Madame Roland: A Biographical StudyTarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
History
Madame Roland: A Biographical Study
Tarbell, Ida M. (Ida Minerva)
France -- History -- Revolution, 1789-1799; Roland, Madame, 1754-1793
After the death of M. and Madame Roland, Eudora was taken in charge by
Bosc, who, in 1795, published the first edition of Madame Roland’s
Memoirs, to help in her support. Legend has it that Bosc even wanted to
marry the child. Later a marriage was arranged for her with a brother of
Champagneux of Lyons, the old friend of the Rolands.
After the Revolution, Madame Champagneux recovered her father’s
property, and Le Clos, the family estate, near Villefranche, came into
her possession. This property is still in the family, being owned by one
of Madame Champagneux’s granddaughters, Madame Cécile Marillier of
Paris.
All of the papers of Madame Roland, which had been confided to Bosc,
were given by him to Eudora, and she seems to have experienced a certain
resentment towards her mother when she found that she had told posterity
so frankly that her only child lacked in depth of sentiment and keenness
of intellect. This feeling only intensified her admiration for her
father, and when Lamartine’s _History of the Girondins_ appeared, she
was deeply indignant at the way in which he belittled M. Roland in order
to make the figure of Madame Roland more brilliant. It was with the hope
that Lamartine’s influence could be counteracted, that she urged a
friend, a grand-nephew of Bosc, M. P. Faugère by name, to take
possession of all the family papers, and prepare a work which would
justify the memory of Roland. M. Faugère was already busy with a new
edition of the Memoirs, but he promised Madame Champagneux to do the
work on M. Roland as soon as that was finished. The Memoirs he
completed, and his edition is by far the best published; but though he
began the study of Roland he died before finishing it. The family papers
remained in the possession of Madame Faugère, who, in 1888, turned over
the most important of them to the Bibliothèque Nationale.
Madame Champagneux lived to be nearly seventy-seven years old, dying in
Paris July 19, 1858. The last years of her life were clouded by the
death of one of her daughters, a loss from which she is said never fully
to have recovered.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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