Communications. Les Petits Teigneux
Charles Péguy
LETTER FROM CITIZEN RUBANOVITCH
Paris, May 18, 1900.
Sir,
The stenographic account that reproduced the few words I pronounced at citizen Paul Lafargue’s lecture makes me say many incoherences. That does not surprise me: there was so much noise and so many interruptions that the omissions of the stenographers were inevitable. I do not complain of it, but there is one omission that gravely alters the meaning of my words, and I shall be much obliged to you if you make the necessary correction in your next cahier:
Cahier 9 of May 5, 1900, page 81: “You will see that, in the French bourgeoisie, there is this double characteristic: critical spirit and desire to serve the cause of the dispossessed.”
I said:
“You will find among the intellectuals of the French bourgeoisie — among those who have taken up the defense of a certain cause — this double characteristic: critical spirit and desire to serve the cause of one dispossessed person.
It would be quite absurd to attribute en bloc to the French bourgeoisie, the most routine-bound and the most selfish perhaps, as a class, of the bourgeoisies of other countries, the characteristics that belong only to a fraction of the intellectual elite.”
Cordially yours,
RUBANOVITCH
LETTERS FROM THE PROVINCES
Nothing very interesting to tell you. Heartbreak of the Paris municipal elections, which were not a surprise for me, but the realization of the fears that the information I had and the state of mind of the people I had seen at Easter made me conceive, little as I was able to see of them. Here we remain in the vilest Mélinism; the few radicals of the outgoing council concentrated with the outgoing Mélinists and passed at the tail of the list, leaving the radicals who were not part of it to form with the socialists, in the first round, a list of republican defense that gathered a third of the votes, and to abandon the socialists in the second round, without moreover harvesting a single vote more.
Since I am chatting a bit, a small fact that shows where the public mind is at: in one of the meetings organized by the defense list, the leader of the social studies group defined in very clear and somewhat brusque terms this alliance, declaring that they had only made it because they were not strong enough to march alone, that they would hasten to abandon the radicals as soon as there was a sufficient socialist force. There was nothing but one cry in the intelligent and liberal circles of Brest: “What a blunderer! what a gaffer! that is not said!” — And good Probus and I were nearly alone in defending him. During these same elections, the radical deputy of Brest — who in meetings gave me the impression of a puffist — M. Isnard, found the means to get himself dishonored by the Mélinist newspaper, the Dépêche de Brest. He was formally accused of having requested the support of the royalists for a sort of Bordeaux deal; and he found only a denial so ambiguous that it seems indeed an admission.
Raymond LARDOISIER
Latest news: I expect to give shortly, like your friend Hubert Plantagenet, a public and popular lecture on alcoholism, more particularly: Alcoholism and the Worker. — On this subject, minor information: cahier 9 of May 5, page 11. “I see no anti-alcoholic congress, and that is a pity.” This omission is deliberate: the sixth international anti-alcoholic congress — Brussels, 1897 — decided that the seventh would take place — in Paris — in 1899, according to the rule of periodicity followed until then, and not, as some requested, in 1900, precisely so as not to be lost in these innumerable congresses.
As for the Congresses of secondary education, you have doubtless seen like me:
1° that the official international congress has published its agenda; one sees announced there reports by M. H. Bérenger, publicist, by M. Max Leclerc, publicist, by M. Kortz, headmaster, etc. It is to be presumed that there will be a strike of secondary education, or else it will be represented by the great professors of the great lycées of Paris, who disdained our attempts at congresses — the same ones who abstained from the Dreyfusist lists and who, with some exceptions, carefully abstain from the Popular Universities;
2° that our lord has authorized the holding, around August 15, of the national congress of Secondary Education, the real one. All that remains is to organize it.
Raphaël MAIRET
My dear Charles,
I am better. — In one of your cahiers you nevertheless spoke of the consideration one owes to the sick: without wishing to insist, a word of reply would have pleased me in my convalescence, a time during which I was almost constantly with you. I have just reread your last cahier: I find many puerilities in it; except for a few good thoughts of Pierre Baudouin, I fear that your cahiers continued in these conditions will not live up to the promises. The Progrès du Loiret (1) was beaten flat in the municipal elections and I fear this may be the death blow for it. I would be quite desolate about it. After all, perhaps all is not lost. We had yesterday a lecture by Briat on the labor exchanges. There were about sixty workers in our immense Festival Hall: see how encouraging that is. I do not know if you have been told that Halma-Grand was odiously fought against as a Dreyfusard. Unfortunately the workers did not rally for him and he failed pitifully.
(1) The Progrès du Loiret — I announce it to the few distant and belated readers who might not have had knowledge of it through universal renown — is a newspaper rather recently instituted with the sole aim of doing in Orléans and the surroundings what we call the defense of the Republic. I add — for the use of these few ignorant readers — that Orléans is more than ever the average ordinary provincial town. Of course the few Guesdists lost in the region shoot it in the back. I read in the Socialiste of last April 8: “Orléans. — The militants of the Orléans Workers’ Party were hardly surprised by the attitude of the Progrès du Loiret toward the striking comrades of Montargis… it is at most if it knows and practices Hutteaupic socialism.” For the innumerable people who would not know what the underlined word means, — I must further add that it is a delicious witty pun à la Lafargue. Citizen Hutteau is a local radical. Unfortunately in the second round the workers abstained despite everything. One is in Orléans to loaf about. One is profoundly disappointed. The walks to Olivet (2) please more than lectures. The municipality has not changed. Portalis is a remarkable mayor.
(2) I remind the few readers who might have forgotten it that Olivet, thus brought into question, is a small town situated on the Loiret, a few kilometers from Orléans. All that the bourgeois imaginations of the Orléanais can suppose of conveniently fresh, of conveniently agreeable… has been arranged on these banks of the Loiret by a bourgeois river, by bourgeois trees… Now the workers of Orléans are even more accommodated to the bourgeoiseries of Olivet than the bourgeois by class. No militant will contradict me if I declare that the immense majority of the workers of Orléans think, on Sunday, of preparing their lines to go fishing at Olivet, and do not think at all of preparing the Social Revolution.
Pierre LE FEBVRE
Note from the Editors:
Citizen Comrade, citizen Mydearcomrade and citizen Notatallmydearcomrade are requesting the insertion of a long rectification that they have drafted in common… We beg them to consider the rectification as made. If they were to pursue us before the bourgeois courts… we would put forward this third argument: that the response of the citizen plaintiffs would far exceed six times the length of the incriminated article.
My dear Péguy,
I read with much pleasure the note you ingeniously put on the cover of the ninth cahier. You are indeed the authoritarian we have always known. But it would be equitable to exercise your authority on yourself. It is not surprising that we saw no one on Holy Saturday. You had announced by exception during the Easter holidays that there would also be administration on Saturday. Now Holy Saturday was Saturday the 14th. The holidays went from the 16th to the 28th. That is not what you said.
In your ninth cahier, page 32, there is mention of Saturday July 21, 1896. Now it suffices to consult the perpetual calendar of the Hachette almanac to perceive that in 1896 July 21 fell on a Tuesday and that Saturday was the 25th. One senses negligence coming on.
What are you doing in Paris-on-Seine? Here we are preparing ourselves gently for the next Saint Bartholomew’s Day. As soon as the bells of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois have begun to ring, warn us, and we shall see what we shall have to do.
Your friend,
René LARDENOIS
My dear Péguy,
Do you not think that the municipal elections, especially the Parisian elections, are a serious contribution of material to your history of the decomposition of Dreyfusism in France? When will you speak to us of the municipal elections?
At Castelreactionary we are preparing ourselves gently for the next Saint Bartholomew’s Day. I am afraid that the governor of Bayonne and the governor of Castelreactionary will respond rather dishonorably to the envoys of the king, when the emissaries disembark from the train proclaiming: “Kill me these heretics.”
CYPRIEN LANTIER
My dear Péguy,
We imagined during the Dreyfus affair that there was finally something changed. It seems to me anew that there is something.
What are you doing over there? Here we are preparing gently for Saint Bartholomew’s Day. Here is what I have decided for myself: on the morning of August 24 I shall ask all those of my friends who are Jewish to be so kind as to transport themselves, en masse, to my family home at the Croix des Chaffauds. Excellent military position. We shall command from there a national road and the great junction of the railway of the western Pyrenees.
As a reserve officer — second lieutenant of infantry — I have at home a regulation revolver, model 1892, an admirable weapon, and an eminently French saber. I have bought two American Smith and Wesson revolvers. Finally I have procured at a price of gold Winchester carbines taken from the memorable besieged of Fort-Chabrol. We shall cut crenellations in my walls and we shall pierce loopholes. We shall dig shelter-trenches in my artichokes. Then we shall watch for the enemy. And if the anti-Semitic enemy is slow to attack us, we shall earn bread by the blessed work of the land.
We usefully read in the decree of May 28, 1890, bearing regulation on the service of armies in the field: “Title fourteen: of combat. Article 128: Combat can be offensive or defensive, but its goal is always to break by force the will of the enemy and to impose ours upon him.”
We shall thus break by force the anti-Semitic will. But to imagine that I am going to start again as two years ago, that I am going to go through the public thoroughfares to receive the blows of innumerable cudgels to guarantee the safe of M. Arthur Mayer, no, my friend, that imagination must be renounced. Jews are men like us. We must, until death ensues, guard them against personal injustice. All the great means of production and exchange are not worth the skin of the old Christian that I am.
Marc MEUNIER
My dear Péguy,
One has sensed for months that it was starting again. You who live in Paris know better than I. In case the anti-Semitic bands start again, I shall do all I can to come see you. We cannot fail Zola, nor Colonel Picquart. They, at least, are not cowards. You will keep me informed.
Édouard LAUBIER
Sir,
You have certainly seen at the Exposition the Frieze of Labor. It would be a matter of having it copied by a scrupulous and skilled draftsman. Two series would be drawn from these drawings: a very large format for the Societies of Popular Education, and a smaller format with which students would adorn their rooms. Do you know if such a project would suit the Union for Moral Action?
Michel AUGÉ (Montpellier)
A history professor writes me from Paris:
“My dear friend… what I reproach socialism with is that it claims to become a religion. — Guesde, Lafargue and old man Vaillant seem to me pontiffs, creators of orthodoxy. I have had enough of popes, all the doxies turn my stomach. From Lafargue’s speech oozes the fright of being replaced by the intellectuals in the shafts of the sedia gestatoria of his father-in-law.”
A schoolteacher from the Côtes-du-Nord writes me:
“I read your cahiers with much interest… I still do not understand the divergences of ideas that break out between the various groupings of the Party. Is socialism going to tolerate in its ranks casuist subtleties? Socialism has the right, the duty to be the government as soon as possible, for it alone will be able to give the masses instruction in profusion, until the age of thirty…”
My dear Péguy,
Is the Marchand panorama that our friends so vehemently recommend to the indignation of good citizens indeed the same as this Marchand Panorama that our newspapers so warmly recommend to the admiration of the crowds? Or are there two Marchand panoramas: a) a truly odious panorama because it reminds us of all the atrocities of colonial wars; b) a pleasant, good-natured panorama, that would remind us of nothing but the victorious glories?
I read in fact in the Aurore of Sunday June 3: “The public goes straight to what interests it. One need not seek any other cause for the ever-growing success of the Marchand Panorama.” Happy combination that permits attracting the people to a vile spectacle while saving quotidian honor.
On the subject of the Aurore, are you certain you are following Urbain Gohier’s action well? Is he doing sincere provocation or literary provocation? When he says that M. Waldeck-Rousseau is the pope’s lawyer, it is true, but with a truth a little less essential than that by which M. General Mercier is the assassin executioner of six thousand and one men. M. Urbain Gohier no longer knows how to present the accusation. He says he is tired. Let him rest.
Yours,
Jean TERRIER
By telegram reply to Marc Meunier: Anti-Semitic military jesting misplaced altogether unbearable. Letter follows.
CHARLES PÉGUY