[Refrain]
When the horse in front slows down to stop,
The one at the rear charges by at a quick clip-clop.
From behind a mantilla, two beautiful eyes
Target a victim with lances of fire.
His heart goes aflutter; a-bump with desire,
But never forget the old maxim, sire:
[Refrain]
Time flies in the morning and all afternoon.
“We must see each other; Let’s do it quite soon.”
“I’m sorry I’m busy … maybe in June.”
He’s furious with her; she’s as mad as a loon.
But when the horse in the front slows … [Refrain]
At last they arrange a sweet rendezvous
To savor the splendors of love evermore.
But in the mad rush for pleasures galore,
He lies exhausted while she yearns for more.
The grass is so soft, her desires implore,
When a lover is tired and ready to stop,
She’ll run to another at a quick clip-clop.
There’s a moral to learn
From this trivial tale
From an old seguedilla
With a lesson so stale:
Beware of women you meet on the trail,
Whose soft words entrance and urge you to stop.
She’ll run with your money at a quick clip-clop.
— H. G. de U.
Coda
Of all the roles that Beaumarchais created on- and offstage, he named Roderigue Hortalez and “the honorable part which I had in the liberty of America” as “the greatest act of my life … the glory of my entire life.”2 Although some historians rank him as “the most underrated French hero of the American Revolution,”3 Congress, to its disgrace, refused to pay him a penny for the arms he shipped to America. When he died, the nation whose liberty he saved owed him at least 2.28 million francs — $8.5 million in today’s dollars, but worth far more in terms of purchasing power in 1799. In the years before and after his death, five American Founding Fathers — John Jay, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and Alexander Hamilton — pleaded with Congress to square accounts with Beaumarchais and, after he died, with his estate. In 1816, the duc de Richelieu supported the Beaumarchais claim with an eloquent letter to Congress — that went unnoticed. “The Claims of the Heirs of Beaumarchais” appeared on the agenda of each session of Congress without any consideration. In 1822, Beaumarchais’s daughter Eugénie Delarue, by then forty-five years old, again pleaded with America’s lawmakers to settle the case.
“As a reward for the devotion of Beaumarchais to your cause, shall his daughter be deprived of her fortune, and finish her life in vain and cruel expectation?” she wrote. “Till the last minute of his life, he begged you to decide upon his claim. … Such were the last wishes of his heart in the long pursuit of his just claims.”4 Congress ignored her request and left her letter unacknowledged. The rest of America did much the same. While the nation renamed hundreds of cities, towns, villages, lakes, rivers, mountains, and institutions to honor other Founding Fathers, it failed to name a single town in America or even raise a monument to commemorate the French spy who saved the American Revolution during its early years, when Washington’s patriots faced British armies alone, without adequate military supplies. Not a stone bears his name; no portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery or any other American museum that honors the nation’s patriots. He lies in Paris, forgotten by all but devotees of eighteenth-century French theater.
In 1835, the U.S. government was about to make a claim of its own against France, but realized it would have little chance of obtaining a hearing as long as the Beaumarchais case remained open. Congress offered the Beaumarchais heirs an 800,000-franc, take-it-or-leave-it settlement — about $3 million in today’s dollars, or about 35 percent of what the government owed Beaumarchais for America’s liberty and independence. Exhausted by the long process and weary of hollow American proclamations of “justice for all,” the Beaumarchais family accepted the settlement.
… which proves that the son of a clod can be worth his weight in gold.
— FIGARO5
Fin
APPENDIX
WORKS BY BEAUMARCHAIS
Full-Length Plays (in chronological order)
Eugénie, a drama in five acts
Les deux amis, ou Le Négociant de Lyon (The Two Friends, or, The Merchant of Lyon), a drama in five acts
Le Barbier de Séville, ou La Précaution inutile (The Barber of Seville, or, The Useless Precaution), a comedy in four acts
La folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (A Crazy Day, or, The Marriage of Figaro), a comedy in five acts
L’autre Tartuffe, ou La Mère coupable (The Other Tartuffe, or, The Guilty Mother), a drama in five acts
Opera
Tarare (Tarare), an opera in five acts
One-Act Plays (Parades)
Colin et Colette
Les Bottes de sept lieues (The Seven-League Boots)
Les Députés de la halle et du Gros-Caillou (The Delegates of the Market and of [the community of] Gros-Caillou)
Léandre, marchand d’agnus, médecin et bouquetière (Leander, the Vendor of Herbs,
Medicines, and Flowers)
Jean Bête à le foire (John the Beast at the Market) [Note: The word bête can also
mean “stupid” and is used as a pun in the title, which can be translated “Stupid
John at the Market.”]
Oeil pour oeil, dent pour dent (An Eye for an Eye, a Tooth for a Tooth)
NOTES
The epigraph to this book is from act 1, scene 6, Le Barbier de Séville, ou La Précaution Inutile, in Beaumarchais, Oeuvres complètes de Beaumarchais (Geneva, Switzerland: Éditions Famot, 1976), 52. Hereafter cited as Oeuvres. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from French works are my own.
1. We Must Help the Americans
1. Douglas Southall Freeman, George Washington: A Biography, 6 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1954), 4:198, citing Reed Papers, New-York Historical Society.
2. Colonel Joseph Reed to George Washington, December 22, 1776, W. W. Abbott et al., eds., The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, June 1775– January 1779, 18 vols. to date (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1984– present), 7:414–17. Hereafter cited as PGW Rev.
3. Henri Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France à l’établissement des États-Unis d’Amérique, 5 vols., quarto (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886), 1:616.
4. Freeman, Washington, 4:194n.
5. GW to Lund Washington, September 30, 1776, PGW Rev. 6:82–87.
6. John Durand, ed., Documents of the American Revolution (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1889), 22–23.
7. Louis de Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times: Sketches of French Society in the Eighteenth Century from Unpublished Documents, trans. Henry S. Edwards (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1857), 266.
8. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:402–3.
9. Journal et Mémoires du Marquis d’Argenson (Paris: Ratheray, 1859), 1:325–26, 371–72; 4:131.
10. Jacques Brosse, ed., Mémoires du Duc de Choiseul (Paris: Mercure de France, 1987), 192–93.
11. Ibid., 198.
12. Ibid., 63.
13. Dinwiddie to GW, March 14, 1754, in W.W. Abbott and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Papers of George Washington, Colonial Series, 1748–August 1755, 10 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1983–95), 1:75.
14. Donald Jackson and Dorothy Twohig, eds., The Diaries of George Washington, 6 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1976–79), 1:195.
15. Robert Douthat Meade, Patrick Henry: Patriot in the Making (Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1957), 171.
16. Richard B. Morris, ed., Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), 74–75.
17. Edward S. Corwin, French Policy and the A
merican Alliance of 1778 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1916; reprinted Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1969), 42.
18. Frederich Kapp, The Life of John Kalb, Major-General in the Revolutionary Army (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1884), 47.
19. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:84.
20. Ibid.
2. Gold by God! The Fuel of Life!
1. Georges Lemaitre, Beaumarchais (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1949), 8.
2. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 46.
3. Ibid., 49–51.
4. Ibid., 51.
5. Elizabeth S. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence (Boston: Richard G. Badger, The Badger Press, 1918, 2 vols.), 1:51–52.
6. Sieur Caron Fils à l’auteur du “Mercure,” 15 novembre 1753, in Oeuvres, 733–34.
7. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 54.
8. July 31, 1754, in ibid., 55.
9. Letter to Mercure, June 16, 1755, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 54.
10. From a song entitled Romance, in Oeuvres, 813.
11. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 59n.
12. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Basic Political Writings: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, On the Social Contract, trans. and ed. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987), 60.
13. Ibid., 141.
14. Unlike the piano, harp pedals raise the pitch of strings by semitones and whole tones. Until about 1720, harp strings were tuned diatonically. The introduction of the first pedal mechanism allowed the harpist to play sharps and flats. Beaumarchais’s contribution marked one step in the instrument’s gradual, century-long evolution into the modern double-action harp with seven pedals.
15. Refrain from La gallerie des femmes du siècle passé, in Oeuvres, 817.
16. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:62–63.
17. Ibid.
18. Paul-Philippe Gudin de la Brenellerie, Histoire de Beaumarchais: Mémoires inédits publiés sur les manuscrits originaux (Paris: Librairie Plon, 1888), cited in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 67.
19. Ibid., 68.
20. Ibid., 68–69.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., 69–70.
23. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:78.
3. Last Night Poor, Wealthy Today!
1. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 78.
2. Ibid.
3. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:83.
4. Ibid., 1:91.
5. Beaumarchais to André-Charles Caron, undated, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 94ff.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.; emphasis in original.
9. Beaumarchais to André-Charles Caron, 1764, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 104.
10. Caron de Beaumarchais to Geneviève Madeleine de Beaumarchais, formerly Lévêque, née Watebled, July 15, 1769, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 133–34.
11. Cynthia Cox, The Real Figaro: The Extraordinary Career of Caron de Beaumarchais (New York: Coward-McCann, 1963), 38, 39.
12. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 171.
13. Ibid., 136.
14. Boston Gazette, March 12, 1770.
15. Charles F. Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, 10 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1850– 56), 1:349–50.
16. Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville, act 1, scene 2, in Oeuvres, 148.
17. Caron de Beaumarchais to Gudin de La Brenellerie, February 1773, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 165–66.
18. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:188–89.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., 1:172.
21. De la Vrillière to Sartines, March 1773, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 166.
4. So You Mistreat Some Poor Devil …
Till He Trembles in Disgrace!
1. Caron de Beaumarchais to Sartine, March 11, 1773, in Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:197–98.
2. Constant to Beaumarchais, in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 170.
3. Beaumarchais to Constant, in ibid., 171.
4. Beaumarchais to Mme. d’Étioles, March 4, 1773, in ibid., 170–71.
5. Beaumarchais, Le Barbier de Séville, act 5, scene 2, in Oeuvres, 223.
6. Beaumarchais to the duc de la Vrillière, March 21, 1773, Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 169.
7. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:211.
8. Oeuvres, 351.
9. Ibid., 387.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 365–66.
12. Ibid., 367–72.
13. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 194.
14. Ibid.
15. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 198–99.
16. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:242.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., 1:243.
19. Ibid., 1:243–44.
20. Ibid., 1:244.
21. Ibid., 1:246.
22. Ibid., 1:198. In fact, Jeanne Bécu was the illegitimate daughter of a domestic of the treasurer of the province of Lorraine. Sent to a convent for her education, she followed her mother into domestic service, but at seventeen left the convent to work as a sales girl in an elegant shop for high-fashion women’s clothes on the rue Saint-Honore in Paris. She caught the eye of a playboy and patron of the arts from Toulouse, Jean-Baptiste du Barry, who was known as Le Roué (a rake) and, not surprisingly, took her as his mistress. After teaching her basics of art, music, and literature, he presented her to the Maréchal Richelieu, a great nephew of the cardinal, and he, in turn, arranged for Louis XV’s chief valet to present her to the king.
23. Lemaitre, Beaumarchais, 137.
24. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 210.
25. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:255.
5. I’m the Busiest, Cleverest Fellow I Know
1. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 214.
2. Ibid., 215.
3. Ibid., 217–222.
4. Ibid.
5. Refrain from Robin, in Oeuvres, 816.
6. Bazile, Le Barbier de Séville, act 2, scene 8, in Oeuvres, 156.
7. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 252.
8. Kite, 1:292–93.
9. Figaro, Le Barbier de Séville, act 1, scene 2, in Oeuvres, 149.
10. M. de Flassan, Histoire générale et raisonnée de la diplomatie française depuis la fondation de la monarchie jusqu’ à la fin du règne de Louis XVI, 7 vols. (Paris, 1809), 5:454.
11. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 233–34.
12. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 1:38.
13. GW to John Hancock, August 4, 1775, PGW Rev. 1:223–39.
14. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:84.
15. Ibid., 232.
16. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:377.
17. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 226.
18. Ibid., 231; Frederic Gaillardet, Mémoires sur la chevalière d’Eon : La Verité sur les mystères de sa vie (Paris: E. Dentu, 1866), 257ff.
19. Ibid., 236.
20. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 2:25.
21. Ibid., 238.
22. Ibid., 242–43.
23. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 243.
24. D’Eon died in 1810; a post-mortem examination stated, “I certify by the present that I have examined and dissected the body of the Chevalier d’Eon … and that I found the male organs of generation perfectly formed in every respect. May 23, 1810. Thos. Copeland, surgeon.” Cited in Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 225n.
6. Plotting and Pocketing
1
. Burton J. Hendrick, The Lees of Virginia: Biography of a Family (Boston: Little Brown, 1935), 229.
2. Ibid., 231.
3. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 266.
4. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:407.
5. Morris, Encyclopedia, 88.
6. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:368–69.
7. GW to the Cherokee Indians, October 1757, GWP, C01.5:27–28.
8. Edmund Burke, First Speech on the Conciliation with America and American Taxation before Parliament, April 19, 1774.
9. From “A Friend to America” to GW, November 20, 1775, PGW Rev. 2:404–5.
10. John Dickinson was a Congressman from Pennsylvania, Benjamin Harrison from Virginia, John Jay from New York, and Thomas Johnson from Maryland.
11. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:267, 289–90. For the entire text, see ibid., 267, 287–92.
12. Durand, Documents, 59–73.
13. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:243–49.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Loménie, Beaumarchais and His Times, 273.
17. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:240–48.
7. I Wish to Serve Your Country as if It Were My Own
1. Francis Wharton, The Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States, Edited under Direction of Congress, with preliminary index, and notes historical and legal, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1889), 1:367.
2. Doniol, Histoire de la participation de la France, 1:240–48.
3. Durand, Documents, 90.
4. Ibid., 2:98.
5. Kite, Beaumarchais and the War of American Independence, 2:100.
6. Ibid.; PGW Rev., 7:414–17, Colonel Joseph Reed to George Washington, December 22, 1776.
7. Wharton, Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence, 2:97.
8. Ibid, 2:78.
9. Ibid., 78–79.
Improbable Patriot Page 22