Lives of Poor Boys Who Became Famous

by Sarah Knowles Bolton

Joseph Gambetta, the father, saw the political storm which was coming, and fearing for his outspoken son, locked him up in a lyceum at Cahors, till he was seventeen. Here he attracted the notice of his teachers by his fondness for reading, his great memory, and his love of history and politics. At sixteen he had read the Latin authors, and the economical works of Proudhon. When he came home, his father told him that he must now become a grocer, and succeed to the business. He obeyed, but his studious mind had no interest in the work. He recoiled from spending his powers in persuading the mayor's wife that a yard of Genoa velvet at twenty francs was cheaper than the same measure of the Lyon's article at thirteen. So tired and sick of the business did he become, that he begged his father to be allowed to keep the accounts, which he did in a neat, delicate hand.

His watchful mother saw that her boy's health was failing. He was restless and miserable. He longed to go to Paris to study law, and then teach in some provincial town. He planned ways of escape from the hated tasks, but he had no money, and no friends in the great city.

But his mother planned to some purpose. She said to M. Menier, the chocolate-maker, "I have a son of great promise, whom I want to send to Paris against his father's will to study law. He is a good lad, and no fool. But my husband, who wants him to continue his business here, will, I know, try to starve him into submission. What I am about to propose is that if I buy your chocolate at the rate you offer it, and buy it outright instead of taking it to sell on commission, will you say nothing if I enter it on the book at a higher price, and you pay the difference to my son?" Menier, interested to have the boy prosper, quickly agreed.

After a time, she called her son aside and, placing a bag of money in his hand, said, "This, my boy, is to pay your way for a year. A trunk full of clothes is ready for you. Try and come home somebody. Start soon, and take care to let nobody suspect you are going away. Do not say good-bye to a single soul. I want to avoid a scene between you and your father."

Ambition welled up again in his heart, and the bright expression came back into his face. The next morning he slipped away, and was soon at Paris. He drove to the Sorbonne, because he had heard that lectures were given there. The cab-driver recommended a cheap hotel close by, and, obtaining a room in the garret, the youth, not yet eighteen, began his studies. He rose early and worked hard, attending lectures at the medical school as well as at the law, buying his books at second-hand shops along the streets. Though poverty often pinched him as to food, and his clothes were poor, he did not mind it, but bent all his energies to his work. His mother wrote how angered the father was at his leaving, and would not allow his name to be mentioned in his presence. Poor Joseph! how limited was his horizon.

Leon's intelligence and originality won the esteem of the professors, and one of them said, "Your father acts stupidly. You have a true vocation. Follow it. But go to the bar, where your voice, which is one in a thousand, will carry you on, study and intelligence aiding. The lecture-room is a narrow theatre. If you like, I will write to your father to tell him what my opinion of you is."

Professor Valette wrote to Joseph Gambetta, "The best investment you ever made would be to spend what money you can afford to divert from your business in helping your son to become an advocate."

The letter caused a sensation in the Gambetta family. The mother took courage and urged the case of her darling child, while her sister, Jenny Massabie, talked ardently for her bright nephew. An allowance was finally made. In two years Leon had mastered the civil, criminal, military, forest, and maritime codes. Too young to be admitted to the bar to plead, for nearly a year he studied Paris, its treasures of art, and its varied life. It opened a new and grand world to him. Accidentally he made the acquaintance of the head usher at the Corps Legislatif, who said to the young student, "You are an excellent fellow, and I shall like to oblige you; so if the debates of the Corps Legislatif interest you, come there and ask for me, and I will find you a corner in the galleries where you can hear and see everything." Here Leon studied parliamentary usage, and saw the repression of thought under an empire. At the Café Procope, once the resort of Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, and other literary celebrities, the young man talked over the speeches he had heard, with his acquaintances, and told what he would do if he were in the House. An improbable thing it seemed that a poor and unknown lad would ever sit in the Corps Legislatif, as one of its members! He organized a club for reading and debating, and was of course made its head. It could not be other than republican in sentiment.

In 1860, at the age of twenty-two, Gambetta was admitted to the bar. The father was greatly opposed to his living in Paris, where he thought there was no chance for a lawyer who had neither money nor influential friends, and urged his returning to Cahors. Again his aunt Jenny, whom he always affectionately called "Tata," took his part. Having an income of five hundred dollars a year, she said to the father, "You do not see how you can help your son in Paris, it may be for long years; but next week I will go with him, and we shall stay together;" and then, turning to her nephew, she added, "And now, my boy, I will give you food and shelter, and you will do the rest by your work."

They took a small house in the Latin Quartier, very plain and comfortless. His first brief came after waiting eighteen months! Grepps, a deputy, being accused of conspiracy against the Government, Gambetta defended him so well that Crémieux, a prominent lawyer, asked him to become his secretary. The case was not reported in the papers, and was therefore known only by a limited circle. For six years the brilliant young scholar was virtually chained to his desk. The only recreation was an occasional gathering of a few newspaper men at his rooms, for whom his aunt cooked the supper, willing and glad to do the work, because she believed he would some day come to renown from his genius.