Felipe Pigna
08/16/2021 8:11 AM
Clarín.com
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Updated 08/16/2021 8:11 AM
On his mission to London with Bernardino Rivadavia in 1815, Manuel Belgrano initially stayed in a room at the White's Club, in the elegant West End area.
The first days in the city of mist, Manuel spent ill
and bedridden.
On his first outing, he was able to walk through historic Saint James to the nearby Piccadilly area and
enter one of the many cafes that had a good habit of subscribing to newspapers
so their customers could read them for free and save about two pence.
Manuel Belgrano / General Archive of the Nation -
There were the conservatives
The Times
,
Morning Post
and
Morning Herald
;
the finance press was represented by the Public Ledger;
and there was even one dedicated to book publishers, the British Press.
Probably
Manuel, while sipping a coffee
, could choose the Morning Chronicle.
In those days the newspaper, after being acquired in 1789 by James Perry, maintained a clear liberal line, abounded in news about the war preparations underway against Napoleon and gave an account of the dramatic English social situation.
After the reading, he was able to continue walking down Piccadilly Street, enter the beautiful Hatchards Bookstore, which had been opened in 1797 (and is still there), at number 138, and
learn about the editorial news that most fascinated him: politics, economics and agriculture
and why not buy the best seller of the moment, The Corsair, by Byron, which would later inspire Verdi's opera.
Manuel Belgrano / General Archive of the Nation
The great poet used his notoriety to
defend the workers and spoke of the "crime of poverty"
, harshly criticizing the government's social policy and condemning the repression and the application of the death penalty to the rebels.
His interest in education and childhood could
also lead Manuel to the vicinity of Saint Paul's Cathedral
, where John Newbery had inaugurated in 1750 the first bookstore-publishing house exclusively for educational materials and children around the world.
She was not a very pretty woman, but she was sensual and attractive.
Later, she decided to come to the Río de la Plata to look for him.
Felipe Pigna, historian
A love in london
Walking through the streets of London, which had become one of the first cities in the world to have gas lighting, Belgrano
met a young French woman named Isabel Pichegru
, who claimed to be the daughter of the French soldier Jean-Charles Pichegru (1761-1804 ).
Pichegru went from being a determined Jacobin in revolutionary times and a victorious general of the Republic, to reviewing under the orders of the Bourbons to fight Napoleon to the last consequences.
In these clandestine tasks he was arrested, but managed to escape to Guyana and return to Paris in 1803, in time
to participate in a plot against Bonaparte
, whom he knew because he had been a student of his at the Brienne military school.
The operation failed and after being arrested, Pichegru appeared, according to some, "committed suicide" in his cell on April 6, 1804.
The truth is that
Isabel was an impostor with such good acting skills
that she had managed to get Louis XVIII to assign her a pension.
Some time later, the priest's brother of the girl's alleged father insisted on
meeting a "niece", who
flatly
refused
even to see him.
The digital reconstruction of Manuel Belgrano, by the artist Ramiro Ghigliazza.
/ Archive
The abbe Pichegru, a persistent man, got the police to question her and published a letter in a newspaper, denouncing her as an impostor.
Belgrano will live this romance in London with that not very pretty, but sensual and attractive woman.
After the farewell, Manuel will remember her as one more lover
, but for Isabel the thing was more important and she will decide, some time later, to go look for him in the convulsed Río de la Plata.
EM
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