But what did more than anything else to forward the dissolution of
the school of authority was the great and crowning piece of folly, as
regards literature, committed by the Bourbons in 1824. Chateaubriand
was dismissed in the most contemptuous manner from the Villèle
ministry, and that at the moment when he had just added to the
reputation of the name of Bourbon by the successful Spanish war, which
he himself called his political _René_, that is to say, his political
masterpiece. Chateaubriand, the man to whom in a manner everything was
due, the man who had laid the foundation stone of the whole building
that had been erected, was contemptuously set aside.[1] And the
ingratitude of his colleagues was as glaring as that of the court, for
it was he who had made ministers of Villèle and Corbière.[2]
His popularity amongst the royalists was at this time at its height,
and with reason; for the war in Spain, which he had succeeded in
carrying through in spite of all manner of opposition in Europe and
the disinclination of France itself, was well calculated to do service
to the cause of the monarchy by the grace of God, then in considerable
disrepute.
Not that Chateaubriand himself was simple enough to have any respect
whatever for that Ferdinand of Spain for whom French troops were to
shed their blood, in order that he might be restored to a throne
which his own people considered him unfit to occupy. He calls him a
promise-breaker and a traitor, calls him a tyrant who allowed himself
to be influenced by the evil passions of his female relations, one of
those cowardly tyrants who have no peace until they have done some
high-handed deed, and who sit and tremble when they have done it.
Chateaubriand's reason for making war was this. He knew that France
was undermined by Bonapartist and Republican plots, which were widely
spread even in the army; he knew that discontent with the restored
monarchical government was universal; therefore, trusting to the
friendship of the Emperor Alexander, he determined, in spite of
Canning's protests and Metternich's dissuasions, to stake everything on
one card. Victory, which he considered probable, meant the suppression
of the plots, the union under the white flag of all the different
parties, and the firm establishment of the Bourbons on the family
thrones of Spain and France. In the case of victory, which the inward
disunion of Spain might even make easy (as it actually did), the French
nation would behold the spectacle of the tricoloured flag lowered to
the white, and would, for the first time since Napoleon's palmy days,
hear tidings of victories won by the arms of France, and that in a
country which the great Emperor himself had not been able thoroughly
to subdue. All this meant "new laurels for the race of St. Louis,"
as Chateaubriand says, and--new laurels for its minister of foreign
affairs, a fact which he did not forget to take into account.[3]
As we all know, the French army under the command of the Duke of
Angoulème, the heir-apparent, succeeded, almost without bloodshed,
in liberating Ferdinand at Cadiz, and conducting him back to Madrid.
Ferdinand immediately wrote a letter of thanks to Louis XVIII. The
answer to this was written for Louis by Chateaubriand; it is amusing
to compare it with Paul Louis Courier's imaginary letter from Louis to
Ferdinand. Chateaubriand exhorts the Spanish monarch to refrain from
high-handedness, "which, instead of strengthening the power of the
king, only weakens it"--a piece of good advice to which Ferdinand paid
uncommonly little attention.
In its giddy elation over this Spanish triumph the court entirely
neglected the man to whom the success was originally due. Chateaubriand
was no favourite. The Duchess of Angoulème did not address a word to
him when he came, on receiving the news of Ferdinand's liberation,
to offer his congratulations on her husband's success. Villèle and
Corbière were envious of him, and feared that he might wish to take
their places; such an idea had never occurred to him, but they were too
deeply in his debt not to bear him a grudge.
The court and the cabinet plotted to bring about his downfall. On the
5th of June 1824 Corbière interrupted him in the middle of a speech in
the Chamber, to prevent his enjoying a triumph as an orator immediately
before his disgrace. On the following morning, when Chateaubriand,
still suspecting no evil, presented himself at the Tuileries to pay his
respects to the King's brother, he learned his fate from the manner in
which an aide-de-camp said to him: "Monsieur le Comte, I did not expect
to see you here. Have you not received anything?" Shortly afterwards
his secretary brought him his formal dismissal by the King in the shape
of a curt "ordonnance" of a dozen lines. It was little wonder that he
felt himself irreparably insulted by the tone of the letter and the
manner of his dismissal.[4] In mentioning Villèle's attempt to excuse
himself by pleading an accidental delay in the delivery of the letter,
but for which the humiliating incident at the Tuileries would not
have occurred, Chateaubriand justifiably remarks "that it is hardly
the thing to address to a man of position a letter which one would be
ashamed to write to a footman who was to be turned out of the house."
Christian humility was not the leading feature in Chateaubriand's
character; he did not turn the right cheek when he was struck on the
left. He writes very characteristically: "And yet my long and faithful
attachment did perhaps deserve some little consideration. It was
impossible for me entirely to ignore what I perhaps after all really
was worth, or entirely to forget that I was _the restorer of religion_,
the author of _The Spirit of Christianity_."
The restorer of religion did not feel obliged to act in the spirit
of Christianity. He naïvely says: "It would have been better if I
had displayed a humbler, more cast-down, more Christian spirit.
Unfortunately I am not faultless, have not attained to the perfection
recommended in the Gospel. If my enemy gave me a box on the ear I
should not turn round and present the other cheek. If he were a subject
I should have his life, or he should take mine; if he were the King ..."
The sentence does not end, because Chateaubriand's behaviour made any
end superfluous. He went over openly to the opposition, and it is to be
noted that it was to the thorough-going opposition, which had always
seemed to him to be the only sensible thing under a representative
government, anything less being impotent. The day after his fall he met
with a warm reception from the whole party then in antagonism to the
government. An article by Bertin in the _Journal des Débats_ announced
that he had become the leader of the party, and he was soon also
practically the editor of that newspaper.
The whole Seraphic school, of which he was the founder, soon followed
him. Lafayette sent him a laurel leaf. Constant flattered him. He began
to fraternise with Béranger, who afterwards addressed a poem to him.
Two of its verses run:
Son éloquence à ces rois fit l'aumône:
Prodigue fée, en ses enchantements
Plus elle voit de rouille à leur vieux trône,
Plus elle y sème et fleurs et diamants.
Mais de nos droits il gardait la mémoire.
Les insensés dirent: Le ciel est beau.
Chassons cet homme, et soufflons sur sa gloire,
Comme au grand jour on éteint un flambeau.
Victor Hugo addressed a eulogistic and consolatory ode to him (livre
iii. ode 2) containing such sentiments as: Was a court the place for
you? and: What can be more beautiful than a laurel scathed by lightning?
Chateaubriand's defection was a fatal blow to the monarchy by the grace
of God. As long as the illusions of the restoration lasted, the poets
of France were _Immanuelistic_ and saw a guardian angel beside every
cradle and every bier. With Chateaubriand's illusions vanished the
illusions of all the rest, and the Immanuelistic school was succeeded
by one to which Southey gave the name of _Satanic_, a name which it
accepted--a school with a keen eye for all that is evil and terrible, a
gloomy view of life, and a tendency to rebellion.
But while the minds of Frenchmen were still occupied with this
unexpected and momentous event, there occurred a more momentous event,
which stirred the whole world, namely, Byron's death in Greece.
The news of Byron's death raised the enthusiasm for the first war of
liberation that had been fought since the Revolution to fever heat.
A new ideal was conceived by the human mind. With Napoleon the glory
of energy had passed away, and the heroes of action had for a time
disappeared from the earth. Human enthusiasm was, as has been said, in
the plight of a pedestal from which the statue has been removed. Byron
took possession of the vacant place with his fantastically magnificent
heroes. Napoleon had supplanted Werther, René, and Faust; Byron's
Promethean and despairing heroes supplanted Napoleon. Byron was in
marvellous accord with the spirit and the cravings of the age. Orthodox
dogmas had in the early years of the century overcome revolutionary
and free-thinking principles; now orthodoxy was in its turn undermined
and obsolete. There was at this moment no future for either
thorough-going unbelief or thorough-going piety. There remained doubt,
as doubt--_poetic_ Radicalism, the thousand painful and agitating
questions concerning the goal and the worth of human life. These were
the questions which Byron asked.
But he did not ask indifferently. It was the spirit of rebellion which
asked with his voice, and which through his voice made of the young
generation in all lands one cosmopolitan society. They united their
voices with his in the cry:
.... Revolution
Alone can save the world from hell's pollution.
His death did far more to advance the cause of liberty in general than
his life. Under the restored monarchy by the grace of God society had
been reduced to an extreme of believing subjection to authority, of
slavish subjection to theology, of dutiful subjection to power--to
an extreme of supineness and hypocrisy. That monarchy was rotten to
the core, but supported outwardly by superstition and bayonets. In
England Bentham, the Radical philosopher, ashamed to see the reaction
successful even in that most advanced of countries, had tried to
undermine it by appealing to men's _interests_. Byron let loose all the
_passions_. His attack was not directed at any one point; he aimed at
revolutionising men's minds, at awaking them to the sense of tyranny.
The politicians of the Holy Alliance period believed that they had
bound the spirit of the Revolution in everlasting chains, that they had
broken, once and for all, the link which united the nineteenth century
to the eighteenth. "Then this one man tied the knot again, which a
million of soldiers had hewn through. American republicanism, German
free-thought, French revolutionism, Anglo-Saxon radicalism--everything
seemed combined in this one spirit. After the Revolution had been
suppressed, the press gagged, and science induced to submit, the son of
imagination, the outlawed poet, stepped into the breach," and called
all vigorous intellects to arms again against the common enemy.[5]
The restored monarchy does not really survive him. The principle of
authority has never had a more inveterate opponent.
In literature the French reaction begins in the name of _feeling_ with
Madame de Staël and the whole group of writers connected with her; in
society it begins in the name of _order_ with Robespierre and those
revolutionists who were his associates. Madame de Staël and Robespierre
have this in common, that they are both pupils of Rousseau. After the
reaction against Voltaire comes the reaction against Rousseau. On the
festival of the Supreme Being follows the great Te Deum in Notre-Dame;
on Madame de Staël follows Bonald. The principle of feeling is ousted,
or employed, as in the writings of Chateaubriand, to support authority;
the principle of order is merged in the principle of authority, which
soon controls every domain of life and literature. This principle is,
as it were, personified in the first group of reactionaries, led by
Joseph de Maistre and Bonald. It has its epic in _Les Martyrs_, and the
idea of order reigns in its poets' descriptions of heaven, of hell, and
sometimes even of terrestrial scenery. It has its political monument in
the Holy Alliance. The supernatural everywhere supplants the natural.
We have not only seraphic epic, but also seraphic lyric poetry,
seraphic love, pious pilgrimages, and seraphic predictions and visions.
In no country had the principle of authority in the domain of literary
style received such homage and honour as in France. The new school
itself begins by acknowledging it. But it unfortunately soon becomes
evident that the principle of the newly introduced matter, namely,
Christian tradition, is utterly at variance with the traditional
principles of literature--and authority begins to totter. Much the
same thing happens in another domain. The lady in whose brain the idea
of the Holy Alliance originates stands in high favour with the powers
as long as her principles seem entirely to coincide with theirs; the
moment they discover that it is possible for Christian tradition to
unsettle men's minds with regard to authority, they feel obliged to
break the tool they have been using; and thenceforward the idea of
the brotherhood of humanity is regarded as the source of rebellious
feelings and doctrines which undermine authority. Lamennais is the
author by whom the principle of authority is most consistently set
forth and determinedly upheld during this period; but it soon becomes
apparent that beneath his doctrine of the sovereignty of universal
reason lies concealed the revolutionary doctrine of the sovereignty
of the people; the principle, as it were, puts an end to itself. At
this same time the enemies of the liberty of the press are compelled
to make use of this liberty for their own purposes, and the enemies of
parliamentary government defend parliamentary government in order to
bring about the fall of a ministry which keeps them out of power. Soon
all the personages whom we have watched appearing on the scene, from
Chateaubriand to Madame de Krüdener, from Victor Hugo to Lamennais,
are at war with the potentates whose cause they began by championing
with such ardour, and at war with that principle of authority which had
ruled themselves and the age.
And the principle falls, never to rise again.
[1] For particulars of this dismissal see Chateaubriand, _Congrès de
Vérone_, ii, 502, &c; and Guizot, _Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de
mon temps_.
[2] _Mémoires d'outre-tombe_, vii. 269, &c.
[3] Chateaubriand, _Congrès de Vérone_, i. 20, 41; ii. 528.
[4] _Congrès de Vérone_, ii. 508-528.