[CR] =?iso-8859-1?q?FLAUBERT=2C_=93MADAM_BOVARY=94_AND_HIRONDELLE=92S_ORIGINS?=

(Example: Framebuilders:Tony Beek)

Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 07:43:51 -0800 (PST)
From: "Peter Jourdain" <pjourdain@yahoo.com>
To: classicrendezvous@bikelist.org
Subject: [CR] =?iso-8859-1?q?FLAUBERT=2C_=93MADAM_BOVARY=94_AND_HIRONDELLE=92S_ORIGINS?=

Bonjour---

An obscure request for the bicycle historians and French cycling fans out there...

O.K., so I’m reading Gustave Flaubert’s “Madam Bovary” (1856), (limping along en francais and also “cheating” with a translation) and the characters are coming and going in a yellow “Hirondelle” horse-drawn carriage which plays a large symbolic part in the novel. [Hirondelle literally means a swallow (bird)].

The thing is, the “Hirondelle,” whenever mentioned, is capitalized and in quotation marks, leading me to believe that Flaubert is referring to a specific marque, that is a brand name. And so I'm wondering if it might be the same company that produced the famous Hirondelle bicycles which enter our CR timeline most commonly via their mid-1900s randonneuring machines.

I know that Hirondelle made bicycles as early as 1887, and that Emile Zola specifically mentions the bicycle brand in an 1898 work, “Paris,” and another writer mentions the marque as early as 1891, but I am wondering if before building bicyclettes Hirondelle were a carriage manufacturing concern?

As an example, AuTomoTo I believe began as a horseless carriage (automobile) maker (hence the curious name for a bicycle, if you’ve ever wondered) and only switched to bicycle manufacturing when the automotive venture failed.

Did the Hirondelle bicycle company have a similar start to AuTomoTo, but even earlier, circa the 1850s, in the horse-drawn carriage trade?

Or was the bicycle brand separate from any relation to carriages and named Hirondelle possibly not only because of its aviarian associations of swift flight but also in mock homage to the contraption in Flaubert’s work?

Merci!

Pierre Antoine Jourdain Whitewater, Wisconsin, États-Unis d'Amérique

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