When Paul set sail for France aboard the Duchaffault, at the beginning of June 1893, the only person on the dock in Papeete to bid him farewell was his friend Jénot, recently promoted to fleet lieutenant.
5
THE SHADOW OF CHARLES FOURIER
LYON, MAY AND JUNE 1844
In Chalon-sur-Saône as well as in Mâcon, where Flora spent the last week of April and the first few days of May 1844, her tour relied almost entirely on the help of her friendly foes, the Fourierists. They offered their assistance so generously that Flora’s conscience pricked her. How to make plain her differences with these disciples of the deceased Charles Fourier, when they received her and saw her off at stagecoach stations and river landings, and did everything they could to arrange meetings and appointments for her, without offending them? Nevertheless, although it pained her to disillusion them, she did not hide her criticisms of their theories and conduct, which to her seemed incompatible with the task that consumed her: the salvation of humanity.
In Chalon-sur-Saône, the Fourierists organized a meeting for the day after her arrival, in the vast hall of the local Masonic lodge called Perfect Equality. A glance around the crowded room, into which two hundred people were crammed, was enough to make her heart sink. Hadn’t you written them that the meetings should always be small, thirty or forty workers at most? A small number permitted dialogue, personal engagement. An audience like this was distant, cold, unable to participate, obliged merely to listen.
“But madame, there was enormous curiosity to hear you. You come preceded by such fame!” protested Lagrange, the head Fourierist in Chalon-sur-Saône.
“I care nothing for fame, Monsieur Lagrange. I seek effectiveness. And I cannot be effective if I am addressing an anonymous, invisible mass. I like to speak to human beings, and to do that I need to see their faces and make them feel that I want to talk to them, not impose my ideas the way the Pope imposes his on his Catholic flock.”
More alarming than the number of listeners was the social composition of the audience. As Monsieur Lagrange introduced her from the stage, decorated with a little jar of flowers and a wall of Masonic symbols, Flora discovered that three-quarters of those present were bosses, and only a third workers. To come to Chalon-sur-Saône to preach the Workers’ Union to these exploiters! There was no hope for the Fourierists despite the intelligence and honesty of Victor Considérant, who, since the death of the founder in 1837, had presided over the movement. Their original sin, which opened an unbridgeable chasm between you and them, was the same as that of the Saint-Simonians: not believing in a revolution waged by the victims of the system. Both distrusted the ignorant, poverty-stricken masses and maintained with beatific naïveté that society would be reformed thanks to the goodwill and money of bourgeois citizens enlightened by their theories.
The amazing thing was that even now, in 1844, Victor Considérant and his followers were still convinced that they would win over to their cause a handful of rich men who, once converted to Fourierism, would finance a “societary revolution.” In 1826, Charles Fourier had announced in notices in the Paris press that he would be at home every day in Saint-Pierre Montmartre from twelve to two in the afternoon, to explain his social reform projects to noble-minded and justice-seeking industrialists or persons of independent means interested in providing financial assistance. Eleven years later, on the day of his death in 1837, the goodhearted old man with kindly blue eyes, in his eternal black frock coat and white tie—it saddened you to think of it, Andalusa—was still waiting punctually from twelve to two for the visit that never came. Never! Not a single rich man, not a single bourgeois, took the trouble to go and ask him questions or listen to his plans for ending human suffering. And none of the famous names to whom he wrote requesting support for his projects—among them Bolívar, Chateaubriand, Lady Byron, Dr. Francia of Paraguay, and all the ministers of the Restoration and King Louis Philippe—deigned to answer him. And the Fourierists, blind and deaf, continued to trust in the bourgeoisie and mistrust the workers!
Seized by a sudden access of retrospective indignation, imagining poor Charles Fourier sitting in vain every midday in his modest dwelling in the twilight of his life, Flora abruptly changed the subject of her talk. She had been describing the functioning of the future Workers’ Palaces, and now she moved on to sketch a psychological portrait of the present-day bourgeoisie. As she declared that masters were ungenerous, narrow-minded, petty, fearful, mediocre, and wicked, she noticed with glee that her listeners were squirming in their seats as if they were being attacked by squadrons of fleas. When it came time for questions, there was a barbed silence. At last, a furniture factory owner, Monsieur Rougeon, still young but already sporting the comfortable belly of the victor, stood up and said that, given the opinion Madame Tristán had of bosses, he couldn’t explain to himself why she bothered to invite them to join the Workers’ Union.
“For a very simple reason, monsieur. The bourgeoisie has money and the workers don’t. To realize its plans, the Workers’ Union will need funds. It is money we want from the bourgeoisie, not the bourgeoisie themselves.”
Monsieur Rougeon reddened. Indignation made the veins in his forehead stand out.
“Am I to understand, madame, that if I join the Union, I won’t have the right to enter the Workers’ Palaces or use their services, despite paying my dues?”
“Exactly, Monsieur Rougeon. You don’t need those services, because you are able to pay from your own pocket for the education of your children, medical care, and an old age without worries. That isn’t true of the workers, is it?”
“Why should I give my money without receiving anything in return? I’d have to be a fool.”
“Out of generosity, altruism, a spirit of solidarity with the downtrodden. Sentiments that you have difficulty comprehending, I see.”
Monsieur Rougeon left the lodge in a huff, muttering that such an organization would never count him among its supporters. Some people followed him, in accord with his sentiments. From the door, one of them remarked, “It’s true: Madame Tristán is a subversive.”
Later, at a dinner hosted by the Fourierists, upon seeing their hurt and disappointed faces, Flora made a gesture to pacify them. Whatever her differences with Charles Fourier’s disciples, she said, she had so much respect for the learning, intelligence, and integrity of Victor Considérant that once the Workers’ Union was established, she wouldn’t hesitate to put his name forward as a candidate for Defender of the People, the first paid representative of the working class, chosen to defend workers’ rights in the National Assembly. Victor would be a popular spokesman, she was sure, as good as the Irishman O’Connell in the English Parliament. This show of deference toward their leader and mentor lifted their spirits. When they bade her farewell at the inn, they had made peace, and one of them said jokingly that, hearing her speak that night, he had at last understood why she was called Madame-la-Colère.
She couldn’t sleep well. She was upset by what had happened at the Masonic lodge, and she lamented having let herself be carried away by the urge to insult the bourgeoisie rather than concentrating on bringing her message to the workers. You had a foul temper, Florita; at the age of forty-one, you were still unable to control your outbursts. But it was your stubbornness and fits of ill humor that had allowed you to maintain your freedom, and win it back each time you lost it. When you were Monsieur André Chazal’s slave, for example. Or when you became little more than an automaton, a beast of burden, living with the Spence family, at a time when you still knew nothing about the Saint-Simonians, Fourierism, Icarian communism, or the work of Robert Owen in New Lanark, Scotland.
The four days she spent in Mâcon, home of Lamartine, the celebrated poet and member of parliament, her bodily ills beset her again, as if to test her fortitude. To the crippling pains in her uterus and stomach was added fatigue; she was tempted to cancel appointments, visits to the newspapers, and meetings to recruit workers—who were more elusive here than
elsewhere—and simply fall onto the little flowered bed in her room at the lovely Hôtel du Sauvage. She resisted the temptation with a Herculean effort. At night, exhaustion and nerves kept her awake, remembering—she liked to torture herself with these thoughts sometimes, as penance for not being more successful in her struggle—her three years of calvary in the service of the Spences. The family must have been well-to-do, but except on trips its members hardly enjoyed their prosperity, due to thrift, puritanism, and lack of imagination. The husband and wife, Mr. Marc and Mrs. Catherine, must have been in their fifties, and Miss Annie, the younger sister of the former, around forty-five. All three were thin, gawky, rather forbidding in their perpetually black attire, and entirely devoid of curiosity. They hired her as a companion to accompany them on a trip to the Swiss mountains, where they would breathe pure mountain air and scour their lungs, blackened by the soot of London factories. The salary was good; it allowed her to pay the wet nurse for the care of her children and left her something for her personal needs. Her designation as a companion proved to be a euphemism; in truth, she was the trio’s servant. She served them breakfast in bed—their inedible porridge, their toast, and the weak cups of tea that all three drank three or four times a day—washed and ironed their clothes, and helped the horrible sisters-in-law, Mrs. Spence and Miss Annie, to dress after their morning ablutions. She ran errands, took their letters to the post office, and went to the market to buy the insipid biscuits they took with their tea. But she also dusted rooms, made beds, emptied chamberpots, and at mealtimes suffered the daily humiliation of seeing that her portions were half the size of the Spences’. Some staples of the family diet, like meat and milk, were perpetually denied her.
But the worst part of those three years in the Spences’ service wasn’t the mindless drudgery or the numbing routine that kept her on her feet from dawn until dusk. Rather, it was the feeling she began to have soon after she started working for them that the three were making her vanish, robbing her of her status as a woman, a human being, rendering her a lifeless instrument without any sense of dignity or even a soul, to whom the right of existence was granted only in the brief instants she was given orders. She would have preferred that they mistreat her, that they hurl dishes at her head—this, at least, would have made her feel alive. Their indifference—she couldn’t remember if they had ever asked her how she felt, or ventured a kind remark or a single affectionate gesture—offended her in the depths of her soul. In her relationship with her employers, it was her job to work like an animal, perform routine duties all day long, and resign herself to abandoning all dignity, pride, and emotion—to renounce even the feeling of being alive. Nevertheless, when the Spences’ time in Switzerland came to an end and they proposed bringing her back with them to England, she accepted. Why, Florita? Well, of course, how else were you to continue supporting your children, all three of whom were still alive then? It would be difficult, too, for André Chazal to find you in London, and report you to the police there for running away from home. The fear of prison shadowed you all those years.
Dismal memories, Florita. Her three years as a servant shamed her so much that she expunged them from her life story until, much later, André Chazal’s lawyer brought them to public light at the accursed trial. Now the memories assailed her in Mâcon: because she felt so ill, because she was so frustrated by this hideous city of ten thousand souls, all of whom seemed as ugly to her as the houses and streets they inhabited. Although she visited the four trade unions, leaving at each her address and a pamphlet about the Workers’ Union, only two people came to visit her: a cooper and a blacksmith. Neither was of interest. Both confirmed that Mâcon’s trade unions were on the verge of extinction, since now the workshops had found a way to pay lower wages, by hiring farmers and migrant harvest laborers for brief periods of intensive work rather than keeping permanent forces. The workers had left en masse to seek employment in the factories of Lyon. And the farmer-laborers didn’t want to be bothered by union problems because they didn’t consider themselves members of the proletariat but rather country men occasionally employed in the workshops to supplement their income.
The only source of entertainment in Mâcon was Monsieur Champ-vans, the head of the newspaper Le Bien Public, which the illustrious Lamartine edited from Paris by correspondence. A distinguished, cultured man, Champvans treated her with a refinement and courtesy that delighted her despite her political and moral reservations about the bourgeoisie. Politely he hid his yawns as she described the Workers’ Union and explained the ways in which it would transform society. But he treated her to an exquisite lunch at the best restaurant in Mâcon and took her to the country to visit Lamartine’s estate, Le Monceau. The castle of the great democrat and man of letters struck her as an irritating and tasteless ostentation. She was beginning to tire of the visit when Madame de Pierreclos, widow of the poet’s illegitimate son—who, shortly after marrying, had died from tuberculosis at the age of twenty-eight—appeared to show her the grounds. The comely young widow, still a girl, talked to Flora about her tragic love and the state of grief in which she had lived since her husband’s death, determined never to enjoy anything again, and to lead a cloistered life of self-sacrifice until death liberated her from her sufferings.
Hearing such talk from this lovely young woman, whose eyes were filled with tears, annoyed Flora beyond measure. As they strolled among Le Monceau’s flowerbeds, she immediately began to lecture her.
“It saddens me to hear you talk so, madame, but it angers me, too. You are not a victim of misfortune, but a monster of egotism. Excuse my frankness, but you’ll see that I am right. You are young, beautiful, rich—and rather than thanking the heavens for such bounty and making the most of it, you bury yourself alive because a turn of fate saved you from marriage, the worst servitude a woman can endure. Thousands, millions of people are left widows or widowers, and you believe your widowhood is an earth-shattering catastrophe.”
The girl stopped walking and turned as pale as death. She stared at Flora incredulously, wondering if she was insane, or had at just that moment gone mad.
“An egotist because I am loyal to the great love of my life?” she asked.
“No one has the right to squander an opportunity like yours,” Flora retorted. “Forget your mourning, abandon this mausoleum. Start to live. Study, do good, help the millions of human beings who, unlike you, suffer from very real and concrete problems—hunger, sickness, unemployment, ignorance—and are unable to face them. What you have isn’t a problem—it’s a solution. Widowhood saved you from having to discover the slavery that matrimony means for women. Don’t play at being the heroine of a romance novel. Follow my advice: return to life and concern yourself with more generous things than the cultivation of your own pain. And finally, if you don’t want to devote yourself to doing good, enjoy yourself, travel, take a lover. It’s what your husband would have done if you had died of tuberculosis.”
From being cadaverously pale, Madame de Pierreclos flushed bright red. And all at once she began to laugh hysterically, and couldn’t stop for some time. Flora watched her, amused. When she took her leave, the little widow, still stunned, stuttered that although she wasn’t sure whether Flora had been speaking seriously or in jest, her words would cause her to reflect.
Upon boarding the ship for Lyon, Flora felt freed of a great weight. She was tired of towns and villages, anxious to be in a great city once again.
Her first impression of Lyon, with its grim mansions like barracks, following one upon the other as in a nightmare, and its cobbled streets, which hurt the soles of her feet, was not pleasant. The grayness of the city, the contrast in it between the extremely rich and the desperately poor, and the way it seemed to serve as a monument to the exploitation of workers reminded her of London with the Spences. This depressing first-day sensation would gradually vanish as she attended more and more gatherings, meetings, and appointments, and as she was, for the first time in her life, hounded by the poli
ce. Here at last she had innumerable meetings with workers from every sector: weavers, shoemakers, stonemasons, blacksmiths, carpenters, velvet makers, and others. Her fame had preceded her—many people knew who she was and looked at her on the street with admiration or disapproval; some eyed her as a queer fish. But the reason she would remember her six weeks in Lyon all through the remaining months of her tour—in Lyon she marked two months since her departure from Paris—was that, in the crowded schedule of those weeks, she overwhelmingly confirmed not only the excessive exploitation of the poor but also the reserves of decency, moral purity, and heroism of the working classes despite the absolute degradation of their living conditions. “In six weeks in Lyon I learned more about society than in all the rest of my life,” she wrote in her journal.
In the first week she gave more than twenty lectures in the workshops of the Croix-Rousse silkworkers, the famous canuts who, a short time before—in 1831 and 1834—had led two workers’ revolutions that the bourgeoisie crushed with terrible bloodshed. In the narrow, dark, and dirty workshops perched on the mountain of Croix-Rousse, its interminable steps making her gasp for breath, Flora had difficulty associating the men half hidden in the shadowy dark, barely illuminated by an oil lamp—the meetings took place at night, after the day’s work—with the fighters who had faced with sticks and stones the soldiers’ bayonets, bullets, and cannon blasts. They were timid, barefoot, dressed in rags, their faces blank with exhaustion; they worked from five in the morning until eight at night, with a small break at midday. Many doubted that she had written The Workers’ Union. Prejudice against women had permeated all social classes. Because she wore skirts, they believed her incapable of conceiving ideas for the redemption of the working class. After a certain awkwardness, due to their surprise at discovering she was a woman, they asked many questions, and when she quizzed them about their problems, they generally expressed themselves with great self-assurance. There were plenty of limited types among them, but also intelligences in the rough who were prevented by society from polishing themselves. She left these meetings nearly collapsing from exhaustion, but in a state of spiritual incandescence. Your ideas were taking hold, Florita—the workers were adopting them, the Workers’ Union was beginning to become a reality.