Beaumarchais

Beaumarchais, DE, the name assumed by PIERRE AUGUSTIN CARON, next to Molière, the greatest French comic dramatist. Born in Paris, January 24, 1732, and the son of a watchmaker, he was brought up to his father's trade, and at twenty-one invented a new escapement for watches, which was pirated by a rival. The vigour with which he assailed him soon brought himself into notice at court, where his handsome figure and fine address quickly procured him advancement. He was engaged to teach the harp to the daughters of Louis XV., and ere long the wealthy widow of a court official married him, whereupon he assumed the title by which he was known thenceforward. Duverney, a rich banker of Paris, also befriended him substantially and helped him to some business speculations which realised a handsome fortune, ere long largely increased by another prudent marriage with a wealthy widow. His first plays, Eugénie (1767) and Les Deux Amis (1770), had but a moderate success. The death of his benefactor Duverney in 1770 now involved the versatile but hitherto unpopular upstart in a long lawsuit with his heir, Count Lablache, in the course of which he became the idol of the populace, as the supposed champion of public rights against the corrupt tribunals of the old regime. In the first trial Beaumarchais gained his cause, but an appeal to the parlement formed by the chancellor Maupeou was decided against him, principally through the exertions of Goetzman, one of its members. Beaumarchais carried his appeal to the public by publishing his famous Mémoires du Sieur Beaumarchais par lui-même (1774-78; new ed. by Sainte-Beuve, 1873), a work which united the bitterest satire with the sharpest logic, and gained for him a reputation that made even Voltaire uneasy, who could not bear a rival in his own department. It fitted in with the popular feeling of dissatisfaction with existing institutions, and did much to help on the Revolution. The same brilliant satire burns in his two famous comedies, Le Barbier de Séville, ou la Précaution Inutile (1775), and La Folle Journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (1784). The latter had a most unprecedented success, and indeed for brilliant wit it may almost be put beside the masterpieces of Molière. Figaro was a permanently enduring creation worthy to be compared with the hardly more famous Tartuffe. These plays are still popular acting plays in France, but in England are chiefly known through the adaptation of them in the grand operas of Mozart and Rossini. The later works of Beaumarchais are hardly worthy of his genius. Further speculations added to his wealth, but his expensive edition of Voltaire's works proved a financial failure. Two later lawsuits cost him his popularity, and in the troubles of the Revolution the shifty but not over-scrupulous author lost his fortune, and, suspected of an attempt to sell arms in Holland to the enemies of the republic, had even to flee from Paris for his life. In Mes Six Époques (1793) he has given us an account of his sufferings during that period. In his last years he became quite deaf; he died May 19, 1799. His Théâtre has been edited by Saint-Marc Girardin (1861) and by De Heylli and Marescot (1868-72), his Œuvres Complètes by Moland (1874) and Fournier (1875). See Lives by Loménie (1873), Lintilhac (1888), and Gudin (1888).