A Toast for this May Eve, 2025 (13-15 Floréal 223)

Tonight I made us Lobster Thermidor.  What is a thermidor?

Do you think it’s like a cuspidor?  Do you know what a cuspidor is?  It’s a spittoon, a receptacle to spit tobacco juice — from Portuguese cuspir, to spit; so I guess on that model a thermidor would be a heater maybe?

Or maybe it’s like a humidor, which you know is a cabinet to keep cigars humid; maybe it’s like a food warmer?

As it turns out, the name of this dish comes from a play; a play called Thermidor that scandalized fin-de-siècle Paris, and was shut down several times.  It was so notorious that the chef of a restaurant around the corner invented this dish, for patrons on their way to see the show.

But that doesn’t get us any closer; what was the play about?  Well, it was a play about events another hundred years in the past, at the end of the 18th century, in the late years of the French revolution, during what was called the “Thermidorian Reaction.”

Okay, but — what made this reaction “thermidorian?”

To understand that, first we have to recall that Republican France, in their zeal to do away with all superstition, all irrationality, all the remnants of the hierarchical past — the same impulse that led to the metric system in fact — discarded the Gregorian calendar, with its varying length months named after Roman gods and heroes, in favor of a new, rationalized, republican calendar of 12 months of equal length; and one of those months was “Thermidor,” the hot month, about July; and the “Thermidorian Reaction” began on 9 Thermidor 1794, what are called “the events of 9 Thermidor.”

The Republican calendar is mostly forgotten now; one of the only other places a reference to it is preserved is in the title of an essay by Karl Marx, The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which is a pretty baffling title until you know that “Brumaire” is another republican month.  Brume means “fog,” so it’s “the foggy month,” around November; and the 18th Brumaire  1799 is the date of the coup which ended the Republican period in France, in which Napoleon Bonaparte seized power.  On that day, Napoleon offered a couple leaders of the Republic to help them seize power, and then double-crossed them, in a “coup within a coup,” retaining power for himself, becoming Emperor and setting out upon many other adventures.

Marx’s essay is about events some 60 years later, when Napoleon’s nephew again seized power in France, having his own little “18th Brumaire” — and it is mainly remembered for the first paragraph, which has some great Marx bangers, including “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce” — which is the point of the whole essay.

Anyway, getting back to Thermidor — what is it that happened five years earlier, on 9 Thermidor, 1794?

To understand that, we have to remember what was happening before, which was called “the Terror.”  Revolutionary Maximilian Robespierre, who you probably remember from history class, began as a radically egalitarian member of parliament, who, in his fanatic defense of liberty, equality and fraternity, unleashed a reign of terror in which tens of thousands of citizens were publicly decapitated or died in prison. Robespierre’s secret police were called, with Orwellian panache, the Committee for Public Safety.

Now one of Robespierre’s best deputies was a man named Jean-Lambert Tallien, who was the representative of the Committee for Public Safety in the French port city of Bordeaux, who became known as the “butcher of Bordeaux” because of his enthusiasm for sending people to the guillotine … until he met a woman named Térézia Cabarrus; the hero of our story.

Cabarrus claimed to have been raised by a goat, but in fact she was the daughter of a Basque businessman, who married her at age 14 to a minor French aristocrat, who she detested, and she left him during the revolution, retiring to Bordeaux where she lived a double life, outwardly conventional but secretly helping, by hook or by crook, the steady stream of refugees from Paris who passed through Bordeaux attempting to escape the Terror by emigrating from France.

Cabarrus was evidently possessed of great personal magnetism, because when Tallien, the Butcher of Bordeaux, discovered her activities, instead of arresting her, they became lovers, and from that time on Tallien ceased his oppression of the people of Bordeaux, much to their relief.

Inevitably though, she was found out by Robespierre himself, who had her sent to the most notorious jail of the Republic, which was called La Force; where her lovely hair was hacked off short, and she was stripped of her luxurious bejeweled garments and forced to wear nothing but a simple cotton shift.  Robespierre apparently was also taken with her, because he tried to get her to denounce her lover, Tallien, and when she refused Robespierre ordered that every day she be brought a looking glass, so that she could see how her dignity and beauty had been brought low.

Now at the prison of La Force every morning the prisoners were gathered and a list of names was read:  The names of those prisoners who were going to be sent to the guillotine that day.  And on the day Térézia Cabarrus’s name was read she wrote a letter, which schoolchildren used to memorize, so significant were its effects on French history.

It was a letter to her lover, Jean-Lambert Tallien, and it said:  “A courageous man might be able to save my life, by toppling Robespierre, but I find myself condemned by your unworthy cowardice.”

Tallien received the letter, and upon reading it, he called a meeting of the National Assembly, at which he denounced Robespierre, and, because he was the first to dare to do so, others joined him, it sparked a general uprising, Robespierre was captured, and jailed, and eventually sent, himself, to the guillotine; and Térézia Cabarrus was released.

And that is what happened on 9 Thermidor.

After the end of the Terror, Cabarrus was a celebrity; the French called her Notre-Dame de Thermidor, Our Lady of Thermidor.  She went to the Jacobin Club, where the Terror had been planned and executed, and symbolically locked the doors.  William Pitt, the English Prime Minister, was there, and is supposed to have said “This woman could close the very gates of Hell itself.”

All this should put us in mind, not only of Marx’s dictum — “history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce” — but also of George Santayana’s famous saying, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Okay, we’re almost done, but there’s a coda.  After the end of the Republic Cabarrus became a fashion designer, spreading the latest fashions at her salon; she popularized what we today call the “empire waist” dress, which was a revolution in women’s wear, after the elaborate three piece corseted dresses popular before the Revolution.  And she commissioned a painting of herself, in the prison of La Force, hair cropped short, in what was now the latest style, and wearing a shift made not of simple homespun but of luxurious silk and muslin; first as tragedy, then as farce.

So, as we enjoy this delectable dish together, let us remember these events of so long ago; and especially Térézia Cabarrus, Our Lady of Thermidor, who could close the very gates of Hell itself.