Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 21, Number 2, Fall 2009 Page: 9
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stopped in Austin to see the Executive Director
at work, shared further reservations about
Considerant's ability to lead. At Reunion this
Belgian soon demanded his money back. Those
leaving the colony wrote notes back from New
Orleans warning not to put another sou into the
enterprise as long as Considerant was there.
Maxmilien Reverchon, farming director of a
Fourierist experiment in Algeria in the 1840s,
arrived. He declined to join the Company of
Reunion, but settled on company land. He
wanted to "take a stick" to Director Cantagrel's
style of leadership. Despite all the negatives, sev-
eral needed buildings had been built, and a herd
of cattle had been started.Things had settled into
a routine, and were better.
At Reunion, after a five months absence,
Considerant returned by stagecoach from San
Antonio on March 24.As he walked up the east-
ern trail to Reunion from Dallas, he passed the
garden in the eroded side of the cap rock begun
by the Doctors Savardan and Nicolas.This valley
garden was a volunteer recreational effort, now
contributed to by many others from the colony,
and the doctors were present that day working.
Considerant had to have noticed how it flour-
ished from eight months' care. Walking only a
few feet away from the two doctors, though he
had not seen them for five months, he did not
speak to them or even acknowledge their pres-
ence. Simonin was astounded at Considerant's
behavior toward the two doctors.
This fact proves, like so many others, that
Considerant does not any more under-
stand how to direct souls practically than
to direct the other affairs of his enterprise.
This conduct toward two respected elder-
ly men also astonished, and even made
indignant another onlooker, Mr. Doderet.
He had arrived only in January, had never
before seen Victor Considerant, and
would not believe so rude a man was
actually he, the great Fourierist so famous
in Europe. He believed the others were
mistaken when they told him that this
was Considerant with his two aides-de-
camp who had just passed. He maintained
that it must have been some Americans.In Simonin's words, "It was thus that
Considerant acted in order to disappear from the
minds of all the other colonists."14
Was Considerant seeing this progress at
Reunion as a threat to his new land purchase for
a different colony? Why rudeness? In Simonin's
words,"He showed a petty vanity like small peo-
ple with narrow minds. He has scraped himself
with his own fingernails off the angel's pedestal
of the colony on which his friends had placed
him, and he had fallen flat on his stomach. He is
at the bottom now, and will never raise himself
back up on his pedestal again."15
Alarmed at Considerant's behavior, rumors
among the colonists about the breakup of
Reunion began to circulate. Esprit started to lag,
and of course production sagged. However, two
weeks later the colonists held their annual cele-
bration in honor of Charles Fourier's birthday,
organized by the workers (not the Gros
Bonnets).16 Considerant, who was asked to speak
at the event, sounded conciliatory, admitting his
own mistakes, and proposing harmony. Esprit
seemed to be restored.
When the Executive Director had gone to
Austin, he had left Francois Cantagrel in charge as
Director, but now Considerant continued to
interfere in management. He obliquely
announced change by sending his Belgian friends
to lay out and stake individual parcels of Reunion
land, hitherto a non-communal practice that was
frowned on in this utopia. Cantagrel became so
frustrated that he resigned. Considerant then rode
out onto the prairie with Cantagrel and told him
that he would blow his own brains out if
Cantagrel persisted in resigning. Cantagrel relent-
ed temporarily, then again resigned as Director
because he would wait no longer under
Considerant's leadership for a replacement from
Paris.
Simonin was still taking notes for his
employers in Paris. Too many people from
Europe were descending on the colony, and they
were not the farmers who were really needed.
Facilities had not been prepared for so many. In
late April he reported that Considerant wrote to
the colony's way-station at its Houston farm
with instructions to discourage new arrivals
from coming north to the Reunion site. TheFall 2009 LEGACIES 9
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Dallas Heritage Village. Legacies: A History Journal for Dallas and North Central Texas, Volume 21, Number 2, Fall 2009, periodical, 2009; Dallas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth66965/m1/11/: accessed May 3, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Dallas Historical Society.