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TO M. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT. - Alexis de Tocqueville, Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2 [1861]

Edition used:

Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville. Translated from the French by the translator of Napoleon’s Correspondence with King Joseph. With large Additions. In Two Volumes (London: Macamillan, 1861). 2 vols.

Part of: Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, 2 vols.

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TO M. GUSTAVE DE BEAUMONT.

I have just received your letter of the 8th, my dear friend. You are surprised at my failure. I own that I was so myself. I was not acquainted with the constituency, and my friends made sure of a majority of eighty votes. I have already alluded to the causes of my defeat, which were the influence of the Government, democratic excitement, and my opponent’s large fortune. You and I, my dear Beaumont, are scarcely aware of the power exercised in France by money when unallied to noble birth, and seconded by the popular hatred against the nobles. The election was accompanied by cries of “Down with the nobles!” Notwithstanding this, all my adversaries acknowledge that I have none of the prejudices which they ascribe to the aristocracy; but these men feel towards us something similar to the instinctive repugnance felt by Americans towards the Blacks. For some time reason struggled against this instinct; but instinct has gained the day. Still, though I am beaten, I am not cast down. . . .

We are then free, dear friend, and I cannot tell you how gladly and how eagerly I return to study and to work. If you will, the next few years shall be happily and usefully spent by us: believe me, the future is our own. I never have felt so sure of this. You retire to the Grange to work; I approve this plan all the more, as I am going for the same purpose to Baugy. . . . . I forgot to say that we are bringing out the sixth edition of my “Democracy.”

TO THE SAME.

I was just going to write to you, dear friend, when your letter came. This is not a mere boast but a solemn truth. Indeed I had long been intending so to do, for I think that our communications are becoming much too slow. We are too completely absorbed by Ireland and America, and we must beware lest we return from those countries strangers to each other.

My life here is much the same as yours at La Grange. Hitherto it suits me very well; my health is excellent, and I do my very best: which does not mean that I am satisfied. Were you ever thoroughly satisfied with your own writing? As far as I can remember, such a thing has never happened to me. It always seems above or below, to the right or to the left of the aim; never exactly hitting the ideal that each of us has ever in view, but that always escapes our grasp. I know that there is a proverb which says that this happens only to those who are capable of great things. But I have always thought this a mistake. I have known many people who very sincerely believed their own performances to be bad, and whose performances were bad indeed. This effectually cured me of fancying myself a great man only because I felt that I was a dunce, and was sorry for it.

In spite of my literary tribulations, I will tell you in the strictest confidence, that I find my work get on so well that I shall stay here till the end of April. . . . .

Louis de Kergorlay has just spent four days with us. At that time I was quite entangled in a mesh of ideas of which I could not find the clue. It was a regular intellectual cul-de-sac; but he brought me out of it in a few hours. His mind is a mine of wealth which he alone is unable to work.