Later Queens of the French Stage

by H. Noel Williams

“On the 24th, I shall be with my good friends, with you and your wife, and shall devote that day to my happiness.”

In another letter, written eleven months later, we find her rejoicing over the victory of Hohenlinden, in which “her son in the army, her hussar, had well avenged them with the army of the Rhine against the Austrians.” She has received details of the engagement from Constant himself, who sends many affectionate messages to his “good and tender mother” and the Belangers, and desires to be remembered to “the amiable ladies of their circle.” The hastily-scribbled notes of the hussar, who seems to have been both a good son and a brave and capable officer—he rose, as we have mentioned elsewhere, to the rank of colonel and fell at Wagram—seem to have been one of the chief consolations of poor Sophie’s life.

When the first of the above letters was written, Sophie had been living for some years in Paris. She had returned to the capital in 1797, and had at first taken lodgings over a barber’s shop in the Rue du Petit-Lion, from which, however, she had removed, a few months later, to an apartment in the Hôtel d’Angivilliers. She still retained possession of the old priory at Luzarches, and appears to have occasionally visited it.

From the Hôtel d’Angivilliers, we find her writing to Lauraguais, who, though he had contrived to save his head,[65] was now almost as poor as she herself was, and was living on a small farm which he had bought or rented at Manicamp, in the department of the Aisne. He had invited her to share his retreat, but Sophie felt obliged to decline the offer. She had succeeded, not without great difficulty, in obtaining from François de Neufchâteau, the Minister of the Interior, a pension of 200 livres a month, and, as pensions were paid very grudgingly, she feared that her leaving Paris might serve as an excuse for discontinuing it. Unable to join Lauraguais in the country, she now invites him to come and live with her, “as to end her days near him, to render him all the attentions of friendship, of the most tender, the most constant attachment, is the desire of her heart and will crown her happiness.” “One must have money, you will say,” she continues, after pointing out that Paris will be the safest place for him to be in, in the coming renewal of the faction strife, which she believes to be close at hand. “But you have a little, and I have a little also. We shall not have any great expenses to meet. No rent to pay; we must breakfast at home; for dinner we can visit our friends; we will be moderate at their houses and very moderate at our own. I have also some wood at Le Paraclet, a portion of which I will have brought here.... As to our means of living; well, my Dorval, we must help one another. We will take for our models Baucis and Philemon. Dorval will write the great adventures of the Revolution; I will transmit to posterity those of our youth. That is already a long time ago, but one never forgets what has moved one deeply. The heart alone, my Dorval, has imperishable recollections.... I shall prepare for you all that I can procure for your needs and comfort. You shall have a fine room, very large and airy and in a good position, where you will be alone and free, with a staircase and door to yourself, a good bed, chairs and commodes to match, a big table for your papers, writing materials, &c. Finally, I hope you will not be uncomfortable. As for other matters, I have all that is required. To assist me, I keep one servant, a woman about thirty years of age, unmarried, and not too intelligent, but who works well and is a great help to me. The intelligent ones are only intrigantes, &c. We must avoid all that, and for good reasons. But do not, my friend, be uneasy about yourself; I shall always be at your service, and shall always say:

“ ‘Ah! qu’on est heureux de déchausser ce qu’on aime!’

“Adieu. I will let you know when the lodging will be ready. That will not be long; and do not send any excuses for not coming. Adieu.”

Lauraguais did not see his way to accept this invitation, but he appears to have been residing in Paris, for some time at least, during the last year or two of Sophie’s life, and to have done what little he could to assist her.

The poverty in which poor Sophie spent the last years of her life was in a great measure the result of her own goodness of heart. Soon after she removed from Luzarches to Paris, her daughter Alexandrine died, leaving behind her three children totally unprovided for. The ex-singer heroically undertook the charge of her grandchildren, although she must have been aware that the cost of their maintenance would leave her with hardly sufficient to procure the barest necessaries. Still, by the aid of the most rigid economy, she contrived to support both herself and them until the summer of 1799, when François de Neufchâteau resigned office, and the pension he had accorded her was discontinued. The unfortunate woman was now almost penniless—it was at this time that Belanger sent her the double louis which called forth the letter of thanks we have already cited. Nevertheless, even when face to face with starvation, her wit did not desert her, as will be seen by the following letter, which she addressed to Lucien Bonaparte, the new Minister of the Interior:

Paris, I Pluviôse, Year viii. (January 21, 1801).

“Citizen Minister,—I am called Sophie Arnould; a name perhaps quite unknown to you, but formerly very familiar to the Theatre of the Gods.