In 1811, a Napoleonic decree declared that all foundlings, orphans, and poor children of Paris were to be placed with rural families of farmers and artisans. People treated these children with contempt, considering them mere commodities. Their host families received a pension from the state and wage-free labour from the children. The children had to pull their weight; they were unworthy and should be grateful for what they were given. That is how 19th-century French society viewed them.
Many young people from rural France were leaving to work as servants for rich Parisian families. For Napoleon, sending the orphaned children of Paris to the countryside was an effective way to solve the growing problem of provincial France losing its workforce.
On the 27th of July 1833, the Paris foundling and orphan service assumed responsibility for Louis Rivola, born on the 2nd of December 1832 in the 12th arrondissement of Paris, son of Louise Augustine Juliette Rivola. On the 30th of July 1833, he was sent to Béthune in the Pas-de-Calais, a region in the north of France, where he became one of the many “petits Paris”.
Louis learnt carpentry from his foster family and grew into a talented artisan.
He met Hortense in his early thirties, and on the 20th of March 1864 their first child, Sophie Marie Joseph, was born. Two weeks later, on the 4th of April 1864, they married in Merville, in the north of France, where Louis lived with his family for the rest of his life. Together, Louis and Hortense had another 14 children.
Louis believed his biological mother was Italian; his family name told him that much. He believed he was a foundling, the son of a young, unmarried woman who had no choice but to give him up. Perhaps that is why he married Hortense so quickly after Sophie was born. After all, Louis was not the sort of man who shied away from his responsibilities.
But after years of research that started in the 1990s with my grandmother and spanned decades after that, I finally had a breakthrough. Juliette was not a girl who had found herself pregnant out of wedlock. When Louis was born, she was a woman well into her late twenties, a settled and married woman.
What I uncovered after years of research in the digitised archives of Paris left me heartbroken.
Juliette had married her sweetheart, Jean-Baptiste Rivolin, on the 11th of September 1827. By the time Louis arrived, they had been married for several years. Because the administrative records of Paris burned during the Paris Commune in 1871, they reconstituted the official documents, making it unclear whether Juliette was 16 or 19 when she got married. However, her age at death suggests she was about 19.
On the 2nd of January 1865, Juliette passed away at 57 in the seamstress lodging where she lived and worked. Her colleagues reported her death to the authorities, since she had no family left. Everyone knew she had been widowed for a long time, but the exact date of Jean-Baptiste’s death remained unknown because the fire had destroyed those records too.
I believe the heartbreaking truth is that her husband’s far too early death left Juliette destitute. She had no choice but to leave her son in the care of others until better times came. And a simple spelling mistake sealed both their fates. She said Rivolin; the administrator heard Rivola. If she ever came back to look for her son, she would have asked for a Rivolin, that the records did not hold. Louis and Juliette never found each other again. All his life, Louis thought he was Italian, and he was proud of it.
Juliette died less than ten months after her son married, alone in her seamstress lodging. She never knew what had become of her only child. They took him from her during a time of great despair, and I truly believe she had no choice.
Belief is a formidable force. Its effects span centuries: entire generations of my family claimed an Italian heritage, and they passed it down through time until it became truth.
I still love pasta, though. That hasn’t changed.
Nadège.