Robert Darnton
An Early Information Society
[Page 9]
The anecdote is trivial in itself, but it illustrates the way a news item moved through various media, reaching an ever-wider public. In this case, it went through four phases: First, it began as mauvais propos, or insider gossip at court. Second, it turned into a bruit public, or general rumor in Paris—and the text uses a strong expression: "the general opinion of the public." Third, it became incorporated in nouvelles à la main, or manuscript news sheets, which circulated in the provinces, like Mme. Doublet's. Fourth, it was printed in a libelle, or scandalous book—in this case, a bestseller, which went through many editions and reached readers everywhere.
The book Anecdotes sur Mme. la comtesse du Barry is a scurrilous biography of the royal mistress pieced together from bits of gossip picked up by the greatest nouvelliste of the century, Mathieu-François Pidansat de Mairobert. He went around Paris collecting tidbits of news and scribbling them on scraps of paper, which he stuffed into his pockets and sleeves. When he arrived in a café, he would pull one out and regale the company—or trade it for another item collected by another nouvelliste. Mairobert's biography of du Barry is really a scrapbook of these news items strung together along a narrative line, which takes the heroine from her obscure birth as the daughter of a cook and a wandering friar to a star role in a Parisian whorehouse and finally the royal bed.13
Mairobert did not hesitate to vent his political opinions in telling his story, and his opinions were extremely hostile to Versailles. In 1749, a police spy reported that he had denounced the government in the following terms: "Speaking about the recent reorganization of the army, Mairobert said in the Café Procope that any soldier who had an opportunity should blast the court to hell, since its sole pleasure is in devouring the people and committing injustices."14 A few days later, the police hauled him off to the Bastille, his pockets bulging with poems about taxes and the sex life of the king.
Mairobert's case, and dozens like it, illustrates a point so self-evident that it has never been noticed: the media of the Old Regime were mixed. They transmitted an amalgam of overlapping, interpenetrating messages, spoken, written, printed, pictured, and sung. The most difficult ingredient in this mixture for the historian to isolate and analyze is oral communication, because it usually disappeared into the air. But, evanescent as it was, contemporaries took it seriously. They often remarked on it in letters and diaries, and some of their comments conform quite closely to the model that I just presented in the form of a flow chart. Here, for example, is a contemporary description of how news traveled by word of mouth: "A vile courtier puts these infamies [reports of royal orgies] into rhyming couplets and, through the intermediary of flunkies, distributes them all the way to the marketplace. From the markets they reach artisans, who in turn transmit them back to the noblemen who first wrought them and who, without wasting a minute, go to the royal chambers in Versailles and whisper from ear to ear in a tone of consummate
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