fairly broad-minded (given the atmosphere he lived in) and sceptical to
the highest degree. He was a great friend of Marshal MacMahon, and had
been préfet at Pau, where he had a great position. He was very
dictatorial, very outspoken, but was a great favourite, particularly
with the English colony, which is large there in the hunting-season. He
had accepted to dine one night with an English family, who lived in a
villa a little out of town. They had an accident en route, which delayed
them very much, and when he and the marquise arrived the party was at
table. He instantly had his carriage called back and left the house in
spite of all the explanations and apologies of his host, saying that
when "one had the honour of receiving the Marquis de N. one waited
dinner for him."
We saw always a great deal of him, as his daughter married the Comte de
F., who was for some time in W.'s cabinet at the Quai d'Orsay, and
afterward with us the ten years we were at the London Embassy, where
they were quite part of the family. They were both perfectly fitted for
diplomatic life, particularly in England. Both spoke English well, knew
everybody, and remembered all the faces and all the names, no easy thing
in England, where the names and titles change so often. I know several
Englishwomen who have had four different names. Lady Holland was also a
friend of "Oncle Alphonse" and dined there often. She was
delicate-looking, rather quiet in general conversation, though she spoke
French easily, but was interesting when she was talking to one or two
people. We went often to her beautiful house in London, the first years
we were at the embassy, and always met interesting people. Her salon was
very cosmopolitan--every one who came to London wanted to go to Holland
House, which was a museum filled with beautiful things.
Another lady who was often at my uncle's was quite a different type,
Mademoiselle A., an old pupil of the Conservatoire, who had made a short
career at the Comédie Française many years before. She was really
charming, and her stories of the coulisses and the jalousies between the
authors and the actors, particularly the stars (who hardly accepted the
slightest observation from the writer of the play), were most amusing.
Once the piece was accepted it passed into the domain of the theatre,
and the actors felt at liberty to interpret the rôles according to their
ideas and traditions. She had a perfect diction; it was a delight to
hear her. She recited one night one of Alphonse Daudet's little contes,
"Lettres de Mon Moulin," I think, beginning--"Qui n'a pas vu Avignon du
temps des Papes n'a rien vu." One couldn't hear anything more charming,
in a perfectly trained voice, and so easily and naturally said.
I suppose no one would listen to it in these days. Bridge has suppressed
all conversation or music or artistic enjoyment of any kind. It must
come to an end some day like all crazes, but at the present moment it
has destroyed society. It has been a godsend to many people of no
particular importance or position who have used it as a stepping-stone
to get into society. If people play a good game of bridge, they are
welcome guests in a great many houses which formerly would have been
closed to them, and it is a great resource to ladies no longer very
young, widows and spinsters, who find their days long and don't know
what to do with their lives.
Notwithstanding his preoccupations, W. managed to get a few days'
shooting in November. He shot several times at Rambouillet with Grévy,
who was an excellent shot, and his shooting breakfasts were very
pleasant. There was plenty of game, everything very well organised, and
the company agreeable. He always asked the ministers, ambassadors, and
many of the leading political men and very often some of his old
friends, lawyers and men of various professions whom W. was delighted
to meet. Their ideas didn't run in grooves like most of the men he lived
with, and it was a pleasure to hear talk that wasn't political nor
personal. The vicious attacks upon persons were so trying those first
days of the Republic. Every man who was a little more prominent than his
neighbour seemed a target for every kind of insinuation and criticism.
We went for two days to "Pout," Casimir Périer's fine place in the
département de l'Aube, where we had capital shooting. It was already
extremely cold for the season--the big pond in the court was frozen
hard, and the wind whistled about our ears when we drove in an open
carriage to join the shooters at breakfast. Even I, who don't usually
feel the cold, was thankful to be well wrapped up in furs. The Pavillon
d'Hiver looked very inviting as we drove up--an immense fire was blazing
in the chimney, another just outside, where the soup and ragout for the
army of beaters were being prepared. We all had nice little foot-warmers
under our chairs, and were as comfortable as possible. It was too warm
in fact when the shooters came in and we sat down to breakfast. We were
obliged to open the door. The talk was entirely "shop" at breakfast,
every man telling what he had killed, or missed, and the minute they
had finished breakfast, they started off again. We followed one or two
battues (pheasants), but it was really too cold, and we were glad to
walk home to get warm.
The dinner and evening were pleasant--everybody talking--most of them
criticising the Government freely. W. didn't mind, they were all
friends. He defended himself sometimes, merely asking what they would
have done in his place--he was quite ready to receive any
suggestions--but nothing practical ever came out of the discussions. I
think the most delightful political position in the world must be
"leader of the opposition"--you have no responsibilities, can
concentrate all your energies in pointing out the weak spots in your
adversary's armour, and have always your work cut out for you, for as
soon as one ministry falls, you can set to work to demolish its
successor, which seems the most interesting occupation possible.
The great question which was disturbing the Chambers and the country was
the general amnesty. That, of course, W. would never agree to. There
might be exceptions. Some of the men who took part in the Commune were
so young, little more than lads, carried away by the example of their
elders and the excitement of the moment, and there were fiery patriotic
articles in almost all the Republican papers inviting France to make the
beau geste of la mère patrie and open her arms to her misguided
children, and various sensible experienced men really thought it would
be better to wipe out everything and start again with no dark memories
to cast a shadow on the beginnings of the young Republic. How many
brilliant, sanguine, impossible theories I heard advanced all those
days, and how the few remaining members of the Centre Gauche tried to
reason with the most liberal men of the Centre Droit and to persuade
them frankly to face the fact that the country had sent a strong
Republican majority to Parliament and to make the best of the fait
accompli. I suppose it was asking too much of them to go back on the
traditions of their lives, but after all they were Frenchmen, their
country was just recovering from a terrible disaster, and had need of
all her children. During the Franco-Prussian War all party feeling was
forgotten. Every man was first a Frenchman in the face of a foreign foe,
and if they could have stood firmly together in those first days after
the war the strength of the country would have been wonderful. All
Europe was astounded at the way in which France paid her milliards,--no
one more so than Bismarck, who is supposed to have said that, if he
could have dreamed that France could pay that enormous sum so quickly,
he would have asked much more.
December was very cold, snow and ice everywhere, and very hard frosts,
which didn't give way at all when the sun came out occasionally in the
middle of the day. Everybody was skating, not only at the clubs of the
Bois de Boulogne, but on the lakes, which happens very rarely, as the
water is fairly deep. The Seine was full of large blocks of ice, which
got jammed up against the bridges and made a jarring ugly sound as they
knocked against each other. The river steamers had stopped running, and
there were crowds of flaneurs loitering on the quais and bridges
wondering if the cold would last long enough for the river to be quite
frozen over.
W. and I went two or three times to the Cercle des Patineurs at the Bois
de Boulogne, and had a good skate. The women didn't skate as well then
as they do now, but they looked very pretty in their costumes of velvet
and sables. It was funny to see them stumbling over the ice with a man
supporting them on each side. However, they enjoyed it very much. It was
beautiful winter weather, very cold but no wind, and it was very good
exercise. All the world was there, and the afternoons passed quickly
enough. I had not skated for years, having spent all my winters in
Italy, but on the principle that you never forget anything that you know
well, I thought I would try, and will say that the first half-hour was
absolute suffering. It was in the old days when one still wore a strap
over the instep, which naturally was drawn very tight. My feet were like
lumps of ice, as heavy as lead, and I didn't seem able to lift them from
the ground. I went back to the dressing-room to take my skates off for a
few minutes, and when the blood began to circulate again, I could have
cried with the pain. A friend of mine, a beginner, who was sitting near
waiting to have her skates put on, was rather discouraged, and said to
me: "You don't look as if you were enjoying yourself. I don't think I
will try." "Oh yes you must,--'les commencements sont toujours
difficiles,' and you will learn. I shall be all right as soon as I start
again." She looked rather doubtful, but I saw her again later in the
day, when I had forgotten all about my sufferings, and she was skating
as easily as I did when I was a girl. I think one must learn young.
After all, it is more or less a question of balance. When one is young
one doesn't mind a fall.
W., who had retired to a corner to practise a little by himself, told me
that one of his friends, Comte de Pourtalès, not at all of his way of
thinking in politics, an Imperialist, was much pleased with a little jeu
d'esprit he had made at his expense. W. caught the top of his skate in a
crevice in the ice, and came down rather heavily in a sitting posture.
Comte de Pourtalès, who was standing near on the bank, saw the fall and
called out instantly, "Est-ce possible que je voie le Président du
Conseil par terre?" (Is it possible that the President du Conseil has
fallen?) The little joke was quite de bonne guerre and quite
appropriate, as the cabinet was tottering and very near its fall. It
amused W. quite as much as it did the bystanders.
The cold was increasing every day, the ground was frozen hard, the
streets very slippery, and going very difficult. All our horses were
rough shod, but even with that we made very slow progress. Some of the
omnibuses were on runners, and one or two of the young men of the
ministry had taken off the wheels of their light carriages and put them
on runners, but one didn't see many real sleighs or sledges, as they
call them here. I fancy "sleigh" is entirely an American expression. The
Seine was at last completely taken, and the public was allowed on the
ice, which was very thick. It was a very pretty, animated sight, many
booths like those one sees on the Boulevard during the Christmas
holidays were installed on the ice close to the banks, and the river was
black with people. They couldn't skate much, as the ice was rough and
there were too many people, but they ran and slid and shouted and
enjoyed themselves immensely. I wanted to cross one day with my boy,
that he might say he had crossed the Seine on foot, but W. was rather
unwilling. However, the préfet de la Seine, whom he consulted, told him
there was absolutely no danger--the ice was several inches thick, so I
started off one afternoon, one of the secretaries going with me. He was
much astonished and rather nervous at seeing me in my ordinary boots. He
had nails in his, and one of our friends whom we met on the ice had
woollen socks over his boots. They were sure I would slip and perhaps
get a bad fall. "But no one could slip on that ice; it is quite rough,
might almost be a ploughed field,"--but they were uncomfortable, and
were very pleased when I landed safely on the other side and got into
the carriage. Just in the middle the boys had swept a path on the ice to
make a glissade. They were racing up and down in bands, and the constant
passing had made it quite level and very slippery. We saw three or four
unwary pedestrians get a fall, but if one kept on the outside near the
bank there was no danger of slipping.
The extreme cold lasting so long brought many discomforts. Many trains
with wood and provisions couldn't get to Paris. The railroads were all
blocked and the Parisians were getting uneasy, fearing they might run
short of food and fuel. We were very comfortable in the big rooms of the
ministry. There were roaring fires everywhere, and two or three
calorifères. The view from the windows on the Quai was charming as long
as the great cold lasted, particularly at night, when the river was
alive with people, lights and coloured lanterns, and music. Every now
and then there would be a ronde or a farandole,--the farandole forcing
its way through the crowd, every one carrying a lantern and looking like
a brilliant snake winding in and out.
We had some people dining one night, and they couldn't keep away from
the windows. Some of the young ones (English) wanted to go down and have
a lark on the ice, but it wasn't possible. The crowd, though thoroughly
good-humoured, merely bent on enjoying themselves, had degenerated into
a rabble. One would have been obliged to have a strong escort of police,
and besides in evening dress, even with fur cloaks and the fur and
woollen boots every one wore over their thin shoes, one would certainly
have risked getting a bad attack of pneumonia. One of our great friends,
Sir Henry Hoare, was dining that night, but he didn't want to go down,
preferred smoking his cigar in a warm room and talking politics to W. He
had been a great deal in Paris, knew everybody, and was a member of the
Jockey Club. He was much interested in French politics and au fond was
very liberal, quite sympathised with W. and his friends and shared their
opinions on most subjects, though as he said, "I don't air those
opinions at the Jockey Club." He came often to our big receptions, liked
to see all the people. He too used to tell me all that was said in his
club about the Republic and the Government, but he was a shrewd
observer, had been a long time an M.P. in England, and had come to the
conclusion that the talk at the clubs was chiefly a "pose,"--they didn't
really have many illusions about the restoration of the monarchy,
couldn't have, when even the Duc de Broglie with his intelligence and
following (the Faubourg St. Germain followed him blindly) could do
nothing but make a constitutional Republic with Marshal MacMahon at
its head.
It was always said too that the women were more uncompromising than the
men. I went one afternoon to a concert at the Austrian Embassy, given in
aid of some inundations, which had been a catastrophe for that country,
hundreds of houses, and people and cattle swept away! The French public
had responded most generously, as they always do, to the urgent appeal
made by the ambassador in the name of the Emperor, and the Government
had contributed largely to the fund. Count Beust the Austrian ambassador
was obliged of course to invite the Government and Madame Grévy to the
entertainment, as well as his friends of the Faubourg St. Germain.
Neither Madame nor Mademoiselle Grévy came, but some of the ministers'
wives did, and it was funny to see the ladies of society looking at the
Republican ladies, as if they were denizens of a different planet,
strange figures they were not accustomed to see. It is curious to think
of all that now, when relations are much less strained. I remember not
very long ago at a party at one of the embassies, seeing many of the
society women having themselves presented to the wife of the then
Minister of Foreign Affairs, with whom they certainly had nothing in
common, neither birth, breeding, nor mode of life. I was talking to
Casimir Périer (late President of the Republic) and it amused us very
much to see the various introductions and the great empressement of the
ladies, all of whom were asking to be presented to Madame R. "What can
all those women want?" I asked him. He replied promptly, "Embassies for
their husbands." It would have been better, I think, in a worldly point
of view, if more embassies had been given to the bearers of some of the
great names of France--but there were so many candidates for every
description of function in France just then, from an ambassador to a
gendarme, that anybody who had anything to give found himself in a
difficult position.
XI
LAST DAYS AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE
The end of December was detestable. We were en pleine crise for ten
days. Every day W. went to the Chamber of Deputies expecting to be
beaten, and every evening came home discouraged and disgusted. The
Chamber was making the position of the ministers perfectly
untenable--all sorts of violent and useless propositions were discussed,
and there was an undercurrent of jealousy and intrigue everywhere. One
day, just before Christmas, about the 20th, W. and his chef de cabinet,
Comte de P., started for the house, after breakfast--W. expecting to be
beaten by a coalition vote of the extreme Left, Bonapartists and
Legitimists. It was an insane policy on the part of the two last, as
they knew perfectly well they wouldn't gain anything by upsetting the
actual cabinet. They would only get another one much more advanced and
more masterful. I suppose their idea was to have a succession of radical
inefficient ministers, which in the end would disgust the country and
make a "saviour," a prince (which one?) or general, possible. How wise
their reasoning was time has shown! I wanted to go to the Chamber to
hear the debate, but W. didn't want me. He would be obliged to speak,
and said it would worry him if I were in the gallery listening to all
the attacks made upon him. (It is rather curious that I never heard him
speak in public, either in the house or in the country, where he often
made political speeches, in election times.) He was so sure that the
ministry would fall that we had already begun cleaning and making fires
in our own house, so on that afternoon, as I didn't want to sit at home
waiting for telegrams, I went up to the house with Henrietta. The
caretaker had already told us that the stock of wood and coal was giving
out, and she couldn't get any more in the quarter, and if she couldn't
make fires the pipes would burst, which was a pleasant prospect with the
thermometer at I don't remember how many degrees below zero. We found a
fine cleaning going on--doors and windows open all over the house--and
women scrubbing stairs, floors, and windows, rather under difficulties,
with little fire and little water. It looked perfectly dreary and
comfortless--not at all tempting. All the furniture was piled up in the
middle of the rooms, and W.'s library was a curiosity. Books and
pamphlets accumulated rapidly with us, W. was a member of many literary
societies of all kinds all over the world, and packages and boxes of
unopened books quite choked up the room. H. and I tried to arrange
things a little, but it was hopeless that day, and, besides, the house
was bitterly cold. It didn't feel as if a fire could make any
impression.
As we could do nothing there, we went back to the ministry. No telegrams
had come, but Kruft, our faithful and efficient chef du matériel, was
waiting for me for last instructions about a Christmas tree. Some days
before I had decided to have a Christmas tree, about the end of the
month. W. then thought the ministry would last over the holidays, the
trêve des confiseurs, and was quite willing I should have a Christmas
party as a last entertainment. He had been too occupied the last days to
think about any such trifles, and Kruft, not having had any contrary
instructions, had ordered the presents and decorations. He was rather
depressed, because W. had told him that morning that we surely would not
be at the Quai d'Orsay on the 29th, the day we had chosen for our party.
However, I reassured him, and told him we would have the Christmas tree
all the same, only at my house instead of at the ministry. We went to
look at his presents, which were all spread out on a big table in one of
the drawing-rooms. He really was a wonderful man, never forgot anything,
and had remembered that at the last tree, the year before, one or two
nurses had had no presents, and several who had were not pleased with
what was given to them. He had made a very good selection for those
ladies,--lace scarfs and rabats and little tours de cou of fur,--really
very pretty. I believe they were satisfied this time. The young men of
the Chancery sent me up two telegrams: "rien de nouveau,"--"ministère
debout."
[Illustration: M. de Freyeinet. After a photograph by M. Nadaz, Paris]
W. came home late, very tired and much disgusted with politics in
general and his party in particular. The cabinet still lived, but merely
to give Grévy time to make another. W. had been to the Elysée and had a
long conversation with Grévy. He found him very preoccupied, very
unwilling to make a change, and he again urged W. very much to keep the
Foreign Office, if Freycinet should succeed in making a ministry. That
W. would not agree to--he was sick of the whole thing. He told Grévy he
was quite right to send for Freycinet--if any man could save the
situation he could. We had one or two friends, political men, to dinner,
and they discussed the situation from every point of view, always
ending with the same conclusion, that W. was right to go. His policy
wasn't the policy of the Chamber (I don't say of the country, for I
think the country knew little and cared less about what was going on in
Parliament), hardly the policy of all his own colleagues. There was
really no use to continue worrying himself to death and doing no good.
W. said his conversation with Grévy was interesting, but he was much
more concerned with home politics and the sweeping changes the
Republicans wanted to make in all the administrations than with foreign
policy. He said Europe was quiet and France's first duty was to
establish herself firmly, which would only be done by peace and
prosperity at home. I told W. I had spent a very cold and uncomfortable
hour at the house, and I was worried about the cold, thought I might,
perhaps, send the boy to mother, but he had taken his precautions and
arranged with the Minister of War to have a certain amount of wood
delivered at the house. They always had reserves of wood at the various
ministries. We had ours directly from our own woods in the country, and
it was en route, but a flotilla of boats was frozen up in the Canal de
l'Ourcq, and it might be weeks before the wood could be delivered.
We dined one night at the British Embassy, while all these pourparlers
were going on, en petit comité, all English, Lord and Lady Reay, Lord
Edmond Fitz-Maurice, and one or two members of Parliament whose names I
have forgotten. Both Lord and Lady Reay were very keen about politics,
knew France well, and were much interested in the phase she was passing
through. Lord Lyons was charming, so friendly and sensible, said he
wasn't surprised at W.'s wanting to go--still hoped this crisis would
pass like so many others he had seen in France; that certainly W.'s
presence at the Foreign Office during the last year had been a help to
the Republic--said also he didn't believe his retirement would last very
long. It was frightfully cold when we came out of the embassy--very few
carriages out, all the coachmen wrapped up in mufflers and fur caps, and
the Place de la Concorde a sea of ice so slippery I thought we should
never get across and over the bridge. I went to the opera one night that
week, got there in an entr'acte, when people were walking about and
reading the papers. As I passed several groups of men, I heard W.'s name
mentioned, also that of Léon Say and Freycinet, but just in passing by
quickly I could not hear any comments. I fancy they were not favourable
in that milieu. It was very cold in the house--almost all the women had
their cloaks on--and the coming out was something awful, crossing that
broad perron in the face of a biting wind.