Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow TO HENRY REEVE, ESQ. - Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for Memoir, Letters, and Remains of Alexis de Tocqueville, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Political Theory

TO HENRY REEVE, ESQ. - 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.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO HENRY REEVE, ESQ.

I received your letter, my dear friend, just when I was expecting to see yourself. Well as you write, it was not an equivalent. We had been looking forward to the pleasure of receiving you here, and we had pushed forward most of our brick and mortar works, and adjourned others, so that you would have been less uncomfortable than I feared at first. My library, which has been turned into the drawing-room, neither you nor Mrs. Reeve would have found fault with, for you both of you like and appreciate objects of intellectual value. To increase your regret, I will tell you that you would have fallen here into the midst of a literary workshop. M. Ampère, whom you must know at least by name, is preparing for the press an account of the tour which he has just made in the United States. He is installed at the top of a tower, and I am scribbling underneath him, on the first floor. Now and then we meet in the library, and in the presence of Madame de Tocqueville, who forms the whole audience, read to each other what we have written; we criticise, we object, and we praise; and the time slips away pleasantly. You would not, perhaps, have been afraid of spending a few days in this way. You would have been amused by Ampère’s animated, brilliant, and unaffected conversation.

The elections for our conseil général have just taken place. I refused to be elected for the canton which I formerly represented. I have undergone, indeed, more trouble, made more advances, and taken more steps to prevent my election than I ever did to secure it. My neighbour, Daru, has acted in the same way.

Good-bye. Let me have news of you. Tell Mrs. Reeve how sorry we are, and how we hope to see her next year. You will still find Tocqueville, but not, perhaps, Ampére.