An Englishman in Paris: Notes and Recollections

by Albert D. Vandam

After the lapse of thirteen years, it is difficult to put the exact hour and date to each exciting incident of a period which was absolutely phenomenal throughout. I kept no diary, only a few rough notes, because at that time I never thought of committing my recollections to paper, and have, therefore, to trust almost wholly to my memory; nevertheless I am positive as to main facts, whether witnessed by myself or communicated to me by friends and acquaintances. I remember, for instance, that, immediately after the declaration of war, I was warned by my friends not to go abroad more than I could help, to keep away as much as possible from crowds. "You are a foreigner," said one, "and that will be sufficient for any ragamuffin, who wants to do you a bad turn, to draw attention to you. By the time you have satisfactorily proved your nationality you will be beaten black and blue, if not worse."

The advice was given on Friday, the 15th of July, about six in the afternoon; that is, a few hours after the news of the scenes in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate had spread, and when the centre of Paris was getting gradually congested with the inhabitants of the faubourgs. My friends were men of culture and education, and not at all likely to be carried away by the delirium which, on that same night and for the next week, converted Paris into one vast lunatic asylum, whose inmates had managed to throw off the control of their keepers; yet there was not a single civilian among them who had a doubt about the eventual victory of France, about her ability "to chastise the arrogance of the King of Prussia," to put the matter in their own words.

"To try to be wise after the event" is a thing I particularly detest, but I can honestly affirm that I did not share their confidence, although I did not suspect for a moment that the defeat would be so crushing as it was. I remembered many incidents that had happened during the previous four years of which they seemed conveniently oblivious; I was also aware, perhaps, of certain matters of which they were either profoundly ignorant, or professed to be; but, above all, I took to heart the advice, tendered in the shape of, "You are a foreigner;" and though I feared no violence or even verbal recrimination on their part, I chose to hold my tongue.

I hold no brief for the late Emperor, but I sincerely believe that he was utterly averse to the war. I, moreover, think that if he had consented to remain in Paris or at St. Cloud, the disaster would have happened all the same. He had no illusions about the efficiency of his armies, though he may not have been cognizant of the thorough rottenness of the whole. But to have said so at any time, especially during the last four years, would have been simply to sign the death-warrant of his dynasty. He endeavoured to remedy the defects in a roundabout way as early as October, '66, by appointing a commission to draw up a plan for the reorganization of the army. Apparently, Napoléon wanted larger contingents; in reality, he hoped that the inquiry would lay bare such evidence of corruption as would justify him in dismissing several of the men surrounding him from their high commands. But both those who only saw the apparent drift as well as those who guessed at the real one were equally determined in their opposition. It was the majority in the Legislature which first uttered the cry, immediately taken up by the adversaries of the régime, "If this bill becomes law there will be an end of favourable numbers." In fact, the bill meant compulsory service for every one, and the consent of the deputies to it would at once have forfeited their position with their electors, especially with the peasantry, to whom to apply the word "patriotism" at any time is tantamount to the vilest prostitution of it.

Of the makeshift for that law I need say little or nothing. Without a single spy in France, without a single attaché in the Rue de Lille, Bismarck was enabled by that only to determine beforehand the effects of one serious military defeat on the dynasty of the Emperor; he was enabled to calculate the exact strength of the chain of defence which would be offered subsequently. The French army was like the Scotch lad's porridge, "sour, burnt, gritty, cold, and, —— it, there was not enough of it." It is not underrating Bismarck's genius to say that a man of far inferior abilities than he would have plainly seen the course to pursue.

Was Napoléon III. steeped in such crass ignorance as not to have had an inkling of all this? Certainly not; but he was weary, body and soul, and, but for his wife and son, he would, perhaps willingly, have abdicated. He had been suffering for years from one of the most excruciating diseases, and a fortnight before the declaration of war the symptoms had become so alarming that a great consultation was held between MM. Nélaton, Ricord, Fauvel, G. Sée, and Corvisart. The result was the unanimous conclusion of those eminent medical men that an immediate operation was absolutely necessary. Curiously enough, however, the report embodying this decision was only signed by one, and not communicated to the Empress at all. It may be taken for granted that, had she known of her husband's condition, she would not have agitated in favour of the war, as she undoubtedly did.

It was only after the Emperor's death at Chislehurst that the document in question was found, but I happened to know Dr. Ricord intimately, and most of the facts, besides those stated above, were known to me on that memorable Friday, the 15th of July, 1870. As I have said already, I thought it wiser to hold my tongue.

But though determined not to speak—knowing that it would do no earthly good—I was equally determined to see and to hear; so, at about eight, I sallied forth. The heat was positively stifling, and it was still daylight, but, in their eagerness to show their joy, the Parisians would not wait for darkness to set in, and, as I went along, I saw several matrons of the better classes, aided by their maids, make preparations on the balcony for illuminating the moment the last rays of the sun should set behind the horizon. I distinctly say matrons of the better classes, because my way lay through the Chaussée d'Antin, where the tenancy of an apartment on the first, second, or third floor implied a more than average income. I was, and am, aware that neither refinement nor good sense should be measured by the money at one's command, but under similar circumstances it is impossible to apply any other valid test. In the streets there was one closely wedged-in, seething mass, and the noise was deafening; nevertheless, at the sight of one of those matrons thus engaged there was a momentary lull, followed immediately by vociferous applause and the cry of "Les mères de la patrie." From a cursory glance upward, I came to the conclusion that the progeny of these ladies, if they were blessed with any, could as yet contribute but very little to the glory of the nation; still, I reflected, at the same time, that they had probably brothers and husbands who, within a few hours, might be called to the front, "nevermore to return;" that, therefore, the outburst of patriotism could not be called an altogether cheap one. In fact, none but the thoroughly irreclaimable sceptic could fail to be struck with the genuine outburst of national resentment against a whole nation on the part of another nation, which, as I take it, means something different from unalloyed patriotism. It was a mixture of hatred and chauvinism, rather than the latter and more elevated sentiment. The "sacred soil of France"—though why more sacred than any other soil, I have never been able to make out—was not threatened in this instance by Prussia; carefully considered, it was not even a question of national honour offended for which Paris professed itself ready as one man to draw the sword, and yet the thousands in the street that night behaved as if each of them had a personal quarrel to settle, not with one or two Germans, but with every son and daughter of the Fatherland.

It was, perhaps, a quarter after eight when I found myself in the Chaussée d'Antin, and the distance to the Boulevard des Italiens was certainly not more than two hundred and fifty yards; nevertheless, it took me more than half an hour to get over it, for immediately on my emerging into the main thoroughfare I looked at a clock which pointed to nine. Two things stand out vividly in my memory: the first, the preparations of several business houses to illuminate on a grand scale, there and then; i. e. the putting up of the elaborate crystal devices used by them on the 15th of August, the Emperor's fête-day. It was exactly a month before that date, and a neighbour of an enthusiastic tradesman remarked upon the fact. "I know," was the answer; "I'll leave it there till the 14th of next month, and then I'll add two bigger ones to it." On the day proposed, not only were there none added, but the original one had also disappeared, for by that time the Second Empire was virtually in the throes of death. The second thing I remember was the enormous strip of calico outside a bookseller's shop, with the announcement, "Dictionnaire Français-Allemand à l'usage des Français à Berlin." In less than two months I read the following; it was an extract from the interview between Bismarck and Moltke on the one side and General de Wimpffen on the other, on the eve of the capitulation of Sedan: "You do not know the topography of the environs of Sedan," replied General von Moltke; "and, seeing that we are on the subject, let me give you a small instance which thoroughly shows the presumption, the want of method, of your nation. At the beginning of the campaign, you provided your officers with maps of Germany, when they utterly lacked the means of studying the geography of their own country, seeing that you had no maps of your own territory." I could not help thinking of the bookseller, and wondering how many dictionaries he sold during those first few days.

I did not get very far that night, only as far as the Maison d'Or, where I was perforce obliged to stop and look on. I stood for nearly an hour and a half, for there was no possibility of getting a seat, and during that time I only heard one opinion adverse to the war. It was that of a justly celebrated dramatist, who is by no means hostile to either the Emperor or the Empire, albeit that he had declined several years ago to be presented to Napoléon when Princess Mathilde offered him to do so. He positively hates the Germans, but his hatred did not blind him to their great intellectual qualities and to their powers of organization. "It is all very fine to shout 'À Berlin!'" he said; "and it is very probable that some of these bellowers (braillards) will get there, though not in the order of procession they expect; they will be in front, and the Germans at their backs." He spoke very low, and begged me not to repeat what he had said. "If I am mistaken, I do not want to be twitted with having thrown cold water on the martial ardour of my countrymen; if I am right, I will willingly forego the honour of having prophesied the humiliation of my countrymen." That is why I suppress his name here, but I have often thought of his words since; and when people, Englishmen especially, have accused him of having contributed to the corruption of the Second Empire by his stage works, I have smiled to myself. With the exception of one, he has never written a play that did not teach a valuable moral lesson; but he is an excellent husband, father, and son, though he is perhaps not over generous with his money.