Henry Mayers Hyndman

The Record of an Adventurous Life


Chapter XIX
Clemenceau

I have always found it quite impossible to carry my political animosities into my personal relations, unless the particular individual has done some unforgivable injury to the Socialist cause. That, probably, is the reason why I cannot feel the bitterness which affects my French friends towards the eminent Frenchman of politics and journalism, M. Georges Clemenceau. I regard him as the most brilliant man I ever knew, and not even his injustice as Prime Minister to the workers on strike, which seemed to me quite contrary to his character and career, has failed to dispel the charm which his personality has for me.

I first made M. Clemenceau’s acquaintance when he was the editor and controller of La Justice and the Ministry Maker and Unmaker of the French Assembly. He was then, as ever, a vigorous and at the same time judicious advocate of an Anglo-French understanding, but his paper was by no means remunerative and I have always thought it was a great mistake he got no support from the Francophils on this side of the Channel. But I suppose a vehement opponent of the Second Empire, an ex-Mayor of Belleville, a thorough-going Freethinker and an extreme Radical, though not a Socialist, could scarcely be regarded without prejudice by any Englishmen with money. Yet, looking back at the circumstances, I wonder, even so, that so patriotic a Frenchman and at the same time such a genuine friend of England should not have been offered help from this country; though whether he would have accepted it, even if given quite unconditionally, is more than I can say.

At the period I speak of, and for many years afterwards, Clemenceau combined in his own person a number of remarkable qualities. He was at one and the same time the best leader of opposition, the best debater, the best conversationist, the best shot, and the best fencer in France. Those were the days when duels might quite easily have serious consequences for one or both of the persons engaged. And few indeed cared to tackle a left-handed pistol-shot and a left-handed fencer like Clemenceau, who drank no spirituous liquors and was always in training. M. Paul de Cassagnac, who had actually killed three men himself, cried off a duel when M. Clemenceau challenged him. He felt he would be so much nearer to his latter end as to be unable to distinguish the difference between that posture and sudden death. Later, in addition to the qualities mentioned above, Clemenceau suddenly added to them the faculty of being the best journalist in France. As editor of La Justice he did not write himself. But when he found himself more or less stranded politically as well as pecuniarily, he took to his pen with the success stated. Yet he was then fifty-two. This I believe to be unprecedented. High-class political journalism, especially in Paris, calls for a combination of faculties which any one who knows anything about it would think it impossible should be developed to such an extent in a man well past middle age. However, so it was.

Clemenceau’s personal appearance gives the impression of his character and disposition. Boundless energy and brightness, indefatigable alertness and intellectual aptitude. “In the game of life as in the game of cards you must always have your stakes on the table.” So wrote Balzac. And Clemenceau always had his stakes on the table, and he was ready to risk his all at any moment. When the French Socialists began to abuse him and to minimise his great qualities they spoke of him as “this Calmuck,” which appeared to me rather strange as a term of contempt, seeing that the imputation in this shape is rather racial than personal. But the reason for it was that Clemenceau, with his broad over-hanging forehead, keen and gleaming but rather deep-set eyes, highish cheek-bones and heavy moustache, had something of the look of the Tartar peasant to those who could not see below the surface.

As a matter of fact Clemenceau looks what he is, the most brilliant man in French politics of his period. I admire Jaurès immensely as an orator; at times he rises to very great heights, though I wish now and then he used fewer words in order to attain to them. Yet, when on one occasion it came to a direct personal conflict between these two brilliant orators in the French Assembly, it could not be disguised that although Jaurès, standing as the champion of Socialism, had far the best case, Clemenceau, to the sorrow of us all, got much the better of him. Those long elaborate rhetorical periods in which Jaurès delights, and which delight his hearers, could not hold their own against the short incisive thrusts of a more concentrated style of oratory. It was a lesson to Socialists not to trust to rhetoric in hand-to-hand encounters. Clemenceau is above all the man of the moment, ever equal to either fortune. It may be admitted, also, that he seeks conflicts rather than in any way avoids them.

It is said that Clemenceau had another tendency, not quite so admirable, which on a special occasion cost him a good deal – practical joking. There was a certain deputy in the House of Assembly who was desperately poor and scarcely able to sustain his family. Returning home each evening, therefore, he took in his pocket some of the large roll sandwiches which lay on the buffet in the House. Clemenceau, so they say, noted this proceeding and one night carefully removed from his fellow-deputy’s pocket the sandwiches which had been placed there. What truth there is in the story I do not pretend to say – very likely it is pure invention; but in any event the result which was attributed to this mauvaise plaisanterie was awkward for Clemenceau. He has never at any time been a rich man and he was on this account desirous of being elected President of the Chamber, a post to which he was fully entitled and to which is attached a salary of £4,000 a year. He lost by only one vote and this decisive vote was declared to be that of the deputy, otherwise one of his supporters, who suspected him of having played the trick of removing the rolls needed for the family supper, which he discovered were missing when he got home.

General Boulanger was Clemenceau’s cousin, and that statesman used his influence to get his relative appointed War Minister. It is only fair to remember, in view of what happened later, that this step was quite justified in the first instance; as undoubtedly the French army has to thank that ambitious and unfortunate General for very great improvements in its supply of food as well as in its barrack discipline. But no long time elapsed before the nominee of the Radical Republican leader developed, or had thrust upon him, a policy of reaction most dangerous to the State. I was a good deal in France at the period of Boulanger’s rise and fall and nothing struck me more than the indifference of the advanced party to the danger of his rapidly increasing popularity. His overwhelming successes in the Nord and the Dordogne seemed to come upon the Republicans quite unexpectedly; while my friend Dr. Paul Brousse, as well as M. Clemenceau himself, both told me they thought he was on the down grade when he was on the point of beating the respectable bourgeois, M. Jacques, by a tremendous majority, for the city of Paris.

How well I recall that now almost forgotten crisis. Such a political victory, it was felt, could only end by the General proclaiming himself either a Napoleon, a Cromwell, or a Monk. This opinion was general. Another 2nd of December was looked forward to on the night or the morning after the great election; by the reactionists and royalists of all shades of opinion with open rejoicing, by the Republicans with ill-disguised trepidation. I was in the crowd outside Durand’s Restaurant where Boulanger was fêting his triumph with his friends. Whether he had made any preparations for a coup and let the opportunity slip from sheer lack of determination or too much easy self-indulgence I do not pretend to know. But the Home Secretary of the day, M. Constans, a most resolute and unscrupulous man, had taken full precautions on the other side, and Boulanger and his friends would assuredly not have reached the Elysée without a very bloody struggle against the Republican troops, whom M. Constans had concentrated around that palace.

Hour after hour passed. The strain of waiting became almost intolerable. The crowd itself seemed to lose patience. At two o’clock it is said the watching Minister felt convinced that whatever chance Boulanger possessed had evaporated and went off contentedly to bed; whither as a humble spectator I had, out of sheer weariness, retired an hour before. From that night onwards Boulanger’s career seemed to me the saddest of modern times. What a mournful descent, slowly and hopelessly, having the qualities of his defects as well as the defects of his qualities, from being the idol of the people and the triumphant member for Paris to the heart-broken and worn-out adventurer committing suicide over his mistress’s grave. “Character is destiny,” says Carlyle. Yet I have always felt sympathy for poor Boulanger, much as I should have rejoiced to hear that he had been shot, if he had attempted to destroy the Republic on the morrow of his great political victory. He fell a victim to woman and a soft disposition. Did not Disraeli say that a politician should have for his wife or his mistress one whom he returned to at night with repugnance and left in the morning with delight?

It was at this time I had a conversation with M. Clemenceau in his flat in the Rue Clément Marot which made a great impression upon me then and afterwards. I had been talking at length with my friends of the Socialist sections, and it certainly seemed to me that the time had come when this formidable political controversialist and leader should himself take control of the French Government in the transition stage, by consolidating in office the really powerful Radical forces which he led and making ready to hold out his hand to the growing Socialist power. A man who had overthrown no fewer than eighteen administrations incurred by doing so a heavy responsibility himself.

How many more ministerial scalps did this terrible Apache “brave” desire to hang on his political girdle? The question was commonly asked, and Clemenceau himself was the only man who could effectively answer it.

Seated comfortably in his delightful library, surrounded by splendid Japanese works of art, of which at this time he was an ardent collector, M. Clemenceau spoke very freely indeed. Of course, he knew very well that I was no mere interviewer for Press purposes and, indeed, I have always made it a rule to keep such conversations, except perhaps for permitted indiscretions here and there, entirely to myself. Seeing that M. Clemenceau at seventy is to all intents and purposes as alert and vivacious and in every sense active as he was more than twenty years ago, there is no need for me to enlarge upon his quick and almost abrupt delivery, his apt remarks and illustrations, his bright, clever, vigorous face and gestures. I put it to him that Socialism was the basis of the coming political party in France and that, vehement individualist as he might be himself, it was impossible for him to resist permanently the current of the time, or to remain merely a supremely powerful critic and organiser of overthrow. Sooner or later he must succumb to the inevitable and take his seat as President of Council, and to do this with any hope of success or usefulness, he would have to rely in an increasing degree upon Socialist and semi-Socialist support.

To this Clemenceau answered that he was quite contented with his existing position; that he had no wish to enter upon office with its harassing responsibilities and corrupting influence; while as to Socialism that could never make way in France in his day.

“Looking only at the towns,” he said, “you may think otherwise, though even there I consider the progress of Socialism is overrated. But the towns do not govern France. The overwhelming majority of French voters are country voters. France means rural France and the peasantry of France will never be Socialists. Nobody can know them better than my family and I know them. Landed proprietors ourselves – my father’s passion for buying land to pay him 8 per cent with borrowed money for which he had to pay 4 per cent would have finally ruined him, but that our wholesome French law permits gentle interference in such a case – we have ever lived with and among the peasantry. We have been doctors from generation to generation and have doctored them gratuitously, as I do myself both in country and in town. I have seen them very close in birth and in death, in sickness and in health, in betrothal and in marriage, in poverty and in well-being, and all the time their one idea is property; to possess, to own, to provide a good portion for the daughter, to secure a good and well dot-ed wife for the son. Always property, ownership, possession, work, thrift, acquisition, individual gain. Socialism can never take root in such a soil as this. North or south it is just the same. Preach nationalisation of the land in a French village, and you would barely escape with your life, if the peasants understood what you meant. Come with me for a few weeks’ trip through rural France, and you will soon understand the hopelessness of Socialism here. It will encounter a personal fanaticism stronger than its own. Your Socialists are men of the town; they do not understand the men and women of the country.”

Imagine all this put with a life and directness which do not pretend to have reproduced in these sentences and it is easy to understand the effect this statement had upon me. “But,” I urged, “if you render yourself the impossible man, the one person whom reactionaries and revolutionaries alike are anxious to get rid of, is it not possible that the extremes will combine against you and oust you from your seat in the Var?” “Let them try that and I don’t envy them their undertaking,” was his retort. I was speaking without any knowledge; but strange to say this is precisely what occurred.

Backed up by the persistent personal attacks of the Petit Journal and the unpopularity engendered by malignant misrepresentation of his friendship for England and calumnies about the Panama Canal, the Catholics and Socialists actually did combine and turned Clemenceau out of a constituency which he was justified in thinking would be his for life. Anticipating events again somewhat, I remember when I wrote and said I was very sorry he had been defeated his letter in reply showed that he was very bitter against Socialists for having taken any part in his reverse, and even brought a little of his annoyance to bear upon me.

Our conversation on this occasion was brought to a close in rather an amusing way. A card was handed to him, “W.T. Stead.” “Shall we have him in?” asked Clemenceau courteously. “Certainly,” I answered, and Clemenceau advanced to the door, I following just behind him expecting to see that well-known personage. It was not Mr. Stead, however, who entered, but one of his young men. No sooner did his eye light upon me than to our astonishment he drew back a pace or so. “You know Mr. Hyndman?” said Clemenceau. “Yes,” said the new-comer, shaking his head solemnly, “I should think I do know Mr. Hyndman, and it is no thanks to him that I am uninjured or even alive here at this moment: I was in the Riding School the other night and I think myself lucky to have got away with my life.” I couldn’t help laughing. “Ho, Ho,” I gasped out, “you must have been at the reporters’ table,” and I laughed more. I then took leave of M. Clemenceau and left the explanation of both the scare and the laughter to his visitor.

What had happened was this: – Not long before we had had the demonstration known as the “Bloody Sunday” meeting, when the unfortunate man Linnell was killed and Burns and Cunninghame Graham were haled into custody for having made an attempt to capture Trafalgar Square from the police and soldiery. They had been sentenced to a month’s imprisonment and on their release a great meeting of welcome was held, got up chiefly by Mr. Stead, in the Riding School near Bryanston Square. Michael Davitt was in the chair, and all the London Radical members had been invited to attend and were present on the platform. The place, which would hold fully 5,000 people, was packed to suffocation, and there was only one small door at the end by which to get either in or out.

At first all went well and the proceedings were most harmonious. I had gone there without having the slightest intention of speaking and sat quite at the back of the platform, where I thought nobody would see me. However, after Davitt, Burns, Graham, Stead and two or three Parliament men had spoken there arose a cry for me. Davitt very properly – for my name was not announced – refused to call upon me. Then the shouting grew louder and more and more insistent. Davitt looked round to me and I shook my head. At last I was obliged to come forward and address the crowded hall. I began peacefully enough; but I had not spoken for more than five minutes or so, when the sight of those twelve Radical M.P.’s who had never done anything for the unemployed, nor helped our fight for free speech in any way, stirred my anger, and turning upon them I asked, “What on earth are these men doing here?” Then I commented upon their individual shortcomings and was getting on very well with, at any rate, the more advanced portion of the audience, when suddenly an enraged Radical crying out “you infernal firebrand” rushed at me with the evident intention of assaulting me. Thereupon, before I could do anything, one of our people attacked him, and catching him a blow full on the jaw with his fist knocked him clean off the platform on to the reporters’ table.

Then there were what the French call “movements in various senses” throughout the Hall; Social-Democrats jumping over the benches and coming to the front to protect me, those whom they trampled upon objecting to these methods of intervention very vigorously. An indescribable hubbub ensued. A free fight raged on every side of the reporters, who themselves were in danger of serious injury. From one end of the Hall to the other turmoil and disturbance reigned supreme. I have been in a good many rough and tumble affrays in the course of my life, but never did I see anything much more dangerous than this. For, as I have said, there was only one small door at the very end of the Riding School, and how the five thousand people were to get through it without loss of life nobody could tell, the personal altercations and fisticuff encounters being so very general and the pressure towards the sole exit so very heavy.

I take it that this scene presented itself to the mind of Mr. Stead’s young man when he espied me behind M. Clemenceau and remembered how very vigorous the struggle had been all round him. Happily in the end no bones were broken and no lives were lost. The Social-Democrats made a circle round me and got me out safe and sound; but for some years afterwards Radicals who were present seemed to have an objection to being on the same platform as myself, and even cherished a certain prejudice against me as a person who had no regard for the general comfort.

On leaving M. Clemenceau, with my mind full of his predictions about the future of Socialism in France and the impossibility of converting peasants to our views, I went off to Dr. Paul Brousse and put to him M. Clemenceau’s pessimist opinion. Brousse was at this time the leader of the Possibilists and certainly no thorough-going Marxist. But it seemed to me his economic outlook was sound enough.

“Socialism is quite sure to make way in our towns,” he said, “as the great industry spreads and the small producers and small distributors feel the pressure of the competition from big centralised factories and stores. Everywhere the tendency is manifestly in that direction, though, as you know, I do not fully share the opinions of Guesde and Lafargue or your own. As to the country we shall make way there too, though in a different way. Of course, Clemenceau is right enough when he says that the peasants are devoted to property and that to preach nationalisation of the land in the villages would be suicidal. But we shall gain ground all the same, and our methods of spreading our views must be modified to suit each district.

“Thus we have had a terrible attack of the phylloxera in the wine districts. Ask the peasants where the disease began, they will tell you in the vineyards of the great proprietors. ‘And who took the measures for checking the disease and discovered the remedy?’ ‘The State’: they know that. ‘And who benefited first and most by the action of the State?’ ‘The great owners who introduced the disease.’ So we can show by actual example that collective action may be most advantageous, but that under the existing conditions the rich chiefly benefit.

“Then, again, machinery and manures are becoming in many districts even more valuable to the peasant working his own land than the land itself; but he has at present great difficulty in procuring a sufficiency of either. Put it to him whether the supply of both by the Commune would not place him in a better position, even if others gained as well as himself, and he would at once admit that collective organisation in this direction might do great good. The word ‘Socialism’ need never be used at all; but the ideas of national and communal organisation and administration would soon find their road into his mind. In this way the peasant’s conception of the sanctity of private and the curse of public ownership would gradually be shaken, and he would be on the path to practical Socialism before he knew what was going on.”

I have always thought that this exposition of Brousse’s as to what might and ought to be done was quite admirable, and though events have not taken precisely the course he indicated they have certainly entirely falsified M. Clemenceau’s forecast, as he himself came to admit. Indeed he said plainly afterwards that in 1889, when he talked with me, he had not declared, as I hold he did, that Socialism could never make way in France but that a Socialist Government could never be possible in France; “I do not say so now” (1906), he added.

What sudden changes occur in life. In that year I asked Clemenceau, Jaurès and Vaillant to lunch to meet Lady Warwick, who was then in Paris, at Marguéry’s. Vaillant could not come but Jaurès and Clemenceau, who were then very good friends, both came and a most delightful conversation we had. Clemenceau was, as always, spontaneously brilliant and agreeable, and Jaurès was in his own way equally pleasant. I specially remember two things in connection with that luncheon. Clemenceau would not have it that anything really valuable could come out of the English proletariat. They were incapable of any high ideals for their own class. “In short,” said he, “la classe ouvrière en Angleterre est une classe bourgeoise”; and so far, I am compelled to admit, with the deepest regret, this caustic appreciation of my toiling countrymen is in the main correct.

As we drove away from the famous restaurant we spoke of Clemenceau almost, from the political point of view, in the same sense as Heine referred to Alfred de Musset, “Ce jeune homme” – Clemenceau at sixty-seven was quite young – “d’un si beau passé.” It seemed impossible that with all his great and universally-recognised ability he should again come right to the front. Yet within six months, having arrived at an understanding with M. Rouvier, this remarkable man was virtually master of France, and shortly thereafter President of Council and of course Premier. From this position he dislodged himself quite unnecessarily in a fit of temper. “I went in with an umbrella and I come out with a stick,” said he as he left his official quarters. Always short of money, he never failed in humour at any period of his life, and at the height of his power and reputation was as thoroughly bon garçon as when he was in a position of “greater freedom and less responsibility.”

When also he took MM. Briand, Viviani and Millerand into his Cabinet he showed clearly to the world at large how completely he had changed his mind as to the need for conciliating some portion of the Socialist forces in order to carry on a stable Republican Government on advanced lines. However much, too, I may object to such alliances it betokened a certain wideness of mind and political sagacity for a statesman of Clemenceau’s strong individualist opinions thus to accept the growth of collectivist doctrine.

One important portion of M. Clemenceau’s adventurous career I have not spoken of. It is that in which he first made his place as the ablest journalist in France. Looking back on the Dreyfus affair, which I may treat a little more in detail when speaking of my friends Liebknecht and Jaurès, it is scarcely possible, even for Englishmen who were in France at the time, to recall the almost inconceivable fury which raged against those who took the side of the Jew Officer. Assassination and massacre were in the air. The whole city of Paris palpitated with conflicting emotions. On the day when Henry’s suicide, or murder, became known my wife and I happened to be shopping. Wherever we went it seemed as if some great domestic affliction had fallen upon the people we saw.

But even this was a quiet episode compared to the excitement at other critical periods of this famous case. Throughout, Clemenceau was in the very forefront of the fight. His articles day by day were more formidable than dynamite shells to the anti-semitic and reactionary elements over against him, and among the gallant band who were fighting against the full fury of combined militarism and priestcraft there was no such telling combatant as he; not even Jaurès in the Petite République writing up to nearly the level of Clemenceau in L’Aurore. The trial of Zola was perhaps the hottest period of all that long and violent conflict. The Court smelt of suppressed slaughter. Massacre had been, it is said, resolved upon if Zola had been acquitted and Clemenceau told me himself – and he does not know what fear is – that he was quite certain that, had Zola not been condemned, not a prominent Dreyfusard in the Court or in the corridors would have escaped with his life. A list of the men to be “removed” had been drawn up, and if a foreigner who knows Paris pretty well may judge at all of what was going on, I can have no doubt that at more than one other moment the butchery of Dreyfus’s prominent supporters, and consequent Civil War of a desperate character, was quite within the bounds of possibility.

Well, I have not forgotten that through all this time of stress and strain Clemenceau never faltered for an instant. Whether it was wise of some of the Socialists to throw themselves so completely into the fray, to the exclusion for the time being of almost all else, is a debatable point. But when we remember how stoutly Clemenceau fought side by side with men who at that time were no friends of his, and certainly greatly to his own disadvantage, it seems to me that a less intolerant view might well be taken of his later doings. To my mind he is always a great Frenchman who has done credit to his race.


Last updated on 30.7.2006