13 January 2014

Blaise Cendrars: Cimetière des Batignolles #4


'ÉMILE LAMBERJACK
1869 – 1912
–––––
BLAISE CENDRARS
1887 – 1961'

The novelist, poet and adventurer Blaise Cendrars was born Frédéric Louis Sausers in Switzerland. We had some problems finding his grave here, but then he is buried with the Lamberjack family. The reason for this is that he died without any money and so was buried in the grave of a friend.

Émile Lamberjack is interesting in his own right: in Auto Racing Comes of Age: A Transatlantic View of the Cars, Drivers and Speedways, 1900-1925 (2012), Robert Dick gives a little of his biography. Lamberjack had been a professional racing cyclist and exporter of Michelin products who married embroiderer Virginie Bossu. They divorced but continued to live together in the same household, until June 1912 when Lamberjack started moving his own furniture out and Bossu shot him dead. Surprisingly, she was acquitted due to the stresses of Parisian life, which caused a public outcry.


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