During Paine's life the world heard no hint of sexual immorality connected with him, but after his death Cheetham published 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 promptly sued Cheetham for slander. Cheetham had betrayed his "pal," Carver, by printing the letter concocted to blackmail Paine, for whose composition the farrier no doubt supposed he had paid the editor with stories borrowed from "Oldys," or not actionable. Cheetham probably recognized, when he saw Madame Bonneville in court, that he too had been deceived, and that any illicit relation between the accused lady and Paine, thirty years her senior, was preposterous. Cheetham's lawyer (Griffin) insinuated terrible things that his witnesses were to prove, but they all dissolved into Carver. Mrs. Ryder, with whom Paine had boarded, admitted trying to make Paine smile by saying Thomas was like him, but vehemently repudiated the slander. "Mrs. Bonneville often came to visit him. She never saw but decency with Mrs. Bonneville. She never staid there but one night, when Paine was very sick." Mrs. Dean was summoned to support one of Carver's lies that Madame Bonneville tried to cheat Paine, but denied the whole story (which has unfortunately been credited by Vale and other writers). The Rev. Mr. Foster, who had a claim against Paine's estate for tuition of the Bonnevilles, was summoned. "Mrs. Bonneville," he testified, "might possibly have said as much as that but for Paine she would not have come here, and that he was under special obligations to provide for her children." A Westchester witness, Peter Underbill, testified that "he one day told Mrs. Bonneville that her child resembled Paine, and Mrs. Bonneville said it was Paine's child." But, apart from the intrinsic incredibility of this statement (unless she meant "god-son"), Underbill's character broke down under the testimony of his neighbors, Judge Sommerville and Captain Pelton. Cheetham had thus no dependence but Carver, who actually tried to support his slanders from the dead lips of Paine! But in doing so he ruined Cheetham's case by saying that Paine told him Madame Bonneville was never the wife of M. Bonneville; the charge being that she was seduced from her husband. It was extorted from Carver that Madame Bonneville, having seen his scurrilous letter to Paine, threatened to prosecute him; also that he had taken his wife to visit Madame Bonneville. Then it became plain to Carver that Cheetham's case was lost, and he deserted it on the witness-stand; declaring that "he had never seen the slightest indication of any meretricious or illicit commerce between Paine and Mrs. Bonneville, that they never were alone together, and that all the three children were alike the objects of Paine's care." Counsellor Sampson (no friend to Paine) perceived that Paine's Will was at the bottom of the business. "That is the key to this mysterious league of apostolic slanderers, mortified expectants and disappointed speculators." Sampson's invective was terrific; Cheetham rose and claimed protection of the court, hinting at a duel. Sampson took a pinch of snuff, and pointing his finger at the defendant, said:
"If he complains of personalities, he who is hardened in every gross abuse, he who lives reviling and reviled, who might construct himself a monument with no other materials but those records to which he is a party, and in which he stands enrolled as an offender*: if he cannot sit still to hear his accusation, but calls for the protection of the court against a counsel whose duty it is to make his crimes appear, how does she deserve protection, whom he has driven to the sad necessity of coming here to vindicate her honor, from those personalities he has lavished on her?"
* Cheetham was at the moment a defendant in nine or ten
cases for libel.
The editor of Counsellor Sampson's speech says that the jury "although composed of men of different political sentiments, returned in a few minutes a verdict of guilty." It is added:
"The court, however, when the libeller came up the next day to receive his sentence, highly commended the book which contained the libellous publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and imposed no other punishment on the libeller than the payment of $150, with a direction that the costs be taken out of it. It is fit to remark, lest foreigners who are unacquainted with our political condition should receive erroneous impressions, that Mr. Recorder Hoffman does not belong to the Republican party in America, but has been elevated to office by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the councils of state." *
* "Speech of Counsellor Sampson; with an Introduction to
the Trial of James Cheetham, Esq., for a libel on Margaret
Brazier Bonneville, in his Memoirs of Thomas Paine.
Philadelphia: Printed by John Sweeny, No-357 Arch Street,
1810." I am indebted for the use of this rare pamphlet and
for other information, to the industrious collector of
causes celebres, Mr. E. B. Wynn, of Watertown, N. Y.
Madame Bonneville had in court eminent witnesses to her character,—Thomas Addis Emmet, Fulton, Jarvis, and ladies whose children she had taught French. Yet the scandal was too tempting an illustration of the "Age of Reason" to disappear with Cheetham's defeat. Americans in their peaceful habitations were easily made suspicious of a French woman who had left her husband in Paris and followed Paine; they could little realize the complications into which ten tempestuous years had thrown thousands of families in France, and how such poor radicals as the Bonnevilles had to live as they could. The scandal branched into variants. Twenty-five years later pious Grant Thorburn promulgated that Paine had run off from Paris with the wife of a tailor named Palmer. "Paine made no scruples of living with this woman openly." (Mrs. Elihu Palmer, in her penury, was employed by Paine to attend to his rooms, etc, during a few months of illness.) As to Madame Bonneville, whose name Grant Thorburn seems not to have heard, she was turned into a romantic figure. Thorburn says that Paine escaped the guillotine by the execution of another man in his place.
"The man who suffered death for Paine, left a widow, with two young children in poor circumstances. Paine brought them all to this country, supported them while he lived, and, it is said, left most of his property to them when he died. The widow and children lived in apartments up town by themselves. He then boarded with Carver. I believe his conduct was disinterested and honorable to the widow. She appeared to be about thirty years of age, and was far from being handsome."*
* "Forty Years' Residence in America."
Grant Thorburn was afterwards led to doubt whether this woman was the widow of the man guillotined, but declares that when "Paine first brought her out, he and his friends passed her off as such." As a myth of the time (1834), and an indication that Paine's generosity to the Bonneville family was well known in New York, the story is worth quoting. But the Bonnevilles never escaped from the scandal. Long years afterward, when the late Gen. Bonneville was residing in St. Louis, it was whispered about that he was the natural son of Thomas Paine, though he was born before Paine ever met Madame Bonneville. Of course it has gone into the religious encyclopaedias. The best of them, that of McClintock and Strong, says: "One of the women he supported [in France] followed him to this country." After the fall of Napoleon, Nicholas Bonneville, relieved of his surveillance, hastened to New York, where he and his family were reunited, and enjoyed the happiness provided by Paine's self-sacrificing economy.