1872
LOUIS BLANC, THE STATESMAN--HIS NOVEL COURTSHIP--HIS
APPEARANCE--INVITES US TO PARIS--JUST MISS VICTOR HUGO--HIS
SPEECH AT MADAME BLANC’S GRAVE--LETTER FROM LOUIS BLANC--
ALABAMA ARBITRATORS--SEE GAMBETTA AND JULES FAVRE.
_May 9, 1872._--On this day Louis Blanc, the French statesman and
historian, called. It was to thank me for a favor I had done on a time
for his nephew, but the visit resulted in a friendship that lasted till
his death, ten years later.
Louis Blanc had been to the old French Republic (1848) what Brentano
had been to the revolution of South Germany. At one time he was the
most powerful member of the French Assembly. His writings, more than
all things else, brought about the revolution that for a time made him
President. In this 1872, he is again in the Assembly of a new republic.
While he stayed at Zurich, we came to know his friend, the vivacious
English writer and traveler, Hepworth Dixon. We met often. Once Louis
Blanc gave us all a dinner in the Neptun, and Dixon kept the table in
a roar, telling of his ridiculous experiences in American overland
coaches, in Texas and elsewhere. Of Texas, he had views alarmingly like
those of Sheridan. If he owned hell and Texas, he certainly would rent
out Texas and live in hell. “And do you tell us _that_ is manners down
South in the United States?” queried Mr. Louis Blanc, in the naivest
manner. “Indeed I do; surely, surely,” said the traveler, glancing
at Mrs. Blanc, “I saw it a hundred times. Pistols, bowie-knives and
swearing. Nothing else in Texas.” The kind Frenchman believed it
all, for he believed all men honest as himself; only at the close
of the dinner did Mr. Dixon let him know that part of his talk was
good-natured champagne chaff.
Louis Blanc was the smallest big man I ever saw. He was only five feet
high. His head was big enough for Alexander the Great. He was only
fifty-nine years old now, but it seemed to me his life and actions went
back to the Revolution. His hair was long and black and straight as an
Indian’s. He had no beard. His face was rosy as a girl’s. His little
hands were white as his white cravat; his feet were like a boy’s;
his eyes brown, large, and full of kindness; his voice sweet as a
woman’s. He dressed in full black broadcloth and wore a tall silk hat.
He looked, when walking in the street, like a rosy-faced boy in man’s
clothes.
His little stature and apparent innocence of half that was going on
about him, kept Madame Blanc in a constant worry for fear he would be
run over by passing wagons when we were out walking together. “Now run
over here quick,” she would say to him at a crossing. “Do, my dear,
be careful. See the horses coming.” Out of doors, or on our little
excursions to the mountains, he was perpetually and literally under her
wing. She knew the treasure she had in him.
I constantly thought of the story of his past; for was not this little,
low-voiced man, walking with us, he who had written “The Ten Years”
that had helped destroy Louis Philippe; was not this the same voice
that had enchained assemblies, and led France?
Once in a little log schoolhouse in the backwoods of the West, where,
as a young fellow, I was teaching, I had read some of his books. Poor
as I was, I would have given a month’s salary then, to have taken
Louis Blanc by the hand. How little I dreamed that some day I should
not only take him by the hand, but have his warm friendship.
Louis Blanc’s head was all there was to him--that and a great heart.
His marriage to Madame Blanc was a marvel. They met in London. She was
German and could speak no French. He was French and could speak no
German. He courted her in broken English; and he did well, for a better
woman never lived.
Victor Hugo, standing at her grave years later, pronounced one of his
noblest eulogies to womanhood. It was an outburst of remembered oratory.
[Illustration: Gambetta.--_Page 45._]
We were glad of the friendship of such a man as Louis Blanc. He wrote
me many letters and invited us to Paris, where we spent some delightful
days. His brother Charles was the director of Fine Arts and Theaters
there. We had invitations to the best operas and plays. One night I had
the pleasure of hearing Gounod lead the Grand Opera House orchestra in
his own “Faust.” Monsieur Blanc also took us out to see the National
Assembly sitting at Versailles, where he was a senator. By good luck
we saw and heard Gambetta and Jules Favre. There was no disorder that
day, at least, and the speaking was moderate in tone. It was no noisier
than our own senate. Louis Blanc also spoke a few words in a quiet way.
He wished them to move the Assembly into Paris. “It is all nonsense,”
he said to me, “this pretense of fearing a Paris mob. ‘Do right,’ I
might have said to them, ‘and the mob will let you alone. Do wrong,
and--well, it is not far from Paris to Versailles, and there was a time
when a mob could escort a king even, from the one place to the other.’”
He meant Louis XVI. and his queen, whom the mob led from this same
palace to the Paris scaffold.
That evening we went late to dinner. The Blanc’s lived on an upper
floor of house No. 96, on the Rue du Rivoli. It was rather far. “But
why didn’t you come earlier?” said Mrs. Blanc, meeting us at the door.
“You can’t guess who was here.” It was Victor Hugo. How sorry we were
to have missed the opportunity of seeing the most famous man in France.
It happened later that I was in Paris the day after Victor Hugo’s
funeral. Everybody said it was like the funeral of a great king. I went
up to the “Arc de Triomphe.” The great monument built by Napoleon, in
his own honor, was covered with wreaths in honor of Victor Hugo. Which
man, I thought, does France, in her inmost heart, revere the most--the
poet, or the conqueror?
I do not recall much that Louis Blanc said to me that first time in
Paris, but something he said in reply to some words of Mr. Dixon’s, at
the banquet, I wrote down. Dixon was chaffing, in an exaggerated way,
about the patriot’s idea of liberty. “Ah!” replied Louis Blanc, quoting
from another Frenchman, “there is but one thing only, which dreads not
comparison with Glory; that is Liberty.”
The nephew whom I had obliged, and through whom our friendship with the
statesman came about, fell ill in Paris, and Louis Blanc wrote me this:
“PARIS, 96 Rue du Rivoli, Dec. 21, 1871.
“DEAR SIR: It grieves me to the very heart to have to say that
my nephew is most dangerously ill. He has now been in bed for
about a month, and his precarious state keeps both my poor wife
and myself in a state of unspeakable anxiety. This domestic
affliction, added to the necessity I am under to spend the whole
of my time at Versailles, where the Assembly is now residing
and threatens to _settle_, has as yet prevented me from seeing
Mr. Washburne. But I have not lost sight of my promise, which I
hope I shall be able to fulfill before long. Many thanks for the
photographs. That of Mrs. Byers is very far, indeed, from doing
her justice. We wish we had a better one. I will write to you
soon. In the meantime, accept, my dear sir, our most cordial
thanks for the kindness you and your dear wife have shown to our
nephew and to ourselves. With my wife’s best regards to Mrs.
Byers and yourself, I remain, very truly yours,
LOUIS BLANC.”
The youth got well, but he did not take much to the Zurich schools
after all. He had gone home again, and the uncle decided on letting him
go to sea.
“PARIS, 96 Rue du Rivoli, July 14, 1872.
“MY DEAR SIR: Many thanks for your very kind letter. Our nephew
is quite recovered, and more than ever determined to be a sailor;
so much so, that we have made up our minds to let him go as a
midshipman. He will probably start in a month or two.
“My wife and myself speak often of you both and of the friendly
reception we met at your hands. May we indulge the hope of
returning it soon, on your visit to Paris?
“I would have been glad to make General Sherman’s acquaintance,
but, unfortunately, I found no opportunity to do so.
“Mrs. Louis Blanc and nephew unite with me in kindest regards to
Mrs. Byers and yourself. Most sincerely yours,
“LOUIS BLANC.”
_September, 1872._--All this past summer the international arbitrators
at Geneva have been trying to settle our difficulty with England over
the Alabama pirate business. Our Mr. Evarts has won great honor in his
management of our side of the matter. Still we have virtually lost the
case. A few days ago, the 14th, the treaty was signed. True, it gives
us fifteen millions, but we set out with claiming two hundred and fifty
millions. What a bagatelle to have to accept after that. The testimony
really tends to show that the Rebels never hurt the North with their
cruisers a hundredth part as much as everybody supposed they had. It
was only a little Captain Kidd sea robbery after all.
It is something, however, to make England come to time, if only a
little, for only the other day a London paper declared England will
never pay the Yankees a dollar, no matter what the arbitrators say. We
shall see.