Madame Adam (Juliette Lambert), la grande Française

by Winifred Stephens Whale

From her aunts’ point of view the child saw those surging political movements of the day at an angle quite different from that at which, under her father’s direction, she had been accustomed to regard them.

At Chivres her father’s heroes, Louis Blanc, Ledru-Rollin, Proudhon, were held in horror. As utterly subversive of all public order the aunts regarded Ledru-Rollin’s famous speech, when, pleading before the Court of Cassation, the republican barrister had challenged the Procureur Général, crying: “Procureur Général, who appointed you?” “The Ministry.” “I, being an elector, may dismiss ministries. In whose name do you speak?” “In the king’s name.” “I, being an elector—history proves it—can make and unmake kings. Procureur Général, on your knees, on your knees before my sovereignty.” While as for Proudhon’s famous maxim, “Property is theft,” the aunts exclaimed: “Why, it’s the end of the world.” Social reform had no place in these good ladies’ political programme. They were content with the existing order. They had no sympathy with Dr. Lambert’s doctrine of the right to work, nor with Ledru-Rollin when he declared: “The workers have been slaves; they have been serfs; to-day they are wage-earners; we must strive to make them partners.”[9] The reforms which the aunts advocated in their talks with their niece were merely administrative. What they desired above all was to see Paris dethroned from her seat as the one centre of influence in the kingdom. They wanted decentralisation, the revival of the old provincialism. “Remember,” said Aunt Sophie to Juliette, “a time will come, I am sure of it, when, after various Jacobin and Buonapartist experiments, after a series of revolutions, you will remember how wise, how essentially French, how truly national, were the opinions of your old aunts.”[10]

The last months of 1847 Juliette was permitted to spend with her parents. Blérancourt in those days was becoming, under Dr. Lambert’s influence, a centre of violent political agitation. The number of Dr. Lambert’s disciples was increasing daily, and his socialistic ideas were being promulgated in the neighbouring villages. Mme. Seron wrote constantly demanding her granddaughter’s return. She feared that from being a Republican, which was bad enough, Juliette would be made into a socialist, converted from a pagan naturiste, as she called it, into an atheist. Finally, such remonstrances passing unheeded, she threatened that if her granddaughter were not immediately restored she would disinherit her, and Juliette would be reduced to depend for her dowry on such savings as her father might accumulate. This practically meant that Juliette would have no dowry at all. For Dr. Lambert, far from saving, could never keep any money in his pocket. In face of poverty and distress he was a veritable St. Martin of Tours, and would give away the very clothes from his back. But to one whose mind was set so far above filthy lucre Mme. Seron’s threat was meaningless. And to his mother-in-law’s letter he replied that Juliette would not need a dowry as he had decided to marry her to a working-man. But such a destiny did not suit Mlle. Juliette at all. She had often dreamed of a cottage, of a farm, but always with a gentleman (un monsieur) for husband. And when her father told her of this letter, she exclaimed: “Of course you are joking.” “But no,” he replied; “that really is my idea.” “Then it is not mine,”[11] retorted this eleven-year-old socialist, to whom her father’s design seemed utterly preposterous and cruel to the last degree.

True, she loved the people more and more every day. True, it seemed to her in moments of exaltation that she was ready to sacrifice herself in their service; but that she, whom generations had raised above them, should become one of them, no. Father and daughter were equally violent. This, their first disagreement, was, to say the least of it, tempestuous. And it was well that Mme. Seron arrived the next day to take her granddaughter back to the less exalted atmosphere of Chauny.

Though Dr. Lambert continued to cherish his dream of a working-class marriage for Juliette, for the time being he ceased to urge its fulfilment; and for the time being Juliette found it not impossible to reconcile her socialism with filial devotion.

At Chauny she found that her grandmother’s political principles, like those of the aunts at Chivres, had undergone a change. Mme. Seron had lost her passion for the citizen king. She had come to realise the necessity for reform. Juliette was delighted, and she expected her father to be equally pleased by his mother-in-law’s partial conversion. But she did not then know human nature. It was not until much later that she understood how a partisan is far more distrustful of opinions differing slightly from his own than of those which are more remote. Dr. Lambert mistrusted a reform movement led by M. Odillon Barot as strongly as the aunts at Chivres mistrusted any reform advocated by that extreme liberal, M. Ledru-Rollin.

Juliette’s schooling had been interrupted by her three months at Chauny, and also by a visit to Boulogne, to which we shall refer later, paid in company with her father in the summer of 1847.

After Christmas she returned to the pensionnat. Many changes had taken place in the school during the five years which had elapsed since that eventful day when she made her début as a scholar. The ogress, Mme. Dufey, had been succeeded by two friends of Juliette’s mother, the Mlles. André. The school had expanded, and a new building had been erected on the site, alas! of Mme. Seron’s garden, in which Juliette had spent some of her most entrancing hours. On the occasion of the destruction of this her land of delight, her “temple of verdure,” as she called it, there had been a long and violent battle between this little devotee of nature and her grandmother. The excuse that the garden had been sold in order to provide Juliette with a dowry did not appeal to her in the least. Money had never loomed large in the child’s imagination. She loathed the mention of it; for it always seemed to her to lead to family quarrels. The only use she had for it personally was for the purchase of sugar-drops, which she distributed among her schoolfellows.

It was long before the little girl could be persuaded to enter the building which seemed to her the grave of her brightest dreams and her most cherished joys.

Now, in the early weeks of 1848, Juliette found her school seething with a political excitement, which she, with her violent views, was the last person to allay.