GAMBETTA’S EGERIA
1871-1878
“_Adam et moi, nous n’avons pas d’autre espoir, pas d’autre culte
que Gambetta. Il est pour nous la personnification même de la
France, l’expression vivante et agissante de notre relèvement, de
nos certitudes républicaines et nationales._”—Juliette Adam.
Mme. Adam’s attitude towards Gambetta passed through three phases.
During the war she regarded him as the incarnation of national
defence, after the defeat of 1871 as _l’Homme de la Revanche_;
finally, when _la Revanche_ was delayed she grew first impatient and
then disappointed with her former hero. It is with the two first of
these phases that we shall deal in this chapter.
As we have seen, Gambetta had already been admitted to Mme. Adam’s
salon before the war. But from the opening of the siege until a year
after the peace they met but seldom if at all. After Gambetta’s
courageous balloon ascent from Paris, and his safe, if hazardous,
landing in a wood near Montdidier, all through those darkest days of
_l’Année Terrible_, Juliette Adam derived almost her only consolation
and hope from Gambetta’s dispatches. The energy he was deploying
in his country’s service made her pulse throb with confidence and
courage. The news brought by carrier pigeon into the besieged capital
of the armies he was creating—Faidherbe’s in the north, Chanzy’s on
the Loire, Bourbaki’s in the east—seemed almost to compensate for the
indecision and inaction of the defenders of Paris.
“On the 24th of November,” she wrote,[254] “this morning, I am mad
with joy, mad with hope. I read and read again Gambetta’s dispatch
to Jules Favre. I bless the great patriot who sends it to us. If
Gambetta, a republican, were to save our France! When others doubt him
and his valour, I do not doubt.”
“Why, we have an army on the Loire two hundred thousand men strong! In
a week we shall have another hundred thousand: two hundred thousand
recruits are clamouring to be on the march. At last!... Long live
France! ... and she will live, our _patrie française_. It will not be
so easy to tread upon her. Frenchmen will be found to defend her, to
prevent the invader from pillaging, from defiling her from one end
of the land to the other. It seems to me that all Paris should thank
Gambetta. I write to him.”
And when the superb movement of French energy, with which Gambetta
alone had been able to inspire the provinces, seemed to Juliette Adam
to have been nullified by the capital’s submission, she followed her
hero more fervently than ever in his advocacy of war to the bitter
end. She deplored the mistrust and suspicion with which the other
members of the September Government regarded _ce fou furieux_, as they
called him. She deplored his resignation on the 5th of February, 1871,
of the office of Minister of the Interior.
Gambetta’s colleagues accused him of ruling France by terror, and
endeavouring to make himself a dictator. To the statesman whom
Bismarck regarded as the most superb organiser in Europe, no portfolio
was assigned in the government Thiers was forming at Bordeaux.
So completely out of sympathy with the National Assembly and its
monarchical majority did Gambetta find himself that, after the signing
of the preliminaries of peace and after he had taken part in that
memorable protest of the Alsace-Lorraine deputies against the session
of those provinces, he resigned his seat and for some months withdrew
from political life.
On his return to it, in the summer of 1871, he found his friends, the
Adams, in Paris, and Juliette once more the mistress of a brilliant
and influential political salon. No sooner had she re-established
herself in the Maison Sallandrouze than her friends began to gather
round her once more.
The social life of the metropolis was gradually being resumed. But it
took at least a year before anything like the old brilliance revived.
The first sign of that revival was when Parisian women began to care
about clothes. “_Les femmes du siège_,” writes Mme. Adam, “_qui ne
savaient plus ce que c’était que s’habiller, s’occupaient à nouveau de
leurs robes_,” of course she adds, “_moi la première_.”[255]
Now once again her Wednesday dinner-parties afforded an occasion for
_grande toilette_. On other evenings any of the Adams’ friends, who
happened to be passing along the boulevard, were welcome to come
up just as they were. Among those evening callers was more than
one well-known Englishman. Mr. Richard Whiteing, in his book _My
Harvest_,[256] paints a vivid picture of Mme. Adam’s salon. He signals
her out as one of those republican women who were reconstructing the
salon on a Republican basis.
The great subjects of discussion on those Wednesday and Friday
evenings were Gambetta’s speeches. Long passages from them were
recited[257] by Spuller, the deputy who led the most moderate section
of Gambetta’s supporters.[258]
Then one day in June the orator himself arrived. He had asked to spend
the evening alone with his hosts. Adam had not seen him since the eve
of his departure from Bordeaux.
“_Cette soirée_,” writes Juliette,[259] “_a été longue et d’un interêt
passionant_.” While not entirely approving of their friend’s attitude,
of his sympathy with the Commune, for example, the Adams congratulated
him on his recent speech at Bordeaux.
“The level-headedness, the wisdom of that speech,” Adam told Gambetta,
“confounded your enemies. You may now group around you a party
recruited from the left and including a few members of the left
centre. Juliette and I will be able to contrive for you a certain
understanding with the left centre on the great questions of national
policy.”
These words foretold what was to be the rôle of Mme. Adam’s salon in
the days of its greatest brilliance. As the rallying ground for the
various parties of republican opposition to the reactionary majority
in the Assembly, it rendered important service, not only to Gambetta,
but also to the President (Thiers) in his difficult task of keeping
the peace between the discordant elements of his nondescript and
essentially provisional Government. Later, after Thiers’ resignation,
during the days of the _République Militante_ between 1873 and 1876,
Mme. Adam’s salon continued to hold together various sections of the
republican party: the left centre, the extreme left and the republican
union, which consisted entirely of Gambetta’s friends. “Our house,”
writes Mme. Adam, “became very useful to Gambetta. There he met
artists whom he charmed, financiers whom he reassured, political
adversaries whom he enrolled.”[260] Sir Sidney Colvin, who[261] in
those years was often in Paris for two or three weeks at a time,
used generally to go to her evening receptions, of which he has a
very distinct recollection. He remembers Mme. Adam as the recognised
Egeria of Gambetta, as very cultivated and intelligent. Obviously she
had been very beautiful; she was still extremely handsome, and above
all things full of graciousness and tact and good-will—the grace and
the good-will of a cultivated _bourgeoise_ accustomed to charm and
determined to exercise her charm for a cause she had at heart. Sir
Sidney used to find it interesting to watch her moving about, the only
lady at her receptions, from some old dry doctrinaire of the Dufaure
group to some fiery municipal Radical from the south; among deputies
of all shades, wide asunder as the poles in tradition and feeling
and temperament, and to see her throwing one after another into good
humour by sheer womanly cordiality and grace.
Indeed, all who have seen Mme. Adam entertaining her guests will agree
that she possesses the true salon manner, and that she is mistress of
that enviable art of talking so as to make others talk.
Had it not been for his admiration of Gambetta, Edmond Adam would have
thrown in his lot entirely with that section of the republican party
known as the left centre. “As it was,” writes his wife, “he was to
serve as a hyphen (_à trait d’union_) between the left centre, the
republican union and the extreme left. There were those who thought
that Juliette was chiefly responsible for her husband’s sympathies
with the extreme wing of the republican party. But this she will not
admit,[262] though she does not deny that her special friends were
radicals, while Adam’s were moderates. Thiers himself said to Adam one
day, “_Quand votre femme rougit, bleuissez”_. And it is obvious that
Juliette with her impulsive nature not infrequently lost patience with
the _grandes ombres élyséennes_, as she dubbed Laurent Pichat, Victor
Hugo, Louis Blanc, and those other _vieilles barbes_ of 1848 who were
the mainstay of the left centre. “For them,” she writes, “_République_
is a solemn and pompous word. The young, with Gambetta at their
head, are more practical and utilitarian.” They desired a government
adapted to the phase of democracy to which France had then attained.
Nevertheless, there was nothing commonplace or even opportunist in
those bright visions of the future Republic which Gambetta painted
in his speeches. “Half smiling,” writes Mme. Adam, “he came straight
to my Athenian Republic.[263]... He desired a France withdrawn into
herself in order to heal her wounds. But when he spoke of her rôle
after this enforced period of retirement, then he had a vision of
her future prestige, when the army, chief symbol of the country’s
revival, should be strengthened, glorified every day in order to raise
_la patrie_ from defeat. Then he saw numberless schools educating
the people—the French schoolmaster playing as prominent a part as
the German schoolmaster—secularism dissipating all the darkness of
clericalism, liberating thought, correcting the errors of the past,
until France, grown great by misfortune, astonished the whole world by
her resurrection.”
Mme. Adam used to complain that in Paris during the first years of the
Republic, while the National Assembly continued to sit at Versailles,
anything like true sociability was impossible. And it was true that
poor “capitulating Paris” was somewhat shorn of her brightest social
glories. The whole of political society precipitated itself upon
Versailles. On the days when some great oration was expected from
Thiers, Dufaure, Batbie or Gambetta, the railway platform at the
Gare St. Lazare was thronged, and the carriages in the Versailles
train so crowded that it was almost impossible to find a place.
Versailles itself was completely transformed. Never since its royal
days had it seen such life. It is true that the dull stream of
black coats flowing along its streets made one long for the gay,
beplumed, bejewelled courtiers of _le Roi Soleil_. Nevertheless,
the political whirl of the place was much greater than ever during
_l’ancien régime_. Constituents waylaid deputies in the streets and
poured into their impatient ears whole _cahiers_ of grievances. At the
luncheon and dinner-hour the Hôtel des Réservoirs was packed. It was
necessary to reserve tables days in advance. And how delightful it was
to sit and sip one’s coffee in the delicious freshness of the park
after a hot summer afternoon passed in the close atmosphere of the
parliament chamber. In that charming verandah, which many of us know
so well, ministers and deputies met together, while the gay frocks
and the still gayer laughter of their women friends enlivened the
scene. Centuries seemed to have passed since the evil days of _l’Année
Terrible_. Nowhere was the miraculous recuperative force of France
more striking, never had political society more _entrain_ than during
those parliament years at Versailles.
Of that sparkling world Mme. Adam was one of the brightest adornments,
one of the gayest _flashers_, as Fanny Burney would have said. Always
perfectly gowned—_elle portrait admirablement la toilette_ was the
opinion of every one—she never missed an important _séance_. After
having dined at the Hôtel des Réservoirs in the evening, she would be
at the Gare St. Lazare at nine the next morning; and surrounded by a
coterie of eminent politicians, who were all in love with her, would
make the journey to Versailles and take her accustomed place in a box
of the theatre of the Château, which now served as a meeting-place
for the Assembly. It had been built by Gabriel as an opera-house
for Louis XIV. While what had been the stage, now shut off from the
main building, had been converted into a lobby, a mahogany rostrum,
approached by a double staircase of six steps, communicated to the
theatre of that most autocratic of monarchs something of the air
of a modern parliament house, and the constant movement among the
seven hundred and twenty-eight representatives of the Republic, the
perpetual lifting of the heavy red velvet _portières_ which led into
the lobby, suggested a political instability quite out of harmony with
the traditions of _le Grand Monarque_.
Among the most striking figures in the Assembly hall were some of
Juliette’s greatest friends. One might easily recognise the Orleanist
Marquis de Lasteyrie by his green eye-shade, M. Jules Simon by his
student’s stoop, M. Dufaure by his brown frock-coat, M. Littré by his
blue velvet skull-cap, M. Garnier-Pagès by his famous _faux col_, and
close by him that “Bull of Bashan of politics,” M. Gambetta,[264] by
his leonine head and the half-recumbent attitude in which he listened
attentively to every word of the debate.
Gambetta’s first appearance at Versailles in July 1871 was a great
political event. At a by-election he had been chosen by three
departments, Bouches-du-Rhone, Var and Seine. “The day of his first
speech,” writes Mme. Adam, “was a day of profound emotion for us,
and of great curiosity for others, who flocked to see the _fou
furieux_.” In those days Gambetta, though only three-and-thirty,
was already threatened with that stoutness which, in a man of his
stature, required all the dignity of his strong personality to carry
off. He had not yet, moreover, been taken in hand by Adam’s tailor.
His black frock-coat, white drill trousers and panama hat made him
appear something of a Tartarin. The unsuitability of his attire would
sometimes diminish the effect of his orations.
On the July day when this political Bohemian, emerging from his five
months’ retirement, suddenly burst upon the cultivated audience at
Versailles, his power of utterance, his energy of thought, and above
all his unexpected moderation carried every one away.
“He roared” (_il a rugi_), said the wife of a conservative deputy
who sat next to Mme. Adam. “Yes,” replied Juliette, “he is a lion.”
The moment was one when the bishops of France, led by Monseigneur
Dupanloup, were petitioning the French Chamber to restore the Pope’s
temporal power. Gambetta, while unchaining all the fervour of his
anti-clerical wrath, nevertheless supported the government in its
motion that the question, instead of being discussed by the Assembly,
should be referred to the Minister of Foreign Affairs. His support of
Thiers, whom he and his friends were supposed to regard as nothing but
_un vieillard sinistre_, took every one by surprise. Coming home in
the train Adam, who was at once the friend of Thiers and of Gambetta,
was bombarded with questions—
“Come, Adam, you must be in the know! Are they in agreement? If so,
you must be acting as intermediary between them.”[265]
But Adam shrugged his shoulders and replied: “Alas! I only wish it
were so. But it is very far from being the case now, or likely to be
in the future.”
Indeed, Thiers, throughout the difficult months which were to follow,
was to regard as a serious obstacle in his path Gambetta’s eloquent
advocacy of _la Revanche_, which so delighted Mme. Adam. For at
that time Thiers was engaged in those delicate negotiations with
Bismarck which culminated in March 1873, in the paying off of the
five milliards war indemnity, and in the consequent liberation of
France from the Prussian occupation almost two years before the time
stipulated by the Treaty of Frankfort.
This magnificent consummation, far surpassing the wildest hopes of
the most sanguine, Thiers beheld constantly endangered by Gambetta’s
_revanchard_ fervour. The President trembled when he heard that to
a deputation from Alsace Gambetta had declared that if ever France
descended to such a depth of impiety as to put away from her the
image of bleeding, mutilated Alsace, then and then alone might
Alsatians give way to despair.[266] “This is not the moment for such
a declaration,” exclaimed Thiers. “Let him wait. Let him wait.” The
President was constantly entreating Adam to implore his friend to be
moderate. His ideas, his speeches in the provinces, were impressing
the Germans in a manner most unfavourable to the negotiations which
were proceeding.[267] Never did the Great Tribune appear to Thiers
more of a _fou furieux_ than during the autumn and winter of 1872
and ’73, when the _commis voyageux de la politique_ (the political
commercial traveller), as he liked to call himself, was going up
and down France delivering that famous series of speeches, intended
to rouse the provinces to a great burst of republican ardour, which
should dissolve the reactionary National Assembly, get rid of the
temporising Thiers, and bring in Gambetta and his friends.
Mme. Adam, despite her respect for Thiers, deeply sympathised with
Gambetta’s aims as he declared them in those celebrated orations.
Merely to read Gambetta’s speeches was to lose their finest flavour.
Unlike the speeches of our own Edmund Burke and John Bright, they will
never be classics. His eloquence, for its full appreciation, so I have
heard Mme. Adam say, required the magic of his presence, the thrill
of his sonorous voice, the dramatic emphasis of his gestures, and the
inspiration of his whole presence.
On returning from Venice to Bruyères in the autumn of 1872, she and
Adam read the first reports of these speeches in the newspapers.
Vigilance and patience were the two qualities Gambetta most fervently
enjoined on his compatriots. And vigilance for him involved two
all-important reforms: the reorganisation of the army on the lines of
universal military service, and compulsory education. _Chaque citoyen
soldat et instruit_ was his device.[268] Indeed, it is largely to the
Great Tribune that we owe that systematic teaching of patriotism in
French schools which in the present war is bearing such rich fruit.
“Every child in our elementary schools,” said Gambetta, “must be
taught that a cause exists to which it must give everything, sacrifice
everything, its life, its future, its family, and that this cause is
France.”
These words Mme. Adam and her husband read over and over again.
“Yes,” exclaims Juliette, “we must sacrifice ourselves for France; we
must keep nothing back, and we must also serve him who utters these
patriotic words,[269] and who has never despaired of his country.”
With Gambetta’s requirement that national education must be as
secular as the state itself the Adams were also in agreement. While
every religion should be assured of absolute liberty, Gambetta
declared at Havre, “the state must not identify itself with any
dogma or philosophy. If such questions are admitted to be within
its competency, then it becomes at once arbitrary, persecuting,
intolerant.”
With the importance Gambetta attached to the army the Adams were in
perfect sympathy. All three they shared the President’s emotion when,
at the close of the Longchamps review in the summer of 1871, _le petit
bourgeois_, descending from his seat, grasped the hands of Marshal
MacMahon as he marched past at the head of the army he had reformed,
and in a voice choked by a sob murmured “Thank you.” “Gambetta,”
wrote Juliette, “rejoices at the success of the review. He adores the
army.”[270]
During their first talk with Gambetta after his return to political
life the Adams had advised their friend to found a republican
newspaper. “_Il vous faut un grand journal_,” said Adam.[271] “Would
it not be possible,” asked Gambetta, “to revive _L’Avenir National_?”
Founded in the middle sixties, largely financed by Adam, with his wife
for one of its regular contributors, and her friend Peyrat as editor,
the paper had at first been a brilliant success. Then it fell on evil
days, and in order to keep it going at all, Adam had to subscribe
large sums. Having been hard hit by this earlier journalistic
adventure, Adam did not feel himself in a position to provide funds
for a second. He suggested, however, that Gambetta might apply to
other ardent republicans, to Dorian and to that fervent Alsatian,
Scheurer-Kestner, for example. While for collaborators, he could not
do better than appeal to Challemel-Lacour, Spuller, Ranc, Paul Bert,
etc.
The outcome of this conversation was the foundation of _La République
Française_. “_Grandissime évènement_,” writes Mme. Adam, “_La
République Française a paru_.” Gambetta, assisted by Spuller, was
its editor-in-chief, Challemel-Lacour its literary editor, Proust
was to contribute articles on foreign politics. The new paper’s
office was, of course, in the Rue Croissant.[272] Where else but in
that most famous journalist street in Paris could an influential
newspaper appear! And close at hand, only round the corner, in the
Boulevard Poissonnière was the Adams’ flat. So, equally of course,
when the editors’ work was done and they required some relaxation
after their literary labours, they were always welcome to talk and
dominoes in the hospitable Maison Sallandrouze. “The workshops of the
_République Française_ will be in the Rue Croissant, the Salon in
the Maison Sallandrouze,” writes Mme. Adam.[273] The paper’s success
justified all the hopes inspired by the eminence of its editors and
contributors.
In every detail of its organisation Mme. Adam took a deep interest.
And she was delighted when Spuller satisfied her curiosity by
describing how the office was worked: how Challemel arrived at five
o’clock, looked through the dispatches and then summoned the various
editors to discuss the day’s events; how barely had the conversation
begun when Challemel saw, in a flash, what would be the subject of his
own article; how Isambert, the leader-writer, invariably came late;
how Paul Bert, who contributed articles on science, was punctuality
itself.
_La République Française_, as may well be imagined, figured large
in the conversation when in the spring of 1874 its three directors,
Gambetta, Spuller and Challemel, visited Bruyères.
Gambetta stayed there a week, going over occasionally to visit his
parents and sister, who were then living at Nice. Mme. Adam had made
their acquaintance some time earlier. She found them excellent people
of the shop-keeping class. Mme. Gambetta, a Frenchwoman of _la bonne
bourgeoisie_, but with no dowry to speak of, had, as we have said,
married a grocer of Genoese origin, who was then in business at
Cahors. But when Mme. Adam first made the family’s acquaintance they
were living at Nice. The household consisted of Gambetta’s father
and mother, a widowed sister, Benedetta, her little boy Léon, and a
servant, who, having entered the Gambettas’ service at thirteen, was
regarded as one of the family. Gambetta’s aunt, the famous “Tata,” had
followed her nephew to Paris. His mother, Mme. Adam could see at a
glance, lived, moved and had her being in her celebrated son. She was
proud to relate how before his birth she had consulted a soothsayer,
a somnambulist, who had declared her about to be the mother of a man
who would govern France. Gambetta’s relatives remained Mme. Adam’s
life-long friends. They frequently visited Bruyères. She helped them
in various ways, and at Gambetta’s request arranged a second marriage
for his widowed sister, who became Mme. Léris; and when she is in the
south of France Mme. Adam never fails to go and see her. Mme. Léris is
now living at Cahors, in what was formerly a monastic dwelling. She
is surrounded by relics of her famous brother, trophies presented
to him on great public occasions, which contrast strangely with the
ecclesiastical fitments of the house.
One day in 1915, when I arrived at Gif, I found Mme. Adam reading a
letter she had just received from Gambetta’s sister. This curious,
original and highly entertaining document I was permitted to read.
It showed plainly that though all the family money had been spent on
the son’s education, by no means all the gifts had been showered upon
him, for a plentiful dower of wit, common sense and originality has
evidently fallen to the lot of Mme. Benedetta.
But here we are anticipating. We must leave Mme. Léris and go back to
the year 1874, when her illustrious brother was visiting Bruyères.
Mme. Adam found Gambetta as delightful a guest as George Sand. She, by
the way, was one of his bitterest foes. She regarded him as nothing
but a windbag, _un simple utilisateur_.[274]
Gambetta’s voracious appetite, challenging comparison with that of
the hero of his favourite author, Rabelais, did full justice to the
good cheer which Mme. Adam never fails to put before her guests.
He ate well, he drank well, and he enjoyed, to the full, all the
picnics and the excursions which were planned for his entertainment,
even the sailings in the barque named after one of his arch-enemy’s
masterpieces, _La Petite Fadette_, and which ought, if there had been
any consistency in the cosmos, to have foundered and shipwrecked one,
at any rate, of its passengers.
Gambetta’s week at Bruyères afforded opportunities for many
serious discussions. And although the friends were on the whole in
perfect accord, we may, in the accounts Mme. Adam gives of these
conversations, discern a difference of opinion, slight apparently,
yet in reality fundamental, which, though at first a mere rift, was
to widen into a chasm and finally to separate them. Mme. Adam even
then began to see that the Republic of Gambetta’s dreams was not
so Athenian as she thought. Between her aristocratic ideas and his
radicalism there was a pronounced difference. She wanted to see the
masses led by the _élite_. For Gambetta there was to be no _élite_:
the masses were to be educated to guide and govern themselves. “Then
we shall sink to their level,” prophesied Juliette. “No, we shall
merely stretch out our hands to them,” was Gambetta’s reply.[275]
That spring visit to Bruyères was repeated in the following winter
(December, 1874) and many times afterwards. Gambetta would arrive
tired, worn-out by his political battles and by his electoral
campaigns. But he, like Challemel-Lacour and many other exhausted
politicians, never failed to find Bruyères _La Villa du Bon Repos_.
Perfect restfulness was the order of the day. Lunch was deferred
until two, so that the tired guest might sleep till one. Even the
house-dog, “Modeste,” was banished to the gardener’s cottage for fear
his barkings might disturb the great man’s slumbers. Everything was
devised to divert his mind from politics: plays, concerts and those
charades in which his hostess excels even to-day in her eighty-first
year. During excursions and picnics not a word so much as bearing on
politics was permitted to be spoken. Against the crowds of supporters,
admirers and curiosity-mongers who would have invaded his solitude his
host and hostess protected him with _une energie farouche_.[276] But
occasionally not even their devotion could prevent his being compelled
to make a speech in the neighbourhood, or on one occasion from the
balcony of Bruyères itself. Certain reactionary newspapers did not
scruple to attribute a political significance to Gambetta’s visits
to Bruyères. They hinted that Marshal MacMahon’s[277] government
regarded with disapproval and had even made a raid on one of these
_conciliabules_ in order to detect and denounce a civil servant who
was present.[278]
In the intervals of these visits, and while Mme. Adam was at Bruyères,
Gambetta, despite his multifarious occupations and interests, found
time to keep her _au courant_ with affairs in Paris by long letters.
“He made his Sévigné,” as his friend expressed it, in a delightful
manner. At the length of his letters the Adams marvelled. In these
lively pages he discussed in detail his own opinions and those of
others of the political situation at home and abroad. No one who is
interested in Gambetta should neglect to read this correspondence.
These letters show how serviceable was Mme. Adam to her friend and to
his party when conservative machinations were placing the Republic in
great jeopardy. The year 1875 was a critical year for the Republic.
That constitution, which was to set it on a permanent basis, was
then being debated in the National Assembly. The President’s powers
were being defined, also his relations to the legislative body, now
consisting of a lower house, la chambre des députés, and an upper, the
senate, of which Adam became a member. The lively discussion of all
these matters, which took place in Mme. Adam’s salon, she reproduces
in her _Souvenirs_. To the disappointment of republicans, it appeared
throughout the three following years that this constitution had not
placed the Republic out of danger. More than once the conservatives
seemed on the point of substituting for it some kind of monarchical
_régime_.
The Republic’s greatest danger was in the spring and summer of 1877,
when MacMahon, by what is known as his _coup d’état_ of _le seize
Mai_, brought in a conservative ministry. At that time Mme. Adam was
passing through the deep waters of personal bereavement. Edmond Adam
died in May. But before his death he had been able to render valuable
service to the republican cause by helping to unite the various
sections of the republican party, _les vieilles barbes_ of 1848,
the moderates who supported Thiers and the extremists who were led
by Gambetta. The Adams brought about a meeting between Gambetta and
Thiers. _Le fou furieux_ and _le vieillard sinistre_ found themselves
called upon by the gravity of the political situation to sink their
differences, and to unite their forces in opposition to MacMahon’s
reactionary Government. This reconciliation practically assured the
triumph of the republican cause. Adam had also been able to sell very
advantageously a newspaper which Gambetta had recently founded, _La
Petite République_. And the proceeds of this sale, so Gambetta himself
admitted, furnished him with the sinews of war for his political
campaign.
On the evening of Adam’s funeral his friend the ex-President Thiers,
who himself had but three months to live, dragged his fourscore years
up Mme. Adam’s staircase. “It was his wish and it is mine,” she said
to her visitor, “that I should continue his life in my own.”
“I will help you in every way I can,” said Thiers.[279] Then he went
on to impress upon her the importance of uniting their forces to win
victory for the cause to which Adam had devoted his life.
There lay upon the table, among the numerous letters of sympathy Mme.
Adam had received, one from Émile de Girardin. In the days of Mme.
d’Agoult’s salon they had been great friends; but they ceased to meet
when Juliette married Adam. He, it will be remembered, could never
forgive Girardin for having killed in a duel Armand Carrel, his friend
and collaborator on the _National_. Now Girardin wrote: “Adam in his
life would not permit me to love him, will you permit it now he is
dead?” “What am I to do?” Mme. Adam asked Thiers. “Let him come,” was
Thiers’ advice. “In your salon, Girardin will feel that he is absolved
from the guilt of Carrel’s death.... Moreover, you owe it to Adam to
fill that vacancy in our ranks which his loss has created.”
Mme. Adam acted on her friend’s advice: she received Girardin, who
became henceforth a constant habitué of her salon, and one of the most
valuable assets of that Republican party from which hitherto he had
held aloof. “Girardin is detested and at times is detestable,” wrote
Mme. Adam, “but his friendship is the most faithful and courageous I
have ever known.”[280]
Many another recruit did Mme. Adam’s charming persuasiveness enlist
on the side of the opposition. The republican leaders were constantly
appealing to her to see what she could do with first one, then
another. One evening Gambetta said to her: “You have brought us
Girardin; you have removed Raoul Duval from hostile influences; you
are preserving for us the loyalty of many wavering friends; you are
enrolling so many recruits, that now I ask you to do a very difficult
thing—to attract Gallifet to our group.”[281] Needless to say,
Gallifet was won over.
[Illustration: JULIETTE ADAM (JULIETTE LAMBERT), 1879]
Throughout that critical summer Mme. Adam, despite her personal grief,
followed in breathless expectation and with feverish interest every
development of political affairs. The conservatives, dismayed by the
large republican majority returned in 1876, persuaded MacMahon to
dissolve the Chamber in the following June. They also brought pressure
to bear upon the President so as to induce him to manipulate the
new elections. But all these reactionary efforts availed nothing. “We
went out 363, we shall return 400,” said Gambetta of the Republican
deputies, and though this prediction was not entirely fulfilled the
Republican majority remained a substantial one, only thirty-three
seats were lost. On the night of the 14th of October, when the results
of the election were coming in, Mme. Adam was at the office of _La
République Française_ in the _salon des tapisseries_.[282] Through
the open door she could hear Gambetta calling out the names of the
elected. One of Gambetta’s secretaries, the brilliant Joseph Reinach,
then a youth of twenty-one, now and again came into the salon and
confirmed what she had overheard.
Two months earlier, at the urgent request of Thiers and Gambetta,
she had reopened her salon and resumed her Wednesday and Friday
dinner-parties. Now for some days after this triumphant election she
had received her friends every evening. Gambetta had declared his
readiness to lead the 330 republican deputies into the very heart of
the citadel. Somehow or other the conservative ministers must be got
rid of. They on their part were trying to persuade MacMahon to carry
out another _coup d’état_. Gambetta and some of his friends were
resolved in such an event to appeal to force. A discussion on this
subject took place in Mme. Adam’s salon.[283] There, one evening,
Girardin announced: “Fortou is preparing his _coup d’état_.” Fortou
was Minister of the Interior in the _seize Mai_ Cabinet. “Voisin
(Préfet de Police) has told me,” continued Girardin, “that at any
moment he may receive orders to arrest us all. He will not do so; he
will send in his resignation. But on the day of that resignation we
may all be arrested. And no doubt they will select one of Mme. Adam’s
evenings for the raid.”
“Very well,” replied the Admiral Jauréguiberry, “we must prepare to
defend ourselves.”
“With arms?” inquired Girardin.
“Why, of course,” replied the Admiral briefly.
“I was disappointed,” writes Mme. Adam, “to discover the timidity of
some who were present. I became furious and cried out: ‘After all, one
risks nothing worse than death in defending oneself.’
“My two hands were seized by General Billot and shaken violently, with
an exclamation of ‘Bravo, comrade!’ which made me very proud.”
It was an amplification of this scene, doubtless, which caused the
appearance in one of the newspapers of an article entitled “Attack on
La Maison Sallandrouze.”
Happily, however, the expected raid never took place, for civil strife
was averted. MacMahon, far from arresting Mme. Adam’s friends, called
on them to form a government. The Dufaure Cabinet came into office in
December 1877.
Most of the new ministers were habitués of Mme. Adam’s salon. The new
Minister of Public Works, M. de Freycinet,[284] was Gambetta’s rival
in her friendship. While for her Friday dinner-parties the Great
Tribune in consultation with his hostess chose such fellow-guests as
were likely to serve _ce pouvoir occulte_, which this statesman out of
office was beginning to exercise, the Wednesday dinners were known as
“The Freycinet Evenings.”
Mme. Adam’s friendship with M. de Freycinet has endured to the present
day. Already, in the middle seventies, “so bleached,” writes Sir
Sidney Colvin, “as to be known as _la souris blanche_,” he has lived
to be a member of the War Cabinet of 1916.
Mme. Adam’s widowhood was still young when people began to speak of
her re-marriage. “Several times over,” she writes, “rumour had married
me to Gambetta.” Of another charming and wealthy Republican widow,
Mme. Arnaud de l’Ariège, the same report was circulated. “_Chacune
son tour_,” said Mme. Adam, laughing, to her supposed rival. And Mme.
Arnaud replied: “Yes, but we know too well where Gambetta’s affections
are fixed to believe any gossip about his marriage unless it should be
to Mlle. L——”[285]
Far from becoming more intimate, as we shall see in the next chapter,
Juliette Adam and Gambetta were now beginning to disagree. These
differences and other reasons made her think of leaving Paris before
her accustomed time. “As I emerge from my mourning,” she writes,
“more than one among my friends begins to regard me rather as a woman
than a widow.”[286] She was planning a new novel, _Grecque_; and in
order to study a suitable background she resolved to visit Naples.
How strained her relations with Gambetta were becoming was proved by
their farewell. “It would have been better for me had you started a
few weeks earlier,” said her friend. “Ah! if you had been able to play
Napoléon, you would have been delighted to give me _un petit air de
Mme. de Staël_,” she retorted.[287]
FOOTNOTES:
[254] _Souvenirs_, IV. 286-7.
[255] _Souvenirs_, V. 276.
[256] p. 140.
[257] _Souvenirs_, V. 163.
[258] The extremists were led by Ranc, who was a much more sincere
admirer of the Great Tribune.
[259] _Souvenirs_, V. 165.
[260] _Souvenirs_, V. 166.
[261] I am greatly indebted to Sir Sidney Colvin for having taken the
trouble to send me these reminiscences, and for permitting me to use
them.
[262] _Souvenirs_, V. 144-269.
[263] _Ibid._, I. 169.
[264] _Souvenirs_, V. 183.
[265] _Souvenirs_, V. 185.
[266] _Ibid._, 283.
[267] _Ibid._, 383.
[268] Gambetta’s speech at Havre. See Hanotaux, _Hist. Contemporaine_,
I. 406.
[269] _Souvenirs_, I. 278.
[270] _Souvenirs_, V. 173.
[271] _Ibid._, 167.
[272] Here are published to-day the _Echo de Paris_, _L’Intransigeant_
and many other well-known journals. It was in a café at the corner of
this street that Jaurès was assassinated in 1914.
[273] _Souvenirs_, V. 214.
[274] _Souvenirs_, V. 304.
[275] _Souvenirs_, V. 76.
[276] _Ibid._, VI. 212.
[277] MacMahon had succeeded Thiers as President of the French
Republic in May 1873.
[278] _Souvenirs_, VI. 92.
[279] _Souvenirs_, VI. 473.
[280] _Ibid._, VII. 5.
[281] _Ibid._, 49.
[282] _Souvenirs_, VII. 6-7.
[283] _Ibid._, VII. 78.
[284] M. de Freycinet’s two volumes of Mémoires should be read by all
who are interested in this period.
[285] _Souvenirs_, VII. 245.
[286] _Ibid._, 185.
[287] _Souvenirs_, VII. 187.