Update: Persistence Pays

So. Apparently this is a picture of the home of M. Caruel Saint-Martin and Alexandrine. I just read that Château du Chesnay is an 18th century structure, remodeled by M. Caruel Saint-Marin in the early years of the 19th century. The original chateau, built in 1638 (the time of Louis XIV) was torn down, but this house still stands.

The reference goes on to say that this is where Gericault stayed when he came out to Versailles to study and sketch the horses, that, indeed, he lived here between 1812 and 1816 when he went off to Italy. He probably painted the portrait of his aunt on horseback here. Perhaps they rode together. It's the home where Alexandrine lived and was eventually confined. It exists. I can't quite get over that—that it exists and I've apparently identified it. I'm not certain about the home in Montmartre. I have a feeling the information I found pointing to that might have been in error, might have been  confusion around Gericault's studio at 23 Rue des Martyrs. I don't know, yet. I'm still researching all that.

What I do know is there's a garden behind the chateau with a fountain of a river god and… Pegasus. Pégase, the mythic horse that has captured the imagination of my main character, Tori, in the opening of the book. In other words, seems I've found something here that circles back around. Magic.

One more little piece that makes me happy. I'm reading Stendhal and I'm fascinated, charmed. He's a very good writer. And I've just come to a chapter that opens with a quote from Lord Byron's Don Juan.

And then there were sighs, the deeper for suppression,

And stolen glances, sweeter for the theft,

And burning blushes, though for no transgression

Stendhal quoting Lord Byron. I love it. Stendhal met Byron in 1816 in Milan, Italy. Byron was famous, Stendhal was not, but they were moving in the same literati circles and Stendhal spoke English. At first, Stendhal reports, Byron was haughty, Stendhal timid. But the fact that Stendhal had been Napoleon's secretary for a time drew the poet in. He wanted to know about Napoleon. From what I know of Byron, that makes perfect sense to me—Byron was fascinated by Napoleon. Stendhal says Byron was "put quite out of humor" when Stendhal recounted Napoleon speaking eloquently to his troops.

Stendhal met with Byron over a period of some months and wrote that whenever Byron was present "there was the finest conversation which I have ever known in my life; a volcano of new ideas and generous sentiments." Byron, he said, was "the most amiable monster that I have ever seen; in poetry, in literary discussions, he is simple as a child; he is the opposite of an academician. When that singular man was elated and spoke with enthusiasm, his sentiments were noble, grand, generous, and in a word, did justice to his genius. But in the prosaic moments of life, the sentiments of the poet seemed to me very ordinary. There was much petty vanity, a continual and puerile fear of appearing ridiculous, and sometimes, if I dare say it, that hypocrisy which the English call cant."

What interests me about all this is that part of the reason I had thought to include Mary Shelley was to make the connection back to Byron. She was a character present in the novel who knew Byron. Clearly Stendhal didn't know him in the same way, but—he did meet him and could provide that continuity or insight or whatever it is I'm looking for, to the book. Lord Byron influenced a generation of writers and artists. He became one of the defining forces in the emerging culture of Romanticism. I might be able to employ Stendhal to bring Byron into focus. 

I've identified the apartment where Stendhal lived while writing The Red and The Black. It's very near The Palais Royal and Comedia Français—and wouldn't Stendhal have walked the half dozen blocks down there to see Hernani? He was an outsider, true—not one of Hugo's Romantiques. Nevertheless, there's every reason to believe he was there; I'm thinking his face should be one of those in the crowd.