France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

"She pitied him, she was dazzled by his brilliant parts, charmed by his plausible manners, and regardless of his poverty and his incumbrance of many children, she insisted on marrying him. Her family was indignant, and cast her off; nor did she long find comfort in her husband. She was a Royalist, and remained so to the end of her days; he was a Jacobin. Moreover, she soon found that his tastes led him to drink and dissipation."

This man, the father of Thiers, was small of stature, mercurial in temperament, of universal aptitudes, much wit, and a perennial buoyancy of disposition. His weakness, like his son's, was a passion for omniscience. Some one said of him: "He talks encyclopedia, and if anybody asked him, would be at no loss to tell you what was passing in the moon." He had been educated for the Bar, and belonged to a family of the haute bourgeoisie of Provence; but everything was changed by the revolutionary see-saw, and shortly before his son was born, he had been a stevedore in the docks of Marseilles. His father (the statesman's grandfather) had been a cloth merchant and a man of erudition. He wrote a History of Provence, and died at the age of ninety-five. The Thiers who preceded him lived to be ninety-seven, and was a noted gastronome, whose house at Marseilles in the early part of the eighteenth century was known far and wide for hospitality and good cheer. He was ruined by speculative ventures in the American colonies.

Thiers' grandfather, the cloth merchant, was a Royalist, who brought down upon himself the wrath of the Jacobins by inciting the more moderate party in Marseilles to seize the commissioners sent to them by the Convention, and imprison them in the Château d'If. His son (Thiers' father), being himself a Jacobin, helped to release the prisoners, and accepted an office under them in Marseilles. This was the reason why he had to conceal himself during the reaction that followed the fall of Robespierre. But all his life he bobbed like a cork to the surface of events, or with equal facility sank beneath them. He seems to have been "everything by turns, and nothing long." Among other employments he became an impressario, and went with an opera troupe to Italy. There for a time he kept a gaming table, and finally turned up at Joseph Bonaparte's court at Naples. He became popular with King Joseph, and followed him to Madrid. He was a French Micawber, without the domestic affections of his English counterpart, but with far more brilliant chances. His wife was left to struggle at Marseilles with her own boy to support, and with a host of step-children. What she would have done but for the kindness of her mother, Madame Arnic, it is hard to tell.

Meantime Adolphe was adopted and educated by Madame Arnic. She had provided him from his birth with influential patrons in the persons of two well-to-do godfathers. The boy was brought up in one of those beautiful bastides, or sea-and-country villas, which adorn the shores of Provence. There he ran wild with the little peasant boys, and subsequently in Marseilles with the gamins of the city.

His cousin, the poet André Chénier, got him an appointment to one of the lycées, or high-schools, established by Napoleon; but his grandmother would not hear of his "wearing Bonaparte's livery." The two god-fathers had to threaten to apply to the absent Micawber on the subject, if the boy's mother and grandmother stood in the way of his education. They yielded at last, and accepted the appointment offered them. Adolphe passed with high marks into the institution, and it cost him no trouble to keep always at the head of his classes. But in play hours there was never a more troublesome boy. He so perplexed and annoyed his superiors that they were on the eve of expelling him, when a new master came to the lycée from Paris, and all was changed. This master had ruined his prospects by writing a pamphlet against the Empire. A warm friendship sprang up between him and his brilliant pupil. The good man was an unbending republican. When Thiers became Prime Minister of France under Louis Philippe, he wrote to his old master and offered him an important post in the Bureau of Public Instruction; but the old man refused it. He would not accept Louis Philippe as "the best of republics," and ended his letter by saying: "The best thing I can wish you is that you may soon retire from office, and that for a long time."

The influence of this new teacher roused all Thiers' faculties and stimulated his industry. From that time forward he became the most industrious man of his age. The bulletins and the victories of Napoleon excited his imagination. He would take a bulletin for his theme, and write up an account of a battle, supplementing his few facts by his own vivid imagination. His idea was that France must be the strongest of European powers, or she would prove the weakest; she could not hold a middle place in the federation of European nations.

When Thiers had finished his school course his grandmother mortgaged her house to supply funds for his entrance into the college at Aix. He could not enter the army on account of his size, and he aspired to the Bar. His family was very poor at that period. Thiers largely supported himself by painting miniatures, which it is said he did remarkably well.

At Aix he found good literary society and congenial associations. His friendship with his fellow-historian, Mignet, began in their college days. At Aix, too, where he was given full liberty to enjoy the Marquis d'Alberta's gallery of art and wonderful collection of curiosities and bronzes, he acquired his life-long taste for such things. Aix was indeed a place full of collections,—of antiquities, of cameos, of marbles, etc.

Thiers' first literary success was the winning a prize at Nîmes for a monograph on Vauvenargues, a moralist of the eighteenth century, called by Voltaire the master-mind of his period. He won this prize under remarkable circumstances. The commission to award it was composed, largely of Royalists, who did not like to assign it to a competitor, who, if not a Republican, was at least a Bonapartist. Thiers had read passages from his essay to friends, and the commissioners were aware of its authorship. They therefore postponed their decision. Meantime Thiers wrote another essay on the same subject. Mignet had it copied, and forwarded to Nîmes from Paris, with a new motto. This essay won the first prize; and Thiers' other essay won the second prize, greatly to his amusement and delight, and to the annoyance and discomfiture of the Committee of Decision.

With six hundred francs in his pocket ($120), he went up to Paris, making the journey on foot. Having arrived there, he made his way to his friend Mignet's garret, weary and footsore, carrying his bundle in his hand. Mignet was not at home; but in the opposite chamber, which Thiers entered to make inquiries for his friend, was a gay circle of Bohemians, who were enjoying a revel. The traveller who broke in upon their mirth is thus described:—