Edouard Drumont
Drumont, author of La France juive and founder of the anti-Semitic daily La Libre Parole, was one of the most poisonous figures in the Dreyfus Affair. Why he was represented as a vendeuse de violettes on this postcard is difficult to say in the absence of further information (the name of the artist, the publisher of the postcard, …). Possibly Drumont’s selling of flowers, which customarily was done by a girl or a young woman à l’époque (G. B. Shaw’s Eliza Doolittle, for instance), was meant to prefigure his selling of newspapers. Wrote Wordsworth: “The Child is father of the Man.” If the image originated with a fellow anti-Dreyfusard, it could have been meant to suggest that La Libre Parole, like a violet, was a symbol of truth, renewal, loyalty, …
An excellent resource for information about the Dreyfus Affair:
Postcard from the Collection of the Blogger
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