An icon. And yet, go and ask around you: “Do you know Clotilde Bizolon? Yet this Lyonnaise by adoption played a key role in the First World War, devoting herself body and soul to supporting the morale of the troops. How did she do it? With iron will and dedication, but above all with a great deal of self-sacrifice, she improvised a counter made of odds and ends to serve hundreds of thousands of soldiers a simple ladle of soup, which for most of them turned into a pot of hope…
Clotilde Bizolon, “the poilus’ mother
From August 1914 to June 1919, this widow, who had also lost her only son at the front, provided over a million meals to the poilus and other refugees passing through the Perrache district. She served over 1,000 lunches a day: broth, bread, coffee and wine. Hard to believe nowadays, but a little soup and a word of comfort could change the face of things for all those men in distress.
In the trenches, the word was passed around: “In Lyon, La Mère Bizolon offers coffee and soup at Perrache station!” Her benevolence earned her the nicknames “Maman des Poilus”, “Mère Bizolon” and “La Madelon”. A popular song was even dedicated to her:
“La Madelon pour nous n’est pas sévère
Quand on lui prend la taille ou le menton
Elle rit, c’est tout le mal qu’elle sait faire
Madelon, Madelon, Madelon!”
She was awarded France’s highest honor, the Légion d’honneur, in 1929, but her work didn’t stop there. After transforming her husband’s former shoemaker’s store into a small bouchon lyonnais, the world’s destiny changed again in 1939. Despite being 68 years old, she reopened her buvette, but tragically died in 1940 of a crime that remains a mystery to this day.
And what remains of Clotilde Bizolon today?
Along with Mère Guy, Mère Fillioux and Mère Brazier (whose apprentice was a certain Paul Bocuse), Clotilde Bizolon is one of the famous Mères Lyonnaises, the outstanding cooks of the early 20th century.
Today, she has a street named after her in the 2nd arrondissement and a commemorative plaque in the Perrache district. But if you were to take a closer look at her story, Clotilde Bizolon would be right at home on a Lyonnais mural, or at the entrance to a college or library. It’s little consolation that the Musée Gadagne has kept its ladle, the one that for so many years fed millions of mouths and an incalculable quantity of what, paradoxically, cannot be measured and is called hope…