Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859 Part 22

'What is the "messe d'une heure?"' I asked.

'A priest,' he answered, 'must celebrate Ma.s.s fasting; and in strictness ought to do so before noon. But to accommodate fashionable ladies who cannot rise by noon, priests are found who will starve all the morning, and say Ma.s.s in the afternoon. It is an irregular proceeding, though winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities. Still to attend it is rather discreditable; it is a middle term between the highly meritorious practice of going to early Ma.s.s, and the scandalous one of never going at all.'

'What was the education,' I asked, 'of women under the _ancien regime_?'

'The convent,' he answered.

'It must have been better,' I said, 'than the present education, since the women of that time were superior to ours.'

'It was so far better,' he answered, 'that it did no harm. A girl at that time was taught nothing. She came from the convent a sheet of white paper. _Now_ her mind is a paper scribbled over with trash. The women of that time were thrown into a world far superior to ours, and with the sagacity, curiosity, and flexibility of French women, caught knowledge and tact and expression from the men.

'I knew well,' he continued, 'Madame Recamier. Few traces of her former beauty then remained, but we were all her lovers and her slaves. The talent, labour, and skill which she wasted in her _salon_, would have gained and governed an empire. She was virtuous, if it be virtuous to persuade every one of a dozen men that you wish to favour him, though some circ.u.mstance always occurs to prevent your doing so. Every friend thought himself preferred. She governed us by little distinctions, by letting one man come five minutes before the others, or stay five minutes after. Just as Louis XIV. raised one courtier to the seventh heaven by giving him the _bougeoir_, and another by leaning on his arm, or taking his shirt from him.

'She said little, but knew what each man's _fort_ was, and placed from time to time a _mot_ which led him to it. If anything were peculiarly well said, her face brightened. You saw that her attention was always active and always intelligent.

'And yet I doubt whether she really enjoyed conversation. _Tenir salon_ was to her a game, which she played well, and almost always successfully, but she must sometimes have been exhausted by the effort. Her _salon_ was perhaps pleasanter to us than it was to herself.

'One of the last,' he continued, 'of that cla.s.s of potentates was the d.u.c.h.esse de Dino. Her early married life was active and brilliant, but not intellectually. It was not till about forty, when she had exhausted other excitements, that she took to _bel esprit._ But she performed her part as if she had been bred to it.'

This was our last conversation. I left Paris the next day, and we never met again.

CORRESPONDENCE.

Tocqueville, June 30, 1858.

I must complain, a little of your silence, my dear Senior. I hear that before you left Paris you suffered a great deal from your throat. Is it true, or have you recovered?

I have not either much to boast of on the score of health since we parted. The illness which I had in Paris became still worse, and when I got a little better in that way I had a violent bronchial attack. I even began to spit blood, which had not happened to me for many years, and I am still almost reduced to silence. Still I am beginning to mend, and I hope, please G.o.d, to be able to _speak_ to my friends when they visit me.

You are aware that I wished to induce my wife to accompany me to the South; but the length of the journey, the difficulties of transport, the heat, and indeed the state of my health, were reasons which she brought forward with so much force that we have remained here, and shall not leave till the end of September. We still hope that you and Miss Senior will join us the first week in that month. We shall be very happy to have you both with us. This is no compliment ... I hope soon to be able to enjoy more frequent communication with my English friends. A steamboat is about to run from Cherbourg to the coast of England. We shall then be able to visit each other as neighbours (_voisiner_).

Between ourselves, I do not think that the events in England during the last six months are of a nature to raise the reputation of Parliamentary Government in the rest of the world. _A bientot!_

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.

Kensington, July 5, 1858.

My dear Tocqueville,--If I had written to you three days ago, I should have talked of the pleasure which my daughter and I expected from our visit to Tocqueville. But our plans are changed. Edward Ellice is going to pay a last visit to America, and has begged me to accompany him. He is a great proprietor in both America and Canada--knows everybody in both countries, and is besides a most able and interesting companion. So I have accepted the proposal, and start on the 30th of this month for Boston. We shall return in the beginning of November.

I am _very_ sorry to lose the visit to Normandy, but I trust that it is only deferred.

We are grieved to hear that neither you nor Madame de Tocqueville are as well as your friends could wish you to be.

My _grippe_, after lasting for three months, has gradually subsided, and I look to the voyage to America as a cure for all remains of it.

I have most punctually carried your remembrances to all the persons honoured by being inscribed on your card.

Though I have often seen Gladstone, it has always been among many other persons, and he has been so full of talk, that I have never been able to allude to your subject. I mentioned it to Mrs. Gladstone on Sat.u.r.day last: she said that there was not a person in all France whom her husband so much admired and venerated as you--therefore, if there was any appearance of neglect, it could have arisen only from hurry or mistake. I shall see him again on Thursday, when we are going all together to a rehearsal of Ristori's, and I will talk to him: we shall there be quiet.

Things here are in a very odd state. The Government is supported by the Tories because it calls itself Tory, and by the Whigs and Radicals because it obeys them. On such terms it may last for an indefinite time.

Kindest regards from us all to you both.

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

9 Hyde Park Gate, Kensington, August 2, 1858.

My dear Tocqueville,--I ought, as you know, to be on the Atlantic by this time; but I was attacked, ten days ago, with lumbar neuralgia, which they are trying, literally, to rub away. If I am quite well on the 13th, I shall go on the 14th to America.

I was attacked at Sir John Boileau's, where I spent some days with the Guizots, Mrs. Austin, and Stanley and Lord John Russell.

Guizot is in excellent spirits, and, what is rare in an ex-premier, dwells more on the present and the future than on the past. Mrs. Austin is placid and discursive.

Lord John seems to me well pleased with the present state of affairs--which he thinks, I believe with reason, will bring him back to power. He thinks that Malmesbury and Disraeli are doing well, and praises much the subordinates of the Government. Considering that no one believes Lord Derby to be wise, or Disraeli to be either wise or honest, it is marvellous that they get on as well as they do. The man who has risen most is Lord Stanley, and, as he has the inestimable advantage of youth, I believe him to be predestined to influence our fortunes long.

The world, I think, is gradually coming over to an opinion, which, when I maintained it thirty years ago, was treated as a ridiculous paradox--that India is and always has been a great misfortune to us; and, that if it were possible to get quit of it, we should be richer and stronger.

But it is clear that we are to keep it, at least for my life.

Kindest regards from us all to you and Madame de Tocqueville.

Ever yours,

N.W. SENIOR.

Tocqueville, August 21, 1858.

My dear Senior,--I hear indirectly that you are extremely ill. Your letter told me only that you were suffering from neuralgia which you hoped to be rid of in a few days, but Mrs. Grote informs me that the malady continues and has even a.s.sumed a more serious character.

If you could write or dictate a few lines to me, you would please me much.

I am inconsolable for the failure of your American journey. I expected the most curious results from it I hoped that your journal would enable me once more to understand the present state of a country which has so changed since I saw it that I feel that I now know nothing of it. What a blessing, however, that you had not started! What would have become of you if the painful attack from which you are suffering had seized you 2,000 miles away from home, and in the midst of that agitated society where no one has time to be ill or to think of those who are ill? It must be owned that Fortune has favoured you by sending you this illness just at the moment of your departure instead of ten days later.

I have been much interested by your visit to Sir John Boileau. You saw there M. Guizot in one of his best lights. The energy with which he stands up under the pressure of age and of ill-fortune, and is not only resigned in his new situation, but as vigorous, as animated, and as cheerful as ever, shows a character admirably tempered and a pride which nothing will bend.

I do not so well understand the cheerfulness of Lord John Russell. For the spectacle now exhibited by England, in which a party finds no difficulty in maintaining itself in power by carrying into practice ideas which it has always opposed, and by relying for support on its natural enemies, is not of a nature to raise the reputation of your inst.i.tutions, or of your public men. I should have a great deal more to say to you on this and other subjects if I were not afraid of tiring you. I leave off, therefore, by a.s.suring you that we are longing to hear of your recovery.

Remembrances, &c.

A. DE TOCQUEVILLE.