HER FIRST BOOK
1858
“_L’œuvre de Mme. Juliette Lambert n’est que l’hymne triomphante
des sentiments humains les plus nobles et les plus joyeux._”—Jules
Lemaître.
Born and bred in an atmosphere of controversy, inheriting from
her grandmother and father an argumentative disposition, it is
not surprising that in the field of polemics Juliette won her
first literary laurels. Neither was it inconsistent with her
ambitious nature that she should have chosen for adversary the most
distinguished controversialist of the day. The socialist Proudhon
was regarded not only as an eminent economist but as a master of
dialectics.
Proudhon’s masterpiece appeared on the 22nd of April, 1858. It was a
work in three volumes, entitled _La Justice dans la Révolution et dans
l’Eglise_. Announced in 1854, this book had been eagerly awaited by
philosophic readers, among whom was Juliette’s father.
Dr. Lambert wrote to his daughter that she must buy _La Justice_ at
once, and that, as she finished each volume, she must send it down
to him at Chauny. It was well that Juliette carried out her father’s
recommendation, for in a few days the book was suppressed[36] and
its author, who had fled to Belgium, condemned to three years’
imprisonment and a fine of 4000 francs.
Juliette, as she read these pages, was compelled to recognise the
excellence of the writer’s style and the skill of his dialectics.
But the so-called “justice” which Proudhon here metes out to women
could not but infuriate so fervent a feminist. For even a cursory
survey of this book will serve to reveal that the writer here carries
the anti-feminist argument to its extreme verge. No self-respecting
woman could possibly read these pages without being moved to
indignation, unless she resolve to treat the matter as a huge joke;
but unfortunately Proudhon, like most pure economists, had no sense
of humour: he only stumbled into being funny. A breath of the blessed
illuminating comic spirit would have saved him from many a ludicrous
absurdity.
Juliette’s resentment of the philosopher’s sweeping indictment of her
sex was aggravated by his singling out for special condemnation the
two women whom among her contemporaries she admired most. “_J’ai la
folie d’admirer_,” she has said of herself; and with all the ardour
of her passionate soul she admired George Sand and Daniel Stern (la
Comtesse d’Agoult). It was precisely against these two distinguished
writers that Proudhon directed all the vitriol of his invective.
In George Sand’s work he would see nothing but _une orgueilleuse
impuissance_.[37] Daniel Stern,[38] because in her _Esquisses Morales_
she had ventured to maintain that woman need not necessarily be
inferior to man, he decried as _une femme savante qui parle sans
raison ni conscience_.[39]
Writhing under these insults, Juliette went one evening to Mme.
Fauvety’s. There she said to Jenny d’Héricourt, “You ought to defend
the women who are thus insulted, you who know so well how to wield a
pen against the terrible Proudhon. It would be disgraceful to leave
unanswered such abominable charges.”
“George Sand and Daniel Stern,” replied this _vertu farouche_, “have
only what they deserve. I insist upon virtue and I practise it.
Proudhon has not dared to insult me, I am certain of it, though I have
not yet read his book.”
“Very well,” said Juliette. “I am nobody, it is true, although I am
as virtuous as you, and I will reply to Proudhon. Women, they must be
defended by women.”
This esprit de corps, this loyalty not to her sex alone, but to
any cause or party, political, social or religious with which she
has chosen to identify herself, has ever characterised Mme. Adam,
and the conflict of her sense of solidarity with her innate Celtic
rebelliousness is one of the most interesting traits in her psychology.
Thus bravely did this young woman of twenty-two take up the glove
thrown down by the most eminent and the most skilful dialectician
of the day. For two months she was absorbed in the writing of this,
her first book. Most of the work was done at night. She would shut
herself up in her room, where she was alone with little Alice.
Whenever she found time to go to the Fauvety’s, M. Fauvety and M.
Renouvier inquired eagerly after the progress of the great work. Mme.
d’Héricourt continued scornful.
“Well, and this defence of your famous friends, how is it getting on?”
she would inquire derisively. “If you succeed in carrying it through,
God send those great ladies be grateful to you, seeing all the pains
you seem to be taking.”[40]
“Madame,” replied Juliette, “I am taking great pains. But then you
must remember I am but a novice; and you can’t expect one of my age to
have the experience of veterans.”
“Veterans! Veterans!” cried the irate lady. “You mean me, doubtless.
Well, if you defend some of us you are very impertinent to others.”
Finally the book was finished, and entitled _Idées
Anti-Proudhoniennes_. It was read to M. Fauvety, who approved and gave
useful advice. But to Juliette’s dismay he expressed a doubt whether a
reply to so powerful an adversary, so acrimonious a controversialist,
so consummate a master of dialectics would ever find a publisher.
In her passionate enthusiasm for her task, such a horrid fear had
never once entered Juliette’s mind.
“What!” she cried, “my poor book which has devoured my nights will
never see day?”
“You have made a _mot_,” replied the editor of _La Revue
Philosophique_, laughing. “But now you must captivate some great
publisher. Don’t write, but offer your manuscript in person. Who
knows? However, I doubt whether you will succeed when your book has
been read.”
Such an opinion from so competent a critic would have discouraged most
writers. But Juliette, with a buoyant hopefulness which has ever
supported her throughout all the trials of her long career, was not
deterred. She merely concluded that such difficulties in the way of
publication would involve her having to defray the expenses of the
book’s appearance. Consequently she went down to Chauny to demand her
father’s fulfilment of a rash promise that should she ever give birth
to a volume he would pay for its publication.
“I told him,” writes Juliette, “that I had written a book.” “What is
it?” he asked, not unnaturally. But the subject of her book was the
last thing Juliette meant to reveal to this disciple of Proudhon. It
would seem a thing unheard of that Dr. Lambert should be asked to pay
for the publication of a book when he was ignorant of its contents.
But this was Juliette’s request; and she knew her father could refuse
her nothing. She was encouraged, moreover, when she heard him express
his annoyance with the philosopher for his gross attacks on such
devoted republicans as George Sand and Daniel Stern. “You must have
been sadly wounded, Juliette?” he inquired. “Yes, I was heart-broken,”
she replied. Yet she did not enlighten him any further. Nevertheless
she returned to Paris with the thousand francs, which her doting
parent calculated would suffice for the publication of her literary
first-born.
Then followed the search for a publisher. Always ambitious, Juliette
applied to one of the greatest publishing houses in the world. She
addressed herself to M. Michel Lévy,[41] the publisher of Victor Hugo,
of Sainte-Beuve, of Alexandre Dumas, who had recently discovered Renan
in his garret. That famous master used to declare that Michel Lévy
had been ordained by a special decree of Providence to become his
publisher. Such was not Juliette’s experience; for M. Lévy’s reception
of her was, to put it mildly, not encouraging.[42]
“Here is a young lady,” said his clerk, and in what a tone! “who
has come about a book she has written, which she wants the firm to
publish.”
Smiling, M. Lévy looked at his visitor and asked: “The subject of the
book?”
“A reply to the attacks made on George Sand and Daniel Stern in _La
Justice dans la Révolution_.”
“And this reply is by you, mademoiselle?”
“Madame, sir.”
“And you think that a book like _this_ will be published by the house
of Michel Lévy?”
“Oh, sir, I quite realise that I must bear the expense of the
publication of my first book. If you would be so kind as to read it.”
“Useless, madame.”
“What! Do you decide without having looked at it?”
“Oh! I can see perfectly what your ... work is like merely by looking
at you. What do you think, my good Scholl?”[43] said he, addressing
some one who had just come in.
“It would be a pity,” said Scholl, “for madame to become a commonplace
blue-stocking. You are quite right to discourage her, my dear Lévy.
She has something better to do.”
“Monsieur Aurélien Scholl,” replied Juliette proudly, “M. Huegel, near
by, has published a poem[44] by me which may not be as good as your
_Denise_, but my prose may quite well be equal to yours.”[45]
And with her heart in her mouth, her literary personality, as she puts
it, thoroughly humiliated, she left Michel Lévy’s office. Scholl, with
whom she was often to discuss that scene in after years, told her he
had advised Lévy to call her back.
Though for the moment her hopes were all dashed to the ground,
Juliette was unconquered. Her courage has ever been roused by
opposition. And M. Lévy’s impertinence had provided her with a further
incentive to succeed: she desired ardently to prove him in the wrong.
So she continued her search for a publisher; and always it was the
leaders of the publishing world whom she visited. No less than eight
did she approach, not omitting even Proudhon’s own publisher. He
was extremely polite, but he said: “You will understand, madame,
that such things are not done.” At that time Hetzel, one of the most
literary of Paris publishers, was in exile at Brussels. Juliette wrote
to him. He replied:[46] “Either your book is very bad or you use a
coloured handkerchief, and possibly you take snuff. I can’t believe
a woman, who is probably ugly and certainly middle-aged, can have
any right to defend against Proudhon the youth of George Sand and
Daniel Stern or their position in the world. You would expose them to
ridicule, and they would never forgive you. For doubtless Proudhon
would reply to you.”
Here was a dilemma. What was Juliette to do? Evidently none of the
recognised publishers would even read her MS., for they all either
found her too pretty or suspected her of being plain.
On the ground floor of her house in the Rue de Rivoli was a
bookseller, Taride by name, of whom Juliette was an excellent
customer. She took him into her confidence. Would he publish her book
if she stood all the expense? “Why not, madame?” he replied. “We
neither of us run any risk, for we are both unknown, and if we fail,
no one will hear of it.”
Consequently, Juliette put down eight hundred francs, and the book
appeared, in defiance of the bookseller’s advice, in the summer, on
the 15th of August, when, as the saying went, there was not “a cat in
Paris.” But the impatient young authoress, whose hopes had been so
long delayed, refused to wait until the autumn.
On the 19th of the month Juliette installed herself in the
bookseller’s back shop, and inscribed on the fly-leaves of fifty
copies suitable dedications to the most important figures in the world
of journalism and letters: George Sand, Daniel Stern, Littré, Émile de
Girardin, Prosper Mérimée, Edmond About, Octave Feuillet, Jules Grévy,
Hippolyte Carnot and others. Then dispatching an errand-boy with the
celebrities’ copies, she herself took a cab and delivered the books at
the newspaper offices.
This done, her next concern was to go down to Chauny and put a volume
into her father’s hands. What would he say to her impudence in
attacking so great a philosopher, to her _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_?
And, indeed, the title was a shock to him. He took the little volume
in his hand, turned it round and round. “What if it’s bad?” he began.
“But if it’s good?” interposed Juliette. “Ah, at your age, even if you
have half a success, you are distinguished for life.”[47]
After dinner, finding her very agitated, he sent her to bed. “_Va te
coucher, Basile_,” he said. “I will read your book to-night, and tell
you what I think of it in the morning.”
At three o’clock in the morning he came into his daughter’s room
and awakened her with the words:[48] “It is good, it is good.
But it is mine. I sowed the seed in your mind of these _Idées
Anti-Proudhoniennes_. My dear child, this means your success, your
salvation,[49] influential friendships, your grandmother’s wishes
realised. Why is she not here at this moment?”
The next morning at breakfast even the usually despondent Mme. Lambert
was gay, although she could not help her customary gloom breaking out
in the exclamation, “I tremble to think what a life of work and worry
this will mean for you.”
Dr. Lambert was eager for his daughter to be off to Paris, there to
receive the congratulations which he was convinced were awaiting
her. And he was not mistaken. Every day brought some new proof of
the attention this little volume had attracted. The book was widely
noticed in the press. The review which pleased her most, even to the
point, she confesses, of for the moment making her lose her head (_cet
article me monta un peu à la tête_),[50] was by Eugène Pelletan, in
_La Presse_. The writer came to see her the day after the article’s
appearance: and from that moment he became one of her most faithful
and devoted friends. The _Siècle_, the periodical which had published
her first prose effort,[51] in the following terms noticed her volume
only a few days after its publication—
“We received yesterday a book destined to produce a profound
sensation. It is a reply to Proudhon and to the insulting attack upon
George Sand and Daniel Stern contained in his last work. This book,
despite its virility, is said to be by a very young woman. The title
of the volume is _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_. It is signed ‛Juliette
Lamessine.’”
Virility is, indeed, the dominating feature of this, Juliette’s first
production, as it was to be of all her work. She writes as one having
authority. Her style is crisp, terse, dramatic, vivid and, above
all, forcible. It is essentially the style of a woman of action as
well as of thought. In controversy she has always been at her best.
And she could not possibly have found a subject better suited to her
temperament and training than this answer to Proudhon’s attack on
women. That in this year, 1858, three years before John Stuart Mill
began to write his _Subjection of Women_, three years before our first
woman doctor, Mrs. Garrett Anderson, began to study medicine, a young
woman of twenty-two should have been able to present a bird’s-eye
view of the whole field of feminist reform; that she should, in such
forcible terms, have enunciated feminist principles and contended for
those rights which it has required half a century of conflict to win,
was a very remarkable achievement.
This little book of one hundred and ninety-six pages, polished off in
two months, naturally makes no pretence at being an adequate answer to
Proudhon’s great work, the result of years of laborious effort. It is,
indeed, only with the last part of the book, that treating of women
and of marriage, that the authoress of _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_ is
concerned. “Therein,” she writes, “are things which every woman who
knows how to hold a pen has the right to regard as personal insults,
and it is to these personalities that I intend to reply.”
Nevertheless, in her first chapter, entitled “Generalities,” she
permits herself a few remarks on the main trend of her adversary’s
book. She blames the narrow dogmatism which blinds him to the
complexity of the social problem. A pure economist, this founder of
the People’s Bank had attempted to solve the social problem in terms
of pounds, shillings and pence. This Proudhon was the J. A. Hobson
of that day. His absorption in the idea of justice caused him to
forget what is equally important, passion, affection, solidarity and
mercy. “There is no heart in your dialectics,” writes Juliette. “Now
to understand life, you must be yourself alive. Had you the most
powerful brain in the universe, you would never comprehend man and
humanity.”
“Justice,” wrote Proudhon, “had been nothing, it must be everything.”
But for this hide-bound economist justice could exist only between man
and man, for all men should be equal; but between man and woman, who
must ever be unequal, justice need not be considered, for man must
ever dominate woman. And why? Because man regarded as a working member
of the community is more productive than woman, who is physically,
intellectually and morally man’s inferior. Such an argument gives us
pause in these days of the Great War, when manufacturers are telling
us that the average output of women in factories is twenty per cent.
higher than that of men.
Woman, man’s inferior physically, maintains Proudhon, must necessarily
be mentally his inferior also. For physical strength is no less
necessary to the work of the mind than to the work of the body. Here
the retort was obvious; and we may be sure Proudhon’s young opponent
did not miss it. “What, M. Proudhon,” she rejoins; “then a porter will
be a better thinker than a philosopher. M. Proudhon’s God is obviously
the dynamometer.... Force, always force. In force lies the millennium.
That was the opinion of the Prætorian Guard when they chose for
emperor the great Maximin, because he was stronger than a horse.”
Instead of the subjection of woman to man, which Proudhon maintains
to be inevitable, his young adversary contends that the progress of
society requires that men and women shall work together as equals.
“A mere glance at the history of mankind,” she argues, “will suffice
to show that among nations civilisation is in proportion to the
part played by woman, to her influence, to her moral worth; and, as
civilisation increases, the greater will be the value set upon the
position accorded to woman.” This is an argument which no profound
observer of human nature could deny. Unless men and women laugh
together you cannot have that true comedy which is the very salt of
the intellectual life, was the opinion of George Meredith.[52] “Where
the veil is over women’s faces,” he wrote, referring to the silence
of comedy among Eastern peoples, “you cannot have society, without
which the senses are barbarous, and the comic spirit is driven to the
gutters of grossness to slake its thirst.” _Nous avons débrutalisé la
société française_ was the proudest boast of Juliette’s forerunner, La
Marquise de Rambouillet, foundress of the first great French salon.
Mme. Lamessine was one of the earliest French women writers to divine
that which this war is proving: woman’s capacity for work, for which
her asserted inferiority to man had been held to unfit her.
Anticipating John Stuart Mill, Mme. Lamessine demanded that all
the liberal professions should be thrown open to women, and that
women should be admitted to a share, if not in the legislation at
least in the administration, of their country. The rôle of mayoress
she considered particularly appropriate to women. She demanded the
admission of women to those _conseils de prud’hommes_ which in France
regulate disputes between employers and employed.
“_O Nazaréen incorrigible!_” she exclaims, when her adversary falls
a prey to the ancient myth that woman is ever the source of evil and
the mother of impurity. “Men who, like M. Proudhon,” she continues,
“desire to restore the patriarchate by imprisoning women in the family
are _des abstractions de quintessence_ who are blind to all that is
going on around them, who misjudge the collective life which is daily
developing new needs, engendering new forces, and giving rise to
social institutions responding to these needs and organising these
forces. They mean well, doubtless, and they think they are serving
the cause of progress, or at least of morality, which always comes to
be that of progress. By compelling woman to shut herself up in her
family, by limiting her to the rôle of wife and mother, they hope to
put an end to her growing passion for luxury and dissipation.... But
they are mistaken. It is not by limiting the scope of her activity
that they will arrest this disorder, but rather by opening up new
channels for the wholesome play of her energy. Women must be educated
thoroughly, and, wherever it is possible, professionally. They must
be made productive. Work alone has emancipated man. Work alone can
emancipate woman. Let woman provide herself by honest work with
clothes which will adorn and become her. Then, instead of dragging in
the dust of the pavement her lace shawls and her silk skirts, she
will walk free and proud in the modesty of clothes which will reveal
her beauty, without tarnishing her virtue or selling her honour....
“But do not let me be accused of undervaluing woman’s rôle in the
family: I, like Proudhon, believe that a woman’s first duty is to be
wife and mother. But I maintain that family life need not absorb all
woman’s activities, physical, moral and intellectual. The part of a
broody hen is honourable without doubt, but it is not suited to every
one, neither is it so absorbing as it is represented.”
In Juliette’s childhood her father had given her a catechism embodying
the principles of democratic socialism. Now in the last pages of this
book she expressed in another catechism her views of society and of
women’s rôle in it.
The question of the parliamentary franchise Mme. Lamessine did not
discuss in this volume. It is obvious that so ardent an advocate of
sex equality must have believed in woman’s right to vote. Woman’s
suffrage, we remember, was one of the reforms demanded by the
Mlles. André’s pupils when, in 1848, Juliette marshalled them in
the playground at Chauny beneath the banner of her father’s social
democratic handkerchief. But the so-called universal, in reality
manhood, suffrage of 1851 had led to the Empire, and Mme. Lamessine
abhorred the Empire: henceforth therefore she placed no great faith
in the people’s vote, not even if, as she believed, in all justice it
should do, the people included women.
FOOTNOTES:
[36] The edition from which I quote is that of 1870 in four volumes.
The suppressed edition of 1858, according to Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_,
II. 66, was in three volumes. In a few years the condemnation was
removed and permission given to Proudhon to return to France. He
elected, however, to remain in Belgium.
[37] _La Justice dans la Révolution et dans l’Eglise_ (ed. 1870), vol.
iv. 203.
[38] Her best-known works are a novel, _Nélida_, and her _History of
the Revolution of 1848_.
[39] Proudhon, _La Justice_, vol. iv. 140.
[40] _Souvenirs_, II. 68.
[41] M. Michel Lévy on his death in 1875, was succeeded as head of the
firm by M. Calmann Lévy, father of the M. Calmann Lévy, who to-day
presides over the business at 3, rue Auber.
[42] _Souvenirs_, II. 74.
[43] A brilliant and fashionable journalist of the day, who was also a
poet and critic. His best-known work is _Le Nain Jaune_. Later, Mme.
Lamessine was to see him frequently.
[44] _Myosotis._
[45] For the discussion of _Denise_ at the Poet’s Union see
_Souvenirs_, II. 49.
[46] _Souvenirs_, II. 75.
[47] _Souvenirs_, II. 79.
[48] _Ibid._, 80.
[49] Referring to the unhappiness of her married life.
[50] _Souvenirs_, II. 81.
[51] Her reply to Alphonse Karr’s article on the crinoline. See
_ante_, 44.
[52] _An Essay on Comedy and the Uses of the Comic Spirit_ (1903), 57.