Founded in Paris in 1883, the Alliance Française was the first organisation to teach French around the world. Initial board members included the renowned scientist Louis Pasteur and the writer Jules Verne. Today, it is the world's largest collection of French teaching associations, all non-profit-making organisations dedicated to teaching French. Very soon after its inception, local committees of the Alliance Française began to spring up all over the world.
La belle époque
The Alliance Française has a long and distinguished past in London. Its first meetings took place at 20 Bedford Street, WC, in February 1885, under the name of Comité regional de Londres, with a Monsieur Charles Cassal as president followed by a Monsieur Jules Bué. The Comité boasted in November 1885 of having signed up « quelques-unes de personnes les plus influentes de la Colonie française à Londres ».
A consolidated Alliance, based in London but encompassing the whole of the British Isles, was formed in 1908 at the Franco-British Exhibition at White City in the wake of the Entente Cordiale with the endorsement of the then French Ambassador Paul Cambon (himself a founder member of the Alliance Française in Paris and later signatory to the Entente Cordiale). "Il ne s'agit rien de moins que de donner une sorte de prolongement culturel à la politique de l'Entente Cordiale" wrote Maurice Bruézière.
The London committee of the Alliance Française coordinated tours of speakers round the British Isles, organised school exchanges, bestowed medals of achievement to pupils and teachers and oversaw a book-lending service. The idea was to inform audiences of what was happening in France, culturally and socially, but also "les Français apprendraient à connaître les Anglais".
Notably the first “cours commerciaux” were launched in London as early as 1894, « cette nouvelle création ne manquera pas d’augmenter les points de contact avec le monde des affaires dans ce pays commercial par excellence » (Bulletin n°57).
Indeed the London Alliance expanded its activities by starting to organise a programme of classes in general French in 1955, but it was not until 1987 that it moved to its permanent home at 1 Dorset Square, NW1, where we now have 12 air-conditioned classrooms and a library.
Some very influential people actively supported the London Alliance. In the 1930s, André Simon, charismatic leader of the English wine trade, at the time a shipper for Pommery champagne, and later founder and president of the Wine & Food Society, was its second President, following on Prof. Amédée Salmon. A certain Jacques Cartier, one of the brothers in the Cartier family of jewellery fame, who opened Cartier of London in 1902, was the third president of our Alliance. His successor at the helm of Cartier, Etienne Bellenger, was also a council member of the Alliance, and, during WWII, he designed insignia for the Free French and for the Alliance. So there is some sparkle in our history! There was also some literary weight to the council in the post-war years when the Nobel prize-winning poet T. S. Eliot was our President and the novelist Graham Greene joined us too.
L’armée des ombres
The London Alliance’s mission took on an added significance when it became the acting headquarters for the world network after the Alliance Française de Paris was closed down as soon as Paris was occupied in June 1940.
The Alliance française in London, as our minutes of 13th Jan 1941 record, saw its mission as becoming "le point de railliement de tous les Alliés" and issued aux quatre coins a news-bulletin called "Alliance Française ".
The Alliance was at the outset, and is today, a non-political organisation but the war made an exception of that. It was felt that certain cultural values had to be preserved and the London Alliance aligned itself straight away with Général de Gaulle and the Free French and their British Allies.
The Alliance française convened its first post-war Assemblée Générale in 1948. This was held at the House of Lords (Lord de La Warr was the Alliance president at the time). The Secretary General of the Alliance française in Paris, Marc Blancpain, in recognition of the role of London, came over to say this:
«L'Alliance n'est pas une administration, c'est une famille. Je vous apporte le salut de cette famille, non pas comme à une Alliance ordinaire, non pas non plus comme à une Alliance ancienne - vous êtes jeune encore, en tant qu'Alliance, vous avez 40 ans - mais comme à une Alliance qui fut pendant 4 ans - je le répète mais on ne le dira jamais assez - l'Alliance mère, la belle Alliance de l'espoir profond des temps misère. Je vous apporte aussi le salut des conférenciers que vous avez accueillis depuis l'hiver 1944. A peine étions-nous délivrés de l'ennemi - sauvés, sauvés comme le monde entier et grâce, d'abord, à la ténacité britannique - à peine étions-nous délivrés que ces conférenciers réapparaissaient chez vous.»
Can you help?
We would be very interested to hear from anyone who has information about YVONNE SALMON, daughter of Professor A.V. Salmon. She was very active in the Alliance Française in London from 1920 to 1945 and we would like to know more about her, both during this period and after, in order to honour her work. If you have any information at all about Yvonne Salmon then please write to ::e-mail.
If you have any information, photos and memorabilia pertaining to the Alliance française, or war-time associations in the UK such as Les Amis des Volontaires Français (AVF), or les Français de Grande-Bretagne (FGB), to which our Alliance was closely associated, then please contact us.
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