by Frank Harris
I never saw such enthusiasm; the populace became delirious and a song in favour of the hero sprang from a myriad throats. I then realized how chauvinist the French public is!
Speaking to Madame Laguerre about it, the thought came into my head that the generation after the war of '70 was coming to manhood and aching for revenge, which perhaps explained Boulanger's colossal, astonishing popularity. She would not have it, but said she'd watch and let me know.
From another person, too, I heard about Boulanger.
I had known Rochefort and his paper the Intransigent for some time. He was really an extraordinary personage. I shall never forget his story of how he founded La Lanterne. He had got into trouble with Napoleon the Third whom, after Victor Hugo, he used to call "Napoleon le petit," and at length he fled to Brussels. There he resolved to bring out a paper to cast light into the dark places and so called it La Lanterne. "But when the first copy was brought to me," he said, "I put it down in utter dejection. There were good things in it, but one thing was lacking: there was no powder in the tail of the rocket, nothing to drive it up and make every one buy it and talk. I sat the whole day beating my brain, trying to excogitate some word that would give it wings. Finally the printer's boy came to the door and I got up in despair: I thought of the state of France, with millions subject to that poor charlatan, and at once the word came. I wrote as the first paragraph: "France counts thirty-five millions of subjects, not counting the subjects of discontent."
But it was as a lover and critic of art that I really esteemed Henri Rochefort. I had bought my first Barye from him and from him I heard of the miserable poverty of the great sculptor. "Barye," he said, "was so hard up that he often came to me with the model of a tigress or lion in his pocket and asked outright for help. Sometimes I could not buy his models; I was ashamed to offer so little for such masterpieces. I've bought his things as cheap as fifty francs a piece because I could not spare any more at the time, and now they're worth thousands and will be priceless. He was le Michelangelo des jauves, the Michelangelo of the Cat tribe"-a fine appreciation!
It was Rochefort who took me to see Boulanger in his house in the street Dumont d'Urville, near the Etoile. I was surprised to find Boulanger as short as I was; his torso was fine, but his legs were very short; he looked his best on horseback. With Rochefort he was silent: indeed, I was astounded to see how the clever and witty journalist assumed the lead and kept it. Rochefort was not a man to be content with a second place in any society; he was all nerves and audacity. A thin, slight figure about five feet nine or ten with silver hair bristling up like a brush from his high forehead and his brown eyes flaming, he literally stood over Boulanger and talked without a pause, laughing every now and then at his own phrases. Boulanger made an impression on me of kindliness and perhaps courage, but certainly not of command or dominant will. He was good-looking and of easy, pleasant manners, but not a great man in any sense of the word. When we went away and I spoke of Boulanger's silence, Rochefort said wittily, "The flag does not need to be articulate."
One later story of Rochefort should find its place here just to round off his portrait and explain the great place he held in Paris and the enormous influence he wielded. It was the beginning of the winter after Marchand was forced to retreat from Fashoda. France was in a fever: nine Frenchmen out of ten were bitterly incensed with the English. Rochefort wrote a leading article in which he asked Queen Victoria not to visit Nice that winter, as had been her custom in those latter years. He began very politely: "France was more than hospitable, more than courteous to women," he said, "and especially to persons of distinguished virtue and position. For these reasons the baser sort of French journalist will assert that you, Madame, are a welcome visitor, but it won't be true; after Fashoda it'll be a lie. We don't want to be reminded of that intolerable humiliation, and especially not by the appearance of cette vieille caleche qui s'obstine a s'appeler Victoria" (that old stage-coach that persists in calling itself a Victoria). The word went all over France in an hour and had its effect, though masses of the better class of Frenchmen deplored the gratuitous insult to a harmless old lady.
Rochefort made no secret of his desire to overthrow the Republic in favour of a military despotism, and I believe it was he who told me that the Duchesse d'Uzes was supplying the Boulangists with funds. At any rate, I got to know it either from him or from Laguerre: one thing was sure; money was forthcoming to any extent.
I shall always be glad that I was in Paris at the end of January, 1889, and was invited by Rochefort to the famous dinner at the Cafe Durand, given in honour of Boulanger's triumph in the election of Paris. The voting was on the 27th of January and the excitement in Paris was incredible. The whole city and every monument in it was placarded with electoral appeals; now and then you read Jacques, but everywhere Boulanger. The posters alone must have cost a fortune: Paris was white with them. The popular newspapers, too, were filled with stories of the hero, everywhere his personality and his achievements; what might not be hoped from him! He was to be president or dictator, head of France, surely, and her army; the saviour of the people!
What did all this excitement mean? Even Marguerite Laguerre admitted to me that the thought of la revanche was in every French heart, and Boulanger was the selected hero of a new coup d'etat. She thought he would be elected and Laguerre put his majority at 25,000; but when the news came in that with half a million votes cast he had a majority of 100,000 (it was afterwards found to be 81,000), Paris went crazy. Even in the Hotel Meurice, where I was staying, there was an air of suppressed excitement. The manager came to see me while I was dressing. "Will there be a revolution?" he wanted to know.
When I went out I found the streets crowded and finally took a cab and went round by the Grands Boulevards, as the rue Royale was crammed with people.
Never was there such a dinner: it took place in the big room on the first floor.
Everyone will remember that Durand's then was on the corner of the rue Royale, opposite the great Church of the Madeleine. I had been a customer at Durand's for some tune; the owner and the waiters knew me and I was ushered upstairs. Already some thirty or forty persons were seated at table.
At the end nearest the door le brav' General; near him on his right, I think, Comte Dillon, who as soon as he saw me called out and pointed to the empty chair beside him.
All round the table were journalists and deputies; I had hardly time to congratulate Boulanger when another visitor was being presented to him. I had only just shaken hands with Rochefort when he was dragged off to a conference at the other end of the room. When he returned, he was laughing.
"Think of it," he said. "That unfortunate Jacques, our opponent, is dining in the restaurant opposite." Everyone exploded as at the best of jokes. From time to time some new dish was served and we ate; the excitement grew steadily as we drank and the heat became tremendous. At length Rochefort gave the order to open the windows, which all gave on the rue Royale and the great place.
Suddenly the cry came to us from the crowd outside: "Vive Boulanger!" It was taken up by the thousand voices and carried in a great wave of sound to the Church and far up the Boulevard; and again the air throbbed with the cry:
"Vive Boulanger." I went to find Laguerre: he was surrounded; Rochefort: he was perorating. I went to the window: you could have walked across the great open place on the heads of the crowd. I made my way downstairs and the head waiter whom I knew assured me that there were five thousand students in the crowd.
I returned to the dining room. The quietest man in the place was General Boulanger, drinking his coffee calmly at the head of the table. And again the cry went up, thrilling me: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger! I could not keep still. I went to him and said, "Surely, General, it is time. The hour has struck!"
"What do you mean?" he asked with perfect composure.
"The Elysee Palace is just over there," and I pointed, "hardly quarter of a kilometre to go!"
To my astonishment he
shook his head. "What!" I cried. "When are we to start?"
"We have no forces," he replied.
I laughed aloud. "There are five thousand students below there waiting," I cried, and again, as if to give weight to my challenge, came the great wave of sound: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger!"
It affected him. He leant towards me and said, "I'm willing and ready. See Rochefort and Dillon: if they agree, we'll start." I passed behind him round the table and went to Rochefort, still talking; I drew him on one side and said,
"Boulanger's ready to go to the Elysee."
Blank surprise came over his face: a moment's thought and then an imperious,
"Non, non! restons dans l'ordre."
"Order is a first-rate resting place," I said, "but you don't find crowns in it."
"We're not ready," retorted Rochefort. "We've made no preparations!"
"First-rate"; I said, "perhaps the others are equally unprepared. Our force is there in the street ready. Listen!" And again the cry arose: "Vive Boulanger, Vive Boulanger!" Rochefort shook his head resolutely and turned away.
Suddenly it came to me: that was why Napoleon the Third had succeeded, because he was ready to try and try again. Had he not failed twice before he finally won? I went back to Boulanger. "What does Rochefort say?" he asked at once and I told him. "But he's wrong," I went on. "That's why Napoleon won.
He tried and failed, tried and failed again, but the third time he won. Try! Try again! They can't eat you!"
Le brav' General shook his head. "We've made no preparations," he said, repeating Rochefort's foolish word. And a minute or two later Laguerre had the same answer: "Not prepared"-as if preparation was necessary.
"I can't act against Rochefort," was le brav' General's last word. "What do you risk?" I cried. "Nothing. They can't punish you for wishing to pay a visit to the President?" He shook his head slowly; he was in doubt. I turned away: kings who daren't crown themselves are not worth crowning. I went round and shook hands with Rochefort, Laguerre and le Comte Dillon. They were all talking eagerly, hopefully of their chances, of what might happen, no one of them seeing the plain fact that unless they could get an election to sweep France as Paris had been swept that day, they'd never have a better chance than that moment.
I went out into the street, almost at the door was met by a young man who asked, "Is he coming?" I shook my head, grinning as he turned away, evidently disappointed. I hesitated; if they had been Englishmen I'd have asked the young fellow to come up with me and speak to Boulanger himself.
But no! They might resent it. I've heard since that Naquet, the Senator, also advised Boulanger to go to the Elysee that night. It may be true. This is sure:
the crowd of students expected the General to do something, to have at least a try for a crown!
His opponents, or one of them, was wiser: it was Mr. Constans who had just come into the Government with a speckled reputation from the Far East.
Mme. Laguerre's word for him was the best; ni conscience, ni tete, mais du poing. He now showed resolution. Scenting the danger, he threatened Boulanger, or sent some false friend to him with the intimation that his arrest had been resolved, and at once Boulanger fled to Brussels. In the summer he came over to London, a damp squib. Everyone saw when he fled from Paris that he had lost his chance. I asked him to dinner in Park Lane and had Wyndham and half a dozen friends to meet him. A witty and pretty Irishwoman insisted that he should talk English to her, and to my surprise he talked quite fairly for a Frenchman, and in answer to my question said that he had been at school in Brighton, "but after thirty years or so one forgets a language."
I dined with him a little later once or twice in Portland Place, but it was depressing and the champagne was appalling, sweet as sugar. His friends, the ubiquitous Rochefort among them, tried a little later to get up a demonstration at the Alexandra Palace and a banquet, but only a few people went out of curiosity; and poor Boulanger issued an immensely long address "to the People, my sole Judge," meaning the people of Paris. But they had already judged and condemned him by default, though he didn't seem to know it.
No one knew or cared how long he stayed in London or when he left it: his bolt was shot. Suddenly, a couple of years later, the news came to us that he had killed himself in Brussels on the grave of his bonne amie, Madame Bonnemain, and so went into the shrouding silence, this poor Antony, who we fancied might have been a Caesar. But greatness was not in him.
Many are called; but few chosen.
The whole incident set me watching. If the French were determined on la revanche, interesting things would soon happen, and now as editor of the Fortnightly Review, it behoved me to keep in touch with France. But M. Ferry made me alter my opinion. Everyone knows how he made war and annexed Tonquin, but when I saw him later in Paris and congratulated him on his achievement, he told me it had ruined him. "Even in my own district," he said,
"my constituents won't forgive me the lives lost and the cost. The French peasant won't have war: he cares nothing for Alsace-Lorraine. You may take it from me: there'll never be a war of revenge!" But the next generation was of a different spirit; they went in for athletics and practiced bodily exercises even in the army, and Caillaux told me in 1912 that the chief French generals thought that Russia and France or France and England could easily whip Germany. I didn't share the opinion, but it was impossible not to recognize that there was a new spirit abroad in France, the exact opposite to what M.
Ferry had predicted twenty years before.
Now I must recall the chief event to me of this decade, the Colonial Conference of 1887 and my meeting with three men: Cecil Rhodes, Alfred Deakin and Jan Hofmeyr. Sir Henry Holland presided at the meetings of twenty or thirty colonial ministers with a courteous good nature that did not exclude dignity, but it was Jan Hofmeyr, whom I had previously met in Cape Town on my first voyage round the world, that I most wished to see. I wanted to meet him and find out whether my first estimate of him ten years ago or so before was justified. He came to lunch and dined with me; I got to know him really well and considered him from that time on one of the ablest and best men I've ever met. The breadth of view and imperial fairness of his fine Dutch mind taught me to understand and appreciate the best English mind.
I began to see that the English race had high qualities in profusion, and above all a genius for government founded on individual character and a recognition of the real forces in practical life, which did not exclude ideal strivings. Strange to say, though gifted with a singular sense of physical beauty, as I have, I think, shown, the English don't even attempt to foster or develop this, which I regard as their highest endowment. The French establish opera houses and national and municipal schools of music, and subsidize even provincial art galleries and so forth, and the Germans spend money freely, endowing chemical and physical laboratories; but the English and Americans close their eyes to all such spiritual needs. The object of all civilized life is the humanization of man, and it must be admitted that less is done in this direction by England and America than by almost any state in Christendom. Jan Hofmeyr was too much occupied with the possible conflict between Briton and Boer and the pressure of the coloured races to care much for national theatres or municipal art schools.
Nor did I talk with him about them, the Dutch caring even less for art than the English. It was Hofmeyr, I think, sturdy, broad, sensible Boer that he was, who introduced me to Cecil Rhodes, but Rhodes at first did not make as good or as deep an impression on me as Alfred Deakin. The Australian seemed more open to ideal influence, and above all, he loved literature as well as politics.
I invited all three to dinner in my little house in Kensington Gore, just opposite Hyde Park. Cecil Rhodes had to go away early and Deakin, too, had an engagement, so that I was soon left alone with Hofmeyr. Hofmeyr spoke slightingly of Deakin while I stuck up for him. At any rate, I concluded, "He's brainier and better read than your Cecil Rhodes!"
"He may be; it's possible," Hofmeyr admitted, "
but Cecil Rhodes is master of Kimberley and already one of the richest and most powerful men in South Africa. He'll go far and may do big things."
I remember distinctly how shocked I was at this evidence of Hofmeyr's worship of the golden calf. I suppose it was Professor Smith's influence and that of German universities that kept me so naive, though I was over thirty. I had yet to learn how universal the power of money is, and I am sure that my first lesson in world values came that evening from Hofmeyr. In half an hour he showed me the enormous influence Rhodes exercised in the Cape and indeed all through South Africa because of his great wealth. He summed up, half bitterly, "He has more influence with the Boer leaders than I have, though they have known me all their lives; money is God today and the millionaire rules."
I soon found out how right Hofmeyr was. Dilke, for example, knew all about Cecil Rhodes and told me he'd be glad to meet him with me at any time. "A very able man!" but when I spoke to him of Deakin he was hardly interested, though he knew his name and work. Arthur Walter, too, the son of the manager of The Times, spoke of Rhodes with unfeigned respect, though at this time he hadn't met him, whereas my praise of Deakin fell on stopped ears.
Strange to say, Rhodes seemed to like me, perhaps because I knew the Cape and Hofmeyr and felt a great liking for the Boers and was not afraid to proclaim it openly. At any rate, he asked me to lunch and I met some important people in his rooms at the Burlington Hotel, notably Lord Rothschild, whom I had already met at Dilke's; and on this occasion I noticed that Rhodes cared little for what he ate, though he drank quite as much as was good for him. What I liked about Rhodes from the beginning was his entire absence of "side" or pretence of any sort. I had already settled in my mind the rule, which, however, is subject to important exceptions, that no great or wise man ever gives himself airs. "Side" is a characteristic of the second rate, and when a great man uses it, as Lord Salisbury did occasionally, it is to ward off the pushing or impertinent; still, it is almost always a proof of weakness.
