“I thought the comedians very good,” wrote Beaumarchais, “to fear that after waiting more than a year for their convenience, I should be offended by a new delay of a few days; I was too used to their manner of proceeding to lose patience at so small a cost. I resolved, therefore, to await the moment when it should please the fugitive assembly to meet. I waited until the 15th of June, when I received a letter from M. le Maréchal de Duras....”
“The comedians,” says Loménie “brought to the wall had
solicited the support of the duke, who intervened and begged the claimant to discuss the matter with him. As Beaumarchais demanded nothing better, he hastened to offer to the Duke of Duras the same lesson in bookkeeping which he had vainly offered to the comedians.... Beaumarchais wrote to him:
“‘You are too much interested, M. le Maréchal, in the progress of the most beautiful of the arts, not to admit that if those who play the pieces gain an income of twenty-thousand livres, those who thus make the fortune of the comedians should be able to draw from it that which is absolutely necessary. There is no personal interest, M. le Maréchal, in my demand; the love of justice and of letters alone determines me. The man whom the impulsion of a great genius might have carried to a renewal of the beautiful chefs-d’œuvre of our masters, certain that he cannot live three months from the fruits of the vigils of three years, after having lost five in waiting, becomes a journalist, a libellist or debases himself in some other trade as lucrative as degrading.’”
M. de Loménie continues, “After a conversation with Beaumarchais, M. de Duras seemed to enflame himself with ardor for the cause of justice. He declared that it was time to finish with the debates where authors are at the discretion of the comedians. He proposed to substitute for the arbitrary accounts a new regulation where the rights of the two parties shall be stipulated in the clearest, the most equitable manner. He invited Beaumarchais to consult with several dramatic authors, and to submit to him a plan. To this Beaumarchais replied that in a question which interested all equally, everyone who had written for the Théâtre-Français had a right to be heard and that all must be assembled.”
The duke consented and the first society of dramatic authors
was founded by a circular, dated June 27th, 1777, in which Beaumarchais invited all to a dinner.
“To unite men,” says Loménie, “who up to that time had been in the habit of living isolated and jealous lives, was something far from easy, even when invoking them to a common interest.”
In order that the reader may judge of the obstacles which this new phase of his enterprise presented, we subjoin two letters of La Harpe, published by M. de Loménie, in reply to the invitation of Beaumarchais.
“If the end,” says Loménie, in speaking of the first of these letters, “announced a man unwilling enough to treat with his fellows, the beginning seemed equally to indicate a little annoyance that another than himself should have been given the lead with the consent of M. de Duras.”