MADAME JULIETTE ADAM
It will be hardly possible ever to write a history of the Third Republic
without mentioning Madame Juliette Adam, the beautiful, clever and
attractive woman whose influence at the end of the nineteenth century,
not only on some of the most important personalities in France but also
on many foreign notabilities, was so considerable. Her efforts and
influence had much to do with the development of the events which
ultimately led to the consolidation of the French Republic, and which,
after having been the object of her most ardent worship, ended by
finding her one of its enemies. Some people are born under a lucky star;
upon them everything smiles, and they can do nothing that fails to turn
out well. Such a being was the lovely Juliette la Messine, who, timid
and still unaware of her own personal attractions, appeared on the
horizon of Paris society at one of the parties given by the Comtesse
d’Agoult. The Countess was “Daniel Stern” in the world of letters, the
mother of Cosima Wagner and Madame Emile Ollivier, and the heroine of
the most lasting romance in the life of the composer Liszt. Madame
d’Agoult, about whom I cannot say much because I have never met her, was
in the late ’fifties a very important personage in Parisian society,
though her own circle had repudiated her since the scandal of her
adventure with Liszt. But though very few women cared to be seen at her
house, most men of note, whether in politics or in the world of letters,
considered it an honour to be asked to her house. She presided over a
salon that dictated the tone in many things, and where she succeeded in
grouping together many celebrities who, perhaps, but for her would never
have had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with each other.
Juliette la Messine, then in the full bloom of her fair beauty, had just
written a book of philosophy and criticism called “Les Idées
anti-Proudhoniennes,” which was a reply to an attack made by Proudhon on
Georges Sand and on Madame d’Agoult herself. She sent a copy of her book
to Daniel Stern, who was very much struck by its virile, lucid
composition, and thinking it was the work of a man who, in order to
disguise his identity, had assumed a woman’s name, wrote in reply to the
author, that she felt surprised at his having taken a feminine
pseudonym, while women generally tried to pass off as men in their
writings. When she saw Mlle. la Messine she was at once attracted by her
peculiar and wonderful charm; a friendship that was only to come to an
end with the life of the Comtesse d’Agoult was at once formed between
the two women, who had a great deal in common, and who were both
enthusiastic, eager to perform noble deeds and to work for the welfare
of humanity. It was also at one of the receptions of Daniel Stern that
Juliette la Messine met for the first time Edmond Adam, whom she was to
marry later on and under whose name she was to reach celebrity.
One of the results of their marriage was the creation of a new salon in
Paris, which very soon became a centre of political activity. It was at
the time when the Republican party, vanquished by the _coup d’état_ of
Napoleon III., by which he had definitely imposed himself and his
dynasty upon a more surprised than terrified France, was beginning to
raise its head again. Thiers, who at that particular moment thought fit
to join the ranks of the enemies of the Empire, was continually
reproaching Edmond Adam for his hesitation to throw himself into the
battle, and was inviting him to work with all his strength for the
overthrow of the Bonapartes, adding, what in fact he did not believe but
he thought it to his advantage to seem to profess, that no government
was possible in France except a Republic. Adam then said to his wife the
following memorable words which she repeats in her memoirs: “I am quite
ready to work for the Republic, more and better than I have done
hitherto, but what can abstentionists like ourselves do for her?”
Husband and wife organised their salon as a meeting place where
adherents of Republican ideas could gather together and exchange their
ideas and opinions. The parties given by Thiers in his hotel in the Rue
St. Georges were generally frequented by the older members of the party,
whilst the younger ones assembled with Laurent Pichat; both young and
old could be met in the house of Madame Adam, who, with all the charm of
her lovely face and the elegance of her graceful manners, made a most
delightful hostess. The first people who assembled around her were for
the most part literary men like Henri Martin, Legouvé, Hetzel the
editor, Gaston Paris, Bixio, Garnier-Pagès, Toussenel, Nefftzer, Texier,
Challemel-Lacour, Jules Ferry, Pelletan--all men well worthy to be
appreciated by her. Some are already forgotten, whilst others will never
be consigned to oblivion by those who follow them on the road of life.
But very soon she tried to draw towards her all the younger forces of
the Republican party, concentrating her attention specially upon
Gambetta. She did not, in the early days, know him, but Adam, who had
met him at a dinner with Laurent Pichat, had spoken to her of him with
an enthusiasm that surprised her the more because he was not generally
addicted to such expansive feelings. In this connection she relates
with humour that she spoke to Hetzel, and asked him to bring to one of
her dinners the young advocate, who had made for himself such a name
already and whose reputation at the Bar was fast becoming considerable,
especially since he had defended Delescluze against the government.
Hetzel screamed with surprise when she proposed it, declaring that she
did not know the man whom she proposed to admit at her hospitable table.
Gambetta, he told her, was a vulgar, common sort of individual, blind of
one eye, dirty and unkempt, with black nails, and walking about in
disreputable clothes which, to add to his uncouth appearance, were never
properly put on or properly fastened. Madame Adam insisted nevertheless.
Her womanly instinct had guessed that if the man in question was really
in possession of the genius attributed to him, it would be easy for him
when once admitted in the houses of civilised people to adopt their
manners and to polish his own. On the other hand, if he failed to notice
the inadequacies of his first education, he would not be the man of
value she had been led to think he could become, and in that case it
would be easy to drop him after this first attempt at drawing him from
the society with which he had hitherto associated. But she wanted to
judge for herself, she persisted with Hetzel, and at last persuaded him
to take her invitation to Gambetta.
The young advocate was at first very much surprised. He knew Edmond
Adam, had vaguely heard he had a wife, but had never troubled to think
about her much, therefore he was rather astonished to find himself the
object of her attention; still he decided to go, saying at the same time
to one of his friends of the Café Procope, where he generally used to
spend his afternoons: “I shall accept; it will be curious to see what
kind of woman Adam’s bourgeoise may be.”
A large and distinguished company had been asked to meet the Republican
orator. Laurent Pichat, Eugène Pelletan, Challemel-Lacour, Jules Ferry,
Hetzel, of course, and, lastly, the Marquis Jules de Lasteyrie, an
intimate friend of Thiers and an ardent Orleanist, who, moreover, was
one of the most elegant men in Paris. The latter had begged hard to be
included in that dinner, as he was excessively interested in Gambetta,
and having arrived a little in advance of the other guests, he said to
Madame Adam that he would repeat all the incidents of the dinner to
Thiers, whom he knew to be very anxious to hear his opinion about “the
young monster,” as he called him.
Gambetta had imagined that he was going to one of those houses where an
utter absence of the conventionalities of life is the order of the day,
and that consequently he would not be required, as it were, even to wash
his hands before making his appearance at the hospitable board to which
he had been bidden. He arrived in one of those indescribable costumes
which are neither evening nor morning dress, with a waistcoat buttoned
high up to the throat and a flannel shirt. He found the whole company in
orthodox evening dress, and his hostess in a lovely velvet costume, out
of which the most beautiful pair of shoulders were looming in their
snowy whiteness. He tried to excuse himself, saying vaguely: “If I had
only guessed.” “You probably would have refused my invitation,” replied
his hostess. “It is not nice of you to say so.”
Everybody felt more or less embarrassed. Lasteyrie, who was always
indulgent with the extravagances of mankind, could not help whispering
into Adam’s ear: “If at least he had donned the blouse of the common
workman, I could have forgiven him, but this kind of get up!” And he
made a gesture of despair.
No woman alive had greater tact than Madame Adam. Seeing the
embarrassment of Gambetta, as well as the look of disgust with which her
other guests observed him, she went up to the Marquis de Lasteyrie, and
in a low voice told him that in order to try and mend matters she was
going to dispossess him from the seat of honour which belonged to him by
right, and to give her arm to Gambetta. “You are quite right,” replied
the Marquis. “If you did anything else, the servants might be tempted to
forget to offer him some soup. And besides, this will allow us to see
whether he understands great things and their meaning.”
Juliette Lambert, to give her her pseudonym in literature, to her
husband’s amazement, walked up to Gambetta, and took his arm to go down
to the dining-room. When they were seated, the Radical leader bent down
towards her ear, and in very humble tones told her that he would never
forget the lesson she had given to him in such a delicate manner. He
understood the meaning of great things, and had emerged to his honour
from a very trying experience.
It was, however, much later that Gambetta became a regular visitor at
the house of Madame Adam. Years had passed since his first introduction
to her, and poor Juliette Lambert had gone through bitter trials that
had left their everlasting impress on her ardent and enthusiastic
nature. The war with all its horrors, the Commune with all its terrors,
had shaken her bright equanimity, and in that generous soul one feeling
had taken the place of almost every other--a deep love for her poor
humiliated country; a passionate desire to see her once more occupying
the proud position from which fate and the mistakes of men had despoiled
her. Later on, when the husband she loved so fondly was snatched away
from her, and when, beside her daughter and the children of the latter,
she found herself with no one to love in the whole wide world, she
attached herself to that one idea and ambition--to revenge the
humiliations of 1870, to get back for that France, to whom all her
energies were devoted, those provinces which she had lost, and to
revenge herself on the conqueror to whom she had owed the shattering of
so many of her brightest dreams.
She had always been the enemy of the Bonaparte dynasty; she could not,
though she was on very good terms with several members of the Orleans
family, reconcile herself to their stepping upon the throne left vacant
by Napoleon III. She had always adored liberty, that of nations as well
as that of individuals, and she imagined that that ideal Republic she
had dreamt of could be brought into existence and would be able to give
back to France her glory and prestige.
This one idea dominated all her actions and inspired all her writings.
She used all the resources of her wonderful intelligence, all the
activity of her remarkable mind, and all her knowledge and her
experience of the world to realise it. She opened once more the doors of
her salon, which had remained closed after the death of Edmond Adam, and
though at the bottom of her heart an inconsolable widow, she forced
herself to present to the glances of others the appearance of a woman
without heartache. Everybody who approached her, even those who did not
share her opinions either in politics or in intellectual and moral
matters, fell under the influence of her charm, and were subjugated by
her enthusiasm and her earnest, ardent words. One could see at a glance
that she was sincere, true--a friend on whom one could always rely, and
an enemy who would always fight loyally. Moreover, her clear mind had
the faculty of looking into the future with an extraordinary
perspicacity, and she seldom was mistaken in her judgments of men or
facts. She it was who for the first time suggested to her friends the
possibility of an alliance with Russia, by which French prestige might
be strengthened. She it was who began working for it at a time when even
wise political men in both countries only smiled when such a thing was
mentioned in their presence.
It has been said that she was an irreconcilable enemy of Germany. In a
certain sense this was true, but there was no preconceived hatred in her
feelings. She detested Germans because she had seen them trampling her
unfortunate country under their feet, because she had owed to them some
of the bitterest hours she had had to go through in her life. Yet she
had no aversion to German culture, and could recognise the great
qualities of the German race, qualities which, perhaps, gave her even
more reasons to detest it. She was above everything else just. Her
character had too much real greatness about it ever to give way to any
mean or petty feeling, even where an enemy was concerned.
When I lived in Paris I used to see her daily. She was then at the
height of her beauty and fame, and political men of all shades used to
crowd to her receptions, and to bow down before her splendid grace and
proud demeanour. She was considered as the real Queen of the Third
Republic, and no important political measure was undertaken by any
member of the government of that day without her having been consulted
about its opportuneness. No one ever regretted having asked her advice
or trusted to the clearness of her judgments; nor could any say that she
had revealed the slightest fraction of all the secrets of state which
had been confided to her.
I do not believe a more discreet person ever lived, and it is a great
deal to that immense and so rare quality that she owed the influence she
managed to acquire with all, without exception, who came into contact
with her. I can talk about it the more easily because on several
different occasions I had the opportunity to convince myself personally
of her discretion. Most certainly among her many qualities I believe it
was the latter that her friends, and among them Gambetta, appreciated
the most in her. The great orator had never forgotten that first dinner
to which she had asked him, and later on, when the fall of the Empire
had drawn them more together, he began, with discretion at first and
with impetuosity at last, to consult her and to confide in her all his
dreams of glory. She grew not only to like him, but to feel for him a
great, deep, true affection, one of those that a woman can only
experience when she has reached middle life, known what the storms of
the heart mean, and, greatest joy of all, felt what it is to be
everything and yet nothing in another man’s life. One can boldly affirm
that it was she who made Gambetta what he became in the later years of
his life, that it was to her he owed the great development of his
fighting qualities, as well as the great dignity of which he gave proofs
in so many important questions, a dignity that in those long bygone
days, when he had appeared with a flannel shirt at the first dinner
given in his honour by Juliette Lambert, no one supposed he could ever
attain. Gambetta, who also could very quickly discover the good and the
bad sides of the people with whom he was thrown into contact,
experienced in time for her a reverence such as he had never imagined he
could feel for any woman in the wide world. He not only admired her
mind, but he also recognised the great superiority which her culture,
apart from everything else, gave her over him, and he soon turned to her
to solve all his doubts, and to be advised as to all that he was to do
to successfully reach the eminence to which he had aspired from the
first day he arrived in Paris, a poor student, with hardly enough money
in his pocket to be able to dine every day.
But, strange to say, when one thinks of the exceptional physical
advantages and charm of Madame Adam, he never for one single moment
allowed himself to pay any banal attentions to her; she perhaps was not
quite so devoid of a nearer feeling of attraction towards him.
In truth, Gambetta placed her so high in his thoughts that it had never
occurred to him to discover that underneath the adviser and counsellor,
to whom he turned for comfort and encouragement at almost every instant
of his life, there could exist a fair, beautiful woman with a womanly
heart and womanly feelings. He did not realise that, in associating
herself with his dreams and his ambitions, she also associated with
them, perhaps even unknown to herself, her own future and her own
existence. Perhaps this misunderstanding, which circumstances and not
their own will had created between them, influenced their relations
towards the end of the life of Gambetta, but, let it be said to the
honour of Madame Adam, she never allowed the ignorance of her charms in
which her friend indulged to influence her friendship for him, and, with
a strength of character such as very few women would have been capable
of, she sacrificed herself to his future and only thought of his
successes. She tried to persuade herself of the fact she had contrived
long ago to impress upon others, i.e. that she was living only for her
child and for her country, and that she was above everything a great
patriot, “une grande française,” and nothing else.
She still believed in the Republic at that period of life when I first
met her. She still hoped that it would bring to her beloved France the
peace and the prosperity she so passionately desired for it. Later on,
however, she was destined to experience in that hope, too, some of the
greatest disappointments of her whole life. For a woman with high ideals
and a great moral aim, as was the case with her, nothing could be
harder to bear than the slow realisation that she had nursed a false
ideal, the conviction that she had worshipped at a wrong altar. And yet
this great trial was not spared to her who had already suffered so much.
Little by little the scales had fallen from her eyes, and she discovered
that personal ambitions, personal greed, and personal intrigues flourish
just as much and just as well, and perhaps even more, under a republic
than under a monarchy. She saw that humanity remains unchangeable,
whilst things undergo many transformations, that bad passions never die,
and that good and virtuous people are always the victims of those who
are their inferiors in moral worth.
I remember one evening that I happened to be alone with Gambetta, at
about the time that he became Prime Minister, we discussed together
Madame Adam. He spoke of her with feelings not only of reverence, but
also with an admiration the more remarkably expressed in that it was
done without the usual enthusiasm which he generally displayed when
talking about things or people who were near to his heart. He told me
that but for her he would certainly never have reached to the political
eminence on which he found himself. We were old friends, and I could
allow myself to touch upon delicate subjects with him; so I ventured to
ask him whether the beauty of Juliette Lambert had ever made an
impression on him. He replied without the slightest hesitation that he
had never thought about it, so perfectly superior she had appeared to
him, intellectually, and so entirely he had put her upon a pedestal
whence he had never once thought that she could come down. I asked him
then brutally why the thought of the great things he could have achieved
together with her, had he made of her the companion of his life, had
never struck him. Gambetta looked at me very closely, then after a few
moments of silence softly said: “I would never have dared to allow my
thoughts to rest upon that idea, I know myself but too well, and I would
not have had the courage to make her unhappy. Believe me, that woman
would never suffer more from anything than from the loss of her
illusions, and she sees in me the man she has created, not the man that
in reality I am.”
I have often thought of these words, of the great Republican leader,
especially when in later years, long after he had entered into eternal
rest, I saw Madame Adam once again on my return to Paris after a long
absence. A great transformation had taken place in her. She had
witnessed that loss of her illusions to which her friend had referred,
and suffered from it just as he had foreshadowed. She had seen her
beloved France not able to come out of the mesh of intrigues and
miseries into which the man who by the force of events had become ruler
had entangled France, and she had realised that her conception of a
Republic, such as she had dreamt of, was an impossibility; that it is
not by changing its form of government a nation rises to greatness and
glory. She had been obliged to assist, powerless to avert it, the
destruction of all the plans which she had made together with those men
who had been her friends, and among whom so many had become her
adversaries, according as the gulf of the opinions that had come to
divide them had grown broader and broader. She had experienced that
grief which is so very acute to a warm, womanly heart such as hers, of
finding that she had no longer the power to influence those who formerly
had cherished the same high ideals that in that beautiful world her
imagination had conjured she had placed before everything else.
Death, too, had robbed her of much that she had leaned upon, both in
France and abroad; she had undergone those fiery trials out of which
noble souls emerge greater, nobler, more valiant and splendid than
before, but under the weight of which vulgar natures are destroyed.
After all these moral struggles and inward battles she had acquired even
more courage, more indulgence, more charity, and more faith in the
Infinite, and in an Eternity to which perhaps she had not given much
attention in the days of her youth, when the world was at her feet and
sovereigns bowed before her inimitable grace. To these consolations her
tired, weary soul turned when everything else had failed her. The
transformation that has taken place in the personality of Juliette
Lambert is one of those phenomena that, when met with, remains always
the subject of the deepest admiration on the part of those who have
watched the change come about, and have followed its various phases.
Politics, that used to be the all-engrossing subject in the life of
Madame Adam, have now dropped to the second plane, and purely
intellectual subjects engross her more. Her affection for her beloved
France, though it remains still the one absorbing passion of her life,
is no longer expressed by the old wild desire to see France revenged
upon her enemies. Her patriotism has assumed proportions that give it
more earnestness, more steadfastness, and thus it makes the greater
impression on others, and carries an authority that passion, when
expressed violently, can never attain. She has obliged strangers to
respect her patriotism, and to see her in that graver, sober light which
alone is worthy of the great patriot that she has always been, of the
woman who in success as well as in disaster has never despaired of the
resources of her country, nor of its power to arise, stronger and more
powerful than it was before, out of disaster and ruin, and, worse evil
than any other, out of the intrigues of unscrupulous men who want to use
her, in order to further their own greed or their own gain.
With that difference Juliette Lambert in her old age has remained what
she was in her youth, a noble, charming woman, kind and affectionate,
with the warmest of hearts and the most generous character. She lives
mostly in the country, in a dear old house, formerly a cloister in those
olden times when a king reigned over France. L’Abbaye du Val de Gyf, as
it is called, is one of those lovely dwellings where everything speaks
of peace and rest, and of the high soul and earnest mind of its owner.
There, among her books and her roses, and her dogs and her birds, she
lives in quietness, and spends her days thinking of the past, and
writing her wonderful reminiscences. There her friends come and see her,
as often as she allows them to do so, there one of her best loved
friends, the unfortunate Queen Amélie of Portugal, has often fled for
consolation, because the closest intimacy unites the fiery Republican
and the daughter of the Bourbons. There Madame Adam forgets her
disillusions, and thinks only of the good things which life has left
her.
The last time I saw her in her beautiful home at Gyf we talked about old
times, and all those hopes of the great things which we both had
expected out of the Franco-Russian alliance. She frankly owned to me
that it had not realised the great hopes that she had trusted it would,
and rather bitterly remarked that “things we yearn after very much never
turn out quite like we have expected they will when they come to be
realised. But then,” she added with a shade of malice, “how very seldom
do we see what we wish for realised in general?”
And thus I take leave of her, after an acquaintance that stretches over
more than a quarter of a century, the same loving, delightful, clever
and kind woman that she has always been, with her serene smile, and
grave, serious eyes that have always looked upon humanity through the
windows of her soul, and never through the spectacles of envy, hatred,
or any of those bad feelings that most human beings indulge in. An
exception she has always stood amongst women, and an exception she will
remain for all those who later on, even when she too has disappeared
from this mortal scene, will read about her, and think what a noble,
beautiful creature she has always proved herself to be.