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Early in 1866, Clemenceau, after a visit to England, crossed the Atlantic for a somewhat prolonged stay in the United States. He could scarcely have chosen a better time for making acquaintance with America and the Americans. The United States had but just emerged from the Civil War, which, notwithstanding the furious bitterness evoked on both sides during the struggle, eventually consolidated the Great Republic as nothing else could; though, owing to the behaviour of “society” in England, the tone of our leading statesmen and the action of the Alabama, the feeling against Great Britain was naturally very strong. This animosity—it was no less—of course did not extend to the young French physician of republican views who had already suffered for his opinions in Paris, and whose sympathies were with the North against the South throughout. He was well received in the Eastern States, and wrote several letters to the Temps on the industrial and social conditions of America which were then of value, and still serve to show how marked is the contrast between the self-contained nation of fifty years ago and the Anglo-Saxon world power that has successfully tried her strength in the international struggle against Germanic infamy to-day. What is not so easy to comprehend is M. le Dr. Clemenceau, as we know him, acting as professor of French in a young ladies’ college at the village of Stanford, in the neighbourhood of New York. His record in that capacity is amusingly described by one of his friends[A] in a bright little sketch of his early experiences.

“An admirable horseman, the young Frenchman accompanied the still younger American misses in their rides. There were free and delightful little tours on horseback, charming excursions along the shady roads which traverse the gay landscape of Connecticut. Such years carried with them for Clemenceau ineffaceable memories of a period during which his temperament accomplished the task of gaining strength and acquiring refinement. At the same time that he enriched his mind with solid conceptions of Anglo-Saxon philosophy, and perfected his general cultivation, he took his first lessons in the delicacies of American flirtation. It was in the course of these pleasing jaunts, where the fresh laughter of these young ladies echoed through the bright scenery, that it was his lot to become betrothed to one of them, Miss Mary Plummer. Henceforth, in consequence of the sound, independent and many-sided education which he had, so to say, imposed upon himself, Clemenceau had completed the last stage of his intellectual development. He was ripe to play great parts. For the rest, events were not destined long to delay the throwing into full relief his versatile, intrepid and powerful characteristics.”

And so Clemenceau, thus prepared to meet what the future might have in store for him, returned to Paris. There are cities in the history of the human race which have taken unto themselves a personality, not only for their own inhabitants, but for succeeding ages, and for the world at large. Babylon, Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, Bagdad, Florence, each and all convey to the mind a conception of chic individuality and collective achievement which brings them within the range of our own knowledge, admiration and respect, which raises them also to the level of ideals of culture for men living in far different civilisations. They are still oases of brightness and greenery amid the wilderness of unconscious growth. The wars of old time, the cruelty of long-past days, the records of brutality and lust are forgotten: only the memory of greatness or beauty remains.