“In her correspondence as a girl, Mlle. Boisgarnier appears to us as a small person, very elegant, slightly coquettish, slightly indolent, somewhat sarcastic, but still very attractive. The whole tone of her letters is that of the petite bourgeoise, of quality, very proud to have for a brother a Secrétaire du roi, Lieutenant-général des chasses, and in relation to whom she says in one of her letters, ‘Comment se gouverne la petite société? Le frère charmant en fait-il toujours les délices?’”
An older sister, Françoise, already had married a celebrated watchmaker of Paris, named Lépine, with whom the family tie was never broken. Her home served as a place of rendezvous for the scattered members of the family during those cruel years, of which we shall have to speak, when the property of Beaumarchais was seized and he himself degraded from his rights as citizen.
A son of this sister afterwards served as an officer in the American army under the name of “Des Epinières.”
The eldest sister of all, Marie-Josèphe, had left her father’s house when her brother was a young lad just returned from the school at Alfort. She had married an architect named Guilbert and had settled at Madrid in Spain. She took with her one of the younger sisters, Marie Louise, who continued to live with her there. The two sisters kept a milliner’s shop and the younger, Lizette as she was called, became the fiancée of a gifted young Spaniard, Clavico, of whom we shall hear presently from the pen of Beaumarchais himself.
Many years later the elder sister returned to France, a widow without fortune, accompanied by Lizette and two young children. Beaumarchais gave them both a yearly allowance, and at the death of the widow Guilbert, continued to provide for her children whom he gathered under his roof in Paris. Lizette had died some time previously.
Mademoiselle de Boisgarnier married very soon after her brother’s return from Spain. She was, however, taken early from her family and friends. She died leaving a daughter who, needless to say, was cared for by her generous uncle, and who later in life owed to him her advantageous settlement and dowry. She seems to have inherited a large share of the family gifts and to have been witty and attractive. In the family circle she went by the name of “the muse of
Orleans,” from the city in which she was married and settled.
In estimating the full value of this unusual generosity which, as will be seen, did not show itself in isolated and spasmodic acts, but rather in a constant and inexhaustible stream flowing direct from his heart, it must not be forgotten that while Beaumarchais was at different periods of his life enormously rich and able to extend his generosity to those outside his family, yet there were other periods when exactly the reverse was the case, when he knew not where to turn for the necessary means of subsistence for himself alone. It was at such times that the true generosity of his nature shone forth in unmistakable clearness; there was never a time in his whole career, no matter what calamity had befallen him, that he thought of shaking himself loose from the family whose care he had assumed, a burden which indeed he bore very lightly most of the time, but which sometimes became a weight which he could scarcely support. The thought, however, of rising again without every one of those dear to him was so impossible to a nature like his, that it never entered his mind. The very fact that it was difficult, that it was impossible for anyone else was a sufficient spur to his energy. Defeat meant nothing to him, if one thing which he had tried failed, he at once attempted something else, but conquer he must and in the end he almost invariably did.
But to return to Beaumarchais and the family gathered under his roof; as we have seen, his actions speak for themselves and need no interpreters. In a letter to his father written a little later he sums up his experience of the world and his reason for pushing his fortunes so vigorously. He says: