Trois-Etoiles' 'The Member for Paris' 1871

 

Smith, Elder first edition - 1871

The story of this author's life is at least as interesting as his literary output. Trois-Etoiles was the pseudonym for Eustace Clare Grenville Murray (1819 or 1824 - 20th December 1881). Murray was the illegitimate son of Richard Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. He matriculated from Magdalen Hall, Oxford in March 1848 (a tumultuous year across Europe) and joined the Inner Temple as a student in 1850. He was appointed to the diplomatic service by Lord Palmerston. and was sent as an attaché to the British Embassy in Vienna in July 1851. He was recalled from Vienna for doubling as foreign correspondent for the Morning Post on the side. In October 1852, he was appointed fifth paid attaché at Constantinople, However, he failed to get on with the irascible Stratford Canning, and was shipped to Mitylene (Lesbos) as vice-consul. He caricatured Canning in his "Roving Englishman" sketches in Household Words as Sir Hector Stubble. Murray was moved yet again, this time shipped to Odessa as consul-general in 1858. For over ten years he engaged in feuds with English merchants from whom he claimed fees they wouldn't pay. Lord Derby ruled against Murray, who came home to England and subsequently attacked Derby at every turn. 

Stratford Canning

As editor of The Queen's Messenger, a bitterly satirical journal of the day, (referred to as polemical, personal, unfair and disrespectful) he wrote an article, Bob Coachington Lord Jarvey, which was considered by the present Lord Carington to cast aspersions on his deceased father. In 1869, Carington horsewhipped Murray outside the Conservative Club. Court cases followed which ended with Murray fleeing to Paris for good. He became well known in Paris as the Comte de Rethel d'Aragon, using the title of the Spanish lady whom he had married. He wrote innumerable sketches and essays for the American and English papers. He was best at short satirical pieces, incisive in style and caustic in matter. He was Paris correspondent for the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily News, also writing for the Cornhill and the Illustrated London News. He was adept at circulating private gossip, mainly by the use of hint and innuendo. He died at Passy in 1881 and was buried in Paris.

The Member for Paris commences in 1854, when Hautbourg on the Loire was fallen of a sudden from its snug position of ease into penury...the Hautbourg of 1854 was but the ghost of the Hautbourg of 1851. The reason? The Duke of Hautbourg, being in Paris at the time of monsieur Napoleon's coup-d'état, finding himself face to face with a troop of government horse and trying to escape, was slain. The irony was that he was a conservative Legitimist; worse, he was found lying side by side with a subversive sweep, a costermonger of socialist tendencies, and a small boy, three foot high, holding a red toy-flag emblazoned with the heinous words, Vive la Liberté! Much of the three-decker novel continues in this vein - ironic, often caustic, humour which actually adds to the pleasure of turning its pages. The new Duke, unlike his deceased nephew, is a Radical who foreswears his title and is known to all as Monsieur Manuel Gerold. A dedicated Republican, Gerold had gone into voluntary exile in Brussels, a hive of French republican emigrés. Gerold has two sons, 24 year-old Horace and Emile, a couple of years his junior. He hands over his entire estate to the young men, saying it is up to them what they do with the title, lands and revenues (unfortunately much of it revivified by profits from slavery).

The story unfolds slowly (although it takes place over very few years) as the brothers diverge in their attitudes as to how best to serve republicanism and their father. They install themselves in a third floor rented accommodation in Paris' "Latin Quarter" close to the Panthéon. They both study for the law and become barristers.  Murray (as we shall call the author) creates a marvellous family group out of the Pochemolles: the landlord, M. Pochemolle was a valiant conservative of existing institutions, whatever they were (who found it appalling that the brothers had a picture of the famous Tennis Court gathering against Louis XVI); Mdme. Pochemolle, stout, buxom and like any Jane Austen mother, determined to get the best match for her daughter; the son M. Alcibiade Pochemolle, who allows the author to construct one of the most droll chapters. Inter Pocula, when he gets drunk and spills all the family's beans to Horace. At a breakfast, he fell to on the omelette and remarked perplexedly on the giddying properties of fresh air, which had almost knocked him off his chair just now; the daughter, Mdlle. Georgette, who looked some seventeen springs old, and was as pretty as clear hazel eyes, thick chestnut curls, red lips, and neat dressing could make her... soon falls in love with Horace, who takes far too long to realise this. Only in the latter part of Volume III, does he reciprocate the feelings. Too late, he is now married and in a touching scene near the end of the book, her better conscience overrides his. 

One of the dominant characters throughout the story is M. Macrobe - who at first sight looked like a weasel, upon closer inspection like a badger, and who, after mature examination, left one doubtful as to whether there were not a chimpanzee or two amongst his ancestors... His nefarious dealings, particularly with his highly suspect Crédit Parisien, reminded me a little of Anthony Trollope's Augustus Melmotte in his The Way We Live Now, published in 1875, four years after Murray's novel. It is his Macrobe's daughter, Mdlle Angélique - a blue-eyed, blonde-haired, angel-faced child, who looked at people with a perpetual expression of soft wonder - who Horace marries. She is the tragic character in the play - her father uses her to get in with Horace, the new Duke after his father's death in Brussels, and the latter marries her for his own political reasons. He is not in love with her and the decline in her mental health as she comes to realise this is sensitively written. 

The author clearly has no time for Napoleon III or his Second Empire - the Paris of the Second Empire was there, a throng of senators, ministers, deputies, stock-jobbers, patchouli-novelists, eau-de-rose journalists; not only is the Emperor portrayed as a dictator but  his main henchman, M. Gribaud, an oily, two-faced, bully of a man, is venomously attacked. The policeman, M. Louchard, well-versed in  government corruption and regularly used by Gribaud and Macrobe, is another believable character, with his false beard and fake eyeglasses enabling him to spy on Horace and others. Murray pours scorn on French newspapers - those spicy collections of false news, mad leaders and improper anecdotes - which was a bit rich considering his own involvement in such a trade. The English journalist, Monsieur Drydust, was surely based on the author or is a compendium of those he knew. The Prince of Arcola, with his English valet Bateson (a touch of Jeeves?) and his Anglophile approach to life is perhaps - with Emile Gerold, Georgette and Angélique - one of the four who deserve a berth in Heaven. Horace, on the other hand like most ambitious men, whose range of mind is not extensive, is fatally flawed.

There are many humorous touches throughout.  I liked this comment on  Father Glabre's "Confession Mornings" - it is to be supposed that the male element in the St. Hyacinth congregation were either singularly free from human error or lamentably blind to their own short-comings, or painfully remiss in their religious duties; anyhow no trowsered penitent was ever seen to kneel in Father Glabre's confessional and declare him himself a miserable sinner. But the women made up for this. What a throng, and what devotion! What a rustling of silk dresses, what contrite rows of six-buttoned gloves clasped daintily over velvet missals... And, to cap it, Father Glabre is clearly more worried about his shares in the Crédit Parisien than any heavenly reward.

I was not anticipating the tragic end - one of the deaths, sadly yes; but not the other. Perhaps it was fitting, but it would have left much heartache behind.