that the hypotexts never say, that they have censured. He also restores the material bodies of the epic heroes. In the two parodic works, this procedure is taken to an extreme by the use of the burlesque style, but it also reappears, with more restraint, in other works by Marivaux which mock the body of the hero, such as Pharsamon ou les nouvelles folies romanesques. Thanks to Norbert Elias’s work, we know that at the beginning of the eighteenth century it was considered impolite to hiccup or to fart. In La Civilisation des moeurs, Elias has shown how we have moved from the free body of the Middle Ages to the controlled body of the sixteenth century. The sixteenth century is seen as a century of transition, the century of ‘a concentrated enterprise of codification and control of behaviour’.31 As prohibitions grew with the passage of time, treatises on politeness at the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century contained longer and longer lists of constraints. According to Elias, the process of civilisation was global. Constraints were progressively and unanimously accepted, and the free body disappeared from public society. But we may note that this free body reappeared in parodic works, which proves that this ‘enterprise of codification’ was also clearly mocked. In Le Télémaque travesti and L’Homère travesti, Marivaux makes no effort to hide the embarrassment that the belly may visit upon its owner, and he relates these digestive disturbances to material realities. In Le Télémaque travesti, Népolème agrees to carry Lotècle on his back, as long as he respects certain conditions: ‘I don’t mind giving you a lift on the back of my horse: but if you stink I’ll repay you in kind, for I sometimes troop when I’ve eaten too many beans.’32 Frédéric Deloffre explains the meaning of the verb roussinner (to troop) by relating it to the expression ‘péter comme un roussin’ (to fart like a trooper’s horse), which was a popular expression for a man who farts too often.33 This discomfort is clearly caused by Népolème’s diet. Louis Lémery’s Traité des aliments, published at the beginning of the eighteenth century, supports the character’s argument, for it does indeed point out that ‘beans are windy and cause colic’.34 This reference to the specific 214

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properties of a familiar foodstuff allows Marivaux to construct the image of an uncontrolled body. The digestive disturbances act as a paradigm or symbol of this representation. This inability to master the digestive tube occurs on several occasions, in different contexts. In book V of L’Homère travesti, Marivaux indicates the contagious force of vomit. When Hécube announces to Hector that she is about to throw up the eggs that she has eaten, the latter hurries to reply: Ne dégobillez rien, maman: Attendez du moins un moment; Car en vous voyant ainsi tout rendre, À mon tour, il me pourrait prendre De dégoût, un soulèvement Qui conduit au vomissement … Je rendrais tripes et tripaille, Si j’allais voir votre mangeaille, Sortir, dit-il, de votre corps, Par de très dégoûtants efforts (Spew nothing forth, my mother fair: Please wait a while before you dare; For if I saw you spill your urn, It well might make my stomach churn With such a movement of disgust That I would vomit in my turn … For I would render tripe and guts, If I saw your meal, quoth he, Leaving so repulsively.)35

In book X of L’Iliade, La Motte condenses Achilles’ discovery of twelve Trojans into two lines.36 Marivaux, on the other hand, clearly enjoys expanding the episode. The soldiers are betrayed by the intestinal disturbances of one among them: Tout en parlant (Achille) entendit Un pet qui près de lui se fit D’abord, notre guerrier écoute, Et dit, le péteur est sans doute Ici près, et dans quelque lieu, Qu’on trouvera s’il plaît à dieu; Et là-dessus il voit un antre Dans lequel aussitôt il entre; Douze troyens s’étaient nichés …

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Hélas! c’est bien pour nos péchés, Que notre imprudent camarade À lâché cette pétarade … Il leur dit, c’est lui qui vous nuit Car je ne suis venu qu’au bruit. (Speaking [Achilles] could hear Someone farting very near. Straightway our hero strained his ear And said, The farter must be here, Or near enough for me to find, If God is willing to be kind; Whereon he saw a hidden cave, And found within the twelve from Troy … Alas, we’re lost and can’t be saved, And all because a silly boy’s Betrayed us with his anal noise … He told them, That’s what I suppose, I was following my nose.)37

The discovery of the Trojans is therefore not due to the speed or bravery of the epic hero. The soldiers are led to their deaths by a gastric disturbance. The guilty party had perhaps consumed too many beans. The belly thus enables Marivaux to represent the body as a potentially unconquerable, untameable force. One passage from L’Homère travesti is particularly interesting here. The hiccup, defined by the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française of 1694 as ‘a convulsive movement of the stomach which is accompanied by some vocal sound’ (‘un mouvement convulsif de l’estomac qui se fait avec quelque son de voix’), affects Ulysses: Monsieur Ulysse à ce banquet Prit un très importun hoquet; Et comme il est fort malhonnête de hoqueter dans une fête, Il but à la santé du Dieu Fit un hoc, et puis dit adieu. (Ulysses, at this repast, Was by hiccupping caught fast; And, as it lacks propriety To hiccup in society, He drank a toast, the gods to please, And, ‘hic!’ et ‘nunc!’, he took his leave.)38

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His motivation – ‘as it lacks propriety / To hiccup in society’ – resembles nothing so much as a rule formulated in a treatise on polite behaviour, which informs one that the social body must be mastered as far as possible. In La Civilisation des moeurs, Elias quotes an extract from La Sallle’s Règles de la Bienséance et de la Civilité chrétienne: ‘It is most impolite to allow wind to emerge from one’s body, whether from above or below, even quite soundlessly, when in company.’39 Marivaux’s formula is reminiscent of La Salle’s. The impersonal turn of phrase ‘comme il est fort malhonnête’ recalls the expression ‘il est très incivil’, and the adverbial qualifier of time and place ‘dans une fête’ echoes the subordinate clause ‘lorsqu’on est en compagnie.’ Using the formula of treatises on politeness, Marivaux mocks the constraints applied to the body. The hiccup is also criticised by Antoine de Courtin in Le Nouveau Traité de la Civilité qui se pratique en France parmi les Honnêtes Gens, in which he asserts that one should not ‘appear insatiable, nor eat so much that the hiccups ensue…’.40 Hiccups are incompatible with self control. In Histoire de la vie privée, Jacques Revel concludes his argument on the evolution of politeness thus: ‘At the dawn of the Enlightenment, a whole group of bodily practices was thus consigned to a furtive, shameful and clandestine existence. A circle of silence and secrecy was organised around the body.’41 It was this circle of silence, which applied equally to literature, that Marivaux took pleasure in mocking and flouting by evoking the trivial realities that stand in opposition to the bowdlerised physiology of Fénelon, Dacier and La Motte. At the heart of this burlesque we hear the sounds of real bodies. Marivaux introduces material reality in the context of epic to break this circle of polite silence. But his goal is also to emphasise and comment upon the omission of such realities from the hypotexts and from literature in general. He criticises the authors who deliberately conceal some aspects of the body. In L’Homère travesti, the character Diomède and his digestive problems allow Marivaux to allude to the omissions of the hypotext. The anecdote takes place between the end of book IV and the beginning of book V, where its pivotal position attracts the reader’s attention. In the Iliad, book V is considered to be the aristeia, the climax of Diomedes’ epic deeds. But there are no heroic feats in Marivaux. Diomède, whose ‘le ventre constipé / Avait besoin d’être trempé’ (‘constipated belly / needed to be loosened’),42 takes some medicine, and the effect is 217

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immediate. At the beginning of book V, the narrator picks up the thread of this anecdote: Nous avons dit que Diomède, Pour sa santé, prit un remède, Lequel remède ce héros Rendit assez mal à propos, Au nez d’Atride, en sa présence; Ce qui fut une irrévérence, Mais c’était par nécessité Qu’il commit l’incivilité.’ (We have said that Diomedes Had to take some remedies For health, but our hero chose Beneath Atride’s very nose His thwarted purpose to fulfil. This was very disrespectful But it was by dire need That politeness he’d not heed.)43

The terms irrévérence and incivilité seem to be included as a nod and a wink to treatises on politeness. Under the influence of the remedy, the body is presented as uncontrollable. If Marivaux had been content with this anecdote, it would have been provocative enough, just one more subversive thrust to add to his burlesque register. But he adds a commentary: Mais qu’il fût contraint ou non, Tant y a bref que ce garcon Eut ce jour tant de vaillantise, Que la postérité surprise, À qui le rapportera bien, Dira: Ma foi, je n’en crois rien. (But, however dire his needs, We must record the noble deeds This lad accomplished on that day, Which so impressed posterity That modern men who learned his feats Found them quite beyond belief.)44

The representation of the hero, as transmitted across the centuries, is incompatible with the existence of a weak, sickly or uncontrollable body. Everything seems to suggest that the body of the epic 218

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hero has been emptied of its inner self, of its innards, in order to preserve only its outer form – the surface exposed to weapons. This absence is incompatible with the aesthetic proclaimed by Marivaux in L’Homère travesti, ‘il faut bien tout rapporter / quand on se mêle de conter’ (‘you must tell it warts and all / or your story flat will fall’).45 That affirmation is directly opposed to La Motte’s dictum that ‘tout ce qui est dans la nature n’est pas bon à peindre’ (‘not everything in nature is worthy of being portrayed’),46 and we might wonder if it is not Homer so much as La Motte whom Marivaux is parodying.47 This incompatibility between the image of the hero and his physiology is also very apparent in a famous episode in Le Télémaque travesti. In book I, Phocion and Brideron find themselves in a smallholding. Phocion is treating the farm owner for rheumatism, although he had initially refused, for his model Mentor ‘autrefois avait bien combattu contre les Barbares, mais non pas guéri de rhumatismes’ (‘had in former times fought Barbarians, but had never cured rheumatism’).48 Since Phocion is emulating ‘des grands seigneurs d’autrefois’ (‘the great lords of the past’), he finds that ‘la medicine déroge’ (‘medicine is demeaning’).49 He also finally agrees to treat Claudine’s fever, but there is one case which he will not handle, that of the smallholder’s wife, who is suffering from diarrhoea, and ‘rend par le bas tout ce qu’elle mâche’ (‘expels from behind all that she swallows in front’).50 It all seems to mean that the woman’s diarrhoea should be banished from the investigating and healing process. The apothecary deals with excrement, not the physician. Treating these ailments, especially digestive disturbances, would ruin his emulation of his heroes, since physiology and heroism are incompatible. Phocion comments on such pettifogging investigation in these terms: ‘Morbleu tout ce tripotage-là dans le fond, dit Phocion, n’est pas bon pour les gens comme nous, vous êtes un Télémaque de m… et moi un Mentor de bran’ (A plague on all this poking around in the fundament, said Phocion, it is not right for people like us, you are are a sh***y Télémaque and I am a crappy Mentor’).51 And precisely because Phocion-Mentor has not cured the farmer’s wife of her diarrhoea, Marivaux amuses himself by making the excremental matter, having been too rapidly evacuated by the smallholder’s wife, return with a vengeance. But there is a transfer of the excrement, as it now comes to characterise Fénelon’s heroes. We do not hear that they are a sh***y 219

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Brideron and a crappy Phocion; rather it is explicitly the characters from Fénelon who are named. Despite their desire to follow the Aventures de Télémaque to the letter, Phoceron and Brideron are confronted with reality: it is this absence of the real, this idealisation of the world at work in the hypotext, which is denounced. To use the words of Yen-Mai Tran-Gervat: ‘The inappropriate body is perhaps less a question of eccentricity, which would merely signal the playfulness characteristic of the parodist, than an invitation to reconsider as unnatural the body constructed in the imaginary by the tradition of fiction.’52 Desire and the belly In Marivaux’s later works, paunches, potbellies and gastric disturbance disappear. The belly, however, remains, and its presence still pervades Marivaux’s later works. Beyond the regular symptoms of indigestion (hiccups, vomiting and colic), the belly is most often associated with Jacob, and with Harlequin and his doubles. In the  spirit of the commedia dell’arte and the picaresque novel, these characters behave like real gluttons who show no signs of digestive problems. According to Claudio Vinti, Marivaux returns to the source ‘by staging the mythical Harlequin, greedy and cowardly’.53 Hunger is a character trait indissociable from this type of commedia dell’arte which Marivaux imports into a number of his plays. In Harlequin poli par l’Amour, it defines the title character from the outset of the play.54 In La double inconstance, Harlequin is goaded by Trivelin into finally admitting his taste for good food. As a descendant of the typical picaresque character, Jacob, the fortunate peasant, is also obsessed with food. In his essay on the fictional body, Roger Kempf drew attention to the voracious appetite of the fortunate peasant, for whom ‘all things may wait, except meal times’: ‘to the vicissitudes of existence, Jacob opposes the constancy of his appetite’.55 This appetite is inseparable from the notion of desire: what these characters want to eat, and therefore digest, is also the body of the other. And the vocabulary pertaining to food tends to permeate the discourse of seduction. In a number of plays, the lexical field of cooking or tasting mingles with that of the expression of amorous feelings. In scene 5 of Harlequin poli par l’Amour, at the end of his encounter with a young shepherdess, Harlequin, in a gesture intended to be courteous, takes Silvia’s hand 220

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to kiss it, but he immediately assigns a culinary reference to this part of her body, when Silvia’s ‘petits doigts’ (‘little fingers’) become ‘de si bons bonbons’ (‘such sweet sweetmeats’) in his mouth.56 The adjective ‘tasty’ and cognate words appear frequently in the mouths of Harlequin and characters with a similar social status. In La double inconstance, Harlequin, noting the arrival of Lisette, the sister of Flaminia and maidservant to the Prince, hopes that she is coming to ‘l’affriander d’elle’ (‘whet his taste buds’).57 In La Fausse Suivante ou le fourbe puni, while Trivelin tells how he got the better of a lady, Harlequin pictures her as ‘friandise de son âme’ (‘a tasty dish for the soul’).58 Maître Jacques in Le Père prudent et équitable notes Toinette’s ‘friand minois’ (‘tasty little face’),59 while in scene 6, Toinette, singing her own praises, mentions her ‘nez friand’ (‘tasty little nose’).60 In Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard, Harlequin mentions Sylvia’s ‘tasty’ heart,61 and in scene 2 of La Méprise, Frontain speaks of Lisette’s ‘prunelle friande’ (‘tasty, plummy little eyes’).62 Food thus sometimes becomes a metaphor for the body of the other. In Le Jeu de l’Amour et du Hasard, Harlequin claims that kissing Lisette’s hand thrills him just like drinking a ‘delicious wine’.63 The body is considered as a foodstuff likely to awaken desire, and the appetite becomes an image of desire in material form. The discourse of seduction is articulated in terms of appetite, and the needs of the body permeate this discourse although the body is never explicitly mentioned. Hunger, appetite and everything likely to fill the stomach are often mentioned, but this organ is never mentioned as a part of the body. In order to rediscover the relation between the body and sexual desire, we have to return to Marivaux’s early works and more particularly to a scene from Le Télémaque travesti, which appears to be a hapax legomenon in Marivaux’s work. In book III, Brideron goes to a ball and enjoys a certain success with the ladies, and yet he takes the decision to leave, in order to emulate his model Télémaque fleeing from the island of Cyprus: Ma mie, disais-je à l’une, en lui léchant les doigts, laissez-moi m’enfuir, je me gâte comme de la viande trop gardée, le moisi du vice se met à mon cœur. Hélas! … mais j’aurais dit mille hélas, que, quand elle venait à retirer ses doigts, il semblait qu’elle m’emportait le ventre. (My dear, I said to one of them, licking her fingers, allow me to flee, I am ripening like meat too long on the hook, the mould of vice is

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eating away at my heart. Alas! … but had I uttered a thousand times alas, it would still have felt, when she came to withdraw her hand, as if she were removing my belly.)64

Although the relation between desire and appetite is omnipresent in Marivaux’s work, this is the only occasion when Marivaux shows so brutally the equivalence between food and the body of a woman. For here it is not a case of kissing fingers, but of actually licking them, a verb which ‘se dit … des hommes friands et goulus qui ne se contentent pas de manger tout ce qu’il y a dans un plat, mais encore le lèchent pour n’en perdre pas même la sauce’ (‘applies to … greedy and gluttonous men who are not content to eat everything served up on their plate, but go on to lick it so as not to miss even a drop of the sauce’).65 The second part of the quotation is also important, for it is one of the very few times when the belly is mentioned in the context of a scene of seduction: the belly in the eighteenth century also designated the abdomen and by extension the sexual organs. Le Télémaque travesti therefore establishes a link between the belly, appetite and desire for the body of the other. The belly becomes the material location of desire. If we examine the frequency of occurrence of the vocabulary of the body in Marivaux’s plays and fictional memoirs, the ‘face’, ‘eyes’ and ‘hand’ are the most prevalent. The belly is conspicuously absent, except in relation to the gluttony of certain characters. This part of the body, on the other hand, is ever present in L’Homère travesti and Le Télémaque travesti, which play their part in the Homeric warfare of the beginning of the eighteenth century. Paunch, potbelly and innards recur throughout these rewritings. Digestive disturbances – from constipation to diarrhoea, not to mention vomiting – also appear. This exceptional vocabulary is part of the traditional procedure of burlesque inversion and allows the author to create new epic targets for the epic combats. But beyond this invention, which calls into question the heroism of antiquity, the variety of vocabulary concerning the belly highlights, and implicitly criticises, the alleged perfection of the heroic body, which has no experience of the misfortunes of physiological disturbances. These colloquial references, which are numerous in the parodies, later disappeared from Marivaux’s work. Gastric disturbances were never mentioned again, and yet the belly did not entirely disappear. Although it is not explicitly mentioned, the relation between appe222

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tite and sensuality is materialised in the characters of valets and the fortunate peasant. It is however above all in Le Télémaque travesti that we encounter explicit mentions of the links between the pleasures of the stomach and the pleasures of the flesh. Notes 1 Harlequin is also a character of the théâtre de la foire, which inspired Marivaux. Those plays contain many allusions to the belly and abdomen. 2 See A. Tadié’s works, www.agon.paris-sorbonne.fr/alexis-tadie/about. html (last accessed 16 February 2018) and esp. ‘Peut-on traduire les querelles? De la Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes à la Battle of the Books’, Littératures classiques, 81 (2013), 211–26. 3 N. Hepp, Homère en France au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Klincksieck, 1968). 4 Marivaux knew Swift’s works: in the prologue to L’Île de la raison, one of his characters refers to Gulliver’s Travels. 5 Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, ed. Frédéric Deloffre and Claude Rigault (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 962. 6 G. Genette, Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), p. 58. 7 Ibid., p. 150. 8 F. Rubellin, ‘Une adaptation burlesque de l’Iliade: L’Homère travesti de Marivaux’, in F. Létoublon, C. Volpilhac-Auger and D. Sangsue (eds), Homère en France après la querelle (1715–1900), proceedings of the conference held at Université Stendhal-Grenoble 3, 23–5 October 1995 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1999), p. 214. 9 Antoine Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (The Hague and Rotterdam: Arnout & Reiners Leers, 1690). 10 Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (Paris, Coignard, 1694). 11 Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (edn of 1727). 12 ‘Je lui baillerai de mon fusil un si bon lavement dans la bedaine qu’il ne faudra plus de frater pour le purger.’ Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 839. 13 ‘Vous voulez-dites-vous lui donner des lavements dans la bedaine dont le fusil sera la seringue? Eh bien en irez-vous plus souvent à la selle?’ Ibid., p. 840. 14 I am thinking especially of Molière. 15 J. Emelina, ‘Comment définir le burlesque?’, in D. Bertrand (ed.), Poétiques du burlesque, proceedings of the international conference of the Research Centre on Modern and Contemporary Literature, Université Blaise Pascal, 22–4 February 1996 (Paris: Champion, 1998), pp. 49–66. 16 Ibid., pp. 59, 58.

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17 D’Alembert describes L’Homère travesti as ‘[un] ouvrage reprehensible à tous égard, & qui ne paraît avoir échappé à la juste censure des gens de gout que par l’espèce d’oubli où il est tombé dès sa naissance’ (‘a disgraceful book by all accounts, and one that only avoided censure by falling into oblivion as soon as it was published’). [D’Alembert], Éloge de Marivaux (n.p., n.d.), p. 5. 18 The bum is also a less noble target, and a symbol of the cowardice of the character running away. 19 Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 1082. 20 Ibid., p. 1032. 21 See the aristeia of Diomedes in Homer. In La Motte, Diomède, who is invincible, instantly kills Pindar. 22 ‘Est désireux de percer [l]a panse.’ Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 1053. 23 Ibid. 24 According to Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel (1727), the ventricle in medical terms is ‘the same thing as the stomach’. 25 The other occasions concern the entrails of victims used in haruspicy. 26 ‘Pisistrate porta un coup de lance si violent contre Adraste, que le Daunien devait succomber: mais il l’évita; et pendant que Pisistrate, ébranlé du faux coup qu’il avait donné, ramenait sa lance, Adraste le perça d’un javelot au milieu du ventre. Ses entrailles commencèrent d’abord à sortir avec un ruisseau de sang …’ F. Fénelon, Les aventures de Télémaque (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2009), p. 492. 27 ‘tâche mais en vain de dérouiller [sa vieille épée] dans les boyaux des ennemis’. Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 929. 28 ‘Pistratte devait périr et ne point voir l’Académie, car Araste lui porta son épée dans le nombril.’ Ibid., p. 930. 29 ‘Nestor s’était retiré un peu loin du champ de bataille, pour avoir le temps de bander le nombril de son fils qui se mourait, il expira entre ses bras avant qu’on eût le temps de couper une vieille chemise pour lui serrer sa plaie.’ Ibid. 30 Hepp, Homère en France, p. 655. Modesty and decorum are values shared by Fénelon and La Motte despite their conflicting positions in the ‘Querelle’. 31 J. Revel, ‘Les Usages de la civilité’, in P. Ariès and G. Duby (eds), Histoire de la vie privée, vol. 3: De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Seuil, 1999), pp. 167–208. 32 ‘Je veux bien te mettre derrière moi en trousse; si tu pues, je te rendrai bien le change, car je roussinne quelque fois, parce que je mange beaucoup de fèves.’ Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 890. 33 F. Deloffre, Une préciosité nouvelle: Marivaux et le Marivaudage (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1955), p. 113.

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34 ‘les fèves sont venteuses et excitent des coliques’. L. Lémery, Traité des aliments (Paris: Pierre Witte, 1705), p. 92. Brideron, in a quiet spot in hell, sees men peacefully asleep. He tastes a bottle full of nut cordial and exclaims: ‘La peste que cela est bon, cela me guérit tout d’un coup de la colique qui commençait à me prendre.’ (‘By all the devils, that is good, that has cured me right away of the colic that was starting to seize me.’) Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 919. The remedy is plausible even if the speed of the cure is comic. 35 Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 1061. 36 ‘Le rapide vainqueur pénétra leur asile; / Douze jeunes troyens y sont pris par Achille’ (‘The speedy victor rushed inside their den; / Achilles caught twelve Trojan men’). La Motte, L’Iliade, poème avec un discours sur Homère (Paris: Grégoire Dupuis, 1714), p. 164. 37 Marivaux, L’Homère travesti ou L’Iliade en vers burlesques (Paris: Pierre Prault, 1716), p. 194. 38 Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 997. 39 ‘Il est très incivil de laisser sortir des vents de son corps, soit par haut, soit par bas, quand même ce serait sans faire aucun bruit, lorsqu’on est en compagnie.’ La Salle, Les Règles de la Bienséance et de la Civilité chrétienne (Rouen, 1729) p. 45, quoted in N. Elias, La Civilisation des moeurs (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1973), p. 285. We also find the following advice in the 1708 edition: ‘[La civilité] ordonne de manger toujours avec modération, sans se hâter et elle ne permet pas de manger jusqu’à se faire venir le hoquet car c’est une marque excessive d’intempérance.’ (‘[Politeness] requires us to eat always in moderation, without hurry, and it does not permit us to keep on eating until we hiccup, for this is an excessive sign of intemperance’.) La Salle, Les Règles de la bienséance (Paris: François Rivière, 1708), pp. 131–2. 40 ‘paraître insatiable, ni manger jusqu’à se faire venir le hoquet …’ A.  de  Courtin, Le Nouveau Traité de la Civilité qui se pratique en France parmi les Honnêtes Gens (Paris: Hélie Josset, 1700), p. 133. 41 Revel, ‘Les Usages de la civilité’, p. 189. 42 Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 1049. 43 Ibid., p. 1052. 44 Ibid. 45 Marivaux, L’Homère travesti, p. 112. 46 La Motte, L’Iliade, poème avec un discours sur Homère (Paris: Grégoire Dupuis, 1714), p. 41. 47 Here I agree with Françoise Rubellin’s analsyis. See for example Françoise Rubellin, ‘Marivaux et le mauvais goût: L’Homère traversti’, in Carine Barbafieri and Jean-Yves Vialleton (eds), Vices de style et défauts esthétiques: XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017), pp. 441–9.

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48 49 50 51 52

53 54

55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64 65

Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 746. Ibid., p. 747. Ibid. Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 747. Y.-M. Tran-Gervat, ‘Les Égarements du corps et de l’écrit: usages parodiques du corps dans Tristram Shandy et Jacques le fataliste’, in M. Moser-Verrey, L. Desjardins and C. Trubide (eds), Le Corps romanesque: images et usages topiques sous l’Ancien régime, proceedings of the twenty-ninth colloquium of the Société pour l’Analyse de la Topique Narrative (Quebec: PUL, 2009), p. 534. C. Vinti, ‘I lazzi nel teatro di Marivaux’, in M. Matucci (ed.), Marivaux e il teatro italiano: atti del colloquio internazionale, Cortono, 6–8 setttembre 1990 (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1992), p. 220. Harlequin’s appetite is omnipresent at the beginning of the play. In scene 3, while the Fairy asks him how he feels after having heard tender songs, Harlequin answers that he feels ‘un grand appétit’ (Marivaux, Théâtre complet, éd. H. Coulet and M. Gilot (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 117). In scene 6, Trivelin says of Harlequin that he ‘excelle en fait d’appétit’ (‘excels in matter of appetite’), and ate ‘comme quatre’ (‘like four men’) (ibid., p. 121). R. Kempf, Sur le corps romanesque (Paris: Seuil, 1968), p. 38. Marivaux, Théâtre complet, vol.1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1993), p. 120. Ibid., p. 204. Ibid., p. 345. Ibid., p. 16. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid., p. 644. Marivaux, Théâtre complet, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), p. 228. The noun prunelle (‘eyeball’) refers to a ‘small wild plum’ (Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 1694). By metaphorical extension, the part of the eye that resembles this fruit came to be called prunelle. Marivaux, Théâtre complet, vol. 1, p. 638. Marivaux, Œuvres de jeunesse, p. 773. Furetière, Dictionnaire universel (1727).

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11  desire, disgust and indigestibility in John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb Rebecca Anne Barr

John Cleland’s notoriety depends on his sexually explicit Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure (1748), a work which stimulates and celebrates the satisfaction of carnal appetites through a series of erotic encounters. Despite prosecution for obscenity, Cleland claimed, with brazen disingenuity, that his writing stemmed from his desire to stimulate while avoiding vulgarity, working as a proof positive that the novel could arouse without descending to depravity, transcending pornography through polite style. Thus, Woman of Pleasure legitimates its lurid copulations by reference to aesthetic standards: extolling sensibility, good taste and moderation despite its scandalous and repetitive subject matter. Despite its variety, Fanny Hill’s sexual picaresque ultimately conforms to the pattern of moral romance. Once reunited with her beloved Charles, she proclaims her virtue (if not her virginity) born again and her decency fortified by repeated lessons of sexual experience. So confident is Fanny in the moral efficacy of libertine practice that ‘anxious for [her] son’s morals’, she allows her husband to introduce the youth to ‘the most noted bawdy-houses in town’ in order to familiarise him ‘with all those scenes of debauchery, so fit to nauseate a good taste’. This experience will give the boy ‘a fixed, a rational contempt for vice’. Both mother and son are saved by a form of sexual inoculation: their virtue is consolidated by a constitutional recoil from the unwholesome fare of the demi-monde. However unconvincing Woman of Pleasure’s ‘tail-piece of morality’, its paradigm of healing surfeit recurs in Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb (1751), 227

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a companion piece to his infamous novel.1 In both works, and indeed in his literary criticism, Cleland argues for the moral necessity of representing (and indulging) sensuality. The author thus caters to lascivious tastes under the auspices of virtue by modelling himself ‘a skillful and polite physician’ whose narratives operate as medical case histories, illuminating ‘the rankness and malignancy of [vice’s] symptoms’ to provoke a curative ‘nausea’ to purge the reader’s inflamed imagination.2 Paradoxically Cleland’s erotic fictions act both to stimulate appetite and as salutary emetics to evacuate the body and mind of the reader. Once the reader is purged of their desires, the narrative ‘promote[s] a Return to Virtue’, refining their tasteful pleasures, bestowing upon them ‘more Stability, more Poignancy, and above all, more Delicacy’ after a glut.3 The physicalised lexicon of appetite, taste and nausea may seem to consist of purely conventional rhetorical tools for representing the moral proclivities of reader and protagonist. Yet, like his contemporary Tobias Smollett, Cleland was fixated on the visceral compulsions of humanity; he was fascinated by the moral and physical interrelations between desire, diet and excess. Cleland’s bodies, like those of Smollett, are ‘never mere bodies because what they feel, and how they react, always bears testimony to their implication in social and moral life’.4 Moving away from Cleland’s erotica, this essay will situate Cleland’s Memoirs of a Coxcomb (1754) alongside his idiosyncratic ‘medical’ tracts. While the sexual dynamics, the philosophical underpinnings and the role of sensibility in Cleland’s writing have been much explored, his interest in human physiology has been largely overlooked.5 Cleland, who claimed to ‘understand the nerves better than any doctor in Europe’, published two works exploring the bodily economy: the medical-dietary treatise Institutes of Health (1761) and the pamphlet Phisiological Reveries (1765). These dietetic and medical writings show that the appetite, palate and intestines – rather than the egregiously overactive genitals – are integral to his Cleland’s representations of male sexuality and selfhood. His ruminations on the intricate mysteries of the viscera reveal the centrality of disgust in delineating the social and moral value of the individual. If taste aims to corral the animal urgings of appetite into cultivated and socially acceptable forms of consumption, distaste diagnoses moments where incorporation is impossible and where sensations of visceral nausea and physical immanence are inescapable. Arising in moments where bodily and 228

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subjective security is threatened and where ingestion or assimilation is impossible (even when attempted), disgust exposes the rejects of culture upon which polite society is founded. As Daniel Cottom has observed, ‘the desire to be disgusted is … the digestive trope of a social body for which the processes of incorporation and expulsion are necessarily interdependent’.6 Vomiting and eliminating waste matter in order to cleanse the body of ‘diseases of effeminacy’, with ‘plentiful evacuations, bleeding, purging, and a low diet’ recommended to counter and permit bulimic cycles of sensual over-indulgence, emphasise the importance of motion – digestive or otherwise – in healthy bodies.7 In Cleland’s work the visceral expulsions of disgust expose the vacillations of embodied subjectivity, a vertiginous oscillation between the desire to incorporate and doomed attempts to extricate the self from the sickly delights of co-dependency. Diet, surfeit and effeminacy Appetite in the eighteenth century is often viewed as metaphorical for leisured consumption of commodities, but its primary meaning of literal, bodily hunger locates desires in the very stomach of the individual. As the body was increasingly conceived as an ‘eloquent object’ whose performances conveyed complex emotions and moral positions, so the medical and rhetorical status of organs shifted.8 Few organs were as central and as subject to contradictory interpretations as the stomach. As Richard Brookes’s General Practice of Physic (1765) confirmed, medical nosology used the stomach as a barometer for the relative health of the entire organism. Gastric wellbeing ensured physical harmony: ‘it can hardly be imagined what consent there is between the Brain and its Membranes, between the Stomach and the adjoining Intestines, they being greatly nervous, and indued with an exquisite Sense; whence many … are troubled with a bad Digestion, Costiveness, and the hypochondriac Passion’.9 In holistic models of the body, the viscera were analogous to the brain and were as complex, as sensitive and as much subject to disturbance as grey matter. As modern urban lifestyles subjected men and women to new conditions, nervous anxiety often registered as somatic disorders, many of which – mysterious loss of appetite, listlessness and wasting of the body – manifested themselves in the stomach. Psychosomatic malaises disordered the 229

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‘exquisitely’ sensitive entrails, so that the ‘Stomach, Guts, Liver, Spleen, Mesentery or some of the great and necessary Organs, or Glands of the lower Belly’ were invariably ‘obstructed, knotted, schirous, or spoil’d’ by nervous disorders.10 Yet it was not solely nervous excitation that impeded digestion and caused gastric distress. Sociability itself placed physical demands on the stomach. Commensality subjected the inner organs to surges of rich food: to tides of alcohol, tea and coffee, stimulants and sedatives that could throw their delicate equilibrium and digestive function into disorder. Testifying from experience of vertiginous weight-gain, the obese Cheyne averred that although ‘almost all of our Diseases proceed from too much and too strong Meats and Drinks’, social miscibility insisted that fellows ‘Eat lustily, and swallow down much Liquor’ to prove their good humour and conviviality, even though the frequent ‘Dining and Supping’ demanded by urban clubbability was perilous.11 If the stomach was expected to be gastronomically accommodating, habitual over-indulgence was recognised as both physically damaging and morally repugnant. Cleland had no medical training that we know of, but as a hack writer whose livelihood was persistently precarious, he recognised a healthy market for works on regimen. Like the eminent physician Cheyne, who incorporates his own case illness into The English Malady, Cleland uses his notoriety as a denizen of the demi-monde to fortify the authority of his precepts against excess. In Institutes of Health, Cleland parades the bitter knowledge won by experience, telling his audience that he has ‘forfeited … a permanently established health … suffered irretrievable damage by the most abandoned intemperance of all sorts’.12 Dismissing physicians such as Boerhaave, Haller, Hoffman and Sydenham, he laments the lack of preventative medicine and a nation in thrall to foreign cooking. ‘What with the two arts of cookery and physic, a man hardly has a chance for his life.’13 The nation is eating its way to effeminacy and dissipation, the preface argues. Britain will forfeit political liberty unless it renounces unwholesome aliment, overhauls its luxurious diet and remasculinises its constitution. Like Cheyne, Cleland makes the digestive tract and the stomach central to the health of the body natural and the body politic. The British, like the Romans before them, are victims of imperial success, and only since the rise of ‘Politeness and Refinement [have] they sunk into Effeminacy, Luxury, and Disease’.14 Characteristically opportunistic, Cleland’s 230

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writings on the body follow Cheyne’s Essay on Regimen and The English Malady in emphasising practical prevention, even as Cleland often slyly invokes sexual potence as a welcome sideeffect of improved overall health. While Cheyne flatters the delicate constitutions of his middle-class audience, rendering their digestive motions material for polite conversation, Cleland’s approach is closer to the political jeremiads of mid-century Britain, which warned of the deleterious effects of ‘vain, luxurious and selfish effeminacy’ on national well being.15 Cheyne’s balance of sympathetic diagnosis and ameliorative advice contrasts with the cantankerous and splenetic urgings of Cleland’s cheap pamphlets. Yet Cleland’s malcontent persona bestows a curious piquancy to his denunciation of bodily decline and ‘unmanly Delicacy’.16 Both Cleland’s dietetic writings and his fiction ostensibly lambast prodigal or voracious appetite, and counsel the conventional wisdom of control. They synthesise a distinctively epicurean regimen in which optimum pleasure is dependent on fashioning a powerful and resilient male body whose energy and virility are epigastric in origin, yet whose primary characteristic is a valetudinarian anxiety. Such emphasis on embodiment and propensity to debility recalls midcentury men of feeling, such as Sterne’s Yorick or Henry Brooke’s Fool of Quality (1761), but Cleland’s narrators are divested of economic charity or benevolence. With roots in libertine concepts of natural, self-interested hedonism Cleland’s visceral sensibility imports associated anxieties of ‘loss of autonomy and dissolution of self’ that come from carnal overinvestment.17 That fear of dissolution is clear in Woman of Pleasure. Though replete with permanently priapic men with ‘stiff staring truncheons…like flesh brushes’, it is male bodies that are casualties of sensual excess. Several of Fanny Hill’s cavalcade of lovers are self-sickened and desensitised by their libertine ways.18 The otherwise youthful Mr Norbert, for instance, is dependent on ‘forced provocatives’ to stimulate a flagging appetite: ‘the natural power of [his] body jaded and raked off to the lees by the constant repeated over-draughts of pleasure, which had done the work of sixty winters on his springs of life’.19 Cleland’s ‘indubitably masculinist’ erotica tends to depict men’s physical limitations ‘more sympathetically’ than those of women: emphasising the vulnerability of the male body.20 As Susan Bordo has argued, works that represent the ‘private and unprotected territory’ disrupt the 231

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imaginary dominance of the phallus.21 Fanny conducts anatomies of desire which trace the origins of sexual desire to more mysterious recesses of the body. Thus Mr Barville’s dependence on flagellation is declared an ‘arbitrary taste’ to be pitied. His peccadillo is ‘independent of all reasoning, as the different relishes or palates of mankind in their viands, [with] some delicate stomachs nauseating plain meats and finding no savour but in high-seasoned, luxurious dishes, whilst others… pique themselves upon disdaining them’.22 The language of taste connects the stomach and the phallus, implying the potential for men’s animal spirits or sexual potency to be weakened by gastric disorder. Gustatory tendencies are not merely a metaphor for sexual dispositions or cultural degeneration, however. Tasting, eating, and digesting work as indices of bodily and subjective health. Though Fanny’s comment might seem a dismissive chacun son goût, her language connotes deep disgust at a ‘debased’ palate. Preferences for highly seasoned meats and luxurious repasts indicate an effeminate, Frenchified taste (though few things are more English than a whipping). Alimentary delicacy became a powerful metaphor for the distortion of ‘natural’ appetites. Physician and social satirist Bernard Mandeville noted that contemporary epicures compensated for flagging sexual potency and debilities in virility by an increasing inventiveness of sexual fare, since the ‘Nicety of [their] Palates’ demanded more exotic ingredients; ‘as a squeamish Stomach requires the greatest Variety of Dishes’.23 Authoritative masculinity, by implication, is sustained on a diet of plain heterosexual nourishment: intrinsically ‘manly’ appetite does not require imaginative variation. If sexual and moral dysfunctions are metaphorised as digestive maladies or jaded appetite, the obverse might also be true. That is, corruption of the palate and digestion might translate into moral and sexual dysfunction. In Cleland’s writings on health, the physical constitution depends on a delicate gastric equilibrium which could be thrown into disarray by rich food or turbulent emotions alike. Safeguarding gastric health was the faculty of taste, with its dual aesthetic and physical implications. Taste’s importance to the body is manifest in Institutes of Health, which makes cleansing the palate a preparative to maintaining the stomach. Opening with an injunction to keep ‘the mouth religiously clean’ through a daily scraping of the tongue, rinsing, and picking of the teeth to encourage salivary 232

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secretions, oral hygiene is Cleland’s first ritual of health. ‘Our taste’, he laments, ‘is become corrupted by example of vitiated habit’. Though ‘our stomach has naturally a repugnance for high-seasoned compounds or made-dishes’ the palate is vulnerable to outside influence.24 ‘Acquired’ taste of luxury habituates the stomach to opulent delicacies, obscuring the ‘true taste of nature’ found in plain fare. The tongue’s ‘papillae’ are smothered under accretions until only ‘French taste, such as rotten ragoos, or soups like glue’ can penetrate the dulled senses.25 The long vowel assonance intensifies the sense of repletion by repetition, as diet stifles appetite, the intellect and the senses: thence the palate furred and depraved of its natural state; the appetite kept down from ever rising again, by the cloying frequency of preventative ingestions; the clouded eye; the paralitic nerves, and the functions of the body robbed of all the sprightliness of health.26

French fare renders English men flaccid. By emulating the continental diet of the beau monde, the English middling-sort acquires ‘bad digestions’ that produce the ‘quality-paleness, that bloodless, sick-green look … [that is] the birthmark of the people of fashion’.27 Culinary imitation supplants native health with dyspeptic and effeminate striplings. If England’s ‘antient sturdy barons once embodied’ ‘a system of manliness’ the ‘race is now … thoroughly refin’d and fritter’d away into the more delicate modern-built frame of our pap-nerv’d softlings, who are as pale, as pretty, and almost as masculine as their sisters’.28 Cleland’s enfeebled modern man is a foppish hypochondriac whose languid nerves point to malnourishment. Fed on bland, soft, infantile food, the effeminate individual embodies national degeneration.29 Diet and taste thus require urgent revaluation. In order to remasculinise the English diet, Cleland rejects sophisticated French gastronomy as a bodily pollutant. France is a ‘fountain of false taste’; a locus of ‘spiritual and temporal slavery’ which must be embargoed in favour of culinary isolationism. Like Cheyne, Cleland counsels moderate eating and an avoidance of ‘high, rich, savoury dishes’ which deprave palates already losing their ‘native simplicity’.30 But unlike Cheyne’s easily absorbed bill of fare, which caters to the overstimulated palates of the hypersensible bourgeoisie, Institutes of Health’s regimen aims to reinvigorate the stomach through foods that encourage digestion, stimulating the active powers of 233

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the viscera. Liquid food’s ‘[g]libness in deglutition’ ‘defrauds the stomach of that salivary juice which a competent mastication carries down with it’.31 Chewing, swallowing, vigorously digesting: Cleland’s healthy body ‘conquers’ food, asserting its vital capacities by processing nutritional goodness through the assimilative power of the salivary and gastric juices. Bodily fluids in Phisiological Reveries are fundamental to virile competence, where the analogous ‘seminal and salivary liquids’ are credited with producing energy and maintaining bodily homeostasis.32 Saliva connects the mouth to the stomach, where it periodically returns, acting with the gastric juices as a ‘reparative’ which circulates within a liquid system of ‘animal energy’ including the blood and seminal fluids.33 Cleland is emphatic about the stomach’s role in transforming food to repair the organism: ‘chilifaction’ or digestion sublimates nutrition into a ‘more perfect animality’ which is conveyed through the bodily system.34 The stomach is credited with a womb-like ‘menstrual or dissolvent energy, that with the concurrence of the other digestive powers it makes of the alimentary mass, a matrix or bed, of which it is itself the vegetative feed, and thence erecting its own increase’.35 The digestive process is evoked as an organic decomposition necessary for sexual fecundity, renewing the potence of the (male) body: it grants the entrails an almost womb-like fertility. Phisiological Reveries thus evokes a vitalist conception of the bodily economy, where physiology is co-ordinated by an interconnected system of liquid energy with the stomach at its core. While Cheyne’s works chastely omit sexual appetite, Cleland’s assert an intimate relationship between the oral, the digestive and the ‘generative’ aspects of the bodily economy. A lively ‘appetite for generation’ is an index of proper bodily function, since ‘the amorous instinct has especially a considerable connexion with the economy of health’.36 This affirmation of robust appetite echoes that of Mandeville, who contrasts ‘Platonick Lovers’ (‘pale-faced weakly People of cold and phlegmatick Constitutions’) with those ‘hale and robust of bilious Temperament and a sanguine Complexion’ who hunger for the satisfaction of both alimentary and carnal appetites.37 Just as his erotica ‘negotiate[d] a taxonomy of pleasures developed by moralists, in which emphasis was placed on the satisfaction of natural but controlled impulses’, so Cleland’s dietetic works accommodate and valorise bodily appetites rather than reducing them to 234

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a bloodless minimum.38 Desire must be subjected to the commands of virtue and the imagination to forestall overproduction becoming a ‘self-destroying fury’ or depleting consumption.39 Enlightened hedonism incorporates self-discipline into its rhetoric of refined masculine pleasures. If erotic self-control limited the expenditure of vital energies, its alimentary corollary limited consumption as a means of preserving taste and safeguarding bodily integrity for the prolongation of pleasure itself. Foregoing gastronomy is a rational calculation designed to procure greater pleasure. Few … have manly enough strength of mind to give their own reason fair play for their own life, and suffer it to state the account honestly between temperance and luxury! … the momentary gratification of a lickerish palate, is infinitely outweighed by the permanent voluptuousness inseparable from every function of life in a firm state of health.40

Deploying concepts of reason and self-discipline, Cleland’s physic advertises the ‘reward of … manliness and resolution’ as the permanent sensual pleasure of bodily autonomy and physical health.41 Cleland’s account emphasises the inseparability of health and pleasure: bodily continence (sexual and alimentary) enables selfgovernance, translating the frenetic movement of kinetic pleasure into the motions and ‘muscular vigor’ of a healthy digestion. ‘Enslaved to their present feelings’, the dissolute multitude are frightened by the ‘disgustful’ sensations of a low diet, and fail to calculate the ‘reward of their manliness and resolution’.42 Thus Institutes of Health’s regimen follows the eighteenth-century trajectory from ‘a libertine ethic toward a moderately Epicurean hedonism’, in which temperance is essential in order to prolong both enjoyment and bodily integrity since ‘moderation guarantees the “vigour” … of those appetites which are, in some form, indulged’.43 As Institutes of Health attacks punitive cures which are ‘violent and torturous in their operation, or even poisonous’, so Cleland foregrounds the palatability of his nostrum.44 In his ‘most sustained and serious statement about the nature of fiction’ the author-as-physician administers his moral cure through ‘Vehicles of wholesome Advice, without its physicky Taste’.45 Literature’s ‘powerful recommendation of pleasure’ optimises its moral efficacy, enabling readers to take their moral medicine.46 Cleland suggests that even ‘obscene’ literature may be morally utile, since ‘poisons 235

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have their Use, when their Distribution is properly guarded’.47 As Hal Gladfelder notes, Cleland’s acknowledgement of fiction’s inflammatory potential is ‘self-incriminating’ at best.48 His fiction, as Jody Greene has argued, rests upon licence and excess rather than prohibition: the indulgence and propagation of pleasure to its limits. Cleland shares Mandeville’s view of male sexual appetite, in which ‘if any Thing cures [men], it must be Satiety’; only ‘a Surfeit of unlawful Love’ will endear the ‘Chaste Embraces of Innocence before the bought smile of Harlots loveless, joyless, unindear’d of casual fruition’.49 In order to claim itself as a prophylactic against the perils of libertinism, then, Cleland’s work must stimulate appetite until the point of disgust: it must please until it sickens. Despite his invectives against unpleasant cures, the trope of therapeutic expulsion persists in Cleland’s writing precisely because of fiction’s moral conventions. ‘Pap-nerv’d softlings’: disgust and pleasure in Memoirs of a Coxcomb Sir William Delamour, the eponymous ‘coxcomb’ or ‘vain, superficial man’ of Cleland’s novel, has few depths, apart from the instinctive stirrings of appetite.50 As he hurls himself into a vortex of dissipated pleasures following the disappearance of his first love, Lydia, Sir William’s appetites counterpoint those propelling Fanny Hill. Yet while Fanny assimilates the ‘genial emulsion’ of her lovers with gusto and profit, moving swiftly onto her next repast, Sir William’s getting and spending is characterised by anxiety, satiety, disgust. Cleland’s dual commitment to the social and corporeal processes of incorporation and elimination, to sexual activity and masculine self-discipline, binds his narrative to cycles of satisfaction, repletion and evacuation, its pleasure punctuated (and licensed) by bouts of nausea. In order to ‘dishabituate’ the individual from dependency on lurid scenes of pleasure, Coxcomb induces imaginary evacuation. To preserve health, modern readers require ‘doses of ipecacuanha, not in the Roman gluttonous intention, but in a salutary one’.51 Yet in Coxcomb the dual commitment to morality and sensuality generates queasy formal oscillations. The positivist pronouncements and valetudinarian anxiety of the health tracts give way to representational tropes, where bodies gorge, bloat, waste and evacuate in the throes of desire and panic. In this text the 236

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dynamics of appetite and surfeit, taste and disgust, are used both to entertain and to assert moral refinement. Coxcomb, like Woman of Pleasure, is deeply preoccupied with its claims to the discourse of polite taste and sensibility.52 Such commitment to the cultural capabilities of taste is not a paradox: Karen Harvey has shown that pretensions to aesthetic refinement were central to erotic culture’s assertion of masculine sociability. Fictional bodies are thus ‘products of cultural, social and political debate’: ‘screens onto which cultural, social and political concerns were projected’ and ‘saturated with beliefs, desires and fears about sex and gender’.53 The embodied nature of those beliefs means that Cleland’s physiology is clearly gendered.54 Thus Woman of Pleasure jauntily credits the female interior with infinite resilience, a ‘happy habit of body, juicy, plump and furnished’ ensuring ‘a fullness of soft springy flesh, that yielding sufficiently … to almost any distension soon recovers itself so as to re-tighten that strict compression of its mantlings and fold’. While Woman of Pleasure’s glib confidence in female recesses is attributable to its status as ‘an it-novel … narrated by an enthusiastic vagina’ in which the parade of character-types is more important that ‘the psychology of the heroine/narrator’, Coxcomb’s focus is a passive male.55 In this novel, narrative probing exposes vulnerabilities in the male body and identity: rather than any triumphant phallus, it is the stomach and taste that define this ‘man of feeling’. As Cleland’s fiction explores the complex relationship between sensation and the self, body and the mind, the delicate palate and the gastric ‘bag … of Nerves and Secretions’ are indicative of a troubled and uncertain interiority that is as physiological and somatic, as it is psychological and novelistic.56 If sensibility often produced physical debility as a hallmark of sensitive psychological virtue, the ‘inner life’ of Cleland’s male narrator is purely gastric. Shuttling between consumption and bulimic recoil, the experiences of this novel are never properly digested. Taste operates both formally and thematically in this novel, as the physiological vacillations of the central character, Sir William, convey not merely the precarious physicality of mid-century men but also the novel’s formal inconsistency. If Sir William uses his physical capacity for disgust to stake his claim to genuine moral worth, this response is shown to be both temporary and unreliable, undercutting the moral claims of the novel form. Displaying the power of distaste, Coxcomb’s salacious fiction culminates in a 237

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tableau of ‘dread and disgust’ designed to revolt the sensibilities of the reader, and supposed to purge the increasingly dissipated body of the protagonist in the hope of restoring his manly selfregulation.57 However, Coxcomb’s negotiation of disgust fails to crystallise into either a convincingly secure masculine identity or a moral outcome. As Gladfelder has argued, Coxcomb participates in the mideighteenth-century assessment of shifting modes of masculinity and the perceived effeminisation of modern men.58 Yet the novel’s depiction of male dissipation reveals as much about Cleland’s interest in the body as it does about the contemporary luxury. Though a self-styled ‘coxcomb’ or ‘vain, superficial man’, Sir William is not constitutionally effeminate. His is ‘a robust, healthy constitution, manifest in the glow of a fresh complexion and vigorous well-proportioned limbs’ and a blood which conveys ‘the ferment of desire’ for the opposite sex.59 When his pure love for the fifteenyear-old heiress Lydia is truncated by her disappearance, his ‘constitution’ ‘interfere[s] with that system of constancy and Platonics’ which stipulates that love remain chastely devoted to an absent object.60 Innate health seems to inure Sir William against the toxicity of London’s fashionable diversions despite the kinetic pleasures of his own sexual pursuits; his bodily health allows him to claim a detached vantage point from which to view the gentlemanly wreckage. The erotic picaresque works as a kind of fictional homeopathy, including in each amatory encounter a dose of male bodily collapse to innoculate the reader against intemperance.61 Sir William’s affair with the aged Lady Oldborough, for example, is prefixed by the story of her recently deceased husband. Once married into money, he ‘abandoned himself to such riotous excesses … that his constitution failed under him … Drained … consumptive, and exhausted, he died, before he was thirty, a very old man.’62 Such admonitory narratives confirm the fatal effects of unrestrained voracity. The dangers of excess are nowhere clearer than in the homosocial demi-monde of the bagnio. Cleland’s evocation of the low-life world of London shows the contradictory interface between desire, the aspirational and self-legitimating discourse of taste and the selfincriminating emotion of disgust. Despite eschewing only the ‘most sensual gratifications’ known to ‘rational votaries to pleasure’, Sir William tours a brothel in order to cement his ‘contempt for all the false, and insipid delights’ of prostitution.63 His comrades are 238

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‘woeful sons of pleasure’ wasting away from surfeit, whose ‘pale jaundiced faces, hectic constitutions, and reduced legs preach from example the virtue of temperance’.64 The bawdy house revolts Sir William’s sensibility. The women are ‘carrion-quarry’, the men inebriate fools, and he condemns ‘the lust-toying of the men, and the repulsive false-fondling of the women … their mock modesty … yet more nauseating’.65 Yet disgust at the carnal riot of male desire is displaced onto the bodies of the prostitutes and concentrated in the figure of the brothel madam. As for mother Sulphur, which was a name de guerre, given her by one of her customers … there could be nothing even more shocking or disgustful than her appearance. Only imagine a tartarphiz, begrimed with powder and sweat, that could not, however, conceal the coarseness of a dun skin; a mob, that with all its pink ribbons, was forced to give way, all round, to the impatience of confinement of stiff, bristling, grizzly locks, every hair of which was as thick as a pea-straw; then this gorgon head was sunk between her two shoulders, and carried in mock state, something in the style of the crown and cushion; descending from which blessed landskip, to where the creases and plaits of her breast triumphed over all the dirt and ceruse that encrusted it, the sight, if not the scent, was feasted with two pailfuls, at least, of uberous flesh, which had outgrown the size, and neither in hue and consistence deserved the names of breasts. I go no lower than a busto description for the sake of nice stomachs.66

Cleland’s gleefully forensic ekphrasis conveys ‘the paradox of disgust … as a passive-defensive reaction … which seeks out its object … in its whole essentiality’.67 The beldam, a terrifying ‘scare-pleasure’, has a dismembered physiognomy which lays up a ‘month’s provision of chastity’ in those who encounter her.68 Vision is ‘feasted’ on her fleshly surfeit. Sulphur’s oozing corporality extends by implication to the deliquescent horror of her nether regions: her body is a quagmire into which her higher functions have sunk. As in Swift’s ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room’ visceral disgust climaxes in the horror of olfaction: ‘who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d’.69 For Cleland, who imagined the pores of the skin as ‘mouths’ working analogously to that opening by continual inahlation and suspiration, the openness of these ‘air-mouths’ constructs the skin as not merely sensitive but remarkably porous, ‘perforated like a sieve’.70 Rather than protect the body this membrane opens it 239

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to external elements, acting as an ‘organ of interchange’ perpetually susceptible to its environment.71 ‘Contagious miasms penetrat[e] instantaneously to the central regions of vitality’ through the open pores, sucking in noxious air in an involuntary microscopic ingestion.72 If merely seeing causes spontaneous vomiting, smelling threatens acute contamination. Mother Sulphur, whose name has flatluent connotations of indigestion, ‘excites extreme revulsion’ in her ‘disarray and decline’, upsetting Sir William’s sense of tasteful self-possession.73 If she, like Swift’s Corinna, turns ‘nice stomachs’, her own is buried in fat, the narrator suggests that bawds and other ‘superannuated fussocks’ are forced to benumb their natural sensibility in ‘fogginess, and corpulence’ in order to endure their nauseating profession.74 The narrator’s palpable horror at the proliferative possibilities of the flesh is also found also in Phisiological Reveries, where fat is ‘a diseased concretion, a stagnated depose of a superfluity of indigested nourishment’.75 The ‘landskip’ of Mother Sulphur is a form of what Vittoria di Palma has classified as the ‘anti-picturesque’, an instance of the aesthetics of aversive emotion.76 Sulphur’s grotesque expansiveness materialises an environmental-moral hazard and threat to masculine security. The narrator’s disgust blocks further representation, acting as a boundary-forming reflex. It also posits the grotesque female body as the antithesis of beauty and orderly function. As Winifried Menninghaus has observed, the hag assumes an increasingly singular role in elaborations of the beautiful as the discourse of aesthetics develops in the eighteenth century. Almost all the defects addressed and rejected in discourses on disgust, Menninghaus asserts, are compressed into one single phantasm: the ugly old woman. This phantasm ‘brings together folds and declivities, warts, larger than usual openings of the body (i.e. mouth and anus) … sunken hollows instead of beautiful swellings, drooping breasts, stinking breath’.77 Sir William’s escalating horror confirms Carl Plantinga’s analysis of disgust as an emotion that begins ‘as a guardian of the mouth’ but ‘extends to the protection of the “temple of the body”’ until it ‘finally becomes the guardian “of human dignity in the social order”’.78 Reifying the ‘maximum disgusting evil’ in female form helps to define the sensibility which expels it as masculine, autonomous, intact.79 Thus Sir William’s capacity for disgust – his expulsive horror – is supposed to save him from fatal sexual surfeit. Sulphur’s 240

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expansiveness materialises the threat of consumption, the silting deposits of an appetite without end. Debauchery, with all its voracity, results in desensitisation, while Sir William’s disgust is paradoxically ‘geared to edibility, nourishment, and health’: the ‘furred palate’ and paralitic stomach can neither discern nor refuse.80 Disgust acts as moral regimen: in order to ‘dishabituate’ the individual from lurid scenes of pleasure, the writer must induce imaginary evacuation. However, the movement of the prose – from compromisingly intimate detail to nauseated revulsion – suggests an ongoing process rather than a successful separation from the objects of disgust. There is, in Sara Ahmed’s terms, a ‘stickiness’ to Cleland’s visceral reactions: a sense of splenetic indigestion, of never having quite cleared away the offending object.81 In its ramble through a catalogue of eighteenth-century comic couplings, Coxcomb is punctuated and propelled by bouts of nausea, sending the narrator staggering on to the next encounter. The vacillations of the central character, Sir William, convey not merely the novel’s formal and moral irresolution but the queasy innards of mid-century masculinity. The connection between aliment, ingestion and sexuality is further confirmed in the bagnio feast. The ‘exquisite viands’ produced for dining ‘exhaust all the refinements of modern cookery … [for] all foreign delicacies had been made to contribute, and all the seasons had been forced’.82 Ingestion and incorporation, whether oral or sexual, risk transforming the body from within, dispossessing the gentlemanly self. By commingling bodily fluids in ‘the puddle of these kennels of filth and venery’ the English nobility contract ‘an habitual disrelish to the joys of sensations, seasoned with sentiment and disembruted with love’.83 Sir William’s professed continence reflects disinterested self-control: he is ‘cool, free, and tranquil’, a ‘true voluptuary’, unlike those who ‘mud-suck [their] pleasure in dirty dull debauches’.84 Oral and sexual desire both threaten to disrupt the boundaries of the gentleman, polluting his lineage and leaving his palate permanently impaired, his stomach befouled. Sir William figures his capacity for disgust as the hallmark of his innate health: his inability to assimilate and digest immoral excesses saves him from the fatal effects of sexual surfeit and personal pollution. Revulsion is therefore part of a system of innate ‘taste’ in which the body is deeply involved, a ‘sensory-somatic emotion … with … cognitive sophistication’; disgust performs moral response and therefore can be claimed for the arsenal of readerly reform.85 241

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The emphasis on provoking satiric disgust explains the roster of eighteenth-century misfits that the coxcomb claims as conquests. Indeed, his intrigues are more likely to provoke disdain than desire. They include a country-Pamela whose ‘vartue’ is swiftly surrendered; a butch miss; Agnes, a mindlessly pretty mannequin whom he fails to bed; the decrepit Lady Oldburgh, whose person resembles ‘a desert of dried fruit’ and with whom he feels like the ‘doge of Venice, when he weds the gulph’.86 As Gladfelder observes, Sir William is a singularly ‘ornamental’ figure who fails to ‘achieve a confident sense of his own sexual and social identity’ throughout the novel.87 This weak sense of the self is confirmed by the young man’s amour with the ‘rational-pleasurist’ Lady Bell Travers; an older, experienced, witty, female rake who may be a caricature of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.88 It is in his encounter with the imperious, powerful and self-possessed lady libertine that Cleland’s complex of sexual continence, dietetic anxiety and visceral disgust is elaborated. Lady Travers is a ‘seraglio of beauties’, whose personal refinement precludes any sense of surfeit.89 It is ‘reserved for lady Travers alone to disgust [Sir William] of lady Travers’.90 Driven by ‘unremitting gust’ to pursue his paramour, Sir William enters her house unseen and conceals himself in her closet. He watches a ‘perverse sort of primal scene’ unfold after she summons her Swiss manservant, Buralt, to her chamber.91 Buralt came in, leaning upon Mrs. Vergers, with his knees knocking together, a wildish stare, and all the symptoms of debility and pallid faintness. They were followed, at a little distance, by a plain, modestlooking country-woman. As soon as this Buralt was come the length of the bed, he let himself fall upon it, without the least ceremony, whilst Lady Travers busied herself with examining the nature of the woman’s milk, and the terms of her agreement. After which she brought the nurse to the bed-side; but as soon as the poor woman viewed more narrowly the object to whom she was to give her breast, she recoiled with visible horror and affright. Nor without reason; for it is hardly possible to figure to oneself a more ghastly spectre than what this wretch exhibited, wrapped in a kind of blue coat, that sat on him yet less loosely than his skin, which was of a dun sallow hue. His eyes goggled from sockets appearing sunk inwards by the retreat of the flesh round them, which likewise added to the protuberance of his cheek-bones. A napkin in the shape of a night-cap covered all his

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hair (except a platted queue of it, and some lank side-locks) the dull dingy black of which, by its shade, raised and added to the hideousness of his grim meagre visage. It was this figure, however, that this superb, this delicate lady, employed herself to support, bolster up with pillows, besides her own arms, so as to place him in a posture to receive the benefit of the restorative which she had prepared for him, in the milk of this nurse; and the fondness and humility with which she performed this tender office obviously enough reminded me of the libidinous lady in one of Scarron’s novels. She could not, however, prevail over the nurse to conquer her fears and aversion, so far as to suckle this babe of delight, but by dint of increasing her hire; and then, with her face averted, she gave him her breast, which he fastened upon, and looked more like a sucking demon, or a vampyre escaped from his grave, than a human creature.92

This grotesque pietà combines oral anxiety, sexual desire and existential nausea. As J. G. Sperling has observed, despite being well known in eighteenth-century sentimental iconography, the vision of the body and sexuality that emerges from ‘roman charity’ is highly troubling. ‘It eroticises maternity and queers our understanding of practices of lactation’, she writes, but also represents ‘an incestuous boundary violation … a quintessential figure of perversion and dissent.’93 As Gladfelder argues, Sir William’s disgust is a reaction ‘not to monstrous otherness, but to self-recognition’: Buralt is ‘a reflection of himself unmanned’.94 The manservant’s physical debility mirrors Sir William’s consumptive decline and enslavement to an upper-class woman. This foreign body, infantilised by the perverse nourishment of a monstrous lover, apotheosises the ultimate end of the ‘pap-nerv’d softling’. The sexual and oral functions combined in this ‘disgustful transaction’ externalise the threat posed by the ‘appetite for generation’ uncoupled from its productive ends and the terror of desire and dependency.95 Further, this monstrous simulacrum of maternity reflects the medical and moral controversy over breastfeeding practices during the 1740s (and beyond), where the body of the mother was simultaneously idealised and demonised for its capacity or failure to nourish or spoil its infant offspring. Lady Travers’s use of a wet-nurse to satisfy her own and her lover’s deviant hunger is the very acme of luxury. Cleland’s obsession with alimentary and bodily health, his idealisation of self-controlled 243

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physicality, is focused in the figure of the female libertine who wields both the powers of love and the powers of horror as she subjects men to her luxurious, effeminising diet. Her use of a wet-nurse implies that she lacks the feminine ‘sympathetic disposition’ demonstrated by breastfeeding, travestying the norms of both maternal selflessness and masculine disinterested benevolence.96 With Sir William immured in her closet, this scopophiliac tableau is a fantasy of maternal engulfment, but likewise a dream of somatic closure: the private interior of the closet renders him a homo clausus, a being whose boundaries separate him from the world.97 Its grid of polymorphous perversity produces a hysterical repudiation which barely conceals its libidinal charge. This is at once at scene of horror and a fantasy of bodily union – a transgressive interdependency which takes the goal of sensible intersubjectivity to an extreme. The transfixed gaze of the narrator confirms that ‘desire and disgust are dialectically conjoined’.98 Like the portrait of Mother Sulphur, the denunciation of Lady Travers’s taboo desire serves to reroute Sir William’s self-disgust. Despite his proclaimed moral abhorrence, the scene stimulates his appetite: the pleasure of the participants can be inferred ‘from my own experience’ since it ‘too sensibly began at home with me. I was more than once, upon the point of breaking out, and adding one more figure to the group before me.’99 The paralysed voyeur, Sir William, experiences an ‘ambivalent situation of suspended agency’, a moment of affective illegibility where his sense of self struggles with desire.100 As Sianne Ngai has argued, the dysphoria of disgust diagnoses ‘social powerlessness’, an emotion (and a sensation) which perform ‘obstructed agency … [and] situations of passivity’ through bodily sensations.101 Disgust exposes powerlessness, rather than extricating the individual. Sir William’s sickened stomach allies him with the expropriated maidservant who can only turn her face from grim creature latching at her breast. ‘Faint, and overcome with all the agitations and conflicts’ of what he has seen, Sir William escapes without confronting Lady Travers.102 If this affair proves the maxim that ‘excesses carry with them the principle of their own destruction’ it also diagnoses profound bodily and subjective vulnerability as a defining condition of modern masculinity.103 Cleland figures the release of disgust as a cathartic evacuation. Sir William’s overflow of gall in a ranting letter repeats an earlier ‘copious expectoration of spleen’ 244

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that followed his failure to seduce the vapid Agnes.104 Here his rage and hatred are projected onto a powerful mother figure, attacking her erotic appetites and neglecting to excoriate the insatiable and draining hunger of the male ‘vampyre’ who leeches from the female body. Infantile and cannibalistic, the scene distils modernity’s digestive entropy as humans feed from each other. The coxcomb’s disgust conveys ‘an acute crisis of self-preservation in the face of an unassimilable otherness, a convulsive struggle in which the question is, quite literally, whether “to be or not to be”’.105 While regurgitation appears to rid Sir William of his debilitating passion, evacuation provides only brief palliation. Though he swiftly sermonises on his lesson (that his sensibility is superior to that of those who ‘souse’ in their vices), evacuation ironically enables further consumption. Purgation has occurred only in ‘the Roman gluttonous’ fashion. ‘Cloyed and sick of his successes’, the coxcomb is ‘benumbed in his sensation … taken torpid’ in the midst of his pleasures.106 The processes of incorporation and elimination grind to a halt. His ‘disrelish’ is reflexive; he has become an object of disgust to himself. Like a ‘pleasure-sated Sultan’ he is overtaken with the languors of satiety: ‘drugged even to loathing, with all the passive obedience and non-resistance round [him], [he] finds at length how essential the heart is to the preparation of a feast worth the appetite of the senses’.107 Resolutely non-cathartic, visceral satiety becomes a nauseating physical immanence; intoxication begets supine self-disgust, reflexive horror. The coxcomb’s tale unveils hypermasculine sexual pursuit as feminised consumption. The ambivalent operations of disgust thus appear to coincide with Cleland’s censure of nauseating cures for the body. Sir William’s failure to reform following his disenchantment with Lady Travers seems to herald pleasure as supreme educator as well as physical panacea. It is ‘reserved for love alone to secure to [him] the benefit of this disgust, and to detach [him]’ from folly.108 Yet the resurgence of his love for the absent Lydia is figured as a ‘violent reflux of the tide of love’, strangely bilious language for permanent affection. Following so soon after his nervous collapse, the narrative’s return to this pure object conforms to the overall dynamic in which surfeit provokes evacuations, apparent moral conversions and compensatory assertions of potent physicality. Lydia, the inviolate and wholesome love object, allows Sir William to re-establish 245

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his discrimination and to stabilise his appetites. Though Cleland could satirise love as ‘a bodily appetite as hunger and thirst … removed by a hearty meal … a corporeal want’, he complies with the ideal that in its highest form, physical love unites the body with ‘the pleasures of the mind’, enabling pleasure to ‘bid defiance to that end which mere momentary desires generally terminate in, when they die of a surfeit of satisfaction’.109 He seems to subscribe to the orthodoxy that health and virtue provide the foundations for ‘permanent voluptuousness’. Yet in its mixture of desire and horror, Sir William’s response to his beloved resembles his closeted reaction to Lady Bell. Shuddering at the sight of her, he is: unable to command any motion, or exert one power of free agency, under the oppression of such sudden sensations acting unitedly upon me, and keeping every other faculty of my soul suspended. I gazed, I devoured her with my eyes insufficient to all the raptures and avidity of my heart.110

Though the trope is a commonplace in the literature of sensibility, Cleland’s character is subjected to a humiliating excess of appetite and inarticulacy. The insatiability of his hunger exceeds his means of expression and incorporation. Words are ‘choaked’ by ideas, until his sentiments ‘forc[e] a passage’ in sighs and broken sounds as he involuntarily expels before a young woman whose reception is ‘dry or reserved’ rather than touched or effusive.111 Hurried away by a guardian, Lydia is seen here for the last time, and the final pages merely summarise her story. Seemingly flummoxed by the prospect of conventional love and deprived of the defective or repellent characters that sustained its sordid narrative, Memoirs of a Coxcomb shows no stomach for nuptial bliss. The stomach so necessary for bodily health and masculine autonomy is at risk of addiction, contamination, dependency. While directing disgust towards female figures of excess might seem to assert bodily boundaries, the freight of bodily revulsion reveals the dispossession of Cleland’s protagonist. Sir William’s protective disgust at powerful female appetites, at incontinent bodies incapable of tempering their desires or policing their boundaries, provides only temporary respite from his own fluctuating embodiment and masochistic desires. The coxcomb’s journey towards sensible union exposes the inequities of power and desire, and the latent perversity of intersubjective love: it is the stomach that most powerfully 246

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expresses the sense of fear and desire. The ‘delicate pleasure’ of ‘confessing one’s follies’, of languishing in one’s own abasement, is ultimately self-incriminating, its repetition an example of ways in which novels’ ‘therapeutic imperative … [is] countermanded by the pleasure principle’.112 If the discourse of taste allows the subject to claim social discernment and to participate in the social exchanges of gentlemanly politeness, disgust returns the subject to visceral physiology, undermining the myth of autonomy through paroxysms of bodily recoil. Notes 1 J. Cleland, Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, ed. Peter Wagner (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p. 223. 2 J. Cleland, ‘The Translator’s Preface’ to Monsieur du Clos, Memoirs Illustrating the Manners of the Present Age (1752), repr. in Memoirs of a Coxcomb, ed. H. Gladfelder (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press, 2005), p. 236. 3 Cleland, Woman of Pleasure, p. 235. 4 A. Douglas, Uneasy Sensations: Smollett and the Body (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 14. 5 For a recent work that addresses this lack see D. Wagner, ‘Body, Minds, and Spirits: The Physiology of Sexuality in the Culture of Sensibility’, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 39:3 (July 2015), http:// dx.doi.org/10.1111/1754–0208.12336 (last accessed 21 February 2018). 6 D. Cottom, ‘In the Bowels of the Novel: The Exchange of Fluids in the Beau Monde’, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, 32:2 (Spring 1999), 157–86, at p. 174. 7 R. Porter, introduction to G. Cheyne, The English Malady; or, A Treatise of Nervous Diseases of All Kinds (1733), ed. Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1991), p. xli. 8 P. Goring, The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 5. 9 R. Brookes, The General Practice of Physic: Extracted Chiefly from the Writings of the Most Celebrated Practical Physicians, 4 vols (London: J. Newberry 1765), vol. 1, p. 3. 10 Cheyne, The English Malady, p. 184. 11 G. Cheyne, The Natural Method of Cureing the Diseases of the Body (London, 1753), p. 144; Cheyne, The English Malady, p. 326. 12 J. Cleland, Institutes of Health (London: T. Becket, 1761), p. iv. 13 Ibid., p. 113.

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14 Cheyne, The English Malady, p. 56. 15 J. Brown, Estimate of the Manners and Principles of the Times (London, 1757), p. 67. 16 Ibid., p. 37. 17 C. Tilmouth, Passion’s Triumph over Reason: A History of the Moral Imagination from Spenser to Rochester (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 323. The so-called ‘Epicurean Revival’ with which Tilmouth associates Rochester has clear similarities with the rather straitened circumstances of Cleland’s vision of sensual pleasure. 18 Cleland, Woman of Pleasure, p. 100. 19 Ibid., p. 170. 20 K. Harvey, Reading Sex (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 34, 137. 21 S. Bordo, ‘Reading the Male Body’, in L. Goldstein (ed.), The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures (Ann Abor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), pp. 265–306, at p. 267. 22 Cleland, Woman of Pleasure, p. 174. Greene provides an excellent account of the philosophical underpinning of Woman’s of Pleasure’s descriptions of insatiable appetite for novelty through a reading of Hume’s assertion that perverse desires are accounted for by ‘defective organs’ of sense. For Greene, the variability of taste and desire for incessant change and novelty undermines the novel’s claims to moral stability. J. Greene, ‘Arbitrary Tastes and Commonplace Pleasures: Accounting for Taste in Cleland, Hume, and Burke’, in P. Fowler and A. Jackson (eds), Launching Fanny Hill: Essays on the Novel and its Influences (New York: AMS Press, 2003), pp. 221–65. 23 J. Mandeville, Modest Defence of the Publick Stews (London: T. Read, 1724), p. 87. 24 Cleland, Institutes of Health, p. 54. 25 Ibid., p. 106. 26 Ibid., p. 45. 27 Ibid., pp. 50–1. 28 Cleland, Woman of Pleasure, p. 101. 29 The discourse of luxury at work here is discussed in both J. Sekora, Luxury: The Concept in Western Thought, Eden to Smollett (Baltimore, MA: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977) and J. Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 30 Cleland, Institutes of Health, p. 7. 31 Ibid., p. 12. 32 J. Cleland, Phisiological Reveries (London: Peter de Hondt, 1765), p. 10. 33 Ibid., p. 9.

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34 Ibid., p. 10. 35 Ibid., p. 11. 36 D. Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), p. 395; Cleland, Institutes of Health, p. 29. 37 B. Mandeville, Fable of the Bees, remark N, in Irwin Primer (ed.), Bernard Mandeville’s ‘A Modest Defence of Publick Stews’: Prostitution and its Discontents in Early Georgian England (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 40. 38 Harvey, Reading Sex, pp. 59–60. 39 Cleland, Institutes of Health, p. 31. 40 Ibid., p. 48. 41 Ibid., p. 49. 42 Ibid., p. 49. 43 Tilmouth, Passion’s Triumph, pp. 6, 352. 44 Cleland, Institutes of Health, pp. 86–7. 45 R. Lonsdale, ‘New Attributions to John Cleland’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 300:119 (1979), 281; Cleland, preface to Pineau-Duclos, Memoirs Illustrating the Modern Age, appendix to Coxcomb, p. 239. 46 Cleland, Institutes of Health, p. 86. 47 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 236. 48 H. Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay: The Making and Unmaking of John Cleland (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), p. 111. 49 Mandeville, Modest Defence, p. 92 (my emphasis). 50 Samuel Johnson’s definition in his Dictionary, quoted in Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 23. 51 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 47. 52 See Greene, ‘Arbitrary Tastes and Commonplace Pleasures’, pp. 221–65. 53 Harvey, Reading Sex, p. 9. 54 For two (divergent) readings of materialism and mechanism, see L. Braudy, ‘Fanny Hill and Materialism’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 4 (1970), 21–40, and E. Kubek, ‘The Man Machine: Horror and the Phallus in Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’, in Fowler and Jackson (eds), Launching Fanny Hill, pp. 173–97. 55 B. Blackwell, ‘Corkscrews and Courtesans: Sex and Death in Circulation Novels’, in Mark Blackwell (ed.), The Secret Life of Things (London: Bucknell University Press, 2007), pp. 265–91, at p. 289. 56 Cheyne, Natural Method, p. 60. 57 I. Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: Comet of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 519. 58 Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, pp. 115–30. 59 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 41.

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60 Ibid., p. 73. 61 On novel reading as inoculation, see S. Vasset, Décrire, prescrire, guérir: médecine et fiction dans la Grande-Bretagne du XVIIIe siècle (Montreal: Presse de l’Université de Laval, 2011), pp. 134–45. 62 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 117. 63 Ibid., p. 102, p. 150. 64 Ibid., p. 158, p. 153. 65 Ibid., p. 159. 66 Ibid., pp. 155–6. 67 A. Kolnai, On Disgust, ed. B. Smyth and C. Korsmeyer (Chicago: Open Court, 2004), p. 41. 68 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 155. 69 J. Swift, The Complete Poems, ed. Pat Rogers (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983), p. 455. 70 Cleland, Phisiological Reveries, pp. 6, 7. 71 S. Connor, The Book of Skin (London: Reaktion Books, 2004), p. 21. 72 Cleland, Phisiological Reveries, p. 7. 73 C. McGinn, The Meaning of Disgust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 16–17. 74 Cleland, Coxcomb, pp. 154–5; on the theorisation of adipose fat as a numbing accretion see Barbara Stenz, ‘Iconography of the belly’, Chapter 13 in this volume. 75 Cleland, Phisiological Reveries, p. 12. 76 V. di Palma, Wasteland: A History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). 77 W. Menninghaus, Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, trans. H. Eland and J. Golb (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2003), p. 84. 78 C. Plantinga, Moving Viewers: American Film and the Spectator’s Experience (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), p. 205. 79 Menninghaus, Disgust p. 84. 80 McGinn, The Meaning of Disgust, p. 66. 81 S. Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (London: Routledge, 2004), p. 11 and passim. 82 Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 161. 83 Ibid., p. 169. 84 Ibid., p. 171. 85 McGinn, The Meaning of Disgust, p. 45. 86 Ibid., p. 135. 87 Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, pp. 129, 128. 88 Whether this is an unflattering portrait of Lady Mary is disputed. Isabel Grundy argues that it is, while Gladfelder points to Cleland’s

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89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

praise for Lady Mary’s pioneering of smallpox inoculation in Institutes of Health and emphasises instead the similarity between her manservant Fribourg and Coxcomb’s Buralt rather than any direct correlation between Cleland’s lady libertine and the aristocratic Lady Mary. Grundy, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, p. 519; Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, pp. 126–7. Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 186. Ibid., p. 187. Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, p. 123. Cleland, Coxcomb, pp. 188–9. J. T. Sperling, Roman Charity: Queer Lactations in Early Modern Visual Culture (Bielefeld: Transcript-Verlag, 2017), p. 10 (my emphasis). Gladfelder, Fanny Hill in Bombay, p. 123. Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 190. J. Kipp, Romanticism, Maternity and the Body Politic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 26. N. Elias, The History of Manners, trans. E. Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), vol. 1, p. 257. S. Ngai, Ugly Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 333. Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 190. Ngai, Ugly Feelings, p. 1. Ibid., pp. 353, 3. Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 191. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 149. Menninghaus, Disgust, p. 1. Cleland, Coxcomb, p. 194. Ibid., p. 195. Ibid. From J. Cleland, A Dictionary of Love (London: R. Griffiths, 1753), repr. in Coxcomb, appendix C, p. 257 (my emphasis). Cleland, Coxcomb, pp. 207–8 (my emphasis). Ibid., p. 208. Ibid., p. 39; R. Porter (ed.), The Medical History of Waters and Spas, Medical History supplement 10 (London: Wellcome Trust for the History of Medicine, 1990), p. x.

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12  rotund bellies and double chins: hogarth’s bodies Frédéric Ogée

Around 1755, the second wife of Francis Matthew Schutz, third cousin to Frederick, Prince of Wales, commissioned a (perhaps humorous) painting from William Hogarth meant to excite shame and disgust in her husband for his past life of gluttony and excess. Instead of resorting to the graphic satire and caricature which such a subject seemed to call for,1 Hogarth produced an extremely ‘direct’ oil painting, showing Schutz in bed and vomiting – after some night before – surrounded by the draperies of an otherwise elegant, rococo décor (see Plate 4). The contrast between the beautifully painted bedroom and the sordid crudity of the depicted action provides us with what is probably one of the most true-to-life accounts of eighteenth-century reality, and the heavy red curtains on either side of the bed endow the picture with a theatrical quality, as if they have just been lifted to ‘dis-cover’ the truth about scene, character and representation. Although the painting was obviously intended for very private consumption,2 it is extremely similar in conception to many betterknown pictures by Hogarth in which the flesh-and-blood presence of the human body, especially when ‘dis-ordered’, is given pride of place, not only as a constituent feature of character, but also as the visual index of society’s moral health. Rotund bellies and double chins, emaciated grins and dishevelled hair, rouged cheeks and spotty foreheads combine in his paintings and engravings as a kind of grammar,3 and constitute one of his most expressive narrative devices (Figure 12.1). Moreover, as it was Hogarth’s strong 252

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Figure 12.1 William Hogarth, frontispiece to Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759) (detail)

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belief that life – and character – could be faithfully rendered only if they were shown ‘in progress’, the bodies in his pictures are always represented in action,4 physiologically registering and displaying (as in the painting of Schutz) the consequences of the characters’ modes of life. One of the most eloquent exercises in the genre – and also, interestingly, one of Hogarth’s most famous pictures – is A Midnight Modern Conversation (1733), in which the artist portrays, in a contiguous and composed manner, the various progressive effects of drink – gaiety, vociferation, stagger, stupor, nausea, loss of consciousness, fall. By juxtaposing the successive stages of drunkenness, framed by the traces of the past (empty bottles) and the portentous  signs of the future (the sleeve catching fire), Hogarth has tried to render the unfolding, the progress of an experiment within a single picture, a visual synthetis of the causes and effects, presenting an intensified vision of reality. The numerous falling and overturned objects (the bottle and the liquid, the chairs, the wigs) underline the kind of conversation at stake and try to provoke in the viewer a correspondingly nauseating effect, and its figurative equivalent, disgust or distaste, which is crudely suggested by the character shown vomiting at the right end of the table. All these slack and flabby lines, all these examples of balance being lost, contribute to provoke in the viewer a reaction of uneasiness, physical as much as existential. Above all, what this drunken disorder reveals, and what is ultimately disturbing, is the vision it unveils of the human body in all its ugliness. In this tableau, in this grouping of limbs swollen by loose clothing, of bare skulls which the wigs no longer manage to hide, of puffed faces linked together in a pathetic line by the syncopated series of closed and open mouths, the bodies are twisted, bent, overturned, swollen, with smoke or vomit coming out of them, and Hogarth even emphasises the grotesqueness of the scene by giving the illusion that the sword of the gentleman sitting on the right seems to have been substituted for his left leg: it is Nature itself that is here ill-treated. One of the most striking characteristics of Hogarth’s oeuvre is its constant preoccupation with the representation of the forms of life. An intuitive but convinced empiricist, he spent his whole professional career, from the 1720s to the 1760s, trying to define a new conception and practice of art that would both express the priorities and ideas of ‘modern’ England and provide the founding principles 254

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for an English school of art. In the post-Glorious Revolution context within which he worked, his approach was influenced not only by the new epistemology of Newton and Locke – mediated by periodicals like The Spectator – which recommended an unprejudiced (read secular) study of Nature as the only source of valid knowledge – but also by the anti-French and in the arts anti-academic stance which helped the nation sharpen its new priorities and thus ‘forge’ itself.5 A few decades before Reynolds tried to reconcile the spontaneity of the new school with the exigencies and principles of high art as exemplified by the best continental traditions – a reconciliation which the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 was meant to facilitate – Hogarth tried to put forward, in practice as much as in theory, a conception of beauty in art that refuted any form of academic, hierarchical selectivity with its élitist mysterious shroud of ‘je ne sais quoi’.6 For Hogarth, the beauty of or in a picture, far from being some fixed, complex, embedded inscription to be understood by the cultivated beholder, was the result of a personal experience, of an individual discovery or progress when the representation manages to convey the movement and ‘truth’ of life. To achieve this movement – a challenge when one’s medium is the still image – Hogarth resorted primarily to two well-known stratagems: visual proliferation (within a single image), as evidenced by his numerous, boisterous crowd scenes,7 and pictorial narrativity, either in sequences of images (his famous series A Harlot’s Progress of 1732, A Rake’s Progress of 1732–33 and Marriage à-la-mode of 1743–45) or, more subtly, in some of his best conversation portraits (e.g. The Strode Family of 1738 and The Graham Children of 1742). Both in his choice of subjects and in his painting technique, Hogarth’s rendering of life is remarkable for its tangible physicality. Whether in the materiality of their settings or in their variety of human characters, his pictures try to offer some kind of total ‘show’, with a view to representing Nature as it is, in opposition to the rarefied delusions of high art which tended to show it as it ought to be. In chapter 13 of his 1753 Analysis of Beauty – Hogarth’s generous if uneven attempt at explaining beauty in rational, Enlightenment terms – he pointed out the ‘perversion of the sight’ caused by ‘the prejudgment of the mind’: Experience teaches us that the eye may be subdued and forced into forming and disposing of objects even quite contrary to what it would

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naturally see them, by the prejudgment of the mind from the better authority of feeling, or some other persuasive motive.8

Hogarth’s approach to art and visual culture was both spontaneous and complex, irreverent and respectful, democratic and critical. Like the nascent English school of art, whose constitutive features he tried to outline, discuss, teach and promote throughout his entire career, his own enterprise was spurred by the ambivalent desire, on the one hand, to be independent and different and modern (i.e. English and ‘free’) while, on the other, measuring up to the best continental artists of his time and of the past. One of his favourite thrusts was to reject the élitist (i.e. French and fettered) academic hierarchies, in particular the cult of history painting, which he was neither capable nor desirous of attempting (although he did try on several occasions),9 and to promote the new genre of ‘modern history painting’ which, like the contemporary novels of Defoe, Richardson and Fielding, revisited the notions of heroism, tragedy, moral worth and civic virtue in the context of early and mid-eighteenth-century England. Similarly, in his theory of art, exemplified in his pictures but argued and developed in the Analysis, Hogarth (classically) used the human body as the standard and repository of beautiful forms, but unlike the ancient and Renaissance writers on the subject, he took an approach that was resolutely anti-theoretical, and above all comprehensive. His aim was not to discuss ideal norms or to enter into a discussion of neoclassical dichotomies (e.g. body/soul, abstract/concrete, design/colouring, etc.) but to look at the human body from an empirical perspective, observing all its ‘particulars’: I shall endeavour to shew what the principles are in nature, by which we are directed to call the forms of some bodies beautiful, other ugly; some graceful, and others the reverse; by considering more minutely than has hitherto been done, the nature of those lines, and their different combinations, which serve to raise in the mind the ideas of all the variety of forms imaginable.10

Hogarth’s main originality was his questioning of art’s ambition to ‘correct’, ‘improve’ or ‘beautify’ nature. Echoing Addison’s seminal 1712 ‘Pleasures of the Imagination’ essays in The Spectator, he acknowledges ‘that infinite variety of human forms which always distinguishes the hand of nature from the limited and insufficient one of art.’11 One of the last chapters of the Analysis, devoted to 256

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‘the Face’, is obviously concerned, between the lines, with the art of portraiture, one of his strongest specialities. Considering Nature’s endless treasuries, ‘true’ likeness, or character, must have priority over fictional flattery or fanciful re-creation: If the poor artist is but able now and then to correct and give a better taste to some particular part of what he imitates, by having learnt so to do from her more perfect works, or copying from those that have, ten to one he grows vain upon it, and fancies himself a nature-mender; not considering, that even in these, the meanest of her works, she is never wholly destitute of such lines of beauty and other delicacies, as are not only beyond his narrow reach, but are seen wanting even in the most celebrated attempts to rival her.12

Most importantly, perhaps, Hogarth had a holistic conception of mankind, and his constant praise, throughout the Analysis, of variety as a newly important aesthetic category can be understood in that context. While it may be admitted that some forms were more elegant, refined or ‘polite’ (to use Addison’s term) than others, a true representation of mankind had to allow for the presence of all its specimens, and Hogarth had a real fascination for the depiction of groups and collections of characters that allowed him to show both their similarities – as members of the the human species – and their individualities.13 Moreover, if some forms became ugly or repulsive, this was primarily due to excess or illness and not to Nature’s fault, and the artist’s aim, therefore, must be, like the scientist’s, to discover the causes and effects of such phenomena, to attain that degree of ‘fitness’ which will endow the representation with its full value. As Michel Baridon writes: The world as Hogarth sees it is the world described by the life sciences; it has warmth, it has elasticity and it has ‘juices’ on which the colour of the skin depends.… The attention given to the visual manifestations of life is the distinctive mark of Hogarth’s artistic theory. … By calling attention to ‘fitness’ and by making it an aesthetic criterion, he certainly perceived the internal logic of the development of the life sciences as they existed in his own time.14

The beauty of a picture, in that sense, is closer to that of a mathematical demonstration than to anything ornamental or ‘aesthetic’. Hence the possibility for Hogarth – as for Fielding in his ‘new province of writing’15 – of representing in his pictures, and often in 257

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the same picture, all the features of human behaviour, all the ‘symptoms’ of human life, including disease, vice, squalor disgust, and so on, without ever forfeiting the high ambition he nourished for art, including his own art. In fact, Hogarth thought that art could be ‘high’ only if it did show all, because that was the only way to make it socially (and aesthetically) efficient and modern (i.e. relevant in contemporary society). While such a design could create unease, his envisioning of the body, however, is never coolly and cruelly anatomical (Figure  12.2).16 True to his observational, experimental bias, Hogarth adopts an empathetic approach to the body, taking in all its forms and appearances, and with remarkable freedom indeed. This was made possible by his blatant, and occasionally hasty, rejection of traditional, ‘ideal’ aesthetic discourse à la Shaftesbury, with its prioritising of abstract conception, rules of composition  and artistry. As the rising new discourse on aesthetics was beginning to propose, it was now deemed more important to understand the work of art than to undertand the artwork,17 and the spectator as receiver was given priority over the artist as conceiver. Beauty did not lie in the artefact but was produced by the spectator’s reception of it. This, as we know, led logically to a profusion of philosophical considerations on the notion and relativity of taste, yet Hogarth, unlike many of his contemporaries (e.g. David Hume, ‘Of the Standard of Taste’ (1757), Alexander Gerard, An Essay on Taste (1759), Allan Ramsay, A Dialogue on Taste (1762) and Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism (1762)), did not have much to say on the question of good or bad taste,  as  his comprehensive approach to representation allowed him to somehow by-pass the question. Beauty, according to him, could be rationally and practically explained (this was the weak point of the Analysis, which attracted much criticism and distracted from the rest of the  argument), and was shown to result from a ‘generous’ (in all  meanings of the term) approach of the representation of  Nature, from the sublime to the ugly and the disgusting. A few decades later, the issue of disgust in relation to beauty and taste would be discussed more often, not least by Immanuel Kant, who in his Critik der Urtheilskraft (‘Critique of Judgment’, 1790) underlined the fact that the feeling of disgust is incompatible with artistic representation: 258

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Figure 12.2 William Hogarth, ‘The Reward of Cruelty’, plate 4 of The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751). Engraving, 320 × 380 cm Where fine art evidences its superiority is in the beautiful descriptions it gives of things that in nature would be ugly or displeasing. The Furies, diseases, devastations of war, and the like, can (as evils) be very beautifully described, nay even represented in pictures. One kind of ugliness alone is incapable of being represented conformably to nature without destroying all aesthetic delight, and consequently

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artistic beauty, namely, that which excites disgust. For, as in this strange sensation, which depends purely on the imagination, the object is represented as insisting, as it were, upon our enjoying it, while we still set our face against it, the artificial representation of the object is no longer distinguishable from the nature of the object itself in our sensation, and so it cannot possibly be regarded as beautiful.18

Such a discussion originated in ‘high art’ culture, but as we have seen, Hogarth’s mindset (as well as his own social background) was radically different, and his representations of the body do intend to accommodate disorder, in the medical as much as the social meaning of the term, even if literally it causes disgust, or at least ‘un-ease’. The main driving force behind all his ‘progresses’ (of drink in A Midnight Modern Conversation or Beer Street and Gin Lane, of cruelty in Four Stages of Cruelty, of an innocent country girl in A Harlot’s Progress, of a naïve and uneducated young man in A Rake’s Progress or of a misled young couple in Marriage à-lamode), from excess to stupor, from lust to venereal disease, from rape to prostitution, from mismatching to adultery, is fuelled by the fact that the body is often presented as a disturbing cluster of animal desires that are obviously out of control. But these disorders always come as the necessary, natural, other half of or counterpoint to his representations of otherwise graceful, happy, attractive characters, which form an equally important group of subjects in his pictures, whether showing the generosity of a Captain Coram – the founder of the Foundling Hospital – or a Sarah Young in A Rake’s Progress, or the spontaneity of The Laughing Audience or the Graham children.19 The obvious intention to ‘show it all’ was Hogarth’s conscious endorsement of one of the most ambitious and sustained quests of the English eighteenth century from Joseph Addison to Jane Austen, that for the perfect balance, the ‘happy medium’. Throughout his oeuvre, he wished to include all the forms of life in order to allow the beholder to discover, both through experience of the work and, often, between the lines, what could be construed as a ‘happy’ middle course. His whole theory of beauty is founded upon that principle, symbolised by the famous line of beauty, or ideal serpentine line. Already present in his 1745 self-portrait The Artist and his Pug (Figure 12.3) the line is at the heart of the Analysis, in which it is represented as the middle line – number 4 on a scale of 1 to 7 – its 260

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Figure 12.3 William Hogarth, The Painter and his Pug (1745). Engraving

beauty being visible only if it is held in tension between the more extreme lines (see diagram 49 in Figure 12.4): Though all sorts of waving-lines are ornamental, when properly applied; yet, strictly speaking, there is but one precise line, properly

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Figure 12.4 William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (1753), plate 1; and detail

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to be called the line of beauty, which in the scale of them is number 4: the lines 5, 6, 7, by their bulging too much in their curvature becoming gross and clumsy; and, on the contrary, 3, 2, 1, as they straighten, becoming mean and poor. 20

In 1745, soon after the tragic story of Marriage à-la-mode, Hogarth attempted another series, entitled The Happy Marriage, that could serve as a pendant to the first. Only one sketch survives, known as ‘The Country Dance’, which shows a dance in the hall of a country house. While there is hardly enough material to indicate what the contrapuntal, ‘happy’, narrative might have been, the image, designed along the line of its gracefully contrasted types (from the elegant couple on the right to the more rotund but equally entertaining – and entertained – figures further down the line) offers a striking example of a harmonious conversation of differences. Conversely, one can certainly see A Midnight Modern Conversation as showing the humorous but sound and honest ‘other’ side of the polite conversation portraits in which Hogarth otherwise excelled. In the first half of the eighteenth century, the ‘conversation piece’ became the fashionable genre in English portraiture, with Hogarth as one of its leading artists. As I have shown elsewhere, it became emblematic and programmatic of ‘modern’ behaviour, its compositions relying on effects of simultaneity and multiple occupation of space, turning conversation into social performance and offering a vision of a carefully policed representation of the sitters’ public and private selves.21 The basic idea underlying the conversation piece was that social interaction between individuals allowed each of them to control and refine their passions and desires by rubbing and polishing them within the group. They could thus reach that equilibrium, that ‘happy medium’ mentioned above, which was, in effect, the ideological designation of a social space, the public sphere of the ‘middle class’, whose territory continued to expand by pushing the nobility and ‘the vulgar’ increasingly to the sides. Conversation painting, like Addison’s essay writing, thus appears as the visual record – and modelling – of this search for the perfect balance, as the representation of the refinement of the passions allowed by social commerce. The metaphorical importance of the rubbing and polishing at stake (like the dance in The Happy Marriage, a subject with which Hogarth concludes his Analysis) 263

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gave to bodies and the physical interaction between them the central role in the representation. Hogarth, as one of the most prominent skilled practitioners of the genre, was very much aware of the staging involved. A Midnight Modern Conversation, which invites an implicit comparison with all the other ‘serious’ conversation pieces, operates a remarkable deconstruction of the covering-up at stake. The use of the term ‘conversation’ in the title is here doubly ironic: on the one hand, it is clear that, in their shared stupor, the men have become incapable of verbal exchange of any kind, and on the other hand, the scene is anything but conversational, in the sense of being. harmonious and polished. or polite, Hogarth, always interested in the precariousness of social harmony and the rapidity with which people can topple over and fall, here reveals that, under the wigs of polished conversation and social ceremony, the body is soon out of control. Between the suspicious play-acting of carefully staged daylight conversation and the crude ‘disorder’ of uncontrolled midnight revelries, Hogarth is suggesting a ‘middle’ form of ideal behaviour that reconciles the demands of the public self and private self. Another example of the importance of bodies in this search for the beauty of balance is provided by another of Hogarth’s famous pictures, O the Roast Beef of Old England (The Gate of Calais) (1748; Figure 12.5), that rather ferocious depiction of French Ancien Régime mediocrities.22 The well-fed monk is the only French figure who seems to be in good physical or material health; all the other characters, in rags, show cadaverous faces and scrawny bodies. Hogarth’s picture of France may well contain some underlying message meant to suggest another more flattering and positive image, that of a British nation nourishing itself (hence the piece of beef) on opposite values. The presence, on the left side of the picture, of Hogarth himself as a practising artist may lead us to think, similarly, that the clichés and stereotypes concerning France allowed him to imagine a form of ugliness which, a contrario, designates the territory, the ‘new province’, of an English model of beauty, which he spent the rest of his life trying to show and promote. Like Moll Hackabout in A Harlot’s Progress, altered by sexual corruption in the course of her tragically laconic, six-picture ‘progress’, like Tom Rakewell in the Rake’s Progress, gradually rotted by money, like the Squanderfield couple in Marriage 264

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Figure 12.5 William Hogarth, O the Roast Beef of Old England (The Gate of Calais) (1748). Engraving

à-la-mode, devastated by the grievous consequences of a forced marriage, and like Tom Nero in The Four Stages of Cruelty, whose body is brutally dissected as the somehow logical outcome of his own cruelty, the French primarily offer the appalling spectacle of a population allegedly driven to extremes by absolutist power and hysterical religion. As always, what Hogarth denounces here is ‘not Men but Manners’: not so much the French, foreigners or others, but what renders people ugly, what alters their nature into deformity, what makes them others to themselves. In a way that is typical of his rejection of extremes (and extremisms) which render forms either too rigid and angular, or too soft and curved, one is faced with the clear, frontal opposition of the sickening roundness of the monk and the painful angularity of the cook, an opposition of extremes echoed everywhere else in the picture. Hogarth’s insistent representation of the excessive or the deformed tends to modify the semiotic significance of the friction 265

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of the beautiful and the ugly. Again, what is suggested here is that beauty, far from being some kind of fixed ideal or a universal norm inherited from the ancients, is now designed as a transient feeling caused by the frictional experience of the variety of contrasted forms, including the most deformed ones. Hogarth’s remarkable contribution to Enlightenment thinking is to suggest that beauty could now be conceived as a form of generous compromise, what he calls ‘a composed variety’,23 in which harmony, synthesis and unity – be they aesthetic or social – no longer proceed from the elimination of extremes, but, on the contrary, from their incorporation within the human conversation. In other words, Hogarth insists on the fact that you cannot have one (beauty or harmony) without ‘the other’, however disgusting. Whatever moral or social difference it may express, otherness, in its graphic excess, is always visually interesting and worth looking at. By distinguishing, like Fielding, between cause and victim, and by selecting only the former as the target of his satire, Hogarth surreptitiously rehabilitates diversities, alterities, foreignness, by endowing them with an aesthetic raison d’être that goes beyond sheer visual interest. Whatever is new or uncommon contributes a little to vary human Life, and to divert our Minds, for a while, with the Strangeness of its Appearance: It serves us for a Kind of Refreshment, and takes off from that Satiety we are apt to complain of in our usual and ordinary Entertainments. It is this that bestows Charms on a Monster, and makes even the Imperfections of Nature please us.24

By composing modern history paintings in which the most elegant forms converse with the plainest lines, Hogarth tried to endow variety with both an epistemological and an aesthetic status – the two are closely linked – that meant the inclusion of the ones and ‘the others’ to such an extent that ‘even the Imperfections of Nature please us’, and beauty finds itself ‘improved’. In most if not all of Hogarth’s pictures, from the gradual body distortions of the Squanderfield couple to the graceful curves of the Graham children, from the singular physicality of a Captain Coram to the bustling energy generated by crowd movements, it is always the human body which endows his art with its textural, formal and rhythmic qualities. We find … that the profuse variety of shapes, which present themselves from the whole animal creation, arise chiefly from the nice

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fitness of their parts, designed for accomplishing the peculiar movements of each … Yet, properly speaking, no living creatures are capable of moving in such truly varied and graceful directions, as the human species; and it would be needless to say how much superior in beauty their forms and textures likewise are.25

Hogarthian beauty and grace, far from being abstract metaphysical concepts or the aesthetic consequences of the application of a set of rules, emerge as transient, living, physical phenomena, apprehended by the beholder – who plays a crucial, fulfilling role – through visual representations of the bodies’ ‘peculiar movements’. Notes 1 In the later years of his life, at a time when his fellow artists were aspiring to a higher reputation and thinking of setting up an academy, Hogarth became increasingly sensitive to criticism of his work that described it as too low and vulgar, in subject matter as much as in style. One of his last written statements, which accompanied the engraved version of The Bench (1758), is a reformulation of the distinction between character and caricatura, first made by Henry Fielding in the preface to Joseph Andrews (1742) and echoed by Hogarth in his 1743 engraving Characters and Caricaturas. In 1758, the tone is less light-hearted: ‘There are hardly any two things more essentially different than character and caricature, nevertheless they are usually confounded, and mistaken for each other, on which account this explanation is attempted. It has ever been allowed that when a character is strongly marked in the living face, it may be considered as an index of the mind, to express which with any degree of justness in painting requires the utmost efforts of a great master.’ 2 The painting was obviously the cause of some family embarrassment. Immediately after his death in 1779, Schutz’s daughter had the vomiting and chamber pot painted over and replaced with the reading of a newspaper, thus giving Schutz a more gentlemanly image. Hogarth’s painting was only restored to its original version in the 1990s. 3 ‘Action is a sort of language which perhaps one time or other, may come to be taught by a kind of grammar-rules.’ William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (London, 1753), p. 139. 4 The last, crowning chapter in Hogarth’s treatise, chapter 17, is entitled ‘Of Action’: ‘To the amazing variety of forms made still infinitely more various in appearance by light, shade and colour, nature hath added another way of increasing that variety, still more to enhance the value of all her compositions. This is accomplished by means of action; the

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5 6

7

8 9

fullest display of which is put into the power of the human species, and which is equally subject to the same principles with regard to the effects of beauty, or the reverse, as govern all the former compositions … The peculiar movements of each person, as the gate in walking, are particularised in such lines as each part describes by the habit they have contracted. The nature and power of habit may be fully conceived by the following familiar instance, as the motions of one part of the body may serve to explain those of the whole.’ Ibid., p. 138. If one follows Linda Colley’s classical thesis in Britons: Forging the Nation (1992), 3rd edn (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). On Hogarth and the ‘je ne sais quoi’, see F. Ogée, ‘Je-sais-quoi: William Hogarth and the Representation of the Forms of Life’, in D. Bindman, F. Ogée and P. Wagner (eds), William Hogarth: Representing Nature’s Machines (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 71–84. For outdoor scenes, see e.g. Southwark Fair (1733); plates 11 (‘The Idle ‘Prentice Executed at Tyburn’) and 12 (‘The Industrious ‘Prentice Lord-Mayor of London’) of Industry and Idleness (1747); The March of the Guards to Finchley (1750); ‘Chairing the Member’, picture 4 of The Humours of an Election (1755), or The Times, plate 1 (1762); and for indoor ones, Strolling Actresses Dressing in Barn (1738) or ‘An Election Entertainment’, picture 1 of The Humours of an Election (1755). For a closer analysis of those crowded scenes, see F. Ogée, ‘The Flesh of Theory: The Erotics of Hogarth’s Lines’, in B. Fort and A. Rosenthal (eds), The Other Hogarth: Gender, Race and Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), pp. 62–75. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, pp. 106–7. See Hogarth’s The Pool of Bethesda and The Good Samaritan (1736– 37) for St Bartholomew’s Hospital; Moses Brought before Pharaoh’s Daughter (1747), painted for Thomas Coram’s Foundling Hospital; his vast Paul before Felix (1748, 322.6 × 427.7 cm) at Lincoln’s Inn, commissioned under a bequest to the inn of £200 made in 1745 by Lord Wyndham, a former Lord Chancellor of Ireland (see also Hogarth’s 1751 engraving of Paul before Felix Burlesqued); and his altarpiece for St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol (1756). His last, and perhaps most ambitious attempt in the genre was Sigismunda Mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo (1759), based on a scene from Boccacio’s Decameron. Hogarth was very proud of it, but it met with a ferocious reception (Charles Churchill called Sigismunda the ‘helpless victim of a dauber’s hand’), and Richard Grosvenor, First Earl Grosvenor, who had commissioned the painting, turned it down. The whole episode soured the last years of Hogarth’s life; involved in endless  satirical quibbles, he became increasingly irascible and never fully recovered from what he

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10 11

12 13

14

15

16

17 18

perceived, with the looming prospect of a Royal Academy, as a complete misunderstanding of his whole enterprise. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, Introduction, p. 1. Ibid., p. 129. Addison had written: ‘If we consider the works of nature and art, as they are qualified to entertain the imagination, we shall find the last very defective in comparison of the former; for though they may sometimes appear as beautiful or strange, they can have nothing in them of that vastness and immensity, which afford so great an entertainment to the mind of the beholder’ The Spectator, 414 (Wednesday, 25 June 1712), ed. Donald F. Bond, 5 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), vol. 3, pp. 548–9. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, p. 129. See e.g. The Laughing Audience (1733), A Chorus of Singers (1736), Scholars at a Lecture (1736), The Company of Undertakers (1740), Characters and Caricaturas (1743) and of course the exceptional painted group portrait Hogarth’s Servants (1750–55). M. Baridon, ‘Hogarth’s “Living Machines of Nature” and the Theorisation of Aesthetics’, in D. Bindman, F. Ogée and P. Wagner (eds), William Hogarth: Representing Nature’s Machines (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 85–101. ‘I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever; for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein.’ H. Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1749), ed. John Bender (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, p. 68. On this and related questions, see Ogée, ‘The Flesh of Theory’. See also R. Paulson, Hogarth, 3 vols. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991–93), vol. 3, pp. 77–81; 100–9; as well as his introduction to William Hogarth, The Analysis of Beauty (1753) (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), pp. xxv–xxvi; D. Bindman, Hogarth and his Times (London: British Museum, 1997), pp. 53–6, and S. J. Juengel, ‘Of Beauty, Cruelty, and Animal Life: Hogarth’s Baroque’, Differences, 16:1 (2005), 24–62. G. Genette, The Work of Art: Immanence and Transcendence, trans. G. M. Goshgarian. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997). I. Kant, Critique of Judgment (1790), trans. James Creed Meredith (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), part 1, ‘Critique of Aesthetic Judgment’, § 48, ‘The Relation of Genius to Taste’, p. 168. Kant’s remarks on disgust, written in the context of the French Revolution  – and in the same year as Edmund Burke’s Reflections – continued a discussion opened by earlier Enlightenment German philosophers, who all tackled the issue of its ‘unrepresentability’ in art, unlike other ‘negative’ qualities such as evil or ugliness. Schlegel, in the extended footnotes to his 1751

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19

20

21

22

23 24 25

translation of C. Batteux’s Les Beaux Arts réduits en un même principe, attempted a definition of disgust, which he saw as the outer limit of the aesthetic: ‘Disgust alone is excluded from those unpleasant sensations whose nature can be altered through imitation. Art would here fruitlessly expend all its labor.’ This was later echoed by Moses Mendelssohn, who in Briefe über die Empfindungen (‘On Sentiments’, 1761) thought that the feeling of disgust was always literal, and therefore could not be experenced as ‘unreal’ in art. Five years later Lessing took up the issue in his Laokoon, oder über die Grenzen der Malerei und Poesie (‘Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry’, 1766). For a thorough examination of this question, see W. Menninghaus, Disgust: The Theory and History of a Strong Sensation, trans. H. Eiland and J. Golb (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), to which I am indebted for this note. Portrait of Thomas Coram (1740), oil on canvas, 239 × 147.5 cm, The Foundling Museum, London; A Rake’s Progress (1733), eight pictures, oil on canvas, 62.5 × 75 cm, The Soane Museum, London; ‘The Laughing Audience’ (1733), engraving, 19 × 17.4 cm; The Graham Children (1742), oil on canvas, 160.5 × 181 cm, The National Gallery, London. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, p. 49. On the extent to which, from Addison to Reynolds, beauty (and taste) – an increasingly subjective notion since the ‘Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes’, and now more open to individual appropriations – had been used throughout the century to explore the new territory of the middle classes, see R. W. Jones, Gender and the Formation of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Analysis of Beauty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Frédéric Ogée, ‘A Midnight Modern Conversation’, in Bernd W. Krysmanski (ed.), 250 Years On: New Light on William Hogarth. 45 Essays to Commemorate the 250th Anniversary of Hogarth’s Death (Berlin: Neofelis, forthcoming). For a more detailed analysis of this picture, see F. Ogée, ‘“The Extreem different face things appear with at so little distance as from Dover”: images de l’autre chez William Hogarth’, Annales du monde anglophone (Aix-en-Provence: Université d’Aix-Marseille I and L’Harmattan, 1999), pp. 31–41. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, p. 17. Addison, The Spectator, 412 (23 June 1712), ed. Bond, vol. 3, p. 541. Hogarth, Analysis of Beauty, ch. 11 ‘Of Proportion’, pp. 85, 88.

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PART IV Visualising the viscera

13  iconography of the belly: eighteenth-century satirical prints Barbara Stentz

If the body is both polysemous and ambivalent, it also serves more widely as ‘a framework for both knowledge and description because its different metaphorical levels were capable of describing the entire world, visible and invisible’.1 Countless studies have examined the social, political, cultural, scientific, cultural and/or private dimensions of the body, its gesturality and other forms of expression and even its fluids. The rhetorical expressivity of the face and hands, for example, has attracted the attention of authors working in a range of different disciplines. However, the significations that were attached to the belly remain to be explored. What does this central zone of the body, portal of the basest and foulest of physiological processes, have to tell us? Although the belly, like the nose, for example, is a body part incapable of movement and is not strictly speaking an expressive sign, it was nevertheless a source of inspiration for artists throughout the modern period. Figurative representations of its bulging or sunken volumes and of the surface of the skin (its smoothness or wrinkles, the shape of the muscles, flesh tones, etc.) were clearly charged with meaning. Two different bodies of work associated with two distinct aesthetic currents illustrate the range of interpretations and modes of pictorial transcription related ot the belly. While some subjected the stomach to codes of representation based on the idealised body of Italian Renaissance painters, others presented a profane vision of the body that did not shy away from detailing its physical imperfections and its deformities. Indeed, the eighteenth century  exemplifies the long 273

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co-existence of these two apparently irreconcilable conceptions of the body. In this chapter, I shall examine what was at stake in the signification of the stomach through two opposing aesthetic models: the ‘beau idéal’ and the grotesquery of caricature. In light of recent and widespread scholarly interest in the history of gluttony and obesity, I will interrogate the significance of excess, outrage and intemperance in comical representations of the belly, by reading them in light of both aesthetic norms and medical discourses.2 The meaning of bodily health was particularly important during the eighteenth century, a period when authors paid close attention to the healthy body and medical pedagogy. Nuanced assessments of portliness were part of a programmatic vision for the daily care of the body. The visual image of corpulence also had other meanings beyond its uses in discourses on health. Thus the protuberant belly was often a central feature of satirical prints, where it carried social or political weight or expressed ideological tensions. A traditional marker of opulence, power and wealth, it also had the potential to highlight the inequality between the powerful and those they dominated, particularly in the physiological and political metaphors used in the Revolutionary caricatures of the 1790s. Both the excesses and the needs to which the image of the belly pointed contributed to the creation of social morphologies which alluded to the dominant classes and the people, drawing attention to their physical, moral and ideological differences and transposing ‘social ‘privilege’ into carnal appetites’.3 The belly between health and idealisation During the Enlightenment authors of all persuasions – doctors, men of letters, philosophers, theoreticians of art – based many of their observations and assumptions on a model of the body whose balance and fine proportions served as a foil to a growing obsession with degeneracy. During the last quarter of the eighteenth century the dominant aesthetic model was neoclassicism in its stoic guise. Its principles were based on the ‘beau idéal’, a concept developed and promoted by the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann and then popularised in France through the painting of Jacques-Louis David. This artistic school promoted a treatment of the body and its deportment that was suffused with grandeur and 274

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nobility, banishing all asperity and all excess, in conformity with the classical precepts of moderation and propriety reiterated by the members of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture from the seventeenth century onwards. The neoclassical masculine body was characterised principally by its vigour, its heightened muscularity and its lofty bearing. This vision was close to that of Buffon in his chapter on the ‘Age of virility’ in Histoire naturelle: The body of a well-proportioned man should be square-cut, the muscles should be strongly evident, the contours of the limbs strongly drafted, the features of the face clearly defined … Everything in man should, even on the surface, denote his superiority over all other living creatures: he bears himself upright and erect, his posture is one of command, his head is held high towards the heavens and presents an august face on which is printed the quality of his dignity; his majestic bearing, and his strong, bold demeanour announce the nobility of his rank.4

Whether real or imaginary, the Enlightenment body partook in a pedagogy of ‘re-education’, since its appearance was modelled by the rules of politeness and decorum, but also by medical, military and political theory and practice.5 Towards the end of the century the appreciation of bodily uprightness and bearing was closely related to the correspondence established between physical and moral strength. This idea was closely linked to a new pedagogy and a new approach to the body, as well as to a polarisation around the conceptual pair ‘degeneracy-regeneration’,6 which, as Georges Vigarello argues, applied as much to art as to the politics and morals of society: The logic of degradation both assumes, and at the same time develops, a logic of discipline … Exposing its dangers is accompanied by an implicitly social argument; a weakening of forms and a weakness of attitude are often indicated through a critique of life in the aristocracy and the salons, whose artifice and shallowness are emphasised. ‘Another’ physical way of life, other, more ‘rigorous’ attitudes, are offered as so many alternatives. The authors of these medical and physiological educational systems seem to be in search of a new cultural approach towards the body.7

When the region of the belly was stripped bare in paintings or drawings of neoclassical inspiration, it was most often to show 275

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masculine warriors in combat, or wounded or dying, captured in a stoic attitude of resolve. In such heroic representations, the area focused upon tended to be the epigastria, corresponding to the upper region of the belly. These stomach muscles were shown as straining in the effort to keep the body upright and dignified. From the end of the seventeenth century, following the doctor and physiologist Van Helmont, the epigastria were considered to be the seat of the passions, and later, in vitalist thinking in the second half of the eighteenth century, the same area was designated as a centre of nervous energy. The epigastric region was therefore ‘the source, the terminus and the channel for nearly all feeling’.8 Strength and nervous energy should  therefore be particularly tangible and visible there. This can be seen in the male nudes of Drouais or Guillon Lethière: the abdomen displays vibrations rippling across the surface of the skin, manifesting the inner conflict which wracks the hero as he seeks to master the pangs of pain and energy that drive him.9 In these bodies, nothing which might refer us to the subject’s ‘material’ innerness is made visible, leaving the eye to observe but an almost flawlessly smooth belly, marked only by the folds resulting from the twisting motion of the male body, and his taut flanks. This was also the case when it came to representing a scene such as that of the death of the Roman statesman Cato of Utica, an episode much in vogue at the end of the eighteenth century (see Plate 9). Cato’s stoic determination to disembowel himself for the sake of his political convictions was sanitised by French neoclassical artists. Whereas the wounded belly, with its gaping wound and its visible bowels, had been part of the visual repertoire in earlier works of art depicting Cato’s suicide or, alternatively, the martyrdom of St Erasmus, painted by Nicolas Poussin, neoclassical representations of this scene purged it of its visceral explicitness. However agonised or severely wounded, the bodies that these artists represented were still glowing with beauty and health, in accordance with the medical and aesthetic ideals of the time. In his study of the history of obesity, Vigarello argues that the eighteenth century saw an increasing attentiveness to the variability of the body and belly. This interest in the particularity of variants translated into a procedural evaluation and definition of the contours and girth of the body and especially of the torso.10 Henceforth it became a question of measuring, quantifying and establishing 276

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norms, as can be seen in scientific debates and literature. But illustrations also captured silhouettes with different contours and attitudes depending on an individual’s profession (soldier, priest, banker, etc.) or character traits (gluttony) as kinds of bodily template. These can be seen in works such as Exercices d’imagination de différents caractères et formes humaines (‘Exercises in the Imagination of Different Human Characters and Forms’) by Franz van Goetz (1784) or the celebrated   treatise on physiognomy by Johann Caspar Lavater.11 To these bodily taxonomies was added a new conception of adiposity, which now became a pathology. Louis de Jaucourt established this connection when he defined obesity not as ‘a superabundance of flesh, but of fat’, as ‘an excessive paunch’, concluding that it was ‘an illness that is the opposite of marasmus [malnutrition]’. In addition he established a distinction between those who are thin and ‘fleshy, but without excess’ on the one hand and those who are fat on the other. The former are vigorous, whereas the ‘fat person’s blood vessels are surrounded by fat collecting in the cells of the adipose membrane and clogging them up. The blood vessels, shrunken by the enormous volume of fat, produce weakness, laziness, inactivity and inaptitude for movement.’12 De Jaucourt, then, approached an excess of fat from the viewpoint of its consequences for health, as did Samuel Tissot, for whom this condition produced, in the long run, ‘a compression strong enough to interfere with the actions of the nerves, and produce a chronic numbness’.13 A portrayal of Paul Butterbrodt shows the exceptional character of certain silhouettes and the attraction provided by physical monsters (Figure 13.1). This Dutchman, who was a 477-pound circus freak, exhibited himself at the Palais-Royal. Some plates show him full face, but inevitably, other prints use his profile to emphasise his great corpulence and to render the image more spectacular. In the same way, focusing on the contours of the silhouette reduces it to the essential, and likewise exploits the profile to contribute to the effective presentation of a physical type. The sparse lines of this kind of sketch evoke the physionotrace, a technique of representation much in vogue in the second half of the eighteenth century. The physionotrace utilised a technology invented in 1786 which used a light chamber to capture the contours of a portrait. But Butterbrodt’s orotund profile also recalls the device of the cut-out silhouette – used notably by the physiognomist Lavater – which at 277

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Figure 13.1 Anonymous, Paul Butterbrodt. Etching, 32.8 × 24 cm

that time constituted an effective means of recording the dominant features of a character.14 Although this print was not a caricature, the medical, social and aesthetic problems of excessive corpulence were implicit in an Enlightenment context. For centuries, the noble art of history painting had featured some rather rotund bellies, that of Silenus being a model of the genre. 15 The promulgation of new, idealised, aesthetic models and of new canons of bodily instruction has led some to 278

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think that the image of the excessive or uncontrolled body became increasingly disparaged towards the end of the eighteenth century, especially when expressed in terms of the prominent stomach. And indeed it is hardly conceivable that these mutations would not have had an effect on the figurative arts. We should remember that, within the framework of official art, formal excess was proscribed, and that under no circumstances should the work flout the canons of beauty. However, satirical visual works did represent figures deformed by their excessive abdominal protuberances. The caricatured belly As we know, caricatures degrade, desacralise and transform the human figure. Long restricted to leisure-time activities in the studio and not considered as a genre in its own right, the caricature was now firmly siding with controversial notions of ugliness and exaggeration, since it deformed the features of those it portrayed by emphasising some of their characteristics, with the intention of ridiculing and stigmatising people or situations. At the same time, its existence and survival depended on well-established norms of representation, which it deliberately flouted and subverted, thus playing the part of a disturbing double: caricature is therefore ‘born of its opposite … a humorous parasite, feeding off what is classic’.16 As early as 1958 Werner Hofmann showed how caricature consists in the transgression of an ideal of beauty, and how it upsets the equilibrium delivered by the restraint and reassuring harmony of classicism.17 We can detect this even in the Renaissance, a period which saw both the origins of caricature and the fixing of the canons of classical beauty, the very same norms which were to persist in France at least until the nineteenth century.18 In the case of Revolutionary caricatures, graphic satire generously exploited the theories formulated by medicine, which associated excessive fatness increasingly with infirmity, and by treatises of corporeal instruction encouraging new practices, ranging from the correction of posture to exercises designed to work the muscles and thus increase the strength of the body. In particular, depicting an excessively pot-bellied silhouette was a popular way of stigmatising a character type or a particular personality. However, the image of the exaggeratedly round waist as a tool for propaganda was by no 279

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means new, since it is found in the sixteenth century in caricatures lampooning Martin Luther and the bodies of monks.19 This image was later used to cement national stereotypes (such as the figure of the Englishman) and to ridicule profiteers, the upper classes and the wealthier segments of society – including clergymen, physicians, judges and financiers – as well as anyone associated with gluttony and a lack of manners, such as butchers for example. French Revolutionary caricaturists of the late eighteenth century also made this distinctive sign a marker of rank or social status. In the graphic production of this period, the figure endowed with such a protuberance is shown to be greedy, lustful and degenerate: he belongs to the privileged orders, and particularly to the clergy. The belly thus crystallises social tensions; it harbours and reflects the opposition between rich and poor, embodying the power relations between the powerful and the dominated. What had been an ancient symbol of power and wealth was reappropriated, becoming the sign of decadence and degeneration; of physical and moral, but also social and political, weakness. This aspect is particularly important in patriotic caricature, which intended precisely to establish the link between organic functions, mental faculties and social life in a grotesque way. The deliberately outrageous style of the grotesque offers a valuable means of identifying a dangerous or ridiculous personage. It brings him to life by accentuating the expressivity of the traditionally ‘noble’ organs, that is to say the eyes, eyebrows, as well as the hands, but it is also and above all focused on the parts of the body that are open to the outside world, that is, the parts through which the world enters the body or emerges from it, or through which the body itself goes out meet the world. This means that the emphasis is on the apertures or the convexities, or on various ramifications and offshoots: the open mouth, the genital organs, the breasts, the phallus, the potbelly, the nose.20

In other words, it is focused on the parts judged to be the most vulgar. Such an appraisal results from the fact that the stomach, like the mouth, was related to the ‘topographic bodily lower stratum’ described by Bakhtin, since it was linked with the entrails through the most trivial human actions, like eating, yawning, swallowing, vomiting or defecating.21 The very marked differentiation of the parts linked to a shameful bodily zone, as opposed to 280

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the other, noble and superior ones, was assimilated into popular culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which made of the exaggerated stomach and its activities a central comic image in the structure of the popular festival. The partisan verve of the patriotic caricaturists, inspired by the grotesque carnival tradition, helped to spread Revolutionary propaganda, but was also part of an economy of laughter. Since the 1780s the proliferation of prints deriding contemporary mores and fashions had been laying the ground for the popularity of these satirical sheets in the golden age of laughter, which was rooted in the French comic tradition even as it was specific to the Enlightenment.22 In this perspective, the  humorous potential of images pertaining to the functions of the  stomach, or rather to its dysfunctions and excesses, explains the omnipresence of scenes of enemas, indigestion and a whole vein of scatology. Apothecaries armed with giant enemas chase and harry the fat aristocrats in order to purge them. In the same way, the dejections and powerful explosions provoked by the aristocratic wind become threatening weapons directed at the enemy invaders.23 Voracity and pathology Patriotic caricaturists enjoyed portraying the enemy as an insatiably greedy creature with a large paunch. Hence Viscount Mirabeau, the younger brother of the famous Revolutionary orator, was a favourite target of Revolutionary leaders. His excesses and his reactionary positions crystallised their animosity, leading to a flurry of personal attacks focused on his appearance: like Silenus he was described as a drunkard endowed with a very hearty appetite. This unregulated and corrupt character came to life in prints, and he soon came to be known by the nicknames they gave him – ‘Mirabeau-Tonneau’ (‘Mirabeau-barrel-oh!’) and ‘Mirabeau-laTonne’ (‘ton-up Mirabeau’). His facial features were not usually the focus of these attacks, which reified his body and stomach, reducing him to a collection of barrels and bottles. The satirists’ intention was evident. They wanted to show an appearance perfectly matching his political ideology and his excesses, since he represented a nobility   viscerally attached to its privileges. The effectiveness of such portraits depended on the personality lampooned being rapidly recognisable, as underlined by this phrase 281

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written on the stomach of ‘Mirabeau-Tonneau’ in a caricature of 1790: ‘See the lust for drink, see the belly cask: it’s young Mirabeau of course – no need to ask!’ When not giving him a barrel for a stomach, satirists portrayed him wearing a shirt straining over his heavy paunch and looking as though the buttons might pop off at any moment.24 Mirabeau was not the only person whose stomach crystallised popular anger. In 1789, at the moment when the Estates General were summoned, organic metaphors mingling politics and medicine played a considerable part at the core of the debates, reflecting the harmony that was required of members of the body politic:25 In France, the king is the head of the State: the soldiers are its hands; the magistrates form part of the head: they are the mouth, the eyes, the ears; they are the organs of the brain, which is the king. The king is also the heart and the stomach; and the magistrates are the viscera. The Great are the trunk which envelops them; the people are the arms, the thighs, the legs and the feet. Such is the body of the State. Wherefore, if we now examine the great whole, what should be the functions of the monarch-brain-heart-stomach? It is certain that the health of the body politic can only result from sweet concord between all of its parts: that if there is the slightest swelling, the slightest failure to correspond, disorder ensues; a fever rises, which can lead the body into total dissolution.26

Common throughout the sixteenth century and the Revolution, this configuration of   power centred on the image of the kingas-head and the king-as-stomach. The latter was a long-standing organic metaphor, traces of which can be found in Rabelais and La Fontaine’s Les Membres et l’estomac (published in English as The Belly and the Members). Louis XVI’s flight from Versailles and his arrest in Varennes on 21 June 1791 tarnished his image  considerably and led to widespread feelings of betrayal, giving rise to an unprecedented explosion of satirical wit in both France and England. The king came to personify the sickness of the body politic in the eyes of the Revolutionaries, and the image of the king-asfather, which he had enjoyed up until then, was changed into that of the king-as-pig.27 The metaphor of the king-as-stomach was taken literally, and his critics endowed him with a voracious and insatiable organ, reflecting medical criticisms of alimentary excesses: ‘The stomach overwhelmed with the weight of its food can no longer fulfil its functions, the body becomes sluggish and its whole 282

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mechanism suffers … We see many people who are otherwise wellbred give in to shameful excess, making the stomach their only source of pleasure, and having no driving passion other than gluttony.’28 Jean-Baptiste Moheau, one of the founders of demography, also shared this belief when he asserted that ‘almost all the wealthy carry more fat than their health demands and than is good for their strength’.29 With an enormous paunch as his principal attribute, Louis XVI was often portrayed gorging himself and drinking outrageously. Sometimes assimilated to Gargantua, he could also transform into a turkey or pig, animals well known for their gluttony. To his stout silhouette was added an air of confusion, even of stupidity. This image recalled the words of André Félibien, who advised painters wishing to portray stupid men to ‘consider that such people ordinarily have an inanimate, puffy face, a fat  stomach, stout thighs, fat legs, a round forehead and staring or absent eyes’.30 This description reflects an idea which became increasingly widespread during the century of the Enlightenment: the notion that excessive fatness engenders inactivity and a state of torpor. In engravings such as The Gourmand by Isaac Cruikshank and Louis XVI Taking Leave of his Wife and Family by Gillray, the English placed particular emphasis on the heavy appearance and confused expression of the French monarch, together with the excessive attachment he showed for the pleasures of the table, as if these constituted his one and only preoccupation, even at the time of his arrest at Varennes or just before his execution. The extraordinary appetite of Louis XVI was also widely publicised by authors, for instance in the Manuel des Amphitrions by Grimod de la Reynière, advocate, journalist and founding father of gastronomy at the very beginning of the nineteenth century. He recounts that Louis XVI ‘ate with more voracity than delicacy, and showed no care for any great finesse of taste in his choice of food’. But above all ‘his vast appetite willingly accepted anything and everything served up in order to sate him’.31 In the texts as in the images, references to dining and diet express the pathological character of obesity. In addition, the authors of these pamphlets, scandal sheets and newspapers drew on the traditional theme of the uncontrolled appetite of ‘the Great’ as a metaphor of their abuse of power, in their descriptions. When the ‘patriotic tailor’ compares Louis XVI to his brother, he concludes that there is a great resemblance, for both are 283

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‘negligent, weak and slothful’, and he sees in each of them ‘a very heavy, cumbrous individual’. Indeed if, following the example of all of the Great, he has consumed a portion of the revenues of the State, his paunch at least bears witness to the great number of succulent meals which have endowed him with that enormous paunch which he lumbers around with so laboriously; and the public newspapers, which have announced that this glutton ate enough for four, and drank likewise, ought to have added that in feeding him France did not till a fallow field, for he put our taxes to good use.32

The physiological is thus amalgamated with the political. The assimilation as well as the accumulation of food becomes synonymous with the incorporation of revenues by the State, both being associated with the digestion, a process during which money is transformed into fat. The king, the nobleman and the cleric are presented as leeches, parasites and profiteers who appropriate the wealth of the people, as is underlined by L’Ami du people, which denounces ‘the tyrants who starve their people to fatten their favourites’.33 The aristocrat is transformed into a cruel and gluttonous monster whose voracious appetite causes him to cannibalise the people. Revolutionary caricatures also often portrayed the figure of the aristocrat – which gradually came to represent anyone who sided with the Ancien Régime – with the image of a ferocious and bloodthirsty monster: ‘Any bourgeois, peasant, cobbler or little girl will know that an aristocrat is a cannibal who feeds on the blood-soaked flesh of the people.’34 Some prints purported to present eyewitness accounts of the bestiality of this cast, drawing on the iconography of prodigies, hybrids and monstrosities. The aristocrat was now a cannibal gobbling up the people, as in a print referring to the famous Chimère de monsieur Desprez (c.1777–84): as its caption explains, this print represents a ‘Monster with three heads figuring the three estates of the aristocracy [which] is busy devouring the remains of the corpse of the people which it has pitilessly gobbled down into its carnivorous entrails’.35 The tendency of caricaturists to portray their political opponents as voracious became especially widespread in English representations of the sans-culottes during the Revolutionary period. Under the acid stylus of Gillray, the notorious figure of the sans-culotte takes on a skinny silhouette and, despite his monstrous appetite, 284

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has bony features and is clad in rags. The English in fact treated the French Revolutionary as the supreme symbol of evil and of a humanity in full regression towards a bestial state. In this context, marked by the fear that the sans-culottes inspired in the English, it was the image of a meal that often came to the fore (Plate 5). Meals devoid of any festive spirit revealed the nightmarish image of sansculottes gorging on human organs and limbs while their offspring greedily devoured the entrails of the same corpses. Such violence in the crude exhibition of the dismembered body and its entrails appears to be a particular feature of English caricature. Although this violence reached its zenith during this troubled period,36 it did have precedents in William Hogarth’s famous print ‘The Reward of Cruelty’, the last in the series of etchings entitled Four Stages of Cruelty, in which the open body of an executed criminal dissected in an anatomy lesson literally overflows, spilling its entrails all over the ground, where they are devoured by a dog (see Figure 12.2). The period of the Revolution coincided with especially vehement figurations of horror. Studies of English caricature often emphasise the death drive that seems to pervade this particular corpus of works.37 The representation of cannibalistic orgies clearly played on the opposition between the civilised and the primitive, as well on mythic images of savage barbarians. However, the figure of the cannibal also shed light on anxieties and contributed to bring out in the open some of the most deep-rooted fears about the integrity of the body. Thus Catherine Girard argues that as well as severely condemning the ideology and violence of the Jacobins, Gillray’s cannibals can be seen as the agents of a metamorphosis which transform the body of the Other into an object.38 According to her, the fragmented bodies of those that are consumed ultimately challenge the Enlightenment rationalisation of the body.39 What is certain is that these striking representations of extreme voracity, where human beings are no more than animals, shifted the focus from excessively wide paunches to the body’s jumbled innards in all their starkly anatomical materiality. This visual strategy at once revealed and denounced the implacable logic of Revolutionary and counter-Revolutionary violence: whether the political opponent being depicted was an aristocrat or a Jacobin, he crushed and absorbed the Other. Blurring the differences between what lies inside and outside the body, this device challenges the classical ideal of the body as a smooth, unbreached whole. This fracturing 285

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recalls the grostesque body and brings to mind Bakhtin’s wellknown theory, which is based on an ancient model of the porous and incomplete body: ‘Contrary to modern canons, the grotesque body is not separated from the rest of the world. It is not a closed, completed unit; it is unfinished, outgrows itself, transgresses its own limits.’40 The definition seems particularly apposite in light of prints where patriotic caricaturists suggest different ways of solving the problem of how to make the aristocrats return the goods which have for so long fattened them at the expense of the people. The stomach slimmed Amid the profusion of Revolutionary caricatures, there appeared of a sort of mission to correct and cure the fundamentally deviant body of the partisan of the Ancien Régime. Here, the prints resort to subjects traditionally treated in Dutch, French or Italian genre scenes – such as the extraction of teeth, bleeding or enemas – while redirecting them towards political ends. We see clerics and nobles who are too tall, too fat or even endowed with protruding teeth, in other words displaying precisely those physical defects treated by these famous patriotic doctors whose task consists of suppressing, cutting, purging or extracting such protean bodily excess. The prints particularly emphasise the need to re-educate the fat cleric in order to fit him for the newly egalitarian society envisaged by the Revolution. The ecclesiastic with his stout silhouette and billowing belly is thus obliged by the most radical of means to follow a slimming cure, so that his belly can return to more acceptable proportions. Horrified, the Marquis de Ferrières recounts that, in certain prints, ‘you could see prelates figured in the most grotesque manner, clothed in the apparel befitting their rank, with peasants crushing their monstrous bellies and squeezing out sackfuls of gold coins’.41 In this way, the patriotic caricaturists brought the image of the press as an instrument of punishment back into fashion during the first years of the French Revolution, with the intention of making humorous comments on the nationalisation of church property, which had been voted on 2 November 1789 (Plate 6). We should remember that this machine – the mystical press  – evolved gradually in modern visual culture, from a devotional Christian image into an instrument of popular justice. This motif perfectly exemplifies the way popular themes with political overtones 286

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were redeployed and updated.42 Used since the sixteenth century for political ends, the image of the press had come to symbolise the oppression and the financial burden weighing on the people. It was very popular during the French Revolution and was still being used in the nineteenth century to punish those who abused their power in the political sphere. To return to the question of the confiscation of church property, this followed the suppression of the dîme (tithe) on 11 August and occurred in a context where the religious question was vital: it was in fact intended to remedy the budgetary deficit of the country. The engravers played with this change of statute by showing the ‘patriotic slimmers’ at work in their enterprise of deflating the clergy to their proper level. This theme enjoyed immense success. There are several variants of the composition, with the title and the word play always emphasising the loss of weight, substance or money and the idea of physical constraint applied in order to expel the excess: the cleric is thus ‘compressed’, ‘leeched’ or ‘stripped’.43 Le Dégraisseur patriote (‘The Patriotic Slimmer’; Plate 6) is a perfect illustration of this type of ‘Revolutionary pedagogy’.44 It is composed in such a way that the different stages of the slimming cure become clear as the eye travels across the print: to the left, a member of the National Guard and a member of the Third Estate lead a reluctant-looking paunchy prelate towards a press represented as a simple vertical vice, inside which a priest is in the process of receiving his punishment and is vomiting golden crowns into a coffer. To the right, two gaunt clerics can be seen staggering away. The way the press is represented in this print suggests a radical shift in values. The press is presented as a physiological device which turns fat into gold, in order to provide the viewer with concrete images of both the redistribution of wealth, and the contamination of the body by social issues by equating the obese with the rich, and the rich with counter-Revolutionaries.45 However, the machine  also symbolises the passing of political power from the degenerate body of the formerly privileged orders to the regenerated and collective body of the nation. By taking Christian iconography and using it against the clergy, the caricaturists transformed the mystical press into an instrument for the normalisation and disciplining of the counter-Revolutionary body while attaching positive value to slimness and health, which were in turn co-opted for the  regenerated state. The message could not have been clearer: the people were 287

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now in charge. No longer passive victims, they were now the agents of their own destiny, re-ordering society by punishing those who had once enjoyed privileged positions. The concave and the convex: a contrast rich in meaning This updated image of the press led to a whole set of contrasts between the ancient and the modern, the before and the after, the healthy and the unhealthy, which are effectively condensed in the image of the fat and the thin. The tubby monk is an allusion to the old metaphor of lechery, vanity and abuse. In this perspective his prominent belly incarnates in bodily and physiological form the wealth and privileges garnered at the expense of the people under the Ancien Régime. The skinny cleric who emerges from the press, with a stomach that is no longer gross but sunken, provides an eloquent expression of the new clergy submitted to a diet and stripped of everything that had fattened them so considerably for centuries. The caption of one of these prints showing the two contrasting silhouettes allows the viewer to assess the contrast between times past and the present and drums out the following message: ‘Once I was a good fat monk / Full of food from top to toe / Like the pig of Saint-Anton / Now I’m skinny as a scarecrow.’46 Following the fashion for the physionotrace and the cut-out silhouette, the caricaturists often opted for a profile view and the simple outline in order to underline the opposition between concave and convex, the exaggeratedly rotund and the greatly reduced stomach. This predilection that patriotic printmakers showed for graphic concision recalls the predominance of contours in the artistic theories and practices of the second half of the eighteenth century. In a treatise on painting, Marc-Antoine Laugier claimed that ‘the spirit of the contours’ resides in seeking ‘more expressivity with fewer strokes’.47 This was a central tenet of neoclassical aesthetics. Under the influence of Winckelmann, many painters believed that artistic perfection lay in producing flawless contours. As with Greek statues, ‘the noblest contours bring together or define all the different parts of the most beautiful nature and the “beau ideal”’.48 The artist’s pen should strive for neat contours, giving the body a pure and simple shape. However, as already remarked, caricatures referenced classical art the better to subvert it. This is certainly what Revolutionary works tend to 288

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suggest. However, if the line plays an essential role in most of these prints, it is not so much in order to define beauty as to define ugliness: their shapes are not harmonious but out of proportion. In Revolutionary art, physical normality and beautiful silhouettes were the province of popular heroes. The English caricaturists at the end of the Enlightenment also appreciated the contrast between full and empty forms. This is hardly surprising when one considers that they were the heirs of Hogarth, a painter and engraver who, while celebrated for his satirical verve, was also a theoretician of the line and an advocate of ‘variety’ in art. The figure of the pot-bellied and self-important physician, for example, was a familiar common target for the sharp stylus of a Hogarth or a Thomas Rowlandson. For them, the excessive plumpness of this figure of authority was most frequently associated with cupidity: in other words, they also linked fat with money. However, a bulging body could also refer to another metaphor of the body in order to describe a mode of political governance. In a print by Richard Newton entitled Aristocracy and Democracy,49 the aristocracy is personified in the features of a tall, elegant man with a slim waist and patronising attitude, while democracy is incarnated in a small man whose simplicity matches the rotundity of his belly. The two different body types are associated with two modes of governance at opposite ends of the political spectrum, which themselves find an echo in the contrasts between two different national types in the pictorial language of English prints: the Frenchman (aristocracy) and the Englishman (democracy). From the perspective of English printmakers, the famished features of the Frenchman under the Ancien Régime signalled poverty and economic backwardness.50 In contrast, the average Englishman takes on the form of the famous John Bull, whose rotund contours point to the difference of regime between France and England: the prosperous English political system feeds its citizens well, while the life of the French populace consists of privations. The study of the satirical prints of the Revolutionary period reveals the ambivalence of the image of the stomach. Depending on its pictorial treatment, it can either indicate a healthy body or point to physical corruption. Honoured by the partisans of neoclassicism for its stoic associations, the belly is a sensitive centre, the focus of the reactions of the body, the place where energy and physical and moral strength are concentrated. At the opposite extreme, 289

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the caricaturists exploit it for political ends: they exaggerate its fatness to make it the centre of the ease and excess which denote the image of the profiteer. Beyond the burlesque and carnivalesque heritage, the representation of an excessively rotund abdomen or its obscure physiological mechanisms was eye-catching. This was part of a visual strategy which displayed an obvious concern with efficiency and legibility, which were both key to the comprehension and diffusion of prints. Patriotic authors, who often resorted to the metaphor of the body in order to comment on current events, found the stomach to be an especially productive image – to the point at which it can be said to constitute an integral part of the ‘body narrative’ of the history of the Revolution.51 Caricaturists used the contours of the stomach to evoke contemporary political tensions and tell the story of the shifting seats of power and wealth. At the same time, the stomach embodied collective fears (conspiracy theories, the fear of degeneracy or invasion, etc.) according to codes of representation which, although traditional, were partly renewed by the assimilation and exploitation of theories derived from medical knowledge and from the new pedagogical approaches to the body. Notes 1 A. de Baecque, art. ‘Body’, in M. Delon (ed.), Encylopedia of the  Enlightenment (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 184. 2 See for example G. Vigarello, Les Métamorphoses du gras: histoire de l’obésité (Paris: Seuil, 2010); F. Quellier, Gourmandise: histoire d’un péché capital (Paris: Armand Colin, 2010); K. Karila-Cohen and F. Quellier (eds), Le Corps du gourmand: d’Héraclès à Alexandre le Bienheureux (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012). 3 Vigarello, Les Métamorphoses du gras, p. 10. 4 G. L. Leclerc Buffon, Histoire naturelle générale et particulière (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1749), p. 518. 5 See G. Vigarello, Le Corps redressé: histoire d’un pouvoir pédagogique (Paris: Armand Colin, 2004). 6 A. de Baecque, Histoire culturelle de la France, Lumières et liberté (Paris: Seuil, 1998), vol. 3, p. 152 and passim. 7 Vigarello, Le Corps redressé, p. 28. 8 T. de Bordeu, Recherches sur les maladies chroniques (Paris: Ruault, 1775), p. 12.

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9 See, for example, La Mort de Caton d’Utique (‘The Death of Cato of Utica’) by G. G. Lethière (1795), oil on canvas, St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum. 10 Vigarello, Les Métamorphoses du gras. 11 Ibid., p. 136 and passim. 12 Ibid. 13 S. Tissot, Traité des nerfs et de leurs maladies (Paris: P. F. Didot le Jeune, 1778), vol. 1, part 2, p. 335. 14 L. Baridon and M. Guédron, L’Art et l’histoire de la caricature (Paris: Citadelles & Mazenod, 2006), pp. 107–8. See also G. Vigarello, La Silhouette du VXIII siècle à nos jours: naissance d’un défi (Paris: Seuil, 2012). 15 On the representation of thinness and obesity, see N. Laneyrie-Dagen, L’Invention du corps: la représentation de l’homme du Moyen Âge à la fin du XIXe siècle (Paris: Flammarion, 2006), pp. 171–80. 16 M. Melot, L’Oeil qui rit: le pouvoir comique des images (Fribourg and Paris: Office du Livre and Bibliothèque des Arts, 1975), p. 25. 17 W. Hofmann, La Caricature de Vinci à Picasso (Paris: Somogy, 1958), p. 14. 18 Baridon and Guédron, L’Art et l’histoire de la caricature, p. 23. 19 O. Christin, ‘La Foi comme chope de bière: Luther, les moines, les jeûnes’, in J. Csergo (ed.), Trop gros? L’obésité et ses représentations (Paris: Autrement, 2009), pp. 48–61. 20 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 26. 21 Ibid., p. 418. 22 A. Richardot, Le Rire des Lumières (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002). 23 A. de Baecque, Les Éclats de rire: la culture des rieurs au 18e siècle (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2000). 24 Anonymous, Mirabeau chef d’une Légion de l’Armée noire et jaune en grand uniforme, 1791, aquatint, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (De Vinck 1964). 25 A. de Baecque, Le corps de l’histoire: métaphores et politique (1770–1800) (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1993). 26 B. V. A. Noilliac, Le plus fort des pamphlets. L’Ordre des Paysans aux États généraux ([Paris]: s.n., 1789), pp. 15–16.  27 A. Duprat, ‘Du roi-père au roi-cochon’, in R. Borderon (ed.), Le Jugement dernier des rois, proceedings of a conference held in SaintDenis, 2–4 February 1989 (La Garenne-Colombes: Édition de l’Espace Européen, 1992), pp. 81–90. 28 C. A. Vandermonde, Essai sur la manière de perfectionner l’espèce humaine (Paris: chez Vincent, 1756), vol. 2, pp. 157–8.

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29 J.-B. Moheau, Recherches et considérations sur la population de la France (Paris: chez Moutard, 1778), book 2, p. 31. 30 A. Félibien, Entretiens sur les vies et sur les ouvrages des plus excellents peintres anciens et modernes (London: David Mortier, 1705), vol. 4, p. 281 (tenth entretien). 31 L. G. de la Reynière, Manuel des Amphitrions (Paris: Capelle et Renand, 1808), pp. 10–11. 32 Jean Duffay, Le Tailleur patriote, ou les Habits de Jean-foutres ([Paris]: s.n., 1790), vol. 2, pp. 1–2. 33 J. P. Marat, L’Ami du peuple, 25 (5 October 1789), 216. 34 J.-P. Gallais, Extrait d’un dictionnaire inutile … (Paris: s.n., 1790), p. 15. 35 Chimère de monsieur Desprez, c.1777–84, coloured etching, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (De Vinck 3656). All the engravings cited in the body of this chapter and in the notes are consultable online. 36 On this subject, see P. Dupuy, ‘Promis’d horrors: la mort dans la caricature contre-révolutionnaire anglaise (1789–1799)’, Sociétés et représentations, 10:2 (October 2000), 117–33. 37 M. Jouve, L’Âge d’or de la caricature anglaise (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1983); Dupuy, ‘Promis’d horrors’, 117–33. 38 C. Girard, ‘Dedans le ventre des Anglais, figures de mangeurs et abject chez James Gillray’, in S. Le Men (ed.), L’Art de la caricature (Nanterre: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2011), pp. 173–89. 39 Ibid., p. 189. 40 Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, p. 26. 41 C. E. de Ferrières, Mémoires du marquis de Ferrières (Paris: Baudouin, 1882), vol. 2, pp. 211–12 (book VIII). 42 R. Reichardt, ‘The Heroic Deeds of the New Hercules: The Politicisation of Popular Prints in the French Revolution’, in I. Germani and R. Swales (eds), Symbols, Myths and Images of the French Revolution: Essays in Honour of James A. Leith (Regina: Canadian Plains Research Center, 1998), pp. 17–46; on the theme of the press, see pp. 22–8. 43 Among these are the following etchings, all preserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Le Pressoir (Hennin 10653), L’Abbé pressuré. Ce trop grand en bon-point ne peut qu’incommoder; il faut messieurs, il faut vous en débarasser (De Vinck 3056), Le Dégraisseur Patriote. Patience Monsieur votre tour viendra. Le Pressoir. Il ni a plus de remede (Plate 6: De Vinck 3055). 44 M. Vovelle, Histoires figurales: des monstres médiévaux à Wonderwoman (Paris: Usher, 1989), p. 126. 45 Antoine de Baecque, ‘Image du corps et message politique: la figure du contre-révolutionnaire dans la caricature française’, in Michel Vovelle

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46

47 48 49 50 51

(ed.), Les Images de la Révolution française (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1988), p. 182. ‘Jadis je fus un bon gros moine plein d’alimens jusques au cou. Comme le porc de Saint Antoine mais je suis aujourd’hui maigre comme un coucou’, Author unknown, Aquatint, c.1790, Bibliothèque Nationale de France (De Vinck 3060). M.-A. Laugier, Manière de bien juger des ouvrages de peinture (Paris: Claude-Antoine Jombert fils aîné, 1771), p. 140. J. J. Winckelmann, Réflexions sur l’imitation des œuvres grecques en peinture et en sculpture (Paris: Jacqueline Chambon, 1991), p. 29. Richard Newton, Aristocracy and Democracy, 1794, aquatint, British Museum. P. Dupuy, ‘L’Image du Français dans les gravures satiriques anglaises avant et après la Révolution française: rupture ou continuité?’, La Licorne, 30 (November 1994), 39–53. De Baecque, Le Corps de l’histoire, p. 18.

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14  visceral visions: art, pedagogy and politics in revolutionary france Dorothy Johnson

In late eighteenth-century France, at the seeming height of neoclassicism in the arts with its goal of idealised form al’antica in the depiction of the human figure, an intensified fascination with the visual experience of viscera emerged. Visualisations of viscera and the innards of the human body in general abound in the visual culture of this period, including prints (anatomical as well as political), wax models of human figures with organs exposed, écorché figures, either sculpted or cast from cadavers, and paintings engaging the subject of death and disembowelment. We also see the actual participation in dissection by artists as well as anatomists. Artists, anatomists and amateurs (sometimes working in concert) produced compelling images of what lies beneath the skin for a variety of purposes and functions. The visual culture of viscera during this period and its correspondence with prevailing aesthetic as well as medical ideas and ideals constitute a vast arena for study. In her seminal inter-disciplinary study, Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine, Barbara Stafford addressed multiple pan-European developments in the Enlightenment’s project to visualise knowledge and proposed that we understand the eighteenth-century emphasis on anatomy and dissection in metaphorical terms related to the practice of etching, excavation and other developments that refer to the digging for knowledge. She poses a principal question germane to the present study: ‘What is the connection between visible surface and invisible depth?’1 I take this question as one starting point in 294

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my examination of the impetus in Enlightenment France to visualise the interior of the body and to question the relationship of surface to depth (exterior appearance and the covering of the skin to the bowels beneath) as evinced in art and aesthetics as well as in the realms of political, social and biological thought. In particular, I propose to examine a few salient examples that reveal the new importance of depictions of the interior of the body and especially its presence in and significance for Revolutionary France. One of the questions I address is the extent to which idealised form and corruptible flesh are conjoined and become prominent in the visual culture of the period and the possible impact of political ideas and ideals on the production of this imagery. The intensification of the visual experience of viscera during the last decade of the eighteenth century in France reveals, I believe, innovative attitudes about the body that began to emerge after the mid-eighteenth century but that appear to have erupted suddenly in the 1790s because of a number of factors, including the suppression of Catholic funerary ritual (1793) in which the body had been occluded, the concomitant cemetery movement and the public spectacles of violent death and dismemberment, especially through the protracted use of the guillotine as well as sanguinary events such as the September massacres.2 At the same time we see the quest on the part of the vitalists, who were centred in Montpellier, to uncover the secrets of the science de l’homme (including human identity) within the bowels and brains of the body. Their investigations into the boundaries of life and death led to an intensified focus on the practice of dissection.3 It is not coincidental that this period of cultural, political and medical transformation would lead to a reconceptualisation of the body itself which was compelled to cede its mysteries as a result of a literal and metaphorical carving out, a disembowelment and dismemberment, that was no longer proscribed or confined to medical practice but instead was on public view. Let us consider first a remarkable coloured etching from 1790 that represents a chimera with the ‘three heads of the aristocracy’ in the final stages of ingesting the ‘people’ which we see in its entrails revealed through the skeletal ribs of the monster (Plate 7).4 As is well known, artists who created Revolutionary prints forged a new allegorical and metaphorical language that expressed prevailing ideas and concerns of the period. The prints were often didactic and were 295

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meant to convey via this popular and widely disseminated artform critiques of the Ancien Régime as well as emerging ideas about the new forms of government. The print from 1790 reveals a new and compelling visceral vision of the aristocracy in a cannibalistic act of devouring the people that the caption beneath the print describes in the following terms: ‘A monster with three heads designating the three states of the aristocracy is busy devouring the remains of the cadaver of the people that it has mercilessly swallowed in its carnivorous bowels’ (Plate 7). The caption also describes the figure of Fanaticism, with a bifurcated snake’s tail and wearing monk’s robes, that crawls before the monster carrying on its back Hypocrisy, dressed as a nun and holding a snake that secretes aristocratic poison. The image of the aristocracy as hydra was popular in the genre of Revolutionary prints, but seeing through the skin and bones was not.5 We note that the ‘cadaver of the people’ has been devoured whole and lies within the bowels of the skeletal monster. This is an important element in the allegory: the aristocracy can never eat enough of the people to put flesh on its bones. The image is based on Jean-Louis Desprez’s etching of 1777–84 of a monster with three heads which depicts the sublime and terrifying vision of a chimera devouring a victim, with the fragmented bodies of prior victims at its feet.6 The metaphor of cannibalism, of one group of society devouring or consuming another, would be used by anti-Revolutionaries as well as Revolutionaries during this period. In 1792 the British satirist and printmaker James Gillray, known for his acerbic antiRevolutionary images, published Un petit Souper, à la Parisienne; – or – a Family of Sans-culotts refreshing after the fatigues of the day (Plate 5). In his coloured etching Gillray depicts a barbaric family of sans-culottes dining on the bodies of murdered members of the aristocracy which they have hacked to pieces. Children are feasting on a bucket of entrails to the left, a crone is roasting the disembowelled body of a baby, and at the main table the sans-culottes are dining on severed heads, limbs and organs. The bloody remains of the bodies of the aristocrats serve conveniently as chairs on which the sans-culottes are seated. Such images remind us of the fascination with depictions of cannibalism in general around 1800, as seen in such canonical Romantic paintings as Goya’s Cannibals Devouring their Victims (1806), his Saturn Devouring his Son (c.1820) and Géricault’s preparatory oil sketch Cannibalism on the Raft of the 296

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Medusa (1818), an episode he contemplated as a possible subject as he worked on his project for the monumental history painting The Raft of the Medusa (1819).7 It is not surprising that the imagery and metaphor of cannibalism emerged during the French Revolutionary period in a major way, since extreme violence and bloodshed constituted a widespread visual experience of the time, as we know from many written and visual sources. Before the Revolution, executions realised via hanging or decapitation by sword attracted crowds. The most infamous case of the eighteenth century was the horrific public torture and dismemberment of Robert François Damiens, who had attempted to assassinate Louis XV, an incident that Michel Foucault analyses in his ground-breaking study, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.8 The guillotine, however, with its mechanical efficacy in severing the head from the body, allowed for what we might describe as the industrialisation of public execution, for it gave spectators the opportunity to observe bloody dismembered bodies on an unprecedented scale. As Daniel Arasse states in his magisterial study The Guillotine and the Terror: The guillotine was perceived from the first as barbaric, for it brought together two virtually incompatible characteristics: a cold technical precision, and the savagery of physical mutilation. The use of the sword or the axe rendered the headman’s attentions personal, and unforeseen consequences could and did arise. The guillotine, by contrast, made simple use of the basic laws of mechanics … The guillotine effected the most abstract of executions through brutal butchery and hence is the subject of an extreme tension between its rational technology and blood-letting purpose.9

The guillotine, invented to assure a more ‘humane’ form of execution, was a subject of heated debate in the 1790s. The horrific spectacle of dismemberment led anatomists such as the German physician Samuel Sömmering and the French vitalist Jean-Joseph Sue to vehemently protest against the guillotine as a form of double torture causing the victim to suffer in the detached head and body at once.10 This was based on accounts and observations of the twitching of the body and head for seconds after decapitation and stories of heads that purportedly continued to speak after being severed from the body. A famous example was the story of the decapitation of Charlotte Corday. Some claimed that when the 297

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executioner slapped her decapitated head while holding it up to the crowd (which scandalised and shocked many) her face blushed.11 The vitalist physician P. J. G. Cabanis wrote an eloquent pamphlet opposing the guillotine for different reasons. He did not believe as did Sömmering and Sue that the mutilated body suffered for a few seconds after decapitation, but he did believe that protracted exposure to the observation of this type of violent mutilation would lead the crowds of citizen observers to become inured to the sight of violent and bloody death, which would inspire further bloodlust.12 Part of the anxiety and horror of the suffering caused by the guillotine was the madness that such spectacles might lead to. Prints of the period such as Les formes acerbes (Figure 14.1), which commemorates the execution of Joseph Le Bon on 15 October 1795, reveal the extremes of madness, bloodlust and cannibalism associated with the Terror.13 In the print we see on the left a group

Figure 14.1 Les formes acerbes. Etching attributed to a drawing of Lafitte after Poirier de Dunkerque, 1795

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of prisoners looking up expectantly to an allegorical vision in the sky of Justice unveiling Truth to the National Convention. The allegorical figures float on clouds that seem to descend on two guillotines. Between them stands the maddened Joseph Le Bon, disciple of Robespierre and agent of the Terror in Arras and Cambrai, who is described in the caption in the following terms: Joseph Le Bon, positioned between the two guillotines of Arras and Cambray, holds two chalices. In one he receives and in the other drinks the blood of numerous victims, above 500, immolated in the two communities. He stands on groups of cadavers that are piled on one another. On one side two furies, worthy companions of this cannibal, incite the animals that are less ferocious than they are to devour the remains of the unfortunates that they can no longer torment.

In the foreground of the composition flows a river filled with body parts and skulls to emphasise even further the butchery of the guillotine. One of the most startling and mordant texts of this period was written by the philosophe and Encyclopédiste Abbé André Morellet. Entitled Nouveau moyen de subsistence pour la nation, proposé au Comité de salut public en messidor de l’an II, this Swiftian text brings together in a compelling way ideas of the guillotine and of cannibalism: I propose to those patriots who butcher their fellow men that they should eat the flesh of their victims, and, given the state of famine to which they have reduced the nation, should feed those that they allow to live on the flesh of those that they kill. I would even propose that a national butchery be established in accordance with the designs of the great artist and patriot David, and that a law be passed to oblige all citizens to buy supplies there at least once a week, under pain of being imprisoned, deported or having their throats cut as suspects, and [I]  demand that at every patriotic festival there should be a course of this kind, which would be the true communion of patriots, the Eucharist of the Jacobins.14

Daniel Arasse has written brilliantly of the conflation of religious ideas with guillotine imagery and cites the considerable number of prints of the period in which guillotined heads are held up to the view of the crowds as a type of religious presentation of what he terms the ‘guillotine portrait’.15 Panoramic views that show execution by guillotine before crowds of citizens pervade the visual 299

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culture of this period, most famously prints of the beheading of Louis XVI, in which the decapitation serves as a metaphor for the body politic ushering in the new citizen regime. And then there are the well-known prints of guillotine-portraits such as Villeneuve’s Matière à reflection pour les jongleurs couronnés, a famous depiction of the guillotined head of the king, dripping with blood, held up by an anonymous hand and accompanied by an admonition in the caption that serves as a warning to all tyrants.16 It is important to keep in mind that in some of the contemporaneous accounts of the execution of the king, citizens were reported to have dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood to keep as mementos or relics, and one citizen is described as thrusting his arm into the king’s blood and flinging clots at the crowd.17 It should not be surprising that during this period when spectacles of violence, spilled blood and the body in fragments were widespread, dissection was introduced as part of the newly construed curriculum at the Classe de la Littérature et des Beaux Arts in Paris (after the abolition of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1793) and it was found to be acceptable.18 Dissection had been proscribed in the eighteenth-century curriculum at the Académie, which demanded study from nature and the antique, emphasising the external appearance of nature as the foundation of mimesis, the essential goal of academic art. Although Diderot strongly supported the study of anatomy via dissection for surgeons, he just as fervently opposed it for artists. In his Pensées détachées sur la peinture he had famously written: ‘The profound study of anatomy has ruined more artists than it has perfected. In painting, as in morality, it is dangerous to see beneath the skin.’19 He had elaborated on this idea in his 1766 Essais sur la peinture: Study of the écorché doubtless has its advantages; but is it not to be feared that this écorché might remain in the imagination forever; that this knowledge might encourage the artist to become enamoured of his knowledge and show it off; that his vision might be corrupted, precluding attentive scrutiny of surfaces; that despite the presence of skin and fat, he might come to perceive nothing but muscles, their beginnings, attachments, and insertions; … and that I might encounter this accursed écorché even in his figures of women?20

The Académie concurred with this perspective and would not condone competitions for osteology and myology when they had 300

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been proposed for inclusion in the curriculum. Artists, of course, could attend dissections independently, for example, at charity hospitals and could learn about the inner structures of the body from illustrations in anatomy books.21 Before the mid-eighteenth century monochromatic illustrations prevailed from Vesalius’s fundamental 1543 The Fabric of the Human Body to Albinus’s 1749 Tables of the Skeleton and Muscles of the Human Body. During the second half of the eighteenth century, however, the genre of anatomical illustration would change dramatically thanks to the introduction of colour, which led to an enhanced visualisation of the organs and innards of the body. The extraordinary plates of Jacques-Fabien Gautier d’Agoty, for example, combined anatomy with art in remarkable ways. In a series of large-scale illustrated anatomy books produced from 1746 to 1781 he introduced the technique of coloured plates that he had learned from his teacher, Jacques-Christophe Le Blon.22 Gautier d’Agoty worked with surgeons and also claimed to have participated in dissections himself, thereby asserting the accuracy of his illustrations (which would later, of course, be vigorously refuted). He sought through the use of colour to produce more vivid, naturalistic images of the interior of the body, which often have a disturbing psychological impact owing to his introduction of narrative elements. His large-scale coloured plates for his 1754 Anatomie générale des viscères present portrait-like standing figures with bowels vividly exposed.23 In the plate for ‘Anatomie de la femme’ a young nude woman looks coyly, almost seductively, at the viewer; the right breast, which is not anatomised, contrasts jarringly with the left, which is flayed, as is the remainder of the body from the stomach to the feet. One of the plates in his 1759 Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps depicts a partially flayed pregnant young woman, gracefully raising her left arm above her head to better display her viscera, uterus and anatomised left breast (Plate 8). These two-dimensional images with their pedagogical intent reveal a new taste of the period for depictions of the dissected body and artistic renderings that show the inside and outside simultaneously, with often macabre effects.24 We see something quite similar in the three-dimensional format of the late eighteenth-century coloured wax anatomical models displayed in Fontana’s La Specola museum in Florence, which was a destination place for artists.25 Madame Vigée-Lebrun wrote 301

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in her Souvenirs about her visit to Fontana’s museum in 1789 to view  one  of the most eloquent examples of the wax anatomical model of the female body, the stunning life-size wax Venus created by Clemente Susini. Her viewing of the viscera of this figure made her recoil in horror. She recounts in detail the impact of the experience: Until that point I had not seen anything that would make me experience a painful sensation. But when I noticed a reclining woman of natural size that gave the illusion of being real, Fontana asked me to approach this figure. Then, lifting off a type of cover, he offered to my view all of the intestines, coiled just like ours. This sight made such an impression on me that I felt close to being sick. For several days it was impossible for me to get it out of my mind, to the point where I could not see a person without mentally stripping them of clothing and skin, which put me in a deplorable nervous state.26

It is clear from her response that Vigée-Lebrun had not observed actual dissections as had many of her fellow male artists such as Houdon, David and others.27 It was only during the 1790s that Sue would open his dissection classes to women artists, an issue which led to heated debates. The artist and critic C. P. Landon, for example, was ardently opposed to the idea. He wrote in 1799: ‘Finally, I repeat, there is nothing more revolting, nothing more capable of blunting this sweet sensibility that forms women’s most precious charm, than the habit of coldly contemplating a horribly mutilated cadaver, which offers the fetid and bloody image of destruction in all its parts.’28 We will return shortly to Sue’s pedagogical innovations. Replicas of Italian wax models like those Vigée-Lebrun saw in Florence could also be found in France during this period and we know that wax anatomical models of body parts were being sent from Florence to the pedagogical committee of the Classe de la Littérature et des Beaux Arts in Paris as late as 1800.29 Anatomised wax figures that often depict idealised, beautiful youths, male and female, replete with detailed viscera, were created in France during the same period by André-Pierre Pinson, a great specialist in this domain.30 One of Pinson’s most well-known figures today is a wax model of a beautiful young woman with her intestines exposed. The models for life-size anatomised waxes were either cast from the actual viscera of cadavers, both male and female, 302

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or actually made of the viscera using a process of preservation that involved wax injection. The anatomical plates as well as the three-dimensional wax models remind us of the high esteem for the domain of anatomy and medicine in eighteenth-century France, the taste for picturesque anatomy with its often macabre narratives, and the fashion for cabinets d’anatomie, places frequented by artists as well as amateurs. French artists of the second half of the eighteenth century, concerned with naturalism in their representations of the human form, took a great interest in the study of anatomy in spite of the reservations of the Académie Royale, who wanted to limit this type of knowledge, as we have seen. The écorché, valued since the Renaissance as a basic pedagogical tool for artists and known in two-dimensional as well as three-dimensional formats (through cadaver casts as well as in sculpted versions), was revitalised in France in the eighteenth century by the sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. His 1767 life-size sculpted Ecorché, made in Rome to serve as a model for his marble figure of St John the Baptist, became famous. It was considered so anatomically correct (Houdon worked with an anatomist in Rome) that it was adopted for teaching by the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture as well as by art academies throughout Europe.31 Houdon was able to combine the flayed figure, the vision of muscles and tendons, with idealised form in the exterior contour. As mentioned above, Houdon and other artists, including JacquesLouis David, attended dissections, usually at charity hospitals. It was only after the abolition of the Académie Royale in 1793 and the ensuing artistic reforms at the Classe de la Littérature et des Beaux Arts at the Institut de France that the study of anatomy via dissection was literally brought into the pedagogical setting. In 1795 the anatomist Jean-Joseph Sue fils created the first anatomy theatre at the Classe des Arts in the Louvre: as mentioned earlier, the dissection of cadavers, the main feature of Sue’s lessons, became central to the art curriculum for the first time.32 Thanks to Sue’s emphasis on dissection, art students became captivated with the investigation itself and were caught up in the current excitement over new discoveries in physiology and the questions about what constitutes life and what happens at the moment of death (this was the subject of the vitalist Bichat’s famous investigations into the physiology of dying, Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort of 1801).33 303

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Sue actually received permission to have cadavers brought into the art school for student artists to dissect, an extraordinary moment which gave rise to many complaints from the art professors concerning odours and hygiene. He installed a coloured  version of Houdon’s Ecorché in the anatomy theatre as a reminder to students that the goal of learning anatomy through dissection was to achieve beauty of form in works of art. In his writings as in his practice, Sue supported dissection as the only means to penetrate the secrets of the human body. In his Élémens d’anatomie à l’usage des peintres, des sculpteurs et des amateurs of 1788, he explained why art students had to actually perform dissections themselves and dig deep into the cadavers to feel the bowels and the bones: ‘You need to have inserted the scalpel into the labyrinth of this admirable machine, taken a tour, visited, questioned all the pathways … and confirmed them by the sense of touch.’34 Sue’s propaedeutic and practice of dissection influenced the important sculptural theorist and archaeologist Toussaint-Bernard Émeric-David, who wrote a handbook for students of sculpture, Recherches sur l’art statuaire, in 1805.35 This manual was immediately used by aspiring sculptors in France. Émeric-David tells sculpture students that in order to truly rival the beau réel of Greek sculpted figures, they must dissect directly from cadavers themselves. For he believed that the Greeks could have attained their remarkable knowledge of the human form, evinced in their sculptures, only by means of the study of anatomy through dissection. Echoing Sue’s principles, Émeric-David recommended that students perform dissections with their own hands and delve deep into the bowels until they reached the skeleton. After learning from dissection, however, they must correct this visceral vision with the study of the greatest examples of antique sculpture as well as the live model: The sculptor does not sufficiently learn anatomy from books; you must dissect with your own hands. Take into your atelier the masterpiece of the divine workman that has become prey to death. Arm your probing hand with a knife. Tear open the veil that covers the interior mechanism. Study the form of the muscles, their position, their intersections and particularly their attachments. Lift off the top muscles, raising them up by the two extremities. Study the shape of those placed below. Lift those up. Keep going, keep going until you reach the skeleton. Sculptors, there is your figure!36

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Émeric-David’s ideas concerning the anatomical verisimilitude of ancient sculptures were also directly inspired by the investigations of Jean-Galbert Salvage, who sought to demonstrate ‘scientifically’ that ancient sculptors achieved ideal beauty through study of anatomy by means of dissection. Emeric-David had studied anatomy with Salvage, a military doctor from the famous vitalist school of Montpellier who worked at the hospital of the Val de Grâce in Paris. In order to prove that the Greeks knew anatomy intimately, Salvage had an écorché made of the famous Gladiateur combattant, the Borghese Gladiator, a work that expressed beauty of form in dynamic movement.37 He created this from a plaster cast of the work that he was able to obtain. He also placed cadavers of dead soldiers in the position of the Gladiateur, made wax and plaster casts of their viscera and body parts, and then had large-scale colour plates made illustrating the skeletal and myological systems. The anatomised antique sculpture retains the boundaries of its idealised form but reveals the inner materials of the body that support this beauty. One might characterise the 1790s in France as a period of intensified visceral meditations. We find this in the domain of painting as well as in the broader realm of visual culture. Cadaver imagery in particular came to the fore in France in the 1790s. One thinks of David’s carefully staged funerals of the Revolutionary martyrs Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau and Marat in 1793 and 1794 respectively, with their bodies exposed to public view so they could be venerated for their patriotic sacrifices after being stabbed to death.38 And his icons of these martyrs at the moment of death emphasise the corporal presence of the individual at the moment of transformation into a cadaver. The portrayal of Marat at his last breath, reclining in the bathtub into which his blood has been seeping, is particularly forceful. I conclude with a startling example from the realm of history painting that reveals the extent to which the newly formulated art curriculum with its emphasis on student participation in dissection inspired depictions of disembowelment: Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s La Mort de Caton d’Utique (‘The Death of Cato of Utica’) of 1797 (Plate 10). The most important competition for aspiring history painters at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture had been that for the Prix de Rome, which included a multi-year fellowship at the Académie de France in Rome where students could perfect their art from the study of Greek and Roman as well as 305

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Renaissance and Baroque exemplars.39 After being admitted to the ranks of finalists, the painting students would be given an assigned subject, typically from an antique or biblical source, and then be sequestered for several weeks as they created their paintings. The most accomplished, expressive and successful interpretation of the subject would receive the prize. In 1797 three students were awarded the coveted first prize since none had been given since 1793, when the Académie Royale was abolished and the Prix de Rome competition suppressed. In 1797 the jury assigned a subject based on suicide by self evisceration: the death of Cato of Utica, a magistrate and citizen hero of Rome known for his moral integrity as recounted in Plutarch’s Lives.40 After the collapse of the Roman Triumvirate Cato sided with Pompey against the tyrannical and corrupt Caesar. When Caesar emerged victorious after a series of bloody battles, Cato decided to commit suicide rather than die by the hand of the hated dictator. The political implications of the subject were important in 1797. But the bloody suicide by disembowelment was what the jury stressed in its assignment: ‘The subject is the death of Cato of Utica. It is taken from Plutarch’s lives of illustrious men. The moment chosen is in the following passage: As soon as Cato regained consciousness and began to realise where he was, he pushed away his doctors and with his own hands he reopened the wound and ripped out his bowels with the result that he died within the hour.’41 The students were expected to be familiar with the preceding moments when Cato plunged a sword into his abdomen but failed at this first suicide attempt: His servants heard the noise and cried out, and his son at once ran in, together with his friends. They saw that he was smeared with blood, and that most of his bowels were protruding, but that he still had his eyes open and was alive; and they were terribly shocked. But the physician went to him and tried to replace his bowels, which remained uninjured, and to sew up the wound.42

I believe the students were well equipped to depict this bloody, painful and horrific episode of a double disembowelment because of the introduction into the art curriculum of actual dissection, the prestige of anatomy and dissection and its preponderance in visual culture of the period and the exposure to pain, suffering and death that had resulted from the Revolution. 306

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Guérin, Bouillon and Bouchet were the three first prize winners (Guérin would become a famous history painter soon thereafter).43 All three depict the bloody sword on the floor before a bed in which  Cato semi-reclines in a dramatic pose, surrounded by his wildly gesticulating grief-stricken son, friends and concerned doctor, whom he is pushing away. He is gripping his bloody abdomen with great force, just at the moment of the second disembowelment when he will pull out his own intestines to ensure the success of his suicide attempt. Guérin depicted a powerful and muscular Cato who repels the doctor, overcoming what must have been a weak physiological state to ensure that no medical help will be forthcoming. Guérin’s composition was filled with the most blood and gore of the three: blood spatters cover the ground and an enormous sword lies in this blood. The viscera emerge from the opened abdominal cavity. These images of violent death and suffering prefigure the bloody battle paintings filled with the dead and dying of the Napoleonic period and herald the fascination with dismembered bodies that characterise, for example, representations of severed heads and limbs by Géricault, offspring of his project for The Raft of the Medusa (1819). It is important to note that French artists of the early nineteenth century continued to study anatomy via dissection and remained fascinated with viewing viscera. In this they joined the quest of vitalists and medical research to discover the essence of human identity and the boundaries of life and death within the brains and bowels of the body. Notes 1 B. Stafford, Body Criticism: Imagining the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 1991), p. 1. 2 J. Clarke, Commemorating the Dead in Revolutionary France: Revolution and Remembrance, 1789–1799 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007); J. McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1981); D. Arasse, The Guillotine and the Terror, trans. C. Miller (London: Allen Lane, Penquin Press, 1989). 3 E. Williams, A Cultural History of Medical Vitalism in Enlightenment Montpellier (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003); E. Williams, The Physical and the Moral: Anthropology, Physiology and Philosophical

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4

5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Medicine  in France, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). R. Reichardt and H. Kohle, Visualizing the Revolution: Politics and the Pictorial Arts in Eighteenth-Century France (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), pp. 52–4; S. Harent and M. Guédron, Beautés monstres (Nancy: Somagy, 2009), pp. 182–4. Harent and Guédron, Beautés monstres, pp. 182–4; J. Cuno, La Caricature française et la Révolution, 1789–1799 (Los Angeles: Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, 1988), p. 161. Harent and Guédron, Beautés monstres, p. 183. Cannibalism is a vast subject that pervades Enlightenment and Romantic visual, historical and literary culture. See F. Lestringant, The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne, trans. R. Morris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). See more recently, D. Cottom, Cannibals and Philosophers: Bodies of Enlightenment (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001). M. Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), pp. 3–5. Arasse, The Guillotine, p. 2. Samuel Sömmering, ‘Sur le supplice de la guillotine’, Le Magasin encyclopédique (1er Thermidor, an II), 468–77; and Jean-Joseph Sue, ‘Opinion de J.-J. Sue sur la douleur qui survit à la décollation’, Le Magasin encyclopédique, 4 (1795), 178–89. Discussed by Y. Beaubatie, ‘Les paradoxes de l’échafaud’, in P. J. G. Cabanis, Note sur le supplice de la guillotine (Périgueux: Éditions Fanlac, 2002), pp. 59–70. See also Arasse, The Guillotine, pp. 35–47. Arasse, The Guillotine, p. 37. Cabanis, Note sur le supplice. See V. Rousseau-Lagarde and D. Arasse, La Guillotine dans la Révolution (Vizille and Florence: Musée de la Révolution Française et l’Institut Français de Florence, 1987), fig. 173, p. 144. Quoted in Arasse, The Guillotine, p. 162, n. 61. Ibid., pp. 134–43. Rousseau-Lagarde and Arasse, La Guillotine dans la Révolution, p. 51, fig. 46. Arasse, The Guillotine, p. 63. M. Guédron, ‘L’enseignement de l’anatomie artistique en France et la question de la dissection (XVIIIe–XIXe siècles)’, Les Cahiers d’histoire de l’art, 2 (2004), 33–40; P. Comar, ‘Une leçon d’anatomie à l’École des Beaux-arts’, in P. Comar (ed.), Figures du corps: une leçon d’anatomie à l’École des Beaux-Arts (Paris: Beaux-Arts de Paris, 2008), pp. 19–39, and D. Johnson, ‘Anatomie, réalité, idéalité dans l’art français autour de

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19 20 21

22 23 24

25 26

27 28 29

30 31 32 33

1800’, in M. Guédron and I. Laboulais (eds), Écrire les sciences, special issue of Études sur le 18e siècle, 42 (2015), 177–92. D. Diderot, ‘Pensées détachées sur la peinture’, in Oeuvres esthétiques (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1968), p. 815. D. Diderot, Diderot on Art – I, The Salon of 1765 and Notes on Painting, trans. J. Goodman (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 193. J. Locquin, La Peinture d’histoire en France de 1747 à 1785 (Paris: H. Laurens), pp. 82–6. This is discussed by D. Johnson, David to Delacroix: The Rise of Romantic Mythology (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), p. 92. See Comar (ed.), Figures du corps, pp. 186–91. J.-F. Gautier d’Agoty, Anatomie générales des viscères … (Paris: Delaguette, 1754). See Stafford, Body Criticism, pp. 76–9; Comar (ed.), Figures du corps, pp. 186–91, and D. Johnson, ‘The Body Speaks: Anatomical Narratives in French Enlightenment Sculpture’, in S. Caviglia (ed.), Body Narratives: Motion and Emotion in the French Enlightenment(Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2017), pp. 48–50. M. V. Düring, Encyclopaedia anatomica, Museo La Specola, Florence (Cologne: Taschen, 1999), pp. 102–15. L. E. Vigée-Lebrun, Souvenirs (Paris: Édition des Femmes, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 237–8, quoted in Morwena Joly, La Leçon d’anatomie: le corps des artistes de la Renaissance au Romantisme (Paris: Hazan, 2008), p. 37. D. Johnson, ‘Anatomie’, pp. 180–1. M. A. Oppenheimer, ‘“The Charming Spectacle of a Cadaver”: Anatomical and Life Study by Women Artists in Paris, 1775–1815’, 19th-Century Art Worldwide, 6:1 (Spring 2007), 7–8, 17, n. 60. M. Bonnaire, Procès-verbaux de l’Académie des Beaux-Arts (Paris: Armand Colin, 1937), vol. 1, pp. 224–7. On wax models see also J. Landes, ‘Wax Fibers, Wax Bodies, and Moving Figures: Artifice and Nature in Eighteenth-Century Anatomy’, in R. Panzanelli (ed.), Ephemeral Bodies: Wax Sculpture and the Human Figure, ed. (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), pp. 41–66. M. Lemire, Artistes et mortels (Paris: Raymond Chabaut, 1990), pp. 192–299. See also Johnson, ‘The Body Speaks’, pp. 44–8. L. Réau, Houdon: sa vie et son oeuvre, 2 vols (Paris: Nobele, 1964), vol. 1, pp. 39–40. Guédron, ‘L’Enseignement de l’anatomie artistique’; Comar, ‘Une leçon d’anatomie’; Johnson, ‘Anatomie’, p. 177. Xavier Bichat, Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1955).

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34 J.-J. Sue, Élémens d’anatomie à l’usage des peintres, des sculpteurs et des amateurs (Paris: Méquignon, 1788), p. 2; discussed by Comar, ‘Une leçon d’anatomie’, p. 33. 35 Toussaint-Bernard Émeric-David, Recherches sur l’art statuaire (Paris: chez le veuve Nyon ainé, 1805); M. Shedd, ‘Un dialogue entre archéologie et sciences anatomiques: les Recherches sur l’art statuaire d’ÉmericDavid’, in D. Rabreau et B. Tollon (eds), Le Progrès des arts réunis, 1763–1815 (Bordeaux: CERCAM, 1992), pp. 345–52. 36 ‘Le Statuaire n’apprend pas suffisamment l’anatomie dans des livres: il faut disséquer de votre propre main. Que le chef-d’œuvre de l’Ouvrier divin, devenu la proie de la mort, se déploie dans votre atelier. Armezvous d’un fer studieux. Déchirez le voile qui couvre les ressorts intérieurs. Étudiez la forme des muscles, leur position, leur entrecroisement, et particulièrement leurs attaches. Enlevez les premier muscles, en les soulevant par les deux extrémités; étudiez la forme de ceux qui sont placés au-dessous; enlevez-les encore; avancez, avancez, allez au squelette; Statuaires, votre figure est là!’ Émeric-David, Recherches sur l’art statuaire, pp. 393–4. See Shedd, ‘Un dialogue’ and Johnson, David to Delacroix, pp. 100–2. 37 J.-G. Salvage, Anatomie du Gladiateur combattant, applicable aux beaux-arts (Paris: chez l’auteur, 1812). See most recently R. Lifchez, ‘Jean-Galbert Salvage and his Anatomie du Gladiateur combattant: Art and Patronage in Post-Revolutionary France’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, 44 (2009), 163–84, and Johnson, ‘Anatomie’, pp. 187–8. 38 D. Johnson, Jacques-Louis David: Art in Metamorphosis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 94–109. 39 P. Grunchec, Le Grand Prix de Peinture: les concours des Prix de Rome de 1797 à 1863 (Paris: École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, 1983). 40 Ibid., pp. 125–6. 41 Ibid. 42 Plutarch, Plutarch’s Lives, trans. B. Perrin, vol. 8 (London and New York: William Heinemann and G. P. Putnam’s Son’s, 1919), p. 407. 43 Grunchec, Le Grand Prix de Peinture, p. 126, plates 1–5.

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15  the saints of the entrails and the bowels of the earth Jacques Gélis

Introduction: folk representations of the belly in eighteenth-century France Eighteenth-century studies of the body are very often focused on urban societies, in which bodies were in close contact with each other and were connected with a growing community in which trades and industries, fortunes and fashions developed and changed rapidly. We tend to forget the bodies of rural communities, which were still primarily understood in terms of analogical and symbolical thought. Agrarian societies made sense of everything on the basis of their everyday experience of natural processes that they observed in fields and cattle, using these to explain human phenomena. Eighteenth-century folk cultures still compared human bodies to natural soil and land, in which a multitude of living creatures swarmed. The image of mother nature as equivalent to women’s life-giving and perpetuating bellies persisted: it stood as the origin of everything, and the womb was seen as the natural source of prolific virtues even before those virtues were theorised by the Christian Church. In Catholic countries, the healing and fertilising caves, springs and stones had been replaced by a variety of saints of the bowels, to whom their devotees similarly prayed for restoration of their intestinal health. Eighteenth-century parishioners suffering from various bellyaches still fervently prayed for the intercession of the saints.1 The head was the seat of our noble functions – and in the lives of the saints the torments of a recalcitrant martyr often ended 311

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in decapitation; the belly, on the other hand, was a much more ambiguous place. Inside the belly, food was mixed and concocted, as if cooked in an oven; what nourished the body and enabled it to live was separated from what was superfluous and impossible  to assimilate: waste, excrements and urine. But the belly was also the source of life, the place where for nine months the child would gently simmer in its mother’s womb: this ‘belly-oven’ is a crucible where humanity constantly renews itself. In codes of practice for anatomical dissection of the period, what we call the belly is only one of three ‘bellies’, one of the three cavities – the head, the chest and the abdomen – into which the dissecting anatomist plunges his hands in order to extract the soft parts, those that have to be evacuated because they do not keep. At all events, the role of the belly as centre of the body was not well understood before the sixteenth century. All those sticky viscera, all those secret cavities were revealed only by the gaping wounds of a soldier or by the caesarean section of a woman before she was sutured; and then again, the belly bore the scar of the umbilical cord, which reminds us of the physical attachment of the foetus to the placenta which nourished it for nine months. The belly thus stood as the inner frontier of the body separating the upper part, which was always highly prized, from the ‘lower body’, which was systematically reviled.2 It was seen as a subtle but fragile alembic, whose slightest disturbance would reverberate throughout the whole ensemble of the human machine.3 Pain was thus quickly related to abdominal dysfunction. The early modern  body was eaten by worms, threatened by constipation, prey to an unbalanced diet, subject to colic and dysentery: in other words it was frequently subject to this ‘internal pain’, this ‘pain in the guts’ which diminishes the individual both physically and mentally.4 In classical times the whole population, from the babe in swaddling clothes to the doddery old man, suffered  from bellyache.5 The symptoms themselves recalled baser functions: they were a prelude to the defecation which brought temporary relief, and as for women, who bore the inheritance of Eve’s original sin in their  very guts, they had in addition to endure the pains of childbirth in order to deliver what the French called ‘the fruit of their entrails’.6 At the turn of the seventeenth century, Jacques Duval drew attention to what he called the indecent proximity of the womb to the 312

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other orifices of the body, a veritable cloaca of rubbish which the child, our greatest hope for the future, passes through as he or she comes into the world: ‘Voilà le lieu où l’homme est premièrement formé, nourri et entretenu … Entre les régions destinées aux plus orduriers et infects excréments qui soient au corps … entre l’intestin ou boyau culier et la vessie destinée à l’urine.’ (‘This is the place where man is first formed, nourished and protected … Between the regions destined for the most filthy and revolting excreta that the body contains … between the intestine or anal bowel and the bladder destined for urine.’).7 An intolerable proximity, one would have thought. Wasn’t the womb itself a cloaca? It regularly expelled the impure, corrupt blood of the woman when she was not bearing a child, as popular medical thought had it. An underlying anxiety thus remained in popular culture: did men and women thus emerge from a sewer? Both the common language of the people and the terminology of the physicians then described the painful belly as ‘wracked with spasms’; but even if the pain was often such that it seemed as if the abdomen was ‘on the rack’, for the French mothers of newborn babies troubled with diarrhoea, there was no doubt that their children had been ‘pris d’un mal de saint’ (‘taken by a saint’s malady’).8 To relieve their pain and free themselves from the saint’s grip on their bellies, the afflicted often undertook a pilgrimage of liberation to one of the saints of the bowels, who are the subject of this essay. My argument is that the representations of these saints of the bowels and the texts describing their martyrdoms and their healing powers enable us to establish patterns of analogical thought in popular culture. Their representations unravel a web of symbols closely related the sheer materiality of the viscera, as illustrated in the etymology of the saints’ names. The cave-like belly is also a prison, and the bowels of children and adults act as mirror images of the bowels of the earth, of mines and tunnels, which are also affected by specific diseases. I will further suggest that firedamp explosions are conceived as the colic of the human belly. Before dwelling on the importance of the symbolic actions of these saints, I will explore the various religious practices of their devotees, in an attempt to examine the deep connection between symbolic meaning and material practices.

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The great wonders of small saints Most of the ‘entephorous’ saints, that is the saints who are represented carrying their entrails and were invoked for bellyache, were extremely local figures and were rarely known outside very circumscribed places of devotion. The French Catholic Church did not encourage these expressions of popular worship, considering them dubious practices and even attempting to suppress them.9 But it was to no avail, so strong was the popular attachment to these minor local saints. Disorders of the guts provoked extreme anxiety: people particularly feared the infantile diarrhoea that struck very young children every summer and dehydrated them; a woman in childbirth could encounter terrible difficulties if her pelvis proved to be too narrow or the head of the infant too wide for straightforward delivery.10 Let us simply recall the vital place held in religious rituals by St Margaret and St Leonard, two saints whose healing abilities were celebrated by virtue of their association with spaces of the belly and the dungeon.11 We will, however, focus on three lesser-known ‘saints of the bowels’: St Agapit, St Erasmus and St Mammès (or Mamas) of Cæsarea, and the way in which they were represented in the centre of France. The main sources for this research come from texts on the lives of the saints, religious hagiography from the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.12 These compilations by clerics were not written with any notion of historical methodology comparable to that of other disciplines of that time. What is striking, however, is the symbolic practices that have been retained by popular belief over the years, the persistent devotion that was passed on from the religious texts to healing practices and iconography. There is however some measure of certainty in these texts: our three saints are not imaginary, as some were. Agapit and Mammès suffered martyrdom under the reign of Aurelian, in 273 or 275, the former at Prenesta (modern Palestrina) in Italy, the latter at Cæsarea in Cappadocia. As for St Erasmus, all we know is that he lived around the end of the third century and the beginning of the fourth.13 Their ‘stories’ are classic: all three belonged to early Christian noble families whose members died in prison as victims of their faith. As the hagiography has it, Agapit and Mammès died young and became child or adolescent saints. Their very youth and their untimely martyrdom predisposed them to be endowed with ability 314

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to heal the bellyaches of young children. Both resisted the efforts of the Roman authorities to make them return to paganism, and they were tortured by whipping, burning, lapidating and drowning. And yet they survived all that, and when they were released once more into freedom, they became in their turn preachers of the Christian religion. Their powers were said to be so great that even the wildest animals – such as the lion, which became the emblem of St Mammès – bowed down and obeyed them. But once recaptured, they were unable to avoid an implacably exemplary end: Mammès was to die from a trident in the belly, which spilt his entrails, while Agapit was decapitated, a more traditional method used to kill early Christians. As for St Erasmus, he enjoyed the privilege of being twice martyred! On the first occasion, an angel saved him from death, but he was recaptured by his torturers and passed from the land of the living to that of the dead. There was nothing predisposing him to become a ‘saint of the bowels’ until a hagiographer in the fifteenth century reported that his executioners had wound his viscera around the bar of a capstan (Figure 15.1). This image of the gutted entrails was so powerful that the saint was adopted as patron by the luthiers’ guild, who twisted catgut to fashion their strings and make their instruments sing. A great variety of images Most of the representations of St Mammès are the work of unknown local artists, and it is hard to trace the sources they used for their personal interpretations of the saint’s life: the images are thus very diverse and not necessarily coherent.14 These numerous representations are the hallmarks of a cult which, until the beginning of the twentieth century, stretched from Anatolia to Brittany, taking in a swath of the territories of Greece and northern Italy. In France, the epicentre of the cult was at Langres, whose cathedral held, and still holds, the chief relics, including the skull of St Mammès (Figure 15.2).15 The spectacular dimension of the final scene of his martyrdom must have incited artists, and above all sculptors, to depict this vision of the fatal thrust of the trident in Mammès’s lower abdomen, which he holds with both hands to prevent his viscera from spilling forth from the gaping wound in the belly. Sometimes St Mammès is shown grasping his spilling entrails with only one 315

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Figure 15.1 Lucas Cranach the Elder, The Martyrdom of St Eramus, 1506

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Figure 15.2 St Mammès as the dean of his church, carrying a ducal crown, seventeenth-century stone statue, Rivière-lès-Fosses, Haute-Marne, France

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hand, usually the left, in accordance with the traditional pose for statues, where it is this hand that is usually charged with expressing a feeling or a condition. We may recall that it is often with their left hands that the ‘anatomical Venuses’ signified their pregnant state.16 At his feet is a tame lion. This representation depicts one episode in the life of the saint. Having spent forty days in the desert, St Mammès ‘vit tomber une verge du Ciel et entendit une voix qui lui ordonnait d’en frapper la terre. Ce qu’il fit et à l’heure même il en sortit un livre des Saints Evangiles’ (‘saw a rod fall from Heaven and heard a voice which ordered him to strike the ground with it. Which he did, and at that very moment a book of the Holy Gospels emerged’).17 It is this very book that the St Mammès of le Douet-Artus in Orne holds gingerly over his belly, as if to conceal the gaping wound: the book acts as a kind of ‘Bible belt’ or a ‘godpiece’, so to speak (Figure 15.3). In other images, Mammès is represented as a type of the ‘Great Oriental Martyr’; he is then conventionally figured with curly hair and a black beard. His final iconographical guise is as a pastor holding a crook, since legend has it that he watched over his flocks. We see this in the church of La Gaudaine near Nogent-le-Rotrou, where ‘Saint Criard’, the Perche region’s equivalent of St Mammès, ‘wears peasant clothing, with a goat’s horn round his neck, and a sheep at his feet, which indicates his vocation as a shepherd’.18 However, the artist has not forgotten to show the Cappadocian saint with his belly open, holding his entrails as one might cradle a string of sausages. This statuary, in its realism, is very much in tune with popular taste, and we can understand why the Catholic Church of the Counter-Reformation tried to channel the faithful towards less realistic representations. There seems little doubt, however, of pilgrims’ taste for such realistic representations of evisceration. The iconography of St Erasmus is also very varied, but most relevant here is the scene of his martyrdom. He is generally figured lying down, while his executioners, having cut through his abdominal wall, are winding out his entrails on a winch. In the second half of the fifteenth century, new models of interpretation started to circulate and came to inspire sculptors and painters, as can be seen in Dieric Bouts’s painting for St Peter’s Church in Leuven, Belgium (Plate 11). The saint is bound hand and foot, wearing just a loincloth; an assembly of dignitaries supervise the proceedings. 318

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Figure 15.3 St Mammès holding the gospel against his open belly, fifteenth-century stone statue. Douet-Artus church, Heugon, Orne, France

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The sculpted group at Dinan-Leffe, also in Belgium, shows one of the executioners ostentatiously holding the knife which was used for the disembowelling, making the scene even more dramatic. On occasions the saint is a standing figure, leaning against a tree, rather like St Sebastian (at Dinan-Leffe again), while his entrails are wound up. The long process of twisting the intestines around the bar of the capstan is evocative of the protracted duration of his martyrdom, as if the bowels would never stop emerging from his belly. In the eighteenth century, the scene was generally more refined: in Bavaria, at Vierzehnheiligen church, in the great Baroque sanctuary devoted to the ‘fourteen intercessory saints’, the martyrdom is discreetly alluded to; only an angel, close to Erasmus, is shown carrying the emblem of the saint: a winch around which is wound the string of the entrails. Everything here is gilded and has no features in common with the realism and brutality of the previous representations (Figure 15.4). The iconographic status of St Agapit, whose visual representations are rarer, is poorer than those of the other two saints. The episode of his martyrdom, in the course of which boiling water was poured over his belly, is comparatively lacking in evocative force. In fact, as he holds on to his entrails, the saint borrows much from the iconography of St Mammès. He is a rather hybrid saint, about whom we have little information. In fact it is above all by the name of his later avatar, Agrapart or Agrapau, that he is known in the popular tradition of Picardy and Wallonia – a name, however, which is worth a closer look. What’s in a name? The etymology of the various forms of St Agapit’s name explains why he was endowed with the power to heal.19 Agrapper in the Picard dialect, or agrawer in that of Liège, means to grasp with hooked hand, to pull and to tear out, as in the French word agripper (‘to grasp’, ‘to grab’ or ‘to grapple’). It therefore certainly started life as an epithet, which later became a proper noun, just like ‘St Criard’ and ‘St Craillou’ (criard and craillou mean ‘crying out loud’). And ‘l’agrapare’ is then at once the illness which wrenches your guts (the ‘gripes’) and the saint invoked to put an end to it. These colourful names are the reflections of basic reactions. They derive from the Germanic root krapp or krappo, which gave 320

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Figure 15.4 St Erasmus, one of the fourteen intercessory saints, eighteenth-century stone statue. Vierzehnheiligen church sanctuary, Bavaria, Germany

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us agrafe in French (‘grappling hook’). In the medieval chansons de gestes, the ‘agrapart’ was the enemy who clutched your body parts and hurt you: that is, in the Middle Ages, the Moor. But in eighteenth-century representations, the Ottoman Turk with his turban has replaced the Saracen, since it is he who now represents the main threat to central Europe. We may add to this image one which is rather surprising, that of the Curé d’Ars (the parish priest of Ars),  who, in the nineteenth century, was tormented by the grappin, in other words the devil, whose name also derives from krapp, via agrapart.20 The hairy, black little devil described by the Curé d’Ars is often represented holding a trident in his hand, just like the soldier who eviscerated St Mammès.21 We can now understand why St Erasmus (Râsse in Walloon, Arrache in French – meaning ‘tearing out’), another avatar of the saint, was more readily adopted in the north of France and in Wallonia, rather than Agapit, whose name appeared too scholarly and too clerical.22 As for the Church, it had its own manner of representing the martyrdom of saints, and sadism was never very far away in the Acta Sanctorum. The image is in fact always more striking than the text. Images of St Apollonia, whose teeth are extracted one by one by the executioner, St Lié, whose tongue was ripped out, and St Agatha, whose breasts we see torn apart with a pair of tongs, are representations which cannot leave the faithful indifferent.23 Higher up the scale of these imagined horrors, the sight of the entrails being either spread out or torn out is certainly even more unbearable. Such visceral violation was designed to excite intense repulsion in viewers. The realism of these tableaux, as argued earlier, undeniably contributed to the success of these smaller saints of the bowels. The collective imagination of agrarian (and urban) societies was a fertile ground for images that provoked the five senses. Bellies cut open with protruding entrails were an object of fascination, as were the coiling lines of bowels held together by the hand of St Mammès, bending over in a last attempt to reach the cave that would become his sepulchre, or St Erasmus’s intestines carefully wound up on a winch. These scenes evoked both the horror of such torments and the stoical attitude of those who endured unbearable pain. This was made clear in the saint’s face, often represented with the eyes looking up to heaven, the mouth open, imploring God for mercy for those who suffered. The popular spectacle of public executions, 322

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together with the evocation of the martyrdom of the saints and the description of Protestant violence, contributed to making the atrocities ‘acceptable’ for public consumption.24 In the late sixteenth century, Richard Rowlands, who worked as an engraver and publisher in the Netherlands but also as an intelligence agent for Catholics, published an illustrated volume on the persecution of Catholics in which he denounced what he called a ‘theatre of cruelties’. Its numerous plates describe in graphic detail the physical violence unleashed against Catholics, and the volume was translated and printed throughout Europe, satisfying the morbid curiosity of countless readers.25 The Catholic Church, however, was cautious when it came to the visualisation of violence, since it had for so long condemned the exploration of the human anatomy and considered it sacrilegious to slice a body open in order to explore its secrets.26 The characteristics of devotion In the hope of obtaining relief for the suffering, weeping child, parents could make a vow and promise to pay their respects to the saint after the cure. In general, they preferred to make the journey in person, for they believed in the effectiveness of a direct encounter between the sick child and the image of the saint of the bowels. In the presence of the statue, the priest was asked to recite the first chapter of the Gospel of St John over the head of the child; this was called ‘evangeling’ (evangilier rather than evangeliser) the infant. However, alongside this ceremony encouraged by the Church, many parallel rituals were performed in secret, incorporating covert magical or symbolic connotations.27 The curing process then worked through indirect contact. The parents could bring the nightshirt of the child stricken with colic to the sanctuary and rub it against the statue, or, to be more precise, against the entrails the saint was holding between his hands. The child was then dressed in the garment again, in the hope that the virtues emanating from the venerated image would ensure the recovery of the young patient. Such a ritual corresponded to a certain perception of the body and a manner of being in the world. Underlying these practices was the idea that any deterioration of the natural organic functions resulted from a dysfunction or abnormal positioning of the viscera. The  bowels were ‘knotted’, ‘entangled’ or excessively twisted, because the child had swallowed some ‘gut-wrenching’ food such as 323

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unripe fruit, for instance. But the child might also be crying because he or she was wracked by worms, or because the crying incessantly caused the ‘gut’ or the hernia to protrude. This was also the reason why some village surgeons used to cut off one or even both testicles so as to suppress the prolapse and force the bowels to withdraw.28 Another ritual form of devotion implied ‘attaching the illness to the saint’. A ribbon, thread, cord or piece of material was pinned onto the statue. The parents thus hoped to transfer, to ‘tie’, the illness to the saint and ‘untie’ it from the child. In a society based on analogical thinking, the offering of a simulacrum, however crude, of the intestine was assumed to be effective.29 Healing depended on similarity and representation. The skein of wool or the ball of hemp twine conjured up the convolutions of the intestines and, since the parents hoped to restore the proper functions of the bowels, they solemnly hung the token around the arm or neck of the statue. Surely the saint who had suffered from bellyache in such horrible circumstances could manage to disentangle the patient’s bowels. Sometimes the ritual was more specific. In the early nineteenth century, those suffering from colic or another affliction of the belly would go to the chapel of Notre-Dame du Haut in Trédaniel, near Moncontour in Brittany, where their girth was measured with waxed string wound around their waists. Then, according to local custom, the length of waxed string was buried at the feet of the statue of St Mamert, who was locally endowed with the attributes of St Mammès. This magic ritual was intended to make the illness melt like wax.30 Primordial entrails Bellyache was immediately experienced in the first degree as a source of suffering. But it also caused anxiety because the belly was considered as a vital part of the human body. People knew from experience that intestinal pains could cause death: diarrhoea and enteritis in infants, dysentery and peritonitis in adults, often ended in the death of the patient.31 But as I argued earlier, also at stake was the symbolic geography of the body, since the waist separates the upper, noble part – orientated towards the head, and towards heaven – from the baser part, which is orientated towards the sexual organs, the excremental orifices, and the earth. Let me underline the vital symbolic role that popular thinking has always granted the to 324

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navel. It is thanks to this original cord that each being is formed; it is the omphalos around which life becomes ‘embodied’. Hence the importance attributed to it when a child was born: depending on whether it was a boy or a girl, the umbilical cord was cut more or less close to the body.32 People thought that there was a close correspondence between the navel, the sexual organs and the intestine, and the swaddling bands that had been wrapped round the belly of the newborn babe until the navel had completely healed were often brought as an offering to the saints of the bowel. The perception of life and the body, and the link readily established between macrocosm and microcosm, led to a conception of the belly as a sort of miniature model of the bowels of the earth. The two were thought to function by analogy. Until the seventeenth century, both common opinion and scientific thought considered the earth to be a living organism in a state of constant renewal, like some vast oven ceaselessly cooking and transforming the matter that it receives in its bosom: a great cosmic body, providing the ‘pattern’ for the human body.33 The structure of the mine through which men descend into the depths of the terrestrial body, thus presents many analogies with the anatomy of the human body. The veins and the arteries that transport the sap of life that is blood through the body correspond to the mineral veins of the mine, which, although solidified, seem to irrigate the soil.34 This is obvious in the prints that illustrate De re metallica, a treatise published by Agricola in 1556, which for decades remained the authoritative work on mineral exploitation.35 Sometimes the veins of the mine plunge into the depths of the earth, forcing the workmen to dive further and further down. They then use a complex ramification of secondary tunnels (called boyaux de mine in French, literally ‘mine guts’) which evoke the complexity of the human body with its cavities and passages. Such a comparison between the representation of a sixteenthcentury mine and the martyrdom of St Erasmus might strike the reader as an act of pure speculation. But the similarities in the postures of the workers, and in the objects that are represented, are striking. The men who work the winding gear over the mineshaft have their doubles in the forms of the executioners who tear out the guts of St Erasmus with the same technology. The common denominator is the mechanism of disembowelment used to tear out the entrails of the earth and those of the saint. The intrusive 325

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work of the miners violating the earth can be seen as an echo of the soldiers’ violation of martyr’s bowels. Finally, mother earth, like the Christian martyr, often makes the violators pay a high price for their aggression. A righteous lion comes to avenge St Mammès for the torments inflicted upon him, while the earth that the miners explore and exploit can savagely avenge this sacrilegious penetration. Just like the ‘fire in the belly’, which suddenly seems to those who endure its torments, so the ‘wild fire’ of a firedamp explosion shakes the belly of the earth, causing disaster. The miners themselves constantly feel the danger of remaining prisoners in this oven where the relentless cooking and transformation of stones and minerals takes place. They are in the position of the foetus in the mother’s womb: it is the same warm, protective envelope, but it is one which is also a prison and can become a tomb.36 Conclusion: Mammès’s death and Catholic morals The devotion to the healing saints of the entrails therefore points to a dual level of symbolic references: the belly of the martyr and the belly of the earth. The life of St Mammès illustrates of this dual background. Even before he was born, the ‘Great Martyr of Cappadocia’ was marked out by fate. Rufina, his mother, was bearing him in her womb when the Christians of Cappadocia were persecuted. His father, Theodotus, refused to make sacrifice to the idols and died in irons. Rufina, also imprisoned, was so affected that she gave birth to her child prematurely and died shortly afterwards. Mammès was thus both premature and an orphan, freed too soon from his mother’s belly and born in prison.37 Such an exceptional birth and such a precocious relationship with the prisons of the body inevitably shaped the destiny of Mammès. Fifteen years later, the circumstances of his martyrdom confirmed these presages. Faced with Mammès’s valiant resistance to these terrible tortures, the governor of Cappadocia ordered one of his executioners to plunge a trident into the martyr’s belly (Figure  15.5). Mammès left the amphitheatre where he had been suffering his martyrdom, and he still had the strength to cross two more stadia, holding back his entrails, as already mentioned, until he entered a cave, where he died and was buried. The cave is the place par excellence which opens the passage through to the underworld, as we can see in the story of Theseus, 326

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Figure 15.5 The martyrdom of St Mammès. Guild picture, print, anonymous, c.1776. Sceaux, Hauts-de-Seine, France

who used Ariadne’s thread – like an unwound gut – to escape from the bowels of that place of damnation; or as we can also see in the myth of Orpheus and so many other legendary tales. That Mammès died by the bowels, his bowels being taken out of his belly in a place which communicated with the bowels of the earth, is not accidental. A life placed so firmly under the double sign of enclosure and of the bowels could certainly endow Mammès with some talent for curing digestive disorders. This story shows how the Roman Catholic Church dealt with the disturbingly base bodily functions that surrounded its birth-centred culture. The bodily manifestation of birth in the lower belly was anything but pure and aesthetic, or to quote a crude folk saying 327

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from the south-west of France, ‘lovely children are born between piss and shit’. One way of dealing with this paradox in a religious culture that nurtured representations and cults of the body was to draw a clear line between the popular conception of women’s wombs and reproductive faculties on the one hand and that of the viscera and digestive faculties on the other. That some saints were charged with curing specific digestive and intestine afflictions is a manifestation of the ways in which the Catholic Church moralised bodily practices and beliefs by creating a realm of associations and analogies around the workings of the entrails as distinct from the rest of the body (see Plate 12). Notes An early version of this chapter was published in Belgium in 1987: ‘“Les saints des entrailles”: recours populaires et iconographie en France du nord et en Wallonie’, Tradition wallonne, 4 (1987), 345–70. 1 On rural bodies and the persistence of traditional conceptions of the body in folk culture see J. Gélis, ‘Le Corps, l’Église et le sacré’, in A. Corbin, J. J. Courtine and G. Vigarello (eds), Histoire du corps. vol. 2: De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Seuil, 2005), pp. 17–113. See also F. Lebrun, Se soigner autrefois: médecins, saints et sorciers aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, 2nd edn (1983; Paris: Seuil, 1995), esp. ch. 4, ‘La Medicine paralèlle: empiriques, conjureurs, saints guérisseurs’, and ch. 5, ‘Les Maux quotidiens: du berceau à la tombe’. 2 On the cultural symbolism of the ‘lower body’, see M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. H. Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984). 3 The comparison between the human body and the alembic was already used by Arab writers and became common in the medical literature of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (see Paracelsus). For more on this subject see C. Voisenat, ‘Feux d’entrailles: alcool, corps-alambic et combustions spontanées’, in Le Feu, special issue of Terrain: revue d’ethnologie de l’Europe, 19 (1992), 17–38. 4 On pain and dysfunctional digestion see Micheline Louis-Courvoisier, ‘The soul in the entrails’, Chapter 4 in this volume. 5 On the subject of bodily pain in the early modern period, see R. Rey, The History of Pain, trans. L. Elliott Wallace, J. A. Cadden and S. W. Cadden (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). 6 The Roman Catholic prayer ‘Hail Mary’ in French reads ‘le fruit de tes entrailles’ for ‘the fruit of thy womb’.

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7 J. Duval, Des hermaphrodits, accouchemens des femmes et traitement qui est requis pour les relever en santé, et bien élever leurs enfans (Rouen, 1612), p. 107. 8 The problem was to know which saint had its grip on the child. The ritual thus started with an identification process to determine which sanctuary should be visited. See L’Homme et son corps dans la société traditionnelle, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Musée des Arts et Traditions Populaires, 1976), p. 84. 9 See F. Lebrun (ed.), Histoire de la France religieuse, vol. 2: Du christianisme flamboyant à l’aube des Lumières, XIVe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 1988). 10 On child mortality see M. Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On childbirth, see K. D. Read, Birthing Bodies in Early Modern France (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016). 11 St Margaret of Antioch was swallowed by Satan, who had appeared to her as a dragon. She miraculously came out of the dragon’s entrails thanks to the cross she carried with her. St Leonard was the patron saint of prisoners (he visited and freed prisoners in the sixth century); prisoners prayed to him for deliverance and he was also prayed to by pregnant women who had become ‘prisoners’ of their child. 12 B. de Segange, Les saints patrons des corporations, 2 vols (Paris, 1887); R. P. Ribadeneira, Les fleurs des vies des saints et festes de toute l’année, auxquelles ont été ajoutées les vies de saints de France par M. André Du Val (Paris, 1652). 13 See Mgr P. Guérin, Petits Bollandistes, Vies des saints, 6th edn (Paris: V. Palmé, 1866–69). 14 See L. Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien, 6 vols (Paris, 1955–59); W. Braunfels (ed.), Lexikon der christlichen Ikonographie, vol. 7 (Rome: Herder, 1974). 15 A. Cordier, Histoire du Grand Martyr saint Mammès, patron de l’église de Langres (Paris, 1650). 16 K. F. Russel, ‘Ivory Anatomical Manikins’, Medical History, 16:2 (1972), 131–42. 17 Cordier, Histoire du Grand Martyr saint Mammès, p. 50. 18 A. S. Morin, Le prêtre et le sorcier; statistiques de la superstition (Paris, 1872), p. 164. 19 On this etymology, see in particular E. Legros, ‘Agrapau’, Enquêtes du Musée de la vie wallonne, 7 (1954), 117–24. 20 This priest, venerated as St Jean-Marie Vianney in the Catholic Church, led a rather abstemious life of mortifications and devotion. He took part in the daily chores of the parish and was for example known for emptying the cesspool of the parish school himself. For more on his

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21 22 23

24

25 26

27 28 29 30

31

life of struggle against the grappin see for example René Fourrey, JeanMarie Vianney Curé d’Ars: vie authentique, 2nd edn (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1998). Segange, Les saints patrons des corporations, vol. 2, pp. 162–6; Abbé Caillet, ‘Saint Mammès’, in Vies des saints du diocèse de Langres (Langres: Crapelet, 1873), pp. 287–91. Anonymous, ‘À propos de grappin’, Le Monde alpin et rhodanien, 2:4 (1986), 82. For further reading see J. Moscoso, Histoire de la douleur: XVIe–XXe siècle (Paris: Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2015); C. Bouteille-Meister and K.  Aukrust, Corps sanglants, souffrants et macabres (XVIe–XVIIe siècle) (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2010). On attitudes towards the institutional violence of public executions in the eighteenth century, see L. Hunt, Inventing Human Rights (New York: W. W. Norton, 2007), esp. ch. 2; E. Peters, Torture (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); Benoît Garnot, Justice et société en France aux XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Ophrys, 2000); P. Spierenburg, The Spectacle of Suffering: Executions and the Evolution of Repression (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). See R. Verstegan [Richard Rowlands], Theatrum Crudelitatum hæreticorum nostril temporis (Amsterdam, 1587); the title means ‘Theatre of the Cruelties of the Heretics of our Time’. Historians and anthropologists do not share the same opinion on the positions of the Church. See L. van Delft, Nature humaine et caractère à l’âge classique, Littérature et anthropologie (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2015); Rafael Mandressi, Le Regard de l’anatomiste: dissections et invention du corps en Occident, L’Univers historique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2003). See M. Grmek (ed.), Histoire de la pensée médicale en Occident, vol. 2: De la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Seuil, 1997). In the eighteenth century many medical and ecclesiastical texts mentioned the practice to condemn it, at a time when it was quite frequent among village surgeons. See J. Gélis, L’Arbre et le fruit (Paris: Fayard, 1984), pp. 23–30. ‘Les saints de Notre-Dame du Haut’, Revue des traditions populaires, 10 (October 1887), 438–39; R. Stoppa, ‘Survol historique de la chirurgie des hernies: de la castration à la haute technologie’, Histoire des sciences médicales, 35:1 (2001), 59. See for example all the recommendations to cure the colic and prevent bellyache in W. Cadogan’s An Essay upon Nursing and the Management of Children from Their Birth to Three Years of Age (London: T. Roberts, 1748) or Georges Armstrong, An Essay on the Diseases Most Fatal to Infants (London: T. Cadell, 1767).

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32 In his study of folk practices, Joubert notes that when women bear a son, ‘Les bonnes femmes veulent qu’on fasse bonne mesure de la védille’ (‘Women want the protruding cord to be measured’) because they think that ‘le membre viril prendra là son patron’ (‘the virile member will be patterned on it’). For girls, on the contrary, it is supposed to be ‘tiré et lié fort ras’ (‘straightened out and cropped short’): L. Joubert, Erreurs populaires et propos vulgaires touchant la médecine et le régime de santé (Montpellier, 1578), p. 353. 33 C. Ernst, Individu et cosmos dans la philosophie de la Renaissance (Paris,  1983), pp. 185–95; Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, pp. 302–432. 34 For example see Agricola, De ortu et causis subterraneorum (Basel: Hieronymus Frobenius and Nikolaus Episcopus, 1546), p. 35: ‘The term vein is borrowed from that used for animals, for just as their veins are distributed through all parts of the body, and just as by means of the veins blood is diffused from the liver throughout the whole body, so also the veins traverse the whole globe, and more particularly the mountainous districts; and water runs and flows through them.’ The English translation of this passage comes from Agricola, De Re metallica, trans. H. Hoover and L. H. Hoover (London: The Mining Magazine, 1912), book III, p. 76, n. 1. 35 Agricola [Georg Bauer], De Re metallica (Basel, 1556). 36 On the parallel between the growth of the foetus and the formation of the mineral vein, see M. Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible, trans. S. Corrin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), esp. ch. 4. 37 Cordier, Histoire du Grand Martyr saint Mammès, p. 20.

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Note: page numbers in italic refer to illustrations abattoirs 51 Abernethy, J. 73–5 absolute monarchy 156 Académie de France in Rome 305 Prix de Rome 305–6 Académie des Sciences 47 Académie Française 155 Académie Royale de Médecine 47 Académie Royale de Musique 146 Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture 275, 300, 303, 305 Académie Royale des Sciences 49 Addison, J. 131, 256, 257, 263 see also Spectator, The advertisements 103, 116, 130, 159–62, 176 aerial body 82, 85, 89–93 aesthetics 12, 13, 15, 199, 237, 240, 255, 258, 266, 273–4, 278 Agoty, J.-F. Gautier d’ 301 Agricola 325 Ahemd, S. 241 Alambert, J. Le Rond d’ 49 Albinus 301 American revolution 131

anal bulbs 11, 172 anal sex 9, 14, 151 anal swabs 172, 176, 178 Anatomie Générale des Viscères 301 anatomy 3, 13, 258, 312, 323 anatomical Venuses 3, 13, 16, 302, 318 La Specola Museum (Florence) 301 see also dissection Ancien Régime 81, 153, 264, 284, 286, 288–9, 296 animal spirits 91–2, 97n.54, 232 anitergium 135, 203 anodyne necklaces 159, 162, 176 appetite 2, 228–9, 231–7, 245–6, 248n.22, 283–4 Arasse, D. 13, 297, 299 Arbuthnot, J. 136 Ariadne 327 Aristotle 82 bakers 49 Bakhtin, M. 14, 149, 174, 280, 286 ballads 115, 132, 133

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Barbier de Séville, le see Beaumarchais, P.-A. Caron de Baumes, J.-B. 45 Beaumarchais, P.-A. Caron de 147 belching 1, 88 Belgrand, E. 35, 53 bellyache 311–15, 324 Bible 131, 138 Bichat, M. F. X. 303 Bièvre see Paris: Bièvre Billingsgate 175 black bile 82, 83 blood 13, 15, 73–4, 82, 113, 183n.18, 213, 233–5, 238, 277, 284, 296–300, 302, 305–7 bodies 12, 15, 16, 30–2, 48, 52, 55, 66, 74, 85, 92, 209, 211, 214, 217, 228–9, 231, 236–7, 239, 246, 254, 264, 267, 276, 280, 285, 296–7, 305, 307, 311, 321n.1 body politic 155 bog-house 9, 17, 101–3, 106, 112–13, 116 see also latrine; privy; toilet books 115–17, 130, 133 collector 131, 132, 133 Boswell, J. 131 Bourdin, P. 155 Bouts, D. 318 breastfeeding 12, 242–4 Brooke, H. 231 Broussais, F. J. V. 72–3, 75  Brown, T. 135 bumfodder 9, 10, 103, 116, 135, 136, 138–40 see also anitergium burlesque 11, 194, 210–13 Burton, R. 83 butchers 44, 49 Cabanis, P. J. G. 298 cabinet of curiosities 33, 34 see also mineralogical cabinet; pathological cabinet

cachexia 46 caesarean section 312 cannibalism 245, 284–5, 296–9, 308n.7 Cannibalism on the Raft of the Medusa 296–7 Cannibals Devouring their Victims 296 Cappadocia 314, 318, 326 Captain Coram 260 Caquire 147, 149, 153 Carden-Coyne, A. 2 caricature 12–15, 195, 197, 202, 242, 252, 267n.1, 274, 278–90 carnivalesque 148–9, 174–5, 280, 290 Casanova 106, 111 castration 324 catacombs 7, 24, 32–5 Catholicism 311–30 Catholic funerary ritual 295 Cato (pseud.) 112, 117 Cato of Utica 13, 276, 305–7 cave 326 cellars 6, 7, 24, 30, 44, 49–52, 55, 111, 128 cemeteries 29–32, 47–8, 55, 295 burial pits 30, 47 see also Paris: ossuary; Paris: Saints Innocents censorship 154 CESAR database 153 cesspits 43, 51, 104 cesspit emptiers 47 see also nightmen cesspools 55, 134 chalk 26 chamber pot 105–6, 152, 161–2, 165–6 character 252 charlatans 159, 166, 170, 185n.43 cheesemakers 49 chemists 44 Chesterfield, P. D. Stanhope, Lord 139 Cheyne, G. 2, 73, 230–4

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childbirth 25, 112–14, 312, 314, 325, 326–8 Childéric see Morand, P. de children 104, 114, 135, 296, 313, 315, 323, 328 Chimère de monsieur Desprez, La 284 chocolate 153, 155 chorizo factories 43, 54–5 Christian religion 49, 286, 287, 311, 315, 324, 326 Churchill, W. 16 Classe de la Littérature et des Beaux Arts 300, 302 clay 25, 26, 35, 47 Cleland, J. 12, 227–47 Memoirs of a Coxcomb 227–8, 236–47 Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 227, 231, 237 Phisiological Reveries 234, 240 close stools 11, 152, 167–8, 171, 174, 176 see also chamber pot Cockayne, E. 5 Coleridge, S. T. 74–5 colic 10, 87, 114, 150, 214, 220, 312–13, 323–4 Comédie-Française 146–7, 154 Comédie-Italienne 146 Commedia dell’arte 155 Compagnie du Ventilateur 52 constipation 10, 15, 86, 93, 148, 150, 152, 155, 171–2, 194–5, 217, 222, 312 consultation epistolary 80–97 consumption 4, 43, 51, 129, 130, 132, 136, 140, 159, 229, 235, 237 contagion 29 conversation 254, 263–4 cookery and cooking 198–9, 220, 230, 241 coprophagia 153 Corday, C. 297 corpse wax 31

corpses 29–32, 48, 163, 284–5, 294, 299, 302–5 correspondence see consultation corruption 45–6, 48, 177, 232, 264, 289, 295 Cowper, W. 71 Cranach, L. the Elder 316 Crawford, P. 129 cruelty 11, 259, 260, 265, 284, 323 Cullen, W. 92 Curé d’Ars 322 Dacier, M. 209–10, 213 Damiens, R. F. 297 David, J.-L. 299, 302–3, 305 decapitation 297–8, 300, 312, 315 see also guillotine decomposition 30, 31, 32, 44 defecation 9, 10, 45, 108, 124n.87, 146, 153, 312 Defoe, D. 137, 256 Dégraisseur patriote, Le 287–8 Derham, W. 64–5 Description des Arts 49 desire 12, 260 sexual 220–3 Desprez, J.-L. 296 deux biscuits, Les 151 diagnosis self-diagnosis 2, 82, 165 see also consultation diarrhoea 10, 14, 148, 150, 152–3, 155, 184n.34, 219, 222, 313–14, 324 Dickie, S. 11, 108 Diderot, D. 49, 300 diet 2, 8, 11, 62–3, 75 digestion 1, 2, 7, 15, 32, 44, 63–76, 128, 133, 139, 192, 197, 213–22, 284, 327 digesting duck 3, 4, 18n.7 digression 161, 164, 166, 171–2, 179, 185n.43 dirt 5, 9, 46, 53, 104, 128, 135, 166–7, 191, 193, 239, 241

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disemboweling 13, 276, 294–6, 305–6, 320, 322, 325 disgust 12, 91, 215, 227–47, 254, 258, 260 dismemberment 106, 239, 285, 295, 297, 300, 307 disorder 55, 174, 264 bodily disorder 63, 70–6, 147, 164, 229, 232, 254, 258, 260, 282, 314, 327 nervous disorder 81, 230 dissection 10, 13, 15, 294–5, 300–7, 312, 323 see also anatomy Donne, J. 92 Douglas, J. 133 drainage 35 drunkenness 12, 254 Dryden, J. 135 Dupont, A. 27 Dürer, A. 83 Duval, J. 312 dysentery 46, 324 dyspepsia 73, 233 earth 14, 23, 25, 30–4, 45, 46, 48, 51, 105, 115, 167, 175, 311, 313, 324–7 écorché 13, 294, 300, 303, 305 see also anatomy; flaying; wax models effeminacy 229–33, 238, 240 Elias, N. 214, 217 élite 4, 5, 7, 16, 156 emanations 7, 29, 43, 45–8, 105 see also smell; stench Émeric-David, T.-B. 304–5 emetics 3, 71–2, 172, 228 emotion 63, 72, 74–6 empiricism 256, 260 Encyclopédie 49, 147 Enders, J. 17 enema 11, 86, 148, 151–2, 161–2, 165, 172–4, 179, 211, 281, 286 entephorous 314 enteritis 324

epistolarity see consultation eroticism 146, 150, 237–8, 243, 245 evacuation 6, 31, 35, 86, 89, 103, 236, 244, 245 evisceration 14, 318 excavation 3, 14, 48, 134, 294 excess 72, 231, 236, 238–40, 244, 257, 260, 265, 274–5, 277–83 excrement 6, 8–9, 11, 14, 18, 45, 47, 53, 111–12, 129, 132, 134–9, 145, 151–3, 156, 162, 166–7, 171, 174, 177, 183n.20, 219, 312–13, 324 executions 13, 115, 283, 297–300, 315, 318, 320, 322, 325 exhalations see emanations Eyre, J. (Sir) 73–4 fabulous beasts 49 see also monster faeces see excrement fanaticism 296 farce 145, 147–8 farts and farting 11, 191–202, 214, 216 see also flatulence; wind fat 15, 211, 240, 277–80, 283–90 Fénelon, F. 210, 212–13, 219–20 fermentation 43, 49 fevers 1, 45, 71, 219, 282 Ficino, M. 82 Fielding, H. 256 firedamp explosion 313, 325 flatulence 11, 15, 29, 43, 192–3, 240 see also fart; wind flaying 301, 303 see also écorché Folengo, T. 145 folk culture 5, 15, 311, 315, 320 food 1, 7, 62–73, 131, 135, 136, 192, 199, 220–2, 312 formes acerbes, Les 298 Forth, C. 2 Foucault, M. 297

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Fouquet, H. 83 Fourcy, E. de 25 French Revolution 13, 15, 28–9, 32, 73, 269, 274, 279–82, 284–9, 295–8, 305–7 Convention 299 Terror 28, 31, 297–9 see also Ancien Régime Gadfelder, H. 242–3 Galen 3, 8, 64, 74, 83 gallows 115, 161, 170, 181n.8 garbage 44, 50 Gay, J. 136 Gee, S. 5 gender 14, 15, 110, 237 genius 82 Gerard, A. 258 Géricault, T. 296, 307 Gerould, D. 145 ghosts 49 Gillray, J. 102, 296 Girard, C. 285 Giraud, P. 151 Glorious Revolution 255 gluttony 220, 222, 252, 274, 280, 283–4 goldsmiths 50 Göttinger Taschen Kalender 162–3 Gowing, L. 129 Goya, F. 296 Graevenitz, G. von 177 Grandval, C.-F. Racot de 146–7, 152–6 Pot de chambre cassé, Le 155 Sirop-au-cul 147, 152–6 gravediggers 30, 47 grocers 131 grotesque 6, 14, 161–2, 165, 167, 171, 175–7, 195, 240, 243, 254, 274, 280–1, 286 Guérin, P.-N. 305, 307 Gueullette, T.-S. 149, 194 Guillaumot, C.-A. 27, 30 guillotine 13, 297 see also decapitation

gut-makers 54 gutters 51 gypsum 25, 26 haemorrhoids 10, 87, 148 hagiography 314, 315 Hallé, J. N. 84 haruspicy 179–80 Harvey, K. 237 Harvey, W. 92 hat makers 50 Haussmann, G. E. 35 healing 14, 219, 227, 311, 313, 314, 320, 323–4, 326 Héricart de Thury, L. É. F. 33, 34 hermeneutics 11, 161–4, 168, 179–82, 184n.34, 186n.59 hiccup 11, 214, 216–17, 220, 225n.39 Hill, J. 133 Hippocrates 2, 74, 82, 105 Histoire maccaronique de Merlin Cocaye 145 history painting 256, 266 Hogarth, W. 12, 252–70 Analysis of Beauty, The 255, 256, 257, 260–1 Artist and his Pug, The, 260 Beer Street 132, 133, 133 Four Stages of Cruelty, The 259, 260, 264, 285 Graham Children 255 Happy Marriage, The 263 Harlot’s Progress, A 10, 159–63, 166, 174, 177, 179, 182n.16, 255, 260, 262, 264 Laughing Audience, The 260 Marriage à-la-mode 255, 260, 263–5 Midnight Modern Conversation, A 12, 254, 260, 263–4 O the Roast Beef of Old England 264, 265 Rake’s Progress, A 10, 255, 260, 264 Strode Family, The 255

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Home, H., Lord Kames 258 Houdon, J.-A. 302–4 Hume, D. 258 humours 9, 15, 82, 86, 171 Hunter J. 2, 66–7, 73 Hurtaut, P.-T.-N. 191–202 hygiene 9, 134 oral hygiene 233 hypochondria 9–11, 15, 80–93, 163–6, 168–73, 177, 179–80, 182n.16, 183n.19, 184n.34, 229, 233 hysteria 84, 85, 244, 265 iatrochemistry 8, 66, 72 iatromechanism 64–7, 72 iconography 15 imagination 10, 15, 17, 87 impolite behaviour 6, 11, 214, 217 industrial activity 49, 50, 128 industrial revolution 44 infanticide 9 Ingram, A. 15 insalubrity 44–5 intellectuals 7, 64, 82, 83, 131 interpretation 10, 81, 85, 162–9, 171, 177, 179–80, 184n.34, 273, 306, 315, 318 overinterpretation 165, 184n.34 Ireland, J. 179 irony 162, 172–3 Isabelle grosse par la vertu 149–50 it-narrative 28, 139, 237 Jacobinism 285, 299 Jacobitism 14, 101, 117 Jaucourt, L. de 207 ‘je ne sais quoi’ 255 Joly Gomez, F. 17 Junqua, A. 162n.125 Kant, I. 258 kidneys 87, 88 knowledge 2, 5, 8, 10, 11, 14, 63, 191–202, 230, 255, 273, 290, 294, 300, 303, 304

Lady’s Magazine, The 15 Landon, C. P. 302 Langres 315 language 80–93 latrine 46, 104–6, 134 see also bog-house; privy; toilet Lauder, W. 133 laughter 47, 148–9, 164–6, 193, 281 laundrywomen 49 Lavater, J. C. 162, 277 laxatives 172, 174 see also enema; purging Le Blon J.-C. 301 Le Bon, J. 297 leather curriers 50 Leclerc de Juigné (Mgr) 30 leeching 73, 245, 284, 287 Leibniz, G. W. 180 Leiris, M. 155 Lenoir, J.-C.-P. 30 Lepelletier de Saint Fargeau, L. M. 305 L’Eunuque, ou la fidèle infidélité 150 lexicon 80, 135–6 libraries 129, 139 Lichtenberg, G. C. 10, 12, 15, 159–80 limestone 25, 27, 44 liver 83 Locke, J. 255 London 6, 9, 24, 25, 43, 54, 101–16, 131, 161, 163, 238 Louis XIV 27, 191, 198, 205n.30 Louis XV 155, 297 Louis XVI 7, 13, 27, 282–3, 300 Louis XVIII 47 Louvre 134, 303 lower belly 81, 90, 200, 230, 312, 315, 327 lower body 146, 212 luxury 43, 50, 73, 163, 230, 233, 235, 238, 243, 248n.29

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MacBride, D. 67–8 Mandeville, B. 87, 91, 232, 234, 236 manhole covers 23 manuscripts 130, 131, 130–2 marasmus 277 Marat, J. P. 305 Marchand de merde, Le 145, 149 Marivaux, P. Carlet de Chamblain de 11, 200–23 market literary 135 see also trade martyrdom 276, 305, 311, 313–16, 318, 320, 322, 323, 325–7 masculinity 102–9, 230–8, 240, 244–5, 275 McTavish, L. 16 Mead, R. 3 melancholia 9, 80–97, 171, 194 Menninghaus, W. 240 mental illness 84, 90 mephitis 28, 46–8 Mercier, L.-S. 7, 26, 27 Mercier de Compiègne, C. F. X. 191–202 Méry, J. 23 metabolism 44 miasmas 46 middle way 260, 264 Miller, I. 62 Milton, J. 138 mind 84–6 mineralogical cabinet 33–6 mining 7, 26, 46, 47, 52, 313, 325–6 Corps des Mines 33 open-shaft mining 26 Mirabeau, H.-G. Riqueti de 281–2 Molière, J.-B. Poquelin dit 148 monster 284, 295–6 see also fabulous beasts Morand, P. de 155 Moreau de la Sarthe, L. J. 84 Morellet, A. (Abbé) 299 Mort de Caton d’Utique, La 305 Motteux, P. 134 Mozart, W. 45

mud 45 mummies 31, 34 dry mummification 48 fat mummification 48 myology 300 Napoleon 75 Napoleonic wars 307 nationalism 264 nature 255, 256, 257, 260, 266 nausea 7, 32, 227–8, 241–3 navel 89–90, 213, 325 neoclassical art 13, 256, 274–6, 288–9, 294 nerves 15, 70–6, 80–4, 89–92, 229–30, 276 new science 14 newspaper 130, 133 Newton, I. 255 Ngai, S. 244 Nieuwnetijgt, B. 65 nightmen 8, 103, 114, 193 see also cesspit emptiers non-naturals 82 nosology 81, 229 nyctalopia (night-blindness) 45, 56n.11 obscenity 11, 136, 147–8, 151, 156, 166, 175, 227, 235 Ode à l’occasion de la convalescence du Roi 156 Opéra-Comique 146 Orpheus 327 ossuary see Paris: ossuary osteology 300 oven 312, 325–6 paganism 315 pain 1–2, 9, 17, 47, 65, 71–6, 81, 85–93, 113, 276, 302, 312–13, 320, 322, 324 paper 9, 10, 49, 128–44, 159, 167 price of 130 toilet paper see bumfodder waste paper 129–33 wrapping 131

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paper mills 128, 135 parade 145, 147–51 Paris 7, 8, 23, 27, 43, 44 Arcis 50 Belleville 37 Bicêtre 29 Bièvre 26, 43 Butte aux Cailles 25 Buttes Chaumont 25 Chaillot 25 Faubourg Saint-Antoine 32 Faubourg Saint-Germain 45 Faubourg Saint-Marcel 54 Hôtel-Dieu 29 Île des Cygnes 53 Gros Cailloux 53 Marais 49 Ménilmontant 25, 35 Métropolitain 24, 37 Meudon 26 Montfaucon 41n.27, 43, 49, 52–3 Montmartre 25 Montrouge (or Mont-Rouge) 25, 31, 33 Montsouris 25, 35 Notre-Dame 26, 54 ossuary 30, 31, 33 Pré Saint-Gervais 37 Roman aqueduct 35, 36 Roman baths (Cluny) 36, 49 Saints Innocents 29, 30, 31, 33, 48, 49 see also cemeteries Seine 25, 35, 50 Tombe-Issoire 30 underground 23, 24, 35, 37, 47, 49 underground map and atlas 25, 28 Vaugirard 50, 53 wandering in 23 see also catacombs; sewers parody 147, 151, 193, 197–202, 209–10, 214–20 Parsons, T. 1–2, 4 passions 75, 82–3

Paterson, S. 132 pathological cabinet 34 paunch 209–23, 277, 281–5 Payen, A. 50 Pepys, S. 106, 110, 129 performance 146, 154, 263, 264 peritonitis 324 petit Souper à la Parisienne, un 296 petrified trees 35 phallus 232, 237, 280 physiognomy 162, 239, 277 physionotrace 277, 288 pilgrimage 313, 318 Pinson, A.-P. 302 Piron, A. 145–6, 157, 194 piss, pissing 109, 119n.5, 328 see also urine Plagnol-Diéval, M.-E. 145 Plantinga, C. 240 Pliny the Elder 172 plumbism 47 Plutarch 306 Poirson, M. 145 politeness 5, 6, 214, 217–18, 257, 263, 264 Pope, Alexander 104, 199 Sequel to the Dunciad, A 136 Portal, A. 47 Porter, R. 62–3, 103 potbelly 210–11, 279, 289 Poudrette 52 pregnancy 67, 301, 318, 329n.11 printing 130 prison 31, 32, 49, 110, 163, 179, 297, 299, 313–14, 326 privy 9–10, 101–5, 107, 111–14, 116, 117, 118n.4, 143n.22, 151 see also bog-house; latrine; toilet progress 254–5 purging 83–4, 138, 170–4, 179, 211, 228–9, 238, 245, 276, 281, 286 putrefaction 43–6, 49, 177

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quarries 26, 27, 28, 31, 32, 34, 38n.5, 47 Inspectorate of the Quarries 35 Rabelais, F. 134, 138, 145, 148, 155 Raft of the Medusa, The 297, 307 rags 10, 50, 128, 130, 264, 285 rag-pickers 49, 50 Rambuteau, C.-P. Barthelot de 33 Ramsay, A. 258 readers and reading 10, 80–1, 93, 116, 128–31, 138, 141n.12, 146, 152–3, 159, 162, 164, 166, 169–71, 175, 177–80, 199, 200, 209, 217, 228, 235–6, 238, 242, 250n.61, 323 reason 5, 85, 93, 235 Réaumur, R. A. 64 recycling 50–1, 128, 131, 133, 139 regimen see diet Remède à la mode, le 150–1 repulsion 239, 322 Reynolds, J. 255 Richardson, S. 256 Pamela 117, 242 rituals 323, 324 Rizzoni, N. 154 Robespierre, M. 299 Roche, D. 43 Romans 315 Rowlands, R. 323 Royal Academy 255 Rufina 326 rural areas 108, 311 Sade, D. A. F. 153 sadism 322 sadness 87, 91, 93 Saint-Aubin, C.-G. de 14 saints 311–27 Saints Innocents see Paris: Saint Innocents saltpetre 44, 49, 51–2, 55 Salvage, J.-G. 305

satire 9, 10, 13, 201–2, 135–6 graphic 252, 273–90 medical 150, 160 Saturn Devouring his Son 296 sausage 7, 54, 61n.64, 148, 318 Sawney 101–3, 106, 110, 115–17 Sawney in the BogHouse 101–2, 110, 115–16 scabies 29 Scarron, P. 148, 210, 243 scatology 6, 9, 10, 13–15, 102–3, 110, 116–17, 145, 150, 152, 161, 165, 181n.8, 193, 198, 211, 281 scatological plays 17, 146–7, 149, 153–6 school of art 255, 256 see also Classe de la Littérature et des Beaux Arts Schutz, F. M. 252 Scotland 101–3, 115–17 see also Sawney scurvy 29 Seine see Paris: Seine self-observation 2, 82 see also diagnosis: self-diagnosis sensations 7, 81, 84, 85, 87, 89–90, 322 sensibility 5, 227–8, 231, 237–40, 245, 302 sensitivity 9, 91, 107, 111, 164 sentimentality see sensibility serpentine line 161, 260 sewage plants 43, 49, 52–4, 60n.46 sewers 23, 35, 43, 46, 51, 104–5, 117, 139, 313 sexuality 2, 12, 15, 228, 241, 243 see also desire Shadwell, T. 135 Shaftesbury, A. Ashley-Cooper, 3rd Earl of 258 Sherman, W. H. 129 shit 102, 106, 108, 136, 137, 138, 145, 193, 219 see also excrement Sim, S. 15

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Sirop-au-cul see Grandval, C.-F. Racot de skatole 55 slaughterhouses 44, 54 slurry 52–3 smell 7, 29, 43, 50, 55, 88, 104–5, 108, 111–12, 152, 192, 201, 196, 239–40 see also emanations; stench smelters 50 Smith, P. 5–6 Smollett, T. 6, 228 sociability 5, 230, 237 Société Royale de Médecine 46 Sömmering, S. 297 Spain 43, 54 see also chorizo factories Spallanzani, L. 68 Spectator, The 116, 131, 255, 256 spleen 15, 83, 230, 244 St Agapit 314, 315, 320, 322 St Agatha 322 St Apollonia 322 St Clair, W. 129, 131 St Erasmus 276, 314–15, 318, 320, 321, 322, 325 St Leonard 314 St Lié 322 St Mammès 314, 315, 317, 318, 319, 320–4, 326–7 St Margaret 314 St Sebastian 320 Stafford, B. 13, 294 stage directions 152 Stallybrass, P. 6 Stamp Act 130 stench 7, 9, 43, 105, 111 see also emanation; smell Sterne, L. Tristram Shandy 253 Sentimental Journey, A 131, 142n.13 stomach 1, 2, 8, 15, 17, 62–76, 83, 86–7, 89, 90 Stone, L. 9, 104 Stone, Major W. 131 Sue, J.-J. 297, 303–4

Susini, C. 302 swamp 45 Swift, J. 6, 11, 69, 103, 130, 159, 167, 174, 194, 195, 199, 223n.4, 239–40, 299 Sydenham, T. 3, 230 symbolic 6, 7, 11, 13, 14, 16, 139, 311, 313–14, 323, 324, 326 syphilis 73, 163, 166, 179, 186n.59 tanners 44 tasseography 179–80 taste 138, 220–1, 227–42, 258 taxonomy 16, 197, 234, 277 Temple, W. J. 131 Terror see French Revolution: Terror theatre 193, 197, 211, 252 theatre of cruelties 323 Théâtre de société 147, 149, 154, 156 Théâtre-Français 155 Théâtre-Libre Ancien 148 Théâtre-Libre d’Antoine 148 Theodotus 326 Theseus 326 Thillaye, A. 84 Thiroux de Crosne, L. 30 Thomas, K. 191 Thouret, M. A. 31–3, 48 Tissot, S. 9, 80–97, 277 toilet 9–10, 109 see also bog-house; latrine; privy Tom Jones 179 torture 106, 179, 235, 297, 315, 320, 322, 326 tourism 33, 34 trade 128, 130, 131 Trédaniel 324 trident 315, 322, 326 tripe 7, 212, 215 tripe merchants 49, 53–4 tripe oil 53 Trombetta, P. J. 134 tunnels 24, 313, 325

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turd 114–15, 137–8, 145, 152, 155–6 Turgot, A. R. J. 35 Turnbull, G. 133 ugliness 240, 258, 265–6 umbilical cord 325 underworlds 6, 7, 13, 139, 326 urine 47, 51, 112, 138, 164, 183n.20, 312, 313 see also piss, pissing Urquhart, T. 134 Van Helmont, J. B. 66, 192, 276 vapours 43, 46–7, 50, 81, 84, 88–92 Vaucanson, J. 3, 4, 18n.7 venereal disease 45, 163, 260 see also syphilis Vesalius 301 Vessaire, M. de (pseud.) see Caquire vice 12, 227–8, 245, 258, 287 Vicq d’Azyr, F. 47 Vierzehnheiligen 320, 321 Vigarello, G. 275–6 Vigée-Lebrun, E. 301–2 Villeneuve 300 violence 89, 154, 213, 285, 297, 300, 307, 323 visual culture 3, 5, 9–12, 15, 101, 129, 252, 254–7, 263, 266–7, 279, 285–6, 290, 294–5, 297, 299, 305–6, 320, 323 vitalism 8, 66, 234, 276, 295, 297–8, 303, 305, 307 Voltaire, F. M. Arouet 147, 149, 154, 192, 198 vomiting 12, 68, 215, 220, 222, 252, 254

waste 5, 6, 8, 9, 50–1, 55, 128, 145, 164–5, 167, 169, 172, 184n.36, 186n.51, 229, 236, 312 waste water 35, 46, 49, 103–4 wastebooks 162 see also paper water 25, 31, 35–7, 44–7, 49, 54–5, 67, 104–5, 109, 111, 331n.34 boiling water 320 sea-water 70 wax models 294, 301–3, 305, 309n.29 see also anatomical Venuses Webster, C. 70 White, A. 6 Whytt, R. 70 Willis, T. 83 winch 318, 320, 322 Winckelmann, J. J. 274, 288 wind 7, 11, 82, 88–92, 138, 153, 155 see also aerial body; fart; flatulence Wollstonecraft, M. 75 womb 13, 14, 16, 114, 234, 311–13, 326, 328 women writing 129, 136, 137 Woodward, J. 3, 103 worms 28, 66, 312, 324 wound 29, 213, 276, 306, 312, 315, 318, 320 Yorick 131, 167, 231 Young, S. 260 Zaïre see Voltaire, F. M. Arouet Zimmermann, J. G. 171

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Plate 1 Underground map of Montparnasse cemetery, extracted from the atlas drawn and supervised by Eugène de Fourcy, Atlas souterrain de la ville de Paris (Paris: Mourgues Frères, 1859)

Plate 2 ‘Life among the dead!’ (published in May 1822), one of the twenty-one coloured engravings of scenes from real life drawn by George Cruickshank for Life in Paris; or the Rambles, Sprees, and Amours of Dick Wildfire, Squire Jenkins, and Captain O’Shuffleton, with the Whimsical Adventures of the Halibut Family, and Other Eccentric Characters in the French Metropolis (London: printed for John Cumberland, 1828)

Plate 3 Sawney in the Bog-house, 1745

Plate 4 William Hogarth, Francis Matthew Schutz in his Bed, c.1755–60. Oil on canvas, 63 × 75.5 cm

Plate 5 James Gillray, Un petit Souper, à la Parisienne; – or – A Family of Sans-culotts refreshing after the fatigues of the day, 1792. Hand-coloured etching

Plate 6 Anonymous, Le Dégraisseur patriote, 1789. Hand-coloured etching, 14 × 23 cm

Plate 7 Anonymous, Un monstre à trois têtes désignant les trois états de l’aristocratie, anonymous, 1790. Coloured etching

Plate 8 Gautier d’Agoty Exposition anatomique de la structure du corps … (Marseille: Vial, 1759), anatomical plate

Plate 9 Albrecht Dürer, self-portrait, sick, 1509–11. Drawing, 118 × 108 mm

Plate 10 Pierre-Narcisse Guérin, La Mort de Caton d’Utique. Colour plate, 1797

Plate 11 Dieric Bouts, Triptych of St Erasmus, 1464

Plate 12 St Mammès, eighteenth-century plaster statue. Museum of Pithiviers, Loiret, France. The intestines and their circumvolutions have been cropped by a moralist priest