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TO MRS. GROTE. - 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 MRS. GROTE.

Paris, May 31, 1857.

Though you have punished me, my dear Mrs. Grote, by not writing for three months, I must tell you that I delight in the hope of soon seeing you. I hope to be in London in the middle of June, and I need not say that I shall immediately try to find out you and Mr. Grote. Your conversation is a great pleasure, and, like other great pleasures, a rare one. Allow me to enjoy it frequently. London is now the only place for conversation. I have been passing two months in Paris. I have heard scarcely a word worth recollecting. It is not merely that the fools are still fools; but that the clever people are getting foolish.

The charming art of conversation—to touch and to set in motion a thousand thoughts, without dwelling tiresomely on any one—is among the lost arts. It must be sought for in History Hut.* There I shall look for it, unless, as is probable at this time of year, I find you in London. I know that in a great town, and in the “season,” one cannot reasonably hope to get much of one’s friends; but the little that I shall get will be very precious.

I date from Paris that you may have my address, in case, as is not very probable, you should answer me. But in fact I write from the ancient château of Chamarande, about forty miles from Paris, where my wife has lived for the last two months, in order to see her aunt every day. I pass three or four days of the week with her, and the rest in the great town.

Chamarande recalls to me the whole history of the French aristocracy. It is immense; built in the reign of Louis XIII. It used to be surrounded by a large park, planted under Louis XIV. by Lenôtre. It was the seat of a great family, of which the last, Marquis Talaru, died without children a few years ago. Though he chose to be buried here, he forgot to devise the estate. His heirs have sold it in lots. A man who keeps a shop in Paris has bought the park, and also the house; he has not pulled it down, because the materials, being brick, are worth nothing. He lets it in apartments. He has cut down the ancient trees, and plants potatoes in the avenues. Statues of goddesses stand among cabbages. You stumble against broken marbles. The fountains work a saw-mill. The splendour of the idle higher classes is gone. Well-regulated and productive industry has not yet come.* It is a picture of revolutionary destruction; a sad picture which the nations that have not seen the reality should look at.

I am writing without thinking, and scarcely know what I have been saying, or whether it was worth saying; but I have done what I wished, which was to express my real pleasure in the hope of seeing you soon. Remember me to Mr. Grote.

[*]Mrs. Grote’s house, near Burnham.

[*]Chamarande, now the seat of M. de Persigny, is reassuming its former splendour.