du C, which affair would have ruined me but for the goodness of Mesdames who spoke with the king. M. de Sablières asked for an explanation of the postscriptum of my letter from Laumur, at whose house I lent him the money, and what is amusing is that this explanation took away all his desire to bring the money himself.”
We have chosen this instance among numerous others to show the difficulty of the position in which Beaumarchais found himself placed. Gudin says, “The efforts of envy against him, fortified the character to which nature had given so much energy. He learned to watch unceasingly over himself, to master the impetuosity of his passions, to conserve in the most perilous and unexpected circumstances, a perfect coolness united with the most active presence of mind. Everything which seemed prepared to destroy him turned to his advantage and enabled him to rise superior to circumstances.”
It was very soon after acquiring the foundations of a fixed fortune, that Beaumarchais carried into execution the cherished dream of his life, which was to gather all the members of his family under his own roof and to lavish upon them all those comforts of life, in which the limited means of the elder Caron had not permitted them to indulge. His mother was no longer living but there remained his father and two unmarried sisters at home. The elder Caron had, two years before, at his son’s request given up his trade of watchmaker, receiving from the latter a lifelong pension and a considerable sum of money to cover certain heavy losses which had come to him in the way of business.
We have formed already the acquaintance of Julie whom Beaumarchais especially loved and who shared with him to the end all the vicissitudes of his career.
Julie is spoken of as charming, witty, and vivacious; a good musician, speaking Italian and Spanish with fluency, improvising songs and composing verses, “more remarkable by their gaiety than by their poetic value.” Later in life she appeared before the public in a serious little volume entitled Reflections on Life, or Moral Considerations on the Value of Existence, but at the present time—1763—the tone of her letters distinctly betokens one not yet disenchanted with the gay world of which her brother formed the center.
The youngest sister of all, Jeanne Marguerite Caron, seems to have received a more brilliant education than the rest. M. de Loménie says of her that, “She was a good musician, playing very well on the harp, that she had a charming voice and more than that she was very pretty. She loved to compose verses like her sister Julie, and without being equally intelligent she possessed the same vivid, gay esprit which distinguished the family. In her infancy and girlhood she was called ‘Tonton.’ When her brother, now a courtier, had associated Julie with the graceful name of Beaumarchais, he found an even more aristocratic name for his youngest sister, he called her Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier, and it was under this name that Mlle. Tonton appeared with success in several salons.
“In her correspondence as a girl, Mlle. Boisgarnier appears to us as a small person, very elegant, slightly coquettish, slightly indolent, somewhat sarcastic, but still very attractive. The whole tone of her letters is that of the petite bourgeoise, of quality, very proud to have for a brother a Secrétaire du roi, Lieutenant-général des chasses, and in relation to whom she says in one of her letters, ‘Comment se gouverne la petite société? Le frère charmant en fait-il toujours les délices?’ ”
An older sister, Françoise, already had married a celebrated watchmaker of Paris, named Lépine, with whom the family tie was never broken. Her home served as a place of rendezvous for the scattered members of the family during those cruel years, of which we shall have to speak, when the property of Beaumarchais was seized and he himself degraded from his rights as citizen.
A son of this sister afterwards served as an officer in the American army under the name of “Des Epinières.”
The eldest sister of all, Marie-Josèphe, had left her father’s house when her brother was a young lad just returned from the school at Alfort. She had married an architect named Guilbert and had settled at Madrid in Spain. She took with her one of the younger sisters, Marie Louise, who continued to live with her there. The two sisters kept a milliner’s shop and the younger, Lizette as she was called, became the fiancée of a gifted young Spaniard, Clavico, of whom we shall hear presently from the pen of Beaumarchais himself.
Many years later the elder sister returned to France, a widow without fortune, accompanied by Lizette and two young children. Beaumarchais gave them both a yearly allowance, and at the death of the widow Guilbert, continued to provide for her children whom he gathered under his roof in Paris. Lizette had died some time previously.
Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier married very soon after her brother’s return from Spain. She was, however, taken early from her family and friends. She died leaving a daughter who, needless to say, was cared for by her generous uncle, and who later in life owed to him her advantageous settlement and dowry. She seems to have inherited a large share of the family gifts and to have been witty and attractive. In the family circle she went by the name of “the muse of Orleans,” from the city in which she was married and settled.
In estimating the full value of this unusual generosity which, as will be seen, did not show itself in isolated and spasmodic acts, but rather in a constant and inexhaustible stream flowing direct from his heart, it must not be forgotten that while Beaumarchais was at different periods of his life enormously rich and able to extend his generosity to those outside his family, yet there were other periods when exactly the reverse was the case, when he knew not where to turn for the necessary means of subsistence for himself alone. It was at such times that the true generosity of his nature shone forth in unmistakable clearness; there was never a time in his whole career, no matter what calamity had befallen him, that he thought of shaking himself loose from the family whose care he had assumed, a burden which indeed he bore very lightly most of the time, but which sometimes became a weight which he could scarcely support. The thought, however, of rising again without every one of those dear to him was so impossible to a nature like his, that it never entered his mind. The very fact that it was difficult, that it was impossible for anyone else was a sufficient spur to his energy. Defeat meant nothing to him, if one thing which he had tried failed, he at once attempted something else, but conquer he must and in the end he almost invariably did.
But to return to Beaumarchais and the family gathered under his roof; as we have seen, his actions speak for themselves and need no interpreters. In a letter to his father written a little later he sums up his experience of the world and his reason for pushing his fortunes so vigorously. He says:
“I wish to walk in the career which I have embraced, and it is above everything else in the desire to share with you in ease and fortune that I follow it so persistently.”
That the family of Beaumarchais knew how to appreciate and to return such rare devotion we have incontestible proofs. Especially touching are the outbursts of tenderness which come so spontaneously from the father’s heart. Under the date of February 5th, 1763, at the moment of his accepting the home prepared for him by his son the elder Caron writes, “I bless heaven with the deepest gratitude for finding in my old age a son with such an excellent heart, and far from being humiliated by my present situation, my soul rises and warms itself at the touching idea of owing my happiness, after God, to him alone.”
And a little later: “You modestly recommend me to love you a little; that is not possible, my dear friend. A son such as you is not made to be loved a little by a father who feels and thinks as I. The tears of tenderness which fall from my eyes as I write are the proof of this; the qualities of thy excellent heart, the force and grandeur of thy soul, penetrate me with the most tender love. Honor of my gray hairs, my son, my dear son, by what have I merited from God the grace with which he overwhelms me, in my dear son? It is, as I feel, the greatest favor which He can accord to an honest and appreciative father, a son such as you.”
The sincerity of these lines cannot for a moment be questioned, and we are not
