FRENCH REVOLUTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 August 1939, Page 5

FRENCH REVOLUTION

SOME BRITISH SOUVENIRS. A British section was included in the exhibition of “The French Revolution in History, Art and Literature,” which opened in Paris at the Carnavaiet Museurn on June 23. Side by side with the famous documents relating to the taking of the Bastille, the trial anc’ execution cf the King and Queen of France, the trial and execution of theGirondms, of Camille Desmoulins and Danton, were shown a number of tocuments dealing with Englishmen i>-F’-ance, most of them of humble class, who were swept into the tragic whirl nnel and lost their lives. Some of the documents that were -hown relate to the English Revolutionary Club whose members met twic r w—k the church of Notre Danr des Victoires. Thomas Paine, natural ! sed American, was a member of this club, as was James Watt, son of the inventor of the steam engine. While some of the members of the club go' into trouble with their own country none of them suffered in France mow toan temporary imprisonment at a later stage of the Revolution, unlike other of their countrymen, who fel 1 victims to the guillotine. If there is no Sydney Carton to be found, nor Scarlet Pimpernell, a number of the records contain full material for dramas as moving as those of Dickens and Baroness Orczy. A set of documents exhibited told the tragic story of two cousins, one a youth of seventeen, who found their way of adventure led to the guillotine.