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COMING SOON: More photos and links that will give you a glimpse of Odette and Louis' world....
The courtyard of the Hôtel Salé, the inspiration for the de l'Estoiles' hôtel particulier. Located in the Marais, today it houses the Musée Picasso. (image source)
A 1765 depiction of the Beast of Gévaudan and a number of its attacks. In the central image, it's being stabbed in the chest by a brave peasant girl, Marie-Jeanne Vallet. Remarkably, it would survive this and many other attempts on its life.(image source)
In 2021 (hence the mask), I posed beside this sign, which is now on display at the Musée Carnavalet, a museum dedicated to Paris's history -- and one of my favorite museums in the world. At the time, it was because this sign inspired the one in my novel Hearts at Dawn. Years later, I was writing Wolves and Brioches and searching for a distinctive sign to include in directions (as one did in the 1760's) to a building on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine. I was absolutely stunned to discover that this very sign was probably hung on a building on that street at that time! And so, in a way, it's in Hearts at Dawn and now Wolves and Brioches, too!
Porcelain figurine of a child dressed as a falot. Made in Sevres, ca. 1767(image via the Adrian Sassoon auction website)
18th century beauty patches and a box to store them in(image via Google Arts & Culture and the Gardiner Museum)
The Pont Notre-Dame in 1751, featured in the painting "La joute des mariniers, entre le pont Notre-Dame et le pont au Change" by Jean-Baptiste Nicolas Raguenet(image source)
Modern depiction of Gersaint's shop on the Pont Notre-Dame, by hromelight Studio, Roubaix; CREHS, Université d’Artois; LARHRA, Université Lyon 2, CNRS; LISIC, ULCO. The sign above the door was a depiction of the boutique's interior, painted by Antoine Watteau in 1720. This painting and the shop were the inspiration for the shop at the bottom of the house on the Pont Notre-Dame where Odette and Louis steal the pamphlet.(image source)
"L'Enseigne de Gersaint" (Gersaint's Shop Sign) by Antoine Watteau. Painted in 1720, this large canvas hung above Gersaint's shop on the Pont Notre-Dame, serving as a sign. It's the inspiration for the shop below the house on the Pont Notre-Dame where Odette and Louis steal the pamphlet.(image source)
A modern-day brioche à tête like the one Odette can conjure. This one comes from a Benoît Castel boulangerie here in Paris.
The cover of a livre bleu ("blue book"). Throughout Wolves and Brioches, Odette and Louis frequently come across, read, and even get published in these popular collections of things like stories, fairy tales, remedies, jokes, almanacs, and incantations, bound in cheap blue paper (hence their name). (image source)
Bust of a woman wearing a fashionable hairstyle in 1767. I was so excited when I came upon a book called L'art de la coëffure des dames françoises , avec des estampes, où sont représentées les têtes coëffées, which features a number of hairstyles for women at the exact time Wolves and Brioches takes place. As you can see, in the 1760's, hair wasn't yet worn in the incredibly high styles that would soon be popularized by Marie-Antoinette. You can also see that rouge was a "must" among fashionable women I used this particular engraving as a model for Odette's silhouette on the cover of the book, but there are so many more illustrations. It was a fantastic reference, and fun to peruse in general. You can read it for free online.
A robe à la française (sack-back gown), the typical elegant dress of wealthy women in 1760's France. Although it evolved a bit over the decades, this dress style was especially popular from ca. 1720-1770. The front was actually a bit like a long coat, attached with pins to a separate, flat insert piece at the center called a stomacher. The other iconic part of a robe à la française is the distinctive fabric draping at the back, which you can see in the next photo.(image source)
Back view of the robe à la française in the previous photo. One of the distinctive details of this type of dress is the folded fabric panel attached to the top center of the back. These are called plis Watteau ("Watteau folds"), a reference to Antoine Watteau, who often painted women in these gowns. (image source)
A pet en l'air -- This jacket-like top was an easier-to-wear version of the robe à la française. In Wolves and Brioches, Odette sometimes opts for a skirt and a pet en l'air in order to blend in more with poor or working-class women, who would generally wear dresses with a shorter bodice. (Since the fabrics Odette wears were more expensive than what women from these classes could usually afford, covering everything with her red cloak, not to mention the dim lighting at night, helps, too.) The pet en l'air is sometimes, even often, confused or interchangeably used with "caraco". This was a similar garment, but according to sources I used, a caraco doesn't have plis Watteau, those folded fabric panels in the back. Fun fact: pet en l'air literally translates to "fart in the air", a hilarious name for this elegant-looking garment. The name probably refers to the fact that the backside of a woman wearing it would be barely covered by it, as opposed to the long, draping fabric of a robe à la française.(image source)
An 18th century portrait of a woman wearing beauty patches, by Pietro Longhi. Although beauty patches were commonly shaped like circles, you could also find them in many other kinds of shapes, including hearts and stars, like the one Odette wears on her cheek. (image source)
The courtyard of the Hôtel de Soubise. A version of this is what I envisioned when I pictured the garden and courtyard of the Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, which no longer exists. You can visit the Hôtel de Soubise in Paris today, on the other hand; it houses the National Archives and is stunning inside and out.(image source)
Interior view of the Hôtel Salé, one of the inspirations for the de l'Estoiles' hôtel particulier in Paris. Located in the Marais, where the de l'Estoiles' hôtel was also located, today, the Hôtel Salé houses the Musée Picasso (Picasso Museum).(image source)
Another view of the courtyard of the Hôtel Salé, one of the inspirations for the de l'Estoiles' hôtel particulier.(image source)
"Les embarras de Paris" (Paris street congestion). Engravings like this one, made in 1730 , were a common depiction of the less pleasant side of Paris life: A crowd of carriages, pedestrians, merchants (often shouting out their famous cries), and animals all trying to get through the city and instead getting in each others' way. A highlight for me is in the upper right corner, where a woman is carelessly dumping the contents of a chamber pot out the window...and onto a pedestrian, who calls her a curse word that's still around in modern French today. This scene is definitely worth looking at up close! You can do that here, via Gallica, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France's official website
An 18th century engraving of the Bastille, the Port Saint-Antoine, and part of the rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, by Jacques Rigaud. Click the link to the image source for a larger view.(image source)
A map of the inside of the Bastille, detail of an engraving showing the storming of the fortress in 1789.(image source)
A sort of wanted poster for the Beast of Gévaudan. Translation: "Figure of the monster who is desolating the Gévaudan region. This beast is the size of a young bull it prefers to attack women and young children it drinks their blood, cuts their head and carries it off. 2700 livres are promised to whoever will kill this animal."(image source)
The preserved body of what was presumed to be the Beast of Gévaudan was presented to Louis XV and Queen Marie Leszczynska (in the central foreground, behind the Beast) and their court at Versailles, ca. October 1765. In Wolves and Brioches, this is the engraving that Odette and Louis see at Mademoiselle de Lespinasse's salon (although there's no historical documentation that this was shown or talked about there in real life). Unfortunately, the horrific attacks started again in the Gévaudan region not long after, which meant the Beast responsible for them hadn't been caught after all. The creature in this engraving came to be known as the Beast of Chazes. The real Beast of Gévaudan was killed in 1767 (according to most historians, anyway). (image source)
An 18th century ceramic candy box. Like most models I've seen, this one is small enough to fit inside a pocket. The love of candy and other sweets (including hot chocolate and brioches) is one of the things I like best about the 18th century!(image source)
A suit from ca. 1765, just like one Louis would wear (although his waistcoat buttons would be more centered).(image source)
The plan de Turgot (Turgot map of Paris), created in 1739 by Louis Bretez & Claude Lucas. This extraordinary map shows a view of Paris that's like a 3-D model. It's the one Louis admired and used as a reference for his falot work (before he discovered that most people didn't designate an address using street names and numbers but rather with landmarks and signs). It's name comes from the fact that it was commissioned by Michel-Étienne Turgot, who was then Prévôt des marchands de Paris. You can consult this amazing map and zoom into it by section (otherwise, it takes a million years to load!) here.
A close-up view of the Turgot map's detailed 3-D depictions of Paris's buildings, gardens, and landmarks. The Hotel de Soubise, (whose courtyard was what I used to picture the courtyard of the Hôtel de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt) can be seen at the lower center. (image source)
An 18th century set of thirty-three volumes of the Encyclopédie Diderot, as shown on the Rouillac auction site. By 1765, when Odette discovers them in Uncle Etienne's library, seventeen volumes had been published, although the seventeenth wouldn't be available until after that summer. The entire Encyclopédie was completed in 1780.(image source)
Title page of a volume of the Encyclopédie Diderot, one of Odette's favorite non-magic books to leaf through. (image source)
Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, a mathematician and Encylopédiste (contributing writer to the Encyclopédie Diderot). He was also great friends with Julie de Lespinasse. Odette and Louis see him standing beside her at Mademoiselle de Lespinasse's salon. I love this 1753 portrait of d'Alembert by Quentin de La Tour. His expression is so lively -- you feel as though he's about to say something witty. (image source)
Julie de Lespinasse, who holds the salon where Odette and her mother have a standing invitation. During the Enlightenment, many wealthy women held salons -- meetings of all thebrilliant and unusual minds in Paris (or at least, those who were invited and accepted the invitation). Mademoiselle de Lespinasse's was one of the most popular. She's also known for her charm and also for having two tragic love stories. The first with a man who had to leave France and then died of tuberculosis, and the second with a man who ended up marrying someone else. You can read her collected letters translated into English for free, thanks to the Internet Archive.(image source)
In this 1741 engraving by Nicolas de Larmessin IV, a woman pours chocolate into a cup. In the 18th century, chocolate wasn't eaten in bar or candy form. Instead, the bars of pure dark chocolate were melted and mixed with things like cream to produce a rich, heavenly version of what we'd call hot chocolate today. Naturally, Odette, Louis, and Odette's mother Marguerite enjoy a cup of chocolate regularly. Today, you can still find hot chocolate made this way in some Paris chocolate shops and cafes, including Angelina, which is famous for its version of the drink.(image source)
In this detail from the painting 1739 Le Déjeuner by François Boucher, a woman (wearing beauty patches, to boot!) enjoys a what's probably a cup of chocolate.(image source)
This 1715 engraving of the traffic on the Pont Neuf by Nicolas Guérard, on the other hand, gives a very different impression of what it was like to take you carriage or cart, or risk your life by walking, along the famous bridge!(image source)
Depiction of two Paris street merchants, ca. 1774. I chose this particular image because I love the face of the cat peeking out from the "dog seller"'s coat, but you can find countless images of the numerous kinds of merchants who literally sang out their wares on the streets of Paris for many centuries. In Wolves and Brioches, you'll hear passing descriptions of orange sellers and a ribbon seller. The merchants of Paris all had particular cries they'd sing out to announce their presence and what they were selling. Although these are bygone sounds today, if you ever pass by a neighborhood's weekly or bi-weekly produce market, you might get a vague idea of what the 18th century city must have sounded like, since some stall owners cry out phrases or even simply words describing the produce in their stalls.(image source)
A page from Louis-Sébastien Mercier's Tableau de Paris, a long work in which the author shares his descriptions and impressions of 1780's Paris. It's become a crucial reference for what the pre-Revolutionary city was like. On this particular page and in this particular chapter, we learn how much the cries of merchants were a part of everyday life. Mercier comments on how loud and piercing the merchants' cries are, and says that they're often hard to understand, although servants seem to know which merchants are passing so that they can run out to the street and get ingredients for their masters' meals. For everyone else (or at least for Mercier), the cries blend together and culminate in a cacophony. It's amazing to think of how this part of Parisian life was so much a part of the city, but has now been lost. ....Then again, maybe you could say it's been replaced by the noise of traffic, bus bells, and music randomly blaring from a passing car. You can read Tableau de Paris for free online.
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