#bouzingo

Prouvaire - The Medievalist

My main inspiration for Prouvaire's fit was this description from Graham Robb's Victor Hugo, in which he describes an outfit worn by one of Hugo's supporters to the opening night of his play Hernani in 1829:

One frightening specimen wore a broad-rimmed hat, pale green trousers with black velvet stripes, vast lapels and - after several sessions with a baffled tailor - a doublet, padded like a breastplate, in purplish-red satin. An important nuance. Bright red would have had a political connotation, whereas the doublet stood for pure, militant aestheticism. This was Théophile Gautier and his famous 'red waistcoat', which was neither red nor a waistcoat (waistcoats were bourgeois).

Genuinely one of the most insane outfit descriptions I've ever read and I knew I had to draw it. I looked at this post by Pilf for some photo references, mostly for the doublet (see below). I decided to go more red than purple because Prouvaire is actually a Republican unlike Gautier. I also added lapels to the doublet. I only realised after I'd drawn it that maybe the lapels were coming from a shirt he was wearing underneath. I also have no idea if 19th century medievalist would wear a cravat under his doublet. I opted to go without which does leave his neck scandalously bare but I'm going to call it a fashion statement.

For his hair and facial hair, I referenced the above portrait of Theophile Gautier from 1839, which is a little bit late but as far as I can tell he seemed to keep that severe side part for almost all of his life. I actually have no idea where the soul patch came from but the moustache is close enough. Prouvaire was the drawing I did first and also the one I like the least but he does undeniably look like a hot mess which is what I was aiming for so I'll take it.

Bahorel - The Bouzingot

I had come across the term bouzingo (or bousingo, I just picked one) before but I have to admit almost 100% of my references for Bahorel came from this other Pilf post, for more information go read that. I knew I needed to give Bahorel the iconic Republican scarlet waistcoat but I was also compelled by plaids starting to be in. I think Bahorel would be a pioneer in that regard. My main reference was the below illustration from George Sand's Horace but I also drew from the incredible Robespierre waistcoat as well (both found in Pilf's post). Though its possible I went a little hard on the lapels. I also think I accidentally made him look a little like the chad meme which makes me want to draw him next to Marius as the virgin Bonapartist vs chad Republican.

Courfeyrac - the dandy

I dithered over whether I should even use the term dandy because I have no idea if it was even commonly used in early 19C France but the Wikipedia page for dandy has a French fashion plate from 1831 which is good enough for me, I'm not getting paid for this. Apart from that, I was pretty well set up to draw a fashionable guy thanks to my main hobby of scrolling through the V&A's fashion plate archives. Though I do think he's kinda being outmogged by Bahorel, sorry Courfeyrac. My main direct reference was the guy on the right in the fashion plate below from 1832 (which I also used as pose references for all three men). I particularly liked the purple patterned waistcoat and I basically modelled everything else after that. There's no particular symbolism behind the jewel tones, I just think they look cool.

I also used the above illustration of Alexandre Dumas from 1829 which I'd been wanted to draw anyway. I mostly used his hair on Courfeyrac, it's an interesting example of how the popular style of the day (short but with lots of curl and volume) could have been achieved on afro textured hair. I also added his pocket watch and tried to emulate the looser fit his clothes have but I'm not sure how well I achieved it, I'm still working on rendering fabric properly. I also increased the lapel size because I have a problem.

Hugo’s version here is, of course:

From time to time, parties re-sole their old insults. In 1832, the word bousingot formed the interim between the word jacobin, which had become obsolete, and the word demagogue which has since rendered such excellent service.

“ Demagogue”  being something Hugo himself had been called by this point, and , as suggested, right in line with “Jacobin” -- it means, well , “ the reds” , and the cold war US sense of “ the reds” isn’t a bad way of translating it, either-- a term  that can mean either genuine political radicals or just someone a conservative doesn’t like for “ lifestyle”  reasons :/ Either way, fair game for a little police brutality!

More confirmation of them as Favorite Police Targets from George Sand in Horace,  via the novel’s main narrator, who is...left-sympathetic but politically more or less apathetic, like a more self-assured Grantaire, really (translation Zack Rogow, bolding/italics mine):

...They always find themselves naturally carried away by riots.  The youngest go just to observe, others go to take part; in those days almost everyone threw himself into it for a moment and then quickly withdrew, after having delivered and received a good few blows.   This activity didn't change things on the surface, and the only alteration produced by these efforts was a doubling of the fear of the shopkeepers and brutal cruelty on the part of the police. But not a single person who so casually disturbed public order back then need blush at the present hour for having had a few days of youthful warmth.   When youth cannot demonstrate the greatness and courage of its heart except by attacking that  society, that society must be evil indeed! 

They were called Bousingots because of the sailor hats of that name, made of shiny leather, which they adopted as their rallying sign.  Later they wore a scarlet headpiece in the form of a  military stocking cap ,  with a black velvet band all around it.  Pointed out again and again, to the police,  and attacked in the street by stool pigeons, they next adopted a gray  hat, but they were no less frequently rounded up and mistreated.  Their conduct has been much denounced; but I  don't think the  government has been able to  justify that of its own officers,  veritable assasssins who beat to death a good number of Bousingots while shopkeepers looked on, showing not the slightest indignation or pity. 

The name Bousingots stuck.  When le Figaro , which kept up a teasing and caustic opposition under the loyal management of M. Delatouche, changed hands, and little by little changed its stripes, the name Bousingot became an insult; after that there was no mockery too bitter or unjust with which to smear them.  But the true Bousingots remained unmoved...

The narrator’s description of a  “ true Bousingot”, his friend Jean Laraviniere,   seems familiar, as a personality:

...his face was pleasant, his  appearance original, as were his wits.  He was generous as he was brave, and that was no small measure.  His instinctual combativeness, as it's called in phrenology, drew him impetuously into every brawl, and he always brought along a cohort of intrepid friends, fanaticized by his coolheaded heroism and his bellicose joyfulness... He was a blusterer, a carouser, if you will; but what a loyal personality, what magnanimous devotion! He had  all the eccentricities of his role, complete recklessness about his impetuosity, all the swagger of his position.  You might have laughed at him; but you would have been  forced to love him. He was so good, so naive in his convictions, so devoted to his friends!

It doesn't sound too far from 

...a good-natured mortal, who kept bad company, brave, a spendthrift, prodigal, and to the verge of generosity, talkative, and at times eloquent, bold to the verge of effrontery; the best fellow possible; he had daring waistcoats, and scarlet opinions; a wholesale blusterer, that is to say, loving nothing so much as a quarrel, unless it were an uprising; and nothing so much as an uprising, unless it were a revolution; always ready to smash a window-pane, then to tear up the pavement, then to demolish a government, just to see the effect of it...a man of caprice, was scattered over numerous cafes; the others had habits, he had none. He sauntered. To stray is human. To saunter is Parisian. In reality, he had a penetrating mind and was more of a thinker than appeared to view.

He served as a connecting link between the Friends of the A B C and other still unorganized groups...

right? 

So there's an image of A Bouzingo as a character, at least:  loud, leftist to a point that would seem absurd to Reasonable, Moderate types, violent in that cause , a constant target/enemy of the police.  This seems consistent across sympathetic writers; even le Figaro, in the mocking article The Red Bouzingo, gives them the same general assessment, albeit from an unsympathetic POV:

The bousingot is inexhaustible, he will leave his mark like the camaraderie, the piqueurs and the jeunes-frances.  If one were still writing books, one would put him in the books; if one still had theaters, one would drag him over the theaters by his beard and by his hat.  The bousingot belongs to painting, statuary, to trestle-stages, to the Cockaigne pole, to Chinese shadows, to blockades at the intersection, he’s the sea-foam of politics, the flower of the ridiculous, the prototype of all exaggeration.  By nature he’s a being of 93 in politics, honorably refined for his fashion, a royal bird for his habits.  We’re waiting for Poulaine slippers.

Again: dangerously republican, dramatic to absurdity ; yet,even le Figaro concludes “ They’re not evildoers. “ 

And of course Philothee O’Neddy, the only person I’ve got quotes from who can and does actually claim the title for himself, says they were, rather intentionally, “laughable” in their exaggeration,but sincere in their politics.  

..and of course, that above all else, they were  bouzingo, no S, no T.  Ah well, what message is ever perfectly preserved across the ages? XD