she had so long been accustomed. Youth, beauty, and fame were gone, and
with them her lovers too, for, soon after her retirement from the stage,
the Prince d’Hénin deserted her for Mlle. Raucourt, of the
Comédie-Française, whom Sophie had generously taken to live with her,
and endeavoured to protect against the hostility of the public.[58]
One thing, however, still remained to her--her wit, which, if it were
powerless to retain her wealthy and aristocratic admirers, sufficed to
draw to her salon men whose friendship was infinitely to be preferred.
Poets, philosophers, encyclopædists, dramatists were all at home in the
house of Sophie Arnould. Diderot and d’Alembert were among her most
frequent guests; Helvétius, who had once, for a brief period, been very
near and dear to her, remained one of her greatest friends; Beaumarchais
delighted in an _assaut d’esprit_ with his witty hostess; Rulhière came
and brought with him Jean Jacques Rousseau; Marmontel, Duclos, Favart,
Linguet, and a host of lesser lights made her salon one of their
favourite rendezvous; that most affable of literary noblemen, the Prince
de Ligne, seldom failed to make his appearance there whenever he
happened to visit the French capital, and Voltaire himself--King
Voltaire--when he came to Paris in 1778, to enjoy at last the triumph of
his renown at its centre--and to die--condescended to call upon Sophie.
The day and hour of the great man’s visit were duly notified to Sophie,
who, knowing what kind of a reception would please him, collected a band
of children, headed by her own little daughter, Alexandrine, who, the
moment Voltaire entered the room, sprang forward and proceeded to hug
and kiss him. The Patriarch was delighted. “You wish to kiss me,” said
he laughing, “and I have no face left!”
After conversing with Sophie for some time, the poet remarked: “Ah,
Mademoiselle! I am eighty-four years old, and I have committed
eighty-four follies.”
“A mere trifle,” replied Sophie consolingly; “I am not yet forty, and I
have committed a thousand!”
That same year, Mesmer visited Paris, professing to cure all diseases by
means of animal magnetism, and speedily became the doctor _à la mode_.
Some of Sophie’s friends advised her to consult him, but, as she did
not happen to have any need of his professional services herself, she
sent her lap-dog instead, declaring that, if he could cure that pampered
animal, who had been ailing for some time past, presumably as the result
of a too generous diet, she would believe in him. Mesmer, anxious to
prove that the success of his system was not dependent upon the
credulity of the patient, undertook the case, and, in a few days,
returned the dog, with the assurance that it was now in the best of
health. Sophie thereupon wrote him a letter of thanks, which the doctor
sent to the journals. He soon, however, had cause to regret this step,
for, four days later, the dog died, much to the joy of the sceptics, who
asked Sophie what could have induced her to give the German a
testimonial so little deserved. “I have nothing to reproach myself
with,” she replied; “the poor animal died in excellent health.”
When Sophie retired from the stage, she was apparently in possession of
what most members of her profession, in those days, would have
considered a very comfortable income, as from a packet of letters
published for the first time by M. Henri Gauthier-Villars, in _La
Nouvelle Revue_ (February 1897), we learn that her notary, a certain M.
Alleaume, was in the habit of paying her fifty louis a month, out of the
moneys she was supposed to lodge in his hands.[59] The maintenance and
education of her three children, however, seems to have involved her in
considerable expense, while during her long years of prosperity she had
acquired such extravagant habits that her income was quite inadequate
for her needs, and she was, in consequence, continually in pecuniary
difficulties. Her letters to Alleaume, indeed, are almost without
exception demands for money, in which she brings all her persuasive
powers to bear upon the stern man of business, in the hope of inducing
him to unlock his cash-box and advance her “her month.”
“Well, _petit père_ Alleaume,” she writes, “I never see you now, and I
ask myself why?--why this difference to poor Sophie?--for it is not kind
of you to avoid the poor people who love you. You will reply to that:
‘But it is you who never see me, unless you have something to ask.’
“Wait and see if I never ask for anything, unless I visit you. Here for
example: Will you please advance me my month? for I am absolutely
without funds.
“Will _petit père_ Alleaume remain inflexible for four days to the
request of Sophie?”
And again:
“I swear to you, though you may be somewhat incredulous as to the state
of my mind, that when you have put my little business clear and
straight--I promise you, on my word as a living being, that I will think
twice ere I incur the smallest expense. It is not possible for me to be
miserly--it is a disgusting vice.”
Then, in a third letter:
“Eh! _bon jour_, my good friend; it is an age since I saw you or
embraced you. When are you going to spend a morning with me? Do you know
that I have learned a good deal of sense since the beginning of the
year? Do you know that I intend to keep my word and commit hardly any
foolish extravagance; and you will see that you will be very satisfied
with poor Sophie. If you knew how many small debts I have discharged,
you would be well content with your Sophie. I have not yet got into my
den (at Port-à-l’Anglais), but so soon as I have, I should like to meet
you, and talk over all this business at our leisure. If, in the
meanwhile, you would like to come this evening and eat a truffled
turkey, much bigger and a thousand times more of a _dinde_ than I am,
you will be welcome.”
In spite of these promises of amendment, we find her, shortly
afterwards, writing to inform the worthy notary that an execution has
been levied upon her for non-payment of her capitation tax and other
dues, and to beg him to send her the sum of 196 livres to enable her to
get rid of the emissaries of the law.
As time goes on, the letters multiply, all full of entreaties, excuses,
promises, regrets, expostulations. She assures him that she cares
nothing for money--one can well believe that--but has an intense desire
to be free from debt. Then, when he shows a marked disinclination to
make any further advances, she declares that not even on the stage of
the Opera has she met with so inhuman, so hard-hearted, a monster. But
the notary, annoyed at finding that her promises are never kept, and
that, notwithstanding her protestations, she makes no change in her
extravagant way of living, shuts himself up in his office and turns a
deaf ear to her appeals. Sophie redoubles her entreaties, reiterates her
vows of amendment, sends him epistles bedewed with her tears. All is in
vain; _petit père_ Alleaume remains inflexible.
In November 1780, Sophie’s daughter, Alexandrine, married a certain
André de Murville, a young man of respectable middle-class family, who
dabbled in literature. Alexandrine was, at this time, only in her
fourteenth year; an ungainly, red-haired child, who seems to have
inherited both her mother’s biting wit and--or, at least, so scandal
asserted--her mother’s indifference to the conventions of morality.[60]
For which reasons, Sophie was probably glad to be rid of her. The
ceremony took place at Saint-Roch, and was attended by several worthy
bourgeois couples, relatives of Murville, who must have been
considerably shocked when Sophie, on being presented to them, remarked
upon the strangeness of the circumstance that the mother of the bride
should be the only unmarried lady present.[61]
For the next few years, we hear little of Sophie. She appears, like so
many women of her class, to have endeavoured to find consolation in
devotion, but soon gave up the attempt, protesting that the directors of
conscience were worse than the directors of the Opera. By the bankruptcy
of the Prince de Guéménée, in 1782, she lost a considerable part of her
fortune--how we are not told--a disaster which probably accounts for the
fact that she soon afterwards quitted Paris and took a little house at
Clichy-la-Garenne, “with an acre of land, which, however, she did not
cultivate.” Here, in 1785, she was joined by her daughter, whose
marriage had turned out very unhappily, and who was now suing for a
separation, on the ground of her husband’s cruelty.
In her plaint, which bears date October 19, 1795, Alexandrine declares
that “since she had had the misfortune to espouse the sieur Murville,
she had never known a moment’s peace”; that he had “several times struck
her at the end of frightful scenes”; that she had been forced to make
over to him all the moneys that had been settled upon her, and that she
was now “sick, destitute, and in urgent need of medical assistance to
prevent the loss of an eye, which her husband had grievously injured at
the risk of killing her.”
In a second plaint, made the following year, she relates that, a few
days after the birth of her first child, towards whose support he now
refused to contribute, her husband had called her atrocious names,
seized her violently by the right arm, “with such force as to leave a
red mark,” and, finally, turned her out of the house, at one o’clock in
the morning.
About the same time, the unhappy Alexandrine applied to the Minister of
the King’s Household for admission to the Opera in the humble capacity
of a chorus-singer; but, for some reason, her request does not appear to
have been granted.
At Clichy, Sophie lived a very quiet life, though she seems to have been
fond of entertaining her humble neighbours. “I went sometimes to see
Mlle. Arnould, at Clichy,” writes Millin. “One day, I found her in the
midst of a large circle. There were twenty persons at table. I was on
the point of retiring, when she called me back and said to me: ‘Come in!
I am marrying the son of my cook to the daughter of my gardener. Both
families are my guests; we are celebrating the pleasures of Love and
Equality.’ In the evening, her two sons arrived. They wanted money. She
had none to give them. ‘Ah, well!’ said she, ‘each of you take a horse
from the stable.’ And they went away with the two horses.”[62]
The expenses of her family--she had now to support Alexandrine and her
two children, in addition to her sons--pressed heavily upon poor Sophie,
and, in January 1788, we find her writing to one of her old friends, a
financier of the name of Boutin, begging him to arrange for her a loan
of 24,000 livres, which she proposes to repay by four yearly instalments
of 6000 livres. As security, she offers a mortgage on her house at
Clichy, which, she declares, is worth 20,000 francs, and another on the
furniture of a house belonging to her in the Rue Caumartin, and assures
him that she will keep her promise to repay the money “with certainty,
honour, and probity.”
She appears to have obtained the accommodation she sought, but was
speedily in difficulties again, and compelled to apply for assistance to
some of her old friends, whom, when they sent her money, or even
“evinced an intention to oblige her,” she overwhelms with gratitude,
declaring that, if it be true, as learned men assert, that the soul
never perishes, her own will remember the obligation, even after death.
Yet, harassed though she was, she could sympathise with the distress of
others. On January 21, 1789, a young man of the name of Bompas was
arrested at the Barrière de Clichy, with three parcels in his
possession, containing a large quantity of lady’s underwear, “marked
with the letters S.A. in red cotton,” a porcelain mustard-pot, a green
morocco case holding two decanters and a crystal goblet, two pairs of
candlesticks, and various other articles. On being brought before a
commissary of police, he confessed that the above-mentioned articles
were the property of Mlle. Arnould, whose residence he had burglariously
entered the previous evening. Sophie caused inquiries to be made and,
finding that Bompas was a journeyman carpenter of hitherto
irreproachable character, who had been out of work for several weeks and
had been driven to the theft by necessity, generously declined to
prosecute, and the prisoner was accordingly released.
Several writers have stated that, in the early days of the Revolution,
Sophie’s salon became a political club and that she herself was an
enthusiastic advocate of republican doctrines. “There are beings,” wrote
Champcenetz, in the course of a brutal attack on the ex-singer which he
published in the royalist organ, _La Chronique scandaleuse_, “who would
not die content unless they had degraded themselves in every conceivable
way. Of this the aged Sophie Arnould is an example. After delivering
herself for forty years to every scoundrel of bad taste, she has now
turned demagogue, that she may receive at her house the dregs of the
human race. She has sent to study at the Jacobins the two children, with
whom a man of gallantry once presented her, through inadvertence.”[63]
That Sophie, in common with her old lover Lauraguais and others of her
aristocratic and literary friends, sympathised to a certain extent with
the Revolution--that is to say, with the Revolution in its earlier
phases--is probable enough. That, crippled as she was with debts, she
kept open house for all the turbulent spirits of her time, or carried
her partisanship so far as to endeavour to influence the opinions of
her sons, who were quite old enough to form them without any assistance
from their mother, as Champcenetz--an old enemy, by the way, of both
Sophie and Lauraguais--asserts, we beg leave to doubt. Any way, her
enthusiasm for the new order of things must have been very short-lived,
for, in 1789, her pension of 4000 livres was reduced to 2000, and from
1793 not paid at all, but, according to an entry in the Archives, “left
owing.”
In 1790, Sophie sold her house at Clichy-la-Garenne and purchased, “for
a mere song,” an old disused priory at Luzarches. Her new residence she
christened Le Paraclet, though whether she derived much comfort from the
house itself is open to question, as it was in the last stage of
dilapidation, and she had no money to spare for even the most urgent
repairs. In an amusing letter, written in 1794 to Belanger, she
describes it as “only the carcase of a house, which waits for doors and
windows until it shall please God to send me the means,” and adds that
she is “camping provisionally in the dovecot of the ancient monks.”
Her surroundings, however, appear to have afforded her some compensation
for the ruinous condition of the building. “I have a beautiful park,
containing all that it is possible to desire whether for ornament or
use; superb kitchen-garden; a vineyard, which has yielded me this year
six hogsheads of wine; a forest, a wood, an orchard, a pond well stocked
with fish, fresh air, beautiful scenery, good land. This is the fourth
year that I have been here, and I remain in the greatest solitude. But
well! I have not felt one moment’s _ennui_ since I came.”
While at Luzarches, Sophie received a domiciliary visit from the local
revolutionary committee. She received them with a smiling face, though
she must have been quaking with fear, since her intimacy with the Prince
de Condé and other distinguished _émigrés_ was sufficient to have sent
her to the guillotine a dozen times over.
“I have always been a very active citizen,” said she; “I know the Rights
of Man by heart” (a remark which was certainly true), “and I have sung
twenty years at the Opéra-National for the pleasure of the Sovereign
People.”
The committee, however, were not satisfied with these assurances and
insisted on ransacking the house, in quest of compromising
correspondence and so forth. Presently they came across a bust of Gluck
and paused before it.
“It is Marat,” said Sophie, in a tone of the deepest veneration.
The worthy _sans-culottes_ uncovered, and convinced that they had just
been contemplating the august features of the father of the people,
whose sanguinary career the knife of Charlotte Corday had recently
brought to an abrupt termination, retired, with many apologies for
having doubted the patriotism of the Citoyenne Arnould.[64]
Sophie remained at Luzarches for seven years, “_tout à fait en
paysanne_.” She wore _sabots_, she planted cabbages, she gathered peas
and apples, and she reared, or tried to rear, poultry. Her daughter
Alexandrine lived with her for a couple of years, and then took
advantage of the new law of divorce to get rid of the estimable Murville
and replace him by the son of the local postmaster, “a stout boy, who
was quite unsuitable for her.” Sophie, though, as we have seen, by no
means strait-laced herself, strongly disapproved of her daughter’s
conduct, and made it the occasion of one of her most celebrated _bons
mots_. “Divorce,” she gravely observed, “is the sacrament of adultery.”
All this time the unfortunate woman was gradually becoming poorer and
poorer. Her pension had been discontinued; the greater part of what
money she had possessed apart from that seems to have been swallowed up,
with so many other fortunes, in the financial chaos which accompanied
the political one; while to apply to her friends for help was no longer
of any avail. Not a few of them, among whom was the Prince d’Hénin, had
departed to another world, by way of the Place de la Révolution; others,
like Lauraguais, were in exile; those who were still within reach of her
appeals were ruined. Of all her old friends and admirers the only one to
whom she could turn was Belanger, and it was but little that he could do
to assist his once-adored Sophie. He himself had been imprisoned and had
narrowly escaped the guillotine, and when he was released, to find that
everything portable belonging to him had been carried off by a faithless
servant, he was thrust, _bon gré mal gré_, into a miserably-paid
municipal office, which kept him hard at work from seven o’clock in the
morning until nearly midnight, and left him no time for practising his
profession. Moreover, he was now married, having, while in prison,
espoused a companion in misfortune, Mlle. Dervieux, of the Opera, who
had been a notorious courtesan, and, consequently, had no money to spare
for old friends in distress.
Nevertheless, the kind-hearted architect did all that was in his power.
He wrote to Sophie; he went to visit her; he entertained her at his
house, and acted as her intermediary with the Minister of the Interior,
in order to secure the restitution of the pension to which she was
entitled. And Sophie, on her side, makes him the confidant of all her
hopes and disappointments, and writes him long, affectionate letters,
beginning: “_Mon bel ange_,” and one of them superscribed, “_À mon
meilleur ami_.”
Once, learning that she was in sore distress, Belanger sent her a double
louis--probably all that the poor man could afford--which the grateful
Sophie acknowledges in the following letter:
“_8 Nivôse, Year_ viii. (_January 29, 1800_).
“Ah, _mon bel ange_, my friend, you are always the same for
goodness and generosity. What a good heart is yours! I would thank
you sincerely, my poor friend, but what expressions can I
employ?... They would always fall short of my gratitude, not for
the money, but for the action. Ah! what good you have done my
heart! Here are a hundred years of happiness for me, if I had them
to live. Console yourself, my friend; I have still a few sous, and
have no need of the two louis that you sent me, and of which you
have deprived yourself for me; for I also know what your position
is. But I will keep _this piece_ to wear upon my heart, and it
shall not leave me until my death. I know the motto I shall put
there; it shall be my relic. Good-bye, _mon bel ange_, my good
angel, my true friend. Believe me there does not exist on earth a
being who is more tenderly attached to you, and more inviolably
attached to you, than your
“SOPHIE ARNOULD.
“On the 24th, I shall be with my good friends, with you and your
wife, and shall devote that day to my happiness.”
In another letter, written eleven months later, we find her rejoicing
over the victory of Hohenlinden, in which “her son in the army, her
hussar, had well avenged them with the army of the Rhine against the
Austrians.” She has received details of the engagement from Constant
himself, who sends many affectionate messages to his “good and tender
mother” and the Belangers, and desires to be remembered to “the amiable
ladies of their circle.” The hastily-scribbled notes of the hussar, who
seems to have been both a good son and a brave and capable officer--he
rose, as we have mentioned elsewhere, to the rank of colonel and fell at
Wagram--seem to have been one of the chief consolations of poor Sophie’s
life.
When the first of the above letters was written, Sophie had been living
for some years in Paris. She had returned to the capital in 1797, and
had at first taken lodgings over a barber’s shop in the Rue du
Petit-Lion, from which, however, she had removed, a few months later, to
an apartment in the Hôtel d’Angivilliers. She still retained possession
of the old priory at Luzarches, and appears to have occasionally visited
it.
From the Hôtel d’Angivilliers, we find her writing to Lauraguais, who,
though he had contrived to save his head,[65] was now almost as poor as
she herself was, and was living on a small farm which he had bought or
rented at Manicamp, in the department of the Aisne. He had invited her
to share his retreat, but Sophie felt obliged to decline the offer. She
had succeeded, not without great difficulty, in obtaining from François
de Neufchâteau, the Minister of the Interior, a pension of 200 livres a
month, and, as pensions were paid very grudgingly, she feared that her
leaving Paris might serve as an excuse for discontinuing it. Unable to
join Lauraguais in the country, she now invites him to come and live
with her, “as to end her days near him, to render him all the attentions
of friendship, of the most tender, the most constant attachment, is the
desire of her heart and will crown her happiness.” “One must have money,
you will say,” she continues, after pointing out that Paris will be the
safest place for him to be in, in the coming renewal of the faction
strife, which she believes to be close at hand. “But you have _a
little_, and I have _a little_ also. We shall not have any great
expenses to meet. No rent to pay; we must breakfast at home; for dinner
we can visit our friends; we will be moderate at their houses and very
moderate at our own. I have also some wood at Le Paraclet, a portion of
which I will have brought here.... As to our means of living; well, my
Dorval, we must help one another. We will take for our models Baucis and
Philemon. Dorval will write the great adventures of the Revolution; I
will transmit to posterity those of our youth. That is already a long
time ago, but one never forgets what has moved one deeply. The heart
alone, my Dorval, has imperishable recollections.... I shall prepare for
you all that I can procure for your needs and comfort. You shall have a
fine room, very large and airy and in a good position, where you will
be alone and free, with a staircase and door to yourself, a good bed,
chairs and commodes to match, a big table for your papers, writing
materials, &c. Finally, I hope you will not be uncomfortable. As for
other matters, I have all that is required. To assist me, I keep one
servant, a woman about thirty years of age, unmarried, and not too
intelligent, but who works well and is a great help to me. The
intelligent ones are only _intrigantes_, &c. We must avoid all that, and
for good reasons. But do not, my friend, be uneasy about yourself; I
shall always be at your service, and shall always say:
“‘Ah! qu’on est heureux de déchausser ce qu’on aime!’
“Adieu. I will let you know when the lodging will be ready. That will
not be long; and do not send any excuses for not coming. Adieu.”
Lauraguais did not see his way to accept this invitation, but he appears
to have been residing in Paris, for some time at least, during the last
year or two of Sophie’s life, and to have done what little he could to
assist her.