Letter from Paul Meyer to Henry Bradshaw
Paris, 10 December 1871
University Library, MS Add. 8916/A71/97

The exchange of letters between Meyer and Bradshaw also documents the difficult period between the Franco-Prussian war and the Paris Commune (1870–1871). The political situation ‒‘les tristes événements dont Paris a été le théâtre au printemps dernier’ (‘the sad events of which Paris was the scene last spring’) (1871) ‒ had forced Meyer to prolong his English sojourn, as he recalled in his 1872 edition of Le Chevalier, la dame et le clerc, based on Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 50.

An earlier letter, dated 1 April 1871 and addressed to Bradshaw from Oxford, is even more dramatic:

‘[…] du reste il m’est bien impossible de dire huit jours d’avance ce que je ferai dans les inconstances abominables où se trouve Paris. Il se peut que je prolonge mon séjour en Angleterre: il se peut aussi que je retourne en France pour revenir bientôt ici. J’ignore même si les deux emplois du gouvernement que j’occupe, comme professeur à l’École des Chartes et comme archiviste ne sont pas supprimés: si on ne me demandera pas en arrivant à Paris de faire adhésion à la commune, ce qui naturellement amènerait immédiatement ma démission.’

‘[…] moreover it is perfectly impossible to say, even a week in advance, what I will be doing next, given the abominable state of instability in which Paris is currently mired. It is possible that I might extend my stay in England: or I could return to France, only to come back to England almost immediately. I do not even know whether the two government positions I hold, as professor at the École des Chartes and as archivist, have been cut: and if they should ask me, upon arrival in Paris, to join the Commune, I would, of course, be forced to resign.’