Beaumarchais au Duc de Chaulnes, 1771
Early life—Trained by his Father to the Trade of Watchmaker—Invents an Escapement for Watches—First Lawsuit—Horloger du Roi—Enters the Court of Versailles as Contrôleur clerc d’office—First Marriage—Assumes the Name of Beaumarchais—Death of his Wife—Becomes Music Master to the Princesses of France—Attracts the Attention of Paris du Verney
IT was on the twenty-fourth day of January, 1732, in an inconspicuous watchmaker’s shop on the rue St. Denis in Paris, that the child first saw the light who was baptized Pierre-August and whose family name was Caron. He was the seventh of ten children, six of whom were girls, but as his brothers all died in infancy he was the only son of the household and consequently its idol.
Formed by nature for fun and frolic, the little “Pierrot” as he was called had the merriest possible childhood. His mother gentle, loving, and indulgent shielded her favorite from his father, who at times was somewhat stern, while his elder sisters petted and spoiled him, and the younger ones entered heartily into his games and pastimes. Two of the girls were younger than he, the one nearest his age, Julie, was his favorite, and was also the one who most resembled him by her talents and her native wit and gaiety. It is from her pen that we have most of the details of their early life. In some of her youthful rhymes Julie tells us how “Pierrot” commanded a band of little good-for-nothings, roving about either to plunder the larder of Margot, the cook, or returning at night to disturb the slumber of the peaceful inhabitants of the rue St. Denis. Again in inharmonious verse she recounts how—
“Upon an incommodious seat
Arranged in form of a pagoda
Caron presents a magistrate,
By his huge wig and linen collar.
Each one pleads with might and main,
Before that judge inexorable
That nothing will appease,
Whose only pleasure is to rain
Upon his clients ever pleading
Blows of fist and tongs and shovel;
And the hearing never ends,
Till wigs and bonnets roll away
In dire confusion and disorder.”
But it must not be thought that the elder Caron approved of too much levity. Although he was himself witty and
gifted with a keen literary and artistic sense, he was above all a serious man with an earnest purpose in life. He was descended from Huguenot ancestors who had managed to live in France after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, although they no longer possessed a legal existence. Their religious exercises were performed in caves or dark woods or in some desert spot. Here their marriages were solemnized by wandering ministers. The grandparents of Pierre-August, Daniel Caron and Marie Fortain, had been thus united, but their son, André-Charles Caron, shortly before his marriage with Louise Picheon in 1722, abjured his faith and joined himself to the Catholic Church. He retained, however, his Calvinistic character.
André-Charles Caron, like his father, was a watchmaker by profession. He was one of those exquisitely skilled French workmen who had done so much for the advancement of science in their own country, and who, when driven into exile, made the fortune of the people among whom they sought refuge, notably the Swiss. Not content with the exercise of his profession alone, the penetrating mind of André-Charles Caron led him into extensive scientific investigations so that he came to be looked upon as an authority in many branches of mechanics.
At ten years of age the young Pierre-August was sent by his father to a professional school at Alfort, where he learned the rudiments of Latin, but three years later his father brought him home intent on his becoming a watchmaker.
In the years that followed there was a period of stress and storm during which father and son wrestled for mastery. Always when the latter worked he showed a dexterity of touch, an ingenuity of invention which astonished the father; but, on the other hand, his escapades away from