Source
The Story Of The French Illegalists by Richard Parry
L'anarchie was now being published by comrades living in a large detached house in the suburb of Romainville, two kilometers north-east of Paris.
It could be reached quite easily by tram from Concorde, Opéra, République or Bastille, or by train to the station which stood almost opposite.
The house itself had a basement, ground and two upper floors; there was a courtyard and extensive garden with fruit and lilac trees.
The rent had been settled at eight hundred francs for the first year and a thousand francs thereafter.
Romainville had the atmosphere of a country village and still retained some of the charm that had led Victor Hugo to describe it as a place "where young lovers went to gather lilac in April".
Romainville was soon to become the home of the comrades from Brussels:
Victor Kibalchich, Raymond Callemin, Jean De Boe, Edouard Carouy, and the French draft-dodger Octave Garnier.
Jean De Boe was first to arrive, at the end of 1910, via Switzerland and Marseilles, where he'd been wrongly arrested for theft.
Raymond arrived in February 1911, although he had visited previously.
Edouard, Octave and Marie seem to have turned up, maybe together, in April.
There were warrants out for both men for their suspected involvement in a burglary in Charleroi the month before, during which a gendarme had been shot.
The rebels. Top left, VICTOR KIBALCHICH wearing the Russian peasant blouse he was later to wear in court. Top right, RAYMOND CALLEMIN ('La Science') Victor's childhood friend. Bottom left, EDOUARD CAROUY, metal worker, professional burglar and anarchist sympathizer, shown here in his early 30s. Bottom right, JEAN DE BOE, organizer of the Brussels Revolutionary Group. These four men worked together on Le Révolté.
In Romainville, Edouard met up with a small, dark-haired Italian anarchist, Jeanne Belardi (née Botelli), during one of those pleasant Sunday afternoon open-air meetings at rue de Bagnolet.
She was cultivated but temperamental, according to Rirette.
She was married to Brutus Benardi or Belardi, who was doing a five-year stretch in Melun prison for forging ten-franc pieces.
She came to l'anarchie to find companionship, and support for her four year-old daughter: she found both in Edouard Carouy.
René Valet also came to live in Romainville in the spring or summer of 1911 with his companion Anna Dondon, a twenty-six year-old from Decize (Nièvre).
She was on parole from Rennes prison after a second sentence (five years this time) for circulating false ten-franc pieces.
She had come to Paris with her brother and met the comrades of l'anarchie, among them René Valet.
Her daughter, however, was still being looked after by her parents in Decize.
Victor and Rirette moved into 16 rue de Bagnolet in the summer of 1911, bringing the two children, Maud and Chinette, with them.
Amour libre — free love — was certainly practised in anarchist circles as part of the struggle against the dependence and slavery of bourgeois marriage.
Victor, Edouard and Octave were all consorting with married women, two of whose husbands were in prison for counterfeiting (a popular practice amongst anarchists), and three of whom had children by their previous relationships.
Still, despite the much proclaimed demand for female emancipation, Rirette could say that "amongst the anarchists, rarely is the woman's opinion asked".
Whether bourgeois, worker or 'rebel', the activity of the man was still very much the focus of attention.
The editor of l'anarchie, Lorulot, was also consorting with a married woman, Louise Dieudonné (née Kayser), nicknamed 'the Red Venus' — a play no doubt on Louise Michel's moniker 'The Red Virgin'.
She was married to a joiner from Nancy, strong, moustachioed Eugène Dieudonné, an anarchist ever since, at the age of fifteen, he had seen his best friend clubbed into the gutter by police during a strike.
Eugène had done his military service, unlike the other comrades at Romainville, but had spent half his time in prison for insulting his superior officers and for making antimilitarist propaganda.
When he was demobbed in 1907 he married Louise, and a child, Jeannot, was born the following year.
He was happy enough in his work, but Louise desperately wanted to see Paris and convinced him to leave Nancy.
In the spring of 1908 they found a flat near Bastille and he began work in the Faubourg St Antoine.
Louise loved the city, but it did not suit Eugène at all.
To her he now seemed rather ordinary compared to the vigorous young rebels, or the more thoughtful intellectual types, that she met at the Causeries Populaires.
An affair developed between her and Lorulot, and, after some anguish, she left Eugène to live with Lorulot in Romainville.
He felt helpless faced with the power of love and his anarchist principles.
On 6th June he returned to Nancy and took his infant son to his mother's.
In Romainville, matinées and soirées were held in the garden virtually every other Sunday, especially after spring had come and the weather was fine.
There would be discussions, eating, drinking and lazing about on the grass, and the habitual singing of revolutionary and popular folk songs, or the reciting of passages of prose and poetry.
The principles of communal life at rue de Bagnolet revolved around la vie naturelle — the natural life.
It was a common enough idea at the time, and found expression in such groups as the 'naturists', the 'savages' and the 'nomads', all living out their particular interpretation of la vie naturelle.
Living in libertarian communes, or life on the road, sometimes travelling in groups of over a hundred people were part of the experience of many anarchists.
Large groups of 'bohemians' travelled around central Europe and France in convoys up to sixty caravans strong.
They lived partially by stealing, 'altering' stolen horses in much the same way as Bonnot was to 'ring' stolen cars.
They were forbidden to stay in towns and were constantly harassed by the authorities; occasionally the police would round up a whole group, arrest and photograph them, and note down their names, which were almost certainly aliases.
They'd then be released and told to move on.
Lorulot, Libertad and Zo d'Axa all praised this marginal existence as anti-capitalist.
Victor, Raymond and Edouard had belonged to the colony in the forest of Soignes, and Lorulot had lived for some time with the libertarian commune at St Germain-en-Laye just outside Paris: apparently one of his favourite activities was wandering naked through the woods.
In Romainville, however, la vie naturelle was given a 'scientific' basis.
Raymond, Octave, Edouard, René and presumably their female companions, Marie, Jeanne and Anna adopted a diet akin to Lorulot's, but based on scientific rather than 'natural' principles.
The communal table was often spread with 'cuisine Lorulot': a typical meal being brown rice or maize porridge, a milky soup, scraped vegetables and macaroni cheese, all highly flavoured.
'Antiscientific' substances such as salt, pepper and vinegar were never used.
Some vegetables were home-grown in the back garden by an ex-con called Hue, who also looked after the chickens and pet ducks and rabbits.
Vegetarianism was the order of the day, while some comrades also experimented with fruitarianism.
As for beverages, tea and coffee were avoided in preference to water, and alcohol was completely shunned.
Besides tuberculosis, the other killer disease of the working class was chronic alcoholism.
The anarchist attitude was that alcohol dulled the senses of workers to their exploitation and was therefore another weapon in the arsenal of Capitalism; alcoholism was a sort of materialized form of the Christian-induced attitude of resignation.
Keeping fit was seen as important both for general health reasons, and in case of brushes with the police.
Tobacco smoking was definitely out.
Comrades took up the latest Swedish exercises and also went for long walks and cycle rides.
Louise, Rirette, Raymond, Edouard, Marie and Octave would get up early on Sunday mornings and cycle down to the River Marne at Nogent.
There they would hire a boat or two and drift along, while Louise sang Edouard's favourite sentimental old love song.
An old romantic at heart, Edouard liked to buy caged birds and set them free: he hated the idea of imprisonment of any creature, human or not.
As they lazed about on the river, Octave and Marie were obviously unaware that destiny would bring them back to the place under rather different circumstances.
At the time it was very à la mode in anarchist circles to possess a 9mm Browning semi-automatic: they were quite easily obtainable, being manufactured at the Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre in Herstal, Belgium.
They were rarely used however: comrades simply tended to be picked up for carrying a prohibited weapon and given three months in jail.
This didn't deter Octave, Edouard and René Valet from conducting target practice in the back garden at Romainville — something which, coupled with their nocturnal activities, made Lorulot extremely anxious, and led to several arguments.
One major topic of discussion was the 'importance of science'.
It was held that Science, by teaching that it was possible not just to comprehend, but also to change one's environment, could counter the dominant attitude of resignation to the current order of things.
At the time, a belief in the impartiality of science was bound up with the old idea of 'Progress' and the general climate of discovery, experimentation and change that had accompanied the expansion of Capitalism.
Some anarchists suggested that 'scientific law' should regulate the whole life of the 'new Man' to the exclusion of irrational sentiment, emotion and idealism.
'Reason' was to replace 'Faith', much as the old nineteenth century philosophes had suggested, but this time the discoveries of science would allow more practical, material applications of 'Reason' to everyday life.
The ideas of Buchner, Haeckel and, above all, Félix Le Dantec were discussed incessantly.
Le Dantec was a determinist, biologist, and philosophical rationalist in the tradition of the great biologist Lamarck, but his ideas were marked by an extremely mechanistic conception of life.
He had published books on sexuality and atheism, which put him in favour with the individualists, and in 1911 he brought out a volume entitled Egoism — foundation of all Society.
He declared:
"Life is an absolutely egotistical act, and the living being is in struggle against the entire universe.
It is enemy of everything outside of it".
Words rather reminiscent of Stirner.
Victor Kibalchich, however, grew annoyed at the direction these discussions were taking:
"Taine and Renan's blind cult of science, here reduced to almost algebraic formulae by fanatical populizers, became the catechism of the individualist revolt...the doctrine of 'comradely living' slightly counteracted the unpardonable isolation of these rebels; but out of it was emerging a constricted coterie equipped with a psychological jargon demanding a long initiation.
I found this coterie at once fascinating and repellent".
Nevertheless, Kibalchich himself was not totally averse to using 'scientific' argument in his polemics: at the end of one article in 1911 he suggested that anarchists "destroy by all means that science has provided".
Raymond was said to be the leading light of the 'scientific individualists' and acquired his nickname — Raymond-La-Science — from the way that he habitually began sentences, "La Science dit... ", or "La Science affirme...".
This coterie cannot have been very big, however, as Victor and Rirette were not part of it, and Edouard apparently used to get irritated and tell Raymond to shut up; René seems to have said little, and Octave just put up with him.
Unfortunately, Lorulot, although he could quite happily share their scientific diet, could not stomach their illegalist ideas and — more to the point — their actions.
Already concerned about the target-shooting, he was worried that sooner or later some of their burglaries would be traced back to l'anarchie.
Rirette said later that Lorulot was never an illegalist in words or deeds.
After several arguments he decided to return to Paris and there set up his own magazine, but as nominal editor of l'anarchie he would need a replacement.
Victor Kibalchich was the obvious choice: he was an old friend of the scientific-cum-illegalist group from Brussels, with whom he shared ideas (or so it seemed in print), and he was a regular contributor to l'anarchie and a leading speaker at the Causeries Populaires.
In fact, it was Rirette's name that appeared on the front page as the nominal editor; perhaps Lorulot felt that making her liable for the contents of the paper would have a calming effect on some of the fiery young men who were being rather too careless with their words and actions.
On 13th July 1911, the first issue appeared bearing Henriette Maîtrejean's name on the cover.
Two weeks later it was explained: "Our situation is very precarious"; there was no money coming in and a malaise reigned amongst their friends.
Lorulot, it was said, had left "for personal reasons", but would continue to help.
The Romainville commune now consisted of the four couples — Octave Garnier and Marie, Edouard Carouy and Jeanne, Victor and Rirette, Anna and René Valet, their three children, Huc the gardener and Raymond Callemin.
A frequent guest was Marius Medge, a friend, and associate in crime, of Edouard's.
He was a draft-dodger who had escaped to England, and may have had a hand in the antimilitarist manifesto from London that appeared in the pages of l'anarchie.
He was nicknamed Le Cuisinier ('Cookie' or 'the Cook') as he'd been an assistant cook in Paris before his call-up papers had arrived; burglary was now his chosen profession.
Nicknames were traditional amongst criminals and were adopted by anarchists for much the same reasons: to avoid being traced or identified by the police or their informers.
Thus Octave Garnier was Le Terrassier (the navvy), Edouard Carouy was Le Rouquin ('Ginger'), Victor Le Rétif, Raymond La Science, Medge Le Cuisinier, and Marie La Belge; the other women were simply La Belardi (Jeanne) and La Dondon (Anna) after their surnames.
While Victor scribbled away writing and translating, Raymond was made treasurer and also helped Jean De Boe with the typography.
Jean, however, soon left to help Lorulot with his new magazine.
Garnierand Carouy lived on the first floor and worked the printing press.
Octave also helped Huc in the garden and baked most of the bread.
The four women seem to have done most of the cooking: Rirette alone of the four did translations, wrote articles and chaired meetings.
The three children were taken care of in communal fashion.
René Valet helped out generally in the print shop.
On the second floor was a large shower room and a graffiti-covered room for travellers — in keeping with the anarchist ethic of obligatory hospitality for comrades in need.
Causeries continued to be held in the garden at 16 rue de Bagnolet on Sundays in July and August; Victor talked on 'Individualism and the Social Question', and there was a discussion on 'The Freedom of Love'.
On 20th August there was an excursion, starting from the Gare du Nord at seven am, to Enghien for an anarchist picnic.
Still, despite these comradely affairs, and Lorulot's departure, new tensions arose amongst the comrades living at Romainville.
This series of posts will insure that these anarchists' works live on in living memory.
If only a few.
Don't lose hope now, dear reader.
We've made it this far.
At some point the ride gets easier.
Rule by force has had it's day.
When everybody sees the iron fist in the velvet glove we win.
We just have to survive its death throes.
There is a reason these facts are not in the modern curriculums.
Setting rewards to burn only burns the author portion of the payout.
The crowd isn't silenced.
Please cheer loudly, if that is your thing.