BOOKS.
G &MB ETTA.* THE title of this book in French is Gambetta par Gambetta, and that gives a truer notion of its contents than the present English title. The work is really a reconstruction of Gambetta's early life by himself as told in letters, most of which were written to his family. From this point of view the book is of great importance and of absorbing interest. As a Life, properly so called, it will be disappointing to those who expect to find in it a regular or a complete biography. The English translation contains three hundred and fifty- eight pages, and it is not until p. 298 that we reach the end of the Empire and come to the Government of National Defence. Or, to put the matter in another way, Gambetta's public life, his great career from 1870 to 1882, is, we must not say crowded, we can hardly say sketched, we can only say indicated or hinted, in some forty pages. We do not point this out as a matter of criticism or of complaint, because we have nothing but praise and gratitude for this volume so far as it goes. We wish only to show intending readers precisely what they will or will not find in M. Gheusi's work, so that they may not be disappointed. The larger aspects of Gambetta's life are to be found elsewhere : in the biographies by M. Depasse and M. Henri Thurat ; in M. Joseph Reinach's Le Ministere Gambetta ; and last, but not least, in the clear and eloquent pages of M. Hanotaux's Histoire de /a France Contemporaine. No book perhaps has ever described Parliaments and their political atmosphere so well. We hope that M. Hanotaux will continue for many years to be a contemporary of French history, and to record it in his most charming, distinguished, and classic prose. Whatever that history itself may do, the historian will certainly immortalise his age and win the admiring gratitude of posterity. There is also a great deal of interesting material about Gambetta in M. Debidour's L'Eglise Catkolique et l'Etat sous la Troisieme Republique, 1870-1889. These useful volumes are rather a compilation than a com- position; they are a mine of information waiting for a master's hand, and they might well be translated into English, because they could lose nothing by the process. Besides these various authorities on Gambetta's public life, we have had more recently the pathetic and vibrating Coeur de Gambetta, a revelation of love and tragedy, which has been turned into English by the translator of the present volume. Let us add with regard to it, before we deal with Gambetta himself, that the translation is very good. We do not know whether the translator's Christian name implies, as it indicates, an origin that is partly or wholly French ; but at any rate she is at home in both languages, and she has an appreciation for the genius and idioms of each. If there be a defect in her rendering, it is perhaps that sometimes she makes her English a little more boisterous than the French original would justify, as when she turns the customary and harmless Mon Dieu into the more dubious " By God." There seems to be only one misprint in her volume. On p. 178 " rules " should be rulers. Otherwise, let us repeat, everything in the workmanship of the volume is good. Though the spirit of the letters is obviously French, very deeply tinged with Italian, yet they are given to us in a sound English form, which avoids all the usual taints and pitfalls of a translation. As Gambetta was not only a Southerner, but a florid and very oratorical Southerner, pouring himself out in familiar correspondence, a translation into English might easily have been very trying. The success of the translator is thus no common achievement, and it is far removed from the average level of such hack-work. The book lives and moves with a dignity of its own.
Leon Gambetta was born in 1838. His father was a small tradesman of Cahors, that place of evil name in Dante ; and
• Gambetta: Lift and Letters. By P. B. Gheusi. Translated by Violette hi. Youtagu. LOndon: T. Fisher Unwin; [128. 61. net.]
he dealt in pottery and groceries. The family was of Italian origin and of seafaring life. Both instincts were strong in Gambetta, who, though a patriotic and heroic Frenchman, was drawn irresistibly by Italian feeling and sympathy. He exemplified in his own person that "paix latine " as M. Hanotaux calls it, the "genie latin " in the phrase of Anatole France, which unites in a common bond, of civilisation rather than of blood, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, and their descendants in the New World. Gambetta's father, before settling in business, served as cabin-boy on a ship in which Garibaldi was an officer and the future Pius IX. a passenger.
At four years of age Leon Gambetta went to a school kept by some Fathers of the Sacred Heart, and thence to the Petit Seminaire of Montfaucon. When he was nine he "found it easier to talk than to write." He was a born orator. Taste, industry, and an irrepressible desire strengthened his natural gifts. As a boy he would play truant from school to hear pleadings in the Court at Cahors ; and later on, in Paris, be could not keep himself from debating societies, the Assembly, and the tribunals. These instincts, and his elocutionary successes at school, decided his future, against his father's wishes. He was destined for trade, but a higher destiny brought him as a law student to Paris in 1857.
Quite early in life he was a zealous politician, and a Republican. In 1848 be wrote "Long live Cavaignac," whose name he misspelled ; "Down with Bonaparte," whom he described as being as "stupid as an ostrich." But he was not onlya politician with a gift of eloquence. He was a considerable scholar, " distinguished for his wonderful aptitude for the Greek language," devoted to French history and literature, devouring books on law and political economy, endowed with a wonderful memory, a passion for work, a Herculean frame though a defective constitution, a strong and keen intelli- gence, and the firm resolve to think for himself. Certainly he was not irreligious, either in youth or later, but the contrary ; though he had all an Italian's dislike for clerical misgovernment, and a full share of most Frenchmen's contempt for the clergy. This came out even in his school exercises. We find in every direction that the little Gambetta was the exact miniature of the future patriot, orator, and statesman.
His life in Paris was an heroic battle with poverty and difficulties. The severity of the struggle, the reality of his privations, and the buoyant courage with which they were borne, can only be appreciated in the letters themselves. All this part of his career is a fine illustration of French domestic life at its best. We find a deep and genuine home attach- ment, the utmost respect and affection for parents, great self- denial for children with a generous sympathy for their aspirations, and a keen sense of family interests and obliga- tions. Gambetta's father is an admirable figure, with his industry, probity, shrewd common-sense, and a rather caustic irony mellowed by real affection. The mother, the aunt, the sister are fine examples of devoted and sensible French women. All this may be commended warmly to English readers, many of whom fail to appreciate what is most sound and, we will add, most characteristic in French life. It is such persons as are here described who have built up and still maintain the true greatness of France.
Gambetta's letters give a most interesting account of Paris during the last twelve years of the Empire. Those who remember it in those days can vouch for the truth of his impressions, though of course there is another side ; and the views of the Opposition should be corrected by, let us say, Merimee's inimitable correspondence with Panizzi. If the Empire committed many faults, the Liberals are not blame- less, and least of all M. Thims, who is so largely responsible for the disasters of 1870.
Gambetta, thanks to his talents and his generous nature, made many good friends in his student days. When he had once started his progress was quick and sure. The eloquent barrister soon became a political force, and his powers of organisation brought him to the front in politics. At the fall of the Empire he became Minister of the Interior and of War. In fact he was literally a Dictator, in the chaos of all regular government. By magic, as it seemed, but in reality by sheer hard work and burning zeal, he raised armies out of the ground; armies which did wonders, which saved the honour of France more splendidly than Francis I. saved it after Pavia. That the terrible year was not a year of disgrace, but of imperishable glory, of indestructible patriotism, is due to Gambetta, who inspired the country with his antique and heroic virtues. Had France been united, had there been any- thing like a solid Government, the overwhelming Prussian force might have beaten itself to pieces in vain. Certainly Gambetta's desperate war was right.
Hardly less wonderful was the political campaign which followed in the few years that were left to him. His long duel with Thiess, the most astute of schemers ; his overthrow of MacMahon and the Monarchists; his rally against political clerical ism ; the inauguration and launching of the Republic,— all these things were triumphs of oratory and of political genius. They are told magnificently by M. Hanotaux. It was a splendid achievement and an heroic story. Like all heroes, Gambetta, ended in tragedy. His statesmanship was not allowed to be proved. After his splendid leadership he made the mistake of taking the Presidency of the Chamber, where his gifts had no scope, and were, indeed, against him. When at length he was head of a Ministry, it fell in less than three months, and within a year he was dead, at forty-four. His ago and his achievements together are a sufficient epitaph. He was a man of large nature and heroic mind, certainly one of the great men of the nineteenth century. And his work lives after him in the French Republic, of which he was one of the leading founders, and perhaps the chief moulding influence. Long may it live and prosper on the lines of its great inaugurators, at the head of whom we must place Gambetta.
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