HER PRE-WAR SALON
1864-1870
_Le Petit Salon de la Rue de Rivoli._
_Le Grand Salon de la Maison Sallandrouze._
Sociability has ever been one of Mme. Adam’s gifts. It declared itself
in her childhood. At school she was always the centre of a band,
grouping, organising her schoolfellows. When she came to live in
Paris, to create a salon became her dominating ambition. And it was
no less a personage than that most distinguished and aristocratic of
_salonnières_, Mme. d’Agoult, who first suggested to her young friend
the possibility of realising her aspiration.
“Mine will remain the great salon of the winter,” said Mme. d’Agoult,
who frequently left Paris during the summer months, “and yours shall
be the little summer salon.” For Juliette, as we have seen, had begun
to spend her winters in the south.
Then the Countess proceeded to draw up a code of rules for Juliette’s
guidance in the execution of her great social enterprise. “Mme.
d’Agoult,” writes Juliette, “sent me _la très belle page suivante_.[87]
“‘Happiness depends on renunciation and wisdom. If you would gather
around you a number of men and a few intelligent women you must appear
serene or happy.
“‘Your life, though in reality it may be agitated, must appear to
others to be without complications and not lacking in unity.
“‘Friendships can only be retained in an atmosphere which is
impersonal and restful.
“‘In order that the founders of your salon may regard themselves as
such you must consult them before you introduce any new-comers.
“‘You should avoid exchanging confidences; for they create too close
an intimacy; and they may lead you to give advice with which some day
you may be reproached.
“‘Be modest, but not self-effacing. Be simple, but distinguished.
Express your opinions with a certain confidence. Appear firm, but also
tolerant.
“‘If you would preserve your salon your first duty should be to
stimulate the intellectual curiosity of those whom you have gathered
round you.
“‘Be careful to make them feel that you are more occupied with them
than with yourself.
* * * * *
“‘Twenty men friends and five women will suffice to found a salon. You
have them already.’”
Juliette had not only the requisite number of friends, but now, in
the spring of 1864, she had also a home in the very heart of Paris,
where she could receive them. And the dinner-party which, by way
of house-warming, she gave in the flat in the Rue de Rivoli may be
regarded as inaugurating her salon, that _salon minuscule_, as she
called it, which was to be the summer ante-chamber to Mme. d’Agoult’s
_grand salon d’Hiver_.
Seven out of her twenty men friends were invited to dinner. They
all accepted, and hence may be regarded as the pious founders of
Juliette’s first salon. They were Edmond Adam, a wealthy financier,
an ardent republican, one of the men of 1848, of whom we shall hear
much later; Edmond Texier, a distinguished writer and a brilliant
wit; the amorous Toussenel, of course; Peyrat, the most bigoted of
anti-clericals; Nefftzer, now editor of the _Temps_; that polished
Jacobin, Challemel-Lacour; and the ever-faithful Ronchaud.
Following Mme. d’Agoult’s instructions, and preserving, roughly, the
feminine proportion of one quarter which she had indicated, Juliette
had invited two women guests—Mme. d’Agoult herself and Mme. de
Pierreclos. But neither was able to come. The Countess, who seldom
went out anywhere, considered herself excused from accepting her
young friend’s invitation by the recent death of her daughter, Mme.
Ollivier. Mme. de Pierreclos was away at Macon, staying with her
uncle, Alphonse de Lamartine.
The conversation that evening gave the tone for the conversations in
all Juliette’s salons: of the little salon in the Rue de Rivoli, of
the greater salon in the Boulevard Poissonnière, of the pre-war and
the post-war salon, of that extension of her salons which was _La
Nouvelle Revue_, and likewise of those latter-day assemblies which,
since her retirement from _La Nouvelle Revue_, seventeen years ago,
Mme. Adam has gathered round her on the terrace or in the spacious
drawing-room of her beautiful country home in the Abbey of Gif.
Whether the late M. Émile Faguet ever visited either of these salons,
I do not know. But if he did, he must have been ill at ease, for he
was one of those who found the political salon “uninhabitable.”[88]
And at Mme. Adam’s, though literature, art, philosophy, and other
subjects were by no means excluded, politics held the first place.
Throughout the Empire Juliette’s salon, first in the Rue de Rivoli,
later on the Boulevard Poissonnière, was a centre of energetic
republican opposition to the Empire. The hostess’s chief desire was
to reconcile the diverse currents of republican sentiment, to blend
in the broad stream of freedom the various and too often conflicting
strands of progress.
Already on that initial evening we find three shades of republican
opposition represented in the Rue de Rivoli salon. There was Peyrat,
the most rabid of reformers, who cared not what the Government might
be so long as it was a Republic. “_Qu’elle soit d’abord la République!
on verra après_,” he exclaimed.[89] There was the more moderate Edmond
Adam, who feared what he called a pseudo-Republic; and there was the
nationalist Nefftzer, the Alsatian, who steadily refused to avert
his gaze from the peril lowering across the north-eastern frontier.
Nefftzer, though calling himself a republican, would have supported
the Emperor had he shown himself capable of inaugurating a vigorous
foreign policy. The editor of the _Temps_ was one of the few who in
those days perceived Bismarck’s true aims and character. “_Il est plus
que dangereux, il est effrayant_,” exclaimed Nefftzer that evening.
But the editor’s lugubrious prognostications were jeered at by most
of his fellow-guests. “Here comes to life again the illustrious
Jeremiah,” said Peyrat. Only Juliette and her _amoureux_ Toussenel
experienced any consternation at Nefftzer’s warnings. “I have long
felt,” said Toussenel, “that some one was undermining our race, our
character, our heroism.... You, Nefftzer, declare this some one to be
Prussia. You have not wasted your time here this evening. You have
warned a patriot, and one who is not stoney-hearted. Thank you.”[90]
In Juliette’s salon at this time everything was an open question; for
in these years, though she was swayed by strong preferences, she had
no exclusions. Different shades of religious as well as of political
opinion were represented. Anti-clericalism, though it dominated, did
not have everything its own way.
When Juliette’s physician, Dr. Clavel, announced that the Masonic
Lodges were intending to drive Catholicism from France, Peyrat
applauded, but Saint-Victor put in a plea for liberty.[91]
“Whether one believes or disbelieves,” said Saint-Victor, “freedom is
essential.”
Eugène Pelletan agreed with him; not so Peyrat, who uttered his usual
cry: “The Republic before everything. And then....”
“And then what?” inquired Duclerc,[92] who was one of the 1848
revolutionists.
“After we have extirpated all error, then...”
“But who shall decide what is error?”
“We shall.”
“Then you consider yourselves infallible?”
“Is it or is it not a question of overthrowing the adversary?”
“Yes; but I should like to know in favour of whom and of what the
adversary is to be overthrown.”
“In favour of the principles of the Great Revolution.”
“The principles of ’92 or ’93?”
“Oh!” said Peyrat; “not the Revolution as understood by Quinet, the
Revolution emasculated of all that was most powerful in it. Michelet
... has accepted the Revolution, including the Terror.”[93]
“What!” exclaimed Duclerc, “the French Revolution may not be
considered apart from its ferocity?”
“Ferocity which was necessary.”
“And which may again become necessary.”
“That may be.”
* * * * *
“When Peyrat and Duclerc were discussing,” comments their hostess,
“arguments flew so rapidly from side to side that we listened without
interrupting. Moreover, there was not the slightest chance of getting
in a phrase or even a word edgeways.”
Though politics held the first place in Juliette’s salon, as we have
said, literature and art were by no means neglected.
The hostess herself, an ardent romanticist and idealist, if ever there
were one, had no sympathy with the realism which in the middle sixties
was beginning to invade French art and literature. Manet’s “Olympia,”
when it was exhibited in the Salon, filled her with loathing. When she
first saw it, she knew not whether to laugh or to cry.
“_Quelle horreur et aussi quels rires_,” she exclaims. “_Voici
l’Olympia de Manet. Nue, étendue, accoudée sur un drap blanc. Derrière
elle une negresse tient un bouquet. Sur le drap blanc un chat noir
déteint et laisse la trace de ses pattes sales. Germinie Lacerteux en
littérature, le chat noir aux pattes sales en peinture, c’est complet!
O idéal, idéal! Je vais revoir Picardia._”
The de Goncourts’ novel, _Germinie Lacerteux_, on its recent
appearance, had been vehemently discussed in the Rue de Rivoli. “It
is Lucrèce Borgia _graillonnante_,” exclaimed Lamartine’s niece, Mme.
de Pierreclos. And most of her fellow-guests as well as her hostess
were up in arms at once when some one described the de Goncourts and
Flaubert as the leaders of the realistic school. Flaubert, they
contended, would never have condescended to wallow in the mud which
seemed as much the de Goncourts’ natural element as it was to be that
of their disciple Zola. For the author of _La Terre_ and for all his
tribe Juliette has ever manifested an extreme aversion.
From the de Goncourts’ realism our passionate idealist turned
with relief to the classicism of her Grecian friends, Ronchaud,
Saint-Victor, Ménard, and to those poets of the new Parnassian school
who shared her enthusiasm for the gods and ideals of antiquity.[94]
Juliette’s _Salon Minuscule_, as she modestly called it, had now
become a regular institution in Parisian intellectual society.
Possibly it had been a greater success than its originator, Mme.
d’Agoult, had ever anticipated. Possibly this may have accounted for
the clouds which now began to appear on the horizon of Juliette’s
friendship with that great lady, clouds which threatened to repeat
in the nineteenth century that earlier story of the jealous Mme. du
Deffand and her gifted young _protégée_, Mlle. de Lespinasse. Certain
of Mme. d’Agoult’s friends were thought to be too often in the Rue de
Rivoli. Consequently, Juliette began to be coldly received in the Rue
Presbourg. Mischief-makers were not lacking: they told the Countess
that in the Rue de Rivoli her works were somewhat severely criticised.
While Juliette was at Bruyères in the winter of 1866-67 she received
a letter from Mme. de Pierreclos[95] warning her that somehow she was
not in the Countess’s good books.
“_Attention, petite Juliette!_” wrote Lamartine’s niece. “_Vous n’êtes
pas en faveur. Je ne jurerais qu’à votre retour vous ne subissiez une
bourrasque qui vous écarte à tout jamais de la Rue de Presbourg._”
In the crisis now approaching, one of the most momentous of Juliette’s
life, Mme. d’Agoult vouchsafed her young friend no sympathy whatever.
For some years, as we have seen, Juliette had been living apart from
her husband. M. Lamessine had used to the full the powers, which
until a few years ago the French law gave a husband, of appropriating
his wife’s earnings. Little Alice lived in terror that one day her
father might even claim that house and garden on the Golfe Juan, the
beloved Bruyères, where she and her mother spent happy winter months.
“You must make haste and grow up,” Dr. Lambert used to say to his
granddaughter, “and then you will marry and Bruyères shall be your
dowry.”
It was in the summer of 1867 that Juliette received from her lawyer,
M. Matthieu, a letter asking her to come and see him on a certain
evening about a communication he had received from her husband.[96]
M. Lamessine, in return for 15,000 francs, consented to relinquish
his claim to the royalties on his wife’s books published before their
separation. Distressed by the exorbitance of this demand, Juliette
and Alice, who had accompanied her, on leaving the lawyer, tried
to divert themselves by watching the crowds of merry-makers in the
Champs Elysées. All Paris seemed _en fête_, for it was the summer
of the Great Exhibition. But these gay sights afforded Juliette no
solace. Tired and sad, she and Alice returned home. On the table lay
a letter marked _urgent_. “Never mind,” said Juliette to herself,
“I have enough worries for one evening. I will not open the letter
till morning.” It was late. Her father and mother had gone to bed.
She wished her daughter a sad good-night and followed her parents’
example. But she could not sleep, neither could she forget that letter
marked _urgent_. The writing seemed familiar. She rose and read it.
The letter was from her lawyer.
“DEAR MADAM,” it ran, “among the papers which I had set aside to
finish examining to-night is a letter from Algeria, which tells me
that your husband, M. Lamessine, died six weeks ago.... Thus the
question of your royalties is decided.[97]—Yours, etc....”
Juliette has never been one of those who feign sentiments they do
not feel. About her first husband’s death she is in her _Souvenirs_
perfectly frank: she makes no attempt to conceal the feeling of
intense relief which the news brought to her. Dr. Lambert, when he
heard it, exclaimed: “I know some one who will be glad to have me for
a father-in-law.”
That “some one” was Edmond Adam. One of the pious founders of
Juliette’s salon, he had also been a member of Mme. d’Agoult’s
circle. Originally a journalist on the staff of the famous _National_,
he had made a considerable fortune and had become one of the mainstays
of the Comptoir d’Escompte, a republican bank founded by his friend
Alessandro Bixio and others. But that which had above all things
attracted Juliette to the man who was to be her second husband—for
he was considerably Juliette’s senior—was his uncompromising
republicanism, dating back to the Revolution of 1848, in which he had
played a prominent part. Edmond Adam united to high principles and
fervent idealism a distinguished appearance and ingratiating manners.
Among his friends he passed for a pleasant fellow. “A fine old
Senator” he appeared some years later to a foreigner who visited Mine.
Adam’s salon. “The chivalrous Adam,” she herself used to call him.
She noticed him first at a Wagner concert, standing opposite to her by
a mirror in which their eyes met. “Who is that tall gentleman?” she
inquired of Mme. d’Agoult, who sat next to her.
“Edmond Adam,” replied the Countess. “We are great friends. You
don’t see him at my receptions because of Girardin, whom he is
always wishing to fight. He will fight for anything or nothing.
After Carrel’s death,[98] when Adam was editor of an Angers
newspaper, Armand Marrast invited him to join the staff of the
_National_. His friends are Duclerc,[99] Grévy,[100] Carnot,[101] all
_abstentionistes_, and so is Adam, though he is essentially a man of
action.... On the 2nd of December[102] he was a Councillor of State.
But he refused to serve the Empire.... I don’t know any man who is
more highly esteemed, and I like him very much.... He is fidelity and
devotion itself.”
During the insurrection of June 1848, Adam with his friend Bixio,[103]
both of them unarmed, had gone up on to the Paris barricades to
endeavour to restore order. Afterwards, when the National Assembly
wished to decorate the hero with the Cross of the Legion of Honour,
Adam refused it on the ground that he could not wear a decoration
won in a civil war, and, moreover, that he had merely done his duty.
“Ronchaud,” added the Countess, “has just told me that he [Adam] has
read your book,[104] and that he would like me to introduce him to
you.”
But Juliette, moved by a sentiment not uncommon in women of deep
feelings, a kind of subconscious fear of a man who has profoundly
impressed them, refused that evening to make her new admirer’s
acquaintance. Later, on the publication of her book _Mon Village_,
he wrote his congratulations. She replied somewhat curtly. But her
correspondent was not discouraged. Some time afterwards, when she
was at the theatre with her friend, Mme. Fauvety,[105] whom he knew,
he joined their party. Mme. Fauvety admired him no less than Mme.
d’Agoult. Dr. Lambert, too, had a high opinion of his daughter’s new
acquaintance. “He is pure gold,” said Juliette’s father, “and when
you see him next you can tell him your father would like to shake
hands with him; for he is one of those—and they are few—of whom an old
republican may be proud.”[106]
Juliette’s betrothal to Edmond Adam took place on the day after she
received her lawyer’s letter. Congratulations poured in from all her
friends, with the one exception of Mme. d’Agoult. Yet she was aware
of her young friend’s happiness. Ronchaud had told her. Since Mme. de
Pierreclos’ warning letter,[107] Juliette and her old friend had not
met. Now, with some misgiving, Juliette determined to go and see her.
She received her kindly. But in a few minutes the discordant note was
struck.[108] “The misfortune of being a widow,” said the Countess, “is
that one is seized by a foolish desire to remarry. But I don’t think
you capable of such folly. An intelligent woman should remain free and
mistress of her own thoughts.”
“I have greater need of happiness than of freedom,” replied Juliette.
Then followed a distressing scene. Mme. d’Agoult completely lost her
temper. She told Juliette she hoped never to see her again. They
parted; and the Countess’s wish was fulfilled. But when, some time
later, Juliette heard that her former friend had entered as a patient
the house of the famous nerve specialist, Dr. Blanche, she felt
that Mme. d’Agoult’s lack of self-control on that sorrowful day was
accounted for.
In the spring of the following year Juliette Lambert and Edmond Adam
were married. The intervening winter had been spent on the Golfe
Juan, where Adam, like other friends of Juliette, the Texiers, for
example, had built himself a villa, Le Grand Pin. There had been a
somewhat heated discussion as to whether after marriage the Adams
should spend their winters at Le Grand Pin or at Bruyères. Juliette
could not tolerate the idea of leaving the house which she had built
and the garden she had planned. Though, as she had told Mme. d’Agoult,
she longed more for happiness than for freedom, she was determined to
hold her own in her new life. Already she had consented to abandon
her flat in the Rue de Rivoli for one in a famous house, la Maison
Sallandrouze,[109] on the Boulevard Poissonnière, opposite Adam’s
favourite restaurant, the Café Brébant. She was making no small
sacrifice by consenting to leave what seemed to her the hub of the
universe, that Rue de Rivoli with its delightful proximity to the
Louvre, to the Corps Legislatif, the doings of which this ardent young
politician followed feverishly, and to those Tuileries Gardens, where,
while Alice was at play, her mother, in conversation with members of
Parliament on their way from the Assembly, could glean all the latest
political news. Not unnaturally, therefore, Juliette’s keen sense of
justice was outraged when Adam asked her to make the further sacrifice
and give up her beloved Bruyères in favour of Le Grand Pin, although
this villa was much more spacious and imposing than her own dear home.
“I entreat you,” pleaded Adam,[110] “do consent to live at Le Grand
Pin for at least two or three years after our marriage. I really
cannot run the risk of being called M. Lamber in a district where you
are so well known.”
“Oh, you need not fear; I can assure you I shall be called Mme. Adam.”
“No, I don’t think so,” persisted Adam.... “And however I may love
your name when borne by you, it would humiliate me.”
“Very well then, I will keep it,” retorted Juliette.
They parted, and did not meet for several days. They were both
miserable. Then that kind physician, the good Dr. Maure, Thiers’
friend, effected a reconciliation.
“Oh, you fools,” he cried, “at your age to lay down conditions and
to be obstinate. When happiness runs to meet you, you turn away. Be
reconciled at once.”
Adam holds out his arms. Juliette hesitates. Dr. Maure makes a
grimace. “He will live at Bruyères. Embrace him. But it costs him
dear. It is the greatest sacrifice he can make.”
The quarrel was at an end. Juliette threw herself into her lover’s
arms. He asked her pardon.
“I ought to have understood, Juliette,” he said. “I was mad. I ought
to have realised that your beloved Bruyères, which you had made with
your own hands, you could not leave for another house so close. It was
with money only that I created Le Grand Pin. To-morrow I will summon
the builders. I will enlarge Bruyères, and next year, when we return,
we shall be at home in your own house.”
The year 1868, the year of her second marriage, opened well for
Juliette. “_Tellement riante_,” she writes, “_que j’y vois tout en
beau. Je suis heureuse autant qu’on peut imaginer...._”[111] As she
awoke on New Year’s Day, Alice whispered, “Dear mother, I wish you
what you already possess.”
Her father, who had not come to Bruyères that year, wrote that he,
too, was the happiest of men. For _cet étudiant rive gauche, ce
fanatique de science_, as Juliette called him, was now at liberty to
quit _cette rue impériale_, as he called the Rue de Rivoli, _infestée
par les allées et venues de l’empereur et de l’impératrice_, and
to inhabit the quarter of his dreams, to take a flat in the Rue S.
Jacques close to the lecture-rooms and laboratories of those eminent
scientists, Paul Bert and Claude Bernard.
In every respect it was well that the two families should separate.
The discordant temperaments of Juliette and her mother rendered it
impossible for them to agree long together. Neither their summers in
Paris nor their winters on the Riviera had been very happy. And as for
Juliette, the bliss of life with a husband who adored her and shared
all her interests soon compensated her for the loss of her favourite
street. “_Nous sommes heureux à rendre jaloux_,” she wrote soon after
her marriage.[112] “But, on the contrary, our friends enjoy our
happiness. Their assiduity in visiting us grows. They love our home,
and they cannot pass along the Boulevard Poissonnière without coming
up to see us, especially in the evening.”
Thus the _minuscule_ salon of the Rue de Rivoli was transformed into
the Great Salon of the Boulevard Poissonnière.
In the two troubled years which were to elapse before the outbreak
of war, the Adams’ salon was to serve, as we have said, as a
meeting-place for representatives of all parties in opposition: for
_abstentionistes_ and for _sermentistes_, for the elder republicans
who followed M. Thiers, and for _les Jeunes_ who followed Gambetta.
“_Bientôt_,” writes Juliette, “_notre salon réunit toutes les
opinions, depuis les orléanistes jusqu’aux irréconciliables_.”[113]
Mme. Adam’s own attitude remained irreconcilably _abstentioniste_.
She had no sympathy whatever with those who, like her husband’s
friend, Jules Grévy, took the oath to the Empire in order to upset
it. “_Prêter un serment qu’on est résolu à ne pas tenir_,” she
writes, “_c’est être déloyal et coupable_.”[114] Imagine her horror,
therefore, when she found her own husband wavering—first inclined to
listen to the arguments of his friend Thiers, and then, on the eve of
the 1869 election, announcing that he is going to his native Normandy,
there to stand as candidate for the village of Brionne.[115]
“And _you_ will take the oath—you?”
“Yes; I have thought it well over. Whatever objection you may have to
offer has been considered and rejected.”
“It seemed,” writes Juliette, “as if a gulf had opened between us.
What I could not say to him when he started, I wrote to him.” With her
letter she enclosed others from friends who had written expressing
their astonishment at his decision. One was from Louis Blanc.
“That the young who never witnessed the crime of December should swear
allegiance to the murderer I can understand,” he wrote. “But how can
one who saw the blood flow, who heard the oath broken, forget, if his
heart be kind and loyal?”
One morning, shortly after this packet had been dispatched, Mme. Adam
received a telegram from Brionne containing one word: “Come.” She
and Alice obeyed. They arrived at Brionne on the very day when Adam
was to take the oath. “I could not take it,” he said, “without being
sure that you approve and that you realise its significance. Have you
become any less narrow, any less bigoted, Juliette?”[116]
But no, Mme. Adam was as resolute as ever. And her husband, yielding
to her arguments, or unwilling to create between himself and his
wife an impassable breach, told his electors that he found himself
incapable of taking the oath. “The candidate who replaced him,” adds
Juliette, “did so well that the electors bore him no grudge. As for
me, I am prouder than ever to bear his name.”
Léon Gambetta was now, as the acknowledged leader of that wing of
the republican party known as _les Jeunes_, attracting considerable
attention. He was a complete meridional, for his parents were a
Provençal mother and a father of Genoese origin. He was born in 1837
at Cahors, where his father kept a small grocer’s shop. Léon and one
sister were their only children. It having been prophesied to Mme.
Gambetta, before her son’s birth, that he would one day be a great
man, she denied herself in every way in order to give him the best
of educations. He entered the legal profession and went to Paris.
There, among the students of the Latin quarter, he rapidly made his
mark. No students’ manifestation was complete without him, neither
was any fête. He showed a marvellous capacity for repeating verses
and drinking beer. He hated the Empire with exuberance, but not
with fanaticism. He was well read. Montaigne and Rabelais were his
favourite authors, and he was seldom seen without a tattered copy of
the latter protruding from his slovenly coat pocket. Passionately
interested in public affairs, he hardly missed a sitting of the Corps
Legislatif. He was equally assiduous at the Café Voltaire and the Café
Procope. There, no matter what subject was under discussion—books,
plays, women, or politics—he never failed to monopolise the
conversation.
Gambetta first appears in Mme. Adam’s _Souvenirs_ when Eugène Pelletan
describes him to her as one of the riff-raff of the party (_les voyous
du parti_).[117] Later Girardin in Mme. d’Agoult’s salon had praised
his exuberance tempered by common sense.
“_Vous n’imaginez pas la vitalité de ce gaillard-là_,” said
Girardin.[118] “If only he were better put on, I would introduce him
to you. But it is impossible. Nevertheless, he is a man of letters.”
But soon Juliette began to feel that without _ce gaillard-là, ce jeune
monstre, ce dompteur des foules_, as Gambetta was beginning to be
called, her _Grand Salon_ was incomplete. Adam was meeting Gambetta
constantly at Laurent Pichat’s, and was ever quoting to his wife this
rising young demagogue’s astute sayings.
“We must introduce him into our circle; you must bring him to me,”
said Juliette.[119]
“But,” objected Adam, “he is very unfledged. Neither in manner nor
in words does he know any restraint. His accent is impossible. He is
insolent in discussion. Moreover, I do not wish you to hear him talk
of the men of 1848.”
For the idealists of 1848, for their lack of worldly wisdom, for their
failure to take advantage of the situation they had created, Gambetta
did not scruple to express his profound contempt.
“But,” interjected Juliette, “is he really out of the common? Is he
worth knowing? Yes or no?”
“Yes, he is out of the common. He is worth knowing. But he is
Bohemian, vulgar, brutal. His manner of life is extraordinary. He is a
typical man of the masses, as Danton, _plus retors_. He has an air of
authority and dominates the conversation, no matter where he is.”
“We will invite him,” said Juliette. Nevertheless, before making the
final plunge, she took the precaution of consulting her old friend,
Hetzel, the publisher, who knew about Gambetta through a mutual
friend, Alphonse Daudet, another brilliant young Provençal, who was at
that time making his mark in Paris.
Hetzel pronounced the _jeune monstre_ to be quite impossible. “You
should hear Alphonse Daudet describe Gambetta’s southern clan, the
clan of the _bas-midi_, composed of howling Gascons, of blatant
windbags of Provençals. He himself a kind of political commercial
traveller ... provincial to the marrow of his bones, a provincial
grocer withal, one-eyed and _chemisé et cravaté et pantalonné en
dégringolade_.”
Such a picture gave Mme. Adam pause. But her husband pronounced it a
caricature. Alphonse Daudet had only seen Gambetta at restaurants. In
Laurent Pichat’s salon he was better. Certainly he was too vehement,
but he was not a windbag. So he was invited to one of the Adams’
famous Friday dinner-parties to meet a number of distinguished
guests, with most of whom he was previously acquainted: his friend
Laurent Pichat, Eugène Pelletan, Jules Ferry,[120] Hetzel, who
came to form his own opinion of _le monstre_, those two faithful
friends Challemel-Lacour and de Ronchaud, d’Artigues, Duclerc, the
Orleanist de Reims. _L’hôte exceptionnel_,[121] as Mme. Adam puts
it, was another Orleanist, no less a personage than the grandson of
General La Fayette, the Marquis Jules de Lasteyrie. He had fought in
Portugal for Don Pedro in 1832; he had sat on the left centre in the
Chambre des Députés under Louis Philippe; he had been exiled in 1852,
but had returned after the amnesty. Now, backed by Thiers, he was
endeavouring, as candidate for Seine et Marne, to re-enter political
life.
Adam had told the Marquis that he was to meet Gambetta, and full of
curiosity, congratulating his hostess on her boldness, Lasteyrie
arrived early. “I shall tell Thiers about this party,” he said, “for
he is deeply interested in _le jeune monstre_.”
Gambetta, imagining that he was going to dine with a blue-stocking,
dressed anyhow. He arrived wearing a nondescript kind of coat, with
a suggestion of a flannel shirt appearing between his high-buttoned
waistcoat and collar.[122] He looked thunderstruck when he saw every
one else in evening dress. Eugène Pelletan, who knew him well,
presented him to his hostess. Adam was talking in another salon.
Gambetta begged Mme. Adam to excuse his not having dressed.
“If I had known,” he said.
“You would not have come,” she replied, laughing. “That is not nice of
you.”
M. de Lasteyrie, who was generally most tolerant, whispered in her
ear.... “If he had come in a workman’s blouse, I might have passed him
... but ... that!”
Jules Lasteyrie was to have taken Mme. Adam in to dinner.
“The only way to rehabilitate him, my dear friend,” she said, “is to
give him the first place. I deprive you of it. But I am sure you will
agree with me.”
The Marquis assumed his fine lordly air and replied: “You are right,
the servants might neglect him. Besides, we shall see whether he
understands _le grand_.”
The hostess took Gambetta’s arm. He was overwhelmed at being placed on
her right. Lasteyrie sat on her left. Adam could not believe his eyes.
Hardly had they sat down at table when Gambetta, leaning towards Mme.
Adam whispered—
“Madame, I shall never forget the lesson you have taught me.”
Evidently he understood _le grand_.
Many another lesson was Juliette to teach her illustrious friend. In
matters sartorial and social she was to find him an apt pupil. As Mme.
d’Agoult had transformed the provincial young person into _une grande
dame_, so Juliette was to turn the Provençal grocer, the political
commercial traveller, into a man of the world.
When some ten years later she saw him at the opera faultlessly
attired, with light gloves, a hat slightly tipped over one ear, a
gardenia in his buttonhole, she felt proud of her handiwork.
While Gambetta was ready enough to employ Adam’s tailor, he was not
ready to adopt all his or his wife’s political opinions. At that first
dinner-party Mme. Adam and her guest, as Adam had foreseen, disagreed
on the question of the oath of allegiance to the Empire and on their
estimate of the republicans of 1848.
Despite these differences, however, for the next seven years, at
least, bonds of mutual admiration united Mme. Adam and Gambetta.
During the national disasters now approaching her esteem for him
steadily increased;[123] she admired not his patriotism only, but his
wisdom, his moderation; she came to regard him as the one hope of _la
patrie_, the _cariatide_ of her beloved France.[124]
It was by his speech at the famous trial of Delescluze that Gambetta
first established his fame as an orator. The days that proceeded that
trial, writes the historian Pierre de la Gorce,[125] in his vivid
account of these incidents, were _les derniers de sa vie obscure_.
That trial and the incidents leading up to it thrilled with excitement
Mme. Adam’s salon. They originated in a manifestation which had taken
place on the 2nd of November, 1868, round the grave of the republican
leader Baudin. After Louis Napoléon’s _coup d’état_ of December 1851,
Baudin, an ardent republican deputy, had endeavoured to incite the
Parisian populace to resist. They taunted him with caring chiefly to
secure the daily sum of twenty-five francs, which he received as a
Member of Parliament. “Why should we be killed for your twenty-five
francs?” they cried. “You will see how one can die for twenty-five
francs,” cried Baudin, and he climbed on to the barricade, expecting
the crowd to follow him. But troops were coming up the street.
Baudin was seen to wave a flag, and then to fall dead after having
called to the people to come on. The republicans, who gathered
round Baudin’s grave in the Montmartre Cemetery, did not lose this
opportunity of expressing their opinions of the Imperial Government
and of prophesying its speedy dissolution. They took themselves very
seriously, and rather expected their little group of some sixty
persons to be dispersed by the authorities. But what they thought to
be the roll of the guns of approaching troops turned out to be nothing
more than an announcement that it was time to close the cemetery.
Afterwards, however, it occurred to certain Republican journalists,
first to Delescluze of _Le Reveil_, later to Peyrat of _L’Avenir
National_ and to Challemel-Lacour of _La Revue Politique_ to open a
subscription for a monument to be erected to Baudin. The Imperial
Government, ever with its eye on the press, determined to nip in the
bud this project of honouring one of its arch enemies. Delescluze,
Peyrat and Challemel, with certain of the manifestants, were summoned
before the Sixth Chamber _Correctionelle_. It was Edmond Adam who
had urged Peyrat to bring _L’Avenir National_ into the movement. His
friend Thiers had rated him soundly for so doing. “_Cette affaire
est insensée_,” said _le grand petit homme_,[126] always the soul
of moderation. “_C’est de la faction! Ces choses-là conduisent aux
émeutes et aux révolutions._”
“You are mistaken,” replied Adam calmly. “We are placing an instrument
in the hands of the opposition. You will soon recognise it. The
Empire’s enemies figure in the subscribers’ lists, and those lists
will one day furnish a basis for a coalition, which you will find
useful.”
A few days later M. Thiers admitted that Adam was right. This eventful
year was now drawing to a close. The late autumn had come, and it was
time for the Adams to shut up their salon and go to Bruyères for the
winter. “But how,” writes Juliette, “could we discontinue our evenings
in the midst of so much agitation, when our friends passing along the
boulevard like to come up and talk in our salon?”
There was considerable discussion as to the advocate to defend
Delescluze, who was regarded as the most important among the accused.
Finally the choice fell on Gambetta.
The trial took place on the 13th of November. “_La surexcitation
est extrême parmi nos amis. Les plus calmes s’emportent_,” wrote
Juliette.[127]
The speeches for the defence were numerous and eloquent. But one alone
has survived. Needless to say it was Gambetta’s. With consummate skill
he converted his defence of his client into an attack upon the Empire.
Posing that difficult question which has of late so often presented
itself in French political life, Gambetta asked, “Can there ever be a
moment, when for the sake of the public weal it is right to violate
the law, to overthrow the constitution, to treat as criminal those who
defend the right at the risk of their lives? Louis Napoléon, when in
December 1851 he effected his _coup d’état_, considered that such a
moment had arrived. But surely,” exclaimed this fearless republican,
“this is not the time to justify such an act, for here we are in the
prætorium of the judge, here the voice of the law alone should make
itself heard.”
These words, as it may well be imagined, created an enormous effect
in the court. There was absolute silence. The audience seemed to hold
its breath. The parts were transposed: the defender had become the
accuser. Several times the President endeavoured to interrupt. But
such remonstrances as “Really, Maître Gambetta, you ought to reserve
that for your peroration,” as well as the objections of the opposing
counsel, passed unobserved amidst the thunder of that tremendous
voice. Gambetta merely redoubled his vehemence. He walked up and down,
he struck with his hand on the bar in front of him. His attitude no
longer was one of defence, but rather of rebellion. His disordered
hair, his floating gown, his collar thrown open, his crumpled cap,
which he was constantly putting on and taking off—everything betrayed
the intensity of an avenging wrath indifferent to everything save the
one matter which kindled it.
“On the 2nd of December,” cried Gambetta, “they tried to deceive Paris
with the provinces, the provinces with Paris. Steam and telegraphy
were instruments in the hands of the new _régime_. Throughout the
departments ran the announcement, Paris submits. Paris submits? Why,
Paris was assassinated, shot down, cannonaded.”
Then like a defiance resounded the concluding ironical appeal to the
Empire—
“Listen; for seventeen years you have been absolute masters, you have
held France in your power.... Yet you have never dared to place among
the national festivals that 2nd of December!... Well, we claim it,
that anniversary of the 2nd of December. We claim it for ourselves.
We shall never cease to celebrate it. Every year it will be the
anniversary of our dead, until the day when the country, once more
having become the master, shall exact from you the great expiation in
the name of liberty, equality and fraternity.”[128]
After a long deliberation the court pronounced sentence, and all the
accused were condemned. But few thought of them. Gambetta, though he
had failed to obtain his client’s acquittal, was the hero of the hour,
for he had brought a more serious indictment against a far greater
criminal. Fêted and congratulated on every hand, he was conducted to
the famous Restaurant Magny. No false modesty was his. He knew he had
dealt faithfully with the tyrants, and he was not ashamed to own it.
“_Comme je leur ai dit leur quatre vérités_,” he exclaimed.
In Juliette’s salon that night there was wild enthusiasm. Adam and
his friends had heard the speech. They repeated passages of it. “You
must read it,” Adam said to his wife. “But it will not be the same as
having heard it.”
“The 13th of November,” writes Juliette, “was a fatal day for the
Empire.[129] ... The imperial tree had been sapped by the little
Cahors lawyer. It was not that Gambetta’s oratory was so very
exceptional. His power lay in making his ardent soul vibrate to the
emotion of the crowd.”
The Adams had found it well worth their while to postpone their
departure for Bruyères in order to be in Paris at such a time.
Juliette, on her arrival at her villa, was overwhelmed by the
transformation which Adam had worked in it. “_Mon Bruyères_,” she
writes, “_est embelli, transformé joliment à l’intérieur, sans avoir
perdu quoi que ce soit de sa gracieuse et modeste physionomie_.”[130]
Now that in her glorified Bruyères Juliette had three guest-chambers
instead of one, she could receive numerous friends from Paris. During
this winter Garnier-Pagès, one of her husband’s old friends, a man
of “1848,” one of the founders of the Comptoir d’Escompte, came with
his family, and Juliette’s publisher Hetzel. On the Golfe Juan, as at
Paris, Mme. Adam gathered her friends round her; and Bruyères became
a veritable salon, with Prosper Mérimée for its _grand homme_. Of
this illustrious writer, in the evening of his days, Mme. Adam in her
_Souvenirs_[131] paints a striking picture. She draws to the life
his elegant figure, always well put on. He affected grey trousers,
white waistcoats, large soft blue cravats tied in an artistic bow.
She describes his eyeglasses, well posed on _un nez qu’on ne voyait
qu’à lui tant la forme en était particulière_, his wrinkled, careworn
forehead, his thick eyebrows, which gave him a cold, haughty and
somewhat severe air. There was something English about his appearance.
His mother was an Englishwoman, and he loved England. It was an
admirable country, he used to say, where reforms proposed by liberals
are executed by conservatives. This statement, which like most
generalisations is more striking than accurate, was natural to an
observer of British politics so soon after the Reform Bill of 1867.
[Illustration: THE VILLA BRUYÈRES, ON THE GOLFE JUAN, MADAME ADAM’S
RIVIERA HOME]
Each winter Mérimée and Juliette Adam became better friends. He paid
her one of the compliments she appreciated most when he told Dr. Maure
that she had made him understand fraternity.[132]
She enjoyed his conversation immensely. “A talk with Mérimée,” she
writes, “is always full of surprises,[133] so wide is his knowledge
and of a quality so superior.” His eclecticism delighted her. He
belonged to no school, but was ready to appreciate anything that
appealed to him, modern or ancient, idealist or realist, romantic
or classical. His _bête noir_ was exaggeration. He was artistic to
the finger-tips. He detested the photographic method of treating
life and nature. “Every artist at the beginning of his life,” he
would say, “must, I admit, be carried away by passion, by rapture,
but before long he must deny himself any ecstasy which might cloud
his imagination and dim his vision of reality; he must retain of his
passion only so much as is necessary for its description.”
Mérimée, like Juliette’s friend Flaubert, was a heroic worker. He
would not hesitate to rewrite a page ten times. A term erased seemed
to him but “a jumping-off place from which to reach _le mot juste_.”
Mme. Adam highly prized the lessons he gave her on style.
In general conversation he was not at his best. However interesting
the subject might be, he was ill at ease if the speaker did not appeal
to him. He would assume a frigid manner. On the other hand, if the
speaker pleased him, he would hasten to pour forth all the treasures
of his accumulated reflections.
The events of the summer of 1868, and the troubles of _L’Avenir
National_, an opposition newspaper founded in 1865, edited by Peyrat,
and in which Adam had a large financial interest, had prevented
Juliette and her husband from taking any honeymoon immediately after
their marriage. Now, in the spring of 1869, accompanied by Alice, they
took their postponed wedding-tour to Italy. They visited Florence,
then the capital of the Italian kingdom, Milan, Turin and Genoa.
Furnished with useful introductions by Thiers and other friends, they
met many interesting people, Cairoli, the Marquis Alfieri, Nino Bixio,
the Garibaldian soldier, whose brother Alessandro had been so intimate
a friend of Adam. At Florence they rejoiced to meet again the Italian
exiles whom they had known in Paris. Mme. Adam, while admiring
the intense patriotism of the Italians, was grieved to perceive
how Napoléon’s papal policy had alienated them from France. At the
meetings of the Italian Chamber, the opposition’s violent attacks on
France cut her to the heart.
“_C’est pour Adam et moi une grande tristesse_,” she writes. “_Quoi!
tout le sang versé, nos sacrifices, notre amitié, notre dévouement,
notre enthousiasme, à nous, républicains, qui nous à fait accepter
un armistice dans notre lutte contre l’Empire, n’ont servi qu’à nous
faire une ennemi violente de l’Italie._”[134]
Juliette was glad to see her last novel, _L’Education de Laure_,
displayed in the book-shops of Milan. Driving home, along the Corniche
Road, in company with Nino Bixio, they had a memorable journey, to
which we shall refer later.
Arriving in Paris in April, they found the capital in the throes of
preparing for the general election, fixed for the 23rd and 24th of
May—the third election held since the establishment of the Empire,
the two previous had been in 1857 and 1863. But this, remarks Mme.
Adam, was the first election which had been held since the granting
of liberty of public meetings and of the Press, two reforms which had
resulted from Ollivier’s establishment of what is known as l’Empire
Libérale.
Juliette in her salon on the Boulevard Poissonnière found herself
quite as much in the movement as she would have been in the Rue
de Rivoli. From her windows she saw, or imagined she saw, all
manner of wonderful happenings: strange meetings and consultations
after midnight between policemen and _les blouses blanches_, those
socialists, the mistrusted tail of the radical party, whom Gambetta,
in his famous Belleville speech, was accused of humouring. His more
moderate friends thought he had promised too much: tariff and tax
reform, election of all Government functionaries, suppression of
standing armies. “You must cut off this tail of yours,” remonstrated
his anti-socialist supporters. “Cut off my tail,” said Gambetta gaily,
“not as long as I live. I will tie a white sash round it and lead it
into society.”[135]
Gambetta, at the head of _les Jeunes_ was opposing at Belleville
Hippolyte Carnot, that _vieille barbe_ as the heroes of 1848 were
called. Baucel, another of _les Jeunes_ in another Paris constituency,
was successfully opposing Ollivier himself; and the founder of
l’Empire Libérale was driven to a provincial constituency in the
Department of Var. So unpopular was the minister in the capital
that his public meeting at Le Châtelet became a riot, during which
the famous beer-house Dréher was sacked before the police could
effectually intervene.
The election cries of the opposition were “Away with personal
government,” “Away with a standing army and substitute a national
militia.” With the latter neither Juliette nor her husband were in
agreement. Jules Simon in their salon represented this party. And
when Adam argued against him, upholding a standing army, maintaining
that without it a nation is lost, Nefftzer intervened saying, “You
are right both of you. We must have a standing army and a national
militia to defend the country against the German invasion which is
approaching.”[136]
Though many of her friends were standing as candidates, Madame Adam’s
salon continued to be well frequented all through the election. The
guests, however, came later and went away earlier. Occasionally some
one would disappoint her. Jules Ferry, for instance, in one of the
most adroit of notes excused himself at the last moment.
“_Madame_,” he wrote,[137] “_je n’appartiens plus ni à mes amis, ni
à moi-même, ni aux choses gracieuses de la vie.... Or voici qu’une
réunion d’électeurs apparaît à l’horizon, un peu plus farouche que
votre salon. L’électeur est un maître, vous le savez, et nous ne
sommes pas sur un lit de roses; vous m’excuserez donc et vous me
permettrez si ce mercredi soir m’est enlevé, de vous porter mes
excuses un matin._”
At the request of their friends the Adams, as will be seen, had
changed their day from Friday to Wednesday. Throughout the election
Juliette had been full of hope. And the result did not disappoint
her. For, although the Government maintained a majority in the House,
the opposition had won a striking moral victory. The forces of the
opposition now led by Gambetta in the Chamber, had shown their
growing power. Many of its candidates, Rochefort, for example, though
defeated, had obtained a large number of votes. The Empire was visibly
tottering. Napoléon, ill and irresolute, was driven to grant the
reformers concession after concession.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] _Souvenirs_, II. 462-3.
[88] _Propos Littéraires_, 5ième série, 285.
[89] _Souvenirs_, II. 450.
[90] _Souvenirs_, II. 453.
[91] _Ibid._, III. 29.
[92] He had held office in the Provisional Government, had attempted
to stem the tide of insurrection in the summer of 1848, and, having
failed, had retired into private life, occupying himself with the
writing of books and articles on political and economic subjects.
After the war he returned to politics, and was Minister of Foreign
Affairs in 1883.
[93] Quinet and Michelet had both recently published histories of
the Revolution. The appearance of these volumes ended that close
friendship which until then had united them. For each regarded himself
as having said the last word on the subject; and according to Mme.
Adam, who disliked Michelet, the latter could not forgive his sometime
friend for not having mentioned him in his book (see _Souvenirs_, III.
314). Michelet was astonished, he wrote to Quinet, “at this amazing
neglect of one _qui seul avait frayé, les voies_.”
[94] See _post_, 209.
[95] _Souvenirs_, III. 123.
[96] _Souvenirs_, III. 131.
[97] _Ibid._, 133.
[98] Armand Carrel, editor of the _National_, killed in a duel by
Girardin.
[99] See _ante_, 100.
[100] Afterwards President of the French Republic.
[101] Hippolyte, see _ante_, 68.
[102] 1851, at the time of Louis Napoléon’s _coup d’état_.
[103] See _ante_, 76.
[104] _Idées Anti-Proudhoniennes._
[105] See _ante_, 48.
[106] _Souvenirs_, II. 236.
[107] See _ante_, 102.
[108] _Souvenirs_, III. 136.
[109] It was said to have been bombarded during the _coup d’état_ of
December 2, 1851.
[110] _Souvenirs_, III. 249.
[111] _Souvenirs_, III. 193.
[112] _Souvenirs_, III. 251.
[113] _Ibid._, 307.
[114] _Ibid._, 261.
[115] _Ibid._, 363.
[116] _Souvenirs_, III. 364.
[117] _Souvenirs_, II. 373.
[118] _Ibid._, 416.
[119] _Ibid._, III. 309.
[120] Later Prime Minister of France.
[121] _Souvenirs_, III. 311.
[122] _Ibid._, 312.
[123] _Souvenirs_, V. 143, 154, 156, 161.
[124] _Souvenirs_, IV. 309.
[125] _Histoire du Second Empire_, chap. v. p. 412.
[126] _Souvenirs_, III. 315.
[127] _Ibid._, 317.
[128] Pierre de la Gorce, _op. cit._, 418, and the speeches of
Gambetta, published by Joseph Reinach, I. 5-17.
[129] _Souvenirs_, III. 318-19.
[130] _Ibid._, 409-13 _et passim_.
[131] _Ibid._, 412.
[132] _Souvenirs_, III. 412.
[133] _Ibid._, 410.
[134] _Souvenirs_, III. 345.
[135] Pierre de la Gorce, _op. cit._, V. 483.
[136] _Souvenirs_, III. 358.
[137] _Ibid._, 361.