Alexis de Tocqueville

by Professor Hugh Brogan

  There would be little point in further discussion of Tocqueville’s relations with his mother. There seems to be no doubt that he was distressed by her sufferings and sorrowed for his loss; that does not do away with the impression formed of earlier years. How little we know is sharply demonstrated by a surprising passage in a letter to Eugène Stoffels: ‘Marie deeply regrets my mother, who was always very good to her.’ Is it possible that Louise de Tocqueville, in the end, had not objected to her son’s choice of a wife?7

  Her death was followed by a distribution of some of the family property. Alexis was the chief beneficiary. It is tempting to see a cause and effect here, but it is plain from the marriage contract that such a settlement was pending even before the death of the comtesse. It seems that Alexis and Marie were expected to take possession of the chateau and lands of Tourlaville, just outside Cherbourg; perhaps the death and obsequies actually held things up.8 Be that as it may, in April, Tocqueville set off to inspect the place. He did not take Marie with him, on the grounds that ‘one can’t make a woman go travelling at this season’ – not, at least, in the Cotentin, where the roads were still dreadful, ‘mere lanes, just broad enough to admit a horse and his burden’. Tourlaville, today beautifully restored and meticulously maintained – it is one of Cherbourg’s chief tourist attractions – might have been expected to appeal to him: it had a romantic and sinister history, which in 1604 had culminated in the execution for incest of the young châtelain and his sister; but it was nearly derelict, and the demesne buildings were let to a farmer. It would cost 1,000,000 francs to put in order. So after long negotiations Alexis instead took possession of the family’s cradle, the château, lands and village of Tocqueville itself; and in the summer of 1837 he began to make it his home.

  His choice was not altogether free. The chateau was part of the family patrimony, and no Tocqueville would have dreamed of realizing capital by selling it, if it could be avoided: for one thing, land was much the safest available investment. This attitude was wholly representative of what Tocqueville, idiosyncratically, loved to call his caste. As François Furet has explained, a caste, in Tocqueville’s thought, was not so much a group closed to all who were born outside it as a group deprived of all political power and therefore all the more fiercely determined to preserve its compensatory privileges.9 After the fall of the Bourbons the legitimist nobles, dislodged from political office and social sway, retired to their chateaux to wait for the better times which never came, although for fifty years they hoped that the peasants at least would always follow the lead of their former masters. Disillusionment was slow in coming, and Tocqueville died before it was complete. Not that he was a supporter of the Bourbons; but during his years in the Cotentin, and especially while he served as deputy and representative, his correspondence constantly shows him playing a role from which he gained deep personal satisfaction: that of the benevolent leader of the countryside, a sort of mini-monarch. It was the possession of the domain of Tocqueville which made this possible, although, in another small demonstration of his fidelity to democratic principle, he always rejected the title of comte which went with it (even if many tradesmen insisted on putting M. le Comte or M. le Vicomte on their bills).10

  Once installed, Tocqueville developed a strong personal devotion to his chateau. It was a commitment second only to his marriage: André Jardin rightly says that it was ‘perhaps the happiest passion of his life.’ He liked the feeling of identification with family, provincial and national history that the place gave him, and it may well have strengthened his bond with his father. For Comte Hervé was deeply attached to the scene of his childhood, in spite of the changes which time and farming activity had wrought on it; he was hurt when Hippolyte dismissed it as dreary. He never seems to have contemplated returning to live there himself, but he came on frequent visits to Alexis. And no doubt he encouraged the works of restoration undertaken by Alexis and Marie (especially, at first, by Marie) over the years. It was a family trait: Hervé had devoted himself to the embellishment of Verneuil during his years there, and nowadays the grounds of Nacqueville, Tourlaville and Tocqueville testify to the degree to which his sons followed his example and that of his father, Comte Bernard.11

  Finally, we must remember the pea-patch of Verneuil. Alexis de Tocqueville was born in Paris and resided there, some of the time, in almost every year of his life; but he never seems to have identified himself as a Parisian, though he had many Parisian attitudes. At Tocqueville he rediscovered the happiness which he had known as a child in the only settled home he had ever had. He greatly enjoyed settling down with Marie in the rue de Bourgogne, but once her efforts had begun to make Tocqueville habitable there was no contest. He became, in the fullest sense, ‘Tocqueville of that ilk’.12

  It is difficult to form an accurate idea of the chateau in Tocqueville’s time, or of all the changes which he made there. In 1828 he referred to it as an old ruin, and was still doing so when he went to live there nine years later. The spell of the place was slow to be felt, partly because of building works. It is amusing to watch his attitude altering. In June 1837 (when, admittedly, he was ill) he wrote to Francisque de Corcelle: ‘I find our poor gentilhommière a thousand times uglier now that I am taking thought for our future guests. It is abominable.’ If Corcelle came he must prepare to live in the middle of a farmyard. ‘Chickens, pigs, turkeys and geese are the objects of recreation which will catch your eye ...’ A few days later he concedes that the chateau is delightful in summer, though it must be frightful in winter; he and Marie enjoy going for rides together, there are few neighbours to bother them, the tranquillity is marvellous for his work – he feels happier than he has for ages. His contentment is completed, he confesses, by his position in the village. ‘I meet absolutely none of those hateful attitudes which divide the upper from the lower classes almost everywhere in France and make the atmosphere so unhealthy for the rich. On the contrary, I enjoy a respect of which I can boast, for it is not accorded on my account, but to the memory of my grandmother.’ But then Marie began the work of rebuilding and repairing. It had to be done, but Tocqueville hated to find himself surrounded by workmen, ‘a detestable race, noisy, gnawing animals, not at all the right neighbours for a philosopher like me’. He left the business entirely to his wife and shut himself up in the little room which was all that she let him keep. ‘You see that I am a model husband.’ But when, next summer, the work still went on and he was chased from room to room (‘just now we are confined to our bedrooms’), his patience, never his strong point, wore thin. He rejoiced when work had to be suspended for a time because the supply of seasoned timber had run out.13

  Henry Reeve, visiting in the summer of 1844, was to be struck by the likeness of the chateau to the peelhouses of Teviotdale, and remarked that it had probably been built for similar purposes: ‘the Cotentin, lying within eighteen leagues of the Isle of Wight, may be considered as a border district in relation to England.’ Nassau Senior has left a good physical description of the chateau, which he visited in 1850 and 1861:

  Creepers in great luxuriance cover the walls up to the first floor windows. The little park consists of from thirty to forty acres, well wooded and traversed by an avenue ... leading from the road to the front of the house. To the west the ground rises to a wild common commanding the sea, the lighthouses of Gatteville, Barfleur, La Hogue, and a green plain covered with woods and hedgerow trees, and studded with church towers and spires of the picturesque forms of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. It has no grand features, except the sea and the rocky coast of the Cotentin peninsula, but it is full of variety and beauty. I can understand Tocqueville’s delight in the house and in the country.

  Senior’s bedroom, in one of the round towers, had granite walls six feet thick. He does not mention the pond or small lake in the garden south of the house, but otherwise the chateau apparently looked much as it does today.14

  In one respect only was the chateau defective: it was damp, even i
n summer, and bad for the health of both husband and wife, especially in winter. According to Marie it killed Alexis in the end. But before that it gave him years and years of as much content as he was capable of.

  It was as well that he had such a refuge. There can be no doubt that he needed undisturbed quiet for his writing, unattainable in Paris since he had become famous. It was there that he had finished his promised article for Mill, ‘État social et politique de la France avant et depuis 1789’, which turned out to be a sketch for his Ancien Régime.15 But for more sustained work he needed country quiet. Originally he found it at Baugy, a chateau much like Tocqueville, but in the end he outstayed his welcome. Between 1836 and 1838 he lived there for months at a time: indeed, in the spring of 1838 Édouard and Alexandrine abandoned their home for Paris, leaving Alexis and Marie in possession. It is difficult to acquit Alexis of inconsideration. It was all very well for him to shut himself up in his turret-room and get on with the second part of his Démocratie; Édouard no doubt had daily business; but Marie had nothing to do; she was only a guest, and eventually she and Alexandrine got on each other’s nerves. Tocqueville himself noticed what he called Alexandrine’s feebleness and indolence, but he loved her affectionate heart. Still, it is no wonder that the breach which had opened between the two women was never really closed, except perhaps during the last illness of Alexis. It was worse with Marie and Emilie. After a visit to Nacqueville in the autumn of 1838 Tocqueville wrote despairingly to Kergorlay that the two would never get on: ‘Their good points and their bad are alike opposed to each other.’ Besides, Émilie was frivolous and extravagant and a bad influence on Hippolyte, who was extravagant himself, and a bad manager of his finances (Marie was an excellent manager, no doubt in part because she had always had to live on a limited income). The two couples had little to do with each other over the next twenty years, though they lived so near. The bond between the male Tocquevilles – the father and the brothers – was too strong to be broken, but Alexandrine and Émilie joined in mocking Marie, behind her husband’s back, for her English accent, English taste and English passion for small dogs (which last was shared by Alexis). Marie went on her way tranquilly, and, once she was in full command of her own house, concentrated on looking after her husband and getting on good terms with his friends. She became particularly close to Beaumont and his wife Clémentine, a granddaughter of La Fayette, whom he married in June 1836. 16

  Soon afterwards, in July, Tocqueville took Marie on a two-month tour to Switzerland by way of Metz and Strasbourg. It might have been a belated wedding-tour, and in some ways assumed that aspect; but the main reason for it was that Marie was unwell, and they hoped that the waters of a Swiss spa might help her. She had always suffered from acute menstrual pains,17 and Tocqueville may already have begun to fear that the marriage would be childless. At Metz they stayed with Eugène Stoffels, who like his friend had recently married;* and there the two men had lively discussions of the Démocratie, its doctrines, and Tocqueville’s ideas for its sequel. Tocqueville seems to have been at his most eloquent, but when he had gone his way Stoffels, to his sorrow and surprise, found himself unconvinced, and after at least one sleepless night wrote to say why. As Kergorlay often complained, Stoffels had a solid strain of Germanic common sense, and he knew Tocqueville’s character very well. It seemed to him that his friend was letting his ideas run away with him. Tocqueville wanted to rally all decent Frenchmen to him, without regard to party; as to the dynastic question, he was happy to let the people have whichever monarch they voted for; he wanted the communes of France to be self-governing, and to give all their citizens municipal voting rights; he wanted to abolish the Chamber of Peers, replacing it with a second chamber derived vaguely from some American model; he wanted to reduce the army in size and cost; he wanted freedom of the press and an extended jury system. All this amounted to the Republic without the name and, said Stoffels, was at present politically impracticable. Tocqueville might think him too much influenced by fear, prejudice and ignorance; but was it not equally likely that Tocqueville himself was being carried away by an idée fixe? Such was the weakness of great men: Napoleon had been ruined by clinging to his ‘continental system’. If Tocqueville published a book advocating his programme, everyone would respond like Stoffels, and his brilliant political prospects would be at an end. ‘Forgive me, dear Alexis, for all the ideas and expressions in this letter which may have wounded you.’ But he had had to write it. He felt like a mother who sees her child running into danger.18

  Tocqueville replied from Berne. Stoffels had been afraid of angering him (he knew his friend’s uncertain temper), but ‘I am not yet such a great man as not to know that one of the best benefits of friendship is a friend’s sincere and truthful advice.’ Stoffels had sketched his proposals accurately, but he thought the disagreement with him was a mere nuance. He himself had for years been appalled by the split between men who especially prized morality, religion and order and those who loved liberty and equality more even than law. He wanted to show that such a confrontation was mistaken and unnecessary. ‘Such is my general proposition. You understand it; you share it.’ But (he said) he loved liberty more passionately, more sincerely than Stoffels. He loved liberty as much as he loved morality, and was not afraid to sacrifice his peace and quiet to obtain it; but he was ‘a liberal of a new kind’, not to be confounded with most democrats of the day. Whether he would be able to make a mark with his doctrine only God could say. It was perhaps presumptuous to try.

  Tell me, if you like, that my undertaking is a rash one, too much for my abilities; even that it is a dream, a chimera. But let me at least believe that the enterprise is something fine – great – noble; that it is worth the commitment of a man’s time, fortune and life; and that it would be better to fail in it than to succeed in something else. To persuade men that respect for the laws of God and man is the best means of remaining free, and that liberty is the best means of remaining upright and religious cannot, you say, be done. I too am tempted to think so. But the thing is true, all the same, and I will try to say so at all costs.19

  This affirmation was probably enough to satisfy Stoffels that his friend had not become a dangerous radical, but evidently both men knew that the central, practical point could not be refuted: in that age Tocqueville’s programme (which he had, of course, already laid out in the Démocratie) was never going to rally most Frenchmen. Charles de Rémusat,* who admired Tocqueville and got to know him well after he entered the Chamber of Deputies, made much the same point in his memoirs:

  Tocqueville’s great merit was that he was the author of his own opinions ... Thus he had become not only a liberal, but a democrat, that is, he was convinced that the world was going to belong to democracy. It demonstrated great power and intellectual independence in a great-grandson of Malesherbes. But as he disdained legitimism without hating legitimists, as he was untainted by any rancour against the Bourbons and their party, his liberalism, purely the work of his reason, was irreproachable but cold, and only moderately persuasive.20

  The political career on which Tocqueville was soon to embark would constantly be bedevilled by his inability to relate his programme to the actualities of politics – to the struggle between Left and Right, between what were called the parties of movement and resistance. This was by no means entirely his own fault. Left and Right under the July Monarchy, which excluded all extremes from the parliamentary arena, were confusingly fluid terms. Tocqueville was never able to make an effective choice between them. But although he may have already begun to fear such a fate, it was not yet certain, and anyway he was still primarily a successful author, who did not need to worry about political expediency.

  The Swiss journey was no great success. Tocqueville found that as a married man he could not pursue his usual strenuous investigative routine in a foreign country. Marie got no better; in fact the waters of Baden, although recommended by the ladies and doctors of Berne, made her worse. Tocqueville did not find Baden ag
reeable: there was nothing to it but a deep ravine through which naturally hot water was piped to bath-houses; the air was humid and smelled slightly of sulphur. Tocqueville would have been extremely bored but for the books in his trunk. He read Machiavelli’s History of Florence and Plato’s Laws; he was not captivated by either of them. Machiavelli, indeed, he rejected: here was the grandfather of Thiers, quite irreligious and impressed only by success (it is a pity that Tocqueville never read the Discorsi). Medieval Florence, in its violence and corruption, was useless to the student of modern democracy. He respected but was puzzled by Plato, who wanted to stop the evolution of music by law and never thought of doing without slaves; and although he strongly advocated aristocratic government, he was an ultra-democrat in social arrangements, wanting all property to be held in common. He too was not usable.21

  Tocqueville made a brief study of the Swiss political system, and decided that he did not think much of it. He found it inferior to both the American and the British.

  The kingdom of England seems much more republican than the Helvetic republic ... He who travels in the United States feels involuntarily and instinctively so convinced that the institutions, taste for and spirit of liberty are bound up with every custom of the American people that he can’t conceive of any government for it except a republic. And in the same way, one can’t imagine that the English could possibly live except under a free government ... In those two countries liberty appears to me even stronger in the manners than in the laws. In Switzerland, it seems to me stronger in the laws than in the manners.22