If you can read this, you almost cer­tain­ly know the French word for a pro­fes­sion­al auto­mo­bile dri­ver. That’s because we use the same word in Eng­lish: chauf­feur. French nouns, unlike Eng­lish ones, come in mas­cu­line and fem­i­nine vari­eties, and that -eur end­ing unmis­tak­ably indi­cates one of the for­mer. What, then, to call a woman who works behind the wheel? Chauf­feuse would be the nat­ur­al option, if it did­n’t already refer to a kind of fire­side lounge chair. One could also fem­i­nize cocher, anoth­er word for dri­ver, but cochère, too, is already tak­en by an arched entry­way (which archi­tec­tur­al detail, notably, meets the vehic­u­lar realm in the form of the porte-cochère).

As often, the dif­fi­cul­ty of pin­ning down the right term here reflects the scarci­ty of the under­ly­ing con­cept. In much of the world today, dri­ving isn’t con­sid­ered the most fem­i­nine of occu­pa­tions. That was even truer in the Paris of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the first woman to get her taxi license made his­to­ry — or rather, when the first women to get their taxi licens­es made his­to­ry. A 1908 dis­patch from the Motor-Car Jour­nal’s Paris cor­re­spon­dent describes a cer­tain Made­moi­selle Gaby Pohlen as hav­ing “obtained her dri­ver’s license to dri­ve a motor taxi­cab from the Pre­fec­ture of Police.” Even at the time of writ­ing, “her exam­ple has already been fol­lowed by Madame Decour­celle.”

Accord­ing to Jeroen Booij at PreWarCar.com, how­ev­er, “three ladies sup­pos­ed­ly began an appren­tice­ship in 1906 to dri­ve a motor­ized car­riage in the City of Light. A lady named Madame Dufaut-Charnier sup­pos­ed­ly got her degree as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary 1907.” But Madame Inès Decour­celle “is believed to be the first to receive her full taxi licence in April 1908, mak­ing her the first woman in his­to­ry to dri­ve a taxi in the streets of Paris. The fact is that she became the sub­ject of a num­ber of dai­ly news­pa­per arti­cles claim­ing this, as she was seen on so many post­cards from Paris nam­ing her the first ‘femme chauf­feur.’ ” After see­ing one such sto­ry in Le Jour­nal, anoth­er woman “wrote to the paper in a par­tic­u­lar­ly irri­tat­ed way, claim­ing that not Madame Decour­celle but she, Made­moi­selle Gaby Pohlen, earned the title,” hav­ing start­ed dri­ving back in 1906.

The com­menters at PreWarCar.com have put some thought toward clar­i­fy­ing the mat­ter. Giv­en the era, when the auto­mo­bile itself was still a nov­el­ty, one of them sus­pects con­fu­sion about “whether all those named were licensed horse-drawn or motor cab dri­vers,” explain­ing that Pohlen and Decour­celles “both report­ed­ly obtained licens­es to dri­ve motor taxi-cabs in spring 1908.” While the pho­to­genic and some­what eccen­tric Pohlen may have start­ed out first, “Mme. Decour­celles’ claim to fame was that she was the first to get “diplo­mas” as both a horse ‘cochère’ and a motor ‘chauf­feuse.’ ” This, anoth­er com­menter adds, was “an incred­i­ble achieve­ment at the time,” no mat­ter which word — or words — the Académie Française approves to describe it.

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years Ago—at the Begin­ning of World War I & the End of La Belle Époque

Paris Had a Mov­ing Side­walk in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Film Cap­tured It in Action

The Time­less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Car Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

Take a Vir­tu­al Dri­ve through Lon­don, Tokyo, Los Ange­les & 45 Oth­er World Cities

Robert De Niro’s Taxi Cab License Used to Pre­pare for Taxi Dri­ver (1976)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Much atten­tion has been paid to the fall of the Roman Empire, by every­one from august his­to­ri­ans like Edward Gib­bon to mod­ern-day observers wring­ing their hands over the fate of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca. But as every Rome enthu­si­ast knows, that long col­lapse con­sti­tutes just one chap­ter — or rather, a series of chap­ters at the very least — of a sto­ry with much more to it. And as with any sto­ry, nobody can hope to under­stand how it ends unless they under­stand how it begins: hence the new Voic­es of the Past video above, “How Did Rome Begin?”

If you’re at all famil­iar with Roman mythol­o­gy (or if you, like me, played Cen­tu­ri­on: Defend­er of Rome grow­ing up), you’ll have seen the image of the twins broth­ers Romu­lus and Remus being nursed by a giant she-wolf, la Lupa Capi­toli­na, on the banks of the Tiber riv­er. Accord­ing to one ver­sion of events, Rome was found­ed by Romu­lus on April 21st in 753 BCE, after he killed Remus and named the Eter­nal City-to-be after him­self.

What rela­tion­ship this dra­mat­ic tale has to his­tor­i­cal events is a mat­ter of schol­ar­ly inter­est, but Voic­es of the Past’s inves­ti­ga­tion has a wider scope, begin­ning four and a half cen­turies ear­li­er with the fall of Troy as told by Homer, one of the many sources cit­ed along the video’s two-hour his­tor­i­cal jour­ney.

To make vivid the con­di­tions under which Rome arose, the video close­ly exam­ines the ruins of the ancient world while quot­ing the words of his­to­ri­ans who lived under the actu­al Roman Empire, like Livy and Diony­sius of Hali­car­nas­sus. While they may come with cer­tain embell­ish­ments, and even fab­ri­ca­tions, these texts togeth­er offer a coher­ent nar­ra­tive of Rome’s rise, which in this video stretch­es to eight tur­bu­lent cen­turies. Its final chap­ter opens in 387 BC, with the storm of Rome’s sack by the Gauls quick­ly gath­er­ing. For Roman cit­i­zens at the time, it would have seemed that their long-estab­lished city had met its end. Lit­tle did they know, it still had — if not an eter­ni­ty — cen­turies and cen­turies still to go.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear an Ancient Chi­nese His­to­ri­an Describe The Roman Empire (and Oth­er Voic­es of the Past)

What the Romans Saw When They Reached New Parts of the World: Hear First-Hand Accounts by Appi­an, Pliny, Tac­i­tus & Oth­er Ancient His­to­ri­ans

The His­to­ry of Ancient Japan: The Sto­ry of How Japan Began, Told by Those Who Wit­nessed It (297‑1274)

The His­to­ry of Ancient Rome in 20 Quick Min­utes: A Primer Nar­rat­ed by Bri­an Cox

Do You Think About Ancient Rome Every Day? Then Browse a Wealth of Videos, Maps & Pho­tos That Explore the Roman Empire

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.