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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
65
This, Father, scatter from the soul,
and grant that we the wisdom
May reach, in confidence of which,
Thou justly guidest all things;
That we by Thee in honour set,
with honour may repay Thee,
Raising to all thy works a hymn
perpetual; as beseemeth
A mortal soul: since neither man
nor god has higher glory
Than rightfully to celebrate
Eternal Law all-ruling.”*
Art.
IV.—George Eliot
as a
Moral Teacher.
ATOVELS are the journals or records of manners,” is a definiIN tion to be found in “ The Conduct of Life.” Mr. Ruskin,
on the other hand, has just described fiction as a “feigned,
fictitious, artificial, put-together-out-of-one’s-head thing,” and
gives us, as the best type of it, a Greek vase. Something
between the two is perhaps what a good novel should.be, not a
mere journal of the outward manners of the world, without any
ruling design to give nobility and light to the correctness of
detail; nor yet only a “ put-together-out-of-one’s-head thing,”
without that foundation of carefully observed and well considered
fact, which lends dignity to imagination and gives meaning to
fictitious creations. Mr. Ruskin’s vivid fancy makes him prefer
suggestion to description, simile to definition ; and doubtless he
perceives in a Greek vase the type of every quality essential to
good fiction. For less splendid imaginations it is easier to
consider that the best sort of novel should resemble a finely
conceived picture, where the details are true and simple to the
recognition of the least artistic of us all, but where there is also
such an arrangement of light, shade, line, and colour, as to
bring out the nobler and more lasting beauties of the scene, and
suggest, if not reveal, to us the deeper meaning and more
permanent law, working over and through the common things
that hide them from dull eyes.
A novel has been called also an epic in prose, but the tendency
of modern fiction to develop itself more and more through the
sparkling rivulets of dialogue, less and less through the broad
river of narrative, brings it nearer to the drama than it was in
its earlier days. True pictures of men and women, revealed in
* From the Hymn of Cleanthes, translated by Mr. Francis Newman in
The Soul, p. 73, fifth edition.
[Vol. 0XVII. No. CCXXXI.j—New Series, Vol. LXI.No. I. E
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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
speech and action, are what we most urgently demand from it;
the use. of it seems to be the bringing in clear light before us
of fine ideals which we may be inspired to follow, and the reve
lation to us of our own responsibility, both in thought and
action, by the tracing of far off and unimagined consequences,
towards which we may have been surely travelling, though they
lay beyond our horizon or hidden by nearer things.
Since the death of George Eliot we have heard much of her
literary power and excellent artistic manner; but her value as a
moral teacher, that continual working towards good m her writings
which might be described as a lt making for righteousness,”
has not been sufficiently pointed out. It is this quality which
constitutes her. a master of prose-fiction in its noblest aspect, that
of virtue teaching truth, and of effort-inspiring revelation.
Fiction has been made a vehicle for the conveyance of moral
lessons since the days of David, son of Jesse, when Nathan the
pi ophet came, with his story of the ewe-lamb to the guilty king.
It was used abundantly eighteen centuries and a half ago, on the
shores of the Sea of Galilee and among the hills of Judea.
And to-day it performs still its highest office, more or less
worthily, but not with so much directness. We have no longer
the allegory in which we are to read out our own lesson step by
step, nor yet the amusing story of adventure with a brief moral
tacked on to the end of it as a sort of apology for its existence :
but we have fiction as a work of art, self-sustaining and self
explaining, truth revealed to us under the keen light of lofty
and virtue-loving thought. It is true that we have novels that
teach us nothing, and novels that teach us evilj but we do not
.find these among the works of George Eliot.
In the beginning of this century historical romance was very
popular; the action of novels was thrown back into the pic
turesque past, and the heroes and heroines were clad in attractively
unfamiliar attire. The tendency of later years has been to study
and . depict the present, to occupy ourselves more with life
studies from our contemporaries and less with fancy portraits of
our ancestors. The world has perhaps been the gainer for this
■change : Sir Walter Scott could take the old pictures down
from the walls and breathe human souls into their ancient
figures, touching them with fervour and passion until they lived
and walked among us as friends ; but there is a danger in having
beauty and nobility always depicted to us afar off, existing only
in other places and times than our own; we need to be taught
to perceive the great possibilities of our own life, the subtle
beauties of our own surroundings, and the unremarked virtues
of our neighbours.
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
67
il I do distrust the poet who discerns
No character or glory in his times,
And trundles back his soul five hundred years,
Past moat and drawbridge, into a castle-court.
Nay, if there’s room for poets in this world
A little overgrown (I think there is),
Their sole work is to represent the age,
Their age, not Charlemagne’s—-this, live, throbbing age,
That brawls, cheats, maddens, calculates, aspires,
And spends more passion, more heroic heat,
Betwixt the mirrors of its drawing-rooms
Than Roland with his knights at Roncesvalles.”
We have been taught, eloquently and truly, in the works of
Mr. Ruskin, that no falseness, no shirking of fact, can produce
beauty. It has been demonstrated to us that the fineness of
Greek architecture becomes almost ugliness in Northern climes;
and that the incongruity of flat roofs and windy porches under
English skies can only be regarded as an outrage against true
taste. We have been instructed to clothe our needs with
beauty, and not to pursue elegance of outline as something apart
from use and fitness. We have been encouraged to give up
stale imitations of Doric temples, to attempt a combination of
beautiful form with serious purpose which shall be worthy the
name of design, and to find opportunities, of decoration in the
light-giving windows, the smoke-conveying chimneys, the rain
draining roofs of our Northern climate. After having been
taught in this way to perceive that in the common-place require
ments of our life may lie concealed the foundations of artistic
beauty, we need not go much farther to discover, amid our
experiences of every day, noble types and poetic pictures of our
common humanity. Jeanie travelled in a stage-coach in 1736,
had she lived in 1881 she would not perhaps have refused the
accommodation of an omnibus; and her errand would have been
not less devoted, her heart not less true, in one conveyance than
in the other. We cannot abolish cabs and tram-cars, but it is
left to us to be and to picture noble human beings using the
unpicturesq-ue vehicles, and living the unadventurous lives of our
own times. In this century, as in every other, the spirit can
elevate, if it cannot dictate, the form of life.
The fact, however, that much modern fiction represents the
life of to-day, limits the possibility of adventure, and brings
character into prominence as a cause as well as a resisting power.
Men and women are depicted to us surrounded by temptation
instead of bodily danger, and exposed to moral instead of
physical hardship. In past times courage and constancy on the
part of the hero, beauty and constancy on the part of the heroine,
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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
carried them through all troubles; most of the heroes and
heroines had indeed no other distinguishing qualities, and all
had these in common; they were young, they were handsome,
they were true; they were, in short, types rather than characters.
The young man was generous because he never troubled himself
about money, others provided it for him ; the young woman was
sweet-tempered because she rarely had anything to do except to
look pretty and to insist on marrying the right young man.
Both lived above the reach of the trivial cares that oppress so
many of us; the trials of daily life were put out of sight behind
picturesque sorrow, and life—as well as human beings—was clad
in the garb of romance. This is better, perhaps, than a morbid
dwelling on sordid details, but better still is a picture of natural
life poetically rendered.
Except in “ Romola,” George Eliot went back into no remote
past, and sought no far lands for the inspiration of her stories.
Among English orchards and meadows, over English hills she
leads us, and we see familiar English faces and hear familiar
English voices, as they are in our own time, as they were in our
fathers’, or as they used to be in the days our grandfathers have
told us of. If every word of the Scotch dialect of Sir Walter
Scott is worthy of careful study, what must be the English
dialect of George Eliot, the dialect which was our Shakespeare’s,
and which is true and pure enough to be used to-day in expla
nation of a knotty point in “ Hamlet” ?
“ I hate the sound of women’s voices; they’re always either
a-buzz or a-squeak—always either a-buzz or a-squeak. Mrs.
Poyser keeps at the top o’ the talk like a fife,” George Eliot wrote
in the latter half of the nineteenth century ; while Shakespeare,
in the beginning of the seventeenth, spoke of “an aiery of children,
little eyases, that cry out on the top of question,” i.e. talk.
George Eliot’s perfection of dialect is, however, only part of
that excellent literary method, to which—with two distinguished
exceptions—ample justice has already been done by the best of
her contemporaries. The end to which she applied the wonderful
means at her command is a separate question for consideration,
and surely we have only to study her works in order to perceive
that she belonged to the remarkable few who have united the
highest gifts to the noblest intentions.
Among the many styles of novel-writing popular to-day, two
great and extreme schools may be singled out for cleverness and
contrast. The one is a partisan of passion, the other a worshipper
of conventionality. The first breaks free from all social law, to
proclaim the sovereignty of feeling and impulse; the second paints
human life as necessarily bound in the fetters of fashion and
custom. In a certain class of French novelists we find the first
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
69
■of these singular types of modern thought. It represents to us
vice rampant under the more attractive title of Nature, and with
out the sequence of punishment which Nature visits on the socalled votaries who profane her name. It depicts to us, in
eloquent writing, physical indulgence without limit, and also
without the consequent diseases which are its natural result;
caprice of feeling encouraged in both sexes to their mutual satis
faction, without the concomitant caprice of weariness, leading to
neglect and desertion on the one side, to melancholy or jealousy
on the other. To complete this theory, and indeed to render it
possible or endurable to any but the basest minds, the world is
pictured to us as holding only one generation. There are—in
these strange studies of human existence—-no aged persons suffer
ing for the vices of their youth, no young children bearing the
burden of their parents’ sins, no sons and daughters dependent
for comfort on the result of their father’s conduct. The present
is everything; and the present belongs only to those who are
young at the moment. No action brings an indirect and undesired
sequence. It is made to appear that if the unjust and arbitrary
punishment of social opinion could be removed, there would be
no punishment left for individual excess, no silent inevitable
working of that great Mother Nature who has been profaned,
and who bears in her bosom disease and death, as well as life and
love, the destruction of her children as well as their nourishment.
The reverse of this school is one which is highly popular in
England just now, being happily more tolerable to an English
mind than the eloquent glorification of vice can yet make itself.
It is a school which deifies custom and regards fashion almost
as a sacred thing. In the pages of its votaries no one endures
hunger, or runs about houseless; but some of the heroines suffer
keenly because the tablecloths are put on crookedly at their
homes, or the maid-servants present an untidy appearance when
they open the door to visitors. We have pictures of poverty
always closely pursued by vulgarity, and discomfort for ever
treading on the heels of limited incomes. The adherents of this
school do not deal, like Shakespeare and the poets, with the
permanent heart of humanity, which throbs with the same great
and simple impulses through all time. Their novels are little
more than pictures of a code of manners and tone of thought
which are woven out of the latest fashion, and will depart with
the newest. The heaven of the personages moving therein is a
higher social circle ; the amelioration of character to which some
of them are led through various trials is only an improvement
of manners; a favoured few are translated from the miserable
pit of vulgarity to a delightful knowledge of social etiquette :
still more of them are made happy by a sufficient staff of servants
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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
and an income large enough to secure a perpetual supply of the
right sort of furniture. In a clever novel which appeared a few
years ago, the heroine’s happiness is represented as hopelessly
lost while she persists in walking out in a bright silk dress ; but
when she renounces that sin against fashion, and enters into the
ways of good taste as translated by the brief caprice of the day,
life unfolds itself with bright promise before her; love and
admission to good society hasten, like twin goddesses, to her
embrace.
To neither of these two modern schools of fiction, did George
Eliot belong, and the best refutation of their sophistries or their
prejudices is to be found in her pictures of human life, which
surpass those of either school both in truth and beauty, and make
us understand that, on the one hand, no human soul is at peace
with itself or of use to the world until it grasps—amid the narrow
needs of to-day—the duties and capabilities of a whole life; and,
on the other hand, that a pure man or woman, living in true and
simple relationship to surrounding persons and things (which
cannot be without the fulfilment of duty), is free of fashion, and
stands above the stupid, unelastic laws of conventionalism.
“Adam Bede” is, perhaps, her masterpiece ; it is the book which,
of all she has written, keeps the nearest to the broad perpetual
stream of persistent human interests. Its style is clear enough
almost to escape our observation, the very perfection of the
medium causing it to elude admiration ; its suggestions of natural
scenery fill up the background of the characters without diverting
our attention from them, and rest in our minds longer than full
descriptions could do; the wit of its secondary personages
is no mere sparkle of words^ but full of tender and humorous
revelation of character: lastly, its plot is simple and clear,
fulfilling Mr. Ruskin’s demand that it should be “ handled
handily.
. . . Comprehensible, not a mass that both your
arms cannot get round; tenable, not a confused pebble
heap of which you can only lift one pebble at a time.'” And
it is worked out with so much power and pathos, such a
strong hand of truth carries the tragedy on to the end, that our
pitying protests are silenced; as the great poets silence us when
they move us most, convincing us that so—just as they have said
it—it was, and could not otherwise be. And we rise from its
perusal with a feeling that nothing can be said about this book
which it does not say for itself; only one answer need be given
to those who question its excellence, “ Read it.” If this does
not suffice, no dissertation or explanation can make a difference.
The story begins, like the actual tragedies of life, without
threats or evil omens, in clear gay sunlight, and minus the growl
ing of any melodramatic thunder. It goes on amid carelessness
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
71
and laughter, amid ploughing, churning, and cooking, in an
atmosphere of scolding and kisses, gossip and flirtation, work and
leisure, and culminates so to a tragic and natural end. There is
nothing arbitrary here, no introduction of extraneous machinery
to punish the wrong-doers; there is indeed no interference of
obnoxious social and so-called artificial laws until the worst of the
tragedy is over. Hetty is not driven to her great sin because she
is cast away by her friends; they are still ignorant of her first
fault when she strives to destroy its unthought-of consequences
by a second. She is even convinced that she might find refuge
and help, beyond the need of further sin, with the pure and
loving Dinah ; but she wants more than this. She had begun
by playing at life like an irresponsible kitten, only to find after
wards in her own heart the complicated needs of a woman, selfesteem, respect of friends, an assured position, a natural guardian
for her child; all these she discovered to be necessary for her
own happiness, as well as the kisses and praise in summer weather
for which she had forfeited them all. dSTo unnatural picture is
here presented to us of remorse in a nature too narrow to under
stand sin in the abstract, Hetty is sorry for herself, not repentant
of her wrong-doing. This blind and cruel Mother IS ature whose
instincts she has followed (without any of those limitations of
intelligence and self-restraint, and outlook towards consequences
to others or ourselves, which we call virtue) has led her onwards
through the paths of self-indulgence to the way of self-destruc
tion. There is none of the original light-hearted Hetty left when
she emerges from the wood where her infant lies forsaken.
And yet, at the beginning, Hetty has been showm to us as a
natural picture of what is called by most persons innocence. She
has no evil intentions, she bears malice against no one, and has
no apparent leaning towards what is depraved and vicious. She
only loves herself, Hetty Sorrel, very well indeed; has a limited
appreciation of any other motive for action than the pleasure of
Hetty Sorrel; refuses to see any distinction between right and
wrong except as they visibly affect the present enjoyment of
Hetty Sorrel. She intends just to please herself and to mind
what no one else says ; and this terrible and unexpected end
comes upon her. The great dumb laws of Nature, which give us
no kindly warnings when we are breaking them, fall like an
avalanche on this feeble creature, and crush her utterly. In the
terrible consequences of her fault she looks back at the tempta
tion to it and finds it insufficient, not worth its results. The
selfish indulgence which brought her to this position makes her
keenly miserable in it. She wants to be comfortable ; she wants
to be well thought of; she wants to be married to a man who is
fond of her; she wants, in fact, good things which she can only
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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
get from other people, and of which she has already dissipated
the price. She would conceal her fault if she could, even now,
at the cost of murder, and go on cheating her friends with false
coin after the real is spent.
But here, also, she cannot succeed. She is not strong enough
anywhere. She has no more self-restraint in times of danger
than in times of delight; she only weaves the web of fate (which
is the sequence of character) more closely about her stumbling
feet. No dark and repulsive visions of that character rose before
us when she tripped in her loveliness and vanity through the
summer woods, nothing in the world seeming (in her own esteem)
too good for Hetty Sorrel; and yet, when we look back, we see
the end in that beginning. The harvest has ripened fast; but
it is the natural fruit of the seed sown.
The mysterious laws of Nature permit the partner of her wrong
doing to go freer than his companion from actual immediate
personal punishment. The consequences of his fault do not so
directly interfere with the circumstances of his life, and if he
had been a worse man he would have suffered less. But in his
sufferings George Eliot teaches us to perceive the best hope for
him. A man who could be happy while others endured misery
for his sin would have had to live afterwards with a companion
little better than a beast; that companion being himself. His
penalty would have been the degradation of his own nature.
The tragic story of Adam Bede is rendered doubly tragic by
its simplicity, by the absence of extraneous accident and adven
ture. We feel that this is no romance of fiction, but rather a
simple history of those easy beginnings of wrong which may all,
and which do some of them, work on to such an end. We under
stand, with Arthur Donnithorne, that we may be guilty of a
crime, even when we have not directly intended it, but have only
accepted the possibility of it in working out our own pleasures.
Scott has chosen a similar subject in “ The Heart of Mid
Lothian,” but he has not pictured Effie’s nature as so much
hardened by her sin as was Hetty Sorrel’s; he has also given to
Effie a strong maternal feeling. It is, however, one of the most
terrible consequences of such a fault as Hetty’s that it tends to
destroy the affections as well as the sacredness of motherhood,
and to convert that which should be a blessing into a burden
and disgrace. Certainly, the end of Hetty, the poor miserable
prisoner, never given back to the warm happy life she loved, stirs
us more keenly, and with a fuller sense of truth, than the uneasy
grandeur and dissatisfied fine-lady life of Effie Staunton. There
is another point in Sir Walter Scott’s great romance in which—
perhaps because, as men suffer less in such a tragedy than women,
a man must be less keen than a woman to perceive all its work
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
73
ings—he falls short of the perfect justice which ought to follow
poetic perception, and deals out judgment like a mere novelist
who permits himself to have favourites among his characters.
This point is the history of Madge Wildfire. The great romancist
makes us feel in the delineation of George Robertson, or Staunton,
that his character would have been utterly repulsive if he had not
felt keenly Effie’s sufferings, and desired to make her the best
reparation in his power. And yet we perceive him indifferent
to the sad result of his earlier sin in the pitiable condition of
Madge Wildfire; we are expected to be indifferent ourselves:
because the poor creature is not revealed to us in the strong light
of the novelist’s compassion her madness becomes only an interest
ing incident in so much as it affects the fate of Effie Deans.
Again, a higher note of feeling is touched in the tenderness of
Dinah than even in the sisterly devotion of Jeanie Deans. The
brave Scotch lassie is inspired by the hope of saving her unhappy
sister’s life; the quaint M ethodist maiden sees no such blessed
chance before her, but she has a full assurance that all is not
lost even if Hetty must suffer the extreme punishment, an
assurance so sublimely strong that she feels capable of conveying
it to the poor miserable girl herself. Sin is worse than death,
love is stronger than either, is the divine teaching of every word
and action of hers, from the moment she appears at the prison
door until the terrible hour when she clasps Hetty in her arms
within sight of the scaffold.
On this one theme, then, George Eliot has worked out a truer
tragedy, because more sublimely simple and less involved in the
intricacies of romance, than her great predecessor.
When we come to her love-story—almost every great writer
having produced one love-tragedy pure and simple, as Shake
speare wrote “Romeo and Juliet,” Sir Walter Scott “ The Bride
of Lammermoor ”—we find the deficiency of a somewhat unworthy
hero. The tragedy of “ The Mill on the Floss ” is essentially one
of modern life ; in the parting of the lovers the voluntary sacri
fice so often demanded to-day plays the part of the cruel persecu
tion of old times. It is only by a delicate treatment of a difficult
subject that we are enabled to understand how Maggie can be
weak enough to drift into an affection for Stephen, and yet strong
enough to refuse to marry him. A sense of freedom to love, or
obligation not to love has, among persons living in habits of
self-control, more to do with the voluntariness of affection than
the theory of Walilverwandschaften would lead us to believe.
But Maggie’s situation was peculiar enough to leave her a sense
of freedom of feeling until the time for action came, then she
realized that she was bound. The perplexities of opposing
desires had grown strong enough meanwhile to destroy her peace
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George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
of mind, but she was able to cling with a touching persistence to
the one conviction that it could not be right to work outlier own
happiness through the misery of others. The sense of what was
due to those who had trusted her, was as deep within her as the
passionate longing to be at last happy herself. She says, in one
of her moments of strongest temptation, “ The real tie lies in
the feelings and expectations we have raised in others’ minds.
Else all pledges might be broken when there was no outward
penalty. There would be no such thing as faithfulness.” And,
again, “ If life did not make duties for us before love comes, love
would be a sign that two people ought to belong to each other.”
Wherein, simply spoken, lies the moral of the whole matter.
From bright and handsome Maggie Tulliver to a miserly old
weaver the distance in subject is very great; but “The Mill on
the Floss ” and “ Silas Marner’’ both give us the same charming
pictures of English country life in the near past, and of quaint
English country people, with their simple ways and their curious
mode of talk. The sketches of childhood which they present to
us, like those in “ Adam Bede ” and in “ Scenes from Clerical
Life,” are full of tender womanly touches, justifying Mr. Swin
burne’s words of praise :—
{< Duty divine and Thought with eyes of fire,
Still following Righteousness with deep desire,
Shone sole and stern before her and above,
Sure stars and sole to steer by ; but more sweet
Shone lower the loveliest lamp for earthly feet;
The light of little children, and their love.”
Silas Marner, the poor old weaver himself, is a unique and
pathetic figure in literature. He is no miser from natural
greediness; his life has been narrowed for him, by the wrong
doing of others, to the smallest circle of interests on w’hich a
human soul can starve without actually dying. He is in himself
a good and simple old man, whom injustice may perplex, but
cannot sour. He recedes more and more from human companion
ship as he finds jt hurtful and fraught with pain, but he is not
embittered, only full of wonder.
George Eliot has a gift for the sympathetic rendering of the
characters of such good old men. She has given us a companion
picture in the minister in “ Felix Holt.” Not a few of us keep
in our memories a sacred place for some whom we have known
long ago, and who were not wholly unlike these pictures ; men
who were unlearned in the wisdom of this world, and yet knew
how to guide an infant’s steps with precepts which would help him
in after-life more than the books of the philosophers or the counsels
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
75
of the worldly wise; men so pure in their unselfishness, so simple in
their truthfulness, so patient in their persistent diligence . in the
performance of duty, so unambitious in their expectations of
reward, so bravely straightforward and kind in the face of a
lying and cruel world, that we keep the memory of their lives as
a refreshing thought in the midst of the hideous careers and
almost as hideous precepts which are not uncommon in society,
to-day and always. Such of us who have reason to cherish these
sacred memories hold it not the least of George Eliot’s claims to
our gratitude that she has known how to depict to us, not
unworthily, this simple and excellent, this unlearned but wholly
incorruptible type of human nature. Others might have sketched
for us the same characters ; but they would have been exaggerated
probably into oddities, oddities whom we liked, but at whom we
must be permitted to laugh. And whoever thinks of laughing
at the poor old weaver, Silas Marner? Who does not rather
regard him with absolute tenderness, with a desire to smooth
the road for his failing steps, to keep the warp and weft of life
straight for his perplexed fingers ?
The youthful heroines of “ Felix Holt” and “ Silas Marner”
are different in many particulars and similar only in one. Hester
has a natural longing for luxury and refined society ; she acts the
fine lady and visits fine people, while Eppie hardly knows of a
higher world than the village circle in which she moves. But
they are both alike in their affection for the old men whom they
call father ; and it strikes us as no unnatural thing in the one or
the other that she should finally refuse to step out of the lowly
life to which her so-called father belongs, in order to possess riches
and dwell in grand houses. Faithfulness to her first lover is
entailed in the final choice of each girl, but we cannot consider
that the cause of the choice. It is rather the influence of the
quiet old man with whom she has lived so long, who has repre
sented to her all that is simplest, truest, and best in life ; the per
manent good among fleeting attractions; and whose image she
cannot imagine transferred to the grander houses, the finer society
to which she is invited. The supreme sincerity of George Eliot
is proved in nothing more strongly than in the fact that she leaves
us satisfied that her heroines should choose poverty rather than
wealth. We have no lingering regrets for the luxuries and the
good society which they lose thereby (regrets which would
prove that the spirit of the book had not prepared us sufficiently
for its end, which would make that end only an ambitious and
incomplete effort), we do not even think that Hester or Eppie
has behaved nobly, she seems only to have acted naturally in
refusing riches. How could the triumph of the author’s principles
be more complete ?
�7G
George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
This question of poverty has been dealt with very variously
by different writers; we may suppose that each has treated it
from the point of view at which it touched most keenly his own
nature. With many of the popular writers of the day poverty is
represented as being very vulgar or very uncomfortable. It is not
admitted that we may live in a simpler way, wuth fewer ap
pliances for pleasure and ease than others of our own rank, with
out being ashamed and unhappy; unless indeed we have a
deficiency of good taste.
With Thackeray poverty was always mean. He touched its
consequences more from the spiritual than the material side, but
still he made its influence debasing. He does not tell us, in
“ Vanity Fair,’"’ that Emmy's parents, when they lost their fortune,
had to sit on horsehair chairs and drink out of cracked cups;
but he sours the kindly mother’s nature strangely indeed. And
we know of nothing sadder in fiction, or more humiliating to
human nature, than the picture of Clive’s home in “TheNewcomes,” after misfortune had overtaken the household. The
horrible temper of the mother-in-law, the mean acquiescence of
the silly wife, the weak-spiritedness of the husband himself, form
a picture which even the courage of the old colonel fails to
redeem. To see a fine nature daily tormented by small insults,
because only of the poverty of the family and the angry discon
tent of the women, is too painful a spectacle. We want to shut
our eyes and turn another way.
Dickens, on the other hand, whether he liked poverty himself
or not, had a knack of depicting it as the most cheerful and
delightful thing in existence. As long as there was abundance
of money every one was melancholy, nobody behaved properly;
but when once want had looked in at the doorway, provided
that he did not actually force an entrance, all the world was as
blithe as a lark from morning to-night.
To live in a kitchen compels vulgarity in Mrs. Oliphant's
novels; it necessitates meanness in Thackeray’s; but in Dickens’
it is an assurance of joy, honesty, and content. A shining kettle
is a more inspiriting sight than any quantity of polished silver ;
and a man has hard work indeed to reach the highest pitch of
excellence if he is not also poor. Are not these views exaggerated
or one-sided ? Is there not a truer and a nobler picture possible,
in which the precise amount of income is a mere incident, not a
predominating influence on the lives of men and women ?
We find such pictures in Shakespeare and the poets, and if we
study carefully the stories of George Eliot we shall find in her
also a fine perception of the value of inward over outward things
in human life. She hardly touches upon the quality of her
heroines’ dresses or the number of their servants. If the question
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
77
of costume comes in at all, it is with a consciousness that Eppie
may look as well in her print gown as Nancy Lammeter did years
before in her silvery silk. Lesser writers, when they are intend
ing an ultimate triumph to poverty and fine principles, cannot
forbear yielding little side tributes to the delights of the opposite
position; they will not go back to the flesh-pots of Egypt, but
they must describe them, how excellently the flesh was cooked,
in what delightfully artistic pots it was served. When Godfrey
Cass and his wife visited Eppie and her adopted father, it would
have been easy to indulge in a little description of the superiority
of Mrs. Cass’s dress and manners. Eppie might have been
represented as overcome by them at first, although her filial
affection for the weaver would have ultimately triumphed.
We should have known that she had proved her moral position
superior to that of the greater people, but we should have had
an uncomfortable consciouness of an outward inferiority at the
same time.
Eppie’s profound and yet natural simplicity saves her from
this humiliation. Having no longing for the actual good things
of a sphere above her own, she has no desire for even the
outward appearance of them. Her dress, her style of living, the
absence of much furniture in her home, do not, for a moment,
embarrass her clear mind or suggest the shadow of shame.
Why should she blush to be without things that it would be
wrong for her to get ? Why should she feel discomposed because
she had not that polish of speech which she could only have
obtained by neglecting her actual duties ? She is the right
thing in the right place, and it would have shown more idiocy
than intelligence to feel remorseful because she would not prove
the right thing in another place, which was not hers.
One of the most healthful, because the most natural, pictures
of middle-class poverty which literature has given to us is that
of the home of the Garths in “ Middlemarch.” It is a sketch
which shows to us the probable troubles of such poverty, the want
of means to apprentice the boys, the necessity for the girls to
leave home, and so on; but false shame has no place there.
Mrs. Garth goes on washing-up the breakfast things while the
vicar makes his call; and we straightway wonder why we ever
thought her occupation less lady-like than crewel work ; it does
not blunt refinement or debar intelligence. If she had wiped
her hands hastily and sat down, hot and discomposed, and tried
to look as if she had been doing nothing of the sort, we might
indeed have blushed with her, and ought perhaps to have blushed
for her. But if the authoress had been clever enough (as this
authoress would have been if she had put her talent in harness
to the prejudices of her time) we should have sympathized with
�78
George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
Mrs. Garth, and might have thought, “ Could not her husband
contrive somehow to keep a servant to do this work ?” and our
hot indignation would have gone out to him; we should have
said that it was his duty to give up theories and to make money ;
that a man’s highest virtue was to look after the members of his
family and to place them in the best possible position. If
they begin life by keeping no servant he must strain his faculties
to procure them one; if they begin with one he must toil his
utmost to secure them two; and so on up all the steps of the
arbitrary social scale; and, if we could have had our own way,
a good man would have been spoilt; while clever, capable
Mrs. Garth would have sat with her hands before her in her
front parlour, trying to enjoy the nominal ease which her
husband had purchased too dearly. Mr. Garth had his faults,
however; and it was a great fault, almost an inexcusable fault
in so good a man, to make himself a surety for the good-fornothing Fred. He had no possible right to endanger the future
of his children, in order to oblige a self-indulgent, extravagant,
rich man’s son. He did not fail in his duty when he preferred
good work with little pay to bad work and more money; but he
did fail when he could not say “ no” to an unreasonable demand.
Good nature is sometimes a criminal form of self-indulgence ; it
is succumbing to the weakness of a moment; buying ease and
approbation on one occasion for ourselves at the cost of terrible
trouble and disappointment in the future, which will not fall
on ourselves only, but on others also who have a right to expect
thoughtful protection from us.
This novel of “Middlemarch” deals, more than George Eliot’s
earlier works, with the intricacies of an advanced civilization ;
and as sad as Dorothea’s blind seekings after a finer type of life
than was open to her in her limited sphere is the history of
Lydgate’s failures. The heroes of old time, the men who were
stronger than their fellows, are depicted to us struggling against
the brute forces of Nature, or warring against avowed adversaries.
The heroes of to-day must fight against their friends. Man has,
in a great degree, subdued Nature ; he has bridged the Atlantic
with his steamers, brought far distant lands within speaking
distance with his cables ; made, as we have often been assured,
the fire his servant and the lightning his messenger; but he has
become a more complicated animal than his forefather was, and
is more dependent on his fellow creatures. It is hard for him to
be entirely noble to-day, entirely free to choose the best course;
and Lydgate, though he began life from a good starting-point for
independence, and was not crippled by narrowness in his desires
or prejudices in his judgment, was not likely to keep his freedom
long. He had too much scorn of other men and of their influence
�George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
79
on his life ; and yet it was partly by and through these men that
he had to work ; he could not be entirely independent, for they
were his instruments; he grasped the weapon of intercourse
carelessly, like a knife with which he meant to cut his way to
knowledge and success ; and the blade maimed him, where the
handle might have helped. His chosen pursuit lay amongst his
fellow men ; freedom to carry it out depended in a measure on
their approbation ; and yet he thought himself at liberty to
follow his own ideas entirely; he believed that the clue to his
success lay altogether in his single-mindedness. He was singleminded enough to deserve a better fate : but he was practically
wrong ; even from his own scientific point of view. If he had had
to calculate the course of a planet, he would have been too wise
to ignore the smaller influences while he gave the full weight to
the greater attractions. Yet he left out of the calculation for
his own course of life the innumerable small social bodies, highly
charged with heavy prejudices, through which he had to move.
The one act of his life which, taken singly, maimed him more than
any other, was his marriage. A good woman might have helped
him in many crises where Rosamond hindered. Dorothea had
made the mistake of supposing that the quality of tenderness
was not essential in a husband ; Lydgate followed it by the error
of believing that intellect was not necessary in a wife. It is
astonishing how many men, self-indulgent, strongly perceptive
of the requirements of their own comfort in other respects, deny
themselves the luxury of a household companion who is capable
of entering into their ideas and furthering their ambitions. It
was not, however, poverty of resource which compelled Lydgate
to put up with an inferior wife ; it was not that lie was without
the qualities that would have entitled him to win a noble woman.
He married Rosamond solely because he thought that she pos
sessed everything which a man required to find in his wife ; he
was not blinded by passion so much as led astray by a want of
consideration of the ultimate importance of the subject; just as
he had been in his dealings with the Mawmseys and Gambits,
the grocers and apothecaries of Middlemarch. If any one persists
in looking at his intended goal without regarding the obstacles
about his feet, he may easily break his leg over a wheelbarrow,
at a moment when a strong man would have opposed his pro
gress in vain.
Lydgate, the capable man baffled by his own mistakes, the man
of heroic resolve entangled in the web of other people’s mean
ness, is a solitary picture in George Eliot’s works. Adam Bede
kept his course straight to the end, and Tito Melema never pos
sessed any noble qualities. But Dorothea had her prototype in
Romola.
�80
George Eliot as a Moral Teacher.
Both these heroines made mistakes in their marriages; they
failed to find in their husbands the true men of their imagination,
and in their histories there is much noble teaching °for the
women of to-day. Surely the thought of Dorothea that “ how
ever just her indignation might be, her ideal was not to claim
justice, but to give tenderness,’ may keep, in the memories of
all good women, a place beside the lessons learnt from “ The
Queen’s Garden ” for help and inspiration. And for men and
women alike what subtle warning and suggestion are to be found
in these words from “ Romola
“ We prepare ourselves for
sudden deeds by the reiterated choice of good or evil which
gradually determines character.”
In “ Armgart” we are told that
“We must bury our dead joys,
And live above them with a living world.”
And, further, it is beautifully suggested to us—
“ Mothers do so, bereaved ; then learn to love
Another’s living child.”
For even sorrow has no right to be selfish ; there is always left
to us the hope of ministering to the joy of another.
We have seen how George Eliot could expound to us the
broad claims of the world’s brotherhood on individual lives, how
she could reveal to us in the human heart the small beginnings
of great crimes, how she could leave us satisfied with poverty and
unafraid of death: but she could also feel and express with
simplicity all the intensity of passionate personal devotion :—
“ Sweet evenings come and go, love,
They came and went of yore :
This evening of our life, love,
Shall go and come no more.
“ When we have passed away, love,
All things will keep their name ;
But yet no life on earth, love,
With ours will be the same.
“ The daisies will be there, love,
The stars in heaven will shine :
I shall not feel thy wish, love,
Nor thou my hand in thine.
“ A better time will come, love,
And better souls be born :
I would not be the best, love,
To leave thee now forlorn.”
�Working-Class Insurance as it is.
81
In the line “ I shall not feel thy wish, love,” is revealed all the
unselfishness which belonged to George Eliot’s conception of love.
She breathed an elevating spirit into every subject that she
touched, and her highest claim to our gratitude is not her literary
excellence, great as that is; not her wit, humour, or pathos; but
the noble purpose which gave to her genius a larger life. She
“ Saw the human nature broad,
At both sides, comprehending too the souls’,
And all the high necessities of art.”
And she always remained true to her highest perceptions.
Art. V.—Working-Class Insurance as it is.
1. Reports of the Chief Registrar of Friendly Societies for the
year endinq December 31, 1879. Part I. (A.) 373—
Sess. 2. 1880.
2. Life Assurance Companies. Statements and Abstracts of
Reports for 1880. Pari. Papers. 1881. No. 216.
3. Paupers, Indoor (Members of Benefit Societies}. Pari.
Papers. 1881. No. 444?.
HE Annual Report of the Chief Registrar of Friendly
Societies is a document which deserves far more attention
than it usually receives. Its contents are of interest and value
to a much larger class than that which comprises the officers and
members of the Societies with whose affairs it specially deals.
The whole nation is concerned in the welfare of institutions into
whose exchequers such vast sums are being poured by its indus
trial population every year. These associations are far more to
the working classes than assurance companies are to the middle
and wealthier classes. To the latter, a life assurance policy is
often but a supplementary provision for the family when the
bread-winner is removed ; but for the immense majority of wage
earners, the Friendly Society or the Industrial Assurance Com
pany takes all that they can afford to put by against the “rainy
days ” and the dark days that are sure to come.
The
“ Society,” as they commonly call it, is their only resource, and
if that goes, everything goes, so far as provision for their families
is concerned. But, in the very nature of the case, the evil
results of failure cannot be limited to the immediate sufferers ;
the Poor-law must, sooner or later, make good the loss, and that,
of course, means that the entire community shares in the disaster.
In the opinion of the Chief Registrar, “ the current estimate
of =£2,000,000 yearly as being virtually saved to the Poor-rates,
through the operation of Friendly Societies, must be far within
[Vol. CXVII. No. CCXXXI.j—New Series, Vol. LXI. No. I.
F
T
�82
Working-Class Insurance as it is.
the mark?’ If this be the case, then on this ground alone, to
say nothing of higher considerations, the question of the sound
ness or unsoundness of these valuable institutions must be one
which concerns every person in the kingdom.
No more important document has ever been presented by
the Chief Registrar to Parliament and the country, than the
Report for 1879 which has been issued during the present year.
It enables us, for the first time, accurately to estimate the
financial condition of a not inconsiderable proportion of all the
registered Friendly Societies in England and Wales. For many
years serious doubts have been felt as to the actual solvency of a
number of these Societies, and, in order to test the truth of these
suspicions, Parliament enacted in 1875 that a valuation of the
liabilities and the assets of all Friendly Societies should be made,
at least once in every five years, by a competent valuer. The
form to be used in making a “ Return” of these valuations to
the department was prescribed, and the date within which the
first returns were required to be sent in was fixed at December 31, 1880. Only eighteen valuation returns were received by the
Chief Registrar in 1877, and no more than forty during 1878,
although in each Annual Report issued since the passing of the
Act, the obligation to make such returns has been most strongly
insisted upon. In 1879, however, 948 valuation returns were
received by the department ; and, in an Appendix of sixty-seven
pages, the Ghief-Registrar gives an abstract of these returns, in
the last Report presented by him to Parliament. (Friendly
Societies, &c., Report, 1879. Part. I.—(A).
It would be impossible to exaggerate the importance of the
information contained in this Appendix. At the date of this
report there were 15,379 Registered Friendly Societies and
Branches in England and Wales, 12,300 of which had made
the usual annual returns, showing an aggregate membership of
4,672,175, and total accumulated funds amounting to <F12,148,609
From tliis it appears that nearly one-fifth of the entire population
of the country were directly interested in the continued stability
of Friendly Societies ; any evidence which can be adduced upon
this point" must, therefore, be of the greatest possible value,
especially when, as in this case, it is evidence which is thoroughly
reliable. It is on this account that we invite the attention of
our readers to the valuation returns, of which an abstract is
placed before us by the Chief Registrar ; we have, however,
summarized its voluminous contents, and give the results in a
form which we trust no one can fail to understand.
Perhaps, however, it may be desirable briefly to explain what
a valuation is, and how it should be made, to be acceptable to
the authorities, and of real value to the members of the Friendly
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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George Eliot as a moral teacher
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: London
Collation: 65-81 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From Westminster Review 61 (January 1882).
Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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Conway Tracts
English Fiction-19th Century
George Eliot
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Text
L’ANNfiE littEraire
CIIAPITRE V.
K -.i-'
5 MFAHS f8 5’^.
Masseur,
' ° >1?'s '
;
‘
'j
,
Z*
.m-dr<nil .-
Mon onele Cotonnet. esimori il y a un an environ melaissaaA s®
maison de la grand’place, sa ferine de Saint-Florent, son moulin des.
Epives, en tout dix ou douze mille livres de rente pLus. que. suffisantes
pour un homrne de gouts simples comme moi, et bien decide a tester
celibataire. AL. Dupuis x decede quelque chose. comme six- moisavant
son ami, m’a. legue. sa biblietheque fort riche: ef fort, belle,, c® qui me
permet de me livrer a rnon gout pour la litterature.
,
x
Ce: gout me vient de famill'e, iL est.dans mon. sang ;Jes Cotonnet ai-ment les lettres de; pere. en fils., Nous, avons en uu Cotonnet, eouroime?
par l’Academie des jeux floraux, deux ans avant la revolution; mats,
let plus celebre. des Cotonnet est sans confredit mon oncle Jeromes;'
Cotonnet, qui publia avec son ami Dupuis Ite&Lettres sttr/a titteraiw&
qui firent quelque bruit en leur temps. Jet me flatte qu’en w lisant,
vous avez reconnu son style qui est celui da la famille..
Jusqu’a leuF dernier moment, Dupuiset.Cotonn.etse sont occupes
des. plus grosses questions litteraires. Ils cherchaienf a decider la ques
tion du realisme lorsqu’ils. sent morts.. 11 me semide encore entendre
les deux amis discuter a ee sujet sur le mail; ce sont eux. qui m’onL
forme 1’esprit et le gout, et j’ose croire que je ne suis pas sansjairer
quelque honneur a mes maitres. On afort remarque mon discours au
dernier comice agricole sur l’alliance de l’agriculture et des beaux-arts..
Il a ete imprime dans le journal de l’arrondissement. Nul doute que
le prochain fauteuil vacant dans notre academie ne fut, pour moi, si
�1«
■
L’ANNfiE LITTfiRAIRE,
consentais aux demarches necessaires; mais je ne tiens pas aux hoh-1
neurs, je pretends garder mon independance et avoir sur toutes chUseSj
mon franc parler. G’est pourquoi il m’a pris fantaisie de vous ecrire
de temps en temps. Vous ferez de mes lettres ce qu’il vous semblera
bon; ne vous gencz point pour les jeter au panier si elles vous deplai-z
sent; je n’y tiens pas autrement. J’en serai quitte pour avoir gate quelques feuilles de papier.
Je commencerai, monsieur, par vous dire quelques mots sur les
theatres. Je les ai presque tons vus pendant mon dernier sejour a
Paris, en commencant parle Theatre-Francais ou j’ai assiste a la re
prise de Rodogune pour les debuts de madame Guyon.
J’avais dix-huit ans, lorsque mon oncle me mena avec lui a Paris
pour la premiere fois; les trains de plaisir n’etaient pas inventts, nous
mimes un jour entier pour faire le trajet de la Ferte-sous-Jouarre*
a la barriere Saint-Martin. M. Dupuis etait du voyage; il s’agissaifl
d’assister a la premiere representation d’un drame en cinq actes et
en vers de M. Casimir Delavigne, intitule la Jeunesse du Cid. Cette
piece se jouaitaun theatre qui s’appelait, si je m’en souviens bien,
le theatre de la Renaissannce.
Il faut vous dire, monsieur, que mon oncle et son ami Dupuis
avaient pour Casimir Delavigne un faible que je ne partageais pas.
Pour ne vous rien cacher, j’etais un romantique enrage a cette epoque.
Mon oncle ne l’a jamais su, il m’aurait peut-etre desherite. Malgre
mon romantisme, la piece de Casimir Delavigne ne me deplut pas
trop. Le principal role etait joue par une> jeune et belle debutante J
nominee Lmilie Guyon. Il y a bien quelque chose comme vingt ans
de cela, ce qui ne nous raj eunit pas. Un souvenir agreable m’etail
reste de cette actrice, et je 1’ai revue avec le plus grand plaisir. Elie
a un peu change, comme vous pensez bien, mais elle est arrivee a
point ou l’on peut jouer, sans faire crier, les reines de tragedie.
L’age rend les gens plus traitables, je suis infmiment moins ennemi
de la tragedie qu’autrefois. C’est un genre majestueux et eleve qui a
bien son charme. Seulement, je trouve que la tragedie ne souffre pas
la mediocrite; a moins qu’une tragedie ne soit parfaite, n’en parions
point. C ’ etait *aussi l’avis de mon oncle; pour Dupuis, il etait plus
indulgent, et il poussait volontiers Cotonnet sur sa preference pour
Racine.
— Corneille, disait Dupuis, est un poete moraliste, il cherche
constamment a elever l’homme; il est sublime.
�CHAPITRE V.
— Sans doute, repondait Cotonnet; pourtant que d’emphase et de
mauvais gout a cote de ce sublime. Rien n’est plus dangereux que
’amour du sublime; c’est par la que le gout finit par se corrompre.
[Certes, le Qu’il mourut est une belle chose, le Romain parle par
la bouche du vieil' Horace; mais pourquoi ne pas vouloir entendre
le vers suivant dans lequel le pere prend la parole a son tour? CorI neille, malgre tout son genie, n’est pas mon homtne; il a contribue
a eloigner les esprits du nature! du simple. Que d||choses on voudrait retrancher de ses ouvrages! Chez Racine,'wcontraire, tout est
excellent, rien de ce qui est en lui n’est mauvais; c’est ce qui n’y est
pas qu’on regrette.
Je partage entierement T opinion de mofi oncle, ’je-suis pour le par
fait eii tout. Il faut convenir, monsieur,’ que Rodogune n’est pas, a
I beaucoup pres, la plus parfaite des tragedies de Corneille, quoiqu’il
la mit fort au-dessus du Cid, de Cinna et des Hordes. C’etait, nous
dit-il lui-meme, son oeuvre de predilection; On sait qu’il ne faut pas
[chicaner un auteur la-dessus. Pourmoi, je h’aime pas les sujets
puises dans l’histoire sanglante d'e cet Orient fabuleux ou Ton ne voit
que des monstres. Corneille a choisi le plusaffreux de tous dans cette
'Cleopatre qui tue un de ses fils a conpshfe fleshes, et qui empoisonne
l’autre. « Au reste, si quelqu’urla la curiosite de voir' cette histoire
plus au long, qu’il prenne la peine de lire Justin, qui la commence
au trente-sixieme livre, et, l’ayant quitlee/la reprend sur la fin du
Itrente-huitieme, et l’acheve au trentc-neuvieme.» Je crois que peu
de gens seront tentes de profiter de cesKridications du bon Corneille.
V Apres avoir parle de la preference de 1’auteur pour- Rodogune, La
Harpe ajoute : « Si les quatre premiers actes repondaient au dernier,
il n’y aurait pas a balancer, tout le'monde serait de son avis. » Tout
le monde, excepte moi. Ce cinquieme acte ne me parait guere moins
Imaussade que les autres^ sans dbute/chmme on tduche a la cata
strophe, l’interet parait plus grand, voila tout. ‘ << Cleopatre avalant
plle-meme le poison prepare pour son fils et pour Rodogune, et se
flattant meme de vivre assez longtemps potlr les voir perir avec elle,
fprme un denoument admirable. Il faut bien qu’il le soit, puisqu’il a
fp.it pardonner les etranges invraisemblances sur lesquelles il est
fonde et qui ne peuvent pas avoir d’autre excuse. » Je suis beaucoup
plus severe que La Harpe; il m’est impossible de pardonner les inj Vraisemblances qui remplissent d’un bout a l’autre ce cinquieme acte.
[ Jouez des tragedies parfaites, ou n’en jouez pas du tout.
Tome III. — 9e Livraison.
10
�U6
IZANN-fiB LITTSRAIRE.
En meme temps que Rodogune. du grand Corneille on> donnait une
Gomedie de M>.. Ernest Legouve Pur droit de aonqi^te^. Madame
Guyon „ quittant. la. pourpre et le diademe, remplissait. dan&eetth
comodienurbledeuiche paysanne^En ecoutanteette piecesou;Hau
teur se propose dafaire la: guerre.a g& prejuge.qui met oBstante-a-des
alliaiicesmatidniomales cntrele&nohles.ellestroturiers, je medemanr
dais s’il* n’y auraii. point par hasard des prejuges plus dangerous et
plus, reels, centre: lesqpels. la. comedie* pourraiit s’escrimer. L.’orgueil
aristoeralique u-’existe reellementpas aujourd’hula l’etat de prejuge^
e’est. a- peine umridicule. On. veil tou& les jours. a- la Ferte-sousJouarre des filles de la plus haute noblesse epouser des vilains^ U ne
tiendrait. qu’amobdesdemaim d’entrer dans la. families d’un vicomte;
mais , vous le saves,, je. veux. rester celibataire-. Je. crains biem que
Ma. Legouv.e,. qui a fait; deux* pieces coup sue coup centre la ^anifd
nobiliaire,. ne se.baltemm pen centre les moulins a vent. Elie, exists
cetle vanite,.cela estsvrai, mais* aj l’etat de- douairiere qu’on respect©
meme dans.* sestravers./C’est un ridicule; d’hier,. la, comedie: ne, dedt
ehatier qpe les ridicules d/aujourd’hmou ceux.de; domain.
Le. role, joue l’autre: jour, par madame: Guyon dans* la-. pidee- de
M. Legouve a. ekcree.-par une. aetrice dfumvrai talent, par madame
Allan.. Je: L’aimais beaucoup parcel quelle- avail dm naturel el de. la
simplicite, deux qualites: fort: races, partout el surtoutau. theatre. Elie
est morte.. Le feuilletom versa sar sat tombe toules les., larmes des sea
ycux., L’art drainatique: venait de* fair© une: perte irreparabib;. mardame Allan.ne sera-it jamais* remplbcee.... Aujpurtl’hui le feuilleton
declare tout net que madame Guyon- a* completement fait oublier. sa
devanciere. J/endoute pour plusieurs, raisons: la-premiere j. e’est. que
madame Allan n’avait pas jeue. pendant vingt-, ans icmelodcame,. ce
qui est pour, moi une cause evidente-desuperioritesur madame Guyon^
la. seconde,. c’est.que. le feuilletoni m’est diantrement suspect dans ses
eloggs.; il. parle absolument.c.omme la-claque applaudit, e’est le meme
enthousiasme et: la, meme conviction.. Dernierement iL m’e&t tombe
sous la main., a notre. CercLe des> arts, un; numeno de la Presss.. Le
feuilleton rendait compte d’tm> romammtiiule F.Ensor.celee. « L’amteur a des idees altieres* et* entieres,. pour lesqueUes il se bat de la
plume, comme on s’escrime dediepee..»? Le lemlleton ajentail« W
heros du livre ? L’abbe dh.hr Groix-Jugarl, a. la, grandeur rigide de- ces
moines de pierce qui se pencheiit,. Un livre, a la? main, dans les eiacoir
gnures des vieilles cathedrales. On s’approehe, ils a’out. pas die
�CIPAPITRE V.
•
vifeige. » Ce keros, qui n’a pa& de visage, esfpeinf« avec une vigucur
dfentesquev » .Tout cela, monsieur, m a donneime* forte enviedfe lire
c^& Emdrcelee, qui, « en tout, par FidSatite* dtes sentiments, le jet?
des caraeteres, la grandeur* du style- est un- roman* hors ligno et a
part. Iliy a de lepopeedans cette chronique populaire, ses rustiques
personnages ont Fair de race des grands poemes. » Je m”en voulhis
d- autant plus de ne pas- eonnaitie cette Epopee que son* succes unanime et inconteste, selbn fe- feuitieton; avait decide de la’ reputation
de 1 auteur. « Tons- ceux- que* la distinction attire apprdcienf dbjfe,
comme il merite-die Petre* Fetiticelknt analyste- 'dm fandfcme, Fecrrvain hardi et protend* d’Wemmtfresse-. Ceu®* que jusqtr’fei?
tenaient a distance Kescrime et les eelairs- de sa- plume-, apprendronf
a Kadmmer dans ee roman d’art simple et pur, on* Fartiste n’apparaW
que plus grand pour setie-volbntairemenf desarme. feAinsi s’exprimait fe feuillefen ;* vous convfendrez-, monsieur, quail
y avait la de quoi faire venir Fean a la bouche. Je me demandaisseu—
fement comment une ehronique, une legcnde1, tine epopee pouvait
etre- un> roman d’art simple et' pur-.
roman ayanf swrtout pour
heros. « m martyr* sorti vivant mais- devisage dtentee fes-griftes* dbg?
lions d’un cirque romain.... un martyr politique, un eonspirateur
en soutane, un> pretre de Ford're de ces* terribles eveques pofonafe qu£
disaient la messes, boties, eperonnes, entre deu-x pistolets- poses suf
Fautel.» J ’ai done voulu en- avoir fe ernur net, et sur ma dtemande
pressante, mon? Kbraire -m’a- expedie courrier par eourrier WEnsvr*celee. Ah! monsieur, quedfe deception!? Ce roman? da-ntesqueg est1
tout simplement une rehabilitation de fe chouaun'erie.' lL’auteur
declare dans sa preface que les chouans ont ete-meeon-nus,. et qu’il est
temps de* leur fa-ire justice, en attendant sansdbufe-qu-’ten rende le
meme service aux chauffeurs. Il faut voir dlans quel style toutes ces
belles choses sont ecrites! Mais moni intention n’est pas dansfetter sur
un mauvais roman, je liens seufement a toucher quelques mote en
passant de la critique dti feuilfefen$ et de son influence- sur le theatie^
puisque c’est fe theatre quidfeihle sujet, principal dfe cetfelettic.
* Alon oncle Cotonnet etait conva-incu que fe feuilfeton perdrait la
literature dramatique , etMx Dupufepaitageaif entierementson avisa eet egard. Autrefois, dfeait fe premier, on nfeutrefenait le public quo*
dsespieeesqui en vafeient reelfeuicnt fepeine, ©ndbissait dans> I’bmbre
uno foule de productions qui nfeat riw a deme'fer'ayee’ Fart et par
consequent avec la critique. Mais-depufe que le fteuilleton sfesf ihstalle
�148
L’ANNfiE LITTfiRAIRE.
a poste fixe dans les journaux, qu’il est oblige de rcmplir^tous les
lundis un certain nombre de colonnes, il a bien fallu changer.de
systeme. Plus de choix, plus de triage, tout fait ventre pour le feuilleton; il avale un melodrame de l’Ambigu, comme une comedie du
Theatre-Francais. A ce regime grossier le gout se deteriore, l’esprit
s’empate, le jugement s’alourdit, on en vient a ne plus faire de diffe
rence entre les mets, on ne songe pas a la qualite, et pourvu que la
quantite y soil, on est content. Quelle conscience voulez-vous qu’on
apporte, dans l’examen d’un melodrame? Qu’importe que cela soit
bon ou mauvais, et ou est le critere pour juger de semblables pro
ductions ? Or, ajoutait l’oncle Cotonnet, quand la conscience s’affaiblit sur un point, elle cede bientot sur tous les autres. Dans cette
espece de promiscuite de tous les genres au milieu de laquelle il vit,
le feuilleton se blasera peu a peu sur le bien et sur le mal, il les
pesera dans la meme balance, il se decidera pour l’eloge ou pour
le blame par des motifs completement etrangers a l’art; on peut
meme prevoir le moment ou il ne blamera plus rien du tout, parce
qu’il est beaucoup plus facile, beaucoup plus commode d’approuver
que de discuter. L’eloge ainsi prodigue perdra toute valeur relative;
la critique nesera plus que l’art d’inventer des superlatifs, et on.
jugera le feuilletoniste d’apres sa force et son habilete a soulever,
l’hyperbole a bras tendu. La conclusion de tout ceci etait : Sr
1’on veut sauver l’art dramatique, il faut le debarrasser de la claque
et du feuilleton. Il me semble encore entendre M. Dupuis repondre
avec son sang-froid habituel a mon oncle :
.
— Vous avez raison, mais vous voulez l’impossible.
— Pourquoi done? repliquait l’impetueux Cotonnet, le feuilleton)
n’existait pas autrefois; il n’est pas eternel; il passera comme ont
passe tant d’autres choses; au train dont il y va, je ne lui en donne
pas pour deux ans.
, Nous verrons qui aura raison de l’oncle Cotonnet ou de son ami
Dupuis. En attendant, je ne sais si je m’abuse, mais on dirait que le
public fait deja mine de se passer de la claque. L’autre soir au
Theatre-Francais le parterre a queilque peu siffle une comedie en trois
actes de MM. Scribe et Bieville, intitulee: Les Reves d’amour. Dupuis,
et Cotonnet auraient pris plaisir a cette piece, e’est tout a fait une
comedie comme on en faisait dans leur jeune temps. On y parle de la
tante Gertrude, le heros s’appelle Melfort, et il est officier de marine.
On voit bien que les auteurs ont voulu faire quelques concessions au
�CHAPITRE V.
149
gout moderne en introduisant dans Faction uncanotier; mais cette
concession ne tire pas a consequence, la forme classique de l’oeuvre
n’en est point alteree sensiblement: c’est du pur Scribe de 1825. Le
poete se propose de donner une vigoureuse lecon a madame Dalibon,
jeune femme romanesque, unie au meilleur, au plus tendre des
epoux, et qui passe son temps a lire et a relire des lettres d’amour.
Heureusement pour elle et pour M. Dalibon, le signataire de ces let
tres, le jeune Melfort, esf mort depuis longtemps; madame Dalibon
n’est coupable que de fidelite a un souvenir. Est-ce la vraiment un
crime? La jeune femme voudrait bien se faire quelque illusion ladessus, mais elle a pour belle-soeur un dragon de vertu et de bon
sens, Jeanne, une demoiselle de vingt ans, aussi ferme dans le celibat
a cet age que je le suis au mien; c’est l’eloquence et la sagesseen personne qui, prechant sans cesse madame Dalibon, lui remontrant a
tout bout de champ le danger, le ridicule des sentiments et des idees
romanesques, la force enfin a bruler les lettres du jeune Melfort, et
meme une meche de ses cheveux. Comme je m’etonnais un peu de la
precoce et ferme raison de mademoiselle Jeanne, mon voisin de stalle
m’a fait observer que c’etait le physique de l’actrice chargee de ce
role qui le voulait ainsi. Regardez en effet, a-t-il ajoute, mademoi
selle Madeleine Brohan, ces epaules, ce port, ce sourire, ce regard
doux, c’est bien la jeunesse, si vous voulez, mais une jeunesse luxuriante, majestueuse; on ne peut pas ecrire des roles d’evapdree, de
petite folle pour une actrice qui jouera peut-etre les reines demain.
Cette reflexion me parut juste, et il n’a fallu rien moins qu’un caractere aussi vigoureusement trempe que celui de mademoiselle Jeanne
pour me rassurer, lorsque, par un coup de theatre auSsi hardi qu’inattendu, les auteurs ont ramene le jeune Melfort sur la scene. Que
deviendrait madame Dalibon sans sa belle-soeur? Entrainee par son
imagination vive et ardente, elle se perdrait'vingt fois pour une;
vingt fois meme elle se croit perdue. Mademoiselle Jeanne, heureu
sement, veille sur cette tete folle. Mais;- 6 surprise! d peripetie! trou
bles, alarmes, regrets, incertitudes, remords de madame Dalibon,
tout cela est en pure perte; 1‘e jeune Melfort ne l’aime pas, il ne l’a
jamais aimee. C’est Jeanne qu’il adore, c’est elle qu’il veut epouser.
Et les lettres brulees ce matin, que la pauvre madame Dalrbon lisait
et relisait sans cesse? c’est a Jeanne qu’elles etaient adressees.
Que Ton corrige les femmes romanesques, je ne m’y oppose pas,
c’est le droit de la comedie. Les femmes romanesques ne sont jamais
�<150
L’ANNEE-LITTER <YI RET
heurcuses ni leurs maris non plus; mais, dans cette.cuponstance,3
prends le parti de madame Dalibon. C’est le seul personnage vraiment interessant de la piece. Les auteurs 1 ont rendue ridicule., .moi
je da trouve fort a plaindre ; car avec .la sensibilite exaltee .qu’on M
donne, elle nepeut manquer de souffrir beaucoup-du role qu’on ffl
fait jouer, et dl y a vraiment de guoi. Je isais bien .que M. Scribe
arrange les .choses ;a sa facon .et gu’il .ne lui .en coutequ’un Iraitde
plume pour que madame .Dalibon devienne tout a .coup amoureuse
de son mart; maiss’dlm’endaut .pas davantage a un .auteur pour fmir
une piece, le spectate ur, delicat, nese-contentepas a si .peu de frais;;
la comedie nlest pas lerminee dans .son esprit, mais seulement sur la
scene.
Que dira Je feuilleton de cette piece? A sa .place Je n’en paTlerais
pas.. .Mais di les theatres ne donnent .aucun -autre lOiivrage non mean
pendant , la semaine, .avec quoi uempliraddlses douze colonnes ? Le
feuilletan «est done oblige de parler des pieces anediocres et meme
naauvaiscs .absolument a^mme de -cellcs .qui sont bonnes; pour lui,
comme pourla claque, il.n^y .a pas de chute,. C’etait la un -autre grief
de mon-onde Cotonnet centre le feuilleion, il ne lui nst pas w.m?
permis., disait-dl, de rendre dajustice du. silence..
■ Pour.moi, monsieur, je montrerais ivolontiers quelque indulgence
paurJa piece aiouvelle, parce quo je wis -bien:quliil faut a tout prix
encouragerla comedic.Leproverhe lui,a fait du tort dans-ces dernfors
temps. Vous .autres., a Paris, vous -commencez a Aire debarrasses ,de
cette epidemic, mais en province-elle sevit-encoreavecune grande an—J
tensile. Les femnaes ^urtout en..sont.atteintes,. .Maus.av.ons.-eu des
nomhreuxde proverbeala IVnle-SDUs-Jouanre, un enfre autres, celm
de madame Javart dont .mon .onole parle dans seslettres : elle s’est
jeteedans le proverhe .a -corps perdu..« Lst-ce done -si difficile, me
disait-elle, de meftreen :s.cene une,marquise .otun chevalier., et. de lour
prefe^les prqpos les plus ngreables .et les plus deliGats du monde?
mais je ne fais moi-mernepas autre chose de toute la journee quedes
bons mots -gue Tontcite partout. A demi couchee dans ma chaise
longue, je lutte de subtilite.et d’esprit avec notr.e recieveur qui est une
fine lame, .comme vous. savez, en.matiere degoiit. Le sous-prefot gui
a publie autrefois un volume de vers recherche ma conversation. Ge
serait donc .bien le diable si je laissais -ma marquise et mon chevalier
au milieu d’une scene ie bee dans I’eam, ou si, ayant entrepris de lour
faire dire les .choses.les plus galantes, je les faisais parler comme des
�■CttvtPFTdVE V.
coisons. Lisette,dupapierglacc, de l’encre rose, et ma plume d’oiseauwrache. »
ot Sepuis.qn’dlle Tait des proverbes, madame Javart a ‘debaptise 'Sa
survante Tfangoise; elle ne I’appelle vj>ltEis que Lisette et que’lqudfdis
Uieme Marton.
‘ Cietait tune chose Gonnrre de ’tout JattarreJqKie7madameHBucoudray
brodait wne paire de bretolles pour la fete-de mon ami Vincent;
w touthien et itoufihnnnenr j's’niitend.-Sesunmurs'et-eel’les de Vincent
sontnu’dessus du swppbn, ils‘Solvent d’ailleurs-canvdler prodhainement en -secondes noces, car its sont veufs tous les deux. La tSaint.Ohrysostome arrive, pas debretellcs. Vincent aceourt dhez moi'desole.
«< ¥ous voyez-un shomme au-desespoir, me di't-il; ra •proi'senges-tu
done, ;bZelie? C’etartana fdte ’hier dt mes bretelles ri’oiitpasparu,
LeSfnrais-tu'donnees^amnTival, femme perftde^ a/coup strr ye ne
steviwai pas a mon malheur, ye me percerai de ceenr aux pieds de
Linfidele. »
■ -Ue'vole chezmadame^Ducoudray pour iPirftormer-de'Ce^qui se passe.
J X<-J’ai appris, :meTtpond-elle,que madame Javart’composeun proVerbe : aurait-elle ^intention-de mTrnmilier par'hasard’P Mais nous
pouvons repondre a son bon tour par un autre, -et 'ecrire nous aussi
un proverbe. J’ai!la, il est vrai, des bretelles sur -le metier, mais elles
attendrent. ‘-Geluia^-qui.je les destine, me -disais-ye, •sera-charme d’apprendre que jersais repondre'aux aflaques 'demes -ermemis'; mais je
vois bien que j’aa affaire % unliommeprosaique qtii neme-comprendrait pas. Toitt-eSt rompu entre nous,diteMeJlui •demapart. ®
Autrefois, ‘Ges dames auraierit porte des petits -chiens dans leur
manchon, -mahitenariLdllesy metterft leu-rs proverbes. Wus avons
piatre-tbeatreS‘de:so'cidte'rien,qu!ailaT'efte-sous-Jouarre, ye ne parle
pas du Teste de'l’arrondis&emeht1. Les proverbes orft -remplace da -ta
pisserie. Wos belles 'dames ne brodent plus •qu’avec la plume. -Ges
raffmees traitent la langue avec tontela-coquetterie imaginable; biles
seplafeeiita ebouriffer une phrase pourfire ensuite del’dtrange mine
qu’elle a, coiffee en coup de vent. Tel adjectif qui demande audience,
dies le'laissent morfondre:ala porte, eomme un amcrureux venu a la
inauvaise heure”, tel autre, presse de sen alleret tout a fait deplace dans
laTOmpagnie, ne peut-dbtenirlaperrmission de;sotftir.‘Ce'qm les<aniusb
surtout, c’est de jeter des mdtsvlansune-chtffonmere,-'et'd ?y'puiser aii
hasard. On leur a dit que Tart d’ecrire n’est pas plus difficile • que
cela.
‘
...
�452
L’ANNEE LITTERAIRE.
Le proverbe est decidement tombe en quenouille, le voila class©
parmi les chiffons, et devenu en quelque sorte un objet de toilette
pour les dames. Il est choye, fete, caresse dans les boudoirs; on le
bourre de sucreries, tant qu’il pourrait bien en mourir comme VertVert. C’est ce que je lui souhaite le plus promptement possible, car
s’il dure encore quelque temps, il achevera de detruire le peu qui
reste de l’ancienne gaiete franchise. Figurez-vous, monsieur, qua la
Ferte-sous-Jouarre nous ne nous sommes pas deguises une seule
fois pendant tout le carnaval; on n’a fait que jouer des proverbes.
Etes-vous partisan du theatre bourgeois? pour moi, monsieur, j’ai
contre lui une violente antipathie. C’est tout au plus si je tolere la
charade en societe. C’est encore une maniere de ne pas aller dans le
monde, et je m’explique bien pourquoi la comedie bourgeoise est si
fort devenue a la mode; quand la societe ne s’interesse plus a rien,
qu’elle est ennuyee, blasee, elle se met a jouer la comedie. Cela dis
pense de causer, ou cela fournit un theme tout fait de conversation,
ce qui revient absolument au meme. La noblesse frivole et indifferente du dix-huitieme siecle, a la veille de la revolution, passait son
temps a jouer la comedie dans ses chateaux. Je n’aime pas a voir
revenir cette mode, c’est un signe de decadence pour la societe.
Je ne parle pas des petits ridicules d’amour-propreet devanite que
peut faire naitre et developper la comedie bourgeoise, ni de l’influence
qu’elle peut exercer sur les moeurs, quoique la chose vaille bien la
peine d’etre traitee; il est certain que la comedie bourgeoise ne favorise pas l’esprit de conversation. En voiture, en chemin de fer, par
tout ou vous vous trouvez en contact avec un homme pendant un
temps determine, vous eprouvez le besoin d’entrer en communication
avec lui. Il n’en est pas de meme au theatre; une salle de spectacle,
j’en ai fait souvent l’experience sur moi-meme, qui me pique pourtant d’etre assez communicatif, est le seul endroit du monde ou l’on
puisse rester assis pendant quatre ou cinq heures a cote d’un de ses
semblables sans echanger une parole avec lui. Le whist, le silencieux
whist lui-meme, vaut mieux pour meler les hommes que le theatre.
Les gens que vous invitez chez vous pour assister a la representa
tion d’un vaudeville resteront completement etrangers les uns aux
autres, comme des gens qui se sont rencontres non pas dans la meme
maison, mais dans la meme salle de spectacle.
Ln autre symptome non moins grave de la decadence de la societe
francaise, c’est le succes des escamoteurs. Autrefois on allait voir ces
�CHAPITRE V.
133
gens-la chez eux; on ne les faisait pas venir chez soi, sinon pour
distraire des enfants. Aujourd’hui l’escamoteur est le roi de toutes
les fetes, on invite les gens expres pour leur montrer des tours de
cartes. Rien n’est triste comme de voir une centaine de femmes couvertes de fleurs et de diamants rangees en cercle autour d’une table a
muscades, et n’ouvrant la bouche que pour rire des calembredaines
du prestidigitateur. Mais revenons au theatre, s’il vous plait.
Il faut que je vous l’avoue, monsieur, j’ai toujours eu un faible
pour le drame. C’etaif meme la un de mes plus ordinaires sujets de
discussion et de dissentiment avec mQn oncle. Il avait beau me dire
que je manquais de gout, que le drame etait un genre faux, batard,
impossible, qu’il n’y avait de reel que la comedie et la tragedie, toute
son eloquence echouait contre un penchant irresistible. Je l’ai tou
jours cache a mon oncle, cela eut empoisonne ses derniers jours, mais
j’ai plusieurs drames en portefeuille. Le moment est peut-etre venu
de les en tirer, car le drame semble reprendre faveur; je parle du
drame veritable, car on ne saurait donner ce nom aux exhibitions
de decors et de machines auxquelles se livrent depuis si longtemps les
theatres du boulevard, i
J’ai vu V Outrage a la Porte-Saint-Martin; c’est le drame tel que je
It’entends, le drame en habit noir, sans mise en scene, sans la colla
boration du machiniste. L’action se passe de nos jours, elle est simple,
pathetique, soutenue avec art et rapide, ce qui est une grande qualite. Comme je n’ai point la pretention d’ecrire un feuilleton, je ne
vous dirai pas que la piece de MM. Barriere et Plouvier est un chefd’oeuvre : je lui trouve au contraire plus d’un defaut, entre autres
celui de commencer par une exposition un peu trop longue. On aurait
pu nous dire plus vite comment le pere d’Helene s’est ruine, et com
ment celle-ci est devenue presque subitement folle sans qu’on puisse
assigner aucune cause a safolie. Il y a des femmes auxquelles la
folie va bien,et qu’on epouserait presque par cette seule raison qu’elles
ont perdu l’esprit, tant elles mettent de grace et de sensibilite dans la
demence. Helene est de ce nombre, elle a au plus haut degre le pres
tige et la poesie de la folie, si bien que Jacques d’Albret en devient
amoureux et en fait sa femme. Quelques mois s’ecoulent entre le
premier et le second acte ; Helene est rendue a la raison, l’amour de
Jacques l’a guerie. Son mariage a ete celebre dans la journee; le soir
est venu, Helene est heureuse et cependant inquiete, troublee, agitee
de je ne sais quelles funestes apprehensions; son mari l’a entrainee
�154
L’ANN&E LITTER Al RE.
vers la chambre nuptiale, elleest settle avec lui, 51 vent la-serrer dans
ses bras, elle frissonne; il s’approdhe, 51 'cherdhe a lui prendre la
main, die pousseuncri de tenreur, >le passe lui re vient a la memoireq
il y a deux;ans, la nuit,nn'.homme -s’etait irttroduitdansoctte-meme
chambre par la fendtre feissee ouverte, et 51 en etait sorti la -laissarit
folleetdeshonoree.
I
Ici commence veellemerit de drame.
.>
Jacques, maitre du secret de .;sa femme, jure de la -venger et de
punirleeoupable. fHdlene, desesperee d’avoir Tiutpartager aun honnete homme une shonte dorit elle n’avait pas conscience, se refugie
dans la folie pour -echapper a I’horrible realite de sa situation, elle
feint d’avoir perdu nine seconde-fois la raison, maisnne larme •qti’-dh
laissefomber :sur ll-a imam de -sonmani eclaire -celui-ci. Les feus ne
pleurent pas, la vie du -coeur s’eteint en meme temps que celfe 'de
1’intelligence. Jacques,•desilepremier-moment, apardonne a Helene ,
maisrfe bariheur est impossible pour iui tant quUl ri’aura pas trouve
l’Jaommerde la ;nuit tfatale.
‘<Get homme eSt le mari de sa propre ^eeur, ton -certain Raoul de
Brives, que je vous donne bien comme le plus -miserable coquin qui
ait jamais fume son <oigare but les'trottoirs della bonne ville de Mnrseille. Savez-vous <qtti fait <cette belle decouverte? c’est precisement
le pere de Raoul, un anciemavocatgeneral, un Briitus-des Bouchesdu-Rhone ^capable d’envoy er -sonfils aux assises, de requerirconfre
luibt de:reponsseriradinission.deS‘ciKCoustances attenuantes. Rarlezmoi.de-ceshomnaeslout d-une piece, -on m’en wit pas assez dans les
pieces reabstes de nos jours, pleines de caracteres touches et indecis.
Cequeje-ne.comprendspas bien, parexemple^cfest ledevouementde
Raymond-de Braves pour son sccleratdefrere.; il s’estbattu autrefois
a sa place, clestvraipmais <ce n’est point la une -raison pour prendre a
sa charge tous ales *az$r/^esquesson.ame ;a pu eommettre dans les
baslides deMarseille. Lola.amene, ilest'vrai,;dans 1’esprit de Jacques
et de .M. de Brives de pure, des Moutes, des (hesitations d ’un effet
asscz dramatique paw nous faire prendre patience jusqu’au *oinquieme acte., ou le mari et de seducteurse trouventface a face, teepee
a ;la main. Admirez ici :le igout dn public francais pour l’emphase
dont seplaignaitlantmon -ancle iGotonneL Touton portant des-buttes
a l’infame Raoul, Jacques va ■s’imaginer, on nesait drop pourquoi, i
que ce n’est geut-etre pas pourlui que sa femme fait des woeux en ee
moment. Ce doute le trouble au point qu’il laisse tornber son epee;
�GHAPITRE X . .
»
si Helene se trouvait pas Japour la ramasser.enlui disant: Thte-itef
le crime driompherait ale da vertu. A ce tue-Ae fort Inutile, selonmoi,
car tout Je monde saiLbien q.ue Jafemme aime son mari, ct non pas
celui qui l’;a>outragee,.la salle a ecl stolen applaudissements Irene—
tiques^cola a emporte le sucres. ■•C’etait ipourlant Je meme public
*£[ui avatt.sithien compris la larme'd’Helen^, cette larme quiavait fait
dire a.Jacques.:«Tn n’es pas folie 1<»
. ^Qtetnage, je vous Tai -dit, most point nn .chef-d’oeuvre sans
doute; les caracteres dt 'meme les -passions .manquent dans ce drame;;.
il n y a guere que des situations et des-effets, tmais dies (situations^
ces effets ne sont -.depourvus nude force, ni d’tune tcertaine<opiginalite»
Je vous ai confesse d’ailleurs ma partialite pour le .drame en general.
Je voudrais qu’on y ;revint un pen. JI me sembleiqu’on valaitmfou-x
a Tepoque oil le -drame efail a Ja mode * il y avait -alors un public
dans la salle, desacteurs^sur Jes planches<etd.es juges dans des juup-*
naux. -Un vrai‘drame n’est-il pas preferable*, a font prendre, a ces
compositions moitie ligue, moitie maisin, qm;Gherohent unmomorit
a.faire ?rire, un moment apres.a daire pJeurer, -eiiquime sont ni des
comedies ni des dramas.? ..Je .tes verrais tdisparaite;avec plaisir.amsi
gue .ces vastes mecamques dialoguees-ou Je peintre ictde machimste
remplacent Tauteun. >Si peu que de eoeiiusoit teuchet, (c’eslitoujours
quelque-dhose; n’est-il pas singulieridesongcrque des milliors^d’an-"
dividus vont s’entasser dans une salle de spectacle pbupwir un vaisseau de carton.? Passe encore pour cela; mais que dire de ces pauvres
chefs-d’oeuvre comme Eaust indignemeni traceslisten.ballets??
; J’ai Teau .cher.cher ■ a-me faire une .raison, aemme «<dit; ill y ;a
unc chose dent je ne -puis prendre mon parti .• .-c’est la rclaque. iNon
pas qu’elle soit plus insupportable au theatre de la Porte-Saint—
Martin •.qu’ailleurs, maisl’tOzz/riz^e aula prouveque ie public pouvait
a la rigueur se passer destimulant, set (que,;si an de voulait bien, il
ne^crait pas impossible -de mettre les .claqueurs ,a JapoKtedeltans
les JMatres,. Llart rserait.sau«ve sidlan;avait ice(courage;; j ’en suis-cw-t
tain,apioique ce ne ?s;oit pas learns de daut le monde..
dNous.avons.a la Forte, tdepuis J’aamee derniere, un chef<de claque
retire; il est mon voisin; nous nous rencontrons souvent;ala';pramenade,; quoique dune education asscz. negligee, it ne manque pas
dlespiitet j ’ aimea Jefaire causer’de temps en temps* C’est principalement aur son metier qu’il -est amusant ?a entendre rcMomcher
voisin,me disait-il, Tautre jour, pendant pres de trente ans, j’ai
�.156
L’ANNtfE LITT^RAIRE.
exerce la profession de chef de claque, et je suis parvenu a elever la
claque au rang d’une des institutions les plus honorables, et les plusl
utiles de 1’Etat. Je prononcais souverainement sur l’a-propos d’une
entree ou d’une sortie, sur le sei d’un bon mot, sur l’effet d’un
denoument. Et quel aimable eclectisme, quelle douce tolerance I Les
querelles litteraires n’existaient pas pour moi; j’applaudissais egalement les romantiques et les classiques, la tragedie et le drame, le
proverbeet la comedie. J’ose dire que pendant trente ans les hommes
ont pu apprendre a mon ecole non-seulement l’art dramatique, mais
encore la plus haute philosophic.
« Je ne dis pas qu’il ne m’en ait rien coute, et que j’aie toujours a
me louer de mes eleves. Mais Orphee lui-meme ne fut-il pas un peu
egratigne par les tigres qu’il charmait des sons de sa lyre?Il me soul
vient que je recus plus d’un horion a la premiere representation
d’Hemani, et a celle de Christine d Fontainebleau, j’eus une cote
presque enfoncee. Mais ce sont la des blessures recues au champ
d’honneur. Je me les rappelle avec orgueil.
« Vous vous plaignez beaucoup.(de la claque; c’est que vous na
1’avez point encore examinee a son veritable point de vue.
« La claque est une necessity sociale. On nie cette verite, mais il
faudra tot ou tard se rendre a ^’evidence, On a toujours voulu la
supprimer, ©n a toujours ete force de la maintenir. Plus de claqueJ
plus de theatre.
«Il faut, dites-vous, laisser au public ie droit de juger les pieces,
d’applaudir les acteurs, en uh mot, de distribuer la gloire. Dans ce
pays de France, on se paye volontiers de mots, et quand la chose a
disparu, pourvu que: le mot reste, tout le monde est content. Le
public ! voila un mot, mais la chose que ce mot represente, faitesmoi le plaisir de me dire ou elle est ? Les uns vont au theatre pour
causer de leurs affaires, les autres pour dormir, le plus grand nombre
par habitude; ils s’amusaient autrefois au theatre, ils y retournent
par souvenir. Le public aujourd’hui se compose done de gens qui
causent, de gens qui revent a l’operation qu’ils feront a la bourse de
demain, dc<gens qui dorment, et d’une centaine de gens qui s’interessent a la piece.
« Or, figurez-vous quel effet pitoyable produisent une vingtaine de
mains battant dans une salle. Le silence complet vaudrait bien
mieux. Quoi! si peu d’applaudissements ! la piece que nous sommes
censes ecouter, se disent l’homme endormi qui se reveille, l’homme
�CHAPITRE V. ‘
qui Buse et 1’homme qui reve, doit etre fort mauvaise, et ils se
remettent a dormir, a causer, a rever. Si je ne suis pas la pour me
joindre aux applaudissements, pour les renforcer, la piece tombe et
le directeur est oblige de fermer boutique. Et l’acteur, monsieur,
l’acteur! Croyez-vous qu’on trouvera aisement des gens pour faire
ce metier de comedien lorsque les applaudissements dependront de
cet^tre de raison qu’on nomme le public? Trouvez le moyen de passionner le public, ou gardez la claque, je vous defie de vous tirer de
la. »
I Cette these est paradoxale en diable, mais je ne la veux point discuter aujourd’hui. Je m’en tiens’a ma devise : Il faut supprimer la
claque, dans les theatres de musique surtout; e’est la qu’elle est vraiment odieuse par la frenesie de son enthousiasme; elle est partout,
elle applaudit tout, elle fait tout bisser. C’est a prendre son chapeau
et a s’en aller des le premier acte. J’etais a la premiere representation
de la Fee Carabosse, au Theatre-Lyrique; j’en suis sorti furieux,
n’ayant pas compris grand’choselau poeme et rien du: tout a la mu
sique. Les contes de fees sont faits pour etre lus et non representes.
J’alme a me figurer la fee Melodine changee en vieille femme bossue
par la jalousie d’une rivale jalouse de sa jolie tete et de sa jolie voix,
feiais si on me montre Carabosse elle-meme avec ses haillons et sa
bosse, adieu le charme et la pitie. Je suis heureux qu’elle trouve
enfin le fiance dont le baiser doit lui rendre sa jeunesse et sa beaute;
■quant au rustre qui l’embrasse, je demande qu’on me le cache.
Decors, costumes, etoffes d’or et de soie, rien de tout cela ne vaut les
merveilles que mon imagination deroule.devant moi. Qu’est-ce que
la voix de madame Ugalde a cote de celle que j’entends en reve au
coin de mon feu? On a mis un grand nombre de contes de fees au
theatre, ou, pour mieux dire, tous y ont passe; cherchez combien y
sont restes : trois ou quatre tout au plus. C’est la naivete qui fait le
’charme de ces recits; elle disparait a la scene. La realite remplace la
fiction. L’esprit cesse d’etre acteur dans le drame^il n’y en a plus que
pour les yeux. MM. Lockroy et Cogniard ont arrange leur conte avec
beaucoup d’habilete scenique, mais il m’a ete. impossible de m’y
interesser. Je ne m’en prends qu’a moi seul, je n’aime les feeries
que dans les livres.
Vous allez peut-etre, monsieur, me taxer de barbarie et de provincialismej mais, en fait de musique d opera-comique, j en suis
reste a la Dame blanche, au Pre aux clercs, a Zampa, a la Fiancee;
�»
l’ankSe'Eitt Fraire.
j&ni*arnete ail Homino noir. Au dela, il nly a- pour moi quo tene*^
hares., Je ne comprends absolument rien a; la musique des; Jeunes*
compositeurs. Vous me direzfqu& presque’ tout' le monde en est la,,
qu’oni n’aime guere que la musique qw’bn a entendue dkns- sa jem~
riesse. Au plus' fort; du sueees dfe* la Rome blanch#, que de’ gens*
regreftaient encore Fontow efr Stephanie1. Vous vous etes arrete aHerold!,. Boieldieu et Aulier, coniine dtautres sont restes- a Nicolo, &
Berten; et. a Daleyrac;: eelte ne: prouve point quo- fe compositeurs d?auujourd’hui manquent de talent; vous ne les goutez pas, d’autres-les>
comprennent. En musique, comme en litterature et en peinture, chaCUBialcs gouts; db son age et de^sa- generation'. J’eir- demeure parfaitement d’accord avec vous, permettez-moi cependant une observation:
on chante.beancoup raoihsles maitres; du jour que ceux d’autrefeisv
Ne me repondez pas queje vis en province, que je suis un etreQiBWKv-Uu vrai dilettante de la Ferte^sous-jbuarre. Jte ne vous; parle
pas< de: mon chef-lieu seutement, mais'deParis- et die la France entiere; EesoperasmowveauxHedevaennentpas-populaires. G’est unfhit*.
'Jenez-,,. monsieur; jeveux etre-juste; celatient moins-au talent des;
musiciens d’aujourd’hui qu’aux. dispositions du public. La musique
Di est plus: a la models de* 1825 ai 1848-,, il y a> eu: w periode de pres
de vingt-cinq-ans, pendantlaquelle ouapu croireque hFrance etait
devenue la, nation- lat phis musicale dfel’Europe.. Essayez de compter
fesi grands succes lyriqwes <fe cette periode-:: la Muette, GuillaumeTeH^ le Gomfx Qry;, Robert le Hiable, lu Have, lee- Huguenots', le
Rre aux elereerZ.ampa,.Fm. Hiavolby- ^sini, Auber; Meyerbeer,
Adam?,- Bellini,. Donizetti. Bappelez—vous tant de chanteurs et de
ehanteuses-illustees,, fe safes rivallsani avec la scene, la mort de
madame Malibran devenue. uni deuil. public, les debuts^ de Duprez
passes.a-1 etat devenemenfeomme ua; changementde ministere, une
cavatine- de Rubini faisant concurrence a uir> discourse de Mi. Guizot
ou de Mr. Thiers,, et la retract®. prematuree de. mademoiselle Falconarr.achant presque. dps femes- au journalisme..
Convenez- que nous. n’en. sommes. plus’ la.
Quiest-ceq-ui- salt au juste aujourd’huiles nomsdfes premiers chan*
teurset de la premiere chanteuse de t Opera.? person nn. pour- afnsii
dire. Que vous est—il reste dans la memoire, du. dernier ouvrage que
vous avez vu representer ? riern Eh biend: avecles ehanteursincoianus^
avec les partitions quon. ne grave meme pas, la salle de FAcademic
demusique est- »oujours? pleme. ML Halevy intente, dit-on, unproces
�MB
€.HAPITRE¥.
a. ses, edileurs pour les forcer a dormer soaplus riant opera ® lagra—
vurc.. Guevmard et madame Lauters, puisque tours noms merevipTT^
ncnt, chantent. devant un parterre aussi garni qpue Duprezet made
moiselle. Falcon, et la Magicierme^ des recettes aussi considerables
que Guillaume T.elleX, les- Hiuguenats. Quel, symptom p. plus ecl a taut
de la decadence de l’art musical ?
Cette, decadence at du vous; frapper- si. vousj avez; assiste vendredi
dernier a la premiere representation dumouveloperade M. Felicie®
^i^Herculmum.. J-’aireeonnw aveeeffroi q.uemon chef declaque
U-exageraff .rien. Si les gens, du lustre niavaienf pris le parti dapplandir cheque morceau.a-.tout rompne, !® salle serail restee silencieuse.,
IL s agissait pourtantd’un ouvrageecritpar-un compositeur- distingue
quidonne plus a l’inspiration qu’aumetierpet dont la premiere parti
tion, sur la scene de L’Academie de musique. auraii du reveiller l’attem
tion des spectateursr. Il n’en,airien e.te.. Cela tienl peut-etre; au poeme^
qui n’offr.epas un intenet bion, vif.nl bien soutenu. Ge poeme-,. pourrait-on dire-, n’a ete feit par personne,. tant.il-a-end,’auteursquiy onfi
pus la, main.. Il s’est fait, tout seuh aux. repetition^, ee qui arrive bien
jdus, souvent quou ne pense*. On. a nomme.pourtanl MM-. Mery et
Iladob. J’ai ce. livret sous les yeux^il; eontient sur ehaque' deeor des
notes.-fort interessantes; ainsi, a prop.os deladJGGoration duideusieme
acte-, nous, lisons-au bas de la page r « La-configuration- geologique de.
ces. metiers, qui semble appartenir an caprice; du peinire^ m son
modele exact a So rrente d ans.le-voi&inage de; Naples ..Ce^vaate paysage
est l’ceuvre de M. Desplechin, un de"os plus grands poetes du decor.»,
C’estiuie agreable innovation, tolivretepaEgnera.ddsorniaisla peine
an fcuillcton de chercher des phrases pour louer dignement le& decoBateurs de l’Opera„ Pourquor le livret ne ferait-il pas pour les chanteurs ce qu’il vient de faire pour les peintres.? J’aimerais assez a lire
aussi a la fin d’un morceau: « Cet air est chante par M. Roger, un de
nos plus grands poetes de la gamme. »
Sans me piquer de connaissances fort etendues en musique, j’ai
pris plaisir a entendre plusieurs morceaux de cette partition : une
romance au premier acte, des airs de danse au deuxieme, un fort
beau duo au dernier, et quantite de choses fines et dedicates que je ne
puis analyser, mais le public n’y prenait pas trop garde, il attendait
IBruption du Vesuve. C’est triste, mais c’est comme ca.
MConsolons-nous en songeant que si la musique devient indifferent©
aux classes elevees de la societe, elle penetre chaque jour davantage
�160
L’ANNfiE LITTfiRAIRE. — CHAPITRE V.
au sein des masses. Je ne m’afflige pas outre mesure de la situation
assez triste de la musique en France. 11 y avait quejque chose qui
sonnait faux dans l’enthousiasme qu’on semblait eprouver pour elle.
On accordait- aux chanteurs et chanteuses une importance qu’ils ne
doivent point avoir au sein d’une nation forte et virile; les tenors
prenaient le pas sur les gens de lettres, ce qui ne presageait rien de
bon pour l’avenir. Cependant, comme cette indifference pour la
musique s’etend, il faut en convenir, sur tous les arts en general,
j’emporte de mon sejour a Paris une conviction assez triste, c’est que
ce qu’on nomme la societe elegante et polie se desinteresse de plus en
plus chaque jour des questions d’art, de litterature, de morale, qui
valent bien les questions d’interet materiel. On dirait que toutes ces
choses ne la regardent pas, et ne sont pas dignes qu’on prenne la
peine de se faire une opinion sur elles. Aussi la claque et le feuilleton
ont-ils seuls la parole en ce moment. Qu’on y prenne garde cepen
dant, une societe abdique lorsqu’elle cesse d’avoir une opinion sur
les choses dont nous venons de parler. La societe francaise n’en est
point encore la, il faut l’es^perer; c’est le devoir de tous ceux qui tiennent une plume de l’avertir et de la tirer de la torpeur ou elle s’endort,
c’est pourquoi j’ai pris la liberte de vous ecrire cette.lettre, dont vous
ejcuserez le decousu; j’aurais voulu la faire plus courte, mais je n’en
ai pas eu le temps. J’ai embrasse d’ailleurs trop de matieres a la fois.
N’est pas ecrivain, qui ne sait pas se borner, disait mon oncle Cotonnet; une autre fois je tacherai de mieux me conformer a ce sage
precepte.
Agreez, monsieur, l’assurance de ma consideration la plus dis—
tinguee.
COTONNET neveu. ; .A
La Ferti-sous-Jouarre, 5 mars <859.
"•>,>)■ iff. r* ■
..
•iLuj j
•
v ■
•
:
TAXILE DELORD.
.
■--•Hal
Paris. — Imprimerie de P.-A. Bourdier et C,e, rue Mazarine, 30.
l.-m
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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L'annee literaire
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [Paris]
Collation: [143]-160 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Le Megasin de Librairie: literature, histoire, philosophie, voyages, .... Vol. 3.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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1859
Identifier
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G5727
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Literature
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[Unknown]
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<img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (L'annee literaire), identified by </span><span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk">Humanist Library and Archives</a></span><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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French
Conway Tracts
Literature
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LE MAGASIN
DE LIBRAIRIE
�library
South Place Ethical Society
3000 Individuai
sacca ar ticles - WT. .-.-.
90ÛKE catalogued.....
Class (COH te.ioujó')
Ca*............ ji . Cffòr—
Paris. — Imprimerie de P.-A. BOLRDIER et Cle, 30, rue Mazarine.
�LE MAGASIN
DE LIBRAIRIE
LITTÉRATURE, HISTOIRE, PHILOSOPHIE,
VOYAGES, POÉSIE, THÉÂTRE, MÉMOIRES, ETC., ETC.
PUBLIÉ PAR CHARPENTIER, ÉDITEUR
AVEC LE CONCOURS DES PRINCIPAUX ÉCRIVAINS
TOME TROISIÈME
. PARIS
CHARPENTIER, LIBRAIRE-ÉDITEUR
2 S , QUAI DE L’ÉCOLE
1859
Réserve de tous droits
��LA JEUNESSE
DE BACHAUMONT*
Si Bachaumont ne fut ni un des personnages éminents, ni un
des écrivains les plus considérables de son temps, il exerça cependant
une grande influence, au moins comme critique, sur tout ce qui est
du domaine des lettres et des arts. Son nom est resté attaché à un vaste
recueil littéraire, dont il n’a écrit que la moindre partie et dont la plus
étendue n’a été composée qu’après sa mort, mais qui conserve encore
aujourd’hui une autorité venant tout entière de ce nom de Bachaumont.
Les biographies ne donnent presque aucun renseignement sur sa famille
et sa jeunesse : les Mémoires ci-après contiennent au moins des indica
tions utiles sur ces deux points. On y trouvera , en outre, de curieux
tableaux de mœurs, des scènes étranges de la vie de ce temps, c’est-àdire des dernières années du règne de Louis XIV ; puis, comme, dans
cet écrit, tout confidentiel, Bachaumont se laisse volontiers aller à inter
rompre sa narration pour réunir des souvenirs de l’époque de son en
fance , recueillis ou complétés un peu plus tard, il s’y rencontre des
détails piquants sur quelques personnages historiques, notamment
sur le prince de Conti et la petite Cour de Meudon. Nous ne doutons
1. Quelques personnes nous blâmeront peut-être de n’avoir pas supprimé
dans ce récit certains détails un peu vifs, mais nous n’avons pas pensé en
avoir le droit. Un éditeur ne peut, sans motifs graves, altérer ou modifier la
couleur d’un récit qui marque le caractère d’une époque ou d’un person
nage, car c’est précisément dans ce caractère que l’histoire trouve les secrets
des événements qu’elle est appelée à juger.
(Note de l’Éditeur.)
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
pas que le lecteur ne regrette avec nous que Bachaumont n’ait prolongé
davantage cette causerie intime.
On s’apercevra bien que ces Mémoires n’étaient pas destinés à la
publicité, et n’ont pas même été relus par l’auteur. Ce sont des con
fidences à un ami très-intime, ce qui nous dispense de chercher à disctiiper Bachaumont d’avoir rappelé les torts de conduite d’une per
sonne qu’il devait respecter, si insoucieuse qu’elle se fût montrée
envers lui enfant. S’il en parle quelquefois avec légèreté, on verra, dans
d’autres passages cependant, que ce n’est pas sans émotion.
Sur une des premières feuilles du manuscrit est écrite la date du
1er juillet 1731. C’est évidemment celle du jour où Bachaumont a
commencé à écrire ces Mémoires. Né en 1700, mort en 1771, il était
donc alors au milieu de sa carrière.
Frédéric Lock.
PRÉAMBULE.
Un de mes amis me dit un jour : « Je sais à peu près tout ce qui
est arrivé depuis que je vous connais ; mais j’ignore presque tout
ce qui a précédé le jour de notre connaissance. Je ne m’intéresse pas
moins à l’un qu’à l’autre, ainsi je vous demande de m’en instruire.
— Le motif de votre curiosité, lui répondis-je, est trop obligeant à
mon égard pour ne m’y pas soumettre. Mais comment ma paresse et
la crainte d’abuser de votre patience me permettront-elles un récit
dont je craindrais la longueur et pour vous et pour moi? J’aime
mieux idonc vous promettre de vous l’écrire, si, par la suite, je me
trouve quelque loisir assez long pour cela; je pourrai même peutêtre vous écrire plus aisément des choses que mon extrême timidité
m’empêcherait de vous dire. » Il voulut bien se contenter de cette
excuse pour le moment et de ma promesse pour l’avenir ; il l’exigea
de moi, et, quelque temps après, m’étant trouvé à la campagne dans
un aimable loisir, l’envie de tenir ma parole et de satisfaire un ami
auquel je ne pouvais rien refuser me fit lui écrire ce qui suit :
tous
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
7
1
J’ai vécu longtemps sans savoir si je descendais d’une origine noble
ou roturière, et, de plus, sans m’en soucier. Si la vertu était toujours
compagne de la noblesse, je me reprocherais cette indifférence ; mais
tous les gens de condition ne vous ressemblent pas. Quoi qu’il en
soit, j’ai été tiré de mon ignorance sur ma naissance par un petit évé
nement que je vous raconterai dans la suite de ce récit. En attendant,
je vous dirai que mon grand-père, à ce que j’ai ouï dire plusieurs fois,
était fils du plus pauvre gentilhomme qu’il y eût peut-être dans tout
le pays chartrain, et ceux de cette espèce abondent dans cette province.
Il demeurait dans un petit village dont j’ai oublié le nom ou que je
n’ai peut-être jamais bien su. Il habitait dans une sorte de chaumière
aux environs de laquelle était situé le peu de bien qu’il possédait, qu’il
cultivait apparemment de ses propres mains, et je vous assure qu’il
avait bientôt fait. Je n’ai jamais su le nom de la femme qu’il a épou
sée, mais vous devez bien juger que, dans la situation que je viens de
vous décrire, il ne trouva pas un parti bien opulent. En récompense,
elle fut très-féconde et le fit bientôt père d’une si grande quantité
d’enfants que je n’en ai jamais bien su le nombre ; vous jugez quelle
espèce d’éducation ses facultés lui permirent de leur donner dans leur
premier âge ; aussi je crois qu’ils ne différèrent pas beaucoup de ce
qu’on appelle de simples paysans. Les postes les plus importants que
la médiocrité de leur fortune et de leur éducation présenta à leur am
bition, quand ils furent venus à un certain âge, furent des places
dans les gendarmes ou dans les gardes du roi, nec plus ultra de la
pauvre noblesse qui se trouve sans bien et sans protection. J’ai cepen
dant ouï dire à mon grand-père que quelques-uns y avaient été tués
au service en braves gens; un d’eux même parvint à être capitaine
de cavalerie et y périt, comme les autres, sans laisser de postérité.
Comme dans les nombreuses familles (même parmi les paysans un
peu aisés) on destine toujours quelque enfant à l’état ecclésiastique,
dans la flatteuse espérance d’en faire un curé de village chez lequel
le reste de la famille pourra trouver, un jour à venir, quelque res
source pour sa subsistance, on obtint pour un d’eux, je ne sais par
quel canal, une place de boursier dans un collège de Paris. Celui-là
ne manquait pas de sens ; il étudia, se fit prêtre et parvint, je ne sais
comment, à être, auprès de l’archevêque de Paris, Pérélixe, un de
�8
*
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
ces espèces de domestiques ecclésiastiques que les prélats ont toujours
autour d’eux et qui ne diffèrent guère des valets à livrée que par la
couleur de leur habit. Comme il avait de l’esprit, il fut élevé par la
suite à l’honneur d’être un des secrétaires de Monseigneur qui, après
bien des années de service, pour le récompenser à la manière ordi
naire des grands seigneurs, c’est-à-dire sans qu’il leur en coûte rien,
lui fit tomber un canonicat de Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois qu’il alla
desservir. Il était violent, bien fait et de complexion amoureuse; il
trouva jolie la femme d’un aubergiste voisin; il lui plut; le mari le
trouva mauvais, le prit sur le fait, le tua d’un coup de couteau et
fut roué *.
1. Voici quel était le supplice de la roue. Le patient était étendu, les jambes
et les bras écartés, sur des poutres de bois disposées en croix de Saint-André,
de façon que les membres, dans leur milieu, portaient à faux dans le vide.
Ainsi fixé, le bourreau brisait, avec une barre de fer, les deux jambes, les
deux cuisses, les deux bras et les deux avant-bras. Un dernier coup fracassait
la poitrine. On détachait ensuite le patient; on lui rapprochait les bras et les
jambes, et on l’étendait sur une petite roue de carrosse élevée de terre au
moyen d’un bâton passé dans son moyeu. Le supplicié dont tous les membres
étaient rompus enroulait ainsi la roue dans sa circonférence, et restait
exposé jusqu’à sa mort qui n’arrivait pas aussitôt qu’on pourrait le penser.
Cartouche, après avoir été rompu, vécut encore sur la roue pendant vingtquatre heures.
C’est cet atrreuxsupplice que desjuges du parlement de Paris firent infliger
à un homme coupable de quoi ?... d’avoir tué dans un accès de colère bien
légitime celui qui lui ravissait sa femme. Si l’oncle de Bachaumont n’avait
fait que dépouiller l’aubergiste de son argent, comme un filou ordinaire,
le mari eût, peut-être, (nous disons peut-être!) été acquitté, mais le cha
noine ne lui volait que sa femme, que les juges estimaient infiniment moins,
sans doute.
Cet horrible et stupide jugement nous en rappelle un autre que raconte
l’avocat Barbier dans son journal :
En 1731, un riche israélite hollandais nommé Du Lis, ayant eu la preuve
^qu’une actrice de l’Opéra, mademoiselle Pélissier, qu’il entretenait avec le
plus grand luxe, avait des rapports particuliers avec Francœur, musicien et
surintendant de la musique du Roi, résolut de se venger de son rival. Il
chargea de sa vengeance un homme attaché à son service, appelé La France,
lequel s’adjoignit à cet effet deux soldats aux gardes. Tous trois, munis de
bâtons cachés sous leurs manteaux, attendirent un soir Francœur à la sortie
de l’Opéra ; mais celui-ci quitta la salle avec deux amis qui l’accompagnèrent
jusqu’à sa demeure, et le complot ne fut pas exécuté. Francœur n’en eut même
connaissance que par le procès que nous allons raconter.
Un écrivain public, qui avait eu connaissance du projet de La France, en
fit part à M. Hérault, lieutenant de police. La France et ses deux acolytes
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
9
II
Ce grand-oncle, en quittant sa place de boursier, l’avait fait tomber
au cadet de tous scs frères, jeune enfant qui pétillait d’esprit et d’en
vie de faire fortune. Celui-ci étudia avec beaucoup d’application et
devint, en peu de temps, le plus brillant écolier du college en grec
furent arrêtés et traduits au Châtelet. Les deux soldats réclamés par leurs
colonels restèrent en prison, et La France, après avoir été appliqué à la ques
tion, fut condamné à être pendu. Il appela de cette sentence à la Grand’chambre; mais, ajoute Barbier, « MM. de la Tournelle, plus amateurs apparem
ment de musique, ont trouvé la chose si grave, qu’ils ont condamné Dtf Lis et
La France à être rompus vifs, ce qui a été exécuté le 9 de ce mois (mai 1731),
en effigie pour Du Lis (il s’était sauvé en Hollande) et très-réellement pour
La France, qui pourtant, par grâce, a été étranglé. Il a joué de malheur et
souffert plus qu’un autre, parce que la corde du tourniquet a cassé. 11 a fallu
chercher une autre corde, qu’il était à moitié étranglé; mais ce hasard ne
vient point du fait des juges (sic). »
Si Francœur avait été frappé ou tué, qu’aurait-on fait de plus à La France?
Cette atrocité a un pendant dans le fait suivant qui avait eu lieu cinq ans
auparavant :
En 1726, Voltaire, qui avait déjà écrit la üenriade, Œdipe, etc., etc., qui
était par conséquent la plus grande illustration de la France à cette époque,
fut insulté grossièrement par un homme de la cour, le chevalier de Rohan ;
il répondit par la seule arme possible à qui n’était pas alors gentilhomme,
par des railleries piquantes. Le chevalier, irrité, fit bâtonner Voltaire par ses
gens, à la porte de l’hôtel de Sully où celui-ci avait dîné, et sans que le duc
de Sully s’en émût le moins du monde. Voltaire se plaignit vivement, on lui
rit au nez; il invoqua la justice, celle-ci ne bougea pas; il parla de se ven
ger, on le mit à la Bastille où il resta six mois. « Ce pauvre Voltaire, dit
l’avocat Barbier, n’avait que faire de ce ressouvenir (sic). »
Quelqu’un qui ne s’est pas nommé, bien entendu, en rapprochant les deux
faits que nous venons de citer, écrivit les vers suivants qui circulèrent dans
Paris :
Admirez combien l’on estime
Le coup d’archet plus que la rime;
Que Voltaire soit assommé,
Thémis s’en tait, la cour s’en joue !
Que Francœur ne soit qu’alarmé,
Le seul complot mène à la roue.
Les mémoires privés du temps sont remplis de faits aussi monstrueux, et,
chose triste à dire! ils sont rapportés simplement, naïvement, comme des
faits naturels, tant le sens moral, les sentiments humains, les plus simples
notions du bien et du mal, du juste et de l’injuste, étaient atrophiés dans cet
ancien régime que la Révolution française a détruit. (Voie de l’Éditeur.)
�<0
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
et en latin. Ses études finies et ne sachant quel parti prendre pour
subsister, le peu de fortune de ses frères ne lui donnant pas beaucoup
de goût pour la profession des armes et ne s’en sentant point pour
l’état ecclésiastique, je ne sais par quel hasard l’idée lui vint de se
faire médecin. Quand il fut. question de se faire recevoir docteur en
médecine à la Faculté de Paris, qualité nécessaire pour pouvoir y
exercer cette profession, comme il faut pour cela de l’argent et qu’il
n’en avait point, il chercha à se marier afin que le bien que sa femme
lui apporterait en mariage lui servit à obtenir ce grade, nécessaire
pour en gagner. Comme il était de figure agréable, beau parleur et
fort insinuant, il trouva ce qu’il cherchait dans la fille d’un bon bour
geois de Paris assez aisé, qui crut sa fille fort honorée de devenir la
femme d’un jeune docteur en médecine, sans bien, mais avec beau
coup d’envie d’en gagner et beaucoup de talent pour cela. Elle était
fort belle; elle le fit père d’un fils et mourut. C’est ce fils qui fut mon
père, dont il me reste à vous parler avant d’en venir à moi, qui serai,
s’il vous plaît, le principal personnage de cette très-petite histoire
dans laquelle vous ne trouverez pas des faits ni des aventures bien
importantes ni bien relevées, mais, en récompense, beaucoup de
vérités et de sincérité, ce que l’on ne trouve pas toujours dans d autres
histoires d’une bien plus grande importance.
III
Ce fils donc, mon père, fut ce qu’on appelle un fils unique, un
enfant de Paris, c’est-à-dire un véritable enfant gâté, et je crains bien
d’avoir eu, en cela, quelque ressemblance avec lui. Son père le mit
au collège, d’où il ne rapporta que beaucoup d’aversion pour l’étude
et une très-violente inclination pour le jeu, qualités qu’il a toujours
conservées et cultivées avec soin, pendant toute sa vie, au préjudice
de sa fortune. C’était, à ce que j’ai ouï dire, car je ne l’ai jamais vu
(il mourut d’une hydropisie de poitrine, un an après ma naissance),
c’était, dis-je, un fort grand homme, fort bien fait, né pour avoir un
visage fort agréable, mais qui fut un peu gâté par la petite vérole qui
même lui rendit la vue très-faible, qualité que j’ai héritée de lui.
Pendant qu’il passait son temps à se rendre incapable de tout, a quoi
il réussit fort bien, son père ne songeait qu’à devenir riche, en quoi il
aurait assez réussi plus tôt, étant devenu un habile médecin, fort em
ployé et fort à la mode, si son fils ne s’était pas employé à le Voler
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
il
pour jouer et faire la débauche avec plusieurs fripons de cousins ger
mains, fort gueux et fort libertins, à qui le bon médecin avait donné
asile chez lui. Entre autres moyens dont mon père s’avisa pour volei
le sien, il en imagina un fort simple que voici : Il s’aperçut que le
bon homme rentrait fort souvent chez lui pendant le cours de la jour
née et montait prestement à un cabinet dans lequel il ne faisait qu’en
trer et sortir, après l’avoir fermé bien exactement. Son héritier l’ob
serva un jour et vit, par le trou de la serrure, que son père ne faisait
autre chose que vider ses poches pleines d’écus qu’il venait de gagner
dans ses visites et les mettre brusquement sur une table, sans prendre
le temps de les compter, et sortir au plus vite pour courir à pied en
gagner d’autres. Les médecins de ce temps-là n’avaient pas tous des
carrosses et n’étaient pas encore des espèces de petits-maîtres habillés
de velours.
Enchanté de cette découverte, mon père fit faire une fausse clef et
entra dans le cabinet. Quel Pérou ! quelle terre de promission pour
un joueur ! Il jouissait paisiblement de sa nouvelle découverte et goû
tait de plus en plus le plaisir de satisfaire ses goûts, lorsqu’il fut
troublé dans son bonheur par un de ces fripons de cousins dont je
viens de parler. Celui-là, ne sachant de quelle mine son cousin
tirait l’or qu’il lui voyait répandre, avec beaucoup d’envie, se méfia
de quelque chose, l’épia, le suivit sur la route du bienheureux cabinet
et le surprit y entrant avec sa fausse clef. 11 lui déclara qu’il allait le
dire à son père ; mais, par l’heureuse convention qu’ils firent en
semble de partager, ils s’accordèrent et se gardèrent le secret en gens
d’honneur. Avant la liaison formée avec cet associé, mon père, crai
gnant que le sien ne s’aperçût de ses excursions, se conduisait modes
tement dans ses prises ; mais ce nouvel associé étant avide et altéré,
et n’étant pas aussi prudemment conduit, le maître du cabinet s’a
perçut à la fin qu’il avait beau revenir souvent mettre de l’argent sur
sa table, le tas n’en grossissait pas, à ses yeux, à proportion. N’ayant
que peu de domestiques et affidés, voyant d’ailleurs son fils plus paré
qu’il ne convenait au fils d’un médecin, sachant bien que la dépense
qu’il faisait ne venait pas de ce qu’il lui donnait, car il savait à mer
veille qu’il ne lui donnait rien, il l’observa et surprit ces deux cor
saires piratant dans le cabinet. Ils furent grondés.comme vous pouvez
juger que peut le faire un père qui s’aperçoit que son vaurien de fils
lui vole, pour perdre au jeu, un argent qu’il a bien de la peine à
gagner. Enfin, les serrures furent changées, le fils misa Saint-Lazare,
�12
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
le cousin envoyé au Canada. Mais ce qui est singulier et matière à
bien des réflexions, c’est que ce jeune homme, dont les commence
ments ne promettaient pas beaucoup, comme vous voyez, du côté de
la probité, changea tout d’un coup et devint honnête homme, comme
si le changement de climat en eût apporté à son naturel. Arrivé au
Canada, il passa par tous les grades militaires, se distingua beaucoup
à la guerre contre les sauvages, mérita d’être avancé et a fini par être
chevalier de Saint-Louis et lieutenant du roi de Québec, capitale de ce
nouveau royaume. Il était d’une jolie figure et fort vif; il plut à une
jeune demoiselle, belle et bien faite, fille d’un gentilhomme d’une
fort bonne noblesse de Normandie, qui avait passé en Canada plu
sieurs années auparavant et y avait amassé du bien. Le jeune Fran
çais enleva la demoiselle que ses parents ne lui voulaient pas donner
à cause de son peu de fortune, et, par là, se mit en risque d’être
pendu, ce qui n’arriva cependant pas. Les premiers moments de
colère des parents étant passés et la fille s’étant trouvée grosse, ils
aimèrent mieux la donner à un jeune homme qui promettait que de
la garder déshonorée. De ce mariage sont venus plusieurs enfants
dont quelques-uns sont dans les troupes et dans la marine du Canada
et que je ne connais point.
IV
Pendant que le Canadien devenait honnête homme, mon père, sorti
de Saint-Lazare, devenait gros joueur, ce qui le mit dans le monde.
A tout prendre, suivant ce que j’en ai ouï dire, ce n’était pas ce qu’on
appelle un homme d’esprit, mais c’était un très-bon homme, fort
doux, généreux, beau joueur, d’une humeur agréable, porté à la
■ joie, ayant une très-jolie voix et chantant bien, aimant beaucoup la
société, la bonne chère, le vin et les femmes, passant tout le temps
qu’il ne trouvait pas d’assez gros joueurs à la comédie, à l’Opéra et au
cabaret, où les honnêtes gens allaient dans ce temps-là. Les soupers
qu’on y faisait étaient, je crois, aussi amusants, pour le moins, que
ceux que l’on trouve aujourd’hui dans ce qu’on appelle communément
de bonnes maisons, où l’on ne voit très-souvent que de sots maris,
grossiers et ennuyeux, de sottes pécores de femmes, caillettes ou pré
cieuses, où l’on ne parle que de babioles ou de quadrilles et où l’on
perd son temps sans joie et sans esprit. A ces soupers de cabaret se
trouvaient souvent des joueurs et des fripons; mais souvent il s’y joi
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
13
gnait d’honnêtes libertins et de ce qu’on appelait dans ce temps-là
d’agréables débauchés, qui avaient de l’esprit et de la gaieté, que le
bon vin et la liberté de la table ne diminuaient pas. Au sortir du
spectacle où l’on s’était trouvé, on admettait à ces parties des comé
diens, des chanteurs, des musiciens et autres gens d’art auxquels on
connaissait de l’esprit ; et, dans ce temps-là, il y en avait de cette
espèce, parce qu’ils menaient cette vie avec d’honnêtes gens, ce qui
les formait au ton de la bonne compagnie, au lieu qu’aujourd’hui ils
ne vivent la plupart qu’entre eux et quelques misérables poëtes qui
les gâtent à force de les louer sur leurs talents médiocres, et cela pour
les engager à jouer leurs misérables pièces, ce qui fait que la plupart
sont fort sots et de fort mauvaise compagnie.
A ces soupers se faisaient encore ces jolis couplets de chansons et
ces jolis vers, enfants de la joie et de la liberté, que la gaieté, leur
compagne, l’amour et le vin produisaient. Tout y était élégant, badin,
simple et naïf; les personnes qui les produisaient n’étaient point
poëtes de profession, prétendus beaux esprits, métier qui entraîne
souvent avec lui le ton pédant et la triste exactitude, y croyant mettre
l’ordre et la pureté ; malheureux puristes pour eux-mêmes, qui ne
trouvent rien de bien parce que, faute d’esprit, ils appellent bien ce
qui ne l’est pas; ennuyeux à la mort pour les autres, parce que
l’esprit, pour être réjoui et désennuyé, veut être relâché et non pas
toujours tendu, si l’on peut ainsi dire. Pardon de mon écart, mais
je n’ai pu refuser ce soulagement à mon esprit souvent fatigué, et
qui l’est peut-être en ce moment, par cette triste et maigre exac
titude. C’est le moins que je puisse faire pour l’ennui qu’elle m’a
souvent causé, et je vous assure que nous ne sommes pas quittes.
V
Je reviens à mon sujet, c’est-à-dire à l’agréable vie que mon père
menait pendant ses premières années, et je vous avoue que j’y reviens
avec complaisance. Cet heureux temps n’était peut-être pas si fécond
en grands hommes que le temps qui l’avait précédé et qui avait pro
duit les Corneille, les Lafontaine, les Molière et tant d’autres. Mais
il en voyait fleurir qui, moins illustres dans le grand et dans le
sublime, étaient peut-être aussi agréables dans le genre aisé et volup
tueux. Tels étaient les Joly, les Lafond, les Regnard et les Vergier,
auteurs de ces jolies chansons et de ces heureuses parodies qui ne
�14
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
mourront jamais. C’était avec ces aimables hommes que mon père
passait sa vie, et hors quelques lessives au jeu qui l’affligeaient quel
quefois, ses amusements valaient bien les nôtres. 11 ne mettait peutêtre pas dans cette société autant d'esprit que les autres, mais il y
mettait beaucoup de douceur et de gaîté, et, de plus, payait le souper.
Ce fut peut-être pour le consoler de quelque revers de fortune que
fut faite dans le temps cette jolie chanson, simple et naïve, qui m’a
toujours beaucoup plu, et que je veux vous dire pour que votre goût
assure le mien ; la voici :
Si tu veux, sans suite et sans bruit,
Noyer tous tes chagrins et boire à ta maîtresse,
Viens avec moi. Je connais un réduit
Inaccessible à la tristesse ;
Là, ncus serons servis
De la main d’une hôtesse
Plus belle que l’astre qui luit,
Et, mêlant au bon vin quelque peu de tendresse,
Contents du jour, nous attendrons la nuit.
Cet aimable réduit désigné dans la chanson était, dans ce temps-là,
le fameux cabaret de la Cornemuse, dont le maître s’appelait Chevet,
bon homme et fort poli, à qui ses hôtes faisaient quelquefois l’hon
neur de l’admettre à leur table, ainsi que l’hôtesse, sa femme, belle
comme le jour et sage, à ce que j’ai ouï dire.
Hélas ! dans mes premières années, je voulus, par curiosité, voir
les lieux habités autrefois par de si aimables convives. Je n’y menai
pas si bonne compagnie, elle est trop difficile à rencontrer. Je ne
trouvai plus à la Cornemuse qu’un vieil hôte presque hébété et de
médiocre vin. Cherchant à égayer et à consoler mon imagination
attristée, je crus, en buvant beaucoup à la santé de ces illustres
morts, toucher leurs âmes de quelque reconnaissance et évoquer leurs
mânes bienfaisants, mais, hélas ! je ne fis que m’enivrer, et ils ne
parurent point.
VI
Je reviens à mon père. Tandis qu’il ne songeait qu’à se réjouir, le
sien pensait à tirer un parti honorable de ce que son habileté et sa
réputation lui faisaient gagner sur le pavé de Paris. Il acheta une
charge de médecin ordinaire du roi et vint faire son quartier à la
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
15
cour. Il y plut beaucoup par son esprit agréable et insinuant; il
s’attira la bienveillance de toutes les vieilles coquettes de ce pays-là,
en leur disant des douceurs emmiellées qu’elles ne méritaient plus,
et il s’acquit la protection de tous les courtisans en leur donnant des
louanges outrées qu’ils n’avaient jamais méritées. En s’avançant, il
voulut songer à faire quelque chose de son fils et, pour cela, lui
acheter une charge. Son ambition, comme celle de plusieurs de ses
confrères qui ont trouvé des fils plus dociles, était de le faire conseiller
au parlement. Mais il avait à surmonter, pour cela, l’incapacité de
mon père pour un emploi de cette nature qu’il faut faire avec distinc
tion ou être méprisé, et surtout l’habitude que son fils avait prise de
mener une vie oisive et uniquement occupée de jeu et déplaisirs. Les
exhortations du père furent souvent réitérées et toujours infructueuses,
jusqu’à un jour où il trouva des circonstances plus favorables pour
être écouté. Mon père avait beaucoup perdu sur parole et, se trou
vant sans ressources, mon grand-père lui promit de payer ses dettes et
de lui donner de quoi en faire de nouvelles s’il voulait prendre une
charge. A ces flatteuses conditions le fils promit d’obéir. On ne devi
nerait jamais sur quelle charge il jeta les yeux, ni les motifs qui la lui
firent accepter et les raisons qu’il eut de la prendre. Parmi ces joueurs
libertins avec lesquels il se rendait incapable d’en bien exercer
aucune, il s’en trouvait un que son père, bon bourgeois de Paris,
voulait, faute de mieux, revêtir d’une charge d’auditeur des comptes.
Le fils devait beaucoup à mon père : dettes de jeu, bien entendu, car il
n’en connut jamais d’autres et activement et passivement, hors celles
des usuriers; mais comme elles étaient contractées scrupuleusement
pour jouer et non pour autre chose, je les comprends dans la même
case. L’auditeur imagina de s’acquitter avec mon père en lui pro
posant de prendre sa charge en payement et de jouer le surplus du
montant de la dette sur une carte. Cette proposition ne fut reçue
d’abord que comme une plaisanterie, mais la dernière circonstance
du marché, si fort dans le goût de celui à qui on la proposait, lui fit
faire plus d’attention à la chose. Mon père s’informa légèrement du
prix de la charge, les gros joueurs ne sont pas vétilleux, mais une
chose sur laquelle il fit les plus exactes perquisitions fut sur scs fonc
tions. Le propriétaire l’assura avec serment qu’il n’y en avait aucune.
Cette assurance détermina mon père, et il fit vatout. 11 gagna, et,
par un coup de la fortune que j’ai toujours regardé comme fort
peu heureux pour lui et pour moi, j’eus le chétif honneur ou, si
�16
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
vous l’aimez mieux, le malheur peu considérable d’être fils d’un
auditeur.
VII
Plus aise d’avoir gagné un beau vatout que d’être officier de la cour
des comptes, mon père fut tout courant trouver le sien pour lui faire
part de la résolution où il était enfin de lui obéir. Le bonhomme fut
charmé du changement de son fils et crut que le ciel l’avait accordé
à ses prières. On lui cacha les circonstances du marché, on lui dit le
prix de la charge moins considérable qu’il n’était, et vous allez voir
pourquoi. Quoique la charge fût à mon père, puisqu’il l’avait gagnée,
on fit payer au bonhomme le prix que l’on imagina, et, de conven
tion secrète, entre les illustres contractants, la somme fut employée à
jouer, à se divertir et à payer certaines dettes usuraires que l’on n’osa
pas déclarer au papa. On crut faire tour d’homme habile en le trom
pant, sans songer que c’était se tromper soi-même ; on se crut géné
reux et économe d’avoir déclaré le prix de l’acquisition moindre qu’il
n’était ; sa modicité le fit goûter à un homme d’une humeur un peu
ménagère et qui connaissait mieux les différentes natures des fièvres
que les différents grades de la magistrature. D’ailleurs, ses amis, qu’il
consulta, lui dirent que si son fils s’appliquait et prenait goût au
métier, il pourrait devenir Maître, place assez honorable dans ce
temps-là. Mais il n’en arriva pas ainsi, comme vous allez voir. Mon
père fut reçu à la chambre, et j’ai toujours ouï dire qu’il n’eut pas à
se reprocher, dans le cours de sa vie, d’y être retourné, ce dont il
s’applaudissait beaucoup, moins cependant que de la façon singu
lière dont il y était parvenu ainsi que de l’ingénieuse fourberie qu’il
avait imaginée à cette occasion pour tromper son père et lui tirer de
l’argent. Cette heureuse manœuvre le consola, disait-il, d’avoir
endossé une robe noire le jour qu’il fut reçu et qui fut le seul. Il ne
pouvait se lasser de raconter à ses amis ce principal événement de sa
vie avec les rires les plus immodérés; mais je craindrais de vous en
causer de moins étendus si j’étendais davantage ce récit.
VIII
Tandis que mon père ne remplissait aucune fonction de sa place,
la fortune en présenta une plus honorable à mon grand-père, comme
si elle eût voulu le consoler de la modicité de celle de son fils et qje
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACIIAUMONT.
17
procurer une origine un peu plus élevée. La place de premier méde
cin de monseigneur le Dauphin, fils unique de Louis XIV , vint à
vaquer. Comme cette place était d’un revenu considérable et que
d’ailleurs elle présentait l’expectative de celle de premier médecin du
roi, quoique cette expectative parût fort éloignée, l’ambition insatiable
et inséparable de l’esprit humain en rapprochait les idées flatteuses à
l’imagination des concurrents. Aussi, vous pouvez imaginer avec
quelle vivacité elle fut briguée par tous les médecins de la cour et de
la ville en quelque réputation. Les amis que mon père s’y était faits
de la manière que je l’ai dit, et aussi son mérite, firent tomber le choix
de la cour sur lui, à la grande jalousie de ses confrères, dont l’un
d eux en avait déjà donné des témoignages, dans une lettre écrite à un
de ses amis et imprimée depuis. Je veux parler du célèbre Guy Patin,
dont l’esprit brûlé, caustique et satirique au dernier point, explique
le portrait peu avantageux qu’il fait de mon grand-père. Voici comme
il en parle dans cette lettre, au sujet de la place de premier médecin
du roi, vacante dans ce temps-là, à laquelle l’habileté de mon grandpère lui donnait déjà l’assurance de prétendre.
« Celui qui la voudrait bien avoir est un certain Guillaume B....,
âgé de cinquante-quatre ans, normand, savant, doucet, fin, rusé, et
qui n'a qu un fils qui le fait enrager. C’est un tartufe parfait, à qui
tout est bon, pourvu qu’il gagne ; mélancolique, brûlé, qui ne parle
que de vierge Marie et de conscience, et qui, par toutes voies , ne
cherche que de la pratique et de l’argent. » Mon père disait assez
plaisamment, au sujet de cette lettre, qu’il y avait une faute d’impres
sion bien considérable et qu’il fallait lire : qui n’a qu’un fils qu'il
fait enrager, et non pas qui le fait enrager. Comme l’un et l’autre
étaient aussi vrais, je crois qu’on peut adopter l’une et l’autre version.
IX
Mon père vint à la cour. On y tenait appartement, on y jouait fort
et les gros joueurs y étaient bien venus. Mon père y fut admis, et une
des premières fois qu’il y joua, il eut la témérité de faire un si gros
vatout à M. de Vendôme que celui-ci, piqué, se leva, dit qu’il ne
jouait pas si gros jeu et quitta la table. On parla de cette aventure, et
mon grand-père étant le lendemain à la toilette de la reine, entendit
qu’elle en parlait; il saisit le moment et pria celle-ci de trouver bon
qu’il eût l’honneur de lui présenter son fils, et quelle voulût bien lui
Tome III. — 9' Livraison.
2
�48
LA JEUNESSE DE BACIIAUMONT.
faire le plaisir de le réprimander, que cela seul pourrait le corriger,
ajoutant que ce serait une action digne d’elle, puisque la conduite de
son fils le faisait mourir de chagrin. La reine, qui aimait à faire de
bonnes actions et à rendre service, le lui promit. Mon père fut pré
senté et grondé par cette bonne princesse. Elle lui dit qu’il devait
mourir de honte de donner de pareils chagrins à un si bon père ; le
mien, peu accoutumé à être grondé et surtout par des personnes
d’aussi haut rang, se retira fort confus et ne parut plus à la cour. Use
contenta de jouir en ville de la réputation de gros joueur qui fut fort
augmentée par ce qui lui était arrivé à la cour, et de satisfaire sa pas
sion à Paris où il trouvait d’autres joueurs de sa condition.
Cette petite aventure m’en rappelle une autre qui lui ressem
ble en quelques circonstances et qui arriva à peu près dans le même
temps; elle se passa au jeu , entre M. le prince de Conti et Baron.
Ce comédien, à qui ses talents, sa figure et ses bonnes fortunes four
nissaient de quoi jouer, faisait l’insolent et l’important. Il jouait
fort, et, comme le jeu égalise en' quelque sorte toutes les con
ditions pendant qu’il dure4 il prenait avec tous des airs familiers.
Quand le cornet lui vint à son tour, il dit, en remuant les dés, d’un
air fort cavalier : «Masse au prince de Conti.« Le prince répondit :
«Tope à Britannicus. « Ce qui fait le plaisant du mot, c’est que Baron
venait de représenter ce rôle à la cour, et, qu’ayant pris avec le prince
des airs d’héritier de l’empire, celui-ci lui répondit comme au fils de
l’empereur. Ainsi les rangs devinrent égaux , les manières conve
nables, et l’étendue du ridicule de Baron fut mise dans tout son jour.
On ne finirait pas si l’on voulait rapporter tous les bons mots de
cet aimable prince. Je ne puis cependant m’empêcher, pendant que
je vous parle de lui, de vous en rapporter un que vous savez peutêtre déjà, et qui m’a paru fort joli. Le roi voulant donner un bal à la
jeune princesse de Savoie, destinée à être la femme de M. le duc de
Bourgogne, déclara que les fenimçs de la cour y seraient seules
admises avec des billets, et que celles de Paris n’y seraient pas
reçues, parce qu’il ne voulait à ce bal, disait-on, que d’honnêtes
femmes. « Sur ce pied-là, dit M. le prince de Conti, il pourra donner
son bal sur un guéridon. »
X
Mon père resta à Paris, à n’entendre dans ses comptes que ceux de
la bassette et du lansquenet. Mon grand-père alla demeurer à la
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
19
cour, et, à quelque temps de là, suivit Monseigneur dans scs cam
pagnes. Ce fut, je crois, pendant une de ces marches forcées, si
célèbres dans ce temps-là, qu il lui arriva la petite aventure que je
vais vous raconter, toute petite quelle est. Mais qu’ai-je autre chose
à vous présenter et à quoi d’important vous attendez-vous dans le
récit de l’histoire d’un particulier aussi peu considérable et aussi '■
isolé que je le suis? Les petits riens deviennent intéressants aux gens
d’esprit et de cœur sensible et délicat quand ils viennent de la part
de ceux qu’ils aiment et de qui rien ne leur est indifférent. J’aime à
agir sur ce pied-là avec vous parce qu’il me flatte. Par humanité,
ne me détrompez pas et écoutez avec indulgence les petits événe
ments que je vais continuer à vous raconter.
J’arrive à cette petite aventure. Mon grand-père avait un neveu
enseigne aux gardes, M. de l’Estang, jeune homme d’une fort jolie
figure, ayant du monde, de la politesse et aimant la bonne compa
gnie. Dans une de ces marches de l’armée dont je viens de parler, ce
neveu, mourant de soif et de fatigue, aperçut le carrosse de son oncle
à quelques pas de la compagnie avec laquelle il marchait. Il y court,
dans l’espérance d’y trouver quelque rafraîchissement dans les can
tines. Quelle joie il a, en mettant la tête à la portière, de voir le fond
de son carrosse plein de gros carafons : « Ah! mon oncle, s’écrie le
jeune homme, sauvez-moi la vie ! faites-moi donner quelques-unes
des bouteilles que je vois là? — Très-volontiers, mon cher neveu,
lui répond son oncle d’un ton humain et compatissant; c’est de trèsbonne eau que je viens de faire prendre à l’endroit où nous avons
couché. » A ce mot d’eau, le jeune homme, qui espérait de bon vin
de Bourgogne, bien velouté, pensa tomber en faiblesse, la voix lui
manqua et il laissa passer le carrosse de son oncle, forcé de marcher
pour ne pas embarrasser le chemin. Pour, se venger, mon cousin, à
la couchée prochaine, lui emprunta de l’argent et un très-bon cheval
qu’il ne lui rendit point. Je l’ai ouï conter, depuis, plusieurs fois, ce
petit événement, avec beaucoup de naïveté et de gentillesse. Il est
mort depuis vieux, goutteux et sans bien, ayant fait du sien, qui
était assez honnête, à peu près le même usage que mon père. Il était
parvenu à être lieutenant de grenadiers dans son régiment et cheva
lier de Saint-Louis. Il quitta le service pour vendre sa charge, afin
de payer une partie de ses créanciers.
�20
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
XI
Je viens à un événement un peu plus considérable, surtout pour
moi, puisqu’il en amena un autre qui me fut de la plus grande
importance, comme vous le verrez par la suite. Mais comme il a rap
port à des personnes avec qui j’ai passé les premières années de
ma vie, et dont les caractères ont peut-être influé sur le mien, il
est à propos de prendre les choses d’un peu loin pour vous les faire
connaître, afin que vous m’en connaissiez mieux. C’est le seul but
de ce griffonnage.
Les campagnes de Monseigneur étant finies, mon grand-père, de
retour à la cour, se trouva dans un grand loisir qui lui donna le
temps de réfléchir qu’il avait laissé cinquante mille écus chez son
notaire sans en tirer aucun parti (ce que ledit notaire n’avait pas
négligé de faire à son avantage personnel, ainsi que ces messieurs en
usent ordinairement). 11 imagina de l’employer utilement dans l’ac
quisition de quelque bonne terre. Les personnes auxquelles il
s’adressa pour aider son incapacité dans ces sortes d’affaires ont eu
trop de part au cours de ma vie pour que je ne vous en entretienne
pas, et d’ailleurs elles le méritent assez à bien des égards.
Parmi les nombreuses connaissances que mon grand-père avait
faites à la cour, il s’était lié d’amitié avec un vieux gentilhomme, atta
ché de tout temps aux princes de la maison de Condé, et spécialement,
en ce temps-là, à la duchesse de Longueville, sœur du grand Condé,
si célèbre pendant la minorité de Louis XIV, si célébrée par le car
dinal de Retz et par tous les écrivains de ce temps-là, adorée de tous
les hommes et jalousée de toutes les femmes de la cour; princesse en
qui la beauté, l’esprit, les grâces et les agréments se disputaient éga
lement, sans qu’on sût laquelle de ses qualités l’emportait en elle. Ce
gentilhomme lui servait d’écuyer, et sa femme faisait auprès d’elle
les fonctions de dame d’honneur. Madame de Longueville avait le
droit d’en avoir une, étant princesse du sang. On sait assez que la
maison de Longueville avait en France les honneurs des princes du
sang, honneur qu’elle avait mérité par les grands services que rendit
à Charles VII le brave Dunois, dont elle tirait son origine, et qui
lui attira ces titres. Quoiqu’il ne fût que bâtard d’un duc d’OrKhns, il mérita l’honneur de succéder à la couronne qu’il avait
empêchée de passer aux Anglais (au cas que Je sang Bourbon vînt à
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
21
manquer), prérogative que nous avons vue accordée de nos jours aux
ibâtards de Louis XIV, qui ne l’ont pas à si juste titre.
XII
Je parlerai plus au long de ce vieux gentilhomme et de sa femme
dans la suite de ce récit. A présent, il me suffit de vous dire qu’ils
avaient acheté, de leurs épargnes et des libéralités des princes de
Condé, une assez jolie terre dans le Vexin. Mon grand-père qui les
connaissait, comme je viens de vous le dire, les pria de lui en cher
cher une dans leur canton, tant à cause de leur voisinage que de la
proximité de Paris et de la cour. Ils lui trouvèrent celle qu’il lui
fallait, et il l’acheta sans la voir et sans y aller que longtemps
après. Cette terre avait appartenu à MM. Rochard de Champigny, et elle fut vendue par leurs créanciers. L’habitation en est
extrêmement jolie et la situation fort agréable. Figurez-vous un joli
petit château, bâti par M. de Villeroy, en belles pierres de taille,
couvert d’ardoise, et qui, tout en n’ayant que cinq croisées de
face et deux d épaisseur, ne laisse pas de plaire par sa jolie propor
tion et son élégante construction. Ce château est entouré d’une ter
rasse flanquée aux angles de quatre petits pavillons couverts aussi en
ardoise, qui contiennent de jolies chambres, et dans l’un desquels
est une jolie chapelle très dorée, avec un plafond peint par une assez
bonne main. Cette première terrasse est environnée d’un fossé revêtu,
dont les murs sont à hauteur d’appui, couverts de banquettes de
pierre de taille. Les fossés sont d’une largeur proportionnée à leur
profondeur, et forment une agréable promenade autour du château.
On y trouve toujours de l’ombre à mesure que le soleil tourne ; ils
sont ornés d’ifs taillés en pyramides; les murs sont tapissés d’un
beau treillage peint en vert et garnis d’arbres fruitiers en palissades;
ces fossés sont entourés d’une seconde terrasse, de laquelle on jouit
de points de vue différents et tous très-agréables. D’un côté on voit la
maison, dont l’aspect est tout riant ; en se retournant on voit la cour,
qui est magnifique par son étendue et par deux grands quinconces
de beaux tilleuls qui la terminent. A droite et à gauche, les bâtiments
de la basse-cour, qui contiennent les écuries, remises, logements de
jardiniers et autres, ne présentent rien que d’agréable aux yeux,
étant tous d’une symétrie régulière et bien proportionnée. A droite
et à gauche de la maison, la vue passe par-dessus deux grands ter-
�22
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
très de gazon copiés sur ceux du bassin de Latone, à Versailles, et elle
y est arrêtée agréablement par deux espaces de même grandeur, dont
l’un, qui est à droite en arrivant au château, contient un grand pota
ger planté régulièrement ; les allées en sont bordées d’arbres nains
en palissades et renferment des carrés de légumes qui, par leur régu
larité et leur variété, ne déplaisent point aux yeux. Les murs en sont
garnis de treillages verts et d’arbres fruitiers comme ceux des fossés
du château. Le côté gauche était plus élégant, puisqu’il renfermait à
un bout un beau bosquet formé par des charmilles et des ormes, et à
l’autre bout un beau cloître de tilleuls. Cet endroit, un des plus
agréables de la maison, a été négligé et presque détruit par celui qui
en est aujourd’hui propriétaire, plus curieux de lois et d’arrêts que
de beaux jardins ‘. Derrière le château on trouve un grand parterre
de gazon bordé à droite et à gauche par deux grands quinconces de
tilleuls pareils à ceux de la cour dont j’ai parlé. Après avoir traversé
ce parterre, on entre par une patte d’oie dans une jolie futaie qui
renferme plusieurs belles allées en étoiles, et entre autres un bosquet
d’un si bon goût qu’il mérite que je vous en fasse la description. Une
allée de la futaie vous conduit à une grande salle, de forme presque
carrée, environnée de treillages peints en vert et palissadés d’ifs qui
forment des enfoncements de différentes proportions, renfermant des
bancs de menuiserie avec des dossiers peints en vert. A un des bouts
de cette salle on trouve un escalier de gazon qui monte à une autre
salle octogone formée aussi par des treillages. Dans un des côtés de
cette salle octogone qui fait face à celui par lequel on entre, on voit
la façade d’un petit berceau en tonnelle avec un campanile qui en
termine le dôme. Cette façade représente parfaitement bien un petit
temple antique dont le frontispice est décoré de colonnes, de pilastres
et d’un grand fronton dans lequel on a mis, depuis, une inscription
dont je parlerai dans la suite. On entre sous ce berceau par une
grande arcade cintrée qui fait la porte de ce petit temple, et l’on
trouve au fond un grand banc dans un enfoncement. C’est là que
l’on peut goûter la fraîcheur la plus agréable pendant la plus grande
ardeur du soleil (ce bosquet étant environné d’arbres extrêmement
hauts et touffus), et qu’on peut être réjoui par le chant continuel des
oiseaux qui paraissent se plaire dans ce joli réduit. Sa situation char
mante, les différents usages auxquels on peut l’employer, et les dif1. M. Gilbert de Vovsin, avocat général au parlement de Paris (B.).
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
23
férentes occupations qui m’y ont retenu autrefois avec beaucoup de
plaisir, m’avaient engagé à y faire mettre l’inscription dont j’ai
parlé ; elle ne contenait que ces trois mots : Otio, musis, et amoribus.
Les agréables moments que j’ai passés dans cette jolie demeure, dans
un âge où tout est riant, et dont je vous entretiendrai par la suite,
m’en ont laissé un souvenir toujours agréable qui m’a porté insensi
blement à vous en faire une description peut-être un peu trop détail
lée, et que vous me pardonnerez en faveur des motifs. Il me semblait,
en vous parlant, me promener encore dans ce joli bois où mon ima
gination, jeune et galante en ce temps-là, ne croyait voir toujours
que des fleurs et des hamadryades favorables, et dans lequel cepen
dant je n’ai pas toujours trouvé de si aimables compagnes, comme
vous le verrez dans la suite de mon récit.
Ne croyez pas que cette habitation fût aussi ornée que je vous
la dépeins quand mon grand-père l’acheta. Une terre qui a été long
temps en décret n’est pas aussi bien tenue ; mais il y dépensa beau
coup depuis. Par des circonstances dont je vous instruirai, je n’y
dépensai pas moins par la suite, et j’ose dire que de certaines élé
gances qu’on y a vues depuis venaient de moi.
XIII
Quand mon grand-père eut fait cette acquisition, mon père y allait
souvent s’amuser avec ses amis. Il fut voir les voisins; il en trouva
peu d’aimables, ce qui ne lui arriva cependant pas dans la maison du
gentilhomme qui avait procuré à son père cette aimable acquisition.
Cette maison était composée de plusieurs personnes dont il est impor
tant que je vous fasse le portrait. Premièrement du maître1, qui sera,
je vous l’avoue, un de mes personnages favoris, et auquel je revien
drai souvent par goût et par reconnaissance. C’était, pour la figure, la
vraie image du héros de Cervantes ; même taille, même maigreur,
même sécheresse, hors le visage et la physionomie, qu’il avait extrê
mement agréables, même dans l’âge où je l’ai vu, qui était son
extrême vieillesse. Pour l’âme, c’était la droiture, la candeur, la
simplicité, la naïveté du premier âge; enfin, ce qu’on aurait pu appe
ler un preux et loyal chevalier, un homme de l’ancienne roche; des
mœurs antiques pour la probité et la vérité, et toute la politesse et la
1. M. de Billv.
�24
LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
galanterie de l’ancienne cour, où cet esprit avait régné de son temps
et où il avait passé sa vie, temps bien différent de celui qui l’a suivi,
où l’on ne voit dans la plupart des femmes que du frivole, de la co
quetterie, peut-être plus, et dans les hommes qu’un vil intérêt sans
valeur et sans la noble ambition de paraître par des qualités esti
mables et propres aux grands emplois.
La femme de cet aimable et respectable vieillard enchérissait
encore sur lui de politesse et d’agréments dans le maintien et dans
la conversation, mais elle en différait beaucoup dans l’intérieur et s’é
tait si fort accoutumée, à la cour, aux airs gracieux, insinuants et ca
ressants à l’extérieur, que je crois que la sincérité du dedans en avait
beaucoup souflert. Ce n’était pas absolument fausseté et dupli
cité mais il n’était pas impossible de démêler, à travers les dis
cours dorés et emmiellés, que la bouche n’était pas toujours un
interprète sincère des sentiments du cœur. Sans être belle, elle avait
eu de l’agrément, de fort beaux yeux, un teint de brune claire, de
beaux bras et encore de plus belles mains. Je ne l’ai vue que fort
vieille et presque aveugle, mais fort sensible encore aux louanges
qu’on ne négligeait pas, pour lui faire plaisir, de donner à ses maius,
qu’elle tenait toujours gantées avec beaucoup de complaisance pour
les conserver. Leur famille était composée de trois tilles et d'un fils.
Ce fils était page du roi et se distingua, comme je le dirai en son
lieu. L’aînée des filles avait été élevée à Port-Royal, le berceau du
jansénisme ; elle y avait reçu une excellente éducation à laquelle elle
avait apporté d’excellentes dispositions du côté de l’esprit. Elle y
apprit, entre autres choses, le latin qu’elle entendait parfaitement
bien; elle était petite, le visage assez agréable, quoique fort brun, les
mains et, à peu de chose près, l’esprit et le caractère de sa mère. Se
voyant fille de condition dans une famille nombreuse et peu riche, au
risque de rester fille ou de faire un mariage peu agréable, comme il
^arrive à bien des pauvres demoiselles, elle aima mieux se faire reli
gieuse à Maubuisson, près Pontoise, abbaye royale et janséniste dans
ce temps-là, où, depuis, elle gouverna l’abbesse, bonne princesse
allemande, tante de feu Madame.
La cadette de ses sœurs ne suivit pas son exemple; elle aima
mieux, après avoir séché d’ennui, vieille fille, épouser un malotru
de parent qu’elle avait, sans bien, et qui n’avait aucun mérite que
celui de porter le même nom que sa mère (Bridieu Ducla), nom
qu’un homme de sa famille avait autrement distingué autrefois en
�LA JEUNESSE DE BACHAUMONT.
25
défendant bravement et avec habileté, pendant longtemps, une trèsmauvaise place et dépourvue de toutes munitions 1 ; ce fut dans le
temps des guerres civiles. J’ai ouï-dire depuis, dans sa famille, que
la cour lui aurait envoyé le bâton de maréchal de France ou le cor
don bleu, s’il ne fût pas mort en défendant sa place, honneur que 1 on
accordait assez volontiers, dans ces temps critiques, à ceux qui
demeuraient fidèles dans le parti du roi, conduite assez peu imitée
où, pour se faire acheter par la cour, presque toute la noblesse pre
nait le parti des révoltés. Beaucoup ont été la dupe de ce calcul et ont
bien mérité cette punition.
1. Guise, en 1650, contre les Espagnols.
(La suite à la prochaine livraison.)
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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La jeunesse de bachaumont
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Place of publication: [Paris]
Collation: 5-25 p. ; 26 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From Le Megasin de Librairie: literature, histoire, philosophie, voyages, .... Vol. 3.
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[s.n.]
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[1859]
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Literature
France
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Conway Tracts
French Literature-18th Century
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66
Sbije JLeal Jjmpn' ®énmâ.
Some time has gone by since M. Michel Lévy issued, under the auspices
of M. Taine, a posthumous work which threw unusual light on the career
and peculiar temperament of one of the most remarkable personalities of
this century. In France, wearied by intestine and foreign warfare, the
sickened mind of the intellectual public has, for three long years, given
unmistakeable tokens of transient sterility ; the living appear momentarily
incapable of healthy productions. Authors themselves are full of the
national cares, political fever swamps that moral repose which is needed
for meditation, and readers are fain to be content with the literary treasures
of the past, whence a recent influx of posthumous works, of more or less
interest, in the shape of private correspondences. The Parisians have
had before them letters of Lamartine, letters of Sainte Beuve, and of
others, all of which afforded a valuable insight into the real character of
their writers. None, however, deserved more study than those of the late
Prosper Mérimée, and critics of both countries have paid a deserving
homage to these confidences of a complex genius. The Revue des Deux
Mondes and the Quarterly Review have in turns given exhaustive treatments
of the subject. Nor should we venture on re-opening a field of speculation
that has called forth such universal notice, but that, in our own opinion,
there is further room for interesting remarks, mainly owing to the scope
within which the reviewers of the Lettres à une Inconnue have seen fit to
remain. Far from us be the presumptuous thought of analysing better
what others have analysed so ably ; our meaning is that the work has
been considered rather in regard to its intrinsic merits as a literary pro
duction than used as it ought to be, namely, as a key to a curious psycho
logical study. Some have deprecated the laxity of morals the writer be
trays in more than one instance ; others have taken seriatim divers remarks
on men and things, apparently forgetting that many hidden thoughts that
have crossed the minds of most men are consigned to intimate correspon
dence—thoughts the author would have been loth to affirm in public ; and,
to the best of our knowledge, none have allotted to Mérimée the place to
which he has a right. Our purpose would be to repair this omission.
f The readers of Mérimée’s critics may still ask in vain : “ Who was he ?
A vulgar sceptic, or a typical incarnation of a time ; a man of genius, or a
distinguished lettré ? What was his influence on his contemporaries, and
how will posterity estimate him ? And how is it that Mérimée attained
celebrity of a peculiar kind which far surpasses that of geniuses superior
�THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
67
to his ? ” Perhaps the following observations may be useful towards a
satisfactory answer.
It was not without reason that the author of the Life of Jesus recently
described Prosper Mérimée as the Petronius of his epoch. He was not
merely an eminent man of letters of the ordinary calibre, a novelist, a
savant ; he was something more, a type of the modern race of Frenchmen,
a man whose adamantine nature was the receptacle of all doubts and dis
beliefs. Together with these two illustrious sceptics, Sainte Beuve and
Stendhal, he made up a trio which might well have passed for the treble
incarnation of haughty and resigned despair. Sainte Beuve possessed a
store of amiability which daubed his scepticism with a pleasant glaze of
varnish. Stendhal was, like all those who have scrutinised the vices of
human nature with a magnifying glass, of a dark and desponding mood,
corrected by considerable tenderness of heart ; but he, Prosper Mérimée,
stood an image of perfection in character, a strong, invulnerable sceptic,
whose acquired toughness was proof alike against love and hatred—a
human Mephistopheles, not of the capacity of Goethe’s, but rather like
the evil spirit such as he has been personified by a famous singer—
polished, refined, elegant ; stabbing with daggers of the finest steel and
richest work, darting a murderous epigram in the choicest language,
working the same havoc as the bitter spirit of German creation, but
killing, tearing, and wounding with the exquisite politeness of a perfect
gentleman. Having so far guarded himself against the invasion of
banality and shown the teeth to most men, he tried hishand at everything,
attained perfection in most things, threw them up in disgust after becom
ing their master, and one day awoke one of the most forlorn of human
creatures. And still Prosper Mérimée was not born what he was here
after. Such sentiments as he possessed and prided on do not issue from
the cradle. A man gifted with the choicest faculties, as Mérimée, must
have the embryo of high qualities of heart ; and if his judge will take the
trouble to follow the incidents of the first years of his life, he will soon find
singular instances in support of this. More than any other, a youthful
creature owning to an unusual degree the faculty of observation should be
attended to by his educators, for, if we judge by the present instance, the
slightest lesson wrongly given and erroneously understood will turn a
precocious child into a dire path of thought. M. Taine tells us, in his
interesting preface, that when he'was nine years old Mérimée was scolded
by his parents for some trifling breach of manners, and dismissed from the
drawing-room in an agony of shame. "While still in tears at the door, he
heard his friends laughing and saying : “ Poor child ! he thinks we are
very angry.” Even at that tender age he was revolted at the idea of
being made a fool of and deceived, and henceforth he pledged himself to
repress his sensibility, to be constantly on guard against enthusiasm, and
effusion, and to speak and write as if in the presence of a harsh and bitter
hearer.
To this petty occurrence, which would have left but little impression
�68
THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
on other children, may, on Mérimée’s own admission, be traced the
origin of the programme he set to himself to fight his way through
life. lienee he studied a part, and applied his rich gifts of intellect
to a manufacture of an artificial self. He curbed his passions, tastes,
and desires under a strong hand ; he had a sensitive heart ; he repressed
his sensitiveness so that it did not seem to exist ; later on the arti
ficial process got the better of him, and it was really suppressed alto
gether. His disposition naturally tended to affection ; this he concealed
in the same way—not that he was yet irreclaimable, but, to quote
„ Taine’s happy metaphor, certain race-horses are so well bred by their
masters that when they are in hand they dare not indulge in the
slightest gambol. So that he entered the lists clad in an inward cuirass
which the contact of society was to harden more and more, and bent
on regarding the world much as one contemplates a forest full of mur
derous robbers. He looked about him, and bitterly disposed as he was
he applied himself more to the observation of what is contemptible in
human nature than to an appreciation of its nobler sides. His remarks
justified preconceived ideas, and from the first, as he said himself, quoting
Hamlet, man pleased him not, nor woman neither. Let us say, however,
that his contempt for his fellow creatures came not from a personal and
disparaging comparison with himself, for his letters to the unknown lady
in whom he confided show that the shortcomings he despised in others
he equally derided in himself. One of his subjects of ironical commentary
was that throughout his life he was credited for qualities not his own, while
he was blamed for defects which he had not. With such thoughts there
was nothing surprising that he should adopt as a first fundamental maxim
the paradox that speech is given to man to conceal his yearnings, and, as
a second principle, Talleyrand’s recommendation to guard oneself against
generous movements because they are usually the best.
A natural consequence of this moral perversion was that he affected, in
the process of writing, theories of a totally different cast from those of others.
First of all he examined with a critical eye the manner then predominant
among the finest writers France has produced in this age. The Romantique
renovation was in full efflorescence ; Mérimée set at work over dishes of the
same taste. A story is told of an original who stopped to look at one of the
hottest street fights of the Revolution of July 1830; a National guard
was obstinately firing on the Royal Suisses without the slightest effect,
and the stranger was looking on in apparent disgust. Presently he walked
up to the unsuccessful marksman, took the rifle from his hands, and
volunteered to show how the work should be done ; he fired and one of
the Suisses fell dead. As he attempted to return the rifle to its owner,
and as the other urged him to keep the weapon he could use so well,
the stranger gravely replied : “No, thank you ; I am a royalist ; it isn’t
my opinion.” Likewise Prosper Mérimée joined the Romantiques ; he
wrote Spanish sword and cloak comedies, which he gave as translations
from the text of an unknown genius, thereby mystifying the public and
�THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
69
proving that it was in his power to affect the tone and style of the new
school as successfully as the best, although “ it was not his opinion.
He
tried the trick once more with the same felicitous result in La Guzla. And
then he gave up romanticism, and took to writing according to his own
ideas, after contemptuously observing that such masterpieces as he had
achieved only demanded the knowledge of a word or two of a foreign
language, a sketch-book of a foreign country, and a tolerable style. Nothing
could be more withering for himself and others.
Prosper Mérimée seems throughout his existence to have been filled
with that restlessness which according to Mr. Forster affected Charles
Dickens, although his studious care was to conceal any sign of such a
disposition, and to appear a man of marble. He did certainly devote
enormous study to French literature, and especially to contemporaneous
productions, but marvellously keen at detecting the strings which set the
machine in motion, ever intent on scanning the details, he ignored
their real beauty of ensemble, lost sight of the pregnant sides of a work,
and soon wearied of the best. It had been the same with Art; a painter
of no little ability, he had become convinced of the sterility of the brush,
because the purely mechanical side of art had no secret for him. It was
the same reason which induced him to sift the delicacies of six languages,
and ransack their literature : occasionally he brought forth a gem and set
it in French, adding the perfection of his style to some pregnant novelette
of Ivan Tourguenef’s; but eventually he wearied of polyglotism too, and
deeming nothing among the living worthy of notice, he turned his eyes to
the past, and turned the final leaf of his literary existence, that of a man
who could never apply his talent to the services of a definite idea, who
had every natural element to be happy and illustrious, and who failed in
being the one and but just attained the other. Mérimée henceforward
wasted priceless faculties in artistic attempts which could only be entitled
to the place of curiosities of literature. He doted on imparting life to
things of the past; he liked to transfer himself, like Théophile Gautier,
into the midst of dead civilisations, constructing an admirable story on
the sight of an inscription, a ruin, using his acuteness of observation in
the framing of types to people the archaic visions he indulged in. He
even went so far as to observe his surroundings merely with the purpose
of guessing by means of induction the gait and ideas of their pre
decessors. In this ungrateful labour he has shown well enough what he
was capable of doing if he had applied himself to the serious analysis of
contemporary characters. Without possessing the intensity of observation
of a Balzac, his intellectual condition might have entitled him to a place
but just below this great master. And it is strange and painful to follow
him as he sedulously narrows his own scope in art.
All the reasons we have adduced above fatally drove him into the
rankest egotism which was ever the bane of a writer. His historical
works no one, not excluding himself probably, took a very great in
terest in; they are cold and stately—comparable for the matter, if the
�70
THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
metaphor be permitted to us, to water contained in the finest Bohemian
glass. As to his essays in fiction it is vastly different. When he has
deigned to remain in his own time, and to pick out his personages and
action from modern society, his productions have always been admirable
both in matter and form. His process was much like Stendhal’s. As he
wrote for the select (if indeed he ever wrote for the edification of any one)
he disdained the imbroglio of commonplace sentiments, the banalities of
ordinary conversation ; he obviously aimed at concentration and abridg
ment, at probing the acts of man by certain telling features of human
nature, and, in fact, at leaving much for the reader to guess by suppressing
what vulgarities are wearisome to the “ profound few.” This kind of
work offers equal dangers and advantages ; it excludes two thirds of the
general readers who may be wanting in the quick sagacity requisite for
the propel comprehension of the author’s process, although in the main
they may be qualified to appreciate the essence of his work ; further, it
circumscribes the repute of a writer in a narrow circle, and, moreover, such
style always tends to fall into obscurity and enigma. On the other hand,
the omission of a great many strictly useless details preserves a work
from the caprices of fashion and change of customs, and Carmen and
Colomba, free as they are from descriptions of transient and superficial
interest, and consisting solely of the condensed description of passions
and impulses that are eternal, will be eternally useful, just as Shakspeare and Milton are. These masterpieces are but few in num her, a,nd
they serve rather to show what their conceiver might have done than
what he has done.
We have now done with Mérimée until we find the new and charac
teristic Lettres à une Inconnue. Their literary merits are of secondary
consideration ; suffice it to say, in departing from the subject once for
all, that their form, wit, and ingeniosity are paramount. As to the In
connue, there is no need to inquire after her. What is thoroughly engros
sing is the perusal between the lines of the desolate story of unhappiness
the great sceptic relates. There are expressions for every disgust, words
eloquent in their brevity expressive of deceptions, weariness, ennui ; bitter
estimations of men, impeachments of what he calls human imbecility ;
contemptuous allusions to his best friends, and topping all a clear disbelief
in goodness, and-those noble commonplaces, honour, love, chivalry, ab
negation. It is worthy of special note that Mérimée is withal open to
superstition, several instances of this being manifested in different,
letters ; so strong is the yearning of every one towards a faith, whatever
it may be. We have found but one good note* in the two volumes of this
The passage we allude to has been quoted by the Quarterly Review as very
cynical. The opinion we hold being somewhat different, the passage should be given:
“ I went to a ball given by some young men of my acquaintance to which all the
figurantes of the Opera were invited. These women are mostly stupid ; but I have
remarked how superior they are in moral delicacy to the men of their class. There
is only a single vice which separates them from other women—poverty.” The Quar
terly goes on to remark that a man must be far gone in cynicism to hazard such a
�THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
71
correspondence ; as to the harsh ones, they abound; on Frenchmen espe
cially his satire never tarries : “ The greatest nation in the world is made
up of a set of scapegraces, inconsistent, anti-artistic, illogical, bigoted,
and not even possessing the religion that comes from the heart.” He
WM a senator of the Empire, not out of any particular liking for a
dynasty or a principle, but because, as he said, “ tyrants had over Re
publicans the advantage of washing their hands; ” in his official capacity
he was once called upon to make a speech in the Senate, and as it was his
first public address he felt rather timorous. “I gained courage,” he
writes to the Inconnue, “ when I bethought myself that I was speaking to
two hundred fools.” On another occasion he relates to the same person
how, answering a toast to European Literature at a dinner of the Literary
Association, presided over by Lord Palmerston, he gravely spoke nonsense in
English for a quarter of an hour, which seemed to be highly appreciated
by the so-called learned men who listened. Further on he writes: “ You
Cannot imagine my disgust for our present society ; it seems as if it tried,
by its stupid combinations, to augment the mass of annoyances and troubles
which are necessary to the order of the world.” Speaking of Englishmen,
he says that individually they are stupid, but as a whole admirable.
Few things, in fact, find grace in his eyes. On marriage, he says that
nothing is more repulsive : “ The Turks, who bargain for a wife as for a
fat sheep, are more honest than we Europeans who daub over this vile
transaction with a varnish of hypocrisy but too transparent.” It may be seen
at this stage how the scepticism of the first days has begot a cynic. He
might have sought happiness in union with a lovely and amiable woman
(for he was a great favourite with the sex); but he discarded marriage and
women by principle. Much of this insensibility is revealed in the following
lines : “ The other day I went out boating on the Seine. There was a
quantity of small sailing-boats filled with all kinds of people about the
river. Another large one was freighted by a number of women (of those
of the bad tone). All these boats had gone to the shore, and from the
largest emerged a man about forty years old, who had a drum, and who
drummed away for his own amusement. While I was admiring this
lubber’s musical dispositions, a woman of about twenty-three comes up to
Mm, calls him a monster, says that she followed him from Paris, and that
it would fare ill with him unless he admitted her to his party. All this
was going on ashore, our own boat being twenty yards away. The man
with the drum was drumming away while the woman was remonstrating,
and he at last told her with much coolness that he would have nothing of
th® kind. Upon this, she ran to the boat furthest from the shore and
jumped into the water, thereby splashing us abominably. Although she
paradox, and. that the “ Unknown ” must have been singularly destitute in feminine
dignity and self-respect could she have endured to be told that she was only separated
from such a class of women by poverty. We hope the “ Unknown ” did endure it
and approve of it, for, unless the Quarterly has entirely misunderstood Mérimée’s
pseaning, no worse construction could be put on a very sensible remark.
�72
THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
had extinguished my cigar, indignation did not prevent me, nor my
friends, from saving her before she had swallowed a glassful. The hand
some object of her despair hadn’t stirred, and he muttered between his
teeth, ‘ Why take her out if she wanted to drown herself ? ’ . . . The
question to which this incident gives rise in my mind is, why are the most
indifferent men the most beloved ? That is what I should like you to tell
me, if you can.”
Such was his opinion on feminine love. Believing as he did that a
man - is no longer cherished from the moment he shows any affection for
the woman he distinguishes from others, Mérimée probably deemed that
the best way of avoiding misery and pain was not to love at all. Perhaps
the unknown might have replied to his query that she used precisely the
means alluded to to win her illustrious correspondent’s heart ; but in any
case it may be affirmed that she did not succeed.
II.
It is within the present writer’s recollection to have met Prosper
Mérimée at one of those Parisian cafés which form the resort of the pith
of the literary world. The place was generally well attended by famous
men, but it was never more crowded than when Mérimée happened to be
there. His brilliancy of conversation, the effective manner in which he
poured out the overflowing of his wit, made of him one of the most desir
able men of Paris. On this occasion a young sculptor of talent was
holding forth on artistic theories, and he came to speak of glory with the
fervency of an adept. “ La gloire !” said Mérimée, with a caustic smile.
“ Do you then believe in glory, young man ? ”
This exclamation remained in our memory as the dejected profession
of faith of a wasted life. Such, indeed, was Prosper Mérimée’s ; and it
can be safely affirmed that this unfortunate result was provoked by
counteraction against nature, and the valuable information afforded by
his correspondence goes to support this view. Throughout the emptiness
of his life prevails. To sum up, he sifted languages, literatures, and cha
racters ; he studied his species in all parts of the globe ; and, as a just
retribution for spurning all subjects of study after devoting his attention
to each, instead of drawing consequences from the synthesis of things, he
sickened, and looked about him for something to love or to like. Failing
in his endeavours, he led the brilliant and sterile life of a delicate
désœuvré, and listlessly wandered through the drama of life, obviously with
out object, and certainly without desire. What was the use for him to
apply his energy to some great work ; to labour for a definite enterprise ?
He was a sceptic, and much of a cynic too ; his soul was. as well closed to
narrow egotism as to a noble faith in the perfectibility of human attempts.
Vanity he had none ; he cared not a whit for glory. If he achieved a few
masterpieces it was for his amusement, not for others—he despised
others too much for that ; and in his sometimes heroic contempt, the
�THE REAL PROSPER MÉRIMÉE.
73
trace he would leave of his passage in this world troubled him but
slightly. 'As most men who look upon the details of life too critically, he
had lost sight of the good features of human nature only to give para
mount importance to its vices. He commenced life on the defensive :
suspicion bred bitterness ; bitterness bred scepticism, scepticism bred the
cynic. It is clear that such negative sentiments were not primarily in his
heart, and that they derived their origin from mistaken notions. It is also
clear that this singular man’s heart never thrilled with love, and that a
fatal distrust, on which we have commented, deprived him of a solace
which might have made of him a far different individual from the polite,
caustic, stoically desponding Mérimée, whom Renan gives as a type of a
period. The “ Unknown” was merely the recipient of those confidences
which every mind has an irrepressible tendency to unfold ; but that alone
is no proof of amorous affection. Proud as he was, Mérimée doubtless
selected her as the fittest person to preserve his secrets ; and perhaps
another deception might be added to the others, could he know that
even this trust has been betrayed. Howbeit, the Inconnue was no more
than a confidante. She might perchance have been more had she liked ;
and her own letters to Mérimée would show if she is responsible for
preventing a very distinguished man from seeing clearly through his mis
takes, and reconciling himself with his fellow-creatures.
This, however, is merely speculation, and one should only reason by
facts on such delicate ground. What facts we have lead us to point to
Mérimée as the most unhappy of men. In the tumult of court life, amidst
the uproar of the gayest society, he was more forlorn than in the solitude
of a desert. His heart was dry to the core ; the eventualities of daily
existence were to him as the phases of a nightmare, in which he was
forced into playing a part although convinced of its vanity. He must,
indeed, have longed to cast off the clay as well as his official gear. His
death was in unison with the mournfulness of his life : it occurred shortly
after the overthrow of the Second Empire. France was going to pieces ;
no one thought of a single individual in this whirling tempest, and
Mérimée’s demise was not more noticed than a simple soldier’s. He
expired in the arms of two faithful English friends. Two hours before
breathing his last he wrote the note which closes the second volume of
his correspondence. He was borne silently to the grave, momentarily
forgotten.
No doubt he would have approved of this oblivion and
indifference.
�
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Victorian Blogging
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An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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The real Prosper Merimee
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Barrere, Camille Eugene Pierre
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 66-73 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway.
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[Smith, Elder & Co.]
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[{1874]
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G5348
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Literature
France
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Conway Tracts
French Literature-19th Century
Prosper Merimee
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193
pKETCHES
OF
J" RAVEL
IN
pERyViANY,
By Professor Blackie.
An hour and a half’s pleasant swing in the Hanoverian train brought
me to Göttingen. I had been introduced here to German things and
German thoughts forty years ago, when Blumenbach and Heeren and
Ottfried Müller, and other mighty names now departed, were the great
ornaments of the Georgia Augusta. As to external appearance, I found
everything pretty much as I had left it; only the Professors, who in my
Burschen days used to lecture in their own private houses, have now
been provided with lecture-rooms in a university building of im
posing and tasteful exterior. The town itself is lightsome, clean,
and pleasant; the architecture exhibiting that quaint combination of a
Certain clumsy unwieldiness in the mass with a light and painted
gaiety in the detail, so characteristic of all those German towns that
have maintained their original mediaeval character in the face of
modern encroachments and transformations. Of course there is a
gross incongruity in this, but there is a pleasant variety also ; and
anything certainly is preferable to those long monotonous rows of
stone or brick walls, with square holes cut in them, which constitute
some of the most prominent streets in certain parts of Edinburgh and
London. The town is surrounded by a vallum (wall) or rampart,
which forms a breezy walk all round, shaded with green trees, outside
of which the old fosse has now been turned into gardens—public and
private—where the nightingales keep up their lively nocturnal concert,
quite close to the screaming whistle of the Hanoverian railway. As to
the University, there can be no doubt that it will suffer to some extent
from the provincial character which must now belong to it, in com
parison with the great central University of Berlin. The division of
the Fatherland into so many petty independent states, which Bismark,
by two great strokes, has put an end to, carried with it at least this
great advantage, that Germany contained more centres of independent
and original culture than any country in Europe, and had its intellec
tual equilibrium less disturbed by the overgrowth of centralisation.
But these minor German universities still present, and will no doubt
�194
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
continue to present, a strong well-orderecl phalanx of teaching power
which our proudest British universities may not look on without
blushing. In the single University of Gottingen, which does not contain
more than 800 students, there are eighty persons officially employed in
the work of teaching, arranged in the three grades of ordinary professors,
extraordinary professors, and privatim docentes—that is, in our language,
licensed graduates—the consequence of which rich provision is, that
instead of the rigid routine of traditional classes which we have in
Scotland, there is scarcely a subject of any conceivable human interest
which may not find its niche in the scheme of teaching for a German
winter and summer session. During the week I spent in Gottingen I
attended four lectures from different professors, each of which was of
a kind that it would have been impossible to have heard in any
university of Scotland. The two first were on special periods of
history : on the political relations of Northern Europe during the second
half of the seventeenth century, by Dr. Pauli, and on the history of
Germany, from the year 1806 downwards, by Professoi* Waitz. Our
professors of history—and it is only exceptionally that in Scotland they
exist at all—could not lightly indulge in various specialties of this kind,
as, like most public teachers in Scotland, they are tied down to some
prescribed scheme, which they must exhaust, and from which they
cannot depart. This mechanical arrangement of university work is a
public proclamation of poverty and meanness which requires no
comment. The other two lectures which I heard were equally signi
ficant of the variety, richness, and flexibility of the German academical
scheme. The one was by Professor Hermann Lotze, ‘On the Philosophy
of Religion,’ a subject that might possibly find a place in a course of
lectures on moral philosophy such as we have in Scotland, but which
certainly could not be taken up by the Professor of Logic and Meta
physics without raising grave discussions in the church courts, and
being productive of very perilous consequences to the University. The
other lecture was by Professor Sauppe ; or rather’ it was a lecture by
the students, over which the Professor presided, pretty much in the
fashion of the tutorial classes in England, or the general style of the
Greek and Latin classes in the Scottish universities. Only, so far as
Scotland is concerned, the sad contrast must be fairly stated: that
whereas in our universities the Professor superintends the drill of
young men as ip. a school, that they may acquire a mastery of the two
learned languages, in Gottingen the Professor trains those who have
already acquired a mastery of those languages in the scientific princi
ples of interpretation and criticism. A notable thing also was that the
whole performances took place through the medium of the Latin
language ; a practice which should never have been allowed to fall
into academical disuse, as it has altogether in Edinburgh (the natural
consequence of the inherent weakness of our classical training), and as I
suspect in Oxford also, for which there can be no excuse. Whatever
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
195
languages are taught at school or college ought not only to be read
and written, but to be spoken ; for the ear is the great natural avenue
through which sounds are received into the familiar citizenship of the
brain ; and it is not, of course, the dead rule of a gray book, but the
living power of a human voice, that can convey to the ear, at once,
most easily, and most effectively, the impressions which, in the acquisi
tion of language, it has a natural claim to expect.
B The most remarkable thing that I saw in Gottingen was a professor
of geology who had been forty-one times on Mount Etna, and, as the
fruit of his various visits, had constructed a map of its lava streams,
as accurate and detailed as any of Graf Moltke’s strategic schemes.
This is German thoroughness in the grand style. Whatever a German
does he does with system and calculation ; and Deutschland certainly has
a better claim than France to boast that she is la patrie de VorganisaEW». For the rest, I have only to note that in Gottingen living is
cheap, that it is thoroughly German in all its ways and habits, and
that it has not suffered any elegant corruption—like Heidelberg and
Bonn—from the presence of a regular English colony. I therefore
think it a most advisable place for young Scotsmen who may wish to
take a taste of German language and learning for a sewiesire or two.
As for Englishmen, they will naturally go where living is more expen
sive, and where they will meet with more of their own countrymen.
The plain Scot fraternises more easily with the homely German.
From Gottingen, being bent for Berlin, I took the route which led
through the two famous sites hallowed by the names of Luther and
Melancthon, viz., Eisleben and Wittenberg. The former town lies on
the railway line betwixt Gottingen and Halle, between twenty and
thirty English miles to the west of the latter town. Of the country
betwixt Gottingen and Eisleben there is little to be said. As we
approached Eisleben, dark heaps of ashes and débris, and smoking
vents on the slopes of the long monotonous ridges of elevated ground,
indicated clearly enough the miners’ country which the well-known
history of Luther’s parentage leads one to expect here. The town of
Eisleben lies in the low ground to the south of the gradual ascent that
leads northward and eastward to the Harz mountains ; it is a place of
small size and pretensions. The market-place presents the usual
strange mixture of the quaint and the unwieldy already mentioned as
so characteristic of old German architecture ; but the great attraction,
of course, is the little lange gasse, or ‘long-gate,’ in which stands the
house in which the great doctor of the Reformation was born. An
effigy of the venerable Martin—as well known as Henry VIII.—stands
Oa the wall, with the superscription :
Luther's Wort ist Gottes Lehr',
Durum stirbt sie nimmermehr.
Luther’s word is gospel lore :
Therefore it lives for evermore.
�196
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
The house is now inhabited in the upper story by one of the school
masters belonging to the Normal Seminary adjacent; but the room in
which the prophet greeted the light is, of course, kept sacred, and left
in all the barrenness of desolation which naturally belongs to a mouldy
old memorial. There is nothing particularly worthy of seeing in this
old house, and yet one could not be in Eisleben without visiting it |
such consideration belongs to the bones, and even the nail-parings, of
the saints.
Thou, too, art great among Germania’s towns,
Little Eisleben ! for from thee came forth
The free-mouthed prophet of the thoughtful North,
Whose word of power with mitres and with crowns
Waged glorious war, and lamed the strength of lies:
As when a bird long time in cage confined
First flaps free vans, and on the roaming wind
Floats jubilant and revels in the skies,
So did thy word, thou strong-souled Saxon man,
Lift up our wings of prisoned thought, and give
New scope of venture to our human clan,
While we did learn from thy great work to live
Erect, and make no league with juggling lies,
Looking right forward with unflinching eyes.
Another stage brought me to Halle, and thence a journey of two
hours to Wittenberg, about half-way between Halle and Berlin. Here
I stayed a night, that the scenery of the greatest drama of modern times
might have time to paint itself leisurely on my imagination. I had not
far to go, however, before the most prominent witnesses of the sacred
traditions of the place stood before me ; the bronze statues of Luther
and Melancthon, on pedestals of granite, after a model which I after
wards found universal in Berlin. This granite, I was informed, came
from no quarry, but is the product of those huge boulders which are
found in various places of the vast flats of North Germany, dropt no
doubt from the floating icebergs of the great pre-Adamitic Sea that
once covered the whole of Brandenburg, Pomerania, and the adjacent
districts. Everywhere in Wittenberg, where Luther appears, as here in
the market-place, Melancthon appears with him. Never were two
contrasts more useful or more necessary to one another.
Two prophets stand forth in the market-place
At Wittenberg to draw the wise regard,
Both broad-browed thinkers of the Teuton race,
Both crowned with Fame’s unbought, unsought reward.
Two prophets like, yet how unlike ! the same
In work, but not in function ; he to fan
The strength more apt of the long smothered flame,
To temper he, and guide with chastened plan.
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
197
Tlius fiery Peter, erst at gospel call,
Drew in one yoke with gentle-thoughted John ;
Thus toiled beneath, one battle’s sulphurous pall
Hot-blooded Bliicher and cool Wellington;
And they are wise who read this text in all—
Man’s ways are many, but God’s work is one.
The market-place in Wittenberg, independently of these two bronze
preachers, is really an imposing combination; on one side the city church,
ia the middle the Town Hall, with hotels, and other buildings with a
definite well-marked German character all round.
The great historical monument, however, at Wittenberg, unquestion
ably is the Schlosskirche, to the door of which the famous ninety-five
theses were affixed that shook the foundation of the most gigantic
Spiritual despotism that ever exercised authority over the free soul of
fiiaa. The church stands quite close to the north wall of the town
(for Wittenberg is a regular fortress), a remarkably plain and almost
ttgly building, beside the two round towers of the old castle, in no
respect more remarkable for architectural effect. But, however little
©an be said of the church, the door has received due honour. Frederick
Wilhelm IV., the predecessor of his present Majesty, who was a man of
great taste and religious sensibility, caused a new door to be cast in
bronze, with the whole ninety-five theses, word for word, in solid scrip
ture, to preach in the eye of day against the vile traffic in sacred things
as long as iron shall endure. In the inside of the church, on the floor,
the spots are shown where the bodies of Luther and Melancthon lie. To
gether in life, in death they should not be sundered ; and so the Elector
of Saxony in those days took care that the body of Luther, who had died
at his own birthplace, should be transported to the place where the
principal scene of his evangelic activity had been. The mass-book
[Which he used as a priest is also shown in the vestry. Having paid
my respects to this most notable of old churches, I had to retrace the
hvhole length of the town to the Elster Thor, which leads out to the
Halle and Berlin Railway. The name of this street, Collegien Strasse,
bears on its face the tradition of the University whose learning added
its authority to the moral weight of the great Reformer’s protest; and
at the end of it, just where it abuts on the fosse of the fortress, stand
the University buildings, still used for educational purposes. The
inscription Bibliotheca Académica, on the left, as you enter, declares
the identity of the spot. In the court behind, a building originally a
cloister, contains the room where Luther dwelt when Professor in the
University. It remains in its original condition, with antique panels,
worn old timber floor, and two pieces of furniture of rude strength and
antique simplicity. The one is the table at which so many sermons
and manifestoes were hammered with such Vulcanian fervour into
Shape: and the other a curious chair in which Martin and his Kate
�198
SKETCHES OE TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
used to sit together and hold domestic chirrupings in the most
connubial and irreproachable way imaginable. The chair has two seats*
looking one another in the face, but made of one block of wood, so as
to present the perfect type of that union of man and wife which is
both one and two ; and it is so constructed that, foi- perfect ease and
comfort, it must be placed close to the window, otherwise there is no
proper resting-place for the arm. The window beside which it stands
looks out into the court-yard, so that the most vivid picture of the
fulminant doctor in his quiet ruminating moments is here presented in
rude significant literalness to the eye.
In the afternoon at Wittenberg, having nothing particular to do
(people dine here, and in the small towns of Germany generally, at
1 p.m.), I took a stroll beyond the Elster Thor, meaning to go a mile or
two into the country, to see if any object might present itself to relieve
the wide expanse of flat green monotony, which, to an English or
Scottish eye, in this part of the world, is apt to convey such an expression
of dreariness. Scarcely, however, had I passed the railway terminus,
when my steps were led into the churchyard ; and there, finding it
as pleasant as any other field of promenade in the cold weather—for
it was a chill May everywhere—I walked up and down for an hour.
The pious care which the Germans bestow on the resting-places of
the dear departed—shown in the frequently renewed flowers of
various kinds planted in the mould—is only one phase of the richer
vein of feeling and genuine human kindliness which distinguishes them,
not less from the lofty reserve of the Englishman and the unde
monstrative gravity of the Scot than from the finely and somewhat
affectedly cultivated mannerism of the French. Not a few pious
hands, even in this cold evening, were busied with these kindly
sepulchral decorations. But my attention was drawn from them to
some continuous beds of apparently recent graves —to the number
of above 150 —over which one stone stood, with the following
inscription :
Les Officiers français
A leurs
Compatriotes
Morts en captivité
A Wittemberg,
1870-1.
.
On enquiry in the town afterwards, I found that 7,000 of the French
prisoners, principally from Metz, had been quartered here ; and that,
partly from the extremes to which they had been reduced in the
fortress, partly from the general distastefulness of German captivity
to Frenchmen, they had died here, one or two every day, till the
number which I mentioned was summed up. Upon such a theme,
in such a place, at such an hour, just before sunset, one could scarcely
help moralising. How some of my Edinburgh German-haters and
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
199
peace-gospellers would have burst out here in indignant blasts of
commercial or evaugelic wrath against that ‘ hoary blood-monger ’
the King of Prussia, whom, along with Mephistopheles Bismark, it
pleases them to regard as the cause of this effusion of Frankish blood!
But my vein was nothing indignant; it was only pitiful. I could not
help feeling infinite sorrow that such a highly gifted people as the
French should have allowed themselves so long to be deluded with
that Will o’ the Wisp called Glory, which after a short season of
flashing prosperity has led them into such swamps of national degra
dation and shame. Is man a reasonable animal ? Certainly, if in
all wars love is extinct, in not a few reason has either been absent
from home, or has rudely been kicked out at the back door. I have
seldom felt so humiliated in presence of frail human nature as in
contemplation of this war, which was the pure and unmingled product
of French jealousy, French vanity, French insolence, and French
ignorance, and should preach a lesson to that people for all time, if
Frenchmen are capable of being taught.
I laud them not; but I must weep for all,
Poor ’wildered Franks, beneath Heaven’s bright blue dome
Who might have reaped home-harvests, but the call
Of Glory, elfish idol, bade them roam,
And here they lie. 0 ! if there be in France
Wise for one hour to nurse a sober theme,
Let such come here, and from this tearful stance,
Spell the true meaning of their juggling dream.
What thing, from reason’s sway divorced, is man,
Vain man, whose epics swell the trump of Fame ?
A monkey gamboling on a larger plan,
A moth that, fluttering with a mightier name,
Drawn by the dear seduction of his eyes,
Bounces into the scorching flame and dies.
I suppose it is not possible to enter Brandenburg, the cradle of
Prussian greatness, from any quarter, without passing through barren
ness, long leagues of unfriendly barrenness and monotony. In fact,
Brandenburg is barrenness; a mere waste of sand deserted by the
primeval brine, and shaping itself by help of rain, vegetable remains,
and scientific skill, through the slow process of the ages, into a
human and habitable trim. But this harshness of the natural con
ditions with which Nature has surrounded him is precisely that which
has made the Brandenburger great; like the Scot, he works hard, be
cause to live at all he must work hard, and work is the price, as
wise old Epicharmus says, ‘ for which the gods sell all things to men.’
The best of us are apt at times to put up the foolish prayer that
the gods might perhaps have done a little more for us. Nay; but, my
good brother, the fact may rather be that they have done too much
�200
SKETCHES OK TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
already. Certainly we can learn to be like to them, in a subordinate
way, only by doing as much as possible for ourselves, and creating, so
to speak, our own world ; making a Prussian monarchy out of a wilder
ness of Brandenburger sand wreaths.
Sand, sand, long leagues of heath and barren sand !
Long formal lines of dark unlovely pine !
Know thus the cradle of the mighty land
Whose lord now sways from Danube to the Rhine.
Blest in their barrenness full sure were they,
Lords of a harsh soil and a frosty clime,
Where thrift and virtue, and in frugal way
To live, sowed seeds of strength for ripening time.
Wise, if they keep the memory of their birth,
And grow, severely strong, as Frederick grew,
Not shaking wanton wings of sensual mirth
Rampant, but to the manful maxim true
That made men wonder at their mounting star—
Still strive for peace, but never flinch from war.
A pleasant rattle of two hours on the rail brought us through
this redeemed sea-bottom to the once little cradle of the Prussian
Electorate, and the now mighty metropolis of the regenerate German
Empire, Berlin. As we approached the town long lines of houses,
stretching towards the south-west, showed distinctly the direction
in which the recent great increase of the city has taken place. When
I was here as a student, some forty years ago—in the days when Boeckh,
Schleiermacher, and Neander were in the zenith of their academical
glory—the population of Berlin was generally stated at about 300,000 ;
it is now nearly triple that figure, and the increase latterly, they say,
has been to the amount of 30,000 annually. This is, to use the
favourite expression of the Germans, something quite ‘ colossal ’—
something quite analogous to the enormous growth of Manchester,
Glasgow, London, and other busy cities of Great Britain, during the
last century. What have been the causes of this phenomenon, which
even more than the needle-guns of Sadowa should have made such an
astute man as Louis Napoleon think twice before he plunged his
people, or allowed his people to plunge him, into a war with the
united strength of Germany ? Prussia alone in her present prosperous
condition, and with her well-organised military system, was quite
strong enough to have made a repetition of Jena and Auerstadt im
possible. The causes of this extraordinary stride made by Prussia, of
which Berlin is the greatest symbol, though not altogether on the
surface, do not certainly lie so deep as to have been beyond the ken of
a cool calculator like the ex-Emperor of France. Prussia, as a Protes
tant Power, was peculiarly marked out as destined to take the lead in
Protestant Germany. Austria might preside at the Diet while the
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
201
Holy Alliance lasted, and while princes conld still continue to rule
without regard to the spirit of the times ; but, if government really
meant the effective hold and control of the public mind, such a
government in Germany could proceed only from Prussia. The other
Protestant States were too small either to originate or to maintain any
movement that could pass the bounds of their own particular province.
To Prussia, therefore, all who longed for the unity of the Patherland
instinctively turned; and this great instinct found its realisation in
the person of Prince Bismark, and in the bold stroke of policy that
prostrated Austria and annexed the recalcitrant minor States in the
1866. With the Protestantism of Prussia was intimately con
nected its intelligence, its comparative freedom of opinion, its patronage
of science, its nursing of speculation, its substructure of popular
education, its truly national and popular and democratic system of
military drill. All this had come tto glorious growth and blossom,
first, from the genius and character of the great Pritz, and then
from the social regeneration that, under the stimulant guidance of
Baron Stein, had followed the terrible prostration of Jena in 1806.
Moreover, the men of Brandenburg, as already mentioned, were a sturdy
race, forced by hard labour to subdue the obstinacy of a barren soil,
and from their poverty acquiring habits of wealth-producing industry.
Th® Northern Germans are characteristically a hard-working people ;
hence the manufacturing industry of the Rhine district, which,
by the aid of railways and their concentrating action, has recently
shown itself on a great scale also in Berlin. Rich merchants, full
cousins to those whose palatial homes fringe the banks of the Mersey
and the Clyde, now raise their high-tiered warehouses and pile their
pictured halls on the banks of the Spree. Berlin is no more a cold,
formal, anlic, and military residence, but a populous capital, full of
lusty pulsation, of fervid energy, and, especially since the grand stroke
of 1866, of vivid nationality. The manifest signs of this are not only
the extraordinary increase in magnitude, but, what is much more
significant, the great rise in prices, and especially the enormous mount
ing of house rents. With regard to this latter item, I learned details
from various quarters which convinced me that houses in Berlin are
even dearer than in London. One evil result of this, naturally, is, that
public servants who live on small salaries, and men of moderate
fortunes generally, find it difficult to live in Berlin and keep up their
natural position in society; an evil, no doubt, but which is balanced
by its consequence, that men of moderate fortunes expelled from the
metropolis will serve to maintain and to enrich the social centres of
the provinces. It is not desirable that Germany should be swallowed
Up in Berlin, and that Gottingen, Bonn, and Halle should assume the
same servile attitude to it that the provincial cities of France do to
Paris.
My object in coming to Berlin was not to see the town, but to see
'
VOL. IL—-NO. VIII.
L
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
Bismark. The town, however, is well worth considering to those
whose eye has been trained to know the significance of places. No
doubt its situation as a dead flat is bad ; the river which waters it, or
rather tinctures with some humidity its immense sand-beds, is neither
large, nor beautiful, nor salubrious ; and the horizontal lines of its
streets draw themselves out, notwithstanding the stateliness of their
edifices, into a wearisome and oppressive monotony. Nevertheless
there is something of a grand imperial conception about it; the great
soul of the great Frederick seems to be typed in its plan; and in
impressing the idea of vastness it is second .only to St. Petersburg.
To me, however, it seems to possess a certain moral significance that
dominates over all gesthetical considerations; I think of Plato and
Pythagoras, and look upon it as the stone-impersonation of the principle
of law and order.
Look here, and ponder well, and know the land
That by the sword of crowned captains grew ;
In rank and file the streets well ordered stand,
And like a serried host stretch forth to view.
Here Order, primal Demiurge supreme,
Sways with firm will and uncontrolled command,
Nor fears, to lame the action of his scheme,
The lagging foot, or the rebellious hand.
Come here who love mad liberty, the dance
Of wanton wills divorced from sacred awe,
Come from your fiery maelstrom in hot France,
And learn how great, how strong a thing is Law.
Ye would be free—poor fools; be tigers, then,
Or monkeys, and forget that ye are men !
But, as I have said, I was eager’ to see Bismark; and as the Diet of
the Empire was then sitting (about the middle of May), there could
not be much difficulty about that. I attended the Diet regularly, both
at that time and afterwards, about the middle of June, on my return
from a short flight into Russia, and had the good luck to see and hear
the great Chancellor on several occasions. I did not, indeed, hear any
of his- great speeches, but, both from what I have read and from what
I heard from others, can form a good idea of his character as a speaker.
He is not an orator, in any sense, like Gladstone, Brougham, Bright,
Canning, and that class of men. He is specifically a man of action
and of business, who speaks, as Socrates says every man ought to speak,
without art, directly, and boldly, and emphatically, when he has got
anything to say. He will nevei- be found, like Cicero or Dr. Guthrie,
rolling out grand pictorial and sonorous periods; he only knows
what he is talking about, and hits hard; yes, hard, and directly in
the face, too, not at all concerned whether your nose purples or not at
the blow. He is sometimes found struggling for the proper word to
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
203
clothe his thoughts, but that hesitation is the growling thunder, which
'preludes a flash. Whatever faults you may find with his oratory, you
must listen to what he says ; and you feel in every sentence that he is
A 'tame man, and no glittering sophist or astute pleader of a bad case.
If he thinks it necessary to pluck your beard, he comes right up and
does it; blatant democracy, with its thousand brazen throats, has no
terrors for him; he stands alone in front of a storm of babblers, and
overawes them by his cool display of intellectual fibre and iron volition.
There is nothing •of German subtlety or German ideality about him;
in this respect Gladstone is much more a German than Bismark;
and Bismark, as I have heard an intelligent German public man
remark, has something essentially English in his character and attitude.
He is pre-eminently a man of deeds ; a man of direct broad views, of
practical sagacity, of firm determination, of unflurried coolness, of
fearless audacity, of commanding survey, with a touch of hot im
periousness, no doubt, in his temper, and of occasional irritability
which in a great statesman is a great fault. But it is
not necessary to hear him speak in order to be impressed by the
feeling that you are in the presence of a great man. His personal
appearance at once stamps him as the leader of the congregation.
When I saw him first I was sitting in the gallery behind the Speaker,
directly opposite to the elevated bench on the side of the House where
the members of the Imperial Council or Senate (JReichsrath') sit. On
this bench the central seat belongs to the Chancellor, and it was empty
when I entered the gallery. I had not watched long, however, before
a tall, broad-browed, broad-chested, truly Neptunian man, in a military
dress, entered and took possession of the empty seat. I asked, Is that
Bismark ? and received the answer which I anticipated. I then set
myself to watch and study him with as much scientific observation as I
was capable of. I had read his life by Hezechiel, and thought I
understood something of the stuff of which he was made. He sat for
an hour, the image of concentrated business and energy, signing papers,
reading telegrams, giving intimations to attendants, now looking to
the right hand, now to the left; again crossing his arms before his
breast, as if buckling down his natural impatience of a sedentary posi
tion, altogether as if he preferred the rattling thunder-car of Jove to the
soft-padded chair of the Chancellor. Such a man certainly will never
fall asleep, nor allow any other person to fall asleep, wherever you
plant him. When he was a young man they called him der toile
Sismark (mad Bismark) : that means, at an age when he had energy
without regulation, and without a suitable field of action, he did many
Strange and, it may be, some very improper things; as young Clive,
they tell us, distinguished his boyhood by climbing up to the top of
Shrewsbury steeple. Such men are not made to do common things ;
for red tape, official grooves, and traditional shams of all kinds, they
testify a despotic impatience; they are intensely real, and can only
L2
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SKETCHES OP TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
work where working means a real growth and a ripe fruitage. Such
a man, the living image of such a man, its very proper type and embodi
ment, the great German Chancellor, now stood before me.
There stands he now, amid the flock the ram,
A visible king by natural right to reign,
Whose high commission, from the great I AM
Direct, makes other seals and sanctions vain.
He stands as one who hath a steadfast will,
He looks as one whose survey lords the field,
At whose sure-darted glance of practised skill
The doubtful waver and the feeble yield.
Even such I knew from Homer’s regal song,
Jove-born, broad-breasted, lofty-fronted kings,
Who like Jove’s bird careered both swift and strong,
And boldly soared with venture on their wings:
But he who boldly ventures grandly wins,
And earns a brilliant pardon for all sins.
Less prominent than Bismark, but very regular in his attendance
as a member of the Diet, was Von Moltke. I never heard him speak ;
I believe he speaks seldom ; and is even less than Bismark, naturally,
a speaking man. His handsome physiognomy is known to all Europe
from the windows of the printsellers; if Bismark has somewhat the
look of an English bull-dog, Von Moltke has certainly the look of
an English gentleman; tall, slender, somewhat stiff and formal to
appearance; not in manner, perhaps, to those who know him, but
merely in outward attitude. He does not look like a soldier (Bismark
has much more of that), but rather smacks of the student, the literary
man, the professor; he is the thoughtful strategist, not the stormy
combatant; the mathematician, not the engineer; the architect, not the
builder; not the woodman who fells the trees, but the master of the
forest, who, according to a well-calculated plan, marks out and numbers
the trees that are to be felled.
[To be continued.']
��
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Sketches of travel in Germany
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Blackie, John Stuart
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Collation: 193-204 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Travels
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820
KETCHES
OF
J RAVEL
IN JcrERMANY.
By Professor Blackie.
PART III.
Having learnt at Berlin that the grand triumphal entry of the troops
■returned from the late war, was not to take place till about the middle
of June, I made a short excursion to Russia, and on my way thither
passed through the good old Prussian town of Königsberg, known
to corn merchants by its flourishing corn trade, but to me interesting
chiefly for very different things.
Here, first I called on Professor
Lehrs, and found in his powerful eye and strong well-chiselled features
exactly those evidences of fine Roman strength which I had derived, at
a distance, from the perusal of his ‘ Aristarchusa work which for
soundness of view, and masculine vigour of expression, will maintain its
place in the libraries alongside of the great Latin masterpieces of
Wolf, Hermann, Ruhnken, and Wyttenbach.
After being ciceronized
by this excellent scholar through the stately and commodious new
buildings of the University, I passed through the small narrow street
which contains the house once inhabited by Immanuel Kant, a meta
physician, who had the singular merit of teaching European thinkers to
believe in their souls, after my subtle, self-puzzling countryman, David
Hume had fairly lost his identity in a whirl of unstable impressions
and ideas which he had spun out of the juggling phraseology of the
schools. Rounding the corner of this little street, I came suddenly, at
the top of a short descent, called Kant Street, on the bronze statue of
the venerable thinker. Here he stood, with his cocked hat under his
left arm, and bag-wig on his head, peering out curiously into the unsym
pathetic world of merchants, corn-dealers, and ship captains, in the
midst of whom it was his destiny, for so many years, persistently to
philosophise.
But Immanuel was too wise a man to complain of this
want of sympathy, as a mere technical metaphysical professor might
have done. As not only a thinker, but a really wise man, he knew that
nothing is so prejudicial to sound thinking as habitual confined inter
course with only one class of men. ‘ Nothing,’ he said, ‘ is so intolerable
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
321
as a company Consisting only of learned men;’ so he dined every day
at the common table of the principal inn, 'with sailors and ship captains,
and in this singular way added to the narrow limits of his solitary
thinking the large range of experience which belongs to the mercantile
and commercial classes.
After taking off my hat before this most
reputable philosopher, I proceeded to make an inspection of the old
Schloss, Castle, or Palace of the Prussian kings. I had in my memory
the humorous picture drawn by Carlyle of the coronation which took
place here of the first King of Prussia, in the first year of the last
■century, on which august occasion, his philosophical spouse, Sophia,
solaced her soul for the extreme weariness of the prolonged ceremonial
by publicly injecting a familiar pinch of snuff into her nose, beneath
the sublime frown of her royal lord.
So what fixed itself in my
memory principally was the room in which this coronation took place,
with the very throne on which self-created majesty placed the crown
{like the Czar of Russia) with his own hands on his own head, and a
¿significant environment of royal portraits hung on the walls. But my
■.eye was also attracted by a splendid dining hall or reception room, nearly
.three hundred feet long, or as long as some of our finest cathedrals,
which, with a necessary addition to its height (expected to be realised
when the present Crown Prince becomes kaiser-king), will certainly be
■ one of the largest and most imposing halls in Europe.
So much for
Königsberg. Want of time prevented me from an intended visit to the
battle-field of Eylau, which lies some considerable distance to the south
east of the town ; so I proceeded on through a grey and grim monotony
•of sand, and bogs, and blasted pines, for a space of nearly six hundred
miles, to the city of the Czar, and on the road, according to my custom,
.amused myself by spinning into verse my meditations on Immanuel
Kant, as follows :
Who’s here? a strange, old-fangled German Heir,
With hat three-cornered and bag-wig behind ;
Who peers with curious gaze, as if he were
New wafted from the moon by some stray wind
On the strange earth ! Ah ! now I know the man,
The sage who from this outmost Teuton station,
Marked their just bounds to all the thinking clan,
And pruned their wings to sober speculation.
Happy who, humanly, with human kind,
Works human work, well pleased from day to day,
Nor dares with high-plumed venture unconfined
Through trackless voids to push his plunging way !
God laughs at lofty thoughts ; but whoso proves
His ponder’d j ath, and walks by faith, He loves.
■vol.
II.—NO.
IX.
R
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
After a fortnight of very magnificent panoramic views of a. great
country, and very suggestive glimpses into social states, very far
removed from British, I returned from Moscow and St. Petersburg,
through Warsaw, to Berlin.
At Warsaw, the whole style of architec
ture, and the long rows of poplar trees along the turnpike roads,,
declared plainly enough that, though still under Russian sway, I was.
no longer in a Russian atmosphere. The civilization of Poland comes,
from the west, that of Moscow from the east ; and this contrast spoke
plainly out from every house-top, and from every street corner,
notwithstanding the forced Russian appearance given to the signs of
thé shops, which, by police order, are printed first in Russian charac
ters, and then in the native Polish, as of inferior dignity, below. But
my business here is only with Germany.
A railway rattle of about
fifteen hours’ duration brought us to Berlin, early on Wednesday
morning (the 14th), two days before the great military entry, and in.
time to learn that apartments in the best inns had risen from a dollar
a night—their usual rate—to a Frederick d’or.
I, of course, had
expected this, and, by travelling second class (contrary to Murray’s,
advice), all through Russia, had left my pocket in a comfortable flow
of cash, quite up to the need of the great foreseen pressure on the.
hotels.
But I am a Sonntagskind, as the Germans say, and always,
fall on my feet.
A kind friend took compassion on me, and opened,
his door for my shelter ; so that a week’s stay in Berlin cost me
nothing in the way of cash, and was a great gain to me in the way of
balmy and brilliant sociality. Now, no one, of course, expects that I
am here to attempt a detailed description of the grand patriotic display
which we call the Einzug : the newspapers have done the thing to satis
faction, and even to satiety ; and achtnn agere is as little my business at.
any time as it can be anybody’s pleasure at this time ; so with regard to
this matter, I will only set down one or two remarks with regard to the
general tone, effect, and significance of the affair, as it struck me. My
German friend had kindly procured for me a seat on the platform or
gallery raised in front of the University, and looking into the grand
open place, circled writh palaces and monuments, into which the Unter
den Linden opens at its east end : certainly the most pictorial point in
the otherwise somewhat monotonous and wearisome stateliness of Berlin
architecture. From this post—for which I paid only three dollars—I
had a broad unhindered view of the different regiments of the Guard,
that to the number of between forty and fifty thousand came spreading
forth their steely ranks from the comparatively narrow line of the Lin
den j and unquestionably, for the eye of a grey civilian accustomed only
to sober sights, this was a grand spectacle to see. For nearly three
hours the mighty palatial space filled and emptied itself again with
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
323
close-packed glittering rows, now of the severe bine infantry, now of the
^bright mailed Cuirassiers gleaming in the sun, now of the rapid-trotting
Uhlans, with their black and white pennons fluttering on their long
lances. These last were not only the most picturesque, but the most
loudly cheered : cheers well merited, as anyone who has even hastily
gleaned the newspaper history of the war will understand. If in the
first decisive battles of the campaign the Germans knew what they were
about while the French did not, it was all owing, after Moltke’s admirable
geographic and strategic studies, to the dexterity and daring shown by
thefr reconnoitring horsemen. If this, thought I, be only some forty or
fifty thousand men, what a spectacle must the military array of a great
battle be,' such a battle as that at Leipzig in October, 1813, when Napo
leon, with 150,000 men, stood in an inner circle, with 400,000 Prussians,
Russians, Austrians, and Swedes in his front. Nevertheless, as a mere
spectacle, one could not but say that the Einzug was deficient in two
important respects—in colour and variety. I have seen not a few more
brilliant shows. But the real show, perhaps, was not the march of the
military, with their arms glittering in the sun, but the pomp of festal
decoration in the town, the endless rows of flag and banner and historic
picture, patriotic sculpture, significant device, and suggestive motto of
every kind. This really was a burst of vivid gaiety well calculated both
to please the eye and to satisfy the mind anywhere, but especially in the
grey and grave regions of the frosty North. Of the illuminations which
closed the great festive day I will say nothing; they were good, very
good, perhaps, of their kind; but I am Stoic enough to think there is
something childish in this cumbrous attempt to light up the night with
an artificial imitation of the day. But what chiefly moved me in this
affair of the Einzug, and will remain with me among the deepest and
most fruitful experiences of my life, was the moral and political signifi
cance of the display. Many shows are mere shows, with emptiness or
even hollow, false pretence behind; mere gilded lies, beneath which the
scratch of a pin will expose the depth of foulness and rottenness which
such rare varnish was necessary to conceal. But the Berlin show was
all reality, and the sign of a greater reality. The reality before me was
effective military strength; the reality of which it was the sign is the
solidity, firmness, and systematic consistency of the German people and
the Prussian Government. There rode the stout old soldier King, pre
ceded by his three mighty men, all dressed in the white livery of his
favourite Cuirassiers, Bismark, Moltke, and Roon, the one the eye of his
policy, the second the brain, and the third the arm of his soldiership.
What a reality was there! What a speaking commentary on the famous
words of Bismark (which some hasty people were forward to misunder
stand), that great social revolutions of a certain kind are not to be
R 2
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SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY
achieved by mere talking, but that the obstinacy of the tough old ma
terial can be moulded into a new shape only by the stern compulsion of
‘blood and iron.’ Now everybody admits that Bismark and the King,
or rather the King and Bismark (for if the King had been a weakling in
the ‘conflict of 62’ Bismark would have had no game to play), were
right in keeping up the strength of the army against the peddling eco
nomies of the Berlin Liberals; the success of the war, therefore, and the
glory of the triumphal entry, were the legitimate fruit of clear counsel,
firm will, and manly consistency of purpose on the part of those who
had the guidance of public affairs in Prussia. Whatever other excel
lencies the champions of the French in this country may see or imagine
in their petted friends, they must at least confess to two great faults—
their fretful irritability took high offence from no sufficient occasion, and
their hasty insolence_made war without adequate preparation. But no
faults of this kind can be laid to the charge of the Germans. They
knew they had an insolent and treacherous neighbour to contend with;
they had known him in this character for four hundred years; and they
were determined that, so soon as the real outbreak of his itching vanity
and imperious insolence should take place, it would not find them, as in
1806, unprepared and divided. The outbreak did come sooner than
even Bismark’s astuteness had anticipated; he was taken by surprise no
less than his European enemies, who accused him of complicity; but he
was surprised in the midst of his earnestness, as the French in their
insolence; and backed by the firm resolve of a serious, honest, and
laborious people, the whole character of the war on his side was as
satisfactory to the moralTas to the intellectual nature of the impartial
observer. The same attitude of reality and honesty was presented in
the person of the stout old King, a monarch in all points the antipodes
of the French Emperor, who was driven into an unequal war by the
necessity of a position which his own unscrupulous ambition and utter
want of political conscience had created. Only continued success could
seem to justify a rule which every one knew was founded on a crime;
and the dramatic necessity of getting up some glory, to titillate French
vanity and gratify French ambition, sent him with a light start and boast
ful parade into the midst of a struggle, of which the issue, even with
the most complete preparation and most thoughtful circumspection, was
extremely doubtful. How different the moral position of the King of
Prussia ! The hereditary holder of a throne firmly rooted in the loyal
allegiance of a sober-minded and intelligent people, who knew how to
value the strength derived from a firm central rule, even when it
pressed a little severely sometimes on individual liberty, he neither
needed to cater by unworthy means for a popularity which he already
possessed, nor if a storm of adverse fortune should seize the state, was
�SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
325
he in danger of being thrown ont as a Jonah to propitiate the wrath
of the sea-god. He was known to be a soldier and a lover of soldiers ;
but he did not require to pander to a fretful appetite, either in his army
or his people, by aggressive acts upon the territories of his neighbours.
The wars in which he had been engaged were purely matters of
domestic arrangement between Germans and Germans ; the changes
which, by the instrumentality of ‘blood and iron,’ he had effected
within the limits of Fatherland, if violent, were absolutely necessary for
the restoration of that imperial unity the loss of which had been
historically identical with the humiliation of Germany beneath the
fraud and force of unscrupulous kingcraft in France. To this firm
political position King William added the wTeight of a personal character
such as the solid and sober-minded Germans knew how to respect. In
‘the conflict ’ with the Parliament in 1862 he showed a firmness of will
which, whatever else may be wanting, must ever be held as a prime
requisite in a ruler of men; in his habits, like his excellent father, he
was plain and unostentatious ; and, like his father also, he was sincerely
and unaffectedly religious. This element in his character I am, of
course, aware it has been the fashion in this country to deride; but
there is not a man in Germany, to what ever party he belongs, who
would insinuate that the devout expressions of thankfulness used by the
King in his despatches were anything else than the genuine utterance
of a natural and unaffected piety. It is indeed a vulgar habit of the
English mind to honour the expression of devout feeling only when it
appears in the stereotyped forms of the national Liturgy ; and beyond
the conventional homage of a Sunday forenoon service, or the question
able zeal for church paraded on the political platform at an election,
many an Englishman seems more than half ashamed of his religion, and
carries no more natural fragrance of piety about him than a cold tulip
does of warm vegetable aroma.
Hence the uncharitable judgments
passed upon good King William : judgments that only prove, if not the
absolute ungenerousness and ungentlemanliness, certainly the frigid
narrowness and formalism of the persons who made them. The real
fact of the matter is, both that there is a fundamental vein of devout
feeling (a portion of their characteristic Gemiitli) in the German mind,
and that the late war, in its motive and occasion essentially a repetition
of the great national struggle of 1813, was inspired by the same fine
combination of devout and patriotic feeling which distinguished its
prototype. The sure instinct of this led the King at the outbreak of
the struggle to re-establish the Order of the Iron Cross, a decoration
which symbolises in the most chaste and significant way that combina
tion of manly endurance, public spirit, and active piety by which the
campaigns of 1813 and 1870 have been so prominently characterised.
�326
SKETCHES OF TRAVEL IN GERMANY.
Sitting in the railway carriage one day, between Gottingen and Halle, I
had before me a young soldier decorated with this expressive symbol,
which, if widely distributed, is so only because, as Bismark said, it is
v’idely deserved ; and, as I am not a smoker, I amused the tedium of the
road by articulating the following lines :
Prussian, that iron cross upon thy breast,
Which thou with manhood’s modest pride dost wear,
I ask not by what deed above the rest,
Dashing or daring, it was planted there ;
I know that when the insolent heel of Gaul
Tramped on all rights to thee and Deutschland dear,
Thou rose regenerate from thy plunging fall
By vows devout and discipline severe.
Thus blazed thy bright noon from a tearful morn,
Blessing from bane sprang, and great gain from loss,
While in thy hand the avenging steel was borne,
And in thy heart was stamped the patient cross :
Thus Spartan pith and Christian grace were thine,
Born in one day, and bodied in one sign.
And now, what more have I to say ? I might tell Mr. Bull not only that
he ought to believe reverently in the moral grandeur of the Iron Cross,
whether as symbolical of the great struggle of 1813, in which himself
took a prominent part, or of the yet greater struggle of 1870, in which
he took no part ; but I would tell him also that the universal arming
of the people, however Lord Derby might call it a retrogression, is a
part of social organisation equally congruous with Spartan discipline,
Athenian freedom, Roman strength, and Christian grace ; that, in fact,
it is a grand nursery of national virtue and patriotic devotion, more
powerful than schools and churches, because it deals in deeds, and not in
words. But I know well that Mr. Bull would not listen to me in this
matter. If I had M.P. after my name, perhaps he might be willing to
lend me a respectful audience for an hour; as it is, I am silent.
�PRESERVATION OF THE NATIONAL HEALTH.
835
un cleanness of every kind, let us tear-down the fever-nests and open up
the pauper warrens to the free light and blithe air, let us sternly treat
as public crime the avarice that distributes poisoned water to swell divi
dends, and that "which refuses to drain villages lest the rates should rise.
Resolute war against dirt, waged under the conduct of scientific enemies
of disease, would soon make this a different country for the poor at least
to live in. If we decline to accept this issue how shall we justify our* solves to the helpless masses whom we are allowing to perish like rotten
sheep ?
Edward D. J. Wilson.
It is just to say here that though the common theory of cholera and its propaga
tion is popularly summarised above, it does not pass unchallenged. - Dr. Chapman, in
a very ingenious work, with the logic oj: which no fault can be found, but which may
be thought to rest on too narrow an induction, has endeavoured to show that cholera
is generated not by any morbid poison but by hyperasmia of the nervous centres dis
tributed along thej spine. He maintains that the disease can be controlled by modify
ing the temperature of these nervous centres, and cites some remarkable cases in which
he has recovered patients far gone in choleraic collapse by the application of ice to the
spine. The method may be useful, even though Dr. Chapman’s theory be unsound,,
and as medical science is confessedly powerless to cope with cholera when once it has
seized on a patient, it will be worth while to give the proposed treatment a fair trial/'
in the public hospitals in case of another cholera epidemic.
�
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Sketches of travels in Germany. Part 3
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Blackie, John Stuart
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Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 320-326 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (November, 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
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Conway Tracts
Germany
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B
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bJ I ^-’3.
national secular society
LORD BACON:
WRITE
HE
DID
SHAKESPEARE’S PLATS?
A REPLY TO
I JUDGE HOLMES, -MISS D. BACON, & MR. W. H. SMITH,
BY
I
CHARLES C. CATTELL,
Editor of “ Dawson’s Speeches on Shakespeare.”
‘ Know the grounds and authors of it.’—Twelfth Night, Act V Sc. 1
PRICE
(THE
PROCEEDS TO
TWOPENCE.
BE
GIVEN
RESTORATION
Printed
and
TO
THE
LIBRARY
FUND.)
Published
by
G. & J. H. SHIPWAY, 39, MOOR STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
1879.
�NEW
WORK
Just Published, Price One Shilling,
THE
BY
CHARLES C. CATTELL.
Opinions—1878.
“A very interesting little work.”—Newcastle Chronicle, March 16th.
“ A series of short biographies of illustrious men who have suffered
tribulation in this world. Apart from this [that some do not deserve
the title], the biographies are interesting and instructive.”—Birming
ham Daily Bost, April 23rd.
“ Might have been made a hundred times as long as it is............ But
this small work very creditably fulfils the purpose which is set forth in
the preface. ”— Weekly Dispatch. March 24th.
“The facts in the various ‘ lives ’ are well marshalled, and the leading
characteristics as well brought out as narratives so very condensed will
admit. The volume bespeaks a large and varied course of reading,
and has substantial literary merit.”—The Advertiser, March 23rd.
“Well worthy of perusal, having been judiciously done.”—Free
Press.
‘1A sort of handy summary of the Foxe’s Martyrs order, and abounds
cheerfully with the headsman’s axe, racks, knouts, and stakes at
Smithfield.”—The Dart, March 16th.
“The biographies are comprehensive, and written in a pleasing
pithy style. The love of freedom which permeates the whole volume
is not the least interesting feature in it.”—Daily Mail.
“It is an excellent work of its kind; and, being very cheap, it
will doubtless find its way into the hands of the young working men
for whom it is adapted.”—7'ruthseeker.
“ Mr. Cattell has compiled a short history of each martyr, the lite
rary merits of which do him as much credit as the generous prompt
ings which led to such a task being undertaken. ’— Brtlish Mercantile
Gazette.
Published by CHARLES Watts, 84, Fleet Street, London.
�BID LORD BACON WRITE SHAKESPEARE’S PLAYS?
BY
CHARLES
C.
CATTELL.
O some this is an old question, but it is not so old as some
other questions by many thousands of years. Many who
possess the volume entitled “Shakespeare’s Works” are
altogether indifferent as to when or by whom the plays and
poems were written. Then there are the idolaters who regard
the utterance of a doubt, as to Shakespeare being the author,
as gross infidelity, a species of blasphemy against “the divine
William.” But a wise scepticism is a healthy sign in this age
of reason, this age of intellectual activity—such as was never
before seen in the history of mankind. Old and wise heads
have settled this and many other questions to their own satis
faction ; but a new generation seeks solutions of its own, and
desires to discuss and settle questions, unawed by all authori
ty but the evidence, by which alone a thoughtful man is
guided. This humble contribution to the discussion is intended
to serve those whose time or opportunity does not permit them
to consult more expensive and voluminous books on the subject.
Some persons are angry with the heretics ; but it may be
fairly taken as a very high compliment to the genius of
Shakespeare, that his plays and poems are considered worthy
of the pen of so profound a philosopher, scholar, and master
mind as Lord Bacon.
T
�4
Those who think this is a fight with phantoms, a firing into
the air at nothing in particular, should be informed that in
1875 a new edition of Judge Holmes’s work was published,
containing 696 pages, setting forth the claims of Lord Bacon.
Besides this, there is a work by Miss Delia Bacon of 582 pages,
and one by W. H. Smith of 162 pages, and others.
The position taken by the heretics is that Shakespeare was
only a poor strolling, vagabond player—who not only could
not be the writer of the plays or of anything else, except his
own name, and that so badly that it is still an open question
whether he knew how to spell it.
On the other hand, Lord
Bacon could write, was a scholar, and lived at the same time,
in the same country, as Shakespeare, and therefore he might
have written the plays and poems. Dr. Watts laid down as a
sort of logical canon that what might be might not be.
One
argument against Lord Bacon is that several literary men of
eminence, who lived at the time, in the same country, do not
say he wrote the plays, but give the credit of authorship to
William Shakespeare.
The words these men wrote, about Shakespeare being the
author, were published at the time, form part of our national
literature, and remained undisputed for more than 250 years.
Besides Ben Jonson, Francis Meres, and others, Earl
Southhampton calls Shakespeare his “especial friend” and
describes him as the “writer of some of our best English
plays ”
John Milton, in 1632, only a few years after the death of
Shakespeare, which occurred in 1616, sings to his memory a
hymn of praise. Heminge and Condell, who played with him,
were on friendly terms with Earl Pembroke, and had, so far
as we know, thirty years good character, published the plays
�5
and poems in 1623, as we now have them, under the name of
William Shakespeare; and at the same time under their own
signature claimed him as their friend and the author of the
hooks they edited.
In order to sustain the claims set up for Lord Bacon we are
compelled to take refuge in the assumption—that men of
learning, scholars, pure and noble characters—-entered into a
conspiracy to deceive mankind to all eternity, or, otherwise,
that they were the most weak, deluded, drivelling, soft-headed
fools that ever were permitted to breathe the air of Great
Britain. Either they lied or were imposed upon, and neither
one nor the other is laid to their charge—or, instead of being
quoted as ornaments to their age, they would be described as
impostors or idiots.
The so-called arguments of the heretics are made up of
11 if’s,” “hut’s,” and “might he’s.” Those who put forth no
arguments on their side are the most difficult writers to answer
or refute : but the reasoning of the heretics admits of illustra
tion, if not of refutation.
The following will illustrate their method, supposing they
described it as I should:—There was a plague in London; Charles II. was King, and
John Milton was a poet. Now John Milton was poor, and old,
and blind—and had no power over the elements,the army or
the government—but the king had control over the govern
ment and its administration, and therefore he “ might ” have
had something to do with the plague. Although we have
held the opinion for more than twenty years that the King
caused the plague, we never hoped or expected to be able to
prove any such thing!
One conclusive proof against Milton
is he left no manuscript giving instructions about the plague ;
�6
neither did the King, but no doubt he wrote them.
Having
sent a copy of our work, showing that the King caused the
plague, to a gentleman who has devoted many years to writing
a life of the King, and he having thanked us for it, and also
given us his opinion—that our theory and statements are
totally unsupported by facts, and are incredible and absurd
beyond all question ; we think it necessary to bring out anew
edition of our valuable work, which we find is supported by
other independent writers, who have proved nothing at all, and
of whose existence we were entirely ignorant at the time we
wrote our own views on the same subject.
Judge Holmes makes a point of the fact that no manuscript
has been found of Shakespeare’s own writing : but if that
proves anything against him it is equally fatal in the case of
Bacon who has also omitted to leave us manuscript of his
Tragedies and Sonnets.
Dr. Ingleby suggests that Shakes
peare’s manuscripts may have been taken to London by his
friend Ben Jonson, and that they may have been burnt at the
fire which took place at Jonson’s house. Heminge and Condell say they had Shakespeare’s manuscripts of his plays and
poems to print from, but I am not aware of any one having
said that much of Lord Bacon’s. Bacon’s works were not
published till after twelve of the plays, so that plagiarism
would be extremely difficult, especially as his works contained no
plays or sonnets.
Here we have Lord Bacon busy writing his great works,
and having them carefully done into Latin; and we are asked
to believe that at the same time he wrote the same sentiments
(for their evidence consists of parallel passages only) in
sublime tragedies, known and played before, and placed to
the credit of a writer whose name was not Bacon. Moreover
�7
these Dramas which have won the praise and admiration of all
nations were in his eyes such inferior rubbish, that he allow
ed them to remain in English instead of having them done
into Latin to be preserved for posterity. Any one who knows
Bacon’s character knows that that is just what he would not
have done.
The assumption necessary for the heretics’ case is that Bacon
not only wrote the sentiments in majestic prose, about which
there is no dispute; but that he also made the same sentiments
do duty twice—in the second instance they appear in the form
of sublime dramatic poetry—the writing of which he confessed
himself incompetent, and the heretics produce no evidence that
he either could or did.
Holmes says it is ‘ historically known’ that Bacon wrote plays
and poems ; but does not say to whom this history was known,
or who wrote it. Ellis gives a list of fifty persons who wrote
in the reigns of Elizabeth and James, but Bacon is not one.
Bacon wrote in fulsome adulation of his friend James, but did
not produce a sonnet on his accession to the throne, but he did
produce some wretched prose, altogether unworthy of his pen.
It certainly is recorded by himself that he 'prepared a sonnet’
as ' a toy,’ in 1599, to please the queen, and in the same docu
ment he says he did not profess to be ‘a poet.’
It is also‘historically known’ that he ‘assisted’ in preparing
a masque, and the part he did was ' the dumb shows,’ and
the rest was done by others. Another proof that Bacon wrote
Shakespeare is that he wrote a metrical version of the Psalms
of David. I can only make out that he paraphrased VII of
them, and if any body else had produced such—I hesitate to
say what language critics would have used about the VII. To
produce any force, the parallel passages, to prove identity of
�8
authorship, should have been taken from Bacon's tragedies
and sonnets, about which no dispute has taken place because
even their existence has not yet been established. Bacon’s
biographer says—if he did not write the plays of Shakespeare,
of which we have no proof, there is no evidence that Bacon
could write Dramatic Poetry. True enough, say the heretics,
but if he did, which he
that is evidence that he
could. Verily there is “much virtue in ?/.”
Any one reading the plays would infer that the writer had
some knowledge of the stage, and was not unacquainted with
Warwickshire, and even Stratford-on-Avon : —and ‘if Bacon
did not write them, some other person ‘might'' who had some
knowledge of both. The author ‘might' have been a player,
‘if he had once lived on the banks of the Avon.
Of course
Bacon lived at a time when his parents ‘might' have resided
in Warwickshire, and he ‘ might' have obtained some know
ledge of the stage, ‘if' he was a player, although it is not
“ historically known " these mights are in any sense rights.
It is urged that all the difficulty is occasioned by Bacon’s
concealment of his name as a Dramatist; because that character
was unpopular in his time. A more conclusive reason, to my
mind, is the fact that he was unknown to be able to sustain
the character—and that the reason why his name was con
cealed, as the writer of Shakespeare’s plays, was because he
did not write them—and that purely through his lack of
ability to do anything of the sort, as he himself confessed in
writing.
Let any one compare Bacon’s version of the Psalms with any
Tragedy or Drama, attributed to Shakespeare, and see what
sort of an idea can be obtained of a parallel. There is as much
difference between the writings of Bacon and the Plays as
�9
there is difference in the characters of the philosopher and
the poet.
Shakespeare has keen described as honest, open,
gentle, free, honourable and amiable; while Bacon has been
described as ambitious, covetous, base, selfish, unamiable and
unscrupulous. Now, taking these two descriptions as a fair
index of their souls—which is the more likely to have por
trayed the women of Shakespeare’s plays ?
The reasons given for concealment lose all their force
when we remember that Bacon’s complete works were not
published till 1635, one year before he died.
He lived long
enough to see the end of his plays ‘ if’ he wrote them ; so
that the excuse which he ‘ might ’ have had, when a young
rising ambitious man, could not do duty at the age of sixty.
Besides, his friend and servant Ben Jonson had placed the
plays and poems, many a long year before, high up above all
the productions of the genius of the human race. To suppose
a man like Bacon dying and leaving such works unowned—•
leaving them to be fathered by a poor despised player, who
could but just sign his name for cash received from the Queen
and King for acting before them—is—what ? To assert that
such is within the limits of probability is unmitigated twaddle.
It is a known fact that Bacon was very anxious about how
he should appear to posterity—and yet we are asked to believe
that he allowed his plays, ‘if’ he wrote them, which he
might not, to come down to us, published under his very eyes,
with 20,000 errors.
Then there is the important point that Shakespeare had
little or no education--very irregular—short in duration—and
the absence of proof that he ever went to school at all—and
if he did go—he must have begun to write before he was
qualified either by college or university.
�10
At the very starting point in this investigation the presump
tion is that the boy Shakespeare was totally unprepared for
the office of poet at the time when he was busy at it. Now, ‘ if
he did go to school, his father being a yeoman and having
served as chief magistrate, he ‘ might ’ have had an education
like his friend Lord Southampton.
Ben Jonson says Shake
speare had “small Latin and less Greek,” so that it seems
quite possible that he obtained these at some school—and is it
too much to assume that his friend Ben, who was a scholar,
could, and would, and did assist him ?
Many of the books he ‘might' have read in English, ‘if
that be added to his Latin and Greek, which is not impossible,
as he lived at a time when English was spoken and written.
Surely Ben Jonson would help his ‘beloved author ’ to Ovid
and Virgil, about the only two he would want besides trans
lations. It should be remembered that much of Shakespeare
is the work of genius observing nature and man, and that he
does not write alone as books enable and as colleges teach.
He may also have in some measure resembled Pope, Goldsmith,
and Burns, whose education was not of a very high order •
but they, as also Dryden, Milton, Coleridge, and others
began to write before they were twenty, Milton being a fair
classical scholar at 17. Shakespeare having, according to Emerson, “the best head in the universe,” and some knowledge
of Latin and Greek, and some mysterious mental power sur
passing that of the wisest of the ancients, he might have been
able to produce some of the great works which make his name
immortal, without being Lord Bacon in disguise, or the mere
puppet of the great philosopher, who had as much to do with
the plays as the writer of this.
�11
Holmes cites a number of passages from Bacon containing
the same words and illustrations as are found in Shakespeare’s
plays, and asks “ can all this be accidental ?”
Yes : but if
not, things that are equal to the same thing are equal to one
another : so that if parallels prove identity of authorship, the
inference that Shakespeare wrote Bacon is as logical as the in
ference that Bacon wrote Shakespeare. The evidence consists
solely of similarity of expressions, as the following will illustrate.
Bacon writes that he remembers in a chamber at Cambridge
there was “ a pillar of iron erected for a prop,” in another
place he speaks of “ Ancient pillars.”
Shakespeare also speaks of “ a prop to lean upon,” “ props
of virtue,” “pillars that stand to us,” and “deserving pillars of
the law.” To me this only proves that both used the words
pillar and prop. Bacon speaks of “the finger of God.”
Shakespeare speaks of “the fingers of the powers above.”
Bacon speaks of “ the soul having shaken off her flesh.”
Shakespeare speaks of “ when we have shuffled off this mortal
coil.” Bacon speaks of “ the mole that diveth into the darkness
of the earth.” Shakespeare says—“ old mole ! canst work i’
th’ ground so fast ? ” Bacon writes—
“ As a tale told, which, sometimes men attend,
And sometimes not, our life steals to an end.”
Shakespeare writes :—
“ Life is as tedious as a twice told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.”
Bacon :—“ The great navies look like walking woods.”
Shakespeare :—
“Anon, me thought,
The woods began to •move.”
It should be noted that the last two quotations from Bacon are
�12
translations from the Psalms, so that, if they prove any
thing, they prove that Shakespeare was written by King David.
Holmes discovers that the plays were written between 1582
and 1613 ; Bacon at the same time living thirty-one years,
from 21 to 52, “ corresponding exactly to that portion of Ba
con slife in which we may most easily suppose they could have been
written by him.” Shakespeare also lived thirty-one years dur
ing the same period, corresponding exactly to that portion
of Shakespeare’s life from 18 to 49, in which we may easily
suppose he wrote some of the plays.
This would be very easy
indeed if we took Holmes as a guide. For instance, in speak
ing of the style of Heminge and Condell’s affectionate dedication,
he says, “it is much more nearly that of Bacon; but it may very
well have been Jonson.” Again, Holmes says, there are traditions
that Jonson severely criticised Shakespeare’s productions,
and was envious of his fame—“and from these it should be
inferred that Jonson could not really have believed that
Shakespeare was the actual author of the works.”
While reading this sentence it will be well to bear in mind
that Jonson paid the highest compliment to Shakespeare’s
genius, and that Holmes himself contends that the works so
“ severely criticised ” were written by no less a person than
Lord Bacon. If we believe in Holmes and his logic, Jonson
was a fool in criticism and a liar in eulogy.
Holmes quotes a postscript from a letter by Tobie Matthew
to Lord Bacon, in which allusion is made to a ‘ ‘ most prodigi
ous wit ”—“ of your Lordship’s name, though he be known by
another.”
Who else could this refer to but Shakespeare?
He calls this a “very remarkable piece of evidence.”
To me
the sentence is by no means clear—as to whom it refers —
is a kind of literary conundrum—the true answer to which,
�13
Judge Holmes himself has not, in my opinion, yet discovered.
The sentence to me is remarkable as evidence of an
obscure style of letter writing, and of interest, or even intelligi
ble, only to the initiated correspondent.
Miss Delia Bacon, whose sincerity is indisputable, since she
sacrificed her reason and her life in pursuing this subject,
states that she will not place any value on Ben Jonson’s evi
dence in favour of Shakespeare’s authorship until he has ex
plained why he did not mention to the author of the “ Advance
ment of Learning ” the name of the author of ‘‘ Hamlet” as,
she says, two such remarkable persons “ might like to meet each
other.” She offers no evidence that Jonson did not do this, or
that they did not meet.
The imputation upon the honour of
Jonson is therefore unsupported, except by thejgreat argument
which the heretics fall back upon on all occasions, which is
founded on the fact that all the historians and biographers are
entirely silent on the subject.
This comes with great force
because historians and biographers so seldom agree, but on this
point they are unanimous, in saying nothing !
She may be excused for her enthusiasm since she believed
she had discovered “hidden treasure” under the surface of
Shakespeare’s plays, although for years she had been a
student of the bard, and, like all the rest of the world, found
only beautiful ideas clothed in the most majestic words of one
of the greatest living languages.
But she, with keener eye
than ordinary mortals, saw, “under the surface of Shakepeare’s plays,” the philosophy of Sir Walter Raleigh, and the
imperishable thoughts of Lord Bacon, the father of the induc
tive method. Strange as this may appear to some—it is mar
vellous what hidden things may be discovered in any great
book, if you gojzo it with a theory preconceived, and with a
�14
settled purpose of finding in it some support to your theory.
A remarkable illustration of this is found in the case of the
English Bible. A thousand discordant sects fly to the book of
books in search of illustrations and facts and sanctions to en
force their views, and they come back loaded with texts innum
erable with which they pelt each other for hundreds of years.
Moreover they not only thus fight each other but they combine
to pelt all who differ from the whole of them with a vigour
that can only be appreciated by those who have been engaged
in what Coleridge’s coachman called “something in the oppo
sition line.”
My contention is, that if you did not first catch your hare
you could not cook it, that if you did not get your theory first
you would not find it in the book nor the facts in support of it.
I read Bacon’s essays before Shakespeare’s plays and
the thought that one man wrote both was not suggested, and
such a thought would not be suggested by the reading only—
not to one man in a million—and still it might be so—it might
still be true that one man was the author of both.
The mul
titude do not make discoveries. The discoverers of truth, the
proclaimers of truth, and the defenders of truth, have in all
ages been the few—-the minority of the human race.
These facts should be constantly borne in mind, so that per
sonal abuse, persecution in any form, should not be possible
among the students, or even among the admirers, of literature,
art, and science. In the words of Shakespeare, let it become
a common truism, and not the insulting concession called toler
ation, that “ Thought is free.”
Mr. W. H. ^Smith contends that in Bacon alone are to be
found the vast variety of talents possessed by the writer of
Shakespeare’s plays.
�15
The best answer I can give is that the talent required, above
all others, is the ability to write such dramatic poetry as the
book contains, and which cannot be traced to Lord Bacon.
Mr. Smith considers similarity of ideas or coincidence of
expressions unreasonable, and not to be expected, yet here we
find them in the following pointed instances.
Bacon speaking of reputation uses these words “because of
the peremptory tides and currents it hath ” and Shakespeare
says “ There is a tide in the affairs of men.”
Bacon relates an anecdote about a man named Hog, who
claimed kindred on account of his name. Sir N. Bacon replied
“ Ay, but you and I cannot be kindred except you be hanged ;
for Hog is not Bacon until it is well hanged.”
Shakespeare
has also used the words hang, hog, and bacon.
Evans—“Hung, Hang, Hog.”
Dame Quickly—“Hang, Hog is the Latin for Bacon.”
Mr. Smith points out that the word ‘ Essay ’ was new in
Bacon’s time, and yet Shakespeare uses it once, Bacon uses it
as a title.
If the use of the same word by two authors who lived at the
same time proves that one wrote the works of the other, there
wonld be no difficulty in proving that Judge Holmes wrote the
book of W. H. Smith, or vice versa.
As a matter of fact he has been charged with copying Miss
Delia Bacon. In his defence he says that if it were necessary
he could show that for twenty years he had held the opinion
that Bacon was the author of the works of Shakespeare. Such
a declaration would lead any reader to expect something very
conclusive,—yet at the end of his volume he says “ we shall
be told that the sum of the whole does not prove that Bacon
wrote the plays.
We have never said or insinuated that we
hoped or expected to prove any such thing,”
�16
The value of an opinion, although like this of Mr. Smith’s,
may be twenty years of age, depends on the facts which support
it. Any opinion of which there is no hope or expectation is
hardly likely to obtain converts, and maybe very justly left to
expire with the name of W. H. Smith.
IN THE I-'NESS.
TO SUBSCRIBERS ONLY, 2/6.
GREAT MEN’S VIEWS
ON
SHAKESPEAKE,
BY
This work will contain the opinions of the leading writers on
the subject in Germany, France, America, and England.
Subscribers names to be sent to
G. & d. H. SHIPWAY, 39, MOOR ST.,
BIRMINGHAM:.
G. & J. H. SHIPWAY, 39, Moon Street, Birmingham.
�
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Lord Bacon: did he write Shakespeare's plays? A reply to Judge Holmes, Miss D. Bacon, & Mr W.H. Smith
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Cattell, Charles Cockbill
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: Birmingham
Collation: 16 p. ; 18 cm.
Notes: Other works by Cattell advertised on page [2] and back cover. Part of the NSS pamphlet collection.
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G. & J. H. Shipway
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1879
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N122
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Literature
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Text
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English
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Francis Bacon
NSS
Shakespeare
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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The tragedy at Mohawk Station
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Clifford, Josephine
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An account of the resource
Place of publication: [California]
Collation: 203-207 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Publication information from KVK. Marks from adhesive tape on p.3.
Please note that this pamphlet contains language and ideas that may be upsetting to readers. These reflect the time in which the pamphlet was written and the ideologies of the author.
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[s.n.]
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1870
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G5734
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Literature
USA
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English
Conway Tracts
United States-History
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237
JINTERNATIONAL.
Last winter at Versailles, during the Prussian siege of Paris, military
funerals were of daily occurrence.
Every afternoon about three o’clock a procession, marching with
measured step timed to the solemn music of the military band at
its head, wound its melancholy way from the chateau through the
tortuous route which led to the city cemetery.
Borne aloft, each upon the shoulders of eight German soldiers, might
be generally seen at that hour from three to a dozen coffins, containing
the bodies of men who had been killed in battle, or who had died in
hospital of wounds or disease, the biers of some of them adorned with
wreaths of immortelles or crowns of laurel.
Escorted on either side by their comrades, or their enemies, with
arms reversed, officers and private soldiers, friend and foe, were carried
indiscriminately to their last resting-place in the soil of the land in the
attack or the defence of the capital of which they had lost their lives.
Reposing on the coffin lids, now the spiked helmet, dark and brass
mounted, of the German infantry, or the burnished morion of the
cuirassier, now the red képi of the Frenchman, indicated the corps or
the nationality of the dead within.
But whether the mournful procession escorted dead Teuton or
Gaul, the French inhabitants of Versailles paid the customary tokens of
respect as it passed : none, man nor woman, ever uttering a disrespect
ful word nor making a disrespectful gesture as they contemplated in
solemn silence the daily cortege accompanying so many of their enemies
to the tomb, while sometimes, in the case of their own countrymen,
the spectators, perhaps friends or acquaintances of the deceased filed
into and swelled the ranks of the mourners.
On these sad occasions it often happened that but a few miles off—at
Bougival, Garches, or Montretout, at Ville d’Avray, Sèvres, or St.
Cloud—the strife was sharply raging, and new victims for the morrow’s
sepulture were being struck down by the shot or shell of cannon or of
mortar, by the bullet of musket or of mitrailleur, the sound of the
distant firing mingling faintly with the mournful music of the band.
If nations must still go to war to settle their real or imaginary dif
ferences, and each do its best to maim and slay, to burn and destroy
�238
INTERNATIONAL.
the subjects or the property of the other, the horrors of war are some
what mitigated since civilisation has asserted itself, and in the name of
humanity has gained the important point, that belligerents tend each
others sick and wounded with impartial kindness, and bury each
others dead with equal decency.
Soldiers in the field, civilians even in time of war, become hard
ened by the frequent recurrence of such sights as I have described.
Those living for months where the solemn dirge in honour of the dead
indicated each afternoon the hour of the day but rarely indulged in any
reflections on the general evils of war, as, attracted by the music, they
looked from their windows upon the passing pageant. Now and then
speculative thoughts would find utterance upon the childless mother,
the bereaved widow, the fatherless children, the unprotected sister, or
the betrothed maiden, away somewhere in distant Germany or remote
part of France, waiting with anxiety for tidings of the son, the husband,
the father, the brother, or the lover, at that moment being carried to his
grave, while they perhaps were still ignorant of his fate, and only more
anxious than usual, because the accustomed periodical letter was over
due. Would it comfort or console them to be told, at the first moment
of their loss being made known to them, that Fritz or Hans, Adolphe
or Emile had died fighting for his Fatherland ? No ! The abstraction
would be too much for them. More likely far that Emperor and
King who began the strife, or Dictator and Kaiser who persisted in
carrying it on to the bitter end, would be cursed in their inmost hearts
when the sad tidings that the loved one, the bread-winner, had met a
cruel and an untimely death far away from home and those he loved ;
and when the natural grief for his loss would be heightened by the
thought that his dying pillow had not been smoothed, nor his eyes
closed by loving hands, nor his body followed to the grave—which they
would never see—by his friends and kindred, as would have been the
case if he had died peacefully at home. The ceremonial of the funeral
to them would be but an empty mockery ; though by and by, perhaps,
when their sorrow has become less poignant, they may tell with pride
of their relationship to one who bravely met death with his face to the
foe, and point out his name carved in stone or cast in more enduring
brass amongst those of his brother heroes on obelisk or tablet in Platz
or Kirche.
But to the nations engaged in war in the aggregate, the interchange
of the courtesies customary on such occasions does much to soften the
feelings of hatred which each nourishes towards the other; and at
some future time, when the tale is told in Germany and in France of the
tender care bestowed in both countries upon the sick and wounded by
German and by French women—angels of mercy, who have with the
widest exercise of the feelings of humanity tenderly wiped the death
damp from the brow of the dying enemy, and become the repositary
of his last message to those he loved ; when the story is related of the
�INTERNATIONAL.
239
honour so scrupulously paid by both belligerents to the dead of the
other side; who knows but that the graves of those who have been
buried in the soil of either country where they fell in battle or died in
captivity, while serving as a warning to both against lightly appealing
to the arbitrament of the sword, may at the same time create a new
bond of union between them and lead them to forget and to forgive the
past ?
Amidst all the horrors of war it is surely well that the nursing of
the sick and the funeral obsequies of the dead should give occasion
for the performance of those graceful acts of international courtesy
which, like the little conventionalities of society, do so much to soften
the asperities which often arise between individuals as between nations.
While the two countries at war were each day burying each other’s
dead, on December 9, 1870, an opportunity was given to the Germans
at Versailles to pay martial honours to the dead of a nation with which
they were at peace. An Englishman—a Captain of the staff of the
Indian army—died suddenly in one of the hotels. Though he was not
in good health, a zealous desire to learn something more of the art of
war than he was likely to do so long as his country was at peace with
all mankind, led him to employ his leisure time—time which one less
devoted to the duties of his profession would have spent (and justifi
ably so) in quietly staying at home, nursing himself into health—in
visiting the scene of the mightiest conflict of modern times in which
the possession of the capital of France, the second city in the world,
had become the prize for which the two greatest military powers of
Europe fought, and where siege operations on a scale never heretofore
undertaken were to be witnessed. Enfeebled by residence in an
unhealthy climate, the hardships encountered in the tedious winter
journey from England through Belgium and Northern France to
Versailles proved too much for him. Ill when he arrived, after a few
days’ residence, ailing all the while but still hoping and manfully
holding out to the last moment with true British pluck, he at length
gave way and took to his bed, from which he was never again to rise.
Attended assiduously by a devoted friend and brother officer who had
accompanied him from home, and nursed by a kind Englishwoman,
who, having come to Versailles on an errand of mercy to the sick and
wounded soldiers of Germany and France, yet found the strength to
devote the hours set apart for rest to the attendance upon her stricken
countryman, who lay dying in a foreign land, for a few days he lingered,
then the brave spirit took flight and the suffering body was mercifully
permitted to be at rest.
As soon as his death was known, and the time of his funeral fixed,
the German military authorities decided to pay to the body of the
deceased English soldier the honours due to his rank. They did more,
for they sent as an escort a body of cavalry more numerous than as a
captain he was entitled to.
�240
INTERNATIONAL.
At the hour appointed, a considerable number of people assembled,
and each being supplied with a piece of crape to tie round the left arm,
two women amongst the number—one the Englishwoman before men
tioned, the other an Italian countess well known for her untiring
attention to the wounded in the hospitals—they followed, two and two,
the body as it was borne by German soldiers to the grave, preceded by
a mounted band and escorted by a squadron of cavalry.
Englishmen, countrymen of the deceased, Americans speaking the
same tongue, walked intermingled in the funeral procession along the
snow-covered streets. The French people as the cortege passed along,
when they saw the Union Jack covering the coffin, filed in, and by the
time the grave was reached the assemblage was about equally composed
of English and Americans, Germans and French. Three nationalities
besides his own joined in doing honour to the remains of the British
officer. The beautiful service of the Protestant Episcopal Church was
read over the body most effectively and touchingly by Colonel (since
Major-General) Walker, military attaché at the Prussian Court, the
responses being devoutly and audibly made by the English-speaking
people present, while the Frenchmen and Germans, most of them of
another faith, stood respectfully uncovered during the simple service
in, to them, an unknown tongue.
There was no volley fired over the grave, for it is not the custom in
war-time with the Germans ; but the defenders of Paris unconsciously
gave their tribute of honour to the deceased, for at the very moment
when Colonel Walker uttered the solemn words, ‘ Earth to earth—
ashes to ashes—dust to dust ’—each couplet accompanied by the
peculiarly eerie sound of the earth thrown upon the shell by the
friend of the deceased—Boom—Boom—Boom—three guns from Mont
Valérien distinctly marked the pauses, and the sound of the falling
dust upon the coffin lid was partially drowned in the reverberations of
the cannon.
As we were burying this man out of our sight, perhaps another,
another, and another were sent to their last account by the shots which
seemed as if fired to do him honour.
We English and Americans waited reverently till the grave was
filled up, and then wended our way mournfully to our quarters, in
stinctively, and without a word spoken on the subject, avoiding the
route taken by the band, which according to wont marched homewards
to the sound of livelier music than we wished to hear.
That evening at the usual rendezvous of the English-speaking
visitors to Versailles, our meeting was more quiet, our talk more
subdued than usual, often turning to the subject of the widowed
mother and sorrowing sisters in England of him whose body we had
that day committed to the dust.
W. L. Duff.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2018
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Pamphlet
Dublin Core
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Title
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International
Creator
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Duff, William L.
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 237-240 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2 (October 1871). Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5322
Subject
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Literature
Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (International), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Franco-Prussian War
Funerals
Funerals-Military
-
https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/fccdf152d366f2cda9ab6e9726f42e74.pdf?Expires=1712793600&Signature=Y%7EfJii3KHeRY4E7J-sSGm8zs7LKhdM8LTB3M1zLEFxI6sTEDPf7uMmw18d3AjZMjkBfPAoxx643P9UkvdLv2UIJS3wRuqHbDlD21J%7EKUukRP8p6Izzd3W51PVwPnUQNrZJYdxTW3CvEHVfQiMAO2FL%7EiUcf16AY7GI-sJtvuQV4adBmI9t59KkdqhG5xZsZ0pZP8ZnhuSrsavVjToZ8VINi4tQ03N5ikK%7EmOIEyrcXQfm9CG5G5MvKg-Fw2pcok1-4bBOv2owf4G5LjwC-yk7RKEs2Tt3umvUwruxXOK-iQdfOPbLu5zFQnsCDA7tUoHA%7E8zGllXSTHQCfzZW%7End0Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM
acc90eda6a0060ee3d1b3d18b609e6cd
PDF Text
Text
185
By J. Hain Feiswell, Author
of
‘ The Gentle Life.’
There are only two powers now to be feared in Society—they are the Church and the
Secret Societies or Mary Anne.—Disraeli’s Lothair.
The recent terrible events in Paris, which in their inception and
execution both are unparalleled, and as Mr. Gladstone asserts only to
be fully designated by the eloquence of silence, have been described by
some as the 1 last kick of the Commune.’ Whether they be indeed
the last or the first, they recall a conversation and experience which
may here be fitly recorded.
The year is 1870 ; the hot summer blazing into autumn ; the streets
unticly and dusty, very far from fresh, somewhat jaded in fact, and not
over-well swept; in the early morning, very hot too, although the
street- sweepers and water-carts have been their due rounds. The carts,
with a heavy lumbering noise, a splash and a gush, which awoke the
sleepers who were wise enough to have their windows open, emptied
themselves so vigorously that two men at a pump by the market-place,
who looked like two tall half-melted navvies who had been unwillingly
reduced to parish work, declared that the water was like a half
quartern of gin in ‘ a two-out glass, no sooner in than it was out agin,’
and every now and then struck work to mop their faces. Little boys
s&t carelessly on the kerb-stones to let the splashing water run over
them, and the water itself was dashed upon the warm stones in the
stupid, wasteful English fashion, and washed away as much of the
concrete as it could, and then evaporated in an efficient and very quick
way.
The only cool people in the street were the sellers of watercresses,
who with an old chair, an old tea-tray, and an inverted basket, held a
Had of bazaar for green meat, and were careful to use one bunch as an
asperge to sprinkle the rest, and so kept a few paving stones damp
around them. But the 1 creases ’ themselves had run 1 spindly ’ and
were dry and yellowish, and not even the tempting cry of ‘ here’s your
fin® fresh brown ’uns ’ caused the slipshod urchins to buy. The
connoisseurs in ‘ creases ’ prefer the dark shining leaves of the young
�186
AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
watercress in spring ; hence the term of ‘ brown ’uns.’ But it was far
too late in the season for them.
The place was Greville Street, Hatton Garden ; the house once a very
handsome one when old city merchants dwelt in the ‘ garden ’ close to
it, and some remnants of the nobility still lingered about the quarter
named from Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke. The street had long been
left to wild tribes of workmen, and a colony of Italian glass-workers,
mathematical instrument makers, silverers, gilders,looking-glass makers,
tube blowers, image vendors, modellers, makers of decorations for
cornices and ceilings, and other artists, had settled in the quarter and
made it what it was fitly called—-little Italy. Here and there a Fre nch
basket-maker had taken a huge house and filled it from the top to the
bottom with baskets, which were delivered in gigantic bnudles neatly
sewn up in canvas, and which reached from the pavement to the top of
the first-floor window.
The insides of these bundles were wondrous specimens of ‘packing.’
For instance, a wicker cradle as big as that which contained the infant
Hercules—for English babies run large—held within it many various
sizes down to the tiniest doll’s cradle ; and baskets followed the same
rule until they were small enough to be stuffed compactly with wicker
rattles, which with a piece of bent tin in them emitted strange noises
like the ghost of a sheep bell. These huge parcels took certain gentle
men in blouses—MM. Achille, Gustave, Arsène, and others—a whole
day to unpack, and during this pleasant operation, A. G. and A., who
were wildly republican, but devoted to the ladies as deeply as the
gayest courtier in the time of Louis XIV., showed their white teeth,
smoothed their black moustaches, and smiled fondly and gallantly upon
any ‘ Misse ’ who passed by.
Inside one of these tall houses, in a back room smelling of vinegar
and as cool as it well could be, sat two men : one was an English
gentleman, the other an Englishman too, of the ‘ base mechanic sort,’ as
some of the superfine swells in Shakespeare’s play are made bitterly and
satirically to say. The sick man was of the base sort—if we dare apply
that to any class ; that is, he got his living by a handicraft which as
surely as it fed him, so surely brought him his death. He knew that,
and we knew it too. It was as certain as statistics. The little boy who
was apprenticed to it would have ten or it may be twenty years
deducted from the sum of his young life, and would be badly paid after
all. He was a water-gilder, an occupation fast dying out, as electro
gilding, which is not half as good they say, has superseded it. When
we have anything good we have to pay for it.
The occupation of the ‘ base mechanic ’—the notion of a man losing
his life by inches and yet being base, although all the while he was
making very beautiful things, is not pleasant—would of course account
for two or three very beautiful silver vases, parcel-gilt, of excellent art,
and glowing inside with a deep reflected red (a colour which made one
�AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
187
understand why the Scotch called gold the ‘red siller,’ and old ballads
talk about the red red gold), and on the outside with a moonlight glory
of fine polish, picked out with lighter gilding.
The occupation of the invalid would also account for the pallor of his
face, the partial toothlessness of his jaws, though the man was young,
the blue marks under his eyes and round his lips, and the continual
trembling of his limbs. Mercury had done its work upon him, and a
hacking cough which shook and tore him to pieces was finishing him
as fie sat.
He looked with satisfaction at the vases. ‘ Them’s the last,’ he said
to his guest and friend. ‘ I give Mr. Jonson my word, and I worked
till I done it. It’s finished me though.’
‘Mr. Jonson,’ said his friend, taking up one of the cups daintily,£ why
they have a coronet on them, and, by the way, the arms and supporters
of the Earl of Mudford—Virtus sola nobilitas.’
1 That’s the motto. Mr. Jonson is the silversmith ; I only know his
name in it. What does that mean ? ’
‘ Virtue is the only nobility. Virtus means strength as well, some
times valour.’
I Ah ! read it that way. If all’s true of Lord Mudford it won’t suit
the other way. He’s strong enough and as big as a bull; he saw me
to give me some directions, and spoke to me as if I was dirt.’
‘ It’s his way; he is a good fellow enough, I hear, but rather wild.’
II wish them noblemen wouldn’t fancy every poor man was deaf. He
split my poor head open a’most, but I give him my word and I
done it.’
It was satisfactory to the poor man this finishing of his last work,
for, base as he was, he was honourable.
‘ You mustn’t talk too much,’ said his companion. 1 Be quiet and
you will be better. When I picked you up in the street a fortnight
ago, I never thought to see you so well as you are. It was a cold
night then—one of those sudden cold nights that we sometimes have
in summer, and the change from your hot workshop was too much
for your lungs, poor fellow.’
‘ Very kind of you, sir; very kind.’
‘Yes, a fellow-feeling you see; I had been nearly as bad.’
The conversation was here interrupted by an Italian who, Swarthy,
black-headed, and full of health, with a huge lettuce in one hand and
a flask of oil in his pocket, opened the door gently and took off his
©ap politely as he entered. ‘ L’ ho apportata,’ said he, putting down
the lettuce, ‘ we will make salad. Here is something also.’ He placed
a little packet on the table by the side of the dying man. ‘ From the
society,’ he said. ‘ We had a meeting, and I opened to them your
case.’
‘ I won’t touch it. I have kept at work and don’t want it.’
The Italian waved his hand. ‘ You are a good workman, and we
�188
AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
know our duty’ said he. 4 If not you, yet for the signora—she will
need it, Mister Walsh.’
The water-gilder sighed and let the parcel lie.
‘ Madre Natura takes care of her children,’ said Giuseppe softly
with a smile, 1 which is more than the State does.’
He moved about the room, found a basin, rinsed the lettuce, mixed
oil, vinegar, and sugar, tasted the mixture, and cutting the lettuce
into shreds, pronounced the salad capital; then saying, ‘ Avrete del vino
e della latte,'' went out to get those articles.
‘He’s a good Samaritan,’ said the gentleman with a smile. ‘J
suppose in this Italian quarter you like salads and foreign dishes.’
‘ We get used to them.’
‘And to other things—to Madre Natura, for instance ; I have heard
about it. What is that ? ’
‘ A great society which has branches all over the world. You will
hear about it soon. Do you know the name of Mary Anne ? ’
‘ Hot meaning a woman ? Yes, I have just heard about it and that
is all; in Sheffield and elsewhere.’
‘ At Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, down here ; in New York,
Paris, Berlin, and at San Brancisco, Melbourne, and Victoria; for the
matter of that, all over the world.’
‘ A large society. What does it mean ? ’
‘ Labour against capital, that’s all,' said the water-gilder in a whisper,
for his voice was weak.
‘ You have to fight with a giant,’ answered his companion.
‘ And we shall beat; at least I think I shall be out of the struggle
soon enough, but I leave a boy who may come after me. It will be
better for him.’
‘ Del vino,’ cried the bass voice of the Italian, bringing some thin
white wine, cheap enough in those quarters, and mixed with water
very delicious in the hot weather.
A Samaritan indeed, for he brought oil and wine, and declaring that
he meant to take a holiday, ‘ Avremo vacanza, amico mio,’ he said to
the poor sick fellow, constituted himself his watcher, took the place of
the Englishman who went away sadly, hardly expecting to see the
poor water-gilder again.
As it was, however, he lingered on some weeks, and from conversa
tions between him and his visitor, and many explanations from Giuseppe
and one of the Erench basket-makers from over the way, certain truths
were picked up which are here given.
The kindness of these men, foreigners and exiles, both of whom had
fought in the streets of Paris or of Naples, and to whom revolution
was a creed, was remarkable. They were as tender as their creed,
according to some, was cruel and wild. The difficulty which society
will have in dealing with such political regenerators is that theirs is not
the conspiracy of bad men for a mere chimerical object selfish in itg
�AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
189
end, but the combination of good men driven to despair at the present
state of society, for an end which the world holds to be Utopian, but
'Which they believe to be in their grasp.
Here, then, follow some of their sentences. Edward Walsh, the
water-gilder, a good sound English workman, who, whether he has
culture or not, whether his education be defective, or he has imbibed
some sweetness and light, was an excellent workman, and had died
at an early age, leaving his wife and child—through no fault of his
own—almost at the mercy of the world. Three men were left: the
guest who first sat by Walsh’s side when the narrative commences,
Arsene the basket-maker, and Giuseppe the Italian modeller, his
decent black clothes somewhat whitened in patches with plaster of
Paris, as if it oozed out of his pores or dusted from his finger-nails.
These after the funeral are debating the matter.
‘ The service is very simple, and the Padre was a good kind gentle
man, but that won’t bring Walsh back to his family or do any good
for him.’ So far the Italian.
‘Ho. We have grown tired of you gentlemen and your religion. We
take our wives to our bosoms and put our dead in earth without forms
or priest. Christianity is very pretty, very touching sometimes, but
for the world, look you there, m’sieur, it is exploded.’
‘ Senza dubbio,’ said Giuseppe. ‘ The time has past for it. We have
had men of genius who loved it, men of science who admired it:
Dante, Galileo, they were its friends—it persecuted and condemned
them.’
‘ The priesthood did: the Church if you like, not the faith.’
‘We make no difference, nous autres. Here am I; look at me,
Arsene Dubois, I loved the faith ; it was sweet in my childhood. I
have outlived it. What Church does good ? Not even to the few
who love it, the rich, the comfortable, as you call them. And remember
beneath them are the thousands of workers who are strange or
antagonistic to it; why these bear the same relation to what they call
here the “ upper crust ” of society as the body of one of your cakes of
Christmas does to the thin sugar which makes it look white and pretty
On the top.’
‘ And you have not made them Christian in eighteen centuries. The
sugar does not mix ; it thinks itself superior to the cake, and yet the
cake has all the goodness ; is all the food, I mean—produces everything
like the workers. And these, my faith, they live in Paris, Berlin, New
York, or Manchester, nine and ten in a room, and die like this poor
Walsh. Christianity has failed.’
‘ No ; we have failed in making our Christianity real. What would
you have ? ’
‘ Law ! ’
‘ Law ; why that is not justice even in England, where it is best
adminstered.’
�190
AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
‘Kot lawyer’s law, good sir, but social law,’ answered Arsene,
‘ administered by society—“ a supreme headship chosen by other
societies ”—that is what one of our English brethren writes.’
‘ Si, si. The Commune. All the good for the good of all. Get thee behind
me, priests, kings, nobles ! What have you done in your twenty cen
turies since Christ came and preached the true religion of the Commune,
“ Love one another”? Why, sirs, they have picked out the best places’,
the parks, the bouses, the carriages, the very ships, rivers, lakes, and
waters ; they have provided for their families, they have taken hold of
the Signor Christ Himself and turned His coat inside out. And during
this while Humanity has worked for them or starved and died.’
‘ It is so,’ said the Frenchman. ‘ Government by the upper classes has
failed. We do not blame them; they saw only as far as they could.
You have a word which is very expressive; you gentlemen are Conser
vatives, you would conserver toutes les choses—keep things as they are,
Well, for you it is very good. It means the Universities, the Church,
the army, fine places and parks; and all nice things, the lamb, the
turbot, and the lobster; poetry, fine art, and splendid emotions, c'est
; but for others, for us, it means little children of four destroying
their lives by dipping matches, gangs of boys and girls driven for miles
to weed your fields at half-a-crown a week; labourers who rear the
lambs paid at nine or twelve shillings; death in the frozen sea for
the man who catches the lobster and the turbot, and half-a-crown a day
for self, boat, and peril, while the fishmonger makes a great fortune, and
plants a paradise or builds a palace ; poverty and hard work for the poet,
the paper maker, and the printer of your books, and the fate of Edward
Walsh for the preparer of fine art. This is a rough outline of our view.
As a rule it is a true one, though there may be exceptions.’
‘ Vero e vero ! True by the good God who has suffered all this, that is,
for ninety out of a hundred. Some giants fight their way upwards,
but the flock dies as its fathers.’
‘Kow we don’t hate you—we did once—we could have slain all
of you, vous autres, but we do not wish so now. But look you, we
will remove you.’
‘ Who will ? ’
‘ Madre Natura. The Commune, the Contrat Social. Is it not time to
shuffle the cards ? ’
‘ For from the workers,’ continued Arsene, ‘ in brain or by hand—and
you are one of these and should be one of us—come all things. There are
exceptions, you say. Kone, not enough to prove the rule. The steam
plough, the plough itself, the spade, the seeds that are sown, the breed
ing of cattle, all proceed from the brains of the masses, and are paid
for by the money of the masses. The pictures which adorn your walls,
the books which teach you how to live, how to die, how to pray, the
very outwork and defence of your religion, all come from the brains of
the workers, poor students often starving and neglected ; the very faith
�AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
191-
you inherit arose from One poor and neglected, who was crucified as a
malefactor, and the very theories by which you administer your wealth
from the solitary students of political economy who were neglected and
laughed at till yon found their theories of use.’
‘ Bravo ! Arsene my son.’
‘ Now we have got tired of all that; we have put it aside as useless ;
others may take it up, a religion which binds us to suffer, and not to
redress wrong.’
1 Does it do that ? The Church will tell you very differently.’
‘ Bah! the Church she is dead; we have no Church, we live for
Humanity. We propose to redistribute wealth, to reward labour, to
punish idleness and over-luxury. Instead of one being educated and
despising others, all shall be educated and none despised. We live no
longer for individual selfishness, but for Humanity.’
‘ You are Comtists then ; you worship the divine Auguste.’
4 Not as divine ; he was one of us. We worship what he worshipped
in his poor ideal, the race, humanity, Madre Natura, all the good for
the good of all, as one of your English said.’
4 But what becomes of trade, society, law, physic, and divinity F ’
1 Ah, my friend, you have a long way to go. What becomes of our
sons that we furnished for your armies and your footmen, our daughters
who were your mistresses or servants, when the whole Society shall
move round you, in every city in France, Germany, Italy, America,
and quietly dispossess you ? We will not slay you if you are quiet—we
will remove you.’
4 You are dreaming. How many have you ? ’
4 Three millions already, and each one an apostle. Nothing stands in
Our way. You remember Mr. Broadhead and Sheffield.’
4 A detestable murderer------’
4 An agent of the great Society, not very wise perhaps, but clear about
his duty and his way. We find that it is of no use to appeal to religion,
to faith, to patriotism, to learning, to culture, to government by the rich.
These do not stop wars nor baby murders, not the death and degrada
tion of millions. We will and we can. We have a president in every
Country, secretaries in every town, members everywhere. We help
our poor—you saw Giuseppe bring money to poor Walsh ; you would
give him dry bread and the workhouse. Your religion encourages the
Scamp and the beggar, and gives away at least the half of seven
millions of gold sovereigns in London alone, to the cheat and the idler.
Our Society would make them work or would let them starve. You
allow millions of children in your fields and streets to grow up to vice
and ignorance ; Mary Anne would take and teach them. At the same
time she is pitiless to those that stand in her way. She says,11 Move on
or I will crush you.” ’
4 A dreadful sentence to thousands who are innocent,’
* Machinery is very cruel to those that are in its way; but as for
�192
AN ENGLISH COMMUNIST.
removal of incumbrances a certain Voice said, “ It hath borne no fruit;
cut it down, why cumbreth it the ground.” ’
1 It also said, “ Come unto me, ye that are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest.” ’
‘ Which priests deny. We have few prayers but our labour, but these
prayers clothe all, feed all, and yet we are denied acceptance into every
Church ; so closely are their doors barred in by dogmas. But enough.
Let those who like the churches take them. It is a free fight with us ;
we have done with Faith, we fight only for Humanity. Let heaven lie
beyond this earth as it may, why should it be purchased—and even
then denied—by misery and degradation here F We will make the world
better than it is.’
‘ What a cruel conspiracy I ’
‘ As cruel as the surgeon’s knife, which by removing a small portion
—say the scalp if you like—gives health to the whole body. Join us ;
we are not cruel, but we are tired of so much talk and so little action
of reforms which always result in greater comfort for the rich and
more work for the poor; of faith which spreads wings of gold, and
utters golden words, but has feet of lead; of the press which makes
great promises and ends in being the reporter of court circulars, grand
doings, cricket matches, horse races, and the grand palaver club, and
yet does nothing of patriots who are silenced by a place. All have
failed—now we workmen, the creators of all, come forward, no longer
to be governed but to govern all. We number three million souls.’
‘ If we have any, Fratel mio ; but we leave that to others ; we take care
only of the body and the mind; we who understand our principles, simple
and wise as they are, and who mean to enforce them. You will hear no
doubt of our struggles; you will hear us called harsh names, for in
brushing the butterflies away we shall dust their wings ; thousands of
us may die, but we do that every day.
‘ We are used to it, Fratello,’ said Giuseppe, giving him an admiring
thump on his back. ‘ We shall die nobly.’
£ And whatever society may say, we shall not fail, any more than do
the nation of ants in South America, which to cross a stream bury
their millions in the river that they pass.’
Thus ended our talk for that time, and after events have given it
importance. I may return again to this subject.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
An account of the resource
A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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An English communist
Creator
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Friswell, James Hain
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [London]
Collation: 185-192 p. ; 23 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. From The Dark Blue 2. Attribution of journal title and date: Virginia Clark catalogue. The Dark Blue was a London-based literary magazine published monthly from 1871 to 1873.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
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[1871]
Identifier
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G5318
Subject
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Literature
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (An English communist), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
English Fiction