Mademoiselle Cloque (, Miss Cloque) is a French novel of manners by René Boylesve published in 1899.
The fifth novel of René Boylesve, tells against the backdrop of a religious quarrel in Tours in the 1880s, the last three years of the life of an idealistic and chivalrous old lady, who ardently wishes the reconstruction of a large basilica dedicated to Saint Martin of Tours. Supporting her principles, she goes so far as to refuse her niece a beautiful marriage with the son of a supporter of the opposing cause, who campaigns for the building of a modest church; However, this last option ends up prevailing at the end of clashes where politics, religion and particular interests are intimately mixed.
Taking as its argument the "war of the basilicas", a real episode in the history of Tours, and therefore fitting more secondarily in the Moeurs historical novel, the story is above all a study of morals on the part of the bourgeois and religious society of Tours in the 19th century as well as a portrait gallery. It traces the lost battle of idealism against realism, a recurring theme for the author.
Summary In the 1880s, the people of Tour were torn over the advisability of rebuilding a large basilica to the glory of Saint Martin or building a modest church above his recently rediscovered tomb.
Mademoiselle Cloque, 70 years old at the start of the novel and still single, a fervent “basilician”,Boylesve uses the term "basilican", in noun or adjective form, to designate the supporters of the reconstruction of a large basilica divides her time between discussions with her servant Mariette and games of cards or checkers with the old Marquis d'Aubrebie, a neighbor and atheist friends with whom arguments are continuous. She lives in the memory of her interview with the Viscount of Chateaubriand, whom she met when she was a young girl, but above all, she devotes a large part of her energy to the project of rebuilding a sumptuous basilica. To do this, she does not hesitate to sacrifice the happiness of her niece Geneviève, an orphan for whom she is guardian and who should have married the rich son of a local notable. The latter is unfortunately won over to the cause of the supporters of a modest church, which makes marriage inconceivable in the eyes of Miss Cloque.
At one time director of the Saint-Martin workshop, she lost this title for a blunder that she was allowed to commit. His friends, taking this pretext and feeling that their cause no longer had the favor of the aediles or even the archbishop, one after the other abandoned the Basilican party and the old lady, except for a handful of irreducible like Mr Houblon. Miss Cloque, for her part, far from the businesses of her time, refuses any compromise and perseveres in her ideal. She lost her fight because only a “Republican chalet”The expression "republican chalet" refers, in the novel as in reality, to the majority political opinion in the municipal council of Tours, which approved its construction, as well as to the reduced size of the new church which, during its consecration, is not even completed was finally built. Geneviève marries a notary from La Celle-Saint-Avant, a small town on the borders of the department and her former fiancé marries one of her friends, with lighter morals, but whose family's political opinions are more in line with hers. Miss Cloque dies at the age of 73, devastated by what she wrongly believes to be a betrayal on the part of her niece but above all undermined by grief and bitterness.
Main characters
Miss Cloque: heroine of the novel, 70 years old, single; Geneviève: niece of Miss Cloque; Second lieutenant Marie-Joseph de Grenaille-Montcontour: ex-future husband of Geneviève; Miss Jouffroy: two elderly sisters, friends than adversaries of Miss Cloque, “weathervanes” according to Boylesve; The Marquis d'Aubrebie: neighbor and friend of Miss Cloque; Sir Houblon: organist at Saint-Martin and fierce basilician; Loupaing: anticlerical, plumber and neighbor of Miss Cloque.
Themes and characters of the novel The general plot of the novel could be summarized as follows: "Because Miss Cloque and the Count of Grenaille-Montcontour do not agree on the dimensions of a basilica under construction, the niece of one will not marry the son of the other!".
Miss Cloque: idealist to the point of cruelty
If René Boylesve uses the historical episode of the “war of the basilicas” in Tours as a basis for his novel, he does not make it the main theme of his story; this event only occurs as a common thread in the story and the main characters who participated in it at the time do not appear in the novel. The author strives above all to describe, in a tenderly ironic manner, the chivalrous spirit and the rearguard battles of his heroine, ultimately "defeated by the forces of opportunism and hypocrisy”. André Bourgeois even establishes a parallel between Miss Cloque and the characters of Don Quixote or Cyrano de Bergerac, the old lady embodying the same ideal of the beautiful and the useless: “But know, my poor child (Miss Cloque addresses her niece, that everything that was most beautiful and greatest in the world was not necessary". It is the clash between idealism and realism, a theme dear to Boylesve and which he develops in many of his works: the ideals of Miss Cloque are defeated by the contingencies of the moment; Geneviève's ideal of love gives way, without her fighting, to respect for the conventions of her social class.
Between the reversals of alliances and opinions, Miss Cloque, and to a certain extent Mr. Houblon, maintain the same convictions and unfailing righteousness throughout the novel. Boylesve says to the old lady: “There is one thing I have never been able to bear, it is lukewarmness, it is what is done half-heartedly, it is what is neither good nor evil”. Miss Cloque's uprightness of mind even borders on rigidity, since she puts her faith and her interpretation of conventions before the family feelings that she nevertheless experiences. This is why André Bourgeois does not hesitate to describe her as a “monster” despite her fundamentally good character, like Father Grandet in Honoré de Balzac who also sacrifices the happiness of a child: Mademoiselle Cloque asks Geneviève to give up in writing to his marriage plan, just as Father Grandet demands from his daughter a document by which she relinquishes her mother's inheritance to him. Where Miss Cloque's blindness becomes manifest is when it seems logical, obvious to her, that Geneviève's feelings towards her fiancé were extinguished with the letter of renunciation.
Mademoiselle Cloque reappears in I Desired You One Evening (1925), a more autobiographical novel by René Boylesve. Her character, with slightly softened contours, nevertheless professes the same ideal of purity and righteousness that she tries to share with the narrator, a young adolescent, of whom she is the friend, the confidante but also the muse.
A bourgeois and realistic society Many characters gravitate around Miss Cloque. Boylesve depicts the compromises and small calculations of everyone: religious people like Mgr Fripière and most of the basilicians like the Jouffroy ladies prefer to abandon their ideal so as not to risk losing everything; the Grenaille-Montcontour family ultimately chose a rapprochement with the Jewish lawyers Niort-Caen, better able to ensure its future within the bourgeoisie than a union with the Catholic but penniless Geneviève; as for Madame Pigeonneau-Exelcis, it was without qualms that in the name of commercial interest, she chose to open her religious bookstore to secular works, like Nana, after her move to street Royale.
The participation of the Niort-Caen family in the plot of the novel testifies to Boylesve's desire to show that the quiet and bourgeois life of a peaceful and Catholic provincial town can be disrupted by real estate expansion projects — Niort-Caen secretly purchased land initially planned to build the great basilica and now of no use— from an Israelite family whose social codes are completely different.
The only character maintaining perfect neutrality in this fight in which he does not get involved, is the Marquis d'Aubrebie who observes everyone. However, beneath a detached and sometimes slightly cynical exterior, it appears in the last lines of the work that he was perhaps the only true, sincere, and disinterested friend of Miss Cloque, no doubt admiring her constancy and stubbornness, without endorsing its opinions.
An art of your time
Historical context
The old Saint-Martin Basilica in Tours, which partially collapsed during the French Revolution due to lack of maintenance, was demolished at the very beginning of the 19th century. Examination of the plan of this basilica reveals that the tomb of the saint if it survived the destruction of the church, is buried in the cellars of the houses located at the eastern corner of the street des Halles and the newly opened street Descartes. The excavations undertaken after the acquisition of these residences effectively led to the discovery of the tomb on December 14, 1860. The construction of a new place of worship was therefore considered but, initially, a simple oratory and then a temporary chapel were built, taking advantage of the three houses whose cellars housed the tomb.
Two camps then formed in Tours and clashed violently for around thirty years, the equivalent of a “Touraine Dreyfus affair”. On the one hand, the most fervent Catholics, "traditionalists", resolutely monarchists, grouped within the Work of the Cloakroom of Saint-Martin,The Saint-Martin Cloakroom Work, originally a charitable organization providing clothing to the needy, is also responsible for searching for the remains of the tomb and, with a view to rebuilding the “great” basilica, is transformed into a real estate company to buy the houses covering the ruins. are campaigning for the reconstruction of a "great" basilica, comparable to the destroyed one. Opposite, the diocesan architects, supported by the majority of the inhabitants of Tours, defend a less ambitious but above all less expensive project, of a more modest basilica, including only, in a crypt located under the choir, the remains of the tomb of Saint Martin. The recently elected municipal council of Tours, republican, fiercely anticlerical and led by the radical Armand-Félix Rivière, initially opposed both projects equally. The option of a small church ended up prevailing: at the end of the war of 1870, finances did not allow a large-scale expenditure and the influence of the supporters of the large basilica, clearly in the minority and not supported by the authorities of the clergy, is insufficient. The Archbishop of Tours Guillaume Meignan and Pope Leo XIII himself declared themselves in favor of the most modest project, finally approved by the prefect.
If the novel takes place over three years, probably between 1883 and 1887, at the height of this quarrel from which it borrows the main episodes, which Boylesve acknowledges in a letter to one of his friends, it is difficult to say specify the dating further. René Boylesve did not seek to respect a rigorous chronology for his story, where he stages real events that took place on different dates but which he makes contemporary for the needs of his novel. The first page of the manuscript, reproduced in the work of Émile Gérard-Gailly, begins with these words: “Around 1884, lived in Tours […]” which Boylesve crossed out and corrected to “Around 188.., lived in Tours […]".
Geographic context