🌿Maria🌿

The story of Robespierre using tobacco I remembered from Peter McPhee’s biography, where he writes the following:

[Robespierre] is said to have commented to his tobacco-seller, Mme Carvin, early in Thermidor that ”we’ll never get out of this mess; I’m worried sick (bourrelé); I’m going crazy (j’en ai la tête perdue).”

Peter you missed a golden opportunity to write ”I’m losing my head” instead of ”I’m going crazy.”

McPhee cited Alphonse Ésquiros’ Histoire des Montagnards (1851) as his source for this. Checking that book, it can however be discovered that Madame Carvin only gets described as ”a tobacco seller,” not ”Robespierre’s tabacco seller,” seemingly destroying the claim that Robespierre used it (even though I suppose it’s not impossible he went there to both talk and buy tobacco for himself).

At the end of a century which had profaned love, Robespierre distinguished himself by the purity of his morals and by the delicacy of his procedures towards a sex, which the literature of the time regarded as born almost solely for pleasure. Above all, he respected the marital bed. Attracted by habit, he went every day to a tobacco seller, Madame Carvin, who was very pretty. He liked to chat with her, but without ever deviating from the most respectful forms. His face expressed sadness when he spoke of the affairs of the day. ”We will never get out of this mess; I'm worried sick; I’m going crazy.”

Esquiros does however not cite any source for this anecdote, nor does he mention any madame Carvin under the section titled ”my witnesses” so not sure where he got this information from… 

As for if any other revolutionary used tobacco, I currently only know of Philippeaux, who while in prison wrote the following to his wife: