Félix Faure

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Félix Faure (30 January 1841–16 February 1899) was President of France from 1895 till his death.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Paris, being the son of a small furniture maker. Having started as a tanner and merchant at Le Havre, he acquired considerable wealth, was elected to the National Assembly on the 21st of August 1881, and took his seat as a member of the Left, interesting himself chiefly in matters concerning economics, railways and the navy. In November 1882 he became under-secretary for the colonies in Ferry's ministry, and retained the post till 1885. He held the same post in Tirard's ministry in 1888, and in 1893 was made vice-president of the chamber.

In 1894 he obtained cabinet rank as minister of marine in the administration of Charles Dupuy. In the January following he was unexpectedly elected President of the Republic upon the resignation of President Casimir-Perier. The principal cause of his elevation was the determination of the various sections of the moderate republican party to exclude Henri Brisson, who had had a majority of votes on the first ballot, but had failed to obtain an absolute majority. To accomplish this end it was necessary to unite the party, and unity could only be secured by the nomination of some one who offended nobody. Faure answered perfectly to this description.

His fine presence and his tact on ceremonial occasions rendered the state some service when in 1896 he received the Tsar of Romania at Paris, and in 1897 returned his visit, after which meeting the momentous Franco-Russian Alliance was publicly announced.

Image:Perelachaise-VictorFaur-p1000345.jpg Image:Perelachaise-VictorFaur-p1000346.jpg The latter days of Faure's presidency were embittered by the Dreyfus affair, which he was determined to regard as chose jugée. But at a critical moment in the proceedings his death occurred suddenly, from apoplexy, on the 16th of February 1899. With all his faults, and in spite of no slight amount of personal vanity, President Faure was a shrewd political observer and a good man of business. After his death, some alleged extracts from his private journals, dealing with French policy, were published in the Paris press.

He is rumoured to have died while receiving oral sex from Marguerite Steinheil. This incident was the theme of numerous jokes and rumours:

The priest who came for Félix Faure's when he died allegedly asked a policeman whether the president still "had his consciousness", to which the policeman replied "no, she left through the backdoor" (this in French, connaissance means both "consciousness" and "acquaintance").
An unconfirmed quotation by Georges Clemenceau has him saying, alluding to Faure's taste for decorum: "He wanted to be Caesar, alas he became merely Pompey" (Il voulait être César, hélas, il ne fut que Pompée: in French, Pompée (Pompey) sounds like pompé (blown)).
Marguerite Steinheil came to be known as Pompe Funèbre (pun of "funeral industry" and "deadly sucker").