Like did people in the 19th Century say things like:
"Oh man, I'll never forget the tragedy of the 13th of March. I lost my Uncle Ignacy that day!" (Ignacy Hryniewiecki blew himself up in 1881, killing Tsar Alexander II and 20 other people).
"Damn, I've just been on the worst cruise ever. I'll never sail with the Medusa again! The catering was horrible!" (In 1816, the French ship Méduse sank off the coast of Africa, leading to the death of 140 people. The 15 survivors, drifting aptop a raft, were forced into cannibalism until they were rescued)
[Most of what follows is derived from Poirier, 2005]. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake led to an outpouring of literary works in prose and poetry: in the following days, weeks, and months, a legion of writers throughout Europe expressed grief or expounded speculations of philosophical, religious, or scientific nature.
A few weeks after the earthquake, a 8-page booklet titled Relation du tremblement de terre arrivé à Lisbonne le 1er novembre 1755 was published in Paris. Presented as a letter by a Portuguese officer to a friend in Paris, it included the tragic story of the Count of Ribera, who had just married Dona Maria de Lucos after a long and disputed courtship. Then, a new threat forced them to flee Lisbon in a ship when the earthquake struck. The ship was thrown inland by the tsunami and the star-crossed lovers died.
According to critic Elie Fréron, who ran the magazine Année Littéraire, the anecdote was a "fable invented for pleasure". As he told in his magazine in December 1755:
The author of the Relation, whom I know, admitted it to me himself; he told me that one fine morning, not knowing what to do, he had stapled up this gazette, & that he had laughed out loud when he saw several people crying in the best faith of the world at this article in his brochure.
Fréron, in a later issue of the Année Littéraire, noted with some irony that "The convulsions of Cybele [the Greek goddess of Earth] give fuel to Calliope [the Muse of eloquence and epic poetry]". Perhaps there were too many authors writing about the tragedy and vying for attention?
Despite being bogus, the story of the Count de Ribera was picked up by other authors. Particularly, it was central to a 5-act play titled Le Tremblement de terre de Lisbonne, by "Mr André, Master wigmaker", published in 1755, allegedly in Lisbon. While called a "tragedy" on the front page, it was a parody written in the pompous style of actual tragedies. The "Lisbon" address of the publisher was dark humour. Its wig-making author complained in the preface about having been delayed in his writings for two consecutive nights by the body odours of people. He dedicated, in mockingly servile terms, the work to Voltaire, who had just written a philosophical poem about the earthquake.
The real author of the farce was Jean-Henri Marchand, an attorney who was fond of literary pranks and pastiches. The text of the Tremblement... is littered with (voluntarily) terrible verses, mixes vulgar language and noble one, and includes sexual innuendos (such as a reference to Louis XV's mistress Marie-Louise O'Murphy). The earthquake only happens in the final act, and is witnessed by Du Pont, the Count's confident and himself the star-crossed lover of Thérèse (the confident of the Count's lover Theodora). Du Pont is at a wigmaker's shop to have his wig ironed (he wants to be pretty for his own marriage) and misses the boat carrying the Count, Theodora, and Thérèse: then the earthquake strikes, causing the wigmaker to burn Du Pont's ear with the hair iron.
Great God! the house is falling down, where am I going to save myself?
I can't take it anymore, Thérèse; where shall I turn?
But I tremble everywhere, to be certain it is here
That I must perish, friend, it is quite sure today.
Was it necessary that I should marry Thérèse now,
To see myself crushed like a bug?
In the last verses of the play, Du Pont locates the ship carrying his master, his master's lover and his own lover, but the ship falls into a hole, that closes immediately and disappears. Du Pont thinks about committing suicide by throwing himself in the hole to die with Thérèse but cannot find it and leaves. The play ends with the following verses.
Wherever I go, on foot or in a carriage,
I'll remember my first wedding day.
Too soon? Le Tremblement de terre de Lisbonne was criticized in 1757 in the Bibliothèque des sciences et des beaux-arts:
It has been printed here a burlesque tragedy on the Lisbon earthquake, by M. André, a privileged wigmaker, a play enjoyed by a people who laugh at everything, but which is no less deserving of the indignation of all those to whom there is any shadow of religion and humanity left.
The play was not shown on stage until 1804, but it was successful in print, and reprinted in 1756, 1805, 1826, and 1834. Is it dark humour? Not exactly perhaps, but it remains an example of a writer and its reading public having fun at the expanse of a very recent and celebrated tragedy.
Sources