Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  He knew his limitations, and couldn’t believe that he or his book deserved so much fuss.15

  Before long he went to see his publisher about a second impression. Gosselin, who was sticking to his principle of never reading his authors’ books, nevertheless greeted him with a wide smile and said, ‘Why, it seems that you have written a masterpiece!’ Tocqueville tried hard to be businesslike, but it did not come naturally to him, and Gosselin was still the most cautious of publishers: he issued two more impressions of the Démocratie in 1835, but they were no larger than the first. However, he was quite willing to raise the author’s royalty per copy from 20 to 25 sous (1 franc: roughly tenpence a copy in predecimal British currency). He invited Tocqueville and Beaumont to dine with him and with another of his successful authors, the poet-politician Lamartine.16

  To find out what so impressed the first readers of the Démocratie (as distinct from those who merely met the author) it is best to look at the reviews. Tocqueville himself thought that the best of them was that written by John Stuart Mill, published in the October issue of the London Review, a Benthamite journal. Mill had several advantages over earlier reviewers. He knew, directly or indirectly, what they had said; as, effectively, the editor of his paper he could give himself as much space as he liked; by the time it appeared he had met Tocqueville, talked long with him, and started a correspondence. But his chief asset was his own keen and earnest intelligence. He was acute, logical, and the complete master of his abilities. Any experienced reviewer must respect the professionalism of his article: the main themes of the Démocratie are laid out fully and accurately and with a sword-like brilliance that almost transcends Tocqueville’s own style. Mill was a born popularizer; he was also frank and fair. He apologized for having to omit consideration of Tocqueville’s arguments about religion and the chapter on the three races; he recommended the study of the entire work ‘both to the philosophical statesman and to the general reader’. Tocqueville could not have had a better introduction to the British public, and he wrote gratefully: ‘a writer’s trade would be too delightful if he encountered many readers of your stamp.’17

  To the credit of both men, this endorsement did not mean that Mill had agreed with everything that Tocqueville said or did not say; he did not accept the idea of majority tyranny, and in a tart footnote pointed out that American democracy was far from complete: ‘the aristocracy of skin, and the aristocracy of sex, retain their privileges.’ But in only one respect, and that doubtful, can Mill be said to have misrepresented his author. Throughout his article he treated the Démocratie as an entirely liberal, even a radical work: he used it as a weapon against the House of Lords, the Tories and the Whigs. And Tocqueville did not object: whatever his long-range anxieties, he was certainly a friend of democracy in the circumstances of 1835.

  Using Mill as a yardstick it can be seen that of all the French reviewers only one, Sainte-Beuve, writing in Le Temps, approaches the Englishman for comprehensiveness. In one respect, indeed, he surpasses Mill: he notices that while Tocqueville has confidence in American democracy, he is much less hopeful for Europe and France. He picks up the notion of the point de départ and wonders mournfully if it is necessary to emigrate to establish a free and just society; would the Old World ever be capable of establishing a society where the defeated, the injured, the puritan could unite in the pursuit of a peaceful and well-founded liberty? Sainte-Beuve was the most Tocquevillean of all the reviewers.18

  By the rest, although the level of discussion was commendably intelligent and the enthusiasm great, Tocqueville’s book was only fitfully illuminated. The legitimist Gazette de France flatly rejected the suggestion that American practices might serve the legitimist cause: ‘Our fathers’ generation, we must admit, were less grossly imposed on when, in the last century, the English constitution was held up for their admiration. At least in England they kidnapped only sailors and sold only women ...’ The reviewer denounced America’s racial record at great length, using facts and arguments drawn entirely from the Démocratie. He compared the July Monarchy, greatly to its disadvantage, to the American presidency, but ‘a true monarchy, representative, legitimate, and national’ (i.e. the Bourbons) was preferable to either. The writer summed up his view by remarking that France should imitate the government of the United States when it had no more wars to fight, no more great armies or dangerous neighbours, ‘when the French people are filled with respect for the laws, and when the Christian religion, having purified their morals, will have prepared them for liberty – then we will have scant fear of a republic in France, and we will be able to adopt American institutions.’19 (It will be seen that, consciously or unconsciously, the reviewer has picked up Tocqueville’s belief in the supreme importance of manners, however ironically he uses it.) Another conservative journal denounced American democracy as incompatible with the divine principle of hierarchy and lamented the egoism of American society. ‘The plea which M. de Tocqueville has written in favour of America seems to us to be the most just and vehement accusation that has ever been brought against her.’20 Tocqueville’s optimistic attempt to convert his own caste to sense and reason through the American example failed immediately.

  The legitimists also ignored or rejected his attempt to demonstrate the value of religious freedom to the Church.21 Le Semeur, a Protestant journal which favoured the separation of Church and state, was not so unintelligent: it welcomed Tocqueville as an ally. And Lammenais, to whom Tocqueville sent a presentation copy, wrote to commend his love for humanity and respect for human dignity, traits nowadays so uncommon. But Le Semeur had little influence, and Lammenais had quarrelled irrevocably with both the Church and the Pope: neither could be of much use to Tocqueville.22 Liberals, whether strongly supportive of the July Monarchy or merely acquiescent in it, should have welcomed the Démocratie as a philosophical justification of the July Revolution, but its complexity was such that they all found something to question. Guizot and his clique of rigid doctrinaires disliked the assertion that the future lay with democracy rather than with the supremacy of the bourgeoisie. 23 Salvandy, a semi-perpetual Orleanist minister, denied that the United States was really a democracy –­­Tocqueville had been taken in, it was really a dictatorship of the majority, which was as bad as any other and contrary to Nature, for the head should rule, not the body (Salvandy was no believer in a wide, let alone universal suffrage). Pellegrino Rossi, a leading Italian liberal who was also a distinguished economist, reviewing the Démocratie, predicted that equality would be transient: the day would come when the rich in America would be very rich and the poor very poor; ‘it seems to us that M. de Tocqueville has somewhat exaggerated the effects of the laws of inheritance.’ Léon Faucher stoutly denied the danger of tyranny of the majority. So did Francisque de Corcelle* in the Revue des deux mondes, although his review had been written under the eye of Tocqueville himself; and he rejected Tocqueville’s melancholy view of the future, accusing him of exaggeration and self-contradiction.24

  Clearly, the reviewers of the 1830s kept their independence of mind, even if they were not above borrowing ideas and information liberally from the work which they were reviewing. But what is more striking, nearly two centuries later, is that however patchy may have been their response to Tocqueville’s message, they were unanimous in their reaction to the messenger: ‘This is one of those books which resist analysis. It contains chapters which are books in themselves. We called M. de Tocqueville the American Blackstone; that is not all we thought; our pen nearly wrote a greater name’ (Salvandy); ‘the imagination of a young man and the patient observation of maturity’ (Rossi); ‘His mind is impartial and lofty, and his book may accurately be considered as an historical document worthy of belief; it is neither an apology nor a satire’ (Le Bon Sens, a republican paper); ‘a book with which, both for its facts and speculations, all who would understand, or who are called upon to exercise influence over the age, are bound to be familiar’ (John Stuart Mill). ‘Nothing, absolutely,’
wrote an American, ‘has been written by a foreigner which approaches to an accurate delineation of our political organization’ – except the Démocratie. The National (once Thiers’s paper, now leaning towards republicanism) thought that ‘the intelligence which dictated this book on American democracy and the remarkable merits of its execution place the author among [our] superior men, and give him indisputable title to the esteem and gratitude of his fellow citizens. L’Écho français spelt out what this meant: ‘Such books should open the way to the parliamentary tribune.’25

  For in that distant epoch the writing of a masterpiece of political thought was deemed to be an excellent qualification for entry to the Chamber of Deputies. It was only necessary to make sure that the reputation of the masterpiece was widely diffused, which, thanks to the practice by which provincial newspapers copied the Parisian journals in extenso, happened spontaneously. Tocqueville had hoped for such an outcome, especially in Normandy and the Cotentin, his likeliest parliamentary prospect. His interest in the region was becoming pronounced: probably through family influence he had already (November 1834) been elected to the fellowship of the Société Académique de Cherbourg. It must have been gratifying when a Norman paper, announcing the fact, called the Démocratie a masterpiece, and mentioned the Système pénitentiaire favourably too.26 Before long Tocqueville had undertaken to write an article on pauperism for the Cherbourg academy’s journal: it would give him a chance to sort out his thoughts on the English Poor Law and its implications.

  Winter passed in a swirl of activity. Beaumont finished Marie and Gosselin published it. This was an important event in Tocqueville’s life, for as he and Beaumont constantly insisted, their books were complementary. Marie, indeed, reads like a negative to the Démocratie’s positive: it is not a work of political or social anatomy, but is full of the particulars and the living movement which Tocqueville omitted; in fact a reader may almost regret that the two friends abandoned their original plan of joint authorship: together, they might have produced a really comprehensive study of the United States. It had not been possible: their diverging interests pulled them apart, as we have seen, and perhaps it was time that each man faced the challenge of solo authorship. Beaumont had more to learn. He made the great mistake of writing his study of racism and slavery as a novel, while not respecting the form. It was a golden age of fiction: he might have read Stendhal and Balzac; we know that he read Scott and Fenimore Cooper. Nevertheless, in his Foreword to Marie he apologizes for writing a novel about a serious subject: he only does so, he says, because he wants to attract frivolous as well as serious readers.27 As if this insult to the public were not enough, he avows that he is no novelist, and proves it all too well in what follows. Yet Marie, for all its obvious failings (Nassau Senior praised it, but said that it had perhaps too much sentimentality (onction) for cold English tastes),28 is still very well worth reading. The idea of a propaganda novel attacking American slavery was a good one, as would be shown triumphantly fifteen years later in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; and Beaumont packed his book with vivid information – nearly half of it consists of appendices and notes, just like the Système pénitentiaire. To anyone who knows Tocqueville and Beaumont’s American letters and notebooks, let alone the Démocratie, Marie appears like an old friend, full of pleasingly familiar material and many new thoughts. The overlap with Tocqueville’s preoccupations is marked, and the long note in which Beaumont defines and asserts the actuality of equality in America might have been written in answer to some of Tocqueville’s twentieth-century critics, such as Edward Pessen, though in fact he chiefly had British writers of his own day in mind, particularly Thomas Hamilton, whose Men and Manners in America had appeared in 1833.29 Here, and indeed throughout the book, is additional evidence of the substantial identity of Beaumont’s views and observations with those of Tocqueville, and mini-essays like those on American women and American sociability so evidently draw on Beaumont’s notebooks that the loss of these comes to seem unimportant. 30 Above all, if Marie is taken in conjunction with Tocqueville’s Démocratie and Michel Chevalier’s Lettres sur l’Amérique, which appeared in book form in 1836, somewhat to Tocqueville’s dismay (he disliked any hint of competition),31 we must agree that readers of these three French writers could form a much fuller, fairer and more accurate picture of Jacksonian America than any British writers of the period, singly or together, came near to supplying.

  Marie had nothing like the runaway success of the Démocratie, but its merits ensured that it was welcomed and widely read. Beaumont and Tocqueville could each feel that he had hit his target, and each, equally, felt that he was owed a holiday after all his efforts; so on 21 April, four years almost to the day since their departure to America, they set off together again – for England.

  The need for a rest (of the energetic kind which Tocqueville always preferred) is on the face of it a sufficient explanation of this journey, but other factors must be mentioned. Tocqueville was always an investigator, and he could not feel that in 1833 he had done more than make a good start on a study of England; and for reasons that are not altogether clear he and Beaumont decided, before leaving Paris, to extend their inquiries to Ireland. Not that Tocqueville intended to write about Britain: he was furious when Gosselin, without his knowledge, told the Journal des débats that he did. He did not want to presume on his sudden fame, or to endanger it by publishing superficialities: as he told Comte Molé, who took a kinsman’s kindly interest in his affairs, England was much harder to understand than America;32 but he must have hoped that a British tour would help him in planning the second part of the Démocratie, which was already stirring in his mind and had been vaguely promised in the first part.33 He meant to consolidate his position, but not in a hurry. Beaumont indeed soon began to plan a book on Ireland, but it is doubtful if he did so before getting to that country. He must have wanted to go to Britain largely because he had never been there, even if Tocqueville had the idea first.

  Tocqueville discovered that before setting out he needed one other person’s consent. Marie Mottley had put up with a great deal in the previous four years. She had allowed her lover to leave her for his long visit to America. She had allowed him to put off making any definite plans for their future while he wrote his book. Now he was proposing to leave her again for several months (over four, as it turned out). It seems (the evidence is scrappy but unambiguous) that she put her foot down. Tocqueville might go, but when he came back he must marry her. In his absence she would receive instruction in the Catholic faith, abjure Protestantism and be received into the Church.

  In his heart of hearts Tocqueville may have been glad to have his hand forced at last, and anyway he was running out of excuses: he would be thirty in August and legally free to marry as he chose. But we gather that there were agitated scenes before he gave in, and he left for England in a gloomy frame of mind. He had always enjoyed his bachelor freedom, and he probably did not relish a confrontation with his parents (it is possible that some of his gloom was caused by a scene with them). However, he had no choice: he loved Marie and was by now utterly dependent on her love for him. He must have known that it was the right decision for both of them.34

  Apparently Tocqueville was not very well when he left for London; the weather which he met there did not make him feel any better. Even at noon, he said, the streets were like nothing so much as the tunnels of a coalmine, lit by a single lantern. London was as expensive as ever – he and Beaumont had to chase about before they could find affordable lodgings in Regent Street; and the British class system obtruded immediately and disagreeably. As he renewed his acquaintanceships and presented his letters of introduction he met the same reception as formerly: ‘Much insolence in the antechambers ... great kindness in the drawing-rooms, and prodigious servility on my return to the antechambers.’ These experiences and the London fog led him to philosophize (‘there is nothing more favourable to philosophy than fog’). Having had some experience of every class, he decided that he did no
t entirely like any of them. The rich had a certain loftiness of tone and distinction of manners which attracted him, but their way of life – ‘the luxury, the pomp, the great possessions, the artificiality’ – bored and repelled him. The middle classes lived much more simply, and were more straightforward, but were so vulgar that he couldn’t bear to see them very often. That being the case it was fortunate for him that the invitations which rained down all came from the greatest possible names, the cream of the Whig nobility – not only Lord Radnor, but also Lords Holland, Lansdowne, Brougham. They were all as kind as possible, but sunlight, he said, if only the sun would show himself, would do more to cheer him up than all the candles of the grand saloons where he was spending his evenings.35

  Nevertheless, it was just as well that he had middle-class friends, for it was they who came to the rescue when he fell seriously ill in early May. Henry Reeve (1813–95) was a promising, rather pushy young man, ostensibly reading for the Bar but also launching a career in journalism. He had met Tocqueville in Paris in March; now he carried off the invalid to Hampstead, where he lived with his mother, and kept him there for two weeks until he recovered.

  It is difficult to know what to think about Tocqueville’s health, or rather his ill-health at this point. As we have seen, strangers meeting him for the first time thought him sickly, and in some sense he undoubtedly was; but his American journey was that of a man full of energy and zest for life, with a marked taste for outdoor activities – swimming, walking, hunting. His illness in Tennessee was brought about by external conditions, though it must be noted that the robust Beaumont was unaffected. But Tocqueville suffered all his life from what the Abbé Le Sueur used to call gastritis.36 The attacks were irregular – he could go many months without having any – but, when they did come on, were agonizing. Tocqueville himself seems to have thought that they were caused by too much high living and excitement, which, if correct, would help to explain his London collapse; but we do not know what were his symptoms on that occasion. The doctor brought in by Reeve forbade him to take any exercise but approved of fresh air; he mitigated the rigour of this regime by lending the patient books to read out of doors.37 There is no hint of any trouble with the lungs, though the appalling atmosphere of the Big Smoke might have made anyone ill.