Alexis de Tocqueville
Page 14
It seems that they want to begin by working with the present Chamber [i.e. of Deputies]; but it is most unlikely that they will find common ground; and if they summon another it will make no difference while the electoral law remains the same. So there they are, committed to a system of coups d’état, of governing by proclamation, that is to say; the issue is drawn between royal power and popular power, a fight engaged at close quarters, a gamble in which, in my opinion, the people risk only their present, whereas royal authority risks both its present and its future. If this ministry collapses, royalty will lose a great deal in its fall, for the ministry is its own creation and the victors will want guarantees that will reduce still further a power already too much enfeebled. God grant that the House of Bourbon may never have to repent what it has just done!3
This prediction, which within twelve months would be vindicated in every detail, would be even more impressive evidence than it is of Tocqueville’s ripening powers if almost everybody else had not been saying the same. In his memoirs Guizot, discussing the new cabinet, remarks with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘What was it proposing? What would it do? Nobody knew, M. de Polignac and the King himself as little as the public. But Charles X had raised the flag of counterrevolution over the Tuileries.’4 ‘Here comes the Court again,’ said the Journal des débats, ‘with its ancient grudges, the emigration with its prejudices, the priesthood with its hatred of liberty, all throwing themselves between France and her king.’ ‘Coblenz, Waterloo, 1815 – these are the three principles of the ministry.’5 These sentiments got Louis-François Bertin, the editor, a six-month jail sentence. Chateaubriand, who had been greatly enjoying himself as ambassador to Rome (the Vatican had already complained) foresaw disaster and resigned his post. After a farewell interview with Polignac he concluded that the new minister’s imperturbable confidence ‘made him a mute conspicuously suited to strangle an empire’.6 Many nervous months lay ahead, while France waited for the King to drop the other shoe.
Charles briefly thought of making Comte Hervé minister for the navy. Nothing came of this, but as a precaution Alexis made his father promise to lie low politically until the outlook was clearer.7 Excellent counsel, though it is doubtful if the comte, with all his experience, needed it; but it is agreeable to see father and son taking heed for each other. They would do so again the following year.
Meanwhile a young man had his career to think of. Tocqueville enjoyed his work and his friends of the parquet, but he had now been a juge-auditeur for more than two years; he had worked hard, mastered his job, and won golden opinions. Quite reasonably he began to feel strongly that he was entitled to promotion and a salary. His father agreed (perhaps hoping to be spared any more tailors’ bills). Besides, Beaumont was clearly going to be promoted immediately – who better than Alexis to succeed him as substitut at Versailles? Comte Hervé went to work. Great-uncle Damas put in a word. There were two moderate men left in the ministry and fortunately one of them, M. Courvoisier, was the Garde des Sceaux. Unfortunately the other, the comte de Chabrol, the minister of finance, also had a hopeful great-nephew, Ernest. The comte de Tocqueville called on M. Courvoisier; they exchanged political views, and Comte Hervé made his request. But the minister thought it more important to support his colleague than yet again to acknowledge the heirs of Malesherbes; young Chabrol got the job.8
The news reached Alexis in the autumn while he was on a walking tour of Switzerland with Kergorlay. It did not please him. He poured out his thoughts to Beaumont in what turned into a kind of intellectual love-letter, for Tocqueville was much more upset by the thought that his friend would have to leave the rue d’Anjou (apparently the possibility had not previously crossed his mind) than by the fact that his own career was stalled. ‘Allow me not to congratulate you, mon bon ami, on what has just happened ... We are now bound intimates, bound for life, I think ... you have done things for me which can’t be forgotten: from the first you treated me in a way that I couldn’t forget even if I wanted to; it was you who got my career going: it won’t be your fault if I don’t get on. So we will always be one. But our true friendship, my dear Beaumont, that intimacy of every hour and minute, that mutual confidence without any limit whatever, everything which, in short, makes up the charm of our life together – all that is finished.’ Beaumont was now fairly launched on the world; Tocqueville, robbed of both his friend and his promotion, would have to make the best of lodgings where he was always bored without Beaumont; would have to go for walks and to work alone; would have no-one with whom even to share his grumbles. It was awful. But they must fight against fate, and see as much of each other as possible, dine once a week in Paris and go on reading Guizot together. Tocqueville had written to young Chabrol, whom he had known for years (he too was the son of a prefect, the prefect of Paris, no less) to ask if he would like to take Beaumont’s place in the rue d’Anjou; Chabrol was a good enough fellow, and might help with work and study.9
As this piece of magnanimity shows, Tocqueville’s youthful warmth of heart soon enabled him to overcome his panic at losing Beaumont, and as it turned out they saw almost as much of each other as ever, Chabrol making an agreeable third to their association: in fact he soon became another intimate friend. But the actual check to Tocqueville’s career could not so easily be overlooked or overcome. Three weeks after his letter to Beaumont from Switzerland he wrote to him again, from Gray (Haute-Saône), where he was staying with Hippolyte and Émilie. His news was bad. We know almost nothing of his Swiss tour, but in spite of assurances to his mother (‘We wanted to climb the high valleys, but there was too much snow’10 ), it is probable that he overdid things. At any rate, after parting from Kergorlay he arrived at Gray on 21 October and collapsed with ‘une indigestion’ and a fever which required that he be bled (‘say nothing of my fever if you see my family’). By the 25th he was better, although his stomach was still troublesome, and he was afraid of catching a grippe because the wind blew under his bedroom door and the chimney smoked. (This seems to contradict the statement in a letter to his mother that apart from one in Émilie’s bedroom the only fire in the house was in the kitchen, where he had taken refuge, writing, reading such books as he could find among Hippolyte’s boots and bridles, and discussing morality with the cook – also religion, politics and cookery.)11
My health seems to get no better with the years, and physical exertion seems to take more out of me than it used to. I fear that this ill disposition, made worse by my way of life, may turn me into an invalid. And besides – it’s all so difficult to understand – I’m afraid of being afraid. That is, it seems that my moral being, which is not animal, Beaumont, whatever they say, gets too preoccupied by my physical condition, and enormously exaggerates its infirmity. I am appalled by how much my imagination dwells on my stomach aches, and how it takes away all taste for study, all hope for the future, all ambition, in other words life itself, as I can tell you, mon cher ami, because somehow the veil between us is rent and we see each other face to face. What I fear more than anything else is this sort of moral enfeeblement which so easily diminishes the only human quality that I really respect, energy.12
This is the first letter in which Tocqueville’s lifelong ill-health comes clearly into view, and it is necessary to ask what was wrong with him. In prescientific terms it might be said that he inherited his mother’s poor constitution, but that explains nothing. The ‘gastritis’ which afflicted him from his boyhood onwards was probably what would nowadays be termed functional dyspepsia; it could prostrate him with agonizing stomach pains for days, and remissions were to become rarer and rarer. He himself blamed his malady on irregular hours and unsuitable food; but it is also the case that stress brings on dyspepsia and dyspepsia brings on stress. The correlation between the state of his mind and that of his body is always striking. He was by nature mercurial (in medical terms, cyclothymic), a creature of violent mood swings: perhaps they were the origin of his dyspepsia. Full of eager vitality, he seems to have taken early
to living on his nerves – to driving himself forward by sheer will. None of these traits helped his quest for physical and psychological stability. He asked too much of himself: as he wrote to Eugène Stoffels in 1839, ‘too much activity wears me out, and rest kills me.’13 However, it seems certain that his trouble was basically physical rather than psychological, and it grew worse as he left youth behind. As George Pierson has remarked, his life became one long unceasing silent struggle against illness. It is not surprising that he was occasionally, as in 1829, alarmed and depressed. But as Pierson also says, ‘his relentless, unquenchable spirit only spurred him to try to forget his bodily sufferings, too, in feverish activity.’14
There was more to life than illness. He had had a letter from Beaumont (now missing) in which his friend showed that his feelings had been hurt by some of the things said in Tocqueville’s own letter of 4 October; Tocqueville now poured out reassurance, and began to discuss plans for the future. These took a significant new turn. Tocqueville was now perforce a convert to the doctrine of la carrière ouverte aux talents (nowadays we would call it equal access), and he was no longer afraid of competition: he knew that he was a better speaker than Chabrol. But he was not so eloquent as Beaumont. He could argue well when he had had time to arrange his ideas, but he was not good at improvising and at best he was a chilly orator. ‘I may perhaps be able to move my hearers on political topics, because political passions move me so powerfully that I feel a different man, literally, when I experience them; but in the ordinary course of life it is not at all the same thing, I swear.’ Besides, though he did not say so to Beaumont, he recognized that his career had been checked, and there was no knowing when it would start moving again. In the circumstances it is not surprising that he raised the possibility of collaborating with Beaumont on some work of history, even though he could not specify a subject.
Meanwhile it was back to life and work at Versailles, and back to Guizot’s lectures. It seems that Tocqueville’s attitude to these had slightly changed: he now went less for the sake of his general historical and political education than for training as a scholar; at any rate he was much more assiduous in his attendance. Guizot’s own position had altered. He was now old enough (forty) to enter the Chamber of Deputies, and in January 1830 came in through a by-election in the Calvados. When he arrived at the Sorbonne to give his next lecture his audience, including Tocqueville, rose to its feet as one man and cheered. Guizot calmed the demonstration – politics, he said, had no place in an academic lecture-hall – but the incident, like the by-election itself, showed the way that events were tending.15
There was nothing to make the Revolution of 1830 inevitable – nothing, that is, except the blind folly of the King and his cherished minister. Both had succumbed to the unreal romanticism which was to be such a feature of post-1830 legitimism.16 Polignac had spent ten years in a Napoleonic prison, which had fatally weakened his never strong sense of French realities. Half a decade as French ambassador in London had not improved matters: as Guizot was to say, he lived in England without understanding it, any more than he did France. ‘He believed that the Charter could be reconciled with the political preponderance of the ancient nobility and with the definitive supremacy of the ancient monarchy.’17 These were his principles, but he had no programme for realizing them: he was inert. His master, who was just as much of a noodle, cherished him because he was perhaps even more reactionary than himself. Charles was King, and owed a duty to all France, but he behaved as if he were only a party leader. He professed loyalty to the Charter, but like Polignac interpreted it as re-establishing the monarchy of Louis XV. He was convinced that he, his supporters and their power were mortally threatened by the rising strength of the Liberals. Had he been merely a conservative he could not have made this mistake, for Guizot, Casimir Périer, Royer-Collard and the rest were themselves profoundly conservative, as the history of the July Monarchy was to demonstrate. A statesmanlike king would have let them form a government, confident that they would do little harm and would, after a few years, again lose support to the Ultras, as they had in 1824. But Charles X was not a statesman. He could not accept the nineteenth century. The question before the country in early 1830 was how far he would go in trying to enforce his unworkable vision.
Spring came on. Édouard and Alexandrine were still in Italy, and at their request Alexis undertook to keep them informed about politics. The result was a series of five letters, written between March and May, which demonstrate the increasing sharpness of Tocqueville’s political insight.
He states the plain truth of the problem in his first letter, of 18 March: ‘I confess that I can’t foresee what is going to happen. The King and the ministry are confronted by a united and violent majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and the Chamber of Peers seems disinclined to get involved in the quarrel.’ As for the Peers, Chateaubriand had opened the debate on their address to the Crown with a speech savagely attacking the ministers. Some of the points he made were good, but on the whole he exhibited such overweening conceit, such insupportable vanity, that no-one was satisfied. ‘Not a single voice was raised to propose that the speech be printed, which greatly mortified the noble peer.’ Things were even worse in the Chamber of Deputies. After postponing its meeting as long as possible the King greeted it on 2 March with what Tocqueville called a ‘haughty’ speech in the course of which his hat fell off and was picked up by the duc d’Orléans, who was standing next to him. The onlookers knew an omen when they saw it, but possibly the King’s actual words were of more significance: ‘Were guilty manoeuvrings to raise obstacles in the path of my government that I do not wish to predict, I would summon the strength to overcome them from my resolve to maintain public peace, from the well-judged support of the French people, and from the love which they have always shown to their king.’ Coming from the brother of Louis XVI this remark was preposterous, though it is possible that Charles had in mind the warm welcome which his subjects had given him at his accession and during a recent tour of the provinces. Whatever he meant, his threat to use force against parliament if necessary deeply angered the deputies; they promptly elected Royer-Collard president of their Chamber, and on 18 March presented an address to the Crown, voted by 221 to 181, which politely but firmly reasserted the principles of parliamentary government and affirmed the liberal interpretation of the Charter:
[The Charter] requires a permanent acquiescence of your government in the wishes of the people as the indispensable condition for the regular conduct of public affairs. Sire, our loyalty, our devotion, compel us to point out to you that this acquiescence does not exist. An unwarranted mistrust of the feelings and opinions of France is now the fundamental attitude of your administration; this distresses your people because it insults them; it worries them because it is a threat to their liberties.
This address in turn angered Charles X; the day after he received it parliament was prorogued; before long a general election would be called.18
Tocqueville wrote again a week later, with further details of what was happening. Many of the debates were closed to the public, but he had excellent contacts, so he could report that Polignac had been ‘pitiful’ in the debate; the new royalist deputy, Pierre-Antoine Berryer, admirable. Considering what he called the violent language of the address, Tocqueville thought it immensely significant that it had been passed, even if only by forty votes. People were saying that:
the nation, which was calm, has been roused by the coming of the new ministry, that a spirit of defiance against the nation rules the cabinet, and that the King must choose between the nation and those who slander it ... The King received the address with the greatest hauteur. He said that he had hoped for the support of the two Chambers, but that the Chamber of Deputies had refused him, and so tomorrow he would make his wishes known through his ministers. All that smacks of Louis XIV, as you can see, but it may be that the Frenchmen of Louis XIV’s day died with him.19
Tocqueville blamed the gathering storm
partly on the press, which had thrown off all restraint, Ultra papers even more than Liberal ones. ‘Every day sprouts a newspaper article or a pamphlet urging the King to abolish the Charter and govern by decree ... if the government lends itself to such proposals I really don’t know what will happen. All in all, the moment is critical.’20 The King was playing double or quits; he hoped that by taking such a risky course he would force his quarrelling supporters to unite behind him, and the ministers boldly asserted that they would win an election. Tocqueville did not think so, though he expected the royalists, united, to do better than they had in 1827; but ‘I can’t believe that from a nation so profoundly irritated against the ministry there can ever come a majority of deputies favourable to it.’21
In pursuit of a quarrel that had been simmering for some years between France and the Dey of Algiers a vast military expedition was preparing, commanded by Marshal de Bourmont. Ministers hoped that its success would help them in the election, and indeed everyone was rallying to their support in the matter. But Tocqueville was more interested in Hippolyte’s desperate attempts to get taken on to Bourmont’s staff (he had left it too late: even the Dauphine could not help him) and in the fact that Kergorlay was going with the advance guard: ‘We are all anxious for him, because everyone says that the landing will be difficult.’22
Kergorlay was setting out on the great adventure of his life, in ever-rising spirits, reeling off letters to Tocqueville describing it all with what to the modern eye seems breathtaking disregard of military security and an equally blithe unsuspicion of what the involvement in Algeria was going to mean for the two countries. Going on campaign, he felt, was bringing him to life again; it was even making him more confident about women.23 Tocqueville’s replies are lost, but as yet he does not seem to be very interested in Algeria; in his letters to Édouard and Alexandrine his preoccupations are profoundly political, and not just because that is what Édouard wants. Apart from small items of family news (the comte and comtesse have moved to the rue de Verneuil, Bébé is well and exercising regularly in the Tuileries gardens) he concentrates exclusively on the crisis. His remarks are always lucid and intelligent, and cannot really be described as inconsistent; but they seem to embody a certain tension. Much of what he says seems to reflect his father’s attitude (which was possibly also Édouard’s) but he seems to know that it is untenable: he is struggling, as yet without success, to find a position of his own. He does not yet identify himself with the Liberals.