The Priapic Afterlife of Victor Noir

Journalists may fall victim to political violence, and it was no different in the 19th century. In the Pere Lachaise cemetery in the 20th arondissement of Paris, alongside more famous posthumous inhabitants - from Maria Callas (1) to Michel Ney (2) - stands the grave of one Victor Noir, shot dead in 1870 by a member of the Imperial family. Though his death was something of a cause celebre at the time, Noir was a minor figure who would be little remembered now, except for one bizarre oddity - women just can't stop rubbing his groin.... (NB - there is a mildly racy picture further down the page. Deal with it.)

Victor Noir was the pen name of a Jew from the Vosges, later baptised as a Catholic, called Yvan Salmon. Yvan, having tried the careers of watchmaker and florist and not found them to his liking, pitched up in Paris and found a position as an apprentice journalist at the radical newspaper La Marseillaise, edited by Paschal Grousset (3), and owned by Henri Rochefort. The period was one of considerable political tension, with growing radicalism and agitation for the end of the Second Empire (4), and a journal with links to Grousset, La Revanche, was currently engaged in an increasingly bitter slanging match with another Corsican paper, the monarchist L'Avenir. This spat culminated in the publication by L'Avenir of an insulting letter from Pierre Napoleon Bonaparte, a cousin of the emperor, aimed at La Revanche's staff and proprietors. Grousset was outraged and demanded a duel. He appointed his employees Victor Noir and Ulrich de Fonvielle as his seconds, and on January 10, 1870 sent them to Pierre Napoleon's home at 59, Rue d'Auteuil to fix terms. Both were said to have been armed, Noir with a sword-cane and de Fonvielle with a revolver.

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59 Rue d'Auteuil, which probably didn't look this way in 1870.

By custom, Grousset's seconds should have dealt with Pierre Napoleon's own seconds, rather than approaching him directly. Pierre was already angered by the challenge - he did not wish to fight the low-born Corsican, but his proprietor Rochefort, who was of noble family - and was further insulted that he was expected to deal with Grousset's manoeuvres (menials). A fracas ensued (5), during which Napoleon drew a revolver and shot the 22-year-old Noir, killing him.The death of a journalist at the hands of a member of the Imperial family caused widespread outrage in France. Upwards of 100,000 people attended his funeral in Neuilly, and it was only impassioned pleading by Noir's brother which prevented them from forcing the cortege to divert to the more central Pere Lachaise cemetery instead. For a while it seemed as if the killing - and the subsequent acquital of Pierre Napoleon at his trial for murder, which provoked rioting - might spark some more general uprising against the Second Empire. Napoleon III, however, outmanoeuvered the opposition politically as the impetus of the protests ran out, calling a plebiscite on a liberalised constitution, which he won easily (6).

Victor Noir, however, was still remembered as a martyr by the radicals, and in 1891 his body was disinterred from its modest resting place in Neuilly and transferred to a more elaborate grave in Pere Lachaise. The centrepiece of this memorial was a bronze sculpture of the mortally wounded Noir, lying on his back with his hat dropped on the ground beside him, rendered in realistic style by the sculptor Jules Dalou - and it is this monument that has ensured Noir's continuing fame.

 The fallen Noir.

Dalou, for whatever reason, decided to sculpt the unfortunate Noir as distinctly well endowed in the trouser department. At some time, possibly in the 1970s, a rumour got around that a lady who wished to become pregnant should visit the grave of the journalist, kiss his brazen lips, and make her wish while rubbing the crotch for luck (7). As a photograph of the sculpture makes clear, this has left the relevant area looking distinctly polished...

 ... to the extent that in 2005 the municipality made an attempt to fence off the grave to prevent "lewd rubbing", which was abandoned after a tongue-in-cheek campaign by "outraged" women of Paris (actually, a newsreader called Peri Cochin).

Of course, where there's a fake cock and some publicity to be had, it's inevitable that Dita von Teese, burlesque artist and former wife of Marilyn Manson, will not be far away with her writhings:

So, what is the moral of this story? Well, if you are a minor crusading journalist who is going to be killed by the establishment and want to be remembered - at least make sure you have a big knob...
 
Notes
(1) The urn containing the Greek diva's ashes was stolen and later recovered, after which the ashes themselves were scattered in the Aegean. The urn itself remains at Pere Lachaise, but Callas ain't there.

(2) Ney was one of Napoleon Bonaparte's original Marshals. The son of a cooper who had an uneasy relationship with the restored Bourbon monarchy, Ney volunteered in 1815 to lead an army to oppose the deposed Emperor's return to Paris, only to switch sides when he encountered Napoleon. After Waterloo, where his failure to put out of action artillery that he had overrun was blamed by some for the French defeat, he was controversially executed on a charge of treason. He refused to wear a blindfold for the firing squad, and was granted the last wish of giving the order to fire himself. There's even a conspiracy theory to the effect that the execution was faked and that Ney escaped to the USA. In which case, he's not in Pere Lachaise either, but in Cleveland, North Carolina, having lived to a ripe old age as a school teacher :)

(3) Grousset, apart from his journalistic activities, was also an early science fiction writer and occasional collaborator of Jules Verne.

(4) The Emperor, Napoleon III, had initially been elected President but had mounted a coup-d'etat in 1851, dissolving the National Assembly and seeking legitimacy by holding periodic referendums on policy.

(5) According to Pierre Napoleon, Noir struck him when called a "menial", and he only then drew his revolver; the defence further suggested that the burly Noir was less of a journalist than a heavy whom Grousset employed to intimidate his opponents. De Fonvielle averred that the emperor's cousin slapped Noir in the face first and then shot him. The court chose to believe Bonaparte's story and dismissed the killing as self-defence.

(6) It was a hollow victory. Before the end of the year, a reckless declaration of war against the growing power of Prussia led to a humiliating defeat at Sedan in which the Emperor himself was captured. In Paris, Leon Gambetta proclaimed a Government of National Defence, which evolved into the Third Republic. Napoleon III went into exile in Britain and died there in 1873.

(7) There's nothing to suggest that Noir was any sort of stud in his lifetime - his posthumous reputation as a fertility idol seems to be based entirely on his well hung effigy.

EDIT: Music link retired 2/1/2013