MAISON DE BUFFON, IN WHICH LAMARCK LIVED IN PARIS. 1793–1829
At the time of his entering on his duties as professor of zoölogy, Lamarck was in his fiftieth year. He had married twice and was the father of six children, and without fortune. He married for a third, and afterwards for a fourth time, and in all, seven children were born to him, as in the year (1794) the minute referring to his request for an indemnity states: “Il est chargé de sept enfans dont un est sur les vaisseaux de la République.” Another son was an artist, as shown by the records of the Assembly of the Museum for September 23, 1814, when he asked for a chamber in the lodgings of Thouin, for the use of his son, “peintre.”
Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in 1829, spoke of one of his sons, M. Auguste de Lamarck, as a skilful and highly esteemed engineer of Ponts-et-Chaussées, then advantageously situated.
But man cannot live by scientific researches and philosophic meditations alone. The history of Lamarck’s life is painful from beginning to end. With his large family and slender salary he was never free from carking cares and want. On the 30 fructidor, an II. of the Republic, the National Convention voted the sum of 300,000 livres, with which an indemnity was to be paid to citizens eminent in literature and art. Lamarck had sacrificed much time and doubtless some money in the preparation and publication of his works, and he felt that he had a just claim to be placed on the list of those who had been useful to the Republic, and at the same time could give proof of their good citizenship, and of their right to receive such indemnity or appropriation.
Accordingly, in 1795 he sent in a letter, which possesses much autobiographical interest, to the Committee of Public Instruction, in which he says:
“During the twenty-six years that he has lived in Paris the citizen Lamarck has unceasingly devoted himself to the study of natural history, and particularly botany. He has done it successfully, for it is fifteen years since he published under the title of Flore Française the history and description of the plants of France, with the mention of their properties and of their usefulness in the arts; a work printed at the expense of the government, well received by the public, and which now is much sought after and very rare.” He then describes his second great botanical undertaking, the Encyclopædia and Illustration of Genera, with nine hundred plates. He states that for ten years past he has kept busy “a great number of Parisian artists, three printing presses for different works, besides delivering a course of lectures.”
The petition was granted. At about this period a pension of twelve hundred francs from the Academy of Sciences, and which had increased to three thousand francs, had ceased eighteen months previously to be paid to him. But at the time (an II.) Lamarck was “chargé de sept enfans,” and this appropriation was a most welcome addition to his small salary.
The next year (an III.) he again applied for a similar allowance from the funds providing an indemnity for men of letters and artists “whose talents are useful to the Republic.” Again referring to the Flore Française, and his desire to prepare a second edition of it, and his other works and travels in the interest of botanical science, he says:
“If I had been less overburdened by needs of all kinds for some years, and especially since the suppression of my pension from the aforesaid Academy of Sciences, I should prepare the second edition of this useful work; and this would be, without doubt, indeed, the opportunity of making a new present to my country.
“Since my return to France I have worked on the completion of my great botanical enterprises, and indeed for about ten years past my works have obliged me to keep in constant activity a great number of artists, such as draughtsmen, engravers, and printers. But these important works that I have begun, and have in a well-advanced state, have been in spite of all my efforts suspended and practically abandoned for the last ten years. The loss of my pension from the Academy of Sciences and the enormous increase in the price of articles of subsistence have placed me, with my numerous family, in a state of distress which leaves me neither the time nor the freedom from care to cultivate science in a fruitful way.”
Lamarck’s collection of shells, the accumulation of nearly thirty years,[38] was purchased by the government at the price of five thousand livres. This sum was used by him to balance the price of a national estate for which he had contracted by virtue of the law of 28 ventôse de l’an IV.[39] This little estate, which was the old domain of Beauregard, was a modest farm-house or country-house at Héricourt-Saint-Samson, in the Department of Seine-et-Oise, not far to the northward of Beauvais, and about fifty miles from Paris. It is probable that as a proprietor of a landed property he passed the summer season, or a part of it, on this estate.