When the Commune was proclaimed, both brothers heartily joined it, and Elie accepted the post of keeper of the National Library and the Louvre Museum under Vaillant. It was, to a great extent, to his foresight and to his work that we owe the preservation of the invaluable treasures of human knowledge and art accumulated in these two institutions, during the bombardment of Paris by the armies of Thiers and the subsequent conflagration. A passionate lover of Greek art, and profoundly acquainted with it, he had had all the most precious statues and vases of the Louvre packed and placed in the vaults, while the greatest precautions were taken to store in a safe place the most precious books of the National Library, and to protect the building from the conflagration which raged round it. His wife, a courageous woman, a worthy companion of the philosopher, followed in the streets by her two little boys, organized in the meantime in her own quarter of the town a system of feeding the people, who had been reduced to sheer destitution during the second siege. In the last few weeks of its existence the Commune finally realized that a supply of food for the people, who were deprived of the means of earning it for themselves, ought to have been the Commune’s first care, and volunteers organized the relief. It was by mere accident that Elie Reclus, who had kept to his post till the last moment, escaped being shot by the Versailles troops; and a sentence of deportation having been pronounced upon him—for having dared to accept so necessary a service under the Commune—he went with his family into exile. Now, on his return to Paris, he had resumed the work of his life, ethnology. What this work is may be judged from a few, a very few chapters of it, published in book form under the titles of Primitive Folk and The Australians, as well as from the history of the origin of religions, which forms the substance of his lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, at Brussels—a foundation of his brother. In the whole range of ethnological literature there are not many works imbued to the same extent with a thorough and sympathetic understanding of the true nature of primitive man. As to his history of religions (part of which was published in the review Société Nouvelle, and which is now being continued in its successor, Humanité Nouvelle), it is, I venture to say, the best work on the subject that has yet appeared; undoubtedly superior to Herbert Spencer’s attempt in the same direction, because Herbert Spencer, with all his immense intellect, does not possess that understanding of the artless and simple nature of the primitive man which Elie Reclus possesses to a rare perfection, and to which he has added an extremely wide knowledge of a rather neglected branch of folk-psychology—the evolution and transformation of beliefs. It is needless to speak of Elie Reclus’ infinite good nature and modesty, or of his superior intelligence and vast knowledge of all subjects relating to humanity; it is all comprehended in his style, which is his and no one else’s. With his modesty, his calm manner, and his deep philosophical insight, he is the type of the Greek philosopher of antiquity. In a society less fond of patented tuition and of piecemeal instruction, and more appreciative of the development of wide humanitarian conceptions, he would be surrounded by flocks of pupils, like one of his Greek prototypes.
A very animated socialist and anarchist movement was going on at Paris while we stayed there. Louise Michel lectured every night, and aroused the enthusiasm of her audiences, whether they consisted of workingmen or were made up of middle-class people. Her already great popularity became still greater, and spread even amongst the university students, who might hate advanced ideas, but worshiped in her the ideal woman. While I was at Paris a riot, caused by someone speaking disrespectfully to Louise Michel in the presence of students, took place in a café. The young men took up her defense and made a great uproar, smashing all the tables and glasses in the café. I also lectured once, on anarchism, before an audience of several thousand people, and left Paris immediately after that lecture, before the government could obey the injunctions of the reactionary and pro-Russian press, which insisted upon my being expelled from France.
From Paris we went to London, where I found once more my two old friends, Stepniák and Tchaikovsky. Life in London was no more the dull, vegetating existence that it had been for me four years before. We settled in a small cottage at Harrow. We cared little about the furniture of the cottage, a good part of which I made myself with the aid of Tchaikovsky—he had been in the United States and had learned some carpentering—but we rejoiced immensely at having a small plot of heavy Middlesex clay in our garden. My wife and I went with much enthusiasm into gardening, the admirable results of which I had before realized after having made acquaintance with the writings of Toubeau, and some Paris market-gardeners, and after our own experiment in the prison garden at Clairvaux. As for my wife, who had typhoid fever soon after we settled at Harrow, the work in the garden during the period of convalescence was more completely restorative than a stay at the very best sanatorium would have been.
Near the end of the summer a heavy blow fell upon me. I learned that my brother Alexander was no longer living.
During the years that I had been abroad before my imprisonment in France we
