Citoyenne Mignot, "amie de Couthon".

Couthon from a 19th engraving

Georges Couthon was the object of a weirdly obsessive adulation from one of his female admirers which throws an interesting light on the relationships between Revolutionaries and the highly charged emotional atmosphere of the Year II.  The backdrop was Couthon's mission to his native Puy-de-Dome in September 1793, above all his triumphant return to Clermont-Ferrand in November 1793 following the surrender of Lyons.  At this moment of greatest triumph, Couthon was the object of much adoring attention, taken up in a flurry of escorts, dinners and receptions, surrounded by men vying to carry the him around and pursued, by all accounts, by a chorus of excited women.  Among them none was more strange than Suzanne Mignot, who, according to the Avergnat historian Francisque Mège, had plunged into extreme revolutionary politics as a result of a failed marriage and apparently saw in Couthon a kind of god of republicanism.  According to Mège Citoyenne Mignot was a believer in Mesmerism, through which she tried to cure the many infirmities of her idol. In order to be near him she become the close friend of his wife.  She followed Couthon and Mme.Couthon to Lyons, haunted them in their home at Clermont and later came to in Paris - she may indeed have lived in Passy, where Couthon is known to have had a residence. According to family tradition she eventually became completely insane and died in an asylum in Paris in about 1820.

Georges Couthon (and his dog!)





Georges-Auguste Couthon at the National Convention in 1793
Black chalk drawing
Metropolitan Museum New York, Acquired 1962

Suddenly the eighteenth century seems beset with dogs!  This sketch by Vivant Denon, now in the Metropolitan Museum, represents a rare portrait of Couthon. We are told he did indeed own a white pug, by name of Bramm, that seldom left his lap in the Convention (Cabanès, p.226). 

Important chairs 2 - Couthon's wheelchair

Description

 This magnificent wheelchair, upholstered in lemon-coloured velvet, once belonged to Robepierre's ally on the Committee of Public Safety Georges Couthon. The wheels are moved by means of two cranks attached to the arms. It is reproduced to dramatic effect in the film Danton - see below.  (If the chair doesn't appear immediately it is about 1 minute 40 into the clip.)

Provenance

The chair first appeared in July 1899  when it was presented out of the blue to the Musée Carnavalet  by a woman who refused to give her name but identified herself as Couthon's great-granddaughter.  She claimed that it had been in store with the family furniture ever since Couthon's execution on 9th Thermidor.