Claude Marcel
The Marcel family lived in the near vicinity of Palais des Tuilieries and Claude's parents would likely have been witness to the executions of notable figures.
Patrice de MacMahon, later 1st Duc de Magenta, of Irish descent, gave a very good testimony “In impeccable conduct, he joins extensive knowledge; he is particularly devoted to the study of foreign languages and especially of English, which he speaks and writes extremely well; he even published in this language some pieces of literature, worthy of good English writers.” His liberal views earned him the same year, after the fall of Charles X and the arrival on the throne of Louis-Philippe, to be appointed by the city of Cork to invite Odilon Barrot, a French Politician and prefect of the Seine department, and General Lafayette who was a general in the American Revolutionary War and a leader of the Garde Nationale during the French Revolution, and address the people of Cork from the French people.
In 1839, his intervention in a maritime incident earned him recognition and the friendship of Admiral Baron Ange de Mackau, who was to intervene on several occasions in his favor afterwards.
On his way back from Martinique, an island in the Caribbean Sea, the frigate Tepsichore commanded by Baron de Mackau, on which was all its family, was attacked by a terrible storm, and remained several days in perdition on the coasts of Ireland.
This action, however, gave him some strong enmities on the part of certain traders, at least this is what he affirmed a few years later by adding that to harm him, his enemies had appealed to teachers of foreign languages by means of small advertisements published in the English newspapers in order to make him lose his clientele.
A few years later, Marcel had to intervene successfully in favour of the crew of the Aurore, sentenced to a long detention for breach of customs regulations.
The government of Napoleon III made Marcel a knight of the Légion d'honneur as well as elevating his mission in Cork to a full consulate and rewarding him with an increased salary and a bonus.
While he continued to work as Chancellor in the French Consulate in Patrick Street as stated in Pigot and Co.’s City of Dublin and Hibernian Provincial Directory Containing a Classification of the Nobility, Gentry, Clergy, professional Gentlemen, Merchants, and Manufacturers of Dublin and upwards of Two Hundred & Twenty of the Principal Cities, Seaports and Towns of Ireland, Alphabetically Arranged in Provinces, 1824:264, Claude’s own French classes were gaining increasing favour in the local Cork community.
On 13 August 1825, an announcement ran in the Southern Reporter that a “Seminary for the General Education of Young Gentlemen” was open at 9 Grand Parade, under the Principals Claude Marcel and James Ward.
[7] After his retirement in the late 1850s Marcel issued a number of publications, often re-presenting the ideas of Language as a Means of Mental Culture and International Communication.
