CONTENTS
[THE STORY OF THIERS.]
[HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.]
[ANALOGIES OF ANIMAL AND PLANT LIFE.]
[THE BELL-RINGER.]
[UNDER FIRE.]
[A NARROW ESCAPE.]
[AN INTERNATIONAL POLAR EXPEDITION.]
[THE FIRST PRIMROSE.]
No. 734. SATURDAY, JANUARY 19, 1878. Price 1½d.
[THE STORY OF THIERS.]
In a densely populated street of the quaint sea-port of Marseilles there dwelt a poor locksmith and his family, who were so hard pressed by the dearness of provisions and the general hardness of the times, that the rent and taxes for the wretched tenement which they called a home had been allowed to fall many weeks into arrear. But the good people struggled on against their poverty; and the locksmith (who was the son of a ruined cloth-merchant), though fallen to the humble position of a dock-porter, still managed to wade through life as if he had been born to opulence. This poor labourer’s name was Thiers, and his wife was a descendant of the poet Chenier; the two being destined to become the parents of Louis Adolphe Thiers, one of the most remarkable men that ever lived.
The hero of our story was at his birth mentally consigned to oblivion by his parents, while the neighbours laughed at the ungainly child, and prognosticated for him all kinds of evil in the future. And it is more than probable that these evil auguries would have been fulfilled had it not been for the extraordinary care bestowed upon him by his grandmother. But for her, perhaps our story had never been written.
Under her fostering care the child survived all those diseases which were, according to the gossips, to prove fatal to him; but while his limbs remained almost stationary, his head and chest grew larger, until he became a veritable dwarf. By his mother’s influence with the family of André Chenier, the lad was enabled to enter the Marseilles Lyceum at the age of nine; and here the remarkable head and chest kept the promise they made in his infancy, and soon fulfilled Madame Thiers’ predictions.
Louis Adolphe Thiers was a brilliant though somewhat erratic pupil. He was noted for his practical jokes, his restlessness, and the ready and ingenious manner in which he always extricated himself from any scrapes into which his bold and restless disposition had led him. Thus the child in this case would appear to have been ‘father to the man,’ by the manner in which he afterwards released his beloved country from one of the greatest ‘scrapes’ she ever experienced.
On leaving school Thiers studied for the law, and was eventually called to the bar, though he never practised as a lawyer. He became instead a local politician; and so well did the rôle suit him, that he soon evinced a strong desire to try his fortune in Paris itself. He swayed his auditory, when speaking, in spite of his diminutive stature, Punch-like physiognomy, and shrill piping speech; and shout and yell as his adversaries might, they could not drown his voice, for it arose clear and distinct above all the hubbub around him. While the studious youth was thus making himself a name in his native town, he was ever on the watch for an opportunity to transfer his fortunes to the capital. His almost penniless condition, however, precluded him from carrying out his design without extraneous assistance of some kind or other; but when such a stupendous ambition as that of governing one of the greatest nations of the earth filled the breast of the Marseilles student, it was not likely that the opportunity he was seeking would be long in coming.
The Academy of Aix offered a prize of a few hundred francs for a eulogium on Vauvenargues, and here was the opportunity which Louis Adolphe Thiers required. He determined to compete for the prize, and wrote out two copies of his essay, one of which he sent to the Academy’s Secretary, and the other he submitted to the judgment of his friends. This latter indiscretion, however, would appear to have been the cause of his name being mentioned to the Academicians as a competitor; and as they had a spite against him, and disapproved of his opinions, they decided to reject any essay which he might submit to them.
On the day of the competition they were as good as their word, and Thiers received back his essay with only an ‘honourable mention’ attached to it. The votes, however, had been equally divided, and the principal prize could not be adjudged until the next session. The future statesman and brilliant journalist was not, however, to be cast aside in this contemptuous manner, and he accordingly adopted a ruse de guerre, which was perfectly justifiable under the circumstances. He sent back his first essay for the second competition with his own name attached thereto, and at the same time transmitted another essay, by means of a friend, through the Paris post-office. This paper was signed ‘Louis Duval;’ and as M. Thiers knew that they had resolved to reject his essay and accept the next best on the list, he made it as near as possible equal to the other in point of merit.
The Academicians were thoroughly out-generalled by this clever artifice, and the prize was awarded to the essay signed ‘Louis Duval;’ but the chagrin of the dons when the envelope was opened and the name of Louis Adolphe Thiers was read out, can be better imagined than described. The prize, which amounted to about twenty pounds, was added to another sum of forty pounds gained by his friend Mignet for essay-writing; and with this modest amount, the two friends set out on their journey to Paris. On their arrival there, both of them were at once engaged as writers on the Globe newspaper, and M. Thiers’ articles soon attracted such attention that the highest political destinies were predicted for their author.
Alluding to the small stature of our hero, Prince Talleyrand once said: ‘Il est petit, mais il grandira!’ (He is little, but he will be great!) Meanwhile, the young adventurer, as we may call him, was engaged on general literary work for the press, writing political leaders one day, art-criticisms the next, and so on, until a publisher asked him to write the History of the French Revolution. He accepted; and when published, the work met with so great a success that it placed him in the front rank of literature, and gained for him the proud title of ‘National Historian.’ After this the two friends published the National newspaper, an undertaking which we are told was conceived in Talleyrand’s house, and was largely subscribed to by the Duke of Orleans, afterwards King Louis-Philippe. M. Thiers disliked the Bourbons; and when, in 1829, Charles X. dissolved a liberal parliament, he took the lead in agitating for the reinstating of the people’s rights. The king having determined to reply to the re-election of the ‘221’ by a coup d’état, the nature of which was secretly communicated to M. Thiers, the latter hastened to the office of the National and drew up the celebrated Protest of the Journalists, which before noon was signed by every writer on the liberal side. As M. Thiers was leaving the office, a servant of Prince Talleyrand placed in his hand a note, which simply bore the words, ‘Go and gather cherries.’ This was a hint that danger was near the young patriot, and that he should repair to the house of one of the Prince’s friends at Montmorency—a place famous for its cherries—and there lie hidden until the storm had blown over.
M. Thiers did not immediately accept the hint, but remained in the capital during the day, to watch the course of events and endeavour to prevent his friends from doing anything rash. He energetically sought to dissuade those who were for resisting the king’s decree by force of arms; but did not succeed. When the barricades were raised, he left Paris, because he thought that the people were doing an unwise thing, which would lead to a fearful slaughter, and perhaps result in himself and friends being shot.
When, however, the battle between the army and the people had really begun, the indomitable little man returned to Paris, and heedless of the bullets that were flying about, he ran here and there trying to collect adherents for the Duke of Orleans. He also had a proclamation of the Duke, as king, printed, rushed out with it, damp as it was from the press, and distributed copies to the victorious insurgents; but this operation nearly cost him his life, for the crowds on the Place de la Bourse were shouting for a republic, and a cry was immediately raised to lynch M. Thiers. He only escaped by dashing into a pastry-cook’s shop, and taking a header down the open cellar which led to the kitchen.
Nothing daunted by this contretemps, however, he sought out M. Scheffer, an intimate friend of the Duke of Orleans, and started off for Neuilly with him (without consulting anybody else), to offer the crown of France to the Duke. When they found the Duke, he despatched M. Thiers to Prince Talleyrand to ask his advice on the subject; and the latter, who was in bed at the time, said: ‘Let him accept;’ but positively refused to put this advice in writing. Thus the Duke of Orleans became King of the French under the name of Louis-Philippe, and the Marseilles student found himself a step nearer the accomplishment of his aim. The poor locksmith’s son had overthrown one king and established another!
It was M. Thiers who caused the remains of Napoleon to be removed from the gloomy resting-place in St Helena to the church of the Invalides in Paris, where they were re-interred amid great pomp and circumstance. He it was who also invented or gave currency to the now well-known constitutional maxim, ‘The king reigns, but does not govern.’
In this reign M. Thiers commenced his great work on the Consulate and the Empire, in which he so eulogised the First Napoleon and flattered the military fame of France, that he unwittingly paved the way for the advent of the second Empire.
The revolution of 1848, which led to the abdication of Louis-Philippe, found Thiers but a simple soldier in the National Guard, and parading the streets with a musket on his shoulder, despite his diminutive stature. A man of his transcendent ability, however, could not be left long in so humble a position, and we therefore find the newly elected sovereign Louis Napoleon trying hard to win over to his side this unique citizen. But Thiers declined the honour, and remained a thorn in Napoleon’s side during the whole period of his reign. When the coup d’état of 1851 was struck he was one of the leading statesmen whose arrest was ordered and carried out. The patriot was seized and forcibly taken out of his bed at an early hour in the morning, and imprisoned at Mazas for several days. He was then escorted out of the country, and became an exile from the land he loved so well.
While the excitement in Paris, which culminated in the outbreak of the war with Germany, was at its height, and the whole nation was singing the Marseillaise and shouting ‘à Berlin,’ M. Thiers’ voice was the only one raised to protest against France precipitating herself into an unjust and unnecessary war. He was unheeded at the moment; but a few weeks sufficed to prove the soundness of his reasoning; and when the Germans were marching on Paris, it was to the locksmith’s son that the whole nation turned in its distress.
The Napoleonic dynasty was deposed, and at the elections for the National Assembly which afterwards took place, M. Thiers was elected for twenty-six Departments—a splendid national testimony to his patriotism and ability. As soon as the Assembly met he was at once appointed ‘Chief of the Executive Power’ of the French Republic. Thus the poor student of the Marseilles Academy had become, almost without any effort of his own, the governor of his country; and how he acquitted himself of the onerous and self-sacrificing task, let the living grief of Frenchmen for his loss at this moment proudly attest.
Previous to this appointment, however, and while the German army was thundering at the gates of Paris, the brave old statesman had, in his seventy-fourth year, shewn his unalterable devotion to France by the famous journey he made to all the European courts to endeavour to obtain assistance. Failing in this, he came back, and being made President, as above mentioned, he made peace with the Germans on the best terms he could get, turned round and beat the Communists in the streets of Paris; and within three short years he had not only paid the heaviest war indemnity ever known, but had cleared his country of the Germans, consolidated her resources, and reorganised her army.
On the morning of the 4th September last, France was suddenly plunged into the deepest grief and dismay by the announcement that her greatest citizen had been taken from her by death on the previous evening, at a time when the whole nation was looking to him as the one man who could save it from the dangerous crisis through which it was at that moment passing.
The funeral was a magnificent one, and though a wet day, there was not a citizen in Paris that did not join the throng, which lined the whole of the way to the cemetery. As the body of the great patriot was borne along every hat was raised, and many among the crowd shed tears. A riot was expected on the occasion, but the people behaved admirably and with great forbearance; the greatest tribute of respect which they could have shewn to the memory of one who had done so much for his country.
The modesty of this great citizen was in perfect accordance with his republican principles; for while President of the French Republic, his card never bore anything more on it than the simple ‘Monsieur Thiers;’ nor did he wear any uniform or decoration other than that one which is so dear to the heart and eye of every true Frenchman, ‘the Legion of Honour.’ Surely never did a worthier breast bear that famous Cross than that of the man who, despite every obstacle both physical and moral, and despite evil prognostications, bitter taunts, and the crushing hand of poverty, rose by the grand yet simple force of his own indomitable will from the position of a labourer’s son to that of the ruler of a mighty nation. But even greater than all this was the fact, that having attained to this grand position, he was ready, at what he believed to be the call of duty, to lay aside his dignity, to step from his proud position, and once more to assume the humbler rôle of a private citizen. Such a sublime act of self-abnegation was sufficient to assure to him the enthusiastic love and respect of an intelligent people, and the esteem of the whole world, which may be said to have joined with France in weaving a chaplet of immortelles to place upon the tomb of one whose memory will be revered by all who respect indomitable perseverance and true nobility of character.