French Studies Bulletin, Vol. LIX, No.

94
doi:10.1093/frebul/kti001

ARTICLES AND NOTES

LOUISE FAURE-FAVIER’S AUTOFICTION BLANCHE ET NOIR

ROGER LITTLE , Dublin
My ongoing researches into Louise Faure-Favier (12 December 1870 –12
December 1961), and particularly into her representation of Blacks, have
taken on a Loch-Ness-monster appearance. Since a head-to-withers section
surfaced in the Australian Journal of French Studies, smaller tronçons have
appeared in FSB.1 The novel Blanche et Noir, published in 1928 and set in the
Velay –Forez region south-west of Saint-Étienne,2 ‘draws on autobiographical
material, yet equally clearly distances itself from it; the precise degree in both
respects is impossible to determine because we have so little information
about her life.’3 No biography of her exists and, to the best of my
knowledge, only one biographical dictionary affords her an entry.4 This,
despite the fact that she was a close friend of Apollinaire’s and was among
the pioneers of aviation literature.5 The present note is a contribution
regarding further details of her biography and, more particularly, that of one
of the characters in the novel, Samba Laobé Thiam.
In Blanche et Noir, he is an indigenous representative of Senegal at the Expo-
sition Universelle of 1889, where he is seen and admired by the forty-two-year-
old Malvina Lortac-Rieux, the widowed paternal grandmother of the narrator,
Jeanne. Admired so much that she follows him back to Senegal and marries him
according to native custom. After bearing him a child – François Laobé-Rieux,
who appears as a pilot towards the end of the novel and gives the fullest account
of his parents’ unconventional romance – but before a Christian wedding can
take place, Malvina dies of a fever.
It is entirely plausible that the author, a well-to-do provincial doctor’s daughter
then aged nineteen, would herself have visited the Esplanade des Invalides to see
the Exposition Universelle. Her own independence of mind and action showed
not only in her involvement with the development of aviation but also in her
eventful married life, her two marriages ending in divorce.6
Thiam, as I noted in my initial article, ‘is invariably a caste´ name in Wolof
society, restricted to workers and subordinates’.7 Georges Hardy, writing in
1917, is more specific, observing that ‘tous les Thiam [. . .] sont forgerons ou
bijoutiers’.8 This chimes fully in the narrative with his functions at the Exhibi-
tion, where he is deemed to be happy, even if he seeks solace for his virile
impulses. But it transpires that Samba Laobé Thiam was not just a fictional
character, and a less satisfied picture emerges from an interview he gave in
real life to the French journalist Hugues Le Roux. I was led to this by an
article by Lynn E. Palermo in which she quotes part of the interview in
American translation.9 Although the transcription of the name is slightly
different (Laobé is spelt Lawbé), it is clearly the same man as in the novel,
but he is more disenchanted with Parisians than his fictional alter ego suggests.
Le Roux records Thiam’s words before adding his own comments:
# The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for French
Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oupjournals.org
 Je laisse la parole à Samba Lawbé Thiam, chef bijoutier, Sénégalais, qui m’a exposé avec
éloquence les doléances du peuple noir:
—Nous sommes très humiliés, monsieur, m’a-t-il dit en fort bon français, d’être ainsi
exhibés dans des huttes, comme des sauvages; ces cases en nattes et en boue ne vous
donnent aucune idée du Sénégal. Au Sénégal, monsieur, nous avons des casernes, des
gares, des chemins de fer; nous nous éclairons à l’électricité. Le conseil d’hygiène ne
tolère plus que l’on édifie des baraques dans ce genre-là. Aucune de celles qui tombent
n’est relevée. . .
Je n’insiste pas sur ces regrets un peu comiques, touchants dans le fond. La souf-
france de Samba Lawbé, qui ne veut pas être pris pour un sauvage, est un peu celle de
la Parisienne à qui l’on dit que l’Angleterre, l’Allemagne, Buenos-Ayres et New-York
la considèrent comme la «cocotte» idéale.
Mais voici qui est plus grave:
Les Sambas Lawbés [sic ] de la place des Invalides trouvent que les Français
manquent décidément de politesse, et ils s’en plaignent. On ne prend pas garde que
presque tous entendent notre langue, assez pour comprendre des exclamations aussi dis-
courtoises que celles-ci:
—Oh! le singe!
—Le monstre!
—Dieu qu’il est laid!
—Où est son horloge?
On oublie trop que ce sont des hommes et non des animaux exotiques que l’on
regarde par-dessus les petites barrières.10
Lynn E. Palermo acknowledges that this article is exceptional, but suggests
that ‘the author tended to minimalize the complaints of the indigenous
people, rather than defend them.’11 Giving them a voice, nevertheless, was
already a sign of understanding and sympathy, rare enough at the time. Recog-
nizing them as sentient human beings whose feelings could be hurt was also, as
is evident from the taunts, to stand out from the crowd. Whatever its excesses,
political correctness took another century to eliminate the more offensive jibes,
and even they remain commonplace in all too many a conversation when Blacks
are out of earshot.
The evidence gathered here inclines one to believe that the novel is more
autobiographical and factual than had previously been allowed, but there is
manifestly a great deal more research to be done to fill in the details.12
1
Roger Little, ‘Blanche et Noir: Louise Faure-Favier and the Liberated Woman’, Australian Journal of
French Studies, XXXVI, 2 (1999), 214-28; ‘Black Pilots in World War I’, FSB, 82 (Spring 2002), 19-20;
‘A Letter on Blacks by Louise Faure-Favier’, FSB, 85 (Winter 2002), 13-15.
2
Paris, J. Ferenczi et fils, 1928.
3
Little, ‘Blanche et Noir . . .’, p. 217.
4
Dictionnaire de biographie française, ed. by R. D’Amat (Paris, Letouzey et Ané, 1975), vol. XIII, col. 779.
5
See her Souvenirs de Guillaume Apollinaire (Paris, Grasset, 1945), her novel Les Chevaliers de l’air (Paris,
La Renaissance du livre, n.d. [1922]), and her numerous Guides des voyages ae´riens (Paris-Londres, 1921;
Paris-Lausanne, 1922; Paris-Bruxelles-Amsterdam, 1922; Paris-Prague-Varsovie, 1925; Paris-
Tunis, 1930 etc.). She figures in biographies of Apollinaire. To contextualize her contribution to
flying, see Siân Reynolds, France Between the Wars: Gender and Politics (London, Routledge, 1996),
chap. 3: ‘‘‘A Slip of a Girl can Fly it”: The False Promises of Aviation’, and Robert Wohl, ‘Par la
voie des airs: l’entrée de l’aviation dans le monde des lettres françaises, 1909-1931’, Le Mouvement
social, 145 (1988), 41-64.
6
Her birth certificate, issued at Firminy (Loire), no 222, on 15 December 1870, three days after her
birth, gives her names as Jeanne Lucie Augustine Claudia (note that Jeanne is the narrator’s name in

[94] 3
Blanche et Noir, so further pointing to the autobiographical nature of the novel). She was officially
separated on 9 August 1900 and divorced on 16 June 1904 from Joseph Gruet ‘aux torts et aux griefs
de la dame Gruet’. Despite her request, she was formally denied access to their child (divorce certificate
issued by the civil tribunal of Cusset (Allier), no 3 U Cusset 240, 16 June 1904). On 17 August 1907, she
married ‘en secondes noces’ (a fact noted on her birth certificate) Ernest Jean Joseph Charles (marriage
certificate issued by the 16e arrondissement de Paris, no 919, 17 August 1907), a marriage which was to
end in divorce on 20 January 1913 (transcribed in margin of marriage certificate, 28 May 1913). I am
grateful to Marie-Antoinette Majola, a friend living at Saint-Étienne, for tracing these documents.
7
Little, ‘Blanche et Noir . . .’, p. 223, n. 20.
8
‘Ici plus que partout ailleurs, c’est déroger à la noblesse que travailler le fer ou le bois, et les métiers
sont laissés à des castes inférieures, qui constituent un véritable peuple à part: tous les Thiam, par
exemple, sont forgerons ou bijoutiers; et ce serait, pour l’indigène le plus pauvre, s’exposer au mépris,
qu’adopter leurs occupations.’ Georges Hardy, Une conqueˆte morale (Paris, Armand Colin, 1917), p. 206.
9
Lynn E. Palermo, ‘Identity Under Construction: Representing the Colonies at the Paris Exposition
Universelle of 1889’, in The Color of Liberty: Histories of Race in France, ed. by Sue Peabody and Tyler
Stovall (Durham [North Carolina] and London, Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 285-301 (esp. p. 291).
10
Hugues Le Roux, ‘Psychologie exotique’, L’Exposition de Paris de 1889: journal hebdomadaire, no 22
(27 juillet 1889), 170-71 (pp. 170-71). Excellent studies on the appalling fascination of exotic exhibits
are to be found in Zoos humains: XIX e et XX e sie`cles, ed. by Nicolas Bancel, Pascal Blanchard, Gilles
Boëtsch, Éric Deroo and Sandrine Blanchard (Paris, La Découverte, 2002).
11
Palermo, p. 299, n. 22.
12
Work currently being undertaken by Christine Jacquet-Pfau, Maı̂tre de conférences at the Collège de
France, has regrettably been delayed by other commitments. On compatit.

doi:10.1093/frebul/kti001

VIRGILIAN UNDERWORLDS IN LE RHIN AND

LA MODIFICATION
FIONA COX , Cork
Although Le Rhin is ostensibly an account of Hugo’s journey along the Rhine, it
is also a highly charged piece of political writing, the point of which becomes
clear in the conclusion: ‘Autrefois Rome s’appelait Urbs, surveillait la Méditer-
ranée et regardait l’Afrique; aujourd’hui Rome se nomme Paris, surveille
l’Océan et regarde l’Angleterre.’ (p. 431)1 Hugo’s travels through France and
Germany serve as a backdrop to his meditation on Rome and her empire, the
ghosts of which will not be exorcized until he has reconfigured Western civiliza-
tion by asserting the supremacy of France as the new cultural capital. It is no
accident that the companions he selects for his journey are Tacitus and Virgil,
historian and poet of the Roman Empire respectively. The Roman presences
in Le Rhin not only help Hugo to articulate his political ambitions2 but also fore-
shadow Butor’s extensive examination of the tensions and connections between
France and Rome in La Modification.
Hugo’s ambition to replace Rome with Paris as the cultural centre of Europe is
made most clear in the conclusion, although his debt to the Aeneid surfaces most
obviously in Lettre vingt-unie`me, otherwise known as the ‘Légende du beau Pécopin
et de la belle Bauldour’. Hugo composed the legend in order to contribute to the
fairytales of the Rhine, thereby ironically placing a tale which warns about the
perils of travel at the heart of his most famous volume of travel writing.3 It tells
the tale of the devoted lovers Pécopin and Bauldour, whose happiness is
destroyed by Pécopin’s ardour for hunting and travel, which leads him on a

4 [94]