Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  Their views were appalling. They thought that Tocqueville had a chance of survival – but no more than a chance. He was much better than he had been six weeks before, when, as Beaumont rightly inferred, he had been at death’s door, but that was not saying very much. He was a difficult patient to treat. If he had had a less delicate constitution (said the doctors) and steadier nerves, and if all his organs were not so worn out, Nature might have helped him to recover. Instead, he was the victim of his stomach (‘always his weak point,’ Beaumont reflected), which was upset by every medicine (we know that he was occasionally given laudanum, presumably as a tranquillizer and sleeping draught). Yet only by eating could he regain some strength: ‘it is a terrible complication.’ He was no longer spitting blood, but he coughed all the time and brought up pus, in which Dr Maure had twice discovered tubercular cells. He expected the blood-spitting to recur, which would terrify the patient. Tocqueville had a perpetual slight fever, and his pulse-rate was 95–100 to the minute, 70 per minute being normal. He was not told that his rate was abnormal, or that he was feverish.20

  Beaumont’s position was extremely difficult. He did not tell even Marie how worried he was, and he was always careful to maintain a cheerful air with Tocqueville. He read aloud, and passed on all the news he could gather from his strolls into Cannes, or from occasional visitors. Lord Brougham, who had first made Cannes fashionable, came to call. Tocqueville was too weak to see him, but he and Beaumont had a long conversation about politics (France was on the brink of war with Austria), which Beaumont afterwards relayed. But these were the merest palliatives. Beaumont’s description of the daily round is as sad as possible. Life was dominated by the fact that neither husband nor wife had been allowed to speak properly for months – Beaumont could not imagine how they could bear it. The morning was taken up with medical attentions: Tocqueville’s back was covered with leeches. The doctor visited. After lunch the patient took little walks, which gave him great pleasure; Beaumont thought this was a sign of returning strength, until he noticed that Tocqueville was wrapped up in two or three cloaks, although the weather was delightfully sunny, walked like a man of ninety, and never spoke a word. At three o’clock the postman arrived with letters and newspapers, and sometimes Tocqueville felt strong enough to receive visitors. Dinner was at six o’clock, and until then there was an appearance of life in the house; ‘but in the evening, the place is a tomb’. Tocqueville was too tired even to be able to listen to reading, and kept on falling asleep, though he struggled to stay awake for fear of having a bad night. Beaumont did what he could to make things livelier, but he felt that he was struggling against impossibility. There was something about their silence which cut off Marie and Alexis from contact with the world, even their most loving friends.

  Marie began to talk, to Beaumont if not to her husband, which suggests the degree to which her illness was psychological; or perhaps, rather, the degree of her desperation. She had thought of a scheme for hiring a doctor to live permanently in the household. Beaumont approved of the idea, since it seemed clear that at best Tocqueville would never again be well enough to do without constant medical attention; besides, such a doctor would be good for Marie too. He wrote to Dr Andral in Paris for help in the matter. She complained, not quite fairly, about the Tocqueville family: Hippolyte had retired from the fight, Édouard (who had a sick wife to consider) did not visit very often, and neither of his sons had shown the least concern for their poor uncle’s condition. A few days later Marie poured out to Beaumont everything she was thinking and feeling. She was absolutely discouraged, beaten down and exhausted, and worst of all

  a little detached from her poor husband, whose condition has exacted from her more effort than she can make; she spoke to me despairingly of her desire to be dead; it is her daily wish; she sees that her husband ardently wishes to live; all her own desire is to see an end to her life, which is crushing her and which she wishes no more of, to the profit of her husband’s life on which he sets such a value. Exhausted as she is, she yet sees clearly that she is only in the middle of a terrifying traverse ... she quite understands that she will never be able to cross another such abyss, in which she judges sanely ...

  I have to say something very cruel: her only chance of life is for her husband to die now; a prolongation of his life, which all in all is most likely, will not definitively save him, I very much fear, and will end by devouring her. That is a horrible thing to say to you, but I tell you all I think, and I must say that her too personal disposition has separated her a little from him. ‘He is killing me,’ she said. ‘He loves me, but it is not for myself, it is for himself,’ and while allowing for the exaggeration produced by her great nervous distress, I think that this thought is all too present in the soul of this poor woman, who just now is destroyed. For the rest, she continues to see to all her tasks and duties admirably, and with unlimited devotion; but it is too much like a Religious duty. I said to her whatever I could to bring her back to gentler thoughts, which are also nearer the truth: for, after all, what woman has ever been so passionately loved for herself, and has received more blazing testimony of the fact? I think I did her good; and yesterday, on seeing her outlook entirely changed, Alexis said to me tenderly that I had saved his wife’s life after having saved his.21

  Beaumont’s observations about Marie are full of interest, but most of his attention was necessarily given to her husband. In his letters to Clémentine we can watch his hope, of which he never had much, dwindle to despair. As early as 17 March he was saying, ‘Every day I am more dissatisfied with what I see ... Consumption is rightly so called; for every day his strength wastes away, without any equivalent gain.’ From the time of Beaumont’s arrival Tocqueville declined anew. His cough never left him, but his appetite did, to his astonishment: ‘he would be less surprised if he knew that he has a very strong, continuous fever; they are still managing to deceive him, but can they do so for long? Yesterday he gave me a harangue (in a whisper, of course) against his doctor, in whom, he says, he only half believes.’ Spring began with fine weather on 21 March, but when Beaumont asked Dr Maure how hopeful he might reasonably be, Maure replied that Tocqueville was like a man who bets his last twenty francs on a lottery in the hope of winning a chateau, at odds of a thousand to one. This comparison made Beaumont tremble. The evenings, he said, were as diabolical as ever, and it was difficult to find suitable readingmatter. Insipid books put Tocqueville to sleep, which endangered his night’s rest; novels of the slightest interest disturbed him to the point of insomnia. They could discuss Madame Bovary because Tocqueville had read it already; it was not going to give him nightmares.*

  Beaumont tried to make him understand what Marie was enduring.

  I said to him, very gently, nevertheless in a manner meant to make an impression: mon cher ami, do you know what’s wrong with your poor wife? She can do nothing more, and all that she needs is that you should let her rest. I tried to make him understand that even from the point of view of his own interest, he ought to let her have a little peace and so allow her, during her hours off, to replenish her strength, and get some reserve of energy for the days of great crisis, which could recur, but our poor friend has been spoilt all his life, spoilt by her; the poor woman devoted herself entirely to that, almost to the moment when she came to the end of all her strength, physical and moral. He made a momentary effort to follow the advice I gave him, of which he could not mistake the justice and the grounds; and then he soon returned to the bent of his character, and asked of his poor wife that she continue this way of life and those efforts of which she is no longer capable.

  Beaumont was afraid that she would collapse (22 March).

  The future looked grim, but Tocqueville continued hopeful, and talked of his second volume. With that in mind he asked Beaumont to read him the memoirs of Comte Miot, a Napoleonic official. Beaumont thought them to be of the greatest interest, showing clearly the character of the Bonapartes, the Corsican clan which had battened on Franc
e. ‘My God!’ cried Tocqueville as he listened, ‘what a punishment that family has earned!’

  But it was one of the last flickers of his mind. Beaumont did not think that he would ever again be equal to the demands of authorship, even if he made some sort of recovery. He struggled to be hopeful: on 24 March he reported that Tocqueville was a little better, but the next day he started coughing up blood once more. Beaumont asked Dr Maure if the patient had some years still before him; ‘Some months,’ was the reply. Next day Tocqueville brought up ‘small spittings’ of blood which, the doctor told Beaumont, certainly came from the chest; but he persuaded Tocqueville that it was a nose-bleed. Nevertheless Tocqueville was frightened. In his fever and his feebleness his manhood was melting away; his feelings were those of a terrified child.

  Next day he was calmer, but the doctors were still abusing his confidence with their lies. Beaumont wondered how long he would remain their dupe, and began to worry about his own position. He did not need to explain to his wife that he could not interfere with the doctors’ treatment: had he done so they would probably have retired from the case. But he did not like being a party to the deception, and began to wonder if he might not be of more use to Tocqueville if he went to Paris in search of the secrétaire-médecin suggested by Marie. At Cannes he felt as if he were only a third Sister of Good Counsel. On 28 March Tocqueville was no longer bringing up blood, but he seemed a little weaker than the day before. He was no longer asking how he was: it seemed to Beaumont that he was living in a complete illusion, ‘but I very much fear that it can’t last much longer’. Beaumont began to share Marie’s irritation about Tocqueville’s relations, or at least about Édouard. His presence at Nice, said Beaumont, was almost no help; he and Alexandrine thought only of themselves. Beaumont regretted Hippolyte, who though muddleheaded was much more reliable. This was not altogether fair to Édouard, who turned up on 30 March to stay the night. He was shocked to see how much worse Alexis had become since his last visit, and on 4 April moved into the villa Montfleury with his wife. It was just as well; Alexis was glad of his presence, and Beaumont was at the end of his tether. The catastrophe was now certain, and the thought of it robbed him of all courage: ‘There are moments when my strength deserts me; sometimes I even think that my health – always very good, however – will collapse’ (3 April). He was needed at home, but he could not think of abandoning Marie to solitude. It was for her that he stayed; he could do no more for Alexis; ‘I consider our poor friend as finished.’ He was now being sustained on laudanum (4 April).

  Édouard’s arrival, which pleased Marie as well as Alexis, changed Beaumont’s calculations. He could no longer overcome his disgust with Dr Maure, who was now telling Tocqueville that he was cured, except for his ‘accidental’ digestive upset, while telling Beaumont that Tocqueville was in the last stage of phthisis, that his lung was nothing but one large wound and he would be lucky to last more than a week. Beaumont could no longer bear to be a part of this performance, ‘which shows how easily poor honesty can be deceived until the supreme moment when it has such need of truth’. Tocqueville thought that his lungs and throat were completely cured. Marie too did not see how near the end was. At least she herself was better. Furthermore, Beaumont was now of very little use to the patient, who fell asleep when read to and had been handed over almost entirely to the care of the nuns. He decided to return to his wife, with the goodwill of both Alexis and Marie. He would, he wrote, look for a secrétaire-médecin as he passed through Paris; and although, as he said in what proved to be his last letter to Tocqueville, he went through that city like a bullet, he did carry out his mission, and a young doctor called Thadée Dujardin-Beaumetz (found, according to Jardin, by Corcelle)22 arrived at the villa Montfleury on 10 April. Beaumont also alerted Hippolyte, Kergorlay and Hubert to the desperate state of Alexis; they left at once for Cannes, and arrived on the 9th. Meanwhile Beaumont reached his home and was warmly welcomed, but he could not stay there; after writing his letter to Tocqueville – he made it as long, interesting and cheerful as he could – he fidgeted back to Paris on the excuse of an election at the Institut, but probably because he wanted to be sure of getting prompt news. He may not have been really reconciled to his desertion of the sinking ship.23

  But although Tocqueville was dying, he had not wholly lost his ability to respond to events and shape what life was left to him. As Beaumont reported, he was delighted to get the news that the plans for the Corcelle–Chambrun wedding had been settled; as late as 9 April he was able to write a short but vigorous letter to Ampère, welcoming the news that he was coming to Cannes;24 and before then he had taken the decisive step in his reconciliation with the Church.

  Beaumont does not say so in his letters to Clémentine, but a draft passage he wrote in 1860 for his ‘Notice’ of Tocqueville states that Marie had for some time been trying to induce Tocqueville to make his confession.25 At first he refused, on the grounds that there were too many dogmas of the Catholic Church in which he did not believe, but before Beaumont left Cannes he had consented, and made his confession to Abbé Gabriel, which the curé deemed quite sufficient; but Tocqueville, not being sure, insisted on making a much more detailed confession to Marie herself the next day.* He looked forward to receiving communion at Easter, but it was exceptionally late that year (24 April) and Gabriel doubted if he would last that long. At this point Édouard (according to himself ) took a hand, suggesting to the curé that in view of his brother’s increasingly rapid decline the time had come for a final push. Perhaps this was why Marie (who Beaumont had thought to be getting better) asked if Mass might be celebrated at the villa, as she was too unwell to get to the church. The curé turned to Alexis: ‘And you, monsieur le comte, when will it be your turn?’ Tocqueville appears to have had what John Lukacs calls a ‘Jansenist’ scruple:26 he said that he was not yet ready, and asked to be confessed again. But next day, 6 April, as the ceremony went forward in his presence and Marie communicated, he accepted Gabriel’s assurance that he was ready, and received communion lying on his chaise-longue. Édouard, Soeur Valérie and Soeur Gertrude were also present, and according to the nuns Alexis insisted to them that he was acting of his own accord and with full conviction.27

  It has been difficult for many scholars and controversialists to accept this turn of events, given Tocqueville’s lifelong scepticism and the mild anti-clericalism of his later years, and the documents are hard (but not impossible) to reconcile with each other.28 Nevertheless, the story which they tell is clear and certain; the spiritual and psychological processes involved are wholly intelligible. One point, on which Beaumont, Gabriel and the nuns all agree, should perhaps be emphasized: Tocqueville did not, and was not required to, give his express assent to any of the Church doctrines which he had rejected for so long. It was enough that he now accepted the Church’s authority and discipline. He repented; he confessed; he received absolution and communion; his reward was reassurance and, as he apparently told Beaumont, the great happiness of knowing that his union with Marie was now complete.29 This reading is essentially the conclusion that André Jardin arrived at. But as he also remarked, ‘we will not be so bold as to assume any certainty about his last thoughts. There are intimate reaches of the spirit that compel one to silence.’30

  While all this was happening Ampère, who had not seen Tocqueville for nearly four years, wrote to say that he would like to visit Cannes, and set out before Tocqueville’s joyful reply reached him. Deceived by Tocqueville’s optimistic letters, Ampère had no idea that he was travelling towards a dying man; rather he was afraid that Tocqueville was on the point of going home without having seen him. Nothing could have been more mistaken, though Tocqueville continued bizarrely hopeful to the last. He told Hubert that he regretted not having devoted more of his life to the interests of religion: ‘if God restores my health, I have decided to consecrate myself more ardently to that cause.’ It was clear to everyone else that the end was near. Dr Dujardin-Beaumetz later reported to Co
rcelle that Tocqueville suffered appallingly when the mistral began to blow. On 15 April he had two frightful attacks which nearly suffocated him. He felt a little better in the morning, but then endured another attack which was followed by so deep a tranquillity that the doctor foresaw that the next crisis would be final: Tocqueville’s body was mustering its last resources, which would not be enough. Marie did not leave his side all day. According to Dujardin-Beaumetz he listened to ‘a short reading’: according to the nuns Bishop Dupanloup arrived, and Mass was again celebrated in the sick-chamber, though Tocqueville was too weak to do more than recite the Salve Regina. That evening (16 April), at a quarter past seven, watched by his wife, by Louis de Kergorlay, his kinsman and oldest friend, and by the rest of the family present at Cannes, Alexis de Tocqueville died.31

  * It is natural to speculate that she may have caught AT’s tuberculosis of the larynx, but the doctors were eventually satisfied that she only had an uncommonly persistent bronchitis.

  * Mme Campan was Marie Antoinette’s first lady of the bedchamber.

  * In my view, only a mathematician (which AT was not) could have thought of such a proposition, or found it enticing.

  * He could have verified the rumour by reading Liberty’s famous dedication. Harriet Mill had died at Avignon in November.