BEAUVILLIER, the name of a very ancient French family belonging to the country around Chartres, members of which are found filling court offices from the 15th century onward. For Charles de Beauvillier, gentleman of the chamber to the king, governor and bailli of Blois, the estate of Saint Aignan was created a countship in 1537. François de Beauvillier, comte de Saint Aignan, after having been through the campaigns in Germany (1634-1635), Franche-Comté (1636), and Flanders (1637), was sent to the Bastille in consequence of his having lost the battle of Thionville in 1640. In reward for his devotion to the court party during the Fronde he obtained many signal favours, and Saint Aignan was raised to a duchy in the peerage of France (duché-pairie) in 1663. His son Paul, called the duc de Beauvillier, was several times ambassador to England; he became chief of the council of finance in 1685, governor of the dukes of Burgundy, Anjou and Berri from 1689 to 1693, minister of state in 1691, and grandee of Spain in 1701. He married a daughter of Colbert. Paul Hippolyte de Beauvillier, comte de Montrésor, afterwards duc de Saint Aignan, was ambassador at Madrid from 1715 to 1718 and at Rome in 1731, and a member of the council of regency in 1719.
(M. P.*)
BEAUVOIR, ROGER DE, the nom de plume of Eugène Auguste Roger de Bully (1806-1866), French writer, who was born on the 8th of November 1806 in Paris. He was the son and nephew of public officials who did not approve his literary inclinations, and it was at their request that he wrote over the signature of Roger de Beauvoir. A good-looking young fellow, of independent means, an indefatigable viveur, he astonished all Paris with his ostentatious luxury and his adventures, while his romantic novels gave him a more serious if not durable reputation. Among the best of them are L’Écolier de Cluny ou le Sophisme (1832), which is said to have furnished Alexandre Dumas and Theodore Gaillardet (1808-1882) with the idea of the Tour de Nesle, and Le Chevalier de Saint Georges (1840). He had married in 1847 an actress, Eléonore Léocadie Doze (1822-1859), from whom he obtained a judicial separation a year or two later after a long and notorious trial, following which his mother-in-law got him imprisoned for three months and fined 500 francs for a satirical poem, Mon Procès (1849). Ruined by extravagance and tied to his chair by gout, he spent the last years of his life in retirement, and died in Paris on the 27th of August 1866.
BEAUX, CECILIA (1863- ), American portrait-painter, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she became a pupil of William Sartain. But her real art training was obtained in Paris, where she started in the atelier Julian and had the coaching of painters like Robert-Fleury, Bouguereau and Dagnan Bouveret. In 1890 she exhibited at the Paris Exposition. Returning to Philadelphia, Miss Beaux obtained in 1893 the gold medal of the Philadelphia Art Club, and also the Dodge prize at the New York National Academy, and later various other distinctions. She became a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, in 1902. Among her portraits are those of Bishop-Coadjutor Greer (exhibited at the Salon in 1896); Mrs Roosevelt and her daughter; and Mrs Larz Anderson. Her “Dorothea and Francesca,” and “Ernesta and her Little Brother,” are good examples of her skill in painting children.
BEAVER,[1] the largest European aquatic representative of the mammalian order Rodentia (q.v.), easily recognized by its large trowel-like, scaly tail, which is expanded in the horizontal direction. The true beaver (Castor fiber) is a native of Europe and northern Asia, but it is represented in North America by a closely-allied species (C. canadensis), chiefly distinguished by the form of the nasal bones of the skull. Beavers are nearly allied to the squirrels (Sciuridae), agreeing in certain structural peculiarities of the lower jaw and skull. In the Sciuridae the two main bones (tibia and fibula) of the lower half of the leg are quite separate, the tail is round and hairy, and the habits are arboreal and terrestrial. In the beavers or Castoridae these bones are in close contact at their lower ends, the tail is depressed, expanded and scaly, and the habits are aquatic. Beavers have webbed hind-feet, and the claw of the second hind-toe double. In length beavers—European and American—measure about 2 ft. exclusive of the tail, which is about 10 in. long. They are covered with a fur to which they owe their chief commercial value; this consists of two kinds of hair—the one close-set, silky and of a greyish colour, the other much coarser and longer, and of a reddish brown. Beavers are essentially aquatic in their habits, never travelling by land unless driven by necessity. Formerly common in England, the European beaver has not only been exterminated there, but likewise in most of the countries of the continent, although a few remain on the Elbe, the Rhone and in parts of Scandinavia. The American species is also greatly diminished in numbers from incessant pursuit for the sake of its valuable fur. Beavers are sociable anirrals, living in streams, where, so as to render the water of sufficient depth, they build dams of mud and of the stems and boughs of trees felled by their powerful incisor teeth. In the neighbourhood they make their “lodges,” which are roomy chambers, with the entrance beneath the water. The mud is plastered down by the fore-feet, and not, as often supposed, by the tail, which is employed solely as a rudder. They are mainly nocturnal, and subsist chiefly on bark and twigs or the roots of water plants. The dam differs in shape according to the nature of particular localities. Where the water has little motion it is almost straight; where the current is considerable it is curved, with its convexity towards the stream. The materials made use of are driftwood, green willows, birch and poplars; also mud and stones intermixed in such a manner as contributes to the strength of the dam, but there is no particular method observed, except that the work is carried on with a regular sweep, and that all the parts are made of equal strength. “In places,” writes Hearne, “which have been long frequented by beavers undisturbed, their dams, by frequent repairing, become a solid bank, capable of resisting a great force both of ice and water; and as the willow, poplar and birch generally take root and shoot up, they by degrees form a kind of regular planted hedge, which I have seen in some places so tall that birds have built their nests among the branches.” Their houses are formed of the same materials as the dams, with little order or regularity of structure, and seldom contain more than four old, and six or eight young beavers. It not unfrequently happens that some of the larger houses have one or more partitions, but these are only posts of the main building left by the builders to support the roof, for the apartments have usually no communication with each other except by water. The beavers carry the mud and stones with their fore-paws and the timber between their teeth. They always work in the night and with great expedition. They cover their houses late every autumn with fresh mud, which, freezing when the frost sets in, becomes almost as hard as stone, so that neither wolves nor wolverines can disturb their repose.