France in the Nineteenth Century

by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer

Both M. Grévy and Marshal MacMahon held their Cabinet meetings in that salle of the Élysée which is hung round with the portraits of sovereigns. Opposite to M. Grévy's chair hung a portrait of Queen Victoria; and it was remarked that he always gazed at her while his ministers discoursed around him. But his happiness, poor man! was in his private apartments, where his daughter, her husband, M. Wilson, and his little grandchild made part of his household.

M. Gréevy gave handsome dinners at the Élysée, and Madame Grévy and Madame Wilson gave receptions, and occasionally handsome balls. Everything was done "decently and in order," much like an American president's housekeeping, but without show or brilliancy.

Having indulged in this gossip about the courts of the presidents (for much of which I am indebted to a writer in "Temple Bar"), we will turn to graver history.

When M. Grévy became president, Gambetta succeeded to his place as president of the Chamber. He did not desire the post of prime minister. His new position made him the second man in France, and seemed to point him out as the future candidate for the presidency.

M. Defavre became chief of the Cabinet, and M. Waddington Minister for Foreign Affairs. But Gambetta, whether in or out of office, was the leader of his party, and a sense of the responsibilities of leadership made him far more cautious and less fiery than he had been in former days. Yet even then he had said emphatically: "No republic can last long in France that is not based on law, order, and respect for property."

In August, 1880, however, eighteen months after M. Grévy's elevation to the presidency, Gambetta became prime minister. He flattered himself that he might do great things for France, for he believed that he could count on the support of every true Republican. He was mistaken. Three months after he accepted office, the Radicals and the Conservatives combined for his overthrow. He was defeated in the Chamber on a question of the scrutin de liste, and resigned.

Gambetta's disappointment was very great. He had counted on his popularity, and had hoped to accomplish great things. He was a man of loose morals and of declining health, for, unsuspected by himself, a disorder from which he could never have recovered, was undermining his strength; this made him irritable. On the 30th of August, 1882, he was visiting, at a country house near Paris, a lady of impaired reputation; there he was shot in the hand. The wound brought on an illness, of which he died in December. It has never been known whether the shot was fired by the woman, as was generally suspected, or whether his own pistol, as he asserted, was accidentally discharged.

He was buried at Père la Chaise, without religious services; but his coffin was followed by vast crowds, and all Frenchmen (even his enemies, and they were many) felt that his country had lost an honest patriot and a great man.

On the centennial anniversary of the opening act of the French Revolution, a statue of Gambetta was unveiled in the Place du Carrousel, the courtyard of French kings. No future king, if any such should be, will dare to displace it. Gambetta's life was a sad one, and his death was sadder still. With all his noble qualities,—and there are few things nobler in history than the manner in which he effaced himself to give place to his rival,—how great he might have been, had he learned early to apply his power of self-restraint to lesser things!

Gambetta wanted Paris to remain the city of cities, the centre of art, fashion, and culture; and he took up the Emperor Napoleon's policy of beautifying and improving it by costly public works. "Je veux ma république belle, bien parée" ("I want my republic beautiful and well dressed") was a sentence which brought him into trouble with the Radicals, who said he had no right to say "my republic," as if he were looking forward to being its dictator. He voted for the return of the Communists from New Caledonia, and during the last two years of his life these returned exiles never ceased to thwart him and revile him. Some one had prophesied to him that this would be the case. "Bah!" he answered, "the poor wretches have suffered enough. I might have been transported myself, had matters turned out differently in 1870."[1] Had he lived, it is probable that in 1886 he would have supplanted M. Grévy. "Nor," says one of his friends, "can it be doubted that, loving the Republic as he did, and having served it with so much devotion and honesty, he would have found in his love a power of self-restraint to keep him from courses that might have been hurtful to his own work." For the establishment of the Republic was principally "his own work." He proclaimed its birth, standing in a window of the Hôtel de Ville in 1870; he gave it a baptism of some glory in the fiery, though hopeless, resistance he opposed to the German invasion; and he kept it standing at a time when it needed the support of a sturdy, vigilant champion. To the end it must be believed that he would, as far as in him lay, have preserved it from harm. Not long before his death, during a lull in his pain, which for a moment roused a hope of his recovery, he said to his doctor: "I have made many mistakes, but people must not imagine I am not aware of them; I often think over my faults, and if things go well I shall try the patience of my friends less often. On se corrige!"