The Physiology of Taste (3 page)

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Haller:
Bibliotecae Practicae
(medical bibliography, to 1788).
Klinger:
Sturm und Drang
.
Gibbon:
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(to 1788).
Smith:
The Wealth of Nations
.
Paine:
Common Sense
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
American Declaration of Independence.
Turgot’s six edicts opposed by
parlements
as an attack on privilege (especially the proposed abolition of the
corvée)
. Fall of Turgot. Necker in charge of French finances (to 1781).
Jenner discovers principle of vaccination. Marquis de Jouffroy d’Abbans develops a 3-metre steamship, the
Palmipède
, and sails it successfully on the river Doubs.

DATE:
1777

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Attends public lectures on chemistry given by Louis Bernard Guyton de Morveau. His interest in science continues throughout his years in Dijon, where he adds some extracurricular medical studies to his law course.

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Robertson:
The History of America
.
Sheridan:
The School for Scandal
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Lafayette leads a group of French volunteers to fight with the Americans. Gluck’s
Armide
(Paris). Lavoisier’s work on combustion. Marie Grosholtz (later Madame Tussaud) creates her first waxwork figure (of Voltaire).

DATE:
1778

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Receives his degree. Travels by boat to Lyon to acquire licence to practise at the Belley bar.
Returns to Belley to embark on his career, taking his place in a privileged legal coterie.

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Death of Voltaire and Rousseau.
Burney:
Evelina
.
Menon:
Les Soupers de la cour
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
France officially enters American War of Independence on the side of colonists. Necker finances the war by heavy borrowing.
Mozart’s “Paris” Symphony. Piccinni:
Roland
.

DATE:
1779

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Restif de la Bretonne:
La Vie de mon père
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Necker abolishes
mainmorte
, last relic of serfdom, on the royal domain. Unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar by French and Spanish troops (to 1782).
Triumph of Gluck’s
Iphigénie en Tauride
in Paris.

DATE:
1780s

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Leads the comfortable life of a provincial lawyer, enlivening his ample leisure time with hunting, shooting and dining. Revives an informal band of musicians he had formed in the 1770s to play concerts on request.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Penal reforms introduced: torture of accused persons to obtain a confession abolished (1780), torture of convicted criminals before execution to name their accomplices abolished (1788); attempt made to prevent the most serious abuses connected with the issue of
lettres de cachet
(1784)

DATE:
1780

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Marat:
Plan de législation criminelle
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Death of Maria Theresa: Joseph II, co-ruler since 1765, in sole control of Habsburg territories. Initiates a series of wide-ranging reforms (1781–5).
Jean-Joseph Clause, cook to the governor of Alsace, opens a shop to sell his creation
pâté à la Contades
, resulting in the first production centre of Alsatian foie gras.

DATE:
1781

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Becomes
lieutenant civil du bailliage
, a magistrate with special powers to deal with civil cases (also gaining him exemption from the hated
taille
, a tax levied on all French subjects except noblemen).

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Kant:
Critique of Pure Reason
.
Schiller:
The Robbers
.
Mercier:
Le Tableau de Paris
(to 1788).
Brissot:
Théorie des lois criminelles
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Cornwallis capitulates to Franco-American force at Yorktown. Necker publishes his
Compte-rendu
, demonstrating how the royal accounts have balanced. In fact the Crown is in debt at excessive rates of interest.
Having antagonized Maurepas, Necker is dismissed.

DATE:
1782

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Enjoys a memorable feast with the Cistercians (20 August).

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Laclos:
Les Liaisons dangereuses
.
Rousseau:
Les Confessions
(and 1789);
Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire
.
Mirabeau (younger):
Des Lettres de Cachet et des prisons d’état
.
Le Grand d’Aussy:
Histoire de la vie privé des français
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Antoine Beauvilliers opens a restaurant – La Grande Taverne de Londres – in the rue de Richelieu, Paris, first formal dining-out venue for the elite, praised by BS for its “elegant dining-room, handsome well-trained waiters, a fine cellar, and a superior kitchen”.
Defeat of de Grasse at the battle of Saintes in the West Indies.

DATE:
1783

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Birth of Stendhal.
Death of D’Alembert.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Treaty of Versailles ends American War of Independence. French gains are minimal. Calonne appointed Controller-General and succeeds temporarily in restoring confidence in royal finances.
Cavendish determines the composition of water. First manned flight in a hot air balloon (France). David:
The Oath of the Horatii
. Society portrait painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun appointed to the French Royal Academy with the support of Marie Antoinette; her rival, Adelaide Labille-Guiard, is accepted on the same day.

DATE:
1784

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Beaumarchais:
Le Mariage de Figaro
.
Sade writes
Les 120 Journées de Sodome
(to 1785).
Necker:
Traité de l’administration des finances de France
.
Death of Diderot.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
The fashionable Café de Chartres opens in the Palais Royal, Paris. After the revolution it becomes a luxurious restaurant frequented by Napoleon as well as BS and fellow gastronome Grimod de La Reynière. Acquired by Jean Véfour in 1820, and renamed Véfour (afterwards the Grand Véfour), it has remained to this day a favourite haunt of politicians, writers and artists.
Grétry:
Richard Coeur de Lion
.

DATE:
1785

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Queen Marie Antoinette is publicly discredited by the affair of the diamond necklace.

DATE:
1786

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Restif de la Bretonne:
Les Nuits de Paris
(to 1793).

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Vergennes negotiates free trade treaty with Britain.
Barthélémy, Maneille and Simon open Les Trois Frères Provençaux at the Palais Royal, introducing Provençal cuisine to Paris for the first time.
Mozart:
Le nozze di Figaro
(from Beaumarchais).

DATE:
1787

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
For the Bugey region the 1780s are a time of deep economic crisis, compounded by the erosion of local liberties by the central government. BS’s first visit to the court in Versailles this year may have had some connection with this.

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre:
Paul et Virginie
.
Louvet:
Les Amours du chevalier de Faublas
(to 1789).
Schiller:
Don Carlos
.
Blake:
Songs of Innocence
.
Adams:
A Defence of the Constitution of the United States of America
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Calonne’s proposal for new land tax rejected by newly summoned Assembly of Notables. Fall of Calonne and his replacement by Brienne. Dissolution of Notables.
Parlement
of Paris exiled to Troyes (August–November) until it agrees to further royal loans. Government bombarded with protests and remonstrances from all the
parlements
(November to May 1785). Edict of Toleration grants Protestants civil rights.
US constitution written.

DATE:
1788

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Legal reforms affect the status of the court at Belley which loses many cases to the newly elevated court of Bourg-en-Bresse. BS and fellow officers of the court refuse to obey the royal edict until ratified by the exiled Dijon
parlement
.

LITERARY CONTEXT:
First publication of the memoirs of the duc de Saint-Simon (1675-1755).

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Lamoignon, Keeper of the Seals, masterminds royal edict (8 May), suspending the
parlements
and replacing them with 47 new courts. Provokes riots in Grenoble, capital of Dauphiné (7 June); less violent (and less successful) resistance in other provinces. In Dijon (BS’s regional
parlement)
protesting members are exiled to their country estates by
lettres de cachet
. Resignation of Brienne. Louis XVI forced to summon the Estates General, for the first time since 1614 (2 August). Necker returns to office. Recall of
parlements
(September).
Royal council approves decree doubling Third Estate (December).
Austrian Netherlands rebel against centralizing policies of Joseph II, forming the United States of Belgium (imperial authority reimposed by Leopold II in 1790).
Salieri:
Tarare
(Paris).

DATE:
1789

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Elections to the Estates General.
Belley is ordered to send one deputy for the nobility, one for the clergy and two for the Third Estate. BS is elected as one of the latter (26 March). They are briefed to demand equality of taxation, regular meetings of the Estates and a fixed constitution.
They would also press for protection from the loathed
lettres de cachet
and restoration of the sovereignty of the Belley court. At loggerheads on many issues (at one point the Third Estate threatened to burn down the bishop’s palace), all three estates determine to win back self-administration for their region. BS arrives in Versailles in April. Present at the opening of the Estates General, he is irritated by having to wear the inferior dress of the Third Estate. Absent (unaccountably) when the Tennis-Court Oath is sworn.
Returns to Belley to report in August; successfully resists an attempt to stop him practising at the bar while he is a deputy at Versailles, and clears his name after being accused by his fellow deputy Delilia of conspiring to increase local taxation. Back at Versailles in time to attend debate on the Rights of Man. Moves to Paris with the Assembly (October). During a debate on administrative reform, makes an impassioned plea for the future of Bugey as an independent province, his first major speech. He is unsuccessful, and Bugey is absorbed into the “Département de l’Ain,” its capital Bourg. In December he may have joined the Jacobin Club.

LITERARY CONTEXT:
Lavoisier:
Traité élémentaire de chimie
.
Mme de Staël:
Lettres sur Rousseau
.
Marat launches radical newspaper
L’Ami du peuple
(to 1792).
Siéyés:
Qu’est-ce que le Tiers Etat
?
Desmoulins:
La France libre
.

HISTORICAL EVENTS:
Revolt at Rennes (January). Bread riots throughout France in the spring, following disastrous harvest of 1788; allegations of a
pacte de famine
renewed. Bloody riots in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine against an employer thought to be planning to lower salaries; 300 killed and more than a 1000 injured (April). As a prelude to the elections, all estates are bidden to produce an account of their grievances in a
cahier de doléance
.
Meeting of Estates General (May). Unable to secure royal consent to a united assembly (in which it would form the majority), Third Estate adopts title of National Assembly (17 June); Tennis-Court Oath (20 June). Royal Session (23 June); king allies himself with privileged orders, offering minimal reforms, then reversing his policy (27 June) when he commands all three estates to meet together – all against a background of social breakdown and build-up of royal troops in Versailles and Paris. Dismissal of Necker and his replacement by Breteuil (11 July).
Paris mob storms the Bastille (14 July). Revolutionaries sieze control of municipal government of Paris, setting up Paris Comune; this is repeated throughout France and sanctioned by the Law of Municipalities in December. National Guard established under Lafayette to maintain order and defend the Third Estate.
The
Grand peur
(to mid-August): news of fall of Bastille causes turmoil throughout the provinces, exacerbated by rumours of foreign troops being brought in to destroy the Third Estate. Castles and monasteries stormed (including the Abbey of Saint-Sulpice where BS had enjoyed a musical day in 1782). Decree abolishing feudal rights and privileges rushed through the Assembly in an attempt to deal with rural disorder (4–11 August). Assembly issues Declaration of Rights (26 August).
Women’s march on Versailles, demanding bread. Queen’s apartment at Versailles entered. A crowd of 20,000 Parisians call on royal family to accompany them to the city, where they become effectively prisoners of the Assembly and the Paris mob (5–6 October).
November, December: secularization of church lands to raise money to pay off national debt; issue of
assignats
(paper money) – successful for two years. France divided into 83 administrative
départements
.
Lifting of censorship brings more than 350 journals into existence in Paris. George Washington first US president (to 1797).

DATE:
1790

AUTHOR’S LIFE:
Death of BS’s father. He comes into his inheritance, including the family estate at Vieu. Constantly lobbied about local issues. In the Assembly contributes to key debates on the reorganization of French law and society. Speaks against introduction of English-style juries and, when he opposes public prosecution, crosses swords for the first time with Robespierre. Chosen as honorary colonel of Belley’s National Guard (October). Strongly built, and with a powerful voice, he is in November one of a deputation of 12 sent to prevent a mob from sacking the duc de Castries’ town house following a duel with a fellow member of the Assembly.