Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence Volume II Part 25

It was at this period that the following address to the American people was written.

"Americans: Though I have served you with an indefatigable zeal, I have in my life received only bitterness for recompense, and I die your creditor. Permit then in dying that I will to my daughter the debt which you owe me. Perhaps after I am gone, other injustices, from which I cannot defend myself, will rob me of all I possess so nothing will be left for her, and perhaps Providence has ordained by your delay in paying me, that through you she will be spared absolute want. Adopt her as a worthy child of the state. Her mother, equally unfortunate, and my widow, will conduct her to you. Let her be looked upon as the daughter of a citizen! But if after these last efforts, if after all has been said, I must still feel that you will reject my demands-If I am to fear that you will refuse her arbitrators; at last, desperate, ruined in Europe as well as by you, your country being the only one in which I could beg without shame-what would remain for me to do, but to supplicate Heaven to give me the strength to take the voyage to America?

"Arrived in your midst, mind and body weakened, unable to maintain my rights, should I there be forced, my proofs in my hand, to have myself carried to the doors of your National a.s.sembly, and, holding aloft the cap of liberty, with which I helped as much as anyone to adorn your heads-to cry out 'Give an alms to your friend, whose acc.u.mulated services have only had this recompense, _date obolum Belisario_!'

"Pierre-Augustin Caron Beaumarchais."

It was precisely to save her daughter, that Madame de Beaumarchais had broken all communication with her husband, retaken her family name and thought only of making herself forgotten.

"The Revolutionary laws," says Gudin, "ordained the divorce of the wives of _emigres_, under pain of being suspected and of running the risk of death that could not be inflicted upon their husbands. Madame de Beaumarchais, worthy of the courageous man whose hand she had received, went to the Revolutionary Committee and with that firmness which inspired respect and that grace which embellished every action, said, 'Your decrees oblige me to demand a divorce. I obey, although my husband, charged with a commission is not an _emigre_ and never had the thought: I attest it and I know his heart. He will justify himself of this accusation, as he has of all the rest, and I shall have the satisfaction of marrying him a second time, according to your new laws.'"

"Such was the effect of his destiny," observes this eighteenth century philosopher, "that he was obliged to renew the knot of his own marriage at the same time that he occupied himself with the marriage of his daughter."

The condition of the family of Beaumarchais when they found themselves once more free, was far from enviable. Their revenues had been seized and their beautiful home was ordered to be sold. Eugenie felt only horror for the place and persuaded her mother to live in a small house.

Gudin had gone into the country and Julie, the faithful sister of Beaumarchais, went to live alone with an old servant in the deserted palace of her brother, which was now guarded by agents of the Republic and which bore written upon its walls, "_Propriete nationale_."

"If, as I hope," says Lomenie, "the reader has retained an agreeable impression of Julie, it will be a pleasure perhaps to see again that intelligent, merry, courageous face which neither age, privations, nor dangers had been able to change.

"A picture of the domestic and inner life of three women, once rich, forced to face the difficulties of a fearful epoch will give details of interest to that period which history itself cannot furnish.

"During the time when the head of the household was proscribed, it was Madame Beaumarchais, a person of rare merit who joined to all feminine graces a truly virile energy of character, who bore the weight of the situation and while working on one hand to prevent the sale of her husband's property, tried on the other, to have his name erased from the fatal list; and all the time was obliged to provide for her family with what she had been able to save from the wreck of their fortune. On her side Julie guarded the house of her brother, kept her sister-in-law in touch with events at the house, and urged her to resistance in the animated and original tone which characterised her.

"'Morbleu! my child,' she wrote her after the Terror, 'let us quickly get the decree suppressed. Even the fruits, the same as last year, are requisitioned; the cherries being ripe, they are to be picked to-morrow and sold, and the rest as it ripens, and then close the garden to the profane and the gluttons! Isn't it sweet to have lived here alone for six months, and only be allowed to eat the stones of the fruit? And even they are sold with the rest. It is for the birds that I am sorry ...

nevertheless, it is a pity that the agency had to interfere this year; ... See if thou cannot prevent this brigandage by a firm protest at the agency....

"'And here a pound of veal has been brought me which costs twenty-eight francs, and at even that it is a bargain, for it might sell for thirty.

Rage! Fury! Malediction! One cannot even live by ruining oneself and devouring three times one's fortune. How happy those who have gone before! They feel neither the confusion in my head, nor my eye which weeps, nor the flame which devours me, nor my tooth which sharpens itself to eat twenty-eight francs worth of veal; they feel none of these evils.'

"Those twenty-eight francs worth of veal, which Julie consumed with humorous anger, bring us to say a word of the curious state of want which was produced by the constant depreciation of paper money after the Terror. It is still Julie who informs us how people lived at that time; her sister-in-law had just given her four thousand francs in paper money and she returned an account of the use to which she put them that December 1794.

"'When you gave me those four thousand francs, my good friend, my heart beat fast. I thought you suddenly had lost your reason to give me such a fortune; I slipped them quickly into my pocket and spoke of other things, so that you would forget them.

"'Returned home and quick, some wood, some provisions, before the prices go higher! And see Dupont (the old servant) who runs, exhausts herself!

And lo, the scales fall from my eyes when I see the result of four thousand, two hundred, and seventy-five francs.

"'One load of wood 1,460 fr.

Nine pounds of candles 900

Four pounds of sugar 400

Three litrons (six qts.), of grain 120

Seven pounds of oil 700

A dozen wicks 60

A bushel and a half potatoes 300

Laundry bill for one month 215

One pound of powder for the hair 70

Three ounces of pomade (that used to be three sous) 50 _________ 4,275 fr.

Over and above this is the provision for the month, b.u.t.ter, eggs, at 100 francs, as you know, and meat from 25 to 30 francs a pound and all else in proportion 576

Bread, there has been none for two days; we only get it every other day-for the last ten days I have only bought 4 pounds at 45 fr. 180 _________ 5,022 fr.

"'When I think of this royal expenditure which costs me from eighteen to twenty thousand francs without allowing myself the least luxury, _J'envoie au diable le regime_.'

"Shortly after this the value of paper money decreased still more and the price of commodities increased in alarming proportion. In another letter to her sister-in-law Julie gave the following details:

"'Ten thousand francs which I have scattered in the last two weeks, give me such a fright, seize me with such pity that I no longer know how to count my income. In the last three days, wood has risen from 4,200 francs to 6,500 and all the costs of transporting and piling are in proportion, so that my load of wood has cost me 7,100 francs. Every week it costs from 700 to 800 francs for a _pot-au-feu_, and other meat without counting b.u.t.ter, eggs, and a thousand other details; laundry work has increased so that 8,000 francs are not enough for one month.

All this makes me impatient and I solemnly affirm that I have not for two years allowed myself a luxury, or gratified a single whim, or made any other expenditures but for the house; nevertheless the needs I have are urgent enough to make me need potfulls of money.'

"But if the sister of Beaumarchais is at the point of famine, the wife and the daughter are no better off; I see in the correspondence of Madame de Beaumarchais that one of her friends went the rounds of the neighborhood to try to obtain some bread which was becoming rarer than diamonds; 'I am told,' she wrote, the 5th of June 1795, 'that at Briare, flour is to be had, if that is true I will make a bargain with some country man and send it direct to you by the barge which goes from Briare to Paris, but that will greatly increase the cost. Please tell me what you think, while waiting I still hope to get hold of a small loaf somewhere. Oh, if I had the gift of miracles, I would send you, not manna from heaven-but good bread and very white!'

"When Beaumarchais in exile, learned all the deprivations from which his family suffered he learned also that they had sufficient moral courage to support them. Gaiety had not wholly disappeared from that interior which used to be so joyous; even if exposed to starvation, the frightful guillotine no longer operated and one began to breathe more freely."

One of his old friends wrote to him, "See now the soup tureen of the family arrive, that is to say, upon the mahogany table (there is no such thing as a cloth) is a plate of beans, two potatoes, a carafe of wine, with very much water. Thy daughter asks for a white poodle to use as a napkin and clean the plates-but no matter, come, come; if we have nothing to eat we have plenty to laugh about. Come, I tell thee, for thy wife needs a miller since thy _salon_ is decorated with a flour mill; while thy Eugenie charms thee upon her piano, thou wilt prepare her breakfast, while thy wife knits thy stockings, and thy future son-in-law turns baker; for here everyone has his trade and that is why our cows are so well guarded.

"It is too droll to see our women, without perruque in the morning, filling each one her occupation, because you must know that each one of us is at their service and because in our _regime_, if there are no masters, there are at least valets. This letter costs thee at least a hundred francs counting the paper, pens, the oil of the lamp, because for economy's sake I came to thy house to write it. We embrace thee with all our hearts."

And his faithful Gudin wrote him, though in much more somber strain, from his retreat in the country: "My most ardent desire, my friend, is to see you again and to press you to my heart; but circ.u.mstances are such that I had to leave Paris where I could no longer subsist. I have taken refuge in a little hamlet fifty miles away, where there are thirteen peasant cabins. The house which I inhabit was a tiny priory, occupied once by a single monk." And after a very long and profoundly pessimistic discourse upon the sad condition of affairs which he likens to the barbarity which formerly engulfed Greece and Egypt and a.s.syria, Sicily, and Italy, he terminates thus:

"Adieu my good friend, I would have wished to have talked to you of yourself, of your family, of those whom you love, the regrets which we feel to meet no more together. Our hearts like your own, are crushed with sorrow.... I embrace you and sigh for the happy moment that will unite us.

"Gudin."

[Ill.u.s.tration: MADAME DE BEAUMARCHAIS]

Now that his anxieties for his family were allayed, Beaumarchais was not idle, for his stay in Hamburg was occupied in drawing up memoirs upon matters of public utility, in commercial negotiations, and in agreeable companions.h.i.+ps with distinguished _emigres_ who like himself were anxiously awaiting the moment when they could return to France.

As for Beaumarchais, the affair of the 60,000 guns had ended, distressingly enough for his coffers, by the English carrying them off.

They consented, however, at the urgent request of the merchant friend, to pay an arbitrary sum which was, however, far below their real value, but saved Beaumarchais from complete ruin. The affair ended, his only desire was to return home. This he was prevented from doing because of the proscription unjustly continued against him, which all the efforts of his friends and his family had been as yet unable to have removed.

Finally a member of the committee which he was serving, the same Robert Lindet before mentioned, wrote in his behalf to the minister of police, Cochon, the following letter:

"You have asked me to enlighten you regarding the second mission of Citizen Beaumarchais, and upon the exact time when that mission ended or should end.

"In charging the Citizen Beaumarchais with a mission, the committee of public safety proposed to itself two objects. The first was to procure the 60,000 guns deposited in the armory at Tervere, as objects of commerce; the second was to prevent these guns from falling into the power of the enemy.

"The Committee was obliged to pay for them only at the agreed price on condition that they should be delivered and placed at their disposition in one of the ports of the Republic, within five or six months, The negotiation might take longer, but these terms were used to excite the zeal of the Citizen Beaumarchais.

"Before the expiration of the term he sent from Holland to Paris, the Citizen Durand, his friend, who had accompanied him on his journey, to give an account of the obstacles which delayed the execution of the enterprise and to propose measures which he thought were needful.