FOOTNOTES:
[75] Lettres à Marcie, III. (1837).
[76] Biographie Générale under “F. M. C. Fourier.”
[77] With regard to this phalanstery there is a slight discrepancy in Mme. Adam’s Souvenirs. According to vol. i. p. 342, Condé was the phalanstery which her father, during her childhood, wished to join, whereas according to vol. ii. p. 136, that phalanstery was Guise. Probably Guise is correct. For the Condé movement had been abandoned before Juliette was born.
[78] Among the latter was Donald McLaren, author of a virulent diatribe against Fourierism, published at Caledonia, Livingstone County, in 1844, entitled The Boa Constrictor, in which Fourier’s gospel is denounced “for the licentiousness of its principles, its hypocrisy and sinister aims.” In this connection it should be noticed that, as a concession to the prejudices of the times, Fourier never attempted to give practical application to his theories as to the relations between the sexes, to that “Phanerogamy” which is but another name for promiscuity.
[79] Founded in 1841, the Brook Farm Community broke up in 1847. In his delightful story, The Blithedale Romance, Hawthorne describes this settlement.
[80] Author of Les Juifs, Rois de l’Epoque, 1844.
[81] Souvenirs, II. 216.
[82] La Réorganisation de la Société Européenne, l’Industrie ou Discussions politiques, morales et philosophiques and others.
[83] Morley, Life of Cobden, 1910 ed., 760.
[84] Morley, Life of Cobden, ed. 1910, 830.
[85] Mon Village, Collection Hetzel, Michel Lévy Frères, Paris; Méline, Cans et Cie, Brussels.
[86] See ante, 57.
CHAPTER VIII
HER PRE-WAR SALON
1864-1870
Le Petit Salon de la Rue de Rivoli.
Le Grand Salon de la Maison Sallandrouze.
Sociability has ever been one of Mme. Adam’s gifts. It declared itself in her childhood. At school she was always the centre of a band, grouping, organising her schoolfellows. When she came to live in Paris, to create a salon became her dominating ambition. And it was no less a personage than that most distinguished and aristocratic of salonnières, Mme. d’Agoult, who first suggested to her young friend the possibility of realising her aspiration.
“Mine will remain the great salon of the winter,” said Mme. d’Agoult, who frequently left Paris during the summer months, “and yours shall be the little summer salon.” For Juliette, as we have seen, had begun to spend her winters in the south.
Then the Countess proceeded to draw up a code of rules for Juliette’s guidance in the execution of her great social enterprise. “Mme. d’Agoult,” writes Juliette, “sent me la très belle page suivante.[87]
“‘Happiness depends on renunciation and wisdom. If you would gather around you a number of men and a few intelligent women you must appear serene or happy.
“‘Your life, though in reality it may be agitated, must appear to others to be without complications and not lacking in unity.
“‘Friendships can only be retained in an atmosphere which is impersonal and restful.
“‘In order that the founders of your salon may regard themselves as such you must consult them before you introduce any new-comers.
“‘You should avoid exchanging confidences; for they create too close an intimacy; and they may lead you to give advice with which some day you may be reproached.
“‘Be modest, but not self-effacing. Be simple, but distinguished. Express your opinions with a certain confidence. Appear firm, but also tolerant.
“‘If you would preserve your salon your first duty should be to stimulate the intellectual curiosity of those whom you have gathered round you.
“‘Be careful to make them feel that you are more occupied with them than with yourself.
“‘Twenty men friends and five women will suffice to found a salon. You have them already.’”
Juliette had not only the requisite number of friends, but now, in the spring of 1864, she had also a home in the very heart of Paris, where she could receive them. And the dinner-party which, by way of house-warming, she gave in the flat in the Rue de Rivoli may be regarded as inaugurating her salon, that salon minuscule, as she called it, which was to be the summer ante-chamber to Mme. d’Agoult’s grand salon d’Hiver.
Seven out of her twenty men friends were invited to dinner. They all accepted, and hence may be regarded as the pious founders of Juliette’s first salon. They were Edmond Adam, a wealthy financier, an ardent republican, one of the men of 1848, of whom we shall hear much later; Edmond Texier, a distinguished writer and a brilliant wit; the amorous Toussenel, of course; Peyrat, the most bigoted of anti-clericals; Nefftzer, now editor of the Temps; that polished Jacobin, Challemel-Lacour; and the ever-faithful Ronchaud.
Following Mme. d’Agoult’s instructions, and preserving, roughly, the feminine proportion of one quarter which she had indicated, Juliette had invited two women guests—Mme. d’Agoult herself and Mme. de Pierreclos. But neither was able to come. The Countess, who seldom went out anywhere, considered herself excused from accepting her young friend’s invitation by the recent death of her daughter, Mme. Ollivier. Mme. de Pierreclos was away at Macon, staying with her uncle, Alphonse de Lamartine.
The conversation that evening gave the tone for the conversations in all Juliette’s salons: of the little salon in the Rue de Rivoli, of the greater salon in the Boulevard Poissonnière, of the pre-war and the post-war salon, of that extension of her salons which was La Nouvelle Revue, and likewise of those latter-day assemblies which, since her retirement from La Nouvelle Revue, seventeen years ago, Mme. Adam has gathered round her on the terrace or in the spacious drawing-room of her beautiful country home in the Abbey of Gif.
Whether the late M. Émile Faguet ever visited either of these salons, I do not know. But if he did, he must have been ill at ease, for he was one of those who found the political salon “uninhabitable.”[88] And at Mme. Adam’s, though literature, art, philosophy, and other subjects were by no means excluded, politics held the first place. Throughout the Empire Juliette’s salon, first in the Rue de Rivoli, later on the Boulevard Poissonnière, was a centre of energetic republican opposition to the Empire. The hostess’s chief desire was to reconcile the diverse currents of republican sentiment, to blend in the broad stream of freedom the various and too often conflicting strands of progress.
Already on that initial evening we find three shades of republican opposition represented in the Rue de Rivoli salon. There was Peyrat, the most rabid of reformers, who cared not what the Government might be so long as it was a Republic. “Qu’elle soit d’abord la République! on verra après,” he exclaimed.[89] There was the more moderate Edmond Adam, who feared what he called a pseudo-Republic; and there was the nationalist Nefftzer, the Alsatian, who steadily refused to avert his gaze from the peril lowering across the north-eastern frontier. Nefftzer, though calling himself a republican, would have supported the Emperor had he shown himself capable of inaugurating a vigorous foreign policy. The editor of the Temps was one of the few who in those days perceived Bismarck’s true aims and character. “Il est plus que dangereux, il est effrayant,” exclaimed Nefftzer that evening. But the editor’s lugubrious prognostications were jeered at by most of his fellow-guests. “Here comes to life again the illustrious Jeremiah,” said Peyrat. Only Juliette and her amoureux Toussenel experienced any consternation at Nefftzer’s warnings. “I have long felt,” said Toussenel, “that some one was undermining our race, our character, our heroism.... You, Nefftzer, declare this some one to be Prussia. You have not wasted your time here this evening. You have warned a patriot, and one who is not stoney-hearted. Thank you.”[90]
In Juliette’s salon at this time everything was an open question; for in these years, though she was swayed by strong preferences, she had no exclusions. Different shades of religious as well as of political opinion were represented. Anti-clericalism, though it dominated, did not have everything its own way.
When Juliette’s physician, Dr. Clavel, announced that the Masonic Lodges were intending to drive Catholicism from France, Peyrat applauded, but Saint-Victor put in a plea for liberty.[91]
“Whether one believes or disbelieves,” said Saint-Victor, “freedom is essential.”
Eugène Pelletan agreed with him; not so Peyrat, who uttered his usual cry: “The Republic before everything. And then....”
“And then what?” inquired Duclerc,[92] who was one of the 1848 revolutionists.
“After we have extirpated all error, then...”
“But who shall decide what is error?”
“We shall.”
“Then you consider yourselves infallible?”
“Is it or is it not a question of overthrowing the adversary?”
“Yes; but I should like to know in favour of whom and of what the adversary is to be overthrown.”
“In favour of the principles of the Great Revolution.”
“The principles of ’92 or ’93?”
“Oh!” said Peyrat; “not the Revolution as understood by Quinet, the Revolution emasculated of all that was most powerful in it. Michelet ... has accepted the Revolution, including the Terror.”[93]
“What!” exclaimed Duclerc, “the French Revolution may not be considered apart from its ferocity?”
“Ferocity which was necessary.”
“And which may again become necessary.”
“That may be.”
“When Peyrat and Duclerc were discussing,” comments their hostess, “arguments flew so rapidly from side to side that we listened without interrupting. Moreover, there was not the slightest chance of getting in a phrase or even a word edgeways.”
Though politics held the first place in Juliette’s salon, as we have said, literature and art were by no means neglected.
The hostess herself, an ardent romanticist and idealist, if ever there were one, had no sympathy with the realism which in the middle sixties was beginning to invade French art and literature. Manet’s “Olympia,” when it was exhibited in the Salon, filled her with loathing. When she first saw it, she knew not whether to laugh or to cry.
“Quelle horreur et aussi quels rires,” she exclaims. “Voici l’Olympia de Manet. Nue, étendue, accoudée sur un drap blanc. Derrière elle une negresse tient un bouquet. Sur le drap blanc un chat noir déteint et laisse la trace de ses pattes sales. Germinie Lacerteux en littérature, le chat noir aux pattes sales en peinture, c’est complet! O idéal, idéal! Je vais revoir Picardia.”
The de Goncourts’ novel, Germinie Lacerteux, on its recent appearance, had been vehemently discussed in the Rue de Rivoli. “It is Lucrèce Borgia graillonnante,” exclaimed Lamartine’s niece, Mme. de Pierreclos. And most of her fellow-guests as well as her hostess were up in arms at once when some one described the de Goncourts and Flaubert as the leaders of the realistic school. Flaubert, they contended, would never have condescended to wallow in the mud which seemed as much the de Goncourts’ natural element as it was to be that of their disciple Zola. For the author of La Terre and for all his tribe Juliette has ever manifested an extreme aversion.
From the de Goncourts’ realism our passionate idealist turned with relief to the classicism of her Grecian friends, Ronchaud, Saint-Victor, Ménard, and to those poets of the new Parnassian school who shared her enthusiasm for the gods and ideals of antiquity.[94]
Juliette’s Salon Minuscule, as she modestly called it, had now become a regular institution in Parisian intellectual society. Possibly it had been a greater success than its originator, Mme. d’Agoult, had ever anticipated. Possibly this may have accounted for the clouds which now began to appear on the horizon of Juliette’s friendship with that great lady, clouds which threatened to repeat in the nineteenth century that earlier story of the jealous Mme. du Deffand and her gifted young protégée, Mlle. de Lespinasse. Certain of Mme. d’Agoult’s friends were thought to be too often in the Rue de Rivoli. Consequently, Juliette began to be coldly received in the Rue Presbourg. Mischief-makers were not lacking: they told the Countess that in the Rue de Rivoli her works were somewhat severely criticised. While Juliette was at Bruyères in the winter of 1866-67 she received a letter from Mme. de Pierreclos[95] warning her that somehow she was not in the Countess’s good books.
“Attention, petite Juliette!” wrote Lamartine’s niece. “Vous n’êtes pas en faveur. Je ne jurerais qu’à votre retour vous ne subissiez une bourrasque qui vous écarte à tout jamais de la Rue de Presbourg.”
In the crisis now approaching, one of the most momentous of Juliette’s life, Mme. d’Agoult vouchsafed her young friend no sympathy whatever.
For some years, as we have seen, Juliette had been living apart from her husband. M. Lamessine had used to the full the powers, which until a few years ago the French law gave a husband, of appropriating his wife’s earnings. Little Alice lived in terror that one day her father might even claim that house and garden on the Golfe Juan, the beloved Bruyères, where she and her mother spent happy winter months. “You must make haste and grow up,” Dr. Lambert used to say to his granddaughter, “and then you will marry and Bruyères shall be your dowry.”
It was in the summer of 1867 that Juliette received from her lawyer, M. Matthieu, a letter asking her to come and see him on a certain evening about a communication he had received from her husband.[96] M. Lamessine, in return for 15,000 francs, consented to relinquish his claim to the royalties on his wife’s books published before their separation. Distressed by the exorbitance of this demand, Juliette and Alice, who had accompanied her, on leaving the lawyer, tried to divert themselves by watching the crowds of merry-makers in the Champs Elysées. All Paris seemed en fête, for it was the summer of the Great Exhibition. But these gay sights afforded Juliette no solace. Tired and sad, she and Alice returned home. On the table lay a letter marked urgent. “Never mind,” said Juliette to herself, “I have enough worries for one evening. I will not open the letter till morning.” It was late. Her father and mother had gone to bed. She wished her daughter a sad good-night and followed her parents’ example. But she could not sleep, neither could she forget that letter marked urgent. The writing seemed familiar. She rose and read it. The letter was from her lawyer.
“Dear Madam,” it ran, “among the papers which I had set aside to finish examining to-night is a letter from Algeria, which tells me that your husband, M. Lamessine, died six weeks ago.... Thus the question of your royalties is decided.[97]—Yours, etc....”
Juliette has never been one of those who feign sentiments they do not feel. About her first husband’s death she is in her Souvenirs perfectly frank: she makes no attempt to conceal the feeling of intense relief which the news brought to her. Dr. Lambert, when he heard it, exclaimed: “I know some one who will be glad to have me for a father-in-law.”
That “some one” was Edmond Adam. One of the pious founders of Juliette’s salon, he had also been a member of Mme. d’Agoult’s circle. Originally a journalist on the staff of the famous National, he had made a considerable fortune and had become one of the mainstays of the Comptoir d’Escompte, a republican bank founded by his friend Alessandro Bixio and others. But that which had above all things attracted Juliette to the man who was to be her second husband—for he was considerably Juliette’s senior—was his uncompromising republicanism, dating back to the Revolution of 1848, in which he had played a prominent part. Edmond Adam united to high principles and fervent idealism a distinguished appearance and ingratiating manners. Among his friends he passed for a pleasant fellow. “A fine old Senator” he appeared some years later to a foreigner who visited Mine. Adam’s salon. “The chivalrous Adam,” she herself used to call him.
She noticed him first at a Wagner concert, standing opposite to her by a mirror in which their eyes met. “Who is that tall gentleman?” she inquired of Mme. d’Agoult, who sat next to her.
“Edmond Adam,” replied the Countess. “We are great friends. You don’t see him at my receptions because of Girardin, whom he is always wishing to fight. He will fight for anything or nothing. After Carrel’s death,[98] when Adam was editor of an Angers newspaper, Armand Marrast invited him to join the staff of the National. His friends are Duclerc,[99] Grévy,[100] Carnot,[101] all abstentionistes, and so is Adam, though he is essentially a man of action.... On the 2nd of December[102] he was a Councillor of State. But he refused to serve the Empire.... I don’t know any man who is more highly esteemed, and I like him very much.... He is fidelity and devotion itself.”
During the insurrection of June 1848, Adam with his friend Bixio,[103] both of them unarmed, had gone up on to the Paris barricades to endeavour to restore order. Afterwards, when the National Assembly wished to decorate the hero with the Cross of the Legion of Honour, Adam refused it on the ground that he could not wear a decoration won in a civil war, and, moreover, that he had merely done his duty. “Ronchaud,” added the Countess, “has just told me that he [Adam] has read your book,[104] and that he would like me to introduce him to you.”
But Juliette, moved by a sentiment not uncommon in women of deep feelings, a kind of subconscious fear of a man who has profoundly impressed them, refused that evening to make her new admirer’s acquaintance. Later, on the publication of her book Mon Village, he wrote his congratulations. She replied somewhat curtly. But her correspondent was not discouraged. Some time afterwards, when she was at the theatre with her friend, Mme. Fauvety,[105] whom he knew, he joined their party. Mme. Fauvety admired him no less than Mme. d’Agoult. Dr. Lambert, too, had a high opinion of his daughter’s new acquaintance. “He is pure gold,” said Juliette’s father, “and when you see him next you can tell him your father would like to shake hands with him; for he is one of those—and they are few—of whom an old republican may be proud.”[106]
Juliette’s betrothal to Edmond Adam took place on the day after she received her lawyer’s letter. Congratulations poured in from all her friends, with the one exception of Mme. d’Agoult. Yet she was aware of her young friend’s happiness. Ronchaud had told her. Since Mme. de Pierreclos’ warning letter,[107] Juliette and her old friend had not met. Now, with some misgiving, Juliette determined to go and see her. She received her kindly. But in a few minutes the discordant note was struck.[108] “The misfortune of being a widow,” said the Countess, “is that one is seized by a foolish desire to remarry. But I don’t think you capable of such folly. An intelligent woman should remain free and mistress of her own thoughts.”
“I have greater need of happiness than of freedom,” replied Juliette.
Then followed a distressing scene. Mme. d’Agoult completely lost her temper. She told Juliette she hoped never to see her again. They parted; and the Countess’s wish was fulfilled. But when, some time later, Juliette heard that her former friend had entered as a patient the house of the famous nerve specialist, Dr. Blanche, she felt that Mme. d’Agoult’s lack of self-control on that sorrowful day was accounted for.
In the spring of the following year Juliette Lamber and Edmond Adam were married. The intervening winter had been spent on the Golfe Juan, where Adam, like other friends of Juliette, the Texiers, for example, had built himself a villa, Le Grand Pin. There had been a somewhat heated discussion as to whether after marriage the Adams should spend their winters at Le Grand Pin or at Bruyères. Juliette could not tolerate the idea of leaving the house which she had built and the garden she had planned. Though, as she had told Mme. d’Agoult, she longed more for happiness than for freedom, she was determined to hold her own in her new life. Already she had consented to abandon her flat in the Rue de Rivoli for one in a famous house, la Maison Sallandrouze,[109] on the Boulevard Poissonnière, opposite Adam’s favourite restaurant, the Café Brébant. She was making no small sacrifice by consenting to leave what seemed to her the hub of the universe, that Rue de Rivoli with its delightful proximity to the Louvre, to the Corps Legislatif, the doings of which this ardent young politician followed feverishly, and to those Tuileries Gardens, where, while Alice was at play, her mother, in conversation with members of Parliament on their way from the Assembly, could glean all the latest political news. Not unnaturally, therefore, Juliette’s keen sense of justice was outraged when Adam asked her to make the further sacrifice and give up her beloved Bruyères in favour of Le Grand Pin, although this villa was much more spacious and imposing than her own dear home.
“I entreat you,” pleaded Adam,[110] “do consent to live at Le Grand Pin for at least two or three years after our marriage. I really cannot run the risk of being called M. Lambert in a district where you are so well known.”
“Oh, you need not fear; I can assure you I shall be called Mme. Adam.”
“No, I don’t think so,” persisted Adam.... “And however I may love your name when borne by you, it would humiliate me.”
“Very well then, I will keep it,” retorted Juliette.
They parted, and did not meet for several days. They were both miserable. Then that kind physician, the good Dr. Maure, Thiers’ friend, effected a reconciliation.
“Oh, you fools,” he cried, “at your age to lay down conditions and to be obstinate. When happiness runs to meet you, you turn away. Be reconciled at once.”
Adam holds out his arms. Juliette hesitates. Dr. Maure makes a grimace. “He will live at Bruyères. Embrace him. But it costs him dear. It is the greatest sacrifice he can make.”
The quarrel was at an end. Juliette threw herself into her lover’s arms. He asked her pardon.
“I ought to have understood, Juliette,” he said. “I was mad. I ought to have realised that your beloved Bruyères, which you had made with your own hands, you could not leave for another house so close. It was with money only that I created Le Grand Pin. To-morrow I will summon the builders. I will enlarge Bruyères, and next year, when we return, we shall be at home in your own house.”
The year 1868, the year of her second marriage, opened well for Juliette. “Tellement riante,” she writes, “que j’y vois tout en beau. Je suis heureuse autant qu’on peut imaginer....”[111] As she awoke on New Year’s Day, Alice whispered, “Dear mother, I wish you what you already possess.”
Her father, who had not come to Bruyères that year, wrote that he, too, was the happiest of men. For cet étudiant rive gauche, ce fanatique de science, as Juliette called him, was now at liberty to quit cette rue impériale, as he called the Rue de Rivoli, infestée par les allées et venues de l’empereur et de l’impératrice, and to inhabit the quarter of his dreams, to take a flat in the Rue S. Jacques close to the lecture-rooms and laboratories of those eminent scientists, Paul Bert and Claude Bernard.
In every respect it was well that the two families should separate. The discordant temperaments of Juliette and her mother rendered it impossible for them to agree long together. Neither their summers in Paris nor their winters on the Riviera had been very happy. And as for Juliette, the bliss of life with a husband who adored her and shared all her interests soon compensated her for the loss of her favourite street. “Nous sommes heureux à rendre jaloux,” she wrote soon after her marriage.[112] “But, on the contrary, our friends enjoy our happiness. Their assiduity in visiting us grows. They love our home, and they cannot pass along the Boulevard Poissonnière without coming up to see us, especially in the evening.”
Thus the minuscule salon of the Rue de Rivoli was transformed into the Great Salon of the Boulevard Poissonnière.
In the two troubled years which were to elapse before the outbreak of war, the Adams’ salon was to serve, as we have said, as a meeting-place for representatives of all parties in opposition: for abstentionistes and for sermentistes, for the elder republicans who followed M. Thiers, and for les Jeunes who followed Gambetta.
“Bientôt,” writes Juliette, “notre salon réunit toutes les opinions, depuis les orléanistes jusqu’aux irréconciliables.”[113]
Mme. Adam’s own attitude remained irreconcilably abstentioniste. She had no sympathy whatever with those who, like her husband’s friend, Jules Grévy, took the oath to the Empire in order to upset it. “Prêter un serment qu’on est résolu à ne pas tenir,” she writes, “c’est être déloyal et coupable.”[114] Imagine her horror, therefore, when she found her own husband wavering—first inclined to listen to the arguments of his friend Thiers, and then, on the eve of the 1869 election, announcing that he is going to his native Normandy, there to stand as candidate for the village of Brionne.[115]
“And you will take the oath—you?”
“Yes; I have thought it well over. Whatever objection you may have to offer has been considered and rejected.”
“It seemed,” writes Juliette, “as if a gulf had opened between us. What I could not say to him when he started, I wrote to him.” With her letter she enclosed others from friends who had written expressing their astonishment at his decision. One was from Louis Blanc.
“That the young who never witnessed the crime of December should swear allegiance to the murderer I can understand,” he wrote. “But how can one who saw the blood flow, who heard the oath broken, forget, if his heart be kind and loyal?”
One morning, shortly after this packet had been dispatched, Mme. Adam received a telegram from Brionne containing one word: “Come.” She and Alice obeyed. They arrived at Brionne on the very day when Adam was to take the oath. “I could not take it,” he said, “without being sure that you approve and that you realise its significance. Have you become any less narrow, any less bigoted, Juliette?”[116]
But no, Mme. Adam was as resolute as ever. And her husband, yielding to her arguments, or unwilling to create between himself and his wife an impassable breach, told his electors that he found himself incapable of taking the oath. “The candidate who replaced him,” adds Juliette, “did so well that the electors bore him no grudge. As for me, I am prouder than ever to bear his name.”
Léon Gambetta was now, as the acknowledged leader of that wing of the republican party known as les Jeunes, attracting considerable attention. He was a complete meridional, for his parents were a Provençal mother and a father of Genoese origin. He was born in 1837 at Cahors, where his father kept a small grocer’s shop. Léon and one sister were their only children. It having been prophesied to Mme. Gambetta, before her son’s birth, that he would one day be a great man, she denied herself in every way in order to give him the best of educations. He entered the legal profession and went to Paris. There, among the students of the Latin quarter, he rapidly made his mark. No students’ manifestation was complete without him, neither was any fête. He showed a marvellous capacity for repeating verses and drinking beer. He hated the Empire with exuberance, but not with fanaticism. He was well read. Montaigne and Rabelais were his favourite authors, and he was seldom seen without a tattered copy of the latter protruding from his slovenly coat pocket. Passionately interested in public affairs, he hardly missed a sitting of the Corps Legislatif. He was equally assiduous at the Café Voltaire and the Café Procope. There, no matter what subject was under discussion—books, plays, women, or politics—he never failed to monopolise the conversation.
Gambetta first appears in Mme. Adam’s Souvenirs when Eugène Pelletan describes him to her as one of the riff-raff of the party (les voyous du parti).[117] Later Girardin in Mme. d’Agoult’s salon had praised his exuberance tempered by common sense.
“Vous n’imaginez pas la vitalité de ce gaillard-là,” said Girardin.[118] “If only he were better put on, I would introduce him to you. But it is impossible. Nevertheless, he is a man of letters.”
But soon Juliette began to feel that without ce gaillard-là, ce jeune monstre, ce dompteur des foules, as Gambetta was beginning to be called, her Grand Salon was incomplete. Adam was meeting Gambetta constantly at Laurent Pichat’s, and was ever quoting to his wife this rising young demagogue’s astute sayings.
“We must introduce him into our circle; you must bring him to me,” said Juliette.[119]
“But,” objected Adam, “he is very unfledged. Neither in manner nor in words does he know any restraint. His accent is impossible. He is insolent in discussion. Moreover, I do not wish you to hear him talk of the men of 1848.”
For the idealists of 1848, for their lack of worldly wisdom, for their failure to take advantage of the situation they had created, Gambetta did not scruple to express his profound contempt.
“But,” interjected Juliette, “is he really out of the common? Is he worth knowing? Yes or no?”
“Yes, he is out of the common. He is worth knowing. But he is Bohemian, vulgar, brutal. His manner of life is extraordinary. He is a typical man of the masses, as Danton, plus retors. He has an air of authority and dominates the conversation, no matter where he is.”
“We will invite him,” said Juliette. Nevertheless, before making the final plunge, she took the precaution of consulting her old friend, Hetzel, the publisher, who knew about Gambetta through a mutual friend, Alphonse Daudet, another brilliant young Provençal, who was at that time making his mark in Paris.
Hetzel pronounced the jeune monstre to be quite impossible. “You should hear Alphonse Daudet describe Gambetta’s southern clan, the clan of the bas-midi, composed of howling Gascons, of blatant windbags of Provençals. He himself a kind of political commercial traveller ... provincial to the marrow of his bones, a provincial grocer withal, one-eyed and chemisé et cravaté et pantalonné en dégringolade.”
Such a picture gave Mme. Adam pause. But her husband pronounced it a caricature. Alphonse Daudet had only seen Gambetta at restaurants. In Laurent Pichat’s salon he was better. Certainly he was too vehement, but he was not a windbag. So he was invited to one of the Adams’ famous Friday dinner-parties to meet a number of distinguished guests, with most of whom he was previously acquainted: his friend Laurent Pichat, Eugène Pelletan, Jules Ferry,[120] Hetzel, who came to form his own opinion of le monstre, those two faithful friends Challemel-Lacour and de Ronchaud, d’Artigues, Duclerc, the Orleanist de Reims. L’hôte exceptionnel,[121] as Mme. Adam puts it, was another Orleanist, no less a personage than the grandson of General La Fayette, the Marquis Jules de Lasteyrie. He had fought in Portugal for Don Pedro in 1832; he had sat on the left centre in the Chambre des Députés under Louis Philippe; he had been exiled in 1852, but had returned after the amnesty. Now, backed by Thiers, he was endeavouring, as candidate for Seine et Marne, to re-enter political life.
Adam had told the Marquis that he was to meet Gambetta, and full of curiosity, congratulating his hostess on her boldness, Lasteyrie arrived early. “I shall tell Thiers about this party,” he said, “for he is deeply interested in le jeune monstre.”
Gambetta, imagining that he was going to dine with a blue-stocking, dressed anyhow. He arrived wearing a nondescript kind of coat, with a suggestion of a flannel shirt appearing between his high-buttoned waistcoat and collar.[122] He looked thunderstruck when he saw every one else in evening dress. Eugène Pelletan, who knew him well, presented him to his hostess. Adam was talking in another salon. Gambetta begged Mme. Adam to excuse his not having dressed.
“If I had known,” he said.
“You would not have come,” she replied, laughing. “That is not nice of you.”
M. de Lasteyrie, who was generally most tolerant, whispered in her ear.... “If he had come in a workman’s blouse, I might have passed him ... but ... that!”
Jules Lasteyrie was to have taken Mme. Adam in to dinner.
“The only way to rehabilitate him, my dear friend,” she said, “is to give him the first place. I deprive you of it. But I am sure you will agree with me.”
The Marquis assumed his fine lordly air and replied: “You are right, the servants might neglect him. Besides, we shall see whether he understands le grand.”
The hostess took Gambetta’s arm. He was overwhelmed at being placed on her right. Lasteyrie sat on her left. Adam could not believe his eyes.
Hardly had they sat down at table when Gambetta, leaning towards Mme. Adam whispered—
“Madame, I shall never forget the lesson you have taught me.” Evidently he understood le grand.
Many another lesson was Juliette to teach her illustrious friend. In matters sartorial and social she was to find him an apt pupil. As Mme. d’Agoult had transformed the provincial young person into une grande dame, so Juliette was to turn the Provençal grocer, the political commercial traveller, into a man of the world.
When some ten years later she saw him at the opera faultlessly attired, with light gloves, a hat slightly tipped over one ear, a gardenia in his buttonhole, she felt proud of her handiwork.
While Gambetta was ready enough to employ Adam’s tailor, he was not ready to adopt all his or his wife’s political opinions. At that first dinner-party Mme. Adam and her guest, as Adam had foreseen, disagreed on the question of the oath of allegiance to the Empire and on their estimate of the republicans of 1848.
Despite these differences, however, for the next seven years, at least, bonds of mutual admiration united Mme. Adam and Gambetta. During the national disasters now approaching her esteem for him steadily increased;[123] she admired not his patriotism only, but his wisdom, his moderation; she came to regard him as the one hope of la patrie, the cariatide of her beloved France.[124]
It was by his speech at the famous trial of Delescluze that Gambetta first established his fame as an orator. The days that proceeded that trial, writes the historian Pierre de la Gorce,[125] in his vivid account of these incidents, were les derniers de sa vie obscure. That trial and the incidents leading up to it thrilled with excitement Mme. Adam’s salon. They originated in a manifestation which had taken place on the 2nd of November, 1868, round the grave of the republican leader Baudin. After Louis Napoléon’s coup d’état of December 1851, Baudin, an ardent republican deputy, had endeavoured to incite the Parisian populace to resist. They taunted him with caring chiefly to secure the daily sum of twenty-five francs, which he received as a Member of Parliament. “Why should we be killed for your twenty-five francs?” they cried. “You will see how one can die for twenty-five francs,” cried Baudin, and he climbed on to the barricade, expecting the crowd to follow him. But troops were coming up the street. Baudin was seen to wave a flag, and then to fall dead after having called to the people to come on. The republicans, who gathered round Baudin’s grave in the Montmartre Cemetery, did not lose this opportunity of expressing their opinions of the Imperial Government and of prophesying its speedy dissolution. They took themselves very seriously, and rather expected their little group of some sixty persons to be dispersed by the authorities. But what they thought to be the roll of the guns of approaching troops turned out to be nothing more than an announcement that it was time to close the cemetery. Afterwards, however, it occurred to certain Republican journalists, first to Delescluze of Le Reveil, later to Peyrat of L’Avenir National and to Challemel-Lacour of La Revue Politique to open a subscription for a monument to be erected to Baudin. The Imperial Government, ever with its eye on the press, determined to nip in the bud this project of honouring one of its arch enemies. Delescluze, Peyrat and Challemel, with certain of the manifestants, were summoned before the Sixth Chamber Correctionelle. It was Edmond Adam who had urged Peyrat to bring L’Avenir National into the movement. His friend Thiers had rated him soundly for so doing. “Cette affaire est insensée,” said le grand petit homme,[126] always the soul of moderation. “C’est de la faction! Ces choses-là conduisent aux émeutes et aux révolutions.”
“You are mistaken,” replied Adam calmly. “We are placing an instrument in the hands of the opposition. You will soon recognise it. The Empire’s enemies figure in the subscribers’ lists, and those lists will one day furnish a basis for a coalition, which you will find useful.”
A few days later M. Thiers admitted that Adam was right. This eventful year was now drawing to a close. The late autumn had come, and it was time for the Adams to shut up their salon and go to Bruyères for the winter. “But how,” writes Juliette, “could we discontinue our evenings in the midst of so much agitation, when our friends passing along the boulevard like to come up and talk in our salon?”
There was considerable discussion as to the advocate to defend Delescluze, who was regarded as the most important among the accused. Finally the choice fell on Gambetta.
The trial took place on the 13th of November. “La surexcitation est extrême parmi nos amis. Les plus calmes s’emportent,” wrote Juliette.[127]
The speeches for the defence were numerous and eloquent. But one alone has survived. Needless to say it was Gambetta’s. With consummate skill he converted his defence of his client into an attack upon the Empire. Posing that difficult question which has of late so often presented itself in French political life, Gambetta asked, “Can there ever be a moment, when for the sake of the public weal it is right to violate the law, to overthrow the constitution, to treat as criminal those who defend the right at the risk of their lives? Louis Napoléon, when in December 1851 he effected his coup d’état, considered that such a moment had arrived. But surely,” exclaimed this fearless republican, “this is not the time to justify such an act, for here we are in the prætorium of the judge, here the voice of the law alone should make itself heard.”
These words, as it may well be imagined, created an enormous effect in the court. There was absolute silence. The audience seemed to hold its breath. The parts were transposed: the defender had become the accuser. Several times the President endeavoured to interrupt. But such remonstrances as “Really, Maître Gambetta, you ought to reserve that for your peroration,” as well as the objections of the opposing counsel, passed unobserved amidst the thunder of that tremendous voice. Gambetta merely redoubled his vehemence. He walked up and down, he struck with his hand on the bar in front of him. His attitude no longer was one of defence, but rather of rebellion. His disordered hair, his floating gown, his collar thrown open, his crumpled cap, which he was constantly putting on and taking off—everything betrayed the intensity of an avenging wrath indifferent to everything save the one matter which kindled it.
“On the 2nd of December,” cried Gambetta, “they tried to deceive Paris with the provinces, the provinces with Paris. Steam and telegraphy were instruments in the hands of the new régime. Throughout the departments ran the announcement, Paris submits. Paris submits? Why, Paris was assassinated, shot down, cannonaded.”
Then like a defiance resounded the concluding ironical appeal to the Empire—
“Listen; for seventeen years you have been absolute masters, you have held France in your power.... Yet you have never dared to place among the national festivals that 2nd of December!... Well, we claim it, that anniversary of the 2nd of December. We claim it for ourselves. We shall never cease to celebrate it. Every year it will be the anniversary of our dead, until the day when the country, once more having become the master, shall exact from you the great expiation in the name of liberty, equality and fraternity.”[128]
After a long deliberation the court pronounced sentence, and all the accused were condemned. But few thought of them. Gambetta, though he had failed to obtain his client’s acquittal, was the hero of the hour, for he had brought a more serious indictment against a far greater criminal. Fêted and congratulated on every hand, he was conducted to the famous Restaurant Magny. No false modesty was his. He knew he had dealt faithfully with the tyrants, and he was not ashamed to own it. “Comme je leur ai dit leur quatre vérités,” he exclaimed.
In Juliette’s salon that night there was wild enthusiasm. Adam and his friends had heard the speech. They repeated passages of it. “You must read it,” Adam said to his wife. “But it will not be the same as having heard it.”
“The 13th of November,” writes Juliette, “was a fatal day for the Empire.[129] ... The imperial tree had been sapped by the little Cahors lawyer. It was not that Gambetta’s oratory was so very exceptional. His power lay in making his ardent soul vibrate to the emotion of the crowd.”
The Adams had found it well worth their while to postpone their departure for Bruyères in order to be in Paris at such a time.
Juliette, on her arrival at her villa, was overwhelmed by the transformation which Adam had worked in it. “Mon Bruyères,” she writes, “est embelli, transformé joliment à l’intérieur, sans avoir perdu quoi que ce soit de sa gracieuse et modeste physionomie.”[130]
Now that in her glorified Bruyères Juliette had three guest-chambers instead of one, she could receive numerous friends from Paris. During this winter Garnier-Pagès, one of her husband’s old friends, a man of “1848,” one of the founders of the Comptoir d’Escompte, came with his family, and Juliette’s publisher Hetzel. On the Golfe Juan, as at Paris, Mme. Adam gathered her friends round her; and Bruyères became a veritable salon, with Prosper Mérimée for its grand homme. Of this illustrious writer, in the evening of his days, Mme. Adam in her Souvenirs[131] paints a striking picture. She draws to the life his elegant figure, always well put on. He affected grey trousers, white waistcoats, large soft blue cravats tied in an artistic bow. She describes his eyeglasses, well posed on un nez qu’on ne voyait qu’à lui tant la forme en était particulière, his wrinkled, careworn forehead, his thick eyebrows, which gave him a cold, haughty and somewhat severe air. There was something English about his appearance. His mother was an Englishwoman, and he loved England. It was an admirable country, he used to say, where reforms proposed by liberals are executed by conservatives. This statement, which like most generalisations is more striking than accurate, was natural to an observer of British politics so soon after the Reform Bill of 1867.
THE VILLA BRUYÈRES, ON THE GOLFE JUAN, MADAME ADAM’S RIVIERA HOME
Each winter Mérimée and Juliette Adam became better friends. He paid her one of the compliments she appreciated most when he told Dr. Maure that she had made him understand fraternity.[132]
She enjoyed his conversation immensely. “A talk with Mérimée,” she writes, “is always full of surprises,[133] so wide is his knowledge and of a quality so superior.” His eclecticism delighted her. He belonged to no school, but was ready to appreciate anything that appealed to him, modern or ancient, idealist or realist, romantic or classical. His bête noir was exaggeration. He was artistic to the finger-tips. He detested the photographic method of treating life and nature. “Every artist at the beginning of his life,” he would say, “must, I admit, be carried away by passion, by rapture, but before long he must deny himself any ecstasy which might cloud his imagination and dim his vision of reality; he must retain of his passion only so much as is necessary for its description.”
Mérimée, like Juliette’s friend Flaubert, was a heroic worker. He would not hesitate to rewrite a page ten times. A term erased seemed to him but “a jumping-off place from which to reach le mot juste.” Mme. Adam highly prized the lessons he gave her on style.
In general conversation he was not at his best. However interesting the subject might be, he was ill at ease if the speaker did not appeal to him. He would assume a frigid manner. On the other hand, if the speaker pleased him, he would hasten to pour forth all the treasures of his accumulated reflections.
The events of the summer of 1868, and the troubles of L’Avenir National, an opposition newspaper founded in 1865, edited by Peyrat, and in which Adam had a large financial interest, had prevented Juliette and her husband from taking any honeymoon immediately after their marriage. Now, in the spring of 1869, accompanied by Alice, they took their postponed wedding-tour to Italy. They visited Florence, then the capital of the Italian kingdom, Milan, Turin and Genoa. Furnished with useful introductions by Thiers and other friends, they met many interesting people, Cairoli, the Marquis Alfieri, Nino Bixio, the Garibaldian soldier, whose brother Alessandro had been so intimate a friend of Adam. At Florence they rejoiced to meet again the Italian exiles whom they had known in Paris. Mme. Adam, while admiring the intense patriotism of the Italians, was grieved to perceive how Napoléon’s papal policy had alienated them from France. At the meetings of the Italian Chamber, the opposition’s violent attacks on France cut her to the heart.
“C’est pour Adam et moi une grande tristesse,” she writes. “Quoi! tout le sang versé, nos sacrifices, notre amitié, notre dévouement, notre enthousiasme, à nous, républicains, qui nous à fait accepter un armistice dans notre lutte contre l’Empire, n’ont servi qu’à nous faire une ennemi violente de l’Italie.”[134]
Juliette was glad to see her last novel, L’Education de Laure, displayed in the book-shops of Milan. Driving home, along the Corniche Road, in company with Nino Bixio, they had a memorable journey, to which we shall refer later.
Arriving in Paris in April, they found the capital in the throes of preparing for the general election, fixed for the 23rd and 24th of May—the third election held since the establishment of the Empire, the two previous had been in 1857 and 1863. But this, remarks Mme. Adam, was the first election which had been held since the granting of liberty of public meetings and of the Press, two reforms which had resulted from Ollivier’s establishment of what is known as l’Empire Libérale.
Juliette in her salon on the Boulevard Poissonnière found herself quite as much in the movement as she would have been in the Rue de Rivoli. From her windows she saw, or imagined she saw, all manner of wonderful happenings: strange meetings and consultations after midnight between policemen and les blouses blanches, those socialists, the mistrusted tail of the radical party, whom Gambetta, in his famous Belleville speech, was accused of humouring. His more moderate friends thought he had promised too much: tariff and tax reform, election of all Government functionaries, suppression of standing armies. “You must cut off this tail of yours,” remonstrated his anti-socialist supporters. “Cut off my tail,” said Gambetta gaily, “not as long as I live. I will tie a white sash round it and lead it into society.”[135]
Gambetta, at the head of les Jeunes was opposing at Belleville Hippolyte Carnot, that vieille barbe as the heroes of 1848 were called. Baucel, another of les Jeunes in another Paris constituency, was successfully opposing Ollivier himself; and the founder of l’Empire Libérale was driven to a provincial constituency in the Department of Var. So unpopular was the minister in the capital that his public meeting at Le Châtelet became a riot, during which the famous beer-house Dréher was sacked before the police could effectually intervene.
The election cries of the opposition were “Away with personal government,” “Away with a standing army and substitute a national militia.” With the latter neither Juliette nor her husband were in agreement. Jules Simon in their salon represented this party. And when Adam argued against him, upholding a standing army, maintaining that without it a nation is lost, Nefftzer intervened saying, “You are right both of you. We must have a standing army and a national militia to defend the country against the German invasion which is approaching.”[136]
Though many of her friends were standing as candidates, Madame Adam’s salon continued to be well frequented all through the election. The guests, however, came later and went away earlier. Occasionally some one would disappoint her. Jules Ferry, for instance, in one of the most adroit of notes excused himself at the last moment.
“Madame,” he wrote,[137] “je n’appartiens plus ni à mes amis, ni à moi-même, ni aux choses gracieuses de la vie.... Or voici qu’une réunion d’électeurs apparaît à l’horizon, un peu plus farouche que votre salon. L’électeur est un maître, vous le savez, et nous ne sommes pas sur un lit de roses; vous m’excuserez donc et vous me permettrez si ce mercredi soir m’est enlevé, de vous porter mes excuses un matin.”
At the request of their friends the Adams, as will be seen, had changed their day from Friday to Wednesday. Throughout the election Juliette had been full of hope. And the result did not disappoint her. For, although the Government maintained a majority in the House, the opposition had won a striking moral victory. The forces of the opposition now led by Gambetta in the Chamber, had shown their growing power. Many of its candidates, Rochefort, for example, though defeated, had obtained a large number of votes. The Empire was visibly tottering. Napoléon, ill and irresolute, was driven to grant the reformers concession after concession.
[87] Souvenirs, II. 462-3.
[88] Propos Littéraires, 5ième série, 285.
[89] Souvenirs, II. 450.
[90] Souvenirs, II. 453.
[91] Ibid., III. 29.
[92] He had held office in the Provisional Government, had attempted to stem the tide of insurrection in the summer of 1848, and, having failed, had retired into private life, occupying himself with the writing of books and articles on political and economic subjects. After the war he returned to politics, and was Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1883.
[93] Quinet and Michelet had both recently published histories of the Revolution. The appearance of these volumes ended that close friendship which until then had united them. For each regarded himself as having said the last word on the subject; and according to Mme. Adam, who disliked Michelet, the latter could not forgive his sometime friend for not having mentioned him in his book (see Souvenirs, III. 314). Michelet was astonished, he wrote to Quinet, “at this amazing neglect of one qui seul avait frayé, les voies.”