For Love of a Dangerous Girl

For Love of a Dangerous Girl

—

Hank H. Cox

Published by Takoma Communications

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Hank H. Cox

All Rights Reserved.

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Cover images are public domain.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Chapter 1 … Adam Lux

Chapter 2 … Charlotte Corday

Chapter 3 … Revolution In The Air

Chapter 4 … L’ami du Peuple

Chapter 5 … Stranger in a Strange Land

Chapter 6 … Family Politics

Chapter 7 … Marie Antoinette

Chapter 8 … The Death of Louis

Chapter 9 … The Lioness in Winter

Chapter 10 … Madame Roland’s Salon

Chapter 11 … Showdown

Chapter 12 … The Girondins in Caen

Chapter 13 … A Dangerous Girl

Chapter 14 … From the Dark of her Cell

Chapter 15 … The Trial

Chapter 16 … The Terror

Sources

Dedication

To Cheryl

The most dangerous girl I know

Foreword

Seillans, France, May 20, 2012

As I write this preface and think about my friend and author, Hank H. Cox, my wife Ruth and I are in the midst of a heavy rain, fog-bound this evening in the south of France. This is a rare downpour, even for the most mountainous areas north of Cannes and Nice. If nothing else, it enhances the seriousness of the quest that Hank and I embarked upon many years ago for the true Charlotte Corday who earned fleeting fame during the French Revolution in a most bold and daring manner that mystified her countrymen and has baffled historians ever since. This gray and forbidding sky also enhances my sense of the elusiveness of our quarry, the mystery surrounding the life of this extraordinary woman. Hank and I probably know as much about her as anyone does, and still we are still left with many questions.

This lower Alpine area of France is beautiful and somewhat isolated from central and northern France, yet the French Revolution had its impact here as in every region of the country. In 1792 the French army recaptured the area from Italy. That didn't last, however, and until 1860, Nice and its environs were Italian (Sardinian). Nonetheless, the French Revolutionary government held a grip on this area through its turbulent early stages and into the Reign of Terror. And as is the case everywhere in this wonderful nation, there is an abiding sense that the core issues of those turbulent years have never been fully resolved.

Hank and I began our journey to find the real Charlotte Corday in April 1993 on a lark -- a trip to Paris. The venture began as a bit of a challenge over a traditional neighborhood New Year's Eve dinner. I was astounded to learn my otherwise worldly friend had never been to France. (Martinique doesn’t count!) Never been to Paris, Hank? Perhaps my wife, a consummate travel agent, could arrange a trip? She did and we were suddenly there, with our wives and daughters, enjoying a spring vacation in the City of Lights.

On our first day in Paris, Hank suggested that we visit Le Conciergerie, the holding location for convicted prisoners during the revolution before they were unceremoniously (in most cases) escorted to the guillotine. Since the property is within Le Palais de Justice, we went through the usual security checks and soon were making our way into dungeons and jail cells occupied not so long ago by notable individuals destined for the National Razor, Madame Le Guillotine, considered at the time to be the most humane form of execution yet designed. One of the most poignant displays was that of Marie Antoinette, far from her Austrian home, bereft of her husband (the executed King Louis XVI), and fearful for the welfare of her children, humiliated in so many ways and waiting despondently to die for the amusement of a howling mob.

As we toured Le Conciergerie, we came upon a wall of names, covered by Plexiglass, of all who had passed through prior to their execution during the Revolution. I recognized the name Antoine Lavoisier, the great chemist; Marie Antoinette; and Charlotte Corday. Hank and I were sitting, taking a breather from all of our walking, and he asked me what I knew about Charlotte. My response, as I suspect would be the case for many of us, was that she killed Jean-Paul Marat during the French Revolution. I knew little more than that, the musical Marat/Sade notwithstanding (poor old Marat).

Hank, wonderfully well-read historian that he is, related the long version of Charlotte Corday's journey to destiny starting with her humble beginnings in the provincial Normandy town of Caen. Hank later continued his tale over wine and cheese in the kitchen of a third story Marais district walk-up in a particularly inspiring area of Paris, as our wives listened curiously. Hank had finished his history lesson and I, not having any clue of the consequences, stated with great confidence, Hank, this is a musical. It's called Corday and this is how it goes. In a burst of bravado, I outlined the play. I would compose the music, Hank would write the libretto and lyrics, and we would collaborate on the overall story. Many years later, I still recall the glow of the wine and the exuberance it inspired in our creative souls.

It has been many years since April 1993, and many more since the tumultuous year 1793, and this has been for us a marvelous voyage of discovery, replete with unexpected detours, fascinating characters and serendipitous occurrences that make the telling of this story compelling, at least to us.

Louis XVI climbed the scaffold to the guillotine in January 1793. For many in France at the time, this was the ultimate effrontery to a civilized society. To others, particularly the Jacobins then in power, this was a necessity to ensure the ultimate success of the Revolution. Among those most offended by the execution of the King were conservative Catholics who were upset by the suppression of the church and the imposition of a secular state. Historically, the church had been closely identified with the Old Regime and was held at least partially responsible for its excesses.

One might assume that in the passage of 200 years, bygones would be bygones. Not so, as we learned from a long-time friend who we traveled from Paris to Versailles to visit on our 1993 trip. Missia LaPorte had been a high school exchange student with one of my sisters. I got to know her during her stay with our family in Chicago, and I later visited her and her family in the Paris suburb of Saint Germaine-en-Laye. On the 1993 trip, while meeting her for lunch at a restaurant in Versailles, just a couple of blocks from the Palace, Hank and I shared with her our desire to learn more about Charlotte Corday's story, which in the broader sense is the story of the revolution.

Missia told us that a few months before, the Archbishop of Paris had declined to celebrate a Catholic Mass for the repose of the soul of Louis XVI, on the 200th anniversary of his death. Conservative French Catholics were incensed. We were fascinated by this sense of history playing out in the present and wanted to know more. Missia told us the story of an uncle in her family tree, a Monsieur Quatre-Mer, who had been deemed to be too lenient a judge by the Revolutionary Tribunal and subsequently lost his head. She showed us the ring that she wears today bearing the Quatre-Mer family coat of arms. We were witness to a two centuries-old drama still playing out.

Back stateside we began to get serious about writing our first musical, a process we would discover is much more complicated than we imagined. But first we needed more on the story. We went into a research mode. Most memorably we spent a snowy day that first winter at the U.S. Library of Congress. Among the materials we reviewed was a transcript in the original French of Charlotte Corday's trial. Much of the play's trial scene is taken directly from this document. We also reviewed an amazing two-volume document entitled The Music of the French Revolution. That work, encompassing martial music, patriotic music and folk music of the period would prove indispensable in the composition of the score.

Ready for our first draft, we spent a weekend at a borrowed A-frame lake cottage in western Maryland near Deep Creek Lake, laying out the storyboard, literally piecing it together with note cards. Once our draft storyline was complete, we recognized that we needed the input of people with stage experience, since neither of us had very much. We had both seen many musical productions, and Hank had actually acted in a couple, but neither of us had direct experience in writing or producing musicals.

One of the first people we sought out was our friend Ralph Frederick, an accomplished singer, musician and actor whose life was built around the musical theater. He boasted that he had seen every credible musical to ever hit Broadway, or even off-Broadway, and we had no reason to doubt him. We prevailed upon him to read one of our early drafts, and took him in to a fancy restaurant (French, of course) one evening, hoping for advice and affirmation. We got plenty of the former, little of the latter, but it proved a memorable evening in other ways. After dinner and a couple of bottles of fine wine, we described the scene as Charlotte is transported to the guillotine that late July evening in 1793 and, almost as an afterthought, how Adam Lux, a reluctant member of the National Convention, observed her so calmly reconciled to her fate and was overwhelmed by her aura. He watched her die and began to write poetic love letters to the journals of the day defending her honor, attacking the revolutionary government for executing her, daring them to do the same to him. Adam Lux may have been the only victim of the guillotine to actually demand its service. He was tried, convicted and executed some months later.

It is a bit embarrassing now to note that at that early stage of the process, we didn’t even have Adam Lux in our draft. He always struck us as a bit over the top, not quite sane. But then, is love ever sane? We were interrupted by Ralph's animated shriek heard throughout the cafe -- You’re telling me this guy never met her, and he died for her anyway? Out of love? And he isn’t even in your play? He never even met her and still he insisted on dying to be with her? Are you kidding me? Every woman loves Adam Lux! Call the play 'Adam Lux', not 'Corday'. Call the play 'Adam Lux', for God's sake! So as a thank you, Ralph, while the working title was Corday, we are now calling our play For Love of a Dangerous Girl.

Somewhere along the line we encountered an experienced theater producer named Scott Malone who graciously agreed to review our play and give us his honest opinion. He let us down gently with a story he attributed to the painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler who one night went for a stroll with his wife beneath a starry sky. She said, according to Malone, Isn’t the sky beautiful? To which Whistler replied, after looking the sky over, I would have done it differently.

We then shared a draft of the play with Robbie Schneider, a local university professor of French history. Again we were seeking some kind of affirmation. Were we even close in the details we portrayed? He carefully read the play, sat down with us and proclaimed that we knew more about this event in the French Revolution than anyone he had met to date. At least our history was on target. We were off to the races!

Our next test was the music. I had used various compositional techniques to incorporate musical themes from French Revolutionary music as well as traditional French country ballads from the same period. How would the melodies be accepted by a modern audience? Would they complement Hank's lyrics?

Through our neighbor Vickie Killian we got in touch with Kate Rossier, a university-trained soprano and pianist with an abiding love for the musical theater. I sent to her the lead sheets for one of the central songs of the musical, Why Must the Good Ones Die? Hank and I met up with her for the first time at her home in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, not far from where we live. Until that point in time I had never heard any of the music for the play performed by anyone other than myself. Would it hold up? Kate sat down at her piano, straightened the lead sheet and said, So far I haven't been able to get through the song without crying. I think it's beautiful. She then performed it flawlessly, and we were the ones in tears.

The second test of the music came from a surprising source -- an individual who Hank had met on the golf course. Hank and a pal were out hitting the little balls around when they chanced to be matched up with an older gentleman and his wife. After golf, they shared a beer and of course Hank told them all about Corday and our efforts to compose a musical. As it happened, the older gentleman described himself as a composer and said that he would be pleased to take a look at my music. Hank accepted his generous offer, but when I heard about it, I was suddenly worried. I gathered my lead sheets, and we headed to a pub in nearby Wheaton, Maryland, to meet up with this guy. I must confess that though he looked vaguely familiar, neither Hank nor I knew who he was. I knew we had a real game on our hands when he apologized for being late, stating that he had just come from rehearsing the National Symphony Orchestra on a new composition he had written. The quiet way he said it made us know he was for real. With feigned self-confidence I handed him my materials. He scanned them a full page at a time, as if a conductor reading a symphony score, which in fact he was! At one point he paused. Why the change to a minor key and then back to the major?...Aha, I see.

I had passed the test! He was most complimentary of my work, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. And as fate would have it, a few days later Hank saw him on TV with Quincy Jones talking about an extravaganza on the Washington Mall. Our advisor that night was none other than the composer George Stevens, Jr., founder of the American Film Institute, creator of the tributes to showbiz greats at the Kennedy Center Honors, but mostly well known for his own work in television. (His father was the late film director George Stevens, Sr., who did Giant and A Place in the Sun.)

The years slipped by and Hank and I continued to work on Corday, now called For Love Of A Dangerous Girl, when we could, a weekend here and there, as we pursued our professional careers and raised our families. In addition to Kate, we hired two more professional singers, Galyia Valera and Allan Garcia, to learn our songs, and recruited a pianist named Al Hart who had extensive experience in theater music. We recorded our songs in a professional studio in Rockville, Maryland, and they are spectacular. I remember Hank and I looking at each other in wonder – did we really write those songs? Yes, Hank, we did.

We had a couple of readings in which our singers participated. Everyone loved it. Of course, we lack influential connections to the theater and despite our best efforts, we have yet to persuade a theater group to produce our play. We understand the reason. Producing any play is an expensive proposition and a musical is more expensive than most. Someone must take a great risk, especially when the composer and lyricists are neophytes. We have yet to find that person.

Even so, this has been an extraordinary journey that neither of us regrets for a moment. We have learned a lot about the musical theater. We have met many wonderful people. We have composed some great music. And we have consumed copious amounts of excellent French wine in the process

Charlotte Corday has been our muse and inspiration. For most musicals, such as My Fair Lady, the book on which the musical was based had already been written (Pygmalion). In our case, although there were many historical treatments of the event, no single source fit well. But now here is the book' as written by Hank Cox. Enjoy!

Martin J. Lowery, Ph.D. Duke University, 1977

Chapter One – Adam Lux

Whoever loved that loved not at first sight?

—William Shakespeare, The Tempest

In the torrid summer of 1793, Jean-Adam Lux found himself adrift in Paris amid a disintegrating political situation that had begun a few years before amid an outpouring of optimism for social and political change, but was rapidly evolving into what is known to history as The Reign of Terror. He was extremely disenchanted and discouraged by what he saw around him. Lux was a member of the National Convention, the chief law-making body of the new revolutionary government of France, but he did not feel powerful. To the contrary, he felt increasingly helpless with every passing day.

Lux had come to Paris on a wave of enthusiasm for the revolution that promised to sweep away the Old Regime of royal rule and upper class privilege, and set the stage for a bright new era of liberty, equality and brotherhood. Like most progressive Europeans of his day, Lux felt oppressed