Le Figaro
- Lætitia Bonaparte
- A Behind-the-Scenes Figure
- Crainquebille the Lessor
Le Figaro's front page of 28 October 1926 carried two signed portraits of public figures and a satirical column on a Paris street novelty. Paul de Cassagnac paid tribute to Princess Lætitia Bonaparte, presenting her as the very embodiment of the Napoleonic line in her looks, her bearing, her mind and her heart. Lucien Romier portrayed Alfred Mascuraud as a backstage operator who, by swinging small and middling shopkeepers to the Left at decisive moments, ensured the Radicals' long hold on power after the Opportunists. Régis Gignoux mocked a police-prefecture measure that allowed costermongers, now bound to official prices, to rent out the shafts, boxes and wheels of their handcarts as advertising space.
Translation
Lætitia Bonaparte
By her features, her bearing, by the qualities of her mind and heart, Princess Lætitia Bonaparte was truly of her race. She summed it up; she embodied it. Napoleonic she was, to the very tips of her fingers.
A Behind-the-Scenes Figure
It was Mascuraud who secured the accession to power and the prolonged reign of the Radicals, as successors to the Opportunists. In the decisive trials, he threw the unstable masses of small and middling commerce onto the side of the Left.
Crainquebille the Lessor
Advertising will come to us at eye level, on the little carts pulled by the costermongers. The Prefect of Police wished to give some compensation to Crainquebille, who is now forced to sell "his veg" and his fruit at official prices: he has allowed him to lease out his shafts, his box and even his wheels.
Context
Mascuraud's committee and the Radicals' electoral base
Alfred Mascuraud died in Paris on 27 October 1926, the day before this issue appeared, which is why Lucien Romier devoted a front-page portrait to him. Mascuraud founded the Comité républicain du commerce, de l'industrie et de l'agriculture, popularly called the "comité Mascuraud"; sources give its founding year as either 1899 or 1898. The committee became a very important lobbying relay for small employers and shopkeepers who backed Radical positions, and Mascuraud also served as an electoral financier of the Radical party. From 1905 until his death in 1926 he sat in the Senate for the Seine. These facts fit Romier's picture of a man who steered small and middling commerce towards the Left. The stronger claim that Mascuraud personally secured the Radicals' rise and long rule after the Opportunists is Romier's own assessment, not a measured result.
Princess Lætitia Bonaparte's lineage
Princess Maria Letizia (Lætitia) Bonaparte died on 25 October 1926, three days before Cassagnac's tribute was printed. She was one of three children of Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte and Princess Maria Clotilde of Savoy, which made her a great-niece of the Emperor Napoleon on her father's side and a member of the House of Savoy's family circle on her mother's. Cassagnac's insistence that she was "of her race" and Napoleonic to her fingertips echoes an older perception: by her late teens some contemporaries already considered her beautiful and, in appearance, a "real Bonaparte". The column extends that family resemblance from her face and bearing to her mind and heart, turning a physical likeness into a portrait of her whole character.
The 1888 marriage to her uncle, the former king of Spain
In 1888 Lætitia married Prince Amadeo, Duke of Aosta, her uncle and the former king of Spain, who had abdicated the Spanish throne on 11 February 1873 for lack of popular support. The announcement caused a great scandal at the Italian court, since he was 23 years older and her mother's brother, but the necessary papal dispensation was obtained. The match was the first marriage of a Bonaparte into a reigning house of Europe since 1859, and it came close to reviving French hopes of restoring the Bonaparte dynasty to power. That episode helps explain why a French paper in 1926 still presented her above all as a Napoleonic figure, although she had married into the House of Savoy.
Crainquebille, Anatole France's street vendor
Régis Gignoux could use the name Crainquebille without explanation because it came from Anatole France's 1901 story L'Affaire Crainquebille. In it, an ageing vegetable seller who has worked his cart in Les Halles for over 40 years is hassled by a policeman who tells him to move on, and is arrested, supposedly for swearing at the officer. Jacques Feyder's 1922 silent film had recently put the story on screen. By 1926 the name could therefore stand for any Paris costermonger at the mercy of police rules, and Gignoux uses it that way: his Crainquebille is the vendor whom the Prefect of Police first held to official prices and then allowed to lease his shafts, box and wheels to advertisers. The details of that prefectoral measure come from Gignoux's column itself.
Original
LÆTITIA BONAPARTE
Par ses traits, son maintien, par les qualités de l'esprit et du cœur; la princesse Lætitia Bonaparte était bien de sa race. Elle la résumait; elle l'incarnait. Napoléonienne, elle l'était jusqu'au bout des ongles.
Un personnage de coulisse
C'est Mascuraud qui assura l'avènement au pouvoir et le règne prolongé des radicaux, succédant aux opportunistes. Dans les épreuves décisives, il jeta du côté de la gauche les masses instables du petit et du moyen commerce.
L'affermateur Crainquebille
La publicité viendra à nous à hauteur d'homme, sur les petites voitures que traînent les marchands des quatresaisons. M. le préfet de police a voulu assurer une compensation à Crainquebille contraint de vendre «sa légume» et ses fruits aux prix officiels: il lui a permis d'affermer dès brancards, sa caisse et même ses roues.