Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright and diplomat of the Age of Enlightenment. Best known for his three [|Figaro] plays, at various times in his life he was also a watchmaker, inventor, musician, spy, publisher, arms dealer, and revolutionary.
Born a Parisian watchmaker's son, Beaumarchais rose in French society and became influential in the court of Louis XV as an inventor and music teacher. He made a number of important business and social contacts, played various roles as a diplomat and spy, and had earned a considerable fortune before a series of costly court battles jeopardized his reputation.
An early French supporter of American independence, Beaumarchais lobbied the French government on behalf of the American rebels during the American War of Independence. Beaumarchais oversaw covert aid from the French and Spanish governments to supply arms and financial assistance to the rebels in the years before France's formal entry into the war in 1778. He later struggled to recover money he had personally invested in the scheme. Beaumarchais was also a participant in the early stages of the 1789 French Revolution.
Early life
Beaumarchais was born Pierre-Augustin Caron in the Rue Saint-Denis, Paris, on 24 January 1732, to André-Charles Caron, a watchmaker from Meaux. The family had previously been Huguenot, but had converted to Roman Catholicism in the wake of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the increased persecution of Protestants that followed. The family was comfortably middle-class and Beaumarchais had a peaceful and happy childhood. As the only son, he was spoiled by his parents and five sisters. He took an interest in music and played several instruments. In spite of his faith, Beaumarchais retained a sympathy for Protestants and would campaign throughout his life for their civil rights.One of his sisters, Marie-Josèphe Caron, became an artist; their cousin was the artist Suzanne Caron.
From the age of ten, Beaumarchais had some education at a "country school", where he learned some Latin. At twelve, he left school to apprentice under his father in the craft of watchmaking. He may have used his own experiences during these years as the inspiration for the character of Cherubin when he wrote the Marriage of Figaro. He generally neglected his work, and at one point was evicted by his father, only to be later allowed back after apologising for his poor behaviour.
At the time, pocket watches were commonly unreliable for timekeeping and were worn more as fashion accessories. Beaumarchais spent nearly a year researching improvements. In July 1753, at the age of twenty-one, he invented a watch escapement that made them substantially more accurate and compact.
The first man to take an interest in this new invention was Jean-André Lepaute, the royal clockmaker in France, whose work could be found in the Palais du Luxembourg, Tuileries Palace, the Palais-Royal, and the Jardin des plantes. Lepaute had become a mentor to Beaumarchais after discovering the boy's talent in a chance encounter in the Caron family shop. He encouraged him as he worked on the new invention, earned his trust, and promptly stole the idea for himself, writing a letter to the French Academy of Sciences describing the "Lepaute system". Beaumarchais was outraged when he read in the September issue of Le Mercure de France that M. Lepaute had just invented a wonderful mechanism for manufacturing a more portable clock, and wrote a strongly-worded letter to that same newspaper defending the invention as his own and urging the French Academy of Sciences to see the proof for themselves. "In the interests of truth and my reputation," he says, "I cannot let such an infidelity go by in silence and must claim as mine the invention of this device." Lepaute defended himself with a statement by three Jesuits maintaining he had shown them such a mechanism in May 1753.
The following February, the Academy indeed ruled in favor of Beaumarchais, catapulting him to stardom and relegating Lepaute to infamy, as l'affaire Lepaute became the talk of Paris. Soon afterwards, Beaumarchais was asked by King Louis XV to create a watch mounted on a ring for his mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Louis was so impressed by the result that he named Beaumarchais "Purveyor to the King", and the Caron family business prospered.
Rise to influence
Marriage and new name
In 1755 Beaumarchais met Madeleine-Catherine Aubertin, a widow, and married her the following year. She helped him secure a royal office, and he gave up watchmaking. Shortly after his marriage, he adopted the name "Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais", which he derived from "le Bois Marchais", the name of a piece of land belonging to his wife. He believed the name sounded grander and more aristocratic, and adopted at the same time an elaborate coat of arms. Catherine died less than a year later, which plunged him into financial problems, and he ran up large debts.Royal patronage
Beaumarchais' problems were eased when he was appointed to teach Louis XV's four daughters the harp. His role soon grew and he became a musical advisor for the royal family. In 1759, Caron met Joseph Paris Duverney, an older and wealthy entrepreneur. Beaumarchais assisted him in gaining the King's approval for the new military academy he was building, the École Royale Militaire, and in turn Duverney promised to help make him rich. The two became very close friends and collaborated on many business ventures. Assisted by Duverney, Beaumarchais acquired the title of Secretary-Councillor to the King in 1760–61, thereby gaining access to French nobility. This was followed by the purchase in 1763 of a second title, the office of Lieutenant General of Hunting, a position which oversaw the royal parks. Around this time, he became engaged to Pauline Le Breton, who came from a plantation-owning family from Saint-Domingue, but broke it off when he discovered she was not as wealthy as he had been led to believe.Visit to Madrid
In April 1764, Beaumarchais began a ten-month sojourn in Madrid, ostensibly to help his sister, Lisette, who had been abandoned by her fiancé, José Clavijo y Fajardo, an official at the Ministry of War. While in Spain, he was mostly concerned with striking business deals for Duverney. They sought exclusive contracts for Spain’s newly acquired colony of Spanish Louisiana, and attempted to gain the right to import slaves to the Spanish colonies in the Americas. Beaumarchais went to Madrid with a letter of introduction from the Étienne François, duc de Choiseul, who was now his political patron. Hoping to secure Clavijo's support for his business deals by binding him by marriage, Beaumarchais initially shamed Clavijo into agreeing to marry Lisette, but when further details emerged about Clavijo's conduct, the marriage was called off.Beaumarchais's business deals dragged on, and he spent much of his time soaking up the atmosphere of Spain, which would become a major influence on his later writings. Although he befriended important figures such as the foreign minister Jerónimo Grimaldi, 1st Duke of Grimaldi, his attempts to secure the contracts for Duverney eventually came to nothing and he went home in March 1765. Although Beaumarchais returned to France with little profit, he had managed to acquire new experience, musical ideas, and ideas for theatrical characters. Beaumarchais considered turning the affair into a play, but decided to leave it to others—including Goethe, who wrote Clavigo in 1774.
Playwright
Beaumarchais hoped to be made consul to Spain, but his application was rejected. Instead he concentrated on developing his business affairs and began to show an interest in writing plays. He had already experimented in writing short farces for private audiences, but he now had ambitions to write for the theatre.His name as a writer was established with his first dramatic play, Eugénie, which premiered at the Comédie-Française in 1767. This was followed in 1770 by another drama, .
Figaro plays
Beaumarchais's Figaro plays are Le Barbier de Séville, Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mère coupable. Figaro and Count Almaviva, the two characters Beaumarchais most likely conceived in his travels in Spain, are the only ones present in all three plays. They are indicative of the change in social attitudes before, during, and after the French Revolution. Prototypes of Almaviva and Rosine first appeared under the names Lindor and Pauline in the short and incomplete play Le Sacristain, in which Lindor disguises himself as a monk and music teacher in order to meet Pauline under the watchful eyes of her elderly husband. Beaumarchais wrote it around 1765 and dubbed it "an interlude, imitating the Spanish style." Naturally, the thinly veiled satirization of the aristocracy did not go without opposition. Upon first reading a manuscript of Beaumarchais's play, King Louis XVI stated that "this man mocks everything that must be respected in a government" and refused to let it be performed.To a lesser degree, the Figaro plays are semi-autobiographical. Don Guzman Brid'oison and Bégearss were caricatures of two of Beaumarchais's real-life adversaries, Goezman and Bergasse. The page Chérubin resembled the youthful Beaumarchais, who did contemplate suicide when his love was to marry another. Suzanne, the heroine of Le Mariage and La Mère, was modelled after Beaumarchais's third wife, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz. Meanwhile, some of the Count's monologues reflect on the playwright's remorse over his numerous sexual exploits.
Le Barbier premiered in Paris in 1775. An English translation premiered in London a year later, and that was followed by performances in other European countries.
The sequel, Le Mariage, was initially passed by the censor in 1781, but was soon banned from performance by Louis XVI after a private reading. Queen Marie Antoinette lamented the ban, as did various influential members of her entourage. Nonetheless, the King was unhappy with the play's satire on the aristocracy and overruled the Queen's entreaties to allow its performance. Over the next three years, Beaumarchais gave many private readings of the play, as well as making revisions to try to pass the censor. The King finally relented and lifted the ban in 1784. The play premiered that year and was enormously popular, even with aristocratic audiences. Mozart's opera based on the play, Le Nozze di Figaro premiered just two years later in Vienna.
Beaumarchais's final play, La Mère coupable, premiered in 1792 in Paris. In homage to the great French playwright Molière, Beaumarchais also dubbed La Mère coupable "The Other Tartuffe".
All three Figaro plays enjoyed great success, and are still frequently performed today, as is Mozart's opera.