THE JOURNEY TO VERSAILLES--MADAME JESSE’S HOUSE, AND OUR LIFE THERE
We left Ferrières about 7 o’clock on the morning of the 5th of October.
At first we drove along by-roads, which were however in excellent
condition, passing a large wood, several parks and châteaux and a
number of respectable villages that appeared to be entirely deserted
by their inhabitants and were now occupied solely by German soldiers.
Everywhere an appearance of exceptional prosperity. Later on we reached
a pontoon bridge decorated with the Prussian colours, which took us
over the Seine. On the other side we met the Crown Prince and his
suite, who had ridden out to welcome the King. The latter, accompanied
by the Chancellor, was to proceed from this point on horseback to a
review of troops. We then drove on alone, turning into a high road
which led to the village of Villeneuve le Roi.
I had long been looking forward to my first glimpse of Paris. It was
however out off on the right by a rather high range of wooded hills, on
the sides of which we now and then, noticed a village or small white
town. At length we come to an opening, a little valley, and we observe
the blue outline of a great cupola--the Pantheon! Hurrah! we are at
last outside Paris.
We shortly afterwards turned into a broad paved highway where a
Bavarian picket was stationed to watch a road which crossed it at this
point and led towards Paris. To the left an extensive plain, and on
the right a continuation of the chain of wooded heights. A white town
half way up the slope, then, lower down, two other villages, and we
finally pass through an iron gateway partially gilt, traverse some busy
streets, and a straight avenue with old trees, and then find ourselves
in front of our quarters in Versailles.
On the 6th of October, the day after our arrival in the old royal town
of France, Keudell remarked that we might possibly remain here for some
three weeks. Nor did I think it improbable, as the course of the war up
to that time had accustomed us to speedy success. We remained however
five long months. But, as will be seen later on, the Minister must have
suspected that our stay would not be a short one. For this reason,
and as our lodging was the scene of very important events, a fuller
description of it will probably be welcome.
The house which was occupied by the Chancellor of the Confederation
belonged to one Madame Jesse, widow of a wealthy cloth manufacturer,
who shortly before our arrival fled to Picardy with her two sons,
leaving her property to the care of her gardener and his wife. It is
No. 14 in Rue de Provence, which connects the Avenue de St. Cloud with
the Boulevard de la Reine. The Rue de Provence is one of the quietest
in Versailles. Many of the houses are surrounded by gardens. Ours is a
slate-roofed house of three stories, the third of these being a garret.
From the entrance in the courtyard a flight of stone steps leads up to
the hall door. On the right of this hall is the principal staircase,
and the following rooms open on to it; the dining-room looking out on
the garden, the salon, a billiard-room, a conservatory, and the library
of the deceased M. Jesse.
On the table in the salon stood an old-fashioned chimney clock with
a fiendish figure in bronze biting his thumb. This demon grinned
sarcastically at all the negotiations which led to the treaties with
the South German States, the proclamation of the German Emperor and
Empire, and afterwards to the surrender of Paris and the preliminaries
of peace, all of which were signed in this salon, thus securing it a
place in the world’s history.
The billiard-room was arranged as an office for the councillors,
secretaries, and decipherers. In January, when there was a severe
frost, a portion of the winter garden was assigned to the officers on
guard. The library was occupied by orderlies and Chancery attendants.
The principal staircase led to a second hall, which received a dim
light from a square flat window let into the roof. The doors of the
Minister’s two rooms opened off this hall. Neither of them was more
than ten paces by seven. One of these, the window of which opened on
the garden, served at the same time as study and bed-chamber, and was
very scantily furnished.
The other chamber, which was somewhat better furnished, although not
at all luxuriously, served, in addition to the salon on the ground
floor, for the reception of visitors. During the negotiations for the
capitulation of Paris it was put at the disposal of Jules Favre for his
meditations and correspondence.
Count Bismarck-Bohlen had a room to the left of the Chancellor’s,
which also opened on the park and garden, Abeken having the opposite
room looking on the street. Bölsing had a small chamber near the
back-stairs, while I was lodged on the second floor over Bohlen’s room.
The park behind the house, though not large, was very pretty, and
there during the bright autumn nights the tall figure and white cap of
the Chancellor was frequently to be seen passing from the shade into
the moonlight as he slowly strolled about. What was the sleepless man
pondering over? What ideas were revolving through the mind of that
solitary wanderer? What plans were forming or ripening in his brain
during those still midnight hours?
It will be seen that the whole Field Foreign Office was not quartered
at Madame Jesse’s. Lothar Bucher had a handsome apartment in the Avenue
de Paris, Keudell and the decipherers were lodged in a house somewhat
higher up than ours in the Rue de Provence, and Count Hatzfeldt lived
in the last house on the opposite side of the way. There was some talk
on several occasions of providing the Chancellor with more roomy and
better furnished lodgings, but the matter went no further, possibly
because he himself felt no great desire for such a change, and perhaps
also because he liked the quiet which prevailed in the comparatively
retired Rue de Provence.
During the day, however, this stillness was less idyllic than many
newspaper correspondents described it at the time. I am not thinking
of the fifes and drums of the troops that marched through the town and
which reached our ears almost daily, nor of the noise which resulted
from two sorties made by the Parisians in our direction, nor even of
the hottest day of the bombardment, as we had become accustomed to all
that, much as the miller does to the roar and rattle of his wheels. I
refer principally to the numerous visitors of all kinds, many of them
unwelcome, who were received by the Chancellor during those eventful
months. Our quarters was often like a pigeon house from the constant
flow of strangers and acquaintances in and out. At first non-official
eavesdroppers and messengers came from Paris, followed later by
official negotiators in the persons of Favre and Thiers, accompanied
by a larger or smaller retinue. There were princely visitors from
the Hôtel des Reservoirs. The Crown Prince came several times, and
the King once. The Church was also represented amongst the callers
by high dignitaries, archbishops, and other prelates. Deputations
from the Reichstag, individual party leaders, higher officials, and
bankers arrived from Berlin, while Ministers came from Bavaria and
other South German States for the purpose of concluding treaties.
American generals, members of the foreign diplomatic body in Paris,
including a “coloured gentleman,” and envoys of the Imperialist party
wished to speak to the busy statesman in his small room upstairs,
and, as a matter of course, English newspaper correspondents eagerly
tried to force their way into his presence. Then there were Government
couriers with their despatch bags, Chancery attendants with telegrams,
orderlies with messages from the general staff, and besides all these
a superfluity of work which was as difficult as it was important. In
short, what with deliberating on old schemes and forming new ones,
seeking how to overcome difficulties, vexation and trouble, the
disappointment of well-grounded expectations, now and then a lack of
support and readiness to meet his views, the foolish opinions of the
Berlin press and their dissatisfaction notwithstanding our undreamt
of success, together with the agitation of the Ultramontanes, it was
often hard to understand how the Chancellor, with all these calls
upon his activity and patience, and with all this disturbance and
friction, was, on the whole, able to preserve his health and maintain
that freshness which he showed so frequently late in the evening in
conversations both serious and humorous. During his stay at Versailles
he was only once or twice unwell for three or four days.
The Minister allowed himself little recreation--a ride between 3 and
4 o’clock, an hour at table with half an hour for the cup of coffee
which followed it in the drawing-room, and now and then, after 10 P.M.,
a longer or shorter chat at the tea-table with whoever happened to be
there, and a couple of hours sleep after daybreak. The whole remainder
of the day was devoted to business, studying or writing in his room, or
in conversations and negotiations,--unless a sortie of the French or
some other important military operation called him to the side of the
King, or alone to some post of observation.
Nearly every day the Chancellor had guests to dinner, and in this way
we came to see and hear almost all the well-known and celebrated men
prominently connected in the war. Favre repeatedly dined with us,
reluctantly at first, “because his countrymen within the walls were
starving,” but afterwards listening to wise counsel and exhortation and
doing justice like the rest of us to the good things of the kitchen and
cellar. Thiers, with his keen intelligent features, was on one occasion
amongst the guests, and the Crown Prince once did us the honour to
dine at our table, when such of the Chief’s assistants as were not
previously known to him were presented. At another time Prince Albrecht
was present. Of the Minister’s further guests, I will here only
mention Delbrück, President of the Bundeskanzleiamt, who was frequently
in Versailles for weeks at a time, the Duke of Ratibor, Prince Putbus,
von Bennigsen, Simson, Bamberger, Friedenthal and von Blankenburg, the
Bavarian Ministers Count Bray and von Lutz, the Würtemberg Ministers
von Wächter and Mittnacht, von Roggenbach, Prince Radziwill, and
finally Odo Russell, who was subsequently British Ambassador to the
German Empire. When the Chief was present the conversation was always
lively and varied, while it was frequently instructive as illustrating
his manner of regarding men and things, or as throwing light upon
certain episodes and incidents of his past life.
Madame Jesse put in an appearance a few days before our departure and,
as previously observed, did not produce a good impression. She seems to
have made charges against us which the French press, even papers that
lay claim to some respectability, circulated with manifest pleasure.
Amongst other things we are alleged to have packed up her plate and
table linen. Furthermore, Count Bismarck tried to compel her to give
him a valuable clock.
The first assertion was simply an absurdity, as there was no silver
in the house, unless it was in a corner of the cellar which was
walled up, and which--on the express directions of the Chief--was
left unopened. The true story about the clock was quite different
to that circulated by Madame Jesse. The article in question was the
timepiece in the drawing-room with the small bronze demon. Madame Jesse
offered the Chancellor this piece of furniture, which in itself was of
comparatively little value, at an exorbitant price, on the assumption
that he prized it as a witness to the important negotiations that had
taken place in her room. I believe she asked 5,000 francs for it. But
she overreached herself, and her offer was declined. “I remember,”
said the Minister afterwards in Berlin, “observing at the time that
possibly the impish figure on the clock, which made such faces, might
be particularly dear to her as a family portrait, and that I should be
sorry to deprive her of it.”