LEON GAMBETTA
Without being an intimate friend of Leon Gambetta, I used nevertheless
to see him very often, and there existed between us one of those close
relationships which sometimes draw together people whose opinions are
totally different. I had first met him before the war, when he had not
reached the fame which ultimately became his. I admired him more than I
liked him, and to tell the truth he never was fully in sympathy with me,
but it was impossible to see him often and not to be struck by his
immense intelligence, and especially by the extraordinary powers of
assimilation which distinguished him.
I have already mentioned that at the beginning of his political career
he had little idea of social requirements, yet as soon as he found out
his mistake he speedily made it his aim to acquire knowledge of the
customs and manners current in the higher classes of society, and to
make a special study of its code of etiquette. He realised quite well
that sometimes trivial details bring about tremendous results, and that
if a man wants to lead his country he must not begin by giving the
public occasion to ridicule him. Besides, there lay at the bottom of the
character of this extraordinary man a thirst for luxury, for power, for
riches, for all the good things of the world, which alone would have
been sufficient to make him study the refinements without which they
become useless. Gambetta was an epicure in the fullest sense of that
word, and the apparent carelessness which he had affected in outward
appearance when he entered political life proceeded more from the desire
to attract notice to himself than from anything else.
He wanted to impose his personality upon others, and not knowing how to
do so, he tried to attain it by an apparent indifference to those
outward things that rule the actions of ordinary men.
When once he was thrown into contact with good society, and especially
after he had fallen under the influence of Madame Edmond Adam, or
Juliette Adam as earlier I referred to her, his views of life changed
considerably. He very soon became more refined in his tastes and habits,
the equal in social deportment of those men and women whose judgments
and opinions he had affected to despise in the days when he was a street
orator who frequented the Café Procope and other meeting-places of the
young Radical party who made it its business to attack the Empire at
every opportunity.
The war sobered him, and his short sojourn in the responsible position
of member of a government, such as it was, considerably changed his
ideas. He at once perceived that it was easier to criticise men in power
than to do their work. He was a great patriot in the sense that he put
his country before anything else in the world, and that he was ready to
sacrifice all that he held dear for its welfare, but he was no
chauvinist, though so often accused of fomenting chauvinism in France.
He had a very clear comprehension of every political situation, and also
of the different ways in which it could be explained to the crowd, who
generally see only the externals of questions without ever going into
their details.
He wanted his country to regain its former power and fame, and he knew
that this would be difficult if the idea of the humiliation it had
endured was always put before its eyes, and if the wounds it had
received were always made to smart. In a certain sense he was right, in
another he was wrong, because France might have been more quiet now, and
more prosperous even in the material sense of the word, if that idea of
a _revanche_ had not always been fostered, and had she been taught to
reconcile herself to accomplished facts. In saying this I know that many
among my readers will scream outright, but not being a Frenchman I may
be allowed to express my opinion, that it would be to the advantage of a
country for which I have always had the greatest sympathy if she began
thinking more about herself and less about another war with Germany.
Gambetta exercised an unbounded influence on many people, and was the
object of hatred to many others, but no one who met him could pass him
by with indifference. If he had not been of a lazy disposition he might
easily have become Prime Minister long before he did, and in this
connection I must relate a story which probably will surprise more than
one person. Gambetta, though he led his party, and though he was at one
moment the most powerful man in France, showed always some reluctance
when the question of his forming a government was raised. I ventured one
day to ask him why. He replied to me that, now he understood the
responsibility of the head of a Cabinet, and had studied European
politics, he did not think himself up to the task, and also did not
think that his presence in a ministry would be to the advantage of
France, because his name had become synonymous with the principle of a
war with Germany, for which he was but too well aware that his country
was not prepared. “Later on,” he added, “my day may come, but I feel
that now, though I may have a great deal more intelligence than some of
the foreign ministers who lead the destinies of other countries, I
haven’t their experience of affairs, nor their perfect knowledge of
saying pretty things which they do not mean. This would make me appear
inferior to them, and France must not be represented by a man to whom
this reproach applies. France must hold her own, and something more, in
the presence of Europe.”
I made a gesture of surprise, which he noticed.
“You are astonished at what I tell you,” he remarked, “but do you think
me such a poor patriot to put my own personal advantage or ambitions
before her welfare? This would be very miserable indeed, and I know of
no meaner thing than accepting office when one is aware that it is not
for the good of one’s fatherland. I know very well what is thought about
me in Europe, and especially in Germany, and I do not wish to give the
latter country the slightest excuse to say that she has been provoked,
or that we are following a policy of aggression. Such policy is unworthy
of a great nation, and we are a great nation, in spite of our reverses,
and we must remain one, though some people would like us to come down
from that height. We must work to consolidate our position, to become
powerful enough and strong enough to be able to strike when the day
comes, not only with the chance, but with the certitude, of success.
What is the good of wasting one’s time in petty strifes or petty
recriminations? Yes, I think about revenge, I think of nothing else, but
I should be ashamed to be thought eager for it at once, and at any
price; above all I would not like to risk losing it by such a miserable
circumstance as my becoming head of the government at a time when the
hour for it had not yet struck.”
I relate this conversation in its entirety as it shows the real
patriotism which animated Gambetta, as well as his great foresight and
intuition in politics in general. Very few statesmen would have viewed
a situation with such entire self-abnegation. In France especially,
where the thirst after power and official positions was so great, he
constituted a solitary and noble exception. I think that the happiest
time in Gambetta’s life was when he was President of the Chamber, and
inhabited the Palais Bourbon. There he felt in his element, and also at
the height, not of his ambitions, but of his wishes--a totally different
matter. In the old home of the Duc de Morny he did not consider himself
inferior to that clever councillor of Napoleon III., and reflected with
some satisfaction on the circumstances that had brought him there, and
placed him in the chair occupied with such authority by the illegitimate
son of Queen Hortense. In his new position also he could give way to the
luxurious tastes which he had always nursed and only appeared to scorn,
because he had not been able to believe he would ever be in a position
to gratify them.
Leon Gambetta also felt that in the capacity of leader of the
representatives of the nation he would have more opportunities of
learning the real wants of that nation, and thus, when the day came that
he could do so, would be able to work for its welfare with better
chances of success than he had had hitherto. His rare tact served him
well, and his knowledge of mankind, something quite different from
knowledge of the world, made him avoid many of the mistakes another
placed in his position would inevitably have fallen victim to. He made
an excellent President of the Chamber, just as he made an admirable host
in the Palais Bourbon, where he displayed his epicurean tastes in a way
that drew upon him the censure of the newspapers, which tried to
ridicule the former Socialist leader, whose first care had been to get
as his cook the most famous chef in Paris.
Madame Adam used sometimes to smile at the change which her influence,
more than anything else, had brought about in Gambetta. But when he
became President of the Chamber their intimacy slackened, for a very
short time it is true, but slackened all the same. Gambetta, it must be
owned, was very sensible to feminine charms and feminine blandishments.
Strange as it may seem when one takes into consideration his extreme
ugliness, the fact that he had but one eye, and was enormously fat, he
yet exercised a great fascination on women in general, and he liked to
use it, and to spend part of his spare time in the society of the fair
ladies who worshipped at his shrine. This partly was the cause of his
death. But about this we shall speak later on.
When at last circumstances arose which obliged Gambetta to accept the
task of forming a Cabinet, it was with the utmost reluctance, in spite
of all that has been said concerning this subject, that he undertook it.
He had no faith in the possibility of being a long time at the head of
affairs, and as he told one of his friends: “Why take such trouble when
one is assured beforehand it is for nothing?” Nevertheless he started
earnestly to work to give to the government the direction he thought the
best for the interests of the country. But the composition of the
Chambers was not congenial to him; he felt himself far superior to all
those men upon the vote of whom his fate depended, and this made him
impatient as to the control which they pretended to exercise over him.
He despised them, if the truth must be said, and involuntarily he
allowed this feeling to appear in the manner in which he handled them, a
fact that had much to do with the short time he remained in power.
His advent as Prime Minister had excited considerable sensation abroad;
even in France it was the signal for the retirement from public life of
many people who felt that they could not remain in office under such a
thoroughly Radical government as the one he was supposed to lead. Among
those who resigned was the Comte de St. Vallier, at that time French
Ambassador in Berlin.
When his resignation was accepted he thought himself obliged,
nevertheless, to call on the Prime Minister when he returned to Paris,
in order to express to him his regrets that the opinions which he held
prevented him from working harmoniously with him. Gambetta received him
with great affability and courteousness, and at once said: “You are
wrong to go away, I shall not remain for long where I am now, and you
would have rendered a greater service to France by remaining at your
post than by a retreat which, as you will see, will prove to have been
useless. Je ne suis qu’un bouche-trou (‘I am only a stop-gap’), and very
probably the President of the Republic in entrusting to me the task of
forming a government wanted to prove to France how impossible it is for
a Radical ministry ever to maintain itself. The sad part of this is
that, though I am a Republican, I have no Radical sympathies. I assure
you that this is the fact, and that you would have found me far more
inclined to sympathise with your opinions than with those of the people
who are supposed to be my followers. The great mistake that we are
constantly making in France is to mix up opinions with the way in which
the country must be governed. We ought to have neither a Conservative,
nor a Radical, nor even a Republican government; we ought to have a
French one. This would be quite enough. I am sorry you have resigned;
very sorry, indeed.”
But Gambetta did not convince M. de St. Vallier, and he insisted on
retiring from the diplomatic service, a fact which I have reasons to
believe he regretted later on.
The great dream of Gambetta was to establish a _modus vivendi_ and a
kind of understanding with Germany. He knew very well how useless it is
in life to go back on things which are already accomplished, and to cry
over spilt milk. And he did not care for France to go on living in the
state of _qui vive_ which had been hers ever since the disasters which
had accompanied the war of 1870. He knew also that he had far greater
chances to take into his hands the reins of government, and to keep them
if once he had succeeded in doing away with this fear of a German
aggression, which haunted the public mind. He was no partisan of
compulsory service, and did not approve of too great military expenses,
entered into by fear of an imaginary danger. That it was imaginary he
was convinced, because he knew very well that Germany was in the same
position in which Napoleon III. had found himself: that of risking the
loss of everything and gaining nothing from a new campaign. But this
conviction which was his alone he could not persuade others to share,
and for this reason he tried to arrange an interview between himself and
Prince von Bismarck.
A great deal has been written about this episode, and several of
Gambetta’s friends have done their best to try to induce the public to
forget it. I don’t know why they believed that it was not to his honour.
Nor why, either, Gambetta could not have met the German Chancellor when
other French political men had done so without anyone saying a single
word against it. By every sensible person the idea of this interview
could only have been hailed with pleasure. Two great minds like those
could not but have found together the solution of many difficulties
which divided the two nations, and it would have been doing the greatest
injustice to Leon Gambetta to imagine that he would not have borne
himself with the dignity necessary to the representative of a great
country.
It was Count Henckel von Donnersmarck, the husband of Madame de Paiva,
whose fame still lives in Paris, who was sounded by Gambetta as to the
possibility of a meeting between himself and Bismarck, and he did his
very best to arrange it in such a manner that it might not become known
to the public, at least not until after it had actually taken place.
Unfortunately outward circumstances interfered with this plan, and
Gambetta had to forgo his intention, partly because his great friend
Ranc told him that if he ventured on such a thing he would entirely lose
the confidence of the Radical party. Whether it was this consideration
or another one, the fact remains that he felt afraid at the last minute,
in view of the hostility of his constituents, to incur the
responsibility of a step which his intelligence and his intuition told
him was the best for the interests of the France he loved so dearly.
Much has been written, and much surmised, concerning the death of
Gambetta. It is now pretty certain that the wound which he received was
not its immediate cause, which must be looked for elsewhere, and can be
attributed partly to his general constitution, which was considerably
impaired, and partly to the treatment which had been applied to him. But
upon this point it must not be forgotten that at that time operations
were not the usual thing that they have become since, and surgical
intervention was generally dreaded, and resorted to only as a last
resource.
As to the pistol shot, about which so many suppositions have been made,
I think that in spite of Gambetta’s own denials there can be hardly a
matter of doubt that it was a lady who, in a fit of fury, had inflicted
the wound that disabled him. It is no secret now, that Gambetta was on
the point of marrying a lady of high social standing, the Marchioness
Arconati-Visconti, the daughter of the Senator Peyrat, and the widow of
a Milanese nobleman. That union was to put the seal to his career, and
to open for him many new vistas. As the husband of a beautiful,
accomplished woman of the world, he could in time aspire to anything
and, who knows, become President of the Republic for life, which was his
dearest secret wish.
But in order to accomplish his desire, he had first to end a situation
that did not date from yesterday, to cut off an intimacy of twenty years
with a noble woman who had been his friend in the bad as well as in the
good days, and who had given him innumerable proofs of her devotion.
Gambetta was well aware of the difficulties which such a step presented,
and for a long time he had not the courage to tackle the subject, hoping
that she would hear something about his new plans, and herself begin the
conversation on this delicate matter. The lady, however, kept silent,
perhaps because she did not believe in the rumours which had reached
her, and partly because she would not give her friend the opportunity he
was seeking. At last Gambetta asked his old comrade Spuller to see her
and to try to persuade her to have the courage to sacrifice herself to
his welfare. He reasoned like a man, and an ungrateful man into the
bargain, and she refused to accept the solution which was offered to
her, and which might have soothed the pride of a person more devoid of
feelings of attachment for her lover of long years than was the case
with her. She dismissed Spuller with scorn, and rushed to Ville d’Avray,
where Gambetta was residing, in order to seek an interview that could
only be a stormy one.
It was during this interview that Gambetta was wounded. And those who
were made aware of all the circumstances attending this drama of
feminine jealousy, knew who it was that fired the fatal shot which
lodged itself in the right hand of the French statesman. When he himself
was questioned as to the accident, he always said that he had wounded
himself in trying to clean a revolver, a circumstance that was the more
unlikely because he was seldom in possession of such a weapon. Moreover,
to some of his friends, like Spuller and Paul Bert, he only remarked
that he had got nothing but what he had deserved.
Perhaps it was this consciousness which made him so patient during his
illness, and also so shy of seeing anyone, even his friends, whilst it
lasted. He used to lie quietly, with closed eyes, and avoid any
conversations that could have touched upon the subject of the accident
which had occurred to him. And when later on other symptoms made their
appearance, he begged the people who surrounded him to say everywhere
that these symptoms had nothing to do with his wound.
If, in his dying moments, he was conscious, he must have regretted
deeply his ingratitude in regard to the woman who had loved him with
such true affection, and who had been tempted to an act of despair when
she learned that she was about to be forsaken for one who certainly did
not have for Gambetta the same passionate affection. It was after all
the sweet lady who had for so long had him in her affections who watched
over his deathbed, and who closed his eyes for ever, whilst the proud
lady for whose sake he had been about to sacrifice her never even made
an appearance at Ville d’Avray. She went on living her former life as if
no tragedy had crossed it, after death had removed from this worldly
scene the great politician to whom ambition had very nearly united her.
And now that years have passed over this drama, since the removal from
the scene of political France of the great patriot who was called Leon
Gambetta, it is still very difficult to form a true judgment about him.
He died before he had given the full measure of his qualities, or shown
the real stuff he was made of. He was for too short a time in a
responsible position to allow us to say whether he would have proved as
able a leader of a government as he had shown himself to be a powerful
leader of men. The two things are very different, and the man who can
master one is found sometimes to be lacking in the other. What, however,
cannot be taken away from him is his true, earnest patriotism, the
absence of all vanity that distinguished him, his readiness to sacrifice
everything in his power at the shrine of his fatherland, and his desire
to serve it, according to what he considered to be its interests. He was
fearless in his devotion, and worked for his country without paying any
attention to the reproaches of the crowd.
The man was colossal in his way, and there was nothing mean about him.
His conceptions were as great as his soul. Of course he was often
mistaken, like every human being, but he was always sincere even in his
errors, and he never hesitated to acknowledge the latter when they were
shown to him.
Reared in different circumstances, and able to show his value otherwise
than by starting on the road of revolution, which bordered very closely
on anarchy, he might have become truly a great man. He had all the
instincts of one--and all the imperfections. He was authoritative and
could be very firm, but he tried always to be just, and avoided wounding
others, even his adversaries, as much as it was possible for him to do
so. He was invariably courteous, even in his exhibitions of rage, and
essentially kind, a faithful friend, and a gallant enemy. Hated by those
who had never known him, or met him personally, he contrived to
fascinate all those who had done so; they always went away from him
liking the man, even when condemning the politician. He had a careless
manner in talking about his foes, which was superb in its way, and
though he seldom spoke about himself, yet he liked to find that he was
respected, feared, or even abused.
The one thing he never could have reconciled himself to would have been
to be ignored, and this indignity was spared him. Perhaps it was better
for his memory that he died in the full force of his talent, and before
he had reached the maturity of his years--perhaps it was a pity. Who
knows?