Improbable Patriot

by Harlow Giles Unger

  Although no one in the Austrian court believed a word of Beaumarchais’s fantastic adventure — no Angelucci or Atkinson ever surfaced anywhere — Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI received him as a hero. In the song he composed describing his quest, he compared himself to Robin Hood and captured the hearts of the royals, their ministers, and the French people:

  Toujours, toujours, il est toujours le même.

  Jamais Robin ne connut le chagrin,

  Le temps sombre ou serein,

  Les jours gras, le carême,

  Le matin ou le soir,

  Dites blanc, dites noir,

  Toujours, toujours, il est toujours le même.5

  Ever faithful, ever true; he is ever faithful and true.

  Robin Hood was never sad,

  In either good times or in bad,

  In days of plenty or of need,

  Mornings or nights, on bright days or drab.

  He is ever faithful and true … etc.

  France hailed and feted Beaumarchais as a near legend. The king promoted Sartine to minister of the navy and ordered the royal treasury to reimburse Beaumarchais 72,000 livres (just under $300,000) for both his missions — the earlier one for Louis XV as well as the mission for Louis XVI. Beaumarchais took advantage of his celebrity to petition the court to annul the judgment in the La Blache case, and the court complied. With his assets no longer attached, he used the 72,000 livres from his mythical hunt for Angelucci to recover his spacious house on the rue de Condé and moved back with his mistress, Marie-Thérèse Amélie de Willermaulaz, his father, his two sisters, a third, widowed sister, and her daughter and two sons. He went on to raise his two fatherless nephews as his own sons.

  Beaumarchais’s father, seventy-six-year-old André Caron, also moved back into the house on the rue de Condé. Although he suffered the agonies of arthritis, he nonetheless continued his constant hunt for women. Closest at hand was the housekeeper, who was just as constant in her hunt for money. Knowing that the old man’s son had ample reserves, she teased the old man mercilessly with aphrodisiacal whispers, light touches, and promises of peut-être demain, mon chéri (maybe tomorrow, dearie) — if only she could find the money today for her sick mother, father, brother, and so on. Beaumarchais suspected what she was up to, but had no evidence to confront her and was powerless to dissuade his sexually starved father from the chase.

  Once he settled into his home again, Beaumarchais asked for and won permission to stage The Barber of Seville, but made the mistake of revising it from a four-act hilarity to a biting, five-act drama. Laced with bitterness and anger, Figaro echoed Beaumarchais’s own pent-up rage at the injustices he had suffered:

  I have seen the most honest men nearly crushed by slander. … At first, a slight rumor, skimming the ground like the swallow before the storm, pianissimo, it murmurs, and twists and leaves behind its poisonous trail. An acquaintance hears it and piano, piano, slips it gracefully into your ear. The evil is done, it sprouts, crawls, travels on, and rinforzando from mouth to mouth, it flies like the devil; then, suddenly, I don’t know how, you see slander arising, hissing, swelling, and growing before your eyes. It flies forward, extends its flight, whirls, envelops, tars, bursts, and thunders, becomes a general cry, a public crescendo, a universal chorus of hate and admonition. Who can withstand it?6

  The play opened on February 22, 1775, to a packed house, but proved too bitter for an audience seeking laughter and entertainment. When Figaro complained of having been “welcomed in one town, imprisoned in another, everywhere rising above circumstances … mocking the foolish, braving the wicked,” hissing interrupted him; the audience had not come for angry diatribe. Some began to leave — one by one at first, then in small groups … By the end the house was almost empty. The Théâtre Français canceled the following day’s performance.

  “People had expected a masterpiece,” according to Jean-François de La Harpe, a contemporary literary critic. “The length of the speeches was wearisome, the bad jokes repulsive. Beaumarchais counted too much on his popularity and encumbered his play with useless scenes and jokes that were often coarse, destroyed all its charms and gave it the character of burlesque. The failure was complete.”7

  Le Théâtre Français in Paris, where a packed house cheered performances of Beaumarchais’s new play, Le Barbier de Séville, in February 1775. The great nineteenth-century French writer Gustave Flaubert called Figaro’s fiery monologues, which assailed aristocratic privilege, one of the causes of the French Revolution.

  RÉUNION DES MUSÉES NATIONAUX

  Always the optimist, refusing to let failure deter him, Beaumarchais set to work that evening. Three nights later, The Barber reopened as a shorter, four-act play that sent its audience into rapt laughter from the first scene to the last. It played to full houses until the end of the season and ensured Beaumarchais’s place among the greatest French playwrights in history and unquestionably the finest of his era. Actors — professionals and amateurs alike — staged it across France. In Versailles, Queen Marie Antoinette insisted on staging it at the Petit Trianon — and starring as Rosine, with her brother-in-law the comte d’Artois, the future King Charles X, playing Figaro.

  Beaumarchais’s alter ego Figaro joined the ranks of the most popular characters ever to appear on the French stage — like Beaumarchais himself, a multifaceted, multitalented genius whom circumstance forced to become a metaphorical barber. Beset by more powerful, evil-minded, high-born characters, he laughs, sings, dances, and cleverly schemes his way over, around, and under impossible hurdles to success — a simple commoner shaving his enemies and manipulating the world to his own advantage.

  A tiny gust that extinguishes a candle, Figaro reminds his audience, can ignite an inferno.

  As unique in the French theater as Falstaff on the British stage, Figaro was an entirely new character in French drama: human in every respect — at times cheerful or sad, daring or cowardly, forthright or scheming, scrupulous or not, but incapable of pure evil, he was ready to do whatever was needed to ensure the survival of humanity and human success. For 150 years, the French stage had presented only classical characters of heroic dimensions created by Corneille and Racine. Although Molière’s satires of manners introduced humor, his characters were buffoonish archetypes rather than individuals, and, more often than not, they were aristocratic archetypes. For the first time, theater audiences were able to see themselves (or at least elements of themselves and what they would like to be) onstage, expressing their thoughts, their emotions. Figaro was not only human — thoroughly human — he was the petit bourgeois in the Age of Enlightenment: a citoyen “born free” under Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Contrat social, surrendering some personal rights to the common good but demanding, in return, equal status, equal opportunity, and a modicum of mutual assistance from others. His speech, mannerisms, interests, and life required an entirely new type of theatrical presentation. He represented as much of a revolution on the French stage as he soon would in French streets.

  Le vin et la paresse

  Se partagent mon coeur.

  Si l’une et ma tendresse,

  L’autre fait mon bonheur.

  Wine and idleness

  Share my heart;

  The first is my love,

  The other my joy.

  The Théâtre Français reaped a fortune from the play, but after a month’s performances, Beaumarchais had not a sou to show for his success — not even an accounting of theater receipts. From the time a century earlier when Molière had formed his own theater company — during the reign of Louis XIV — the law required theaters to give playwrights about 10 percent of the profits from all performances of their plays — unless total receipts fell below 1,200 livres for the first two performances. With that rule in mind, theaters often failed to publicize productions until the third performance, thus ensuring empty houses the first two nights — and allowing theaters and actors to keep all subsequent revenues for themselves. By the time Figaro walked on
stage, theater companies had not only stopped paying playwrights, they had stopped sending them financial statements. But they had never faced Figaro.

  When Barber opened, Beaumarchais was intent on rebuilding his fortune, and after a month of seeing his play performed to packed houses, he shocked the theater managers and actors by demanding an official tally and share of receipts — in other words, by claiming his authorship rights. In a backstage scene that mirrored Figaro’s onstage confrontations, one irate actor demanded, “At least tell us how many times you expect us to play it for your profit before the play belongs to us.”

  “Why should it ever belong to you?” Beaumarchais retorted.

  “Because that’s the arrangement most authors make.”

  “That does not mean I have to do the same.”

  “They are very satisfied, Monsieur, by the honor of seeing their plays performed time and time again. So tell us how many times you want us to play it for your profit — six, eight, ten times? Tell us!”

  “I want you to play it 1,001 times!”

  “You are not very modest, Monsieur!”

  “I am as modest as you are just. You want to inherit from people before they are dead.”8

  The Théâtre Français claimed it had no written records of receipts and could not provide any. With the malicious smile that had become his trademark, Beaumarchais bid his tormentors adieu and invited twenty-three of the nation’s leading authors and composers to join him to form the powerful Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques. Under his leadership, the group threatened a writers’ strike and forced all theater companies in France to agree not to present any play without the author’s consent and to pay playwrights 12 percent of gross profits. As Figaro the barber put it,

  Overwhelmed with debts and light on cash;

  Welcomed in one town, imprisoned in the next;

  Praised by some, blamed by others;

  Making the best of good weather, enduring the bad;

  Mocking the foolish, braving the wicked;

  Laughing in my misery and shaving all.9

  Early in 1775, French foreign minister comte de Vergennes watched the uncanny Figaro and his creator manipulate the world onstage and off — and enlisted the playwright’s help with a problem of state that would tie Beaumarchais’s fortunes to the American Revolutionary War. The problem had baffled the king’s intelligence bureau for a decade and threatened to involve the nation in an unnecessary war with England that it could not afford. At the heart of the problem was a rogue French spy in London, Chevalier Charles Geneviève d’Eon de Beaumont, who had served heroically as an army captain during the Seven Years’ War and been an effective spy before and after the conflict. Although a fierce, dangerously skilled swordsman, his prewar espionage had raised some questions — and eyebrows — about his gender.

  In the buildup to the Seven Years’ War, French King Louis XV had tried unsuccessfully to lure Russia from the British to the French side. Then a mysterious French beauty appeared at the czarina’s palace and so stunned the court with her grace, bearing, and intellect that the czarina embraced her as a personal aide for French cultural and political affairs. As the two grew closer, Mademoiselle Lia de Beaumont revealed herself to be the Chevalier d’Eon. Instead of arousing the czarina’s fury, she/he provoked gales of laughter, admiration, and deep affection that resulted in Russia’s alliance with France in the Seven Years’ War with Britain. Hailed at Versailles for his diplomatic victory, the Chevalier d’Eon marched off to battle (in a man’s uniform) to win his nation’s highest military honor — the Cross of Saint Louis.

  Although France eventually lost the war and her vast empire in Asia, Africa, and North America, French King Louis XV immediately began plotting to avenge his nation’s defeat. Among other things, he ordered the comte de Broglie, the commanding general of the army, to draw up plans to invade England and sent the Chevalier d’Eon to England to ingratiate himself at court, elicit military secrets, and survey British ports and military defenses.

  D’Eon proved himself as remarkable in London as he had been in St. Petersburg, appearing alternatively as the stunning Mademoiselle de Beaumont or the handsome Chevalier Charles d’Eon in formal military dress in ballrooms and diplomatic functions — without arousing suspicions that he might be she or she he. The chevalier won the friendship, trust, and favors of King George III and his queen. At least one d’Eon biographer — and there were many — claims he fathered English queen Sophia Charlotte’s son — the future King George IV. And while Monsieur d’Eon was seducing the queen, the svelte Mademoiselle de Beaumont was seducing courtiers with fine brandy and the promise of sexual favors for hints of military secrets to send to General de Broglie.

  After a violent falling out in which d’Eon challenged the French ambassador’s authority in London, Versailles ordered d’Eon home and cut off his salary. D’Eon refused to return and threatened to reveal military secrets to the British government and turn over letters from King Louis XV revealing plans to invade Britain. Louis XV’s ministers relented and bought d’Eon’s silence by letting him remain in London, a retiree on full salary. With Louis XV’s death, however, salary payments to d’Eon ended. The chevalier sent angry demands to Versailles for back pay and an additional 300,000 livres (about $1.25 million modern) that he claimed the late king owed him for private services. The new foreign minister, comte de Vergennes, sent agents to arrest him and bring him back to France, but d’Eon was too clever, rapidly switching disguises and leaving agents embarrassed and befuddled about his/her identity. One agent was so taken in by Mademoiselle de Beaumont that, instead of arresting her, he all but swooned over her beauty and proposed marriage.

  La Chevalière d’Eon was a transsexual who, as a male, had been a French officer and spy. Posing as a woman, he/she extracted money from the French government by threatening to reveal French military secrets to the British. French foreign minister Vergennes sent Beaumarchais to England as a secret agent to foil d’Eon’s plan.

  AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

  “It cannot be denied that she was a phenomenal person,” wrote M. de Flassan, a contemporary historian and archivist.

  Nature was deceived in giving her a sex so much in contradiction with her … character. Her mania for playing the part of a man and for deceiving all observers rendered her sometimes ill-tempered. … For the rest she deserved esteem and respect for the constancy with which she concealed her sex from scrutiny. The brilliant part this woman played in missions of a delicate nature … proves that she was more fitted for politics by her wit and knowledge than many men who have followed the same career.10

  After each farcical encounter with French agents, d’Eon increased his threats and blackmail demands. Foreign Minister Vergennes decided that only Figaro would be able to untangle the d’Eon affair, and he asked Beaumarchais to go to London to see if he could retrieve the secret correspondence of Louis XV from the dangerous chevalier/chevalière.

  “You are enlightened and prudent,” Vergennes told Beaumarchais. “You know what men are, and I am not uneasy about your arriving at a good result with Monsieur d’Eon, if it is possible to do so. If the enterprise fails in your hands, it must be taken for granted that it can never succeed.”11 Vergennes said he was particularly interested in retrieving a damaging letter of Louis XV asking d’Eon to assess which English harbors would be most open for landing invading French troops.

  A master of espionage himself, Vergennes had honed his skills for thirteen years as French ambassador in Turkey. Appointed ambassador to Sweden in 1771, he masterminded the coup d’état that overthrew King Gustave III, before being called by the new king, Louis XVI, to head the Foreign Affairs Ministry at Versailles in 1774. A fierce nationalist like his predecessor Choiseul, Vergennes was intent on rebuilding the French empire — if possible, without plunging the nation into a costly war with her ancient enemy Britain. Like Choiseul before him, Vergennes saw the incipient rebellion by American colonists as a possible means of w
eakening Britain and opening the way for French repossession of Canada.

  As Vergennes spoke to Beaumarchais about the d’Eon mission, the shots at Lexington resounded around the world, provoking consternation and anger in London and cheers in France. Versailles ministers smiled or laughed at the vision of ill-clad farmers with outdated muskets humiliating the vaunted British Redcoats and laying siege to British-occupied Boston. In Philadelphia, representatives of the twelve other British colonies agreed to form a Continental Army to join the Massachusetts rebels under the overall command of Virginia’s General George Washington. As Vergennes related the latest news from America, he told Beaumarchais to report any interesting developments in the British political scene that might be of interest to Versailles. Beaumarchais agreed to serve Vergennes on condition that Louis XVI would fulfill his late grandfather Louis XV’s pledge to restore the playwright’s civil rights. Vergennes agreed.

  Too well known by then to travel undercover as Monsieur de Ronac, Beaumarchais went to London festooned in the ostentatious garb and other accoutrements that befitted his reputation as a theater celebrity and carefree bon vivant. Accompanied by his friend Gudin, he pretended he was going to London to savor what promised to be a triumphant English presentation of his Barber of Seville, which had been playing to standing-room-only audiences in Paris. By the time he reached London, Beaumarchais was beginning to enjoy his double life as a government spy. A master at plotting intrigue on the stage, he was equally skilled at plotting it in real life and as addicted to living a life of adventure, espionage, and speculation as he was to writing about it. He had become every bit as cunning, resourceful, and witty offstage as his fictional alter ego Figaro was in The Barber onstage. Indeed, Beaumarchais had become Figaro.