Showing posts with label Giffard (Pierre). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Giffard (Pierre). Show all posts

12 November 2013

Pierre Giffard: Cimetière de Maisons-Laffitte #2


'PIERRE LOUIS GIFFARD
1853 – 1922
HOMME DE LETTRES
OFFICIER D LA LEGION D'HONNEUR
VULGARISATEUR DU TÉLÉPHONE EN 1877
                                           DU PHONOGRAPHE EN 1878
                                            DE LA BICYCLETTE EN 1890
                                            DE L'AUTOMOBILE EN 1894'

A rather unusual epitaph, 'Vulgarisateur' of course meaning 'Populariser'. Below is a link to an earlier post I made on Giffard, which also includes a little on Jean Cocteau's house in Maisons-Laffitte:
 
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Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard in Maisons-Laffitte

2 December 2011

Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, France: Literary Île-de-France #46

As well as Jules Vallès, Jean Cocteau and Pierre Giffard have plaques marking their former residence in Maisons-Laffite. (As does Arthur Koestler, although the tourist bureau could only direct me to Cocteau's place: there's a point where tourism of the literary kind just becomes too obscure for the tourist industry, and that point is very soon reached.)
So here we have Cocteau's birthplace.

'Ici est né

le 5 juillet 1889
JEAN COCTEAU
Prince des Poètes'

Also in the town is Pierre Giffard's former house.

This has two plaques, and the weatherbeaten one (which bears two date discrepancies, one of them saying that he lived here a year after his death) provides additional information that he founded the paper Le Vélo and was the godfather of the Petite Reine.

The later plaque tells us that this place was known as 'The Grotto', which this other weatherbeaten photo shows.