The foregoing testimonials regarding Paine's personal appearance and dress are equally true of his old age. The Jarvis painting, executed when he was an old man of sixty-seven, is a mute witness to this. This portrait is that of a handsome, temperate, well-preserved man. It is of itself a standing refutation of the slanders of his defamers, and especially of the charge that he was addicted to drunkenness in his old age.
Aaron Burr: "I always considered Mr. Paine a gentleman, a pleasant companion, and a good-natured and intelligent man, decidedly temperate."
Regarding another base calumny, Dr. Conway says: "During Paine's life the world heard no hint of sexual immorality connected with him, but after his death Cheetham published [in his 'Life of Paine'] the following: 'Paine brought with him from Paris, and from her husband in whose house he had lived, Margaret Brazier Bonneville, and her three sons. Thomas has the features, countenance, and temper of Paine.'" Madame Bonneville was a lady of unblemished character, educated, cultured and refined. For this vile insinuation its author, a disreputable publisher of New York, who boasted of having nine libel suits pending against him at one time, was pronounced guilty of slander by a jury composed mostly of Christians.
Counsellor Sampson (Cheetham's prosecutor): "It is argued that everything should be intended to favor the defendant, who has written so godly a work against the prince of deists and for the Holy Gospel.... His book, a godly book—a vile obscene, and filthy compilation, which bears throughout the character of rancorous malice!"
Commenting on this case, Ellery Sedgwick, the able editor of the Atlantic Monthly, in his Beacon biography of Paine, says: "The evidence which her (Madame Bonneville's) lawyers adduced at the trial was conclusive, and the jury found Cheetham guilty; but Judge Hoffman, with casuistry worthy of his version of Christianity, held that Mr. Cheetham, while guilty of libel, had written a very useful book in favor of religion, and fixed the damages at the modest sum of $150. Thus sheltered, Cheetham's lies grew into history."
Some years ago the evangelist, Rev. Dr. R. A. Torrey, while in England, made a brutal attack upon Paine's character, repeating the slanders that have been circulated against him. W. T. Stead, the noted editor and publisher of the Review of Reviews, London, who later perished on the ill-fated Titanic, in his magazine defended Paine and refuted the slanders of Torrey. Of the Madame Bonneville slander he says:
"The 'commonly believed outrageous action' [quoting Torrey] of Thomas Paine in living with another man's wife was shown to have been the kindly hospitality shown by an old man of sixty-seven to the refugee family of his French benefactor. The only man who had ever imputed a shadow of obloquy to Paine in this connection went into the witness-box after Paine's death and solemnly swore that there was no foundation for his calumny."
The basis of this calumny was one of the many noble acts of Paine's life. When it became known that Napoleon had designs against the liberties of France, and was planning to elevate himself to power, Paine and Bonneville opposed him. Concerning the results of this rupture Stead quotes from Conway as follows:
"In return Bonaparte suppressed Bonneville's paper, threw Bonneville into prison and placed Paine in surveillance. Afterwards by the intervention of the American minister Paine was permitted to leave the country. Bonneville was forbidden to quit France. A year after Paine crossed the Atlantic Madame Bonneville with her children escaped to America.... So far from Paine having taken Bonneville's wife away from her husband, he did everything to induce Napoleon to free Bonneville from surveillance and to allow him to rejoin his wife in New York."
Stead finally forced Torrey to eat his words and to make the following retraction: "It is the obligation of those who make the charges to prove them, and to my mind this particular charge against Paine has not been proven."