The Great Cat Massacre, and Other Episodes in French Cultural History by Robert Darnton

Author:Robert Darnton [Darnton, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465010486
Amazon: B00850ZMF0
Barnesnoble: B00850ZMF0
Goodreads: 7339665
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

In short, d‘Hémery took stock of the literary world with sympathy, humor, and an appreciation of literature itself. He shared some of the values held by the people under his surveillance, but he did not waver in his loyalty to church and state. Nothing could be more anachronistic than to picture him as a modern cop or to interpret his police work as witch-hunting. It really represents something less familiar and more interesting: information gathering in the age of absolutism. No one expected to uncover revolutionary conspiracies in the mid-eighteenth century, when the Revolution was unthinkable; but many bureaucrats in the Bourbon monarchy wanted to learn as much as possible about the kingdom—about the number of its inhabitants, the volume of its trade, and the output of its presses. D’Hémery belonged to a line of rationalizing officials that extended from Colbert and Vauban to Turgot and Necker. But he operated at a modest level—an inspector of the book trade belonged a notch or two below an inspector of manufactures—and he built up his files on a smaller scale than some of the surveys undertaken by ministers and intendants.7

The texts of the reports contain some evidence about the way they were written. They often include remarks such as “See the attached sheets” or “See his dossier,” which indicate that d‘Hémery kept a file on each writer. Although the dossiers have disappeared, the references to them in the reports reveal the kind of information they contained. They included clippings from journals, prospectuses from booksellers, notes that d’Hémery made when he went on his rounds, records of interrogations in the Bastille, letters from authors who wanted to ingratiate themselves or to undermine their enemies, and reports from spies in the hire of the Lieutenant-Général de Police. Some of the spies had dossiers of their own. The report on Charles de Fieux, chevalier de Mouhy, shows how they worked: “He is a spy for M. Berryer [the Lieutenant-Général de Police], to whom he furnishes a daily report on everything he sees in the cafés, theaters, and public gardens.” One can also find traces of Mouhy’s activities in other reports, such as the one on Mathieu-François Pidansat de Mairobert: “He has just been arrested and taken to the Bastille for having distributed some [verse] attacking the king and Mme la marquise [de Pompadour] in cafés. Some was even found in his pockets upon his arrest. It was the chevalier de Mouhy who denounced him.” Denunciations also arrived from jilted lovers, angry sons, and estranged wives. Booksellers and printers produced a steady flow of information about the sources of their copy—and especially the copy of their competitors. Landladies and cures supplied further details, and at the bottom of many dossiers d’Hémery could find scraps collected from neighborhood gossips, not all of it malicious. Thus Etienne-André Philippe de Prétot: “As to his conduct, it is fairly good. He is married and has children, which forces him to be orderly. He is well spoken of in his neighborhood.”

D‘Hémery culled through all this material before composing a report.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.