vieillesmaisons

There are five ground floor rooms that make up the museum, with reproductions of many portraits, documents and other objects. The first room is now a library and playroom for the local school:

The reproductions include a letter to Desmoulins, his baptismal record, and his sketch of the head of Antinous

And then we broke into the Robespierre high-school to see the ugly bust in the courtyard (since we couldn't see the ugly bust in the house, or the ugly bust in the town hall). Well, @mali-umkin the brave broke into the school...then I followed 😅.

We stood in front of an important wooden door talking about pigeons

We sat complaining to the ARBR on the doorstep of Max's house

And talked about travelling in time while the people working at the Hôtel Dubois de Fosseux looked at us curiously

Also we NEVER found the door to the Palais de Justice so we supposed Maximilien used to get in by climbing the windows

- I've learned that Elizabeth get married again and got other children? ( with whom she was married to? )

- And for the other duplay members, where do they live ? (They lived together? I mean maurice with children until he passed away)

I tried to search but I wasn't lucky.

Élisabeth, the first of the (surviving) family members to get out of prison (on December 8 1794) at first went to live at 148 rue Neuve-du-Luxembourg (today rue Cambon), which was the same place she and her husband had lived before his death and her arrest. On January 9 1799 she got remarried to Lebas’ younger brother Charles-Louis-Joseph (1772-1829) and they had two children together — Charles and Caroline. After the death of her second husband, Élisabeth first moved in with her oldest son Philippe on 30 rue de Condé and then from there to her daughter Caroline in Rouen. There she remained up until her death in 1859.

As for the other family members, we know Maurice Duplay owned three houses besides the famous one on rue Saint-Honoré — one on rue Mathurin, one on rue d’Angoulême and one on rue de l’Arcade. On September 18 1795 we do however find the following decree:

House in Paris, rue de l'Arcade, n° 5, sold by Maurice Duplay, carpenter in Paris, in his name and on behalf of Élisabeth-Éléonore Duplay, his daughter, widow Lebas, Jacques-Maurice Duplay, Éléonore Duplay and Marguerite-Victoire Duplay, daughters of full age, and Antoine Auzat, director of military transport, and Marie-Sophie Duplay his wife, ordinarily residing in Brussels, for 400,000 livres.

Through a note written by Jacques-Maurice Duplay in 1815, we learn that his father had at that point also sold the other three houses (confirmed again by the inventory left after Maurice’s death in 1820) though I haven’t been able to discover exactly when.

Finally, on February 2 1797 we find a certificate stating that citoyenne Duplay (Éléonore) lives on rue Honoré, opposite rue Florentin.

Danton’s apartment on Rue des Cordeliers. From Paris Révolutionnaire, G. Lenotre, 1895

And his house in Arcis:

The Duplessis house in Bourg-la-Reine. From Claretie’s Camille Desmoulins: Ouvrage Illustré

A young Lucile negotiates a visit:

« Monsieur Duplessis, dans son cabinet, au coin du feu » : « Ma sœur et moi, nous savons que tu dois aller à la campagne un des jours de cette semaine. Te souviens-tu, qu'il y a plus de quinze jours que tu nous avais promis de nous y mener ? Tu m'as dit, qu'il t'en souvienne, que si j'apprenais Zaire [de Voltaire], tu me donnerais tout ce que je voudrais.

J'en sais déjà presque la moitié, papa, et je meurs d'envie de voir les petits cochons. Ma sœur se joint à moi pour te demander la même grâce et pour te présenter le respectueux attachement avec lequel nous sommes, mon cher papa, tes très humbles servantes. Lucile et Adèle? »

Photos of the Duplessis property at Bourg-la-Reine by Eugène Atget, 1901.

I am curious about the discrepancies between the Claretie drawing of the well and the one photographed by Atget (the photo is from 1901 and Claretie’s book was published in 1908). Unless there were two wells, the drawing is probably incorrect. According to this blog entry, Philippe Lejeune found the remnants of the well in 1990’s, but the person who wrote the entry wasn’t able to find it on their visit. So I can add the Duplessis well to my list of the frev architectural mysteries.

Atget is a really interesting artist. He started out as a photographer that provided reference images for artists, but shifted focus to documenting old Paris during the rapid modernization at the turn of the century. I recently saw some of his photographs of 1890’s Paris alleys on display.

The MoMA has 2,874 of his photos online and they’re worth looking at if you’re interested in the history of Paris. There’s everything from dog shearers and storefronts to the Carnavalet.

Here is what Philippe Lejeune had to say about Clartie and Atget in the 1990’s.