Bancroft

by Brett Rutherford

Adapted from Victor Hugo, l'Annee Terrible, "November 1870"

IV

BANCROFT

How does this trifle affect the greatness of France?
His tragic disdain extends almost as far as ignorance.
The existence of France does not depend
     upon the kind words of strangers,
     whether they lives in palaces, or garrets.
She exists, and need not be aware of “what they say,”
     “they” being shoeless wretches turned foreign Ministers.
You have no problem siding up to some sinister majesty;
you buzz in vain about its millennium, if not eternity.
You insult a whole nation. Who, then, shall feel the sting?
She will not see, either in mourning or celebration,
the kind of dark and shabby shadow that you are.
Try then to be somebody: Tiberius, Genghis Khan:
be the man of scourges, the voice of a volcano!
We will see if you are up to the task.
Let people despise you. Give them some cause to hate you,
and we will see. Otherwise, go away. A dwarf
can add a venom’d tongue to its tininess
yet it is still a dwarf, and what does one atom matter?
Who needs the vile affront that falls from this man?
Why give an audience to a nullity that passes and goes away?
Without shaking the huge head, basically
From the desert where we see the ferocious lynx prowling,
The trash-eating jaeger bird
      can light upon a colossus
immobile forever under the starry sky,
screech a familiar squawk, then fly away.

NOTES:

George Bancroft (1800-1891) was not an insignificant character. As U.S. Minister to Prussia since 1867, he wielded considerable influence back home in the United States, where he had founded the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. He began his literary life as a Romantic poet, publishing a volume of poetry in 1823 after his Grand Tour of Switzerland, Italy, and Rome. His long poem on the ruins of Rome is a worthy specimen of that sub-genre. Bancroft’s ten-volume History of the United States, finally completed in 1874, was regarded as the definitive history of the young republic. Admitted to Harvard at age 13, he graduated there, and at the age of 20 received a doctorate in Germany at Göttingen. He published translations of the poems of Goethe and Schiller.

Bismarck considered Bancroft an “intimate friend.” Bancroft admired Prussia as a staunch defender of Protestantism, and he saw the evolving German federation as a parallel to the formation of United States (Werengerode). As early as 1868, the French were already aware of the American Minister’s pro-Prussian bias, terming it a case of “eccentricities and vanities” (Blumenthal 226). In an 1869 letter, Bancroft displays the extent through which he viewed all French affairs through a Protestant lens: “You are right in saying France is given to extremes. When the Protestants were driven out, France was maimed, and left to the struggle of extremes” (Howe 228).

Bancroft confidently predicted that Napoleon III would fail to prevent German confederation (Blumenthal 233). Bancroft appeared to have been instrumental in keeping the United States aloof from France in the lead-up to the Franco-Prussian War, and congratulatory to Prussia at its end. Historians disagree on just how much influence Bancroft had on attitudes that were already baked into international politics, but at the time he certainly seemed an influencer (235-236).

Bismarck sent Bancroft a telegram honoring the jubilee of his doctorate from Göttingen, and this letter was Bancroft’s personal reply. The letter was shared, translated into English, published in London, and then translated into French, possibly with context and intent not stated. This would appear to be the text which prompted Hugo’s poem:

To Count Bismarck.
Berlin, September 30, 1870.

“I was equally surprised and delighted that while you are tasked with the work of renovating Europe, you yet found time to send me lately a friendly congratulation on my being spared so long. It is indeed a great happiness to survive till these times, when three or four men who loved nothing so much as peace and after long and hard service were only seeking to close their career in tranquility, win during a war of defense more military glory than the wildest imagination conceived of, and in three months bid fair to bring the German hope of a thousand years to its fulfillment. So I gratefully accept the good will, conceded to my old age; for old age, which is always nearest eternity, is, this year, mightiest on earth; this German war being conducted to its close by the aged. You, to be sure, are young; but Roon must be classed among the venerable; Moltke is within twenty-three days as old as I am; and your king in years and youthfulness excels us all. May I not be proud of my contemporaries?

“Retain for me your regard in the little time that remains to me” (Howe 228).