Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. Part 37

La Celle, October 27th.

My dear Reeve,--I don't know whether the article 'Germany since the Peace of Frankfort' has done in Great Britain so much noise as the 'Affghanistan,' which has been, over here, an event in the literary-politic world. But the first one is quite equal to the second, and gives career to endless (alas! useless, too!) reflections. It is a sombre picture, quite in the style of Rembrandt, with a _chiaroscuro_ much akin to darkness. It can be objected that the lights are sacrificed to the shades. But, excepting the strong const.i.tution of the Imperial army, and the perfection to which, according to competent judges, the preparations for an offensive and defensive war have been pushed, I cannot see anything, in the condition of finances, industry, husbandry, and, above all, public morals, which is not threatening, if not absolutely disheartening. No traveller comes back from Germany without a tale of woe. _Savior armis Luxuria incubuit, victamque ulciscitur Galliam_. And while the rancour and the thirst for vengeance are still, in France, what they were in 1871, the whole of power, riches, and fas.h.i.+on in Germany crowding to Paris, give it a sort of transient popularity, and suffers itself to be led by what is among us most frivolous, most immoral, and even less French, in the old and legitimate sense of that word. It is very curious to observe how the strangers flock to Paris in order to enjoy the spectacle of themselves, reckoning the French for nothing save the ministers of their pleasures, _et improbi turba impia vici_. If, in the midst of these brilliant saturnalia, the _pares_ were to rise, and another Commune spring from the kennel to the day, how many of the lords of the Philistines would be buried under the ruins of the temple of Dagon? But to revert to Germany, or, rather, to her ruler.

Prince Bismarck, I apprehend, has lived too long. He begins to feel the fickleness of fortune. He has never had any friends; he begins to be burdensome to his a.s.sociates. I don't know whether he could have managed a Parliament elected after the actual method on the Continent; I am certain that he did not, and never was able to, uphold a consistent and honourable system whatever. He is no financier, no economist; and as he does always act upon the interests of the present hour, without regard to past engagements, he can have with him but those who superst.i.tiously deem him a prophet, or those who choose to _servir a tout prix_. He is rude, suspicious, and vindictive. The only great minister with whom he can be compared, Richelieu, was at least frank and open towards friend and foe.

Bismarck has never negotiated with any man, nor charged any man with an important measure, without becoming their ruin, or changed them into implacable enemies--Savigny, Usedom, Arnim, Gortschakoff. The good genius of his country has protected Moltke against his insidious praises and bitter censures. It is easy to prove that, during the late war, all the good advice given to the King came from Moltke; all hurried, or lame, or improvident, or perfidiously cruel measures came from the Chancellor. Why did he leave half of the forts round Paris in the power, not of our army, but of the armed rabble, to which he left the possession of 1,500 field-pieces and 300,000 guns, while he disarmed the regulars to the last man? To his calculations we owe the Commune; posterity will hold him responsible for that incalculable calamity, which it was at every hour in his power to avert, or to crush instantly. Presently his tenure of office is very precarious. The Emperor is eighty-two, and has never liked Bismarck; he has given recently some signs that he feels galled by the chain. The Crown Prince may make use of him, and sacrify his personal feelings to the advantage not to upset suddenly the system of government; but, under Friedrich Wilhelm V., it is more than probable that Bismarck shall have to choose between retire or obey. Even in the present occurrence, considering that France is wholly taken up with her internal dissensions, which are not likely to become soon better, and that Russia has need of time for recruiting her exhausted resources, it was certainly not sound policy to blow the trumpet of a coalition which was, presently, dreamed of by n.o.body, and shall, in the future, result from the necessity of things.

The article upon the Code of Criminal Law is an excellent treatise of _Criminalison_; we, too, want a _refonte_ of our criminal law. What is called civilisation has gorged our society with an infinity of malpractices unknown to our ruder but better fathers; and we suffer from the bane of modern civilisation, that idiot charity towards the refuse of mankind, coupled to a perfect indifference for the honest people they a.s.sail or bring to ruin. To that endemic disease of the mind no penal statute can afford a remedy. MacMahon was as weak as a school-girl on such occasions; Grevy is scarce better; at least he does not call weakness Christian charity.

'The Impressions of Theophrastus Such' are little intelligible to me, merely because I have read so few books of the auth.o.r.ess. Doudan [Footnote: Ximenes Doudan (1800-72) was in early life a tutor in the family of the Due de Broglie, and remained attached to him. His critical judgement and sparkling conversation made him a special feature of the d.u.c.h.ess's _salon_.

He was well known in literary society, and was compared by Reeve (_Ed.

Rev._, July 1878) with John Allen of Holland House. Like Allen, his reputation was based almost entirely on his conversation and encyclopaedic knowledge. After his death, his few essays and numerous letters were collected and edited by the Comte d'Haussonville, under the t.i.tle of _Melanges et Lettres_(4 tomn. 8vo. 1876).] wrote that he could never be quite unhappy while he had _des romans anglais a lire_; I confess that, when they are not first-rate, they seem to me to belong rather to the department of industry than to that of literature. The article upon the civil engineers of Britain is an admirable compilation of much that's useful to know and easy to understand; the magnificence of the _tableau_ strikes the fancy and weighs upon the mind. But, after all, is humanity become grander, or better, or happier by so many performances of the inquisitive and constructive genius? _That's the question_. With trembling hope I'll answer Yes! Life is less dark, a little longer, and better provided against the material plagues of nature: but farther?

I am pent up with a severe cold, and losing the last day of a capricious autumn. Mme. d'Affry has promised me a visit.

What of the parliamentary strife between Disraeli and his rivals? At least, it is _Diomedes c.u.m Glauco_, statesman pitched against statesman. But in our camp: _non melius compositus c.u.m Bitho Bacchius_. Yours truly,

A. C.

The letter that follows is endorsed by Reeve 'M. de Circourt's last letter to me. He was struck with apoplexy on the 15th, and died on the 17th of November. The last token of fifty years' friends.h.i.+p':--

_From the Comte de Circourt_

La Celle, November 12th.

My dear Sir,--Many thanks for your kind letter of the 6th. I am still an invalid, _conjuguant_ in all its tenses the verb _grippe_, with its near relation bronchitis. However, I am recovering by-and-by, and the weather--not fine, still very mild--helps me towards recovering my liberty of locomotion. I am the more sorry for my _reclusion_ that I had begun some plantations in my garden. Fancy what it is to plant trees by half-dozens and to buy land by wheelbarrows!

We are in a state of partial fermentation and general disgust. The President _videt meliora probatque, deteriora sequitur_; he is absolutely sunken in the opinions, but tolerated, because he lets every party at freedom to plot and to hope. Waddington does not fare better, but Jules Simon has presently no chance of replacing him. The sympathy which Ferry has proclaimed for the Reformed Church [Footnote: See _Times_, November 8th.]--very natural in itself--may be mischievous for them; our nation has never any sympathy for minorities. The leaders of the Clerical party have lowered their teaching and their practices to the level of the most obtuse intellects and the most childish enthusiasms; they make conquests by myriads; and as, in our present state of society, numbers are accounted for everything, the Government and ruling party have already encountered, and shall encounter more and more, a formidable opposition, which, if it does not drag the country into civil war, cannot fail to accelerate and precipitate the fate of the Republican Government. As the Duc d'Aumale seems resolved never to put himself forward, the conjectures hover between Galliffet [Footnote: General de Galliffet was more especially known for the stern justice he had meted out to the Communards of 1871.] and several others, all men of action, although none of them has the prestige which made, in 1799, the task of Bonaparte so wonderfully easy. The 'Great Unknown' will be revealed to us by some sudden stroke; our people is perfectly disposed to acknowledge a master, and prays only that 'nous ayons un bon tyran,' since we must have one.

Lord Beaconsfield's speech [Footnote: At the Mansion House on the 10th. See _Times_, November 11th.] shall not put an end to the embarra.s.sments of our Exchange, shaken to its foundations by the curiously tragical episode [Footnote: 'Gigantic swindle' would more correctly designate it. See _Times_, November 7th. Philippart, having made away with some 100,000,000 francs, had judiciously vanished.] of Philippart. _Imperium et Libertas_, i.e. 'Domination abroad and Freedom at home,' is a proud legacy of 'the most high and palmy days of Rome'; but it will be difficult to force the submission to that maxim upon all the powers of the world. If the Turks had studied the history of cla.s.sical times, they would believe that the days of _Civis Roma.n.u.s sum_ and the _Reges clientes Populi Romani_ are come again for the East; and what immense s.p.a.ce does this name design, since the exclusive and dominating influence claimed by the Premier begins at the Adriatic and ends--nowhere; for the whole of Affghanistan being brought under British control, and Turkish Asia on the other side being claimed as a protected and indirectly governed country, it will become necessary that the intermediate region, Persia, be a.s.similated to the rest of the dependencies of an Empire which, at the farthest end, shall soon be contiguous to China.

The task of the Russian people is very different. The stern decrees of Providence have made of it the antagonist and hereditary foe of the Asiatic barbarics, which it has faced under the walls of Kief and Moscow, and pressed, by dint of repeated battles and immense sacrifices, to the foot of the Himalaya range and the course of the Upper Oxus. Sooner or later, a tremendous shock must happen between the two gigantic Empires which meet upon that debateable ground. I hope I may never witness it; but I do regret much the disparition of the ample neutral ground, which till lately stretched from the Indus to the Yaxartes....

Many wishes for your health and occupations.

Yours very truly,

A. CIRCOURT.

The Journal gives the chronicle of the last weeks of the year:--

_November 22nd_.--Visit to Chatsworth. Delane died. _23rd_.--Chatsworth.

Long talk with Lord Hartington.

_29th_.--Delane's funeral at Easthampstead. Went down with Barlow and Stebbing; then across by Woking to Lithe Hill (Haslemere); very cold.

At Christmas severe illness came on--gout and violent bleeding of the nose.

I was totally laid up for two months.

The year had been a sad one, and had marked its progress by the death of many of Reeve's dearest and oldest friends--Lady Blackett (to whom he had always been tenderly attached), Longman, Circourt, and Delane.

CHAPTER XX

OUTRAGE AND DISLOYALTY

The very serious illness which ushered in the year 1880, and which confined Reeve to his room till near the end of January, formed a very important era in his life. Though it pa.s.sed away, so that, after a fortnight at Brighton, he was able, by the middle of February, to attend to his official duties at the Council Office, the bad effects remained. He was no longer a young man, but he had carried his years well. He had travelled, he had occasionally shot, and always with a keen sense of enjoyment. Now, the full weight of his age told at once. His illness left him ten years older; unable to undergo the fatigue of field sports, and feeling that of travel sometimes irksome.

And Foxholes afforded him a tempting excuse. From this time, instead of going for his holiday to Scotland, to France, or to Geneva, it seemed so much easier to go to Foxholes, so much more comfortable to spend it there.

And for the next fifteen years a large part of his time was pa.s.sed at Foxholes, where, in the most delightful climate known in this country, surrounded by beautiful scenery and with a commanding view of the sea, amid the comforts of home and in the company of his books and his chosen friends, he could say, from both the material and moral point of view:

Suave, mari magno turbantibus aequora ventis, E terra magnum alterius spectare laborem.

Of course, his duties at the Council Office required him to be in town during the season and while the Court was sitting; and in the April of this year he noted a breakfast at Lord Houghton's, to meet Renan, and presiding as a Vice-President at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries. Otherwise the Journal is almost a blank, containing little beyond the dates of going to Foxholes or returning to town.

But though thus in a measure withdrawing from the swirl of society in which so much of his life had been pa.s.sed, he in no sense lost touch with the movements of the day, and in none of these did he take a more lively interest than in those which affected the state of France. And that seemed particularly unsettled. No one could attempt a forecast of the future, though wild guessing was easy. Nothing was certain; everything was possible. Hope was guided rather by fancy than by reason, and tinted the years to come in brighter colours than--now that those years have pa.s.sed --history has warranted. For many years back the French Princes had been Reeve's occasional correspondents, but their letters had seldom had any political significance. At this time they began to have a more serious importance; and during the next six years those of the Comte de Paris, more especially, are full of deep and pregnant meaning. In England, the topics of the day were the dissolution in March, Mr. Gladstone's Mid-Lothian campaign, which will live in history as an instance of the noxious admixture of sentiment and politics, and the overwhelming success of the Liberal party at the polls, which brought Mr. Gladstone back to office, at the head of an absolute majority in the House of Commons of 56. Reeve, of course, followed the progress of the election with anxious eyes. To Mr. T.

Norton Longman he wrote:--

_Foxholes, April 2nd_.--The Liberal gain on the Elections is far more than I antic.i.p.ated, and I begin to hope there may be a decided Liberal majority.

What I most deprecate is an even balance of parties. If the Liberals are strong, they will be moderate; if weak, they will be violent.

It is raining heavily to-day--rather damp for the electors, but a capital thing for the country and for my shrubs.

The further course of the election brought him the following letters from the Comte de Paris:--

_Chateau d'Eu, le 12 avril_.--Je vous remercie de tout mon coeur des voeux que vous m'adressez a l'occasion de la naissance de mon fils, et je suis heureux de pouvoir vous donner les meilleures nouvelles de la mere et de l'enfant.

Je suis bien peine d'apprendre que vous avez ete si longtemps souffrant cet hiver. La rigueur de la saison peut bien en avoir ete la cause, et j'espere que l'ete achevera de vous remettre. Nous serions heureux, la Comtesse de Paris et moi, si durant cet ete vous pouviez, avec Madame et Mademoiselle Reeve, renouveler la visite que vous nous avez faite au chateau d'Eu il y a trois ans. Depuis lors la maison a ete toujours en deuil; l'evenement qui vient de s'accomplir ici nous permet, j'aime a le croire, une annee plus heureuse.

The result of the elections in England has caused great surprise in France.

Nothing led us to expect such a complete change in the opinion of the electorate. When I saw Mr. Gladstone a few months since, he did not seem at all confident of his party's speedy return to power. A year or two ago I should have greatly regretted the fall of Lord Beaconsfield; but my opinion is entirely changed since Lord Salisbury's speech in honour of the Austro-German alliance. Lord Beaconsfield's term of power has had the one good result of obliging the Government which succeeds him to pay more and closer attention to Continental politics than the English Cabinet did in 1870 and 1871. But for some time back the Russophobia of the Foreign Office and its agents has been so great that it looked as if England was going to give up the idea of preserving the equilibrium of the Continent, and become the accomplice or the dupe of those who played on this pa.s.sion.

_20 avril_.--Je m'empresse de vous remercier de votre lettre et de vous dire tout le plaisir que la Comtesse de Paris et moi nous aurons a vous voir ici avec Madame et Mademoiselle Reeve. Malheureus.e.m.e.nt les trois dernieres semaines d'aout sont le seul moment ou je ne serai pas ici, et si vous venez un peu plus tot en France je vous prierais de commencer par le chateau d'Eu.... I have read the article on M'Clellan by Mr. Curtis, in the last number of the 'North American Review.' It did not teach me much, for I have often talked it all over with M'Clellan, in his visits to Europe. But the article is good, and all the facts alleged are perfectly true. Lincoln was very weak in this business, the tool--without knowing it--of Stanton and Halleck. The author sometimes closes his eyes to M'Clellan's faults, which, though they do not excuse Lincoln, impartiality will not permit us to ignore. M'Clellan was an excellent organiser and a skilful general, but he made blunders; he could not take a decided resolution at the proper time, and it is not correct to say that he was considered a faultless general: he was loved, appreciated, and respected by all, and justly considered as the best chief of the Federal armies, when Grant, Sherman, and Thomas were as yet little known. Personally, he was, at times, very indiscreet: he permitted those about him to speak of the President in insulting terms, and he wrote the letter quoted by Mr. Curtis. An extremely silly thing, for it could not possibly do any good, and it was easy to see that his enemies would use it against him. With these exceptions, I entirely share the views of the author of the article.

We await the formation of your new ministry with curiosity. I agree with you that it is better that Gladstone should be its recognised head than its unofficial and irresponsible leader. I hope the experience of 1871, and the verdict of the electors in 1874, have opened his eyes to the dangers of a _far niente_ policy, as practised by the Foreign Office during his last administration.

_27 avril_.--Je vous remercie infiniment de votre lettre du 21 et je me rejouis bien de penser que nous aurons probablement votre visite ici au mois de juillet. Je vous remercie de l'intention que vous m'exprimez d'arranger vos projets de maniere a pouvoir venir en France a cette epoque.

I see Mr. Gladstone has not been afraid of the fatigue you thought would be too much for him. I quite understand that after his disaster in 1874 he should insist on a material proof of his wondrous political rehabilitation.

But it seems to me that he ought not to have combined the Exchequer with the leaders.h.i.+p--unless, indeed, his friends wanted to handicap him by allowing him to take upon his strong shoulders a burden which is usually divided between two ministers. I am not surprised at this change, so complete, so striking to one who thinks of the time when Mr. Gladstone, almost disavowed by the party he had so imprudently led to defeat, could hardly find a const.i.tuency to open the doors of the House to him. It is a spectacle presented by all free countries, a salutary warning to the victors of the day, and a consolation to the vanquished, to whom hope is always left. But what does astound me is that the change should not have been foreseen. It is rather a severe democratic shock to the parliamentary machine. Is it the effect of the lowering of the franchise, or of the secret ballot? I do not know. But does not the astonishment of the leaders of the victorious party prove that their followers are escaping from their control? And if so, where and to whom will they go? However, I am confident that the practical spirit which has. .h.i.therto inspired all cla.s.ses of the English people, as they have been successively called upon to take their part in the government--from the old n.o.bility to the petty shopkeepers--will not be found wanting in the new electoral body, const.i.tuted by the last reform.

_4 juin_.--Si, comme je l'espere bien, vous pouvez realiser la bonne promesse que vous m'avez faite de venir ici avec Madame et Mademoiselle Reeve dans la seconde moitie de juillet, je serais heureux de vous voir fixer votre visite aux environs du 22: en effet, nous attendons ce jour-la ou le suivant quelques personnes qui vous interesseront certainement et qui seront charmees de vous rencontrer: le Comte et la Comtesse d'Eu, le Duc et la d.u.c.h.esse d'Audiffret-Pasquier, M. et Madame de Rainneville (Rainnevillea formosa, d'apres votre botanique speciale).

_19 juillet_.--Je m'empresse de vous remercier de votre lettre, et de vous dire que je vous enverrai jeudi, a Dieppe, une voiture pour vous chercher a l'Hotel de la Plage a deux heures apres midi, a moins d'avis contraire.

Toutefois je dois vous prevenir que M. Alexandre Dumas, qui habite pres de Dieppe, et auquel j'avais demande de venir dejeuner ici l'un de ces jours, en lui laissant le choix du jour, m'annonce qu'il viendra dejeuner au chateau le jeudi 22. Le dejeuner est a onze heures et demie. Si vous desiriez le rencontrer il faudrait que vous partiez le matin de Dieppe.