SALON LIFE DURING THE SECOND EMPIRE
1858-1863
“_Le Salon était alors ... l’ambition suprême de la Parisienne, la
consolation de sa maturité, la gloire de sa vieillesse._”—Daniel
Stern (la Comtesse d’Agoult).
Dr. Lambert was right. Juliette’s book brought her influential
friendships and distinguished acquaintances. It flung her right into
the whirl of Parisian literary and political society.
The two women writers, whom _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_ had defended,
both wrote to thank their young champion. Of George Sand’s letter
and of the friendship which some years later ensued between her and
Juliette we shall hear much in another chapter. La Comtesse d’Agoult
(Daniel Stern), after having read Juliette’s book, wrote to her—
“It is surprising, sir, that you should have assumed a woman’s name,
while we women write under masculine pseudonyms.”[53]
“I replied to her,” writes Juliette, “that I was a woman, and very
much a woman.”
Then there followed an invitation to one of the great lady’s evenings.
This was a high honour. For Mme. d’Agoult’s salon in the Rue Presbourg
was not only the centre of the Republican opposition to the Empire, it
was a brilliant and cosmopolitan assembly, a meeting-place for many
of the most distinguished men of the day. Renan, Littré and Émile de
Girardin, here foregathered with Emerson, Heine and Kossuth. The life
of Mme. d’Agoult herself had been as eventful as that of any of her
guests. Born at Frankfort in 1805, she was the daughter of a German
banker’s daughter and the Comte de Flavigny, a French _emigré_, who
had been page to Marie Antoinette. When the Revolution had subsided,
the Comte de Flavigny brought his wife and his daughter, Marie, back
to France. Marie soon grew into an intelligent and beautiful girl
of Germanic type—tall, golden-haired and blue-eyed. Having set her
heart upon a man who married some one else, she refused offer after
offer until well on in what was then regarded as spinsterhood. At the
age of twenty-two she submitted to a _mariage de convenance_ with
the Comte d’Agoult. In a loveless life she found consolation in that
joy of every clever Parisienne’s heart, the creation of a salon. She
delighted to gather the élite of the aristocracy round her in her town
house on the Quai Malaquais, facing the Louvre, or in her country
château of Croissy, fifteen miles out of Paris. Soon this “Corinne
of the Quai Malaquais,” as she was called, became one of the most
attractive of Parisian hostesses. She aspired even to emulate the
seductive Mme. Récamier, whose salon at L’Abbaye-aux-Bois was then
at the height of its glory. But the Comtesse realised that without
_le grand homme_, in other words, without a literary lion, a salon is
nothing. Mme. Récamier had her Chateaubriand. Mme. d’Agoult selected
for her “great man” the poet, Alfred de Vigny. So, while Chateaubriand
was entrancing Mme. Récamier’s guests by the reading of his _Mémoires
d’Outre Tombe_, the Countess invited her friend, Alfred de Vigny, to
read his new poem, _La Frégate_, to an assembly of ambassadresses,
duchesses, and countesses at Croissy. But alas! de Vigny, though a
gifted poet, was no reader. And the chilling silence at the end of
the reading was broken by the freezing question: “Is your friend an
amateur, madame?” “Decidedly,” said de Vigny to his hostess, “my
frigate has been shipwrecked in your salon.”
But a worse shipwreck than that of _La Frégate_ was to attend the fair
châtelaine of Croissy. Some one had described this statuesque beauty
in terms she herself found _not_ inaccurate as “six inches of snow on
twenty feet of lava.” And the lava was soon to melt the snow. Mme.
d’Agoult’s apparent coldness vanished before the noontide heat of an
irresistible attraction, that of the most fatal Don Juan of Europe,
none other than the musician, Franz Liszt, who had already melted many
a distinguished feminine heart.
Casting to the winds her social reputation, her marriage vows, and her
maternal affection (she had borne the Comte d’Agoult two children),
she suffered herself to be carried off from a ball, and spent the next
years of her life wandering over Europe with her lover.
Then, having quarrelled with Liszt, she returned to Paris in 1846, and
settled down, in the Rue Presbourg, to write under the pseudonym of
“Daniel Stern.”
Of course all the doors of her aristocratic friends in the Faubourg
St. Germain were closed against her. But even before her flight she
had made some friends in the _bourgeoisie_; and among them were M. and
Mme. Émile de Girardin. Mme. de Girardin, the Countess had known when,
as the clever and beautiful Delphine Gay, she was the poetess laureate
of the Restoration. Now, married to Émile de Girardin, the Lord
Northcliffe of that day, Delphine was one of the most successful of
Parisian hostesses. While her mysterious husband, that Napoléon of the
Press, that _homme fatal_, of whose origin no one was sure, muffled
himself in a shawl and slumbered in a corner of the salon until such
time as he should go to his newspaper,[54] the vivacious Mme. de
Girardin gathered round her all the great literary celebrities of the
hour, Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Théophile Gautier and Eugène
Sue. And in this brilliant circle, the Countess, ostracised elsewhere,
was made warmly welcome. Here she formed her Republican opinions, here
she came into contact with the leading figures of that Revolution of
1848, of which she was to become the historian.[55] Here, in Mme. de
Girardin’s salon in the Rue Lafitte, the Countess replenished her
emptied visiting-list and gathered material for her second salon.
With most of this story Juliette had become acquainted through the
gossip of Mme. Fauvety’s drawing-room. And what she did not already
know was told her by Mme. d’Agoult’s friend, de Ronchaud, whom the
Countess had sent to escort the young Mme. Lamessine to the Rue
Presbourg. Mme. d’Agoult could not have assigned Juliette a more
congenial cavalier. De Ronchaud was a fervent classicist, one of the
founders of that new Hellenic school which was just then coming into
prominence. His delightful talk about Greek art in the book-shop
of Père France on the Quai Voltaire had seduced young Anatole into
playing truant from the Collège Stanislas in order to spend a whole
day wandering through the Galerie des Antiques in the Louvre. Juliette
found de Ronchaud’s conversation equally entrancing. “Our first talk,”
she writes, “was one long hymn to Greece.” De Ronchaud promised to
introduce his young friend to other Hellenists, and he foretold that
together they would bring about a second Renaissance.
What an all-important event was Juliette’s first evening in Mme.
d’Agoult’s salon may easily be imagined. She found the Countess,
like many other distinguished Frenchwomen, anticipating her age, for
although she was only fifty-three, she wore over her silver hair a
light black lace mantilla. At the first glance she gave Juliette
the impression of strength, almost virile, and yet of femininity.
“_J’ai atteint l’âge d’homme_,” she used to say, echoing Catherine of
Russia’s sentiment when she welcomed Diderot with the words: “As man
to man we can discuss anything.” Tall and superbly graceful, it seemed
to Juliette that she had never seen a more complete great lady. When
Mme. d’Agoult described herself as a Democrat, it was difficult to
suppress a smile, so anomalous on her lips sounded such a word. Her
bearing, the pose of her head, her features, the lines of her face
which betrayed no trace of the tempestuous passion that had swept over
her in youth; everything about Mme. d’Agoult was aristocratic.
In the general conversation of her salon the Countess took little
part, but, seated on the right of the fireplace, she would carry on
a _tête-à-tête_ with some single person. Unlike many another salon
lady, Mme. du Deffand or Mme. de Staël or Juliette herself, she was no
maker of _mots_; nor was she ready with repartee. She herself could
never understand how she came by her reputation of a wit;[56] for she
knew that she never appeared at her best in conversation. She was too
reserved, too self-conscious to be a vivacious talker, and she could
only be eloquent when intense feeling took her out of herself.[57]
Grave and a trifle solemn, her salon was frequented by serious
students, such as Littré, who rarely went anywhere else, as well as
by more sociable philosophers like Renan. The subjects discussed were
politics, philosophy, art (music especially), serious literature, but
seldom plays or novels. The guests were too addicted to monologue; and
too often some weighty personage, leaning against the mantel-piece
would discourse at such length that his talk became a veritable
lecture. Sometimes Mme. d’Agoult would read a letter from some foreign
correspondent, a famous revolutionary like Mazzini or Kossuth; for she
had relations with the whole of Europe, including those illustrious
Frenchmen whom Louis Napoléon’s _coup d’état_ of December 1851 had
driven into exile.
Though all Mme. d’Agoult’s friends were republicans and therefore
opposed to the Empire, they were not all agreed as to the best way of
conducting the opposition. About this year, 1858, two distinct parties
were beginning to define themselves: the extreme republicans who,
like Juliette and her father, believed in keeping entirely aloof from
imperial politics, and who regarded as traitors to Republicanism any
who should, no matter for what purpose, consent to swear allegiance
to the Emperor. These uncompromising anti-imperialists went by the
name of _abstentionistes_. But there was also coming into existence
a more moderate party led by Mme. d’Agoult’s son-in-law, Émile
Ollivier.[58] They held that opposition to the Empire could be most
effectively carried out by entering the Corps Legislatif, for which
it was necessary to take the oath of allegiance. This party, known as
_sermentistes_, was to grow in strength until it succeeded in forcing
its so-called Liberalism on the Emperor, and establishing what is
known as _L’Empire Libéral_.
Juliette’s uncompromising nature, as we have seen, made it impossible
for her to approve of the _Sermentistes_. And she loses no opportunity
of ridiculing _les petits Olliviers_, as Ollivier’s followers were
called, when they appeared in Mme. d’Agoult’s salon. Indeed, the
Countess herself opposed her son-in-law’s policy; and, after her
daughter’s death, there was an open breach between them.
From the very first the pretty, vivacious Mme. Lamessine made a highly
favourable impression on Mme. d’Agoult. “She took the trouble,” writes
Juliette, “to convert a little provincial into a society lady.[59]
She encouraged me to talk of my work. When you are perplexed, come and
tell me,” she would say. “I shall be delighted to give you the benefit
of my observation of mankind and of all I have learnt in the hard
school of experience.”
Soon Juliette’s invitation to the Countess’s evenings was extended to
those smaller intimate parties, which met around the luncheon or the
dinner-table. On these occasions the Hellenist, Louis de Ronchaud, was
almost invariably her fellow-guest.
Mme. d’Agoult laughed at Juliette’s passion for antiquity. “My
dear child,” she would say, “you must be of your time. At your age
you ought not to be so _antique_.... I shall take you to the Opéra
Bouffes” (the Italian theatre). “That will modernise you a little.”
“For the love of Greece, remain Greek,” pleaded de Ronchaud. But,
indeed, there was no fear of the Opéra Bouffes perverting Juliette
from Hellenism; for Offenbach’s caricaturing of her Homeric deities
in _Orphée aux Enfers_ so outraged her Grecian sympathies that
Mme. d’Agoult was constrained to make amends by inviting her to a
neo-Grecian dinner. “It will be a pagan party,” the Countess said.
“De Ronchaud has arranged it.” The other guests were two brilliant
Hellenists, Ménard and Saint Victor. They began by discussing the now
much-disputed importance of a classical education. These neo-Grecians
were firmly persuaded that the classics alone can inculcate those
superior ideas of justice and heroism, which are all the more salutary
because for ages they have permeated the race. Naturally they lamented
over what seemed to them the decadence of French society under the
Empire. Ménard maintained that periods of intellectual decadence are
invariably periods of mechanical progress and of political despotism.
Then the worshippers of ancient Hellas fell with equal zest and
vivacity to discussing the antiquity of the Orphic mysteries.
How intensely alive for Juliette was this Hellenic past she has proved
over and over again in her literary work, and most notably in three
novels she was to produce some years later, _Laide_ (1878), _Grecque_
(1879), and _Païenne_ (1883).[60]
That great wave of philosophic speculation which was sweeping through
France could not fail to affect so intellectual a salon as Mme.
d’Agoult’s. An earlier dinner-party, Juliette’s first at the Rue
Presbourg, had been a veritable symposium of philosophers. The great
Littré,[61] the eloquent exponent of Comte’s philosophy, was the lion
of the evening. His famous _Etymological Dictionary of the French
Language_ was then going through the Press.
“Littré,” writes Juliette, “inspired me with a sentiment which was
almost worship.” When they had met before they had talked of Greece.
The editor of Hippocrates and Pliny, though laughing at his young
friend’s fervent passion for ancient Hellas, had been able to reveal
to her things in the _Iliad_ which neither she nor her father had
dreamed of.
Among the other guests were De Ronchaud, of course; Hippolyte
Carnot, son of the “Organiser of Victory,” and editor of one of
the leading magazines of the day, _La Revue Encyclopédique_;[62]
Dupont-White, the friend of John Stuart Mill, a bold thinker and an
ardent apologist of centralisation in government. In the presence
of such an august philosophic trio Juliette for the first part of
the dinner was content to listen; and we may be sure that, like her
illustrious namesake, Mme. Récamier, she listened “with seduction.”
But towards the end of the evening we find her warmed to take part in
the discussion. Although she admired, almost worshipped Littré, she
could not tolerate his positivism. Positivism suggested Comte, and
Comte suggested the husband whose conduct was rendering her domestic
life unbearable. But Littré seemed to her to out-Comte even Comte;
for Littré would stifle the slightest breath of idealism. While Comte
admitted that there are as many arguments for as against the existence
of an unknowable, Littré seemed to Juliette absolutely to deny it.
This may have been so at that time; but surely Littré must later have
become less dogmatic. For we remember Paul Bourget’s description of
“Old Littré” as a saint who spoke eloquently of that ocean of mystery
washing our very shores, but over the waters of which we have no
barque to carry us.[63]
When Littré maintained that as “light cannot exist without a luminous
body, neither can life without organs nor spirit without matter,”
Juliette protested that vehicles are not essences. “The Homeric past,”
she added, “presents us with a poetic conception of things which
encourages the belief that the future has something better in store
than your immutable law and its brutality.”
“Yes, I agree,” replied Littré, “the immutable law is brutal in its
partial manifestations, but its general action, based on the unvarying
conditions of proportion and order, inspires us with the idea of
absolute justice.”
Against such determinism Juliette revolted with all the fervour of her
rebellious and romantic soul.
“I protest,” she said. “If I feel myself a mere atom of dust swept
about by the wind and not an intelligence dominating matter, why
should I make any effort?”
“Because action is the law of humanity.”
“Ah! but for me belief in man led by the spirit and nature by the
divine is a necessity.” Here, in these words indicating so plainly the
wish to believe, lies the key to Juliette’s whole mental and spiritual
evolution. It was a key which her philosopher friends were quick to
grasp.
“We shall see this pagan turning Christian,” said Littré.
“And I should not be at all sorry,” remarked Mme. d’Agoult, “if it
were only for the pleasure of exasperating that Hellenising Ronchaud.”
Juliette and her hostess would appear to have been the only women
at these dinner-parties. There may have been others, whom Juliette
does not mention. But Mme. d’Agoult was essentially a man’s woman.
The wives of her guests, with very few exceptions, did not interest
her. There were, however, a few clever and distinguished women who
frequented her salon. There was the masculine Mme. Royer, who was
as much of a blue-stocking as her friend Jenny d’Héricourt, and
whom Juliette equally detested; there was the heroic Mme. Hippolyte
Carnot, the Cornelia of French republicans, who, when her husband was
resisting Louis Napoléon in December 1851, said, “If you die you will
bequeath to your sons the example you inherited from your father.”
Then there was that queen of _raconteuses_, the witty but rather
Rabelaisian Comtesse de Pierreclos, the poet Lamartine’s niece. This
tall and powerfully-built lady, with large prominent features, was
one of the most striking figures in salon society. She was pleased to
joke about her own appearance. Being asked what part she would take
in a play, she replied, “I think mine should be the part of the bust
of Louis Philippe.” But if other people attempted to make fun of her
she resented it strongly. Thus when she said she had met a certain
person face to face, which in French is “nose to nose,” and some one
ejaculated, “Then it must have been yours that conquered,” she was on
the point of bursting into tears.[64] But Mme. de Pierreclos passed
as quick as lightning from tears to laughter. She and Juliette were
equally exuberant and impulsive. Perhaps it was this that made them
sworn friends. They corresponded regularly, and during Juliette’s
frequent absences from Paris she depended on her friend to keep her
_au courant_ with all the doings of the metropolis, with the latest
_mot_, the last scandal, the newest play and the best music.
For Juliette’s interests were far from being concentrated on
philosophy or even on neo-Hellenism. Plays, picture-shows, fancy-dress
balls and the opera crowded her days, leaving her, one might have
thought, no time for literary work. Nevertheless, she had contrived
before 1863 to produce a novel, _Le Mandarin_, three volumes of short
stories, _Mon Village_, _Récits d’une Paysanne_, _Voyage autour du
Grand Pin_, besides pamphlets on public questions and newspaper
articles.
[Illustration: JULIETTE LAMBERT
From a portrait by Léopold Flameng, 1860]
Among all these various pleasures and duties one wonders what became
of Juliette’s little daughter Alice. The child was now old enough to
notice the strained relations between her parents, and in order to
remove her from the unedifying disputes between her mother and father,
Alice had been sent to her grandparents at Chauny.
As far as her literary and social life was concerned Juliette’s most
ambitious dreams were about to be realised. She was on the way to
become a queen of society. True, she had enemies, chiefly pedants
like Mme. d’Héricourt and Mlle. Royer, or the friends of Proudhon.
No one so convinced, so outspoken as Juliette could avoid arousing
opposition. But, with the exception of that little coterie, all
hearts were hers, won by her good nature, her charm, her genius for
friendship, her vivacity, her intelligence and her loveliness.
A leading French journalist, now no longer living, who followed Mme.
Adam’s career with interest and admiration, told me that in her youth
she was entrancingly beautiful. Referring to the salon she was shortly
to establish, to the princes, ambassadors, writers and artists who
crowded round the brilliant young hostess, that journalist said: “We
were all in love with her.”
Moreover Juliette, though an advocate of the rights of woman in
days when feminists tended to affect masculine attire, discarded
none of her femininity. It has always been her opinion that _Pour
une femme, c’est une infériorité que se deféminiser_. She who had
been independent enough to abstain from the crinoline, knew how to
dress. One of her gowns, velvet _gorge de tourterelle_, with large
steel buttons, worn at Alphonse Daudet’s dinner-party, made such an
impression on Edmond de Goncourt that he described it in detail, in
the pages of that Journal which has now become a classic.[65]
It is not surprising that more than one distinguished artist—Flameng,
Charpentier, for example—painted Mme. Lamessine’s portrait.
Charpentier’s picture was exhibited in the salon. Mme. d’Agoult’s
friend, the famous sculptor, Adam Salomon, photographed her in a
Charlotte Corday costume, which she had worn at a fancy-dress ball,
and wished to model her bust. The photograph was a success, not so
the bust. After having made many attempts in clay, the sculptor gave
it up. Some time later, however, when Mme. Lamessine was in his
studio, he persuaded her to let him take a caste of her face. “It was
horrible,” she writes.[66] “I thought I should have been suffocated;
and I felt as if my eyebrows and eyelashes were being torn off. The
agony of those few seconds when Adam Salomon was piercing holes for
my nostrils and making slits for my lips, when I could hardly breath,
pursued me for months.” “I quite understand,” she adds, “that a cast
of the head and face is not usually taken until after death.”
It was at the Adam Salomons’ that Juliette met Lamartine. He came
there every day: and it saddened her to see this great poet worried
by financial embarrassments and attempting to retrieve his fallen
fortunes by soliciting subscriptions to his _Cours Familier de
Littérature. Ce pauvre Lamartine_, wrote the witty Mme. Mohl, _ce
n’est plus une lyre, c’est une tire-lire_ (a sealed earthen pot with a
slit into which a peasant puts his money). The poet’s fine, handsome
countenance still lit up when he spoke of art, letters or politics,
but that unhappily was but seldom.[67]
There are those for whom socially the Second Empire signifies
little more than hollow splendour, ostentatious display and vulgar
luxury. No doubt these tendencies were strongly marked; but at the
same time there flourished a rich and original development of art,
music and literature. When Juliette was making her _début_ in Paris
drawing-rooms, Alexandre Dumas’ _La Dame aux Camélias_ and his _Fils
Naturel_ were being played at Le Théâtre Français, Millet and Puvis
de Chavannes were exhibiting their first pictures in the Salon, Renan
was writing his _Vie de Jésus_, Erckmann and Chatrian their Napoleonic
romances, and Victor Hugo, in exile, his _Légende des Siècles_.
Those were the days when two of the greatest composers of the modern
world, Berlioz and Wagner, were rivalling one another on the Parisian
operatic stage.
Juliette first met Berlioz at the representation of _Orpheo_ at the
Théâtre Lyrique. Mme. Viardot’s sublime rendering of the part of
Orpheo avenged Juliette and her neo-Grecian friends, Ménard and de
Ronchaud, who accompanied her, for the insults Offenbach had offered
to their Greek gods. During the song “I have lost my Eurydice,”
Juliette, overcome by emotion, paid the singer the superb compliment
of momentarily losing consciousness. When Berlioz himself came round
to their box at the end of the act, Ménard did not neglect to tell him
of the beautiful Mme. Lamessine’s little swoon. Highly flattered the
composer took her hand in his and kept it there.[68]
“Yes,” he said, “it is quite beautiful.... Orpheo is near enough to
the real Orpheo for the expression of grief rendered as we have just
heard it to overwhelm the senses.”
Juliette appreciated Wagner’s art, though she was far too much of a
Latin to prefer this Teuton to Berlioz. “Berlioz,” she wrote, “is the
initiator, he stands above all others. He can well afford to let the
Wagnerian fanatics assert that Wagner’s is the music of the future.”
Juliette first met Wagner and heard him play at the Comtesse de
Charnacé’s. The Comtesse was Mme. d’Agoult’s daughter by her husband,
the Comte d’Agoult, and, strangely enough it may seem to us, she was
in the habit of receiving her half-sister, daughter of Liszt and Mme.
d’Agoult, and wife of the celebrated pianist, Hans von Bülow. Von
Bülow was Wagner’s shadow; and it was Von Bülow who brought Wagner to
the Rue Vaugirard. About twenty-five people were present. Juliette
thought Wagner’s enormous head not lacking in character, at least the
upper part of it. His forehead was broad and high. His questioning
eyes were now tender, now hard; but his ugly mouth, with its sarcastic
expression, seemed to press back his cheeks and like nut-crackers to
bring together an authoritative chin and an arrogant nose. She found
him caustic and witty as he talked of everything and seemed to know
everything. Then suddenly he would become vulgar, personal, conceited.
He played the Prelude to _Lohengrin_. “Never has anything been written
to equal it,” exclaimed Von Bülow.
“I alone,” said Wagner ..., “can do these things. No one else in the
world would dare to attempt them.”
Then laughing, and, with a strong Germanic accent, he added: “People
can never tell whether I am hydrocephalous or a man of genius.”
“Something of the first,” whispered Juliette to Mme. d’Agoult.
“A great deal of the second,” rejoined the Countess, rather severely.
Wagner, who was extremely quick of hearing, had caught this whispered
conversation.
“He gave to each of us,” writes Juliette, “the ‛thank you’ we
deserved.” Then he talked well of Parisians and their mocking spirit.
He said how it grieved him not to be understood in France, and to have
for a rival any one so eminent as Berlioz.
“It is impossible for you ever to understand one another,” said Mme.
d’Agoult.
Despite the personal antipathy with which Wagner inspired her,
Juliette made enormous efforts to sell tickets for the three concerts
he was to give at Paris. And she disposed of so many that the musician
actually sent de Ronchaud to her with a message of thanks from “the
Hydrocephalous.”
The first two concerts at least were a distinct success. At the second
even Berlioz applauded.
Mme. d’Agoult, unlike most aristocratic Frenchwomen of her day, was
a brave pedestrian. That was what kept her such a good figure, said
Juliette; and her young friend often accompanied her on her walks.
In May 1859, after having visited the Salon, they walked through the
Bois. Juliette seldom refers to her own _toilettes_. But on that
day, she tells us, she was wearing a specially becoming costume, a
frock of black taffetas with no trimming, but wide sleeves of white
lace, a fichu of black chantilly and a Leghorn hat with a cluster
of cornflowers and strings of black velvet. It was a glorious May
day. All Paris seemed to be out enjoying itself. As the Countess and
Juliette walked past the Arc de Triomphe, Mme. d’Agoult said—
“The war is imminent. Perhaps it will be declared to-morrow. God send
we may see France victorious and Italy delivered.”[69]
For months Mme. d’Agoult and her friends had been eagerly following
Italy’s struggle for liberty. With the whole of France they ardently
desired their Latin sister’s liberation from the Austrian yoke.
The Countess herself had Italian connections. She was related to a
well-known Florentine family, the Peruzzi.
Juliette, before she came to Paris, had known little of foreign
politics. Save for a vague prejudice against England, the legacy
of the Napoleonic Wars, a mistrust of Prussia and a liking for the
Russians because Russian soldiers, billeted in the house of Chauny,
had been kind to her grandmother, Juliette had no very decided
sympathies or antipathies towards countries not her own. But in Mme.
d’Agoult’s salon such indifference speedily vanished. On the very
first evening in the Rue Presbourg she met the Alsatian, Nefftzer, who
had been editor of _La Presse_ and was later to direct _Le Temps_.
“By him,” she writes, “for the first time in my life I heard foreign
politics lucidly discussed, and it was then that I began to take an
interest in them.”[70]
Among the European nations outside France, Italy was Juliette’s first
love and Garibaldi her greatest hero. Next to Italy, as one might
expect from so ardent a Hellenist, came Greece. She and her Grecian
friends were highly delighted when the Ionian Isles were reunited to
Greece. She was in the South of France at the time, but de Ronchaud
wrote announcing the good news and exclaiming “_Vive l’indépendence_.”
But that was in 1862. To return to 1859 and to the cause of Italian
unity as it appealed to Mme. d’Agoult’s salon. Napoléon’s declaration
of war against Austria so delighted Juliette and her friends that
for a moment they almost forgot their opposition to the Empire. The
news of the victories which followed increased their rejoicing,
but their joy was short-lived; for in a few weeks came a bitter
disillusionment. In July the Peace of Villafranca was signed. Instead
of fulfilling Napoléon’s proud boast and freeing Italy from the Alps
to the Adriatic, it delivered her tied hand and foot into the power of
Austria. Francis Joseph remained master of Italy, the most powerful
member of the Italian Confederation, over which the Pope, Pio-Nono,
presided.
“Ah! we felt that Napoléon’s promises had been too good to be true,”
exclaimed Juliette and her Republican friends. And, with more reason,
“I told you so,” exclaimed M. Thiers. For the ex-Minister had advised
the Emperor not to engage in war against Austria. Italian unity, he
foretold, would be followed by Prussian unity. And now he pointed
out that France had not only made an enemy of Austria, but she had
offended Italy, who saw that she had been duped. Italy was still
further offended when Napoléon in direct violation of the Treaty of
Villafranca insisted on annexing Savoy and Nice. Then, not content
with ranging against him Italy and Austria, the Emperor proceeded to
alienate the Pope, whom he was pledged to support.
Out of that mind which, as Lord Palmerston said, “was as full of
schemes as a warren of rabbits,” Napoléon III produced at this
juncture one of his numerous pamphlets. In this one he attacked
nothing more nor less than the Pope’s temporal power, urging him to
acquiesce in the independence of Romagna. This dangerous policy of
playing first with one party then with another made Juliette and her
friends tremble for France, despite their anti-clericalism.
They were kept closely in touch with Italian affairs by a friend of
Mme. d’Agoult’s, a man equally remarkable in the three fields of
science, literature, and politics, Alessandro Bixio, the founder
with Buloz of the _Revue des deux Mondes_. Born in 1808, Bixio was
a Genoese by birth, but had been educated in France. A moderate
Republican, during the terrible insurrection of July 1848, in an
attempt to keep order in Paris streets, he had been severely wounded.
Having lost consciousness he was taken for dead, and left lying near
one of the barricades. Not having been heard of afterwards, his death
was announced, a memorial service was arranged, mourning was ordered,
when suddenly his friend Hetzel, the publisher, received a letter
from him. A concierge had found the wounded man lying in the street,
had taken him into the house, and there, after some days of coma, he
had returned to consciousness. He wrote to Hetzel entreating him to
announce his resurrection as delicately as possible.
Earlier in the year, Bixio had been French Ambassador at Turin, later,
during Prince Louis Napoléon’s presidency, he was French Minister of
Agriculture. After the _coup d’état_ he had retired into private life.
But he remained in close touch with Turin, which he visited every
fortnight, never failing on his return to bring to the Rue Presbourg
the latest news from the Piedmontese capital. On one occasion, when
Mme. d’Agoult was going to Turin to see the performance of one of her
plays, Bixio was her escort. The Countess’s story on her return of her
reception by Victor Emmanuel and of her having seen Cavour, fanned
into yet greater ardour her guests’ passion for Italian unity.
Alessandro’s brother, Nino Bixio, played a prominent part in
Garibaldi’s Sicilian expedition, having commanded one of the two
ships which sailed from Genoa. This adventure he related in detail to
Juliette some time later. Nino Bixio was one of the most fearless of
men; he was said to have plucked a bullet out of his own flesh, saying
to his men, “See, such things are quite harmless.” When Juliette in
conversation with his brother, referred to Nino’s intrepidity, “Yes,
by my faith,” exclaimed Alessandro. “Did I not bring him up not to
know fear? Did I not, when he was a boy, hold him by one foot and let
him dangle from the balcony over the street?”
Juliette eagerly and sympathetically followed Garibaldi’s adventures.
She collected all the details she could glean about her hero, and, in
1859, published a pamphlet[71] which caused her to be regarded as an
authority on the Italian liberator.
Her admiration for Garibaldi did not prevent her from appreciating
the services rendered to Italian liberty by the more judicious
Cavour. The tidings of Cavour’s illness, broken to Mme. d’Agoult in a
letter from Turin, cast a gloom over the salon of the Rue Presbourg.
“Cavour,” wrote the Countess’s correspondent, “is _in extremis_, the
Italian doctors are killing him. They are butchers. They have bled him
fourteen times.”[72] “Alas,” adds Juliette, “they bled him once more,
and he died on the 6th of June” (1861).
Almost as fruitless as the Italian War was Napoléon III’s expedition
to Syria on behalf of the Christians of Mt. Lebanon, threatened
with extermination by a neighbouring Mussulman tribe, the Druses.
This expedition, which was much discussed in Mme. d’Agoult’s salon,
had ended in the French, as the result largely of Lord Palmerston’s
intervention, evacuating Syria and leaving the cause of the persecuted
Christians to the Sultan’s somewhat uncertain championship. Renan,
appointed to an archæological mission in Syria by the French
Government, had chanced to sail with the expedition. As soon as
he came back, and returned to the Rue Presbourg, he was eagerly
questioned by Juliette and her friends as to his opinion of the
settlement.
“What do you think of it?” inquired Dupont-White, referring to the
Sultan’s protectorate and the French evacuation of Syria.
“I think well of it,” replied Renan. “It will put an end to the
massacres.”
“What,” exclaimed Dupont-White, “then do I understand that you were
sent there to stir up religious fanaticism? I knew you received your
mission through Prince Napoléon, so I thought your object would be
rather to come to an understanding with the infidels. For I regard
your prince and you as being two of the finest specimens of infidelity
in the world.”
“But Prince Napoléon is a deist,” said Renan.
“Very well. And you?”
* * * * *
“I have no objection to saying _Mon Dieu_,” replied Renan. “But ...”
“I don’t see Renan going to preach a crusade in Syria or anywhere
else,” said Littré, who had seemed to be dreaming.[73]
Two years later, on the 23rd of June, 1863, after Juliette had
separated from her first husband and was living with her parents at
Chauny, appeared Renan’s _Vie de Jésus_. From the point of view of
its influence on free thought Dr. Lambert considered the publication
of this book the most significant event of the latter half of the
nineteenth century. Juliette received twenty letters from her friends,
some extolling, others attacking the book. Mme. de Pierreclos thought
it abominable and pernicious, all the more because of the perfection
of its style. Ronchaud wrote admiring its poetry. “Even those,” he
added, “who disbelieve in the divinity of Jesus of Nazareth must
henceforth worship him.”
“Renan,” said Dr. Lambert, “was like myself, a simple-minded, sincere
and pious student of theology. But when he found the sacred text
distorted by those to whom it had been entrusted, he lost faith as I
did.”
Dr. Lambert on hearing that Renan had been deprived of his chair of
Hebrew at the Collège de France, exclaimed, “You see, imperialism,
by treating Renan as an enemy, is pointing him out to us as our
friend.”[74]
FOOTNOTES:
[53] _Souvenirs_, II. 83. _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes_ was signed
“Juliette Lamessine.”
[54] See Daniel Stern, _Mes Souvenirs_, 311.
[55] Daniel Stern, _Histoire de la Révolution de 1848_, 2 vols.,
Paris, Charpentier, 1862.
[56] Daniel Stern, _Mes Souvenirs_, 346.
[57] _Ibid._, 349.
[58] He had married Blandine, daughter of Mme. d’Agoult and Liszt.
[59] Mme. Adam, _Souvenirs_, I. 108-9, _“Elle prenait la peine de
faire d’une petite provinciale une dame.”_
[60] See _post_, 209.
[61] Born in 1801, Littré had studied and qualified as a doctor of
medicine, though he never practised his profession. He, like most of
Mme. d’Agoult’s friends, was a “man of 1848.” Immediately after the
Revolution he served for a few months as unpaid municipal councillor
of Paris. But, disillusioned after the violent suppression of the
July rising, he had retired from office and since then had lived in
retirement.
[62] Hippolyte Carnot, born in 1801, had accompanied his father
into exile. After the elder Carnot’s death, Hippolyte returned to
France. There he became one of the leaders of the Saint-Simonian
group of philosophers, see _post_, 86-90. During the Revolution of
1848 Carnot was Minister of Education. Like Littré, disillusioned
by the reactionary movement which followed the July insurrection,
he resigned. After the _coup d’état_ of December 1851, he went into
voluntary exile. During his absence he was elected member of the Corps
Legislatif. But although he returned to France, he refused to take the
oath to the Empire, thus forfeiting his seat. Since then he too had
lived in retirement.
[63] _Le Disciple_, Preface.
[64] _Mémoires de la Comtesse Diane_, 146-7.
[65] _Journal des Goncourt_, VI. 184.
[66] _Souvenirs_, II. 155.
[67] _Ibid._, 147.
[68] _Souvenirs_, II. 214.
[69] _Souvenirs_, II. 166.
[70] _Souvenirs_, II. 85.
[71] _Garibaldi: Sa vie d’après Documents Inédits, avec un portrait_,
Paris, 1859.
[72] _Souvenirs_, II. 315.
[73] _Souvenirs_, II. 317.
[74] _Souvenirs_, II. 421.