Best-sellers and gossip-mongers in 18th-century France

It would be a mistake to think that the England of Samuel Johnson, the France of Diderot and the Germany of Goethe formed part of a media-free civilization. Their world buzzed with a communication network every bit as dense as ours. It was merely different - so different that most of its media have been forgotten. Take the case of eighteenth-century Paris. Who today can even recognize the names of the genres and modes of its communication system: mauvais propos (saucy gossip), bruit public (public rumour), on-dit (rumour), pasquinade (scurrilous pamphlet), canard (tall story), feuille volante (scandal sheet), factum (squib), libelle (lampoon) and chronique scandaleuse (muck-raking history)?

There were so many modes of communication, and they intersected and overlapped so intensively, that one can hardly picture their operation. Let me give as an example an anecdote which might be likened to a modern "news flash". It was incorporated in a best-selling biography of Mme. Du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV:

"There is a report, carefully spread about by some courtiers, which proves that Mme du Barry has not lost any favour or familiarity with the king, as some had suspected. His Majesty likes to brew his own coffee and, by means of this innocent amusement, to get some relief from the heavy burdens of government. A few days ago, the coffee pot began to boil over while His Majesty was distracted by something else. 'Hey, France!' called out the beautiful favourite, 'Look out! Your coffee's going to pot!' We are told that 'France' is the familiar expression utilized by this lady in the intimacy of the petits appartements. The details should never circulate outside of them, but they escape, nonetheless, thanks to the malignity of the courtiers."

The anecdote is trivial in itself, but it illustrates the way a news item moved through various media, reaching an ever-wider public. In this case, it went through four phases: it began as a mauvais propos, or insider gossip at court. Then it took the form of a bruit public, or general rumour, in Paris. Next it was consigned to writing in a manuscript news sheet, or gazette a la main. And finally it figured as an episode in a libelle, that is, a printed book which belonged to a genre of scandalous and highly illegal political literature

* Forbidden best-sellers

In my own research, I have tried to identify the forbidden books that were most in demand during the twenty years before the French Revolution. By studying orders of booksellers and other sources, I have come up with a retrospective best-seller list, the top fifteen of the 720 works that composed the highly popular corpus of literature which circulated beyond the reach of the censors and the police. The list contains some well-known works by famous writers like Voltaire, the Abbe Raynal and the Baron d'Holbach. But five of the top fifteen best-sellers were libelles like Anecdotes sur Mme la comtesse Du Barry, quoted above, or chroniques scandaleuses, a variety of muck-raking contemporary history. Although they reached readers in every corner of the kingdom, all five have been completely forgotten, like their authors, who have disappeared from the history of literature

How can we assess the impact of these books on public opinion?

Thanks to advances in the new discipline known as the history of the book, we have a pretty good idea of how the printed word became a force in European history; but we know very little about oral modes of communication. They could have been more important than the print media in societies with a high rate of illiteracy, but their effectiveness is difficult to gauge because the spoken word generally vanished into the air.

In the case of eighteenth-century Paris, however, oral communication about public affairs was followed carefully by the police, who posted spies in cafes, taverns, public gardens and all the nerve centres for the spread of information. Spy reports cannot be taken literally, of course, but they reveal a great deal about the general tone and the modes of transmission in oral communication. By way of illustration, I will discuss two modes: gossip and songs.

* A hotbed of gossip

Gossip provided the most important source of news for Parisians under the Old Regime, because newspapers did not exist. True, there were many periodicals, and some of them contained articles about court ceremonies and foreign affairs. But papers with news in them, news as we know it - information about power struggles and personalities in the public sphere - did not appear until the press was freed of censorship in 1789.

If you wanted to know what was happening in the corridors of power before 1789, you used your feet and your ears. You went to certain cafes, certain benches in the Luxembourg Gardens, a certain terrace in the Tuileries Gardens or the Tree of Cracow; and you listened to the nouvellistes de bouche or newsmongers who gathered at those centres of gossip. The Tree of Cracow was an actual tree in the garden of the Palais-Royal, which served as a meeting place for those who wanted to know who was winning in the War of the Polish Succession from 1733 to 1735. During the next decades, it became such an important institution that ambassadors sent their servants to pick up news items - or to plant them, for gossip became public opinion and public opinion became a force to be reckoned with under Louis XV.