Eliphas Lévi and the French Occult Revival

8. The Radical

8 The Radical Constant emerged from Saint-Sulpiceconfronted by the daunting problems ofadjusting to a secular life. His first thought was to avoid them by entering a monastery. 'I do not wish', he wrote to one of his friends 'to resume in the world a life of which the seminary has taken the best part, and to lead here the degrading and miserable existance of an apostate.'! But his friends dissuaded him, and this desperate course ofaction was abandoned. Constant would have to face the world as best he could. It was not long before the world gave him his first test. His departure from the seminary had been a great shock to his widowed mother, by this time old and infirm, who had put allher hopes in her son. She appeared to have acceptedthe situation , but one morning a friend found her dead in her room. She had committed suicide, and it was evident that she had been planning the deed for some time. Coming as it did so soon after the anguish of leaving the seminary, his mother's suicideaffected him deeply. He wrote in L'Assomption de lafemme: 'It seemed at that time as though all belief and all hope had abandoned me.' But, miserablethough he was, he had to face the considerable practical problem of how to earn a living. Twenty-six years old, he was still, in his habits of thought and appearance, a priest-down to the natural tonsure which precociously graced the backofhishead. A drawing, (Fig9.) made by a friend in the year he left the seminary,showsa young man with a prematurely severe expression. The cold, detached eyes and the tight lips betray little ofthe inner conflictthat tormented him and conceal the fundamentally warm and generous character that lay behind them. There is a faint hint of the dandy in the neat moustache and beard and the slightly stiff, self-conscious way 84 Eliphas Levi andthe French Occult Revival the head is carried. The receding hair accentuates a high and noble forehead. The solitary childhood years, the tribulations ofthe seminary, the constant forcing back on his own resourcesall these show their result in an expression ofingrained resilience and toughness. The owner of such a face could never, we feel, take the escape route that Mme Constant had adopted. The problem of earning a living was solved, for a year, by teaching in a boarding-school near Paris. But it was an unhappy year. At length, Constant saysin L'Assomption de fa f emme, 'I left this school, whose masters hated me as much as the children loved me, and 1 found myself in the world for the first time, seeking to work and to create a future for myself' A friend from his very early schooldays came to the rescue. He was Aristide Bailleul, a touring actor, who offered Constant a place in the company for a tour of the provinces. The exseminarist accepted and evidently proved himself a skilful actor. When the tour came to an end he returned to Paris and shortly afterwards met Flora Tristan, a woman who was to have a profound influence on him. Flora Tristan's life is summed up as follows by her grandson, Paul Gauguin, the painter, in his Avant et Apres (1903): 'My grandmother was an astonishing woman. Proudhon said she had genius. Not having known her I believe what he says. She wrote a number of books, socialistin outlook, among them being L'Union ouvriere. The grateful workers had a monument erected to her memory in the cemetery at Bordeaux. 'She was probably no good at cooking. A blue stocking, a socialist and an anarchist, she was credited with having founded together with Pere Enfantin the trade union movement and a certain religion, the religion of Mapa of which he was the God Pa and she was the Goddess Ma.2 'I cannot distinguish fact from fable and I give you all this for what it is worth. She died in 18«. There were thousands at her funeral. What is fact is that Flora Tristan was a very beautiful and noble woman. I also know that she spent all her money to further the workers' cause and travelled continually to this end.' At the time that Constant met her Flora Tristan was thirty-four years old. Some years earlier she had left her husband, Andre Chazal, by whom she had three children, and had reverted to her maiden name. In September 1838...