In the epistolary exchanges between Balzac and Madame Hanska, the famous reply is known: “We desired each other without seeing each other, let us continue to love each other without speaking.” Less than a century earlier, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais also delighted in cultivating the act by embellishing it with the magic of his pen. A whole culture. Two women, the legitimate one and his “last mistress,” as Maurice and Evelyne Lever tell us in the introduction of the book they dedicated to the writer, had the “painful experience.” Throughout a life of absolute libertinism, where female encounters served both his carnal pleasures and his professional interests, it’s likely they were not the only ones.
A year after his third marriage but two before the French Revolution, that is in 1787, the correspondence between the aristocrat and Amélie Houret de La Morinaie began. Wealthy and at the peak of his fame after the success of his plays, Beaumarchais receives from Amélie a financial solicitation barely disguised as a request for a meeting. An unequal and doomed battle from the start between a poor ingenue and an older man, schooled by experience? “Very aware of her charm, Amélie is too clever to give herself at the first meeting.” All excited by a “leg attached to the best-made knee” and “a foot so sneaky you could put in your mouth,” Beaumarchais seemingly loses the first round. But in the eighteenth century, the games of seduction are cruel. She retrieves some funds, facilitates a job for her brother but gains his submission. His literary power does the rest: “how to hold a pretty woman without paying homage to her beauty?” he writes in response to Amélie’s plea, quickly revealing to her the existence of “his utterly misplaced agitations.” Immediately believed, the language would become even more so when it had to compensate for physical deficiencies. A great connoisseur of female psychology, Beaumarchais plays on both the love and sex fronts: “it is not the union of our bodies that I want to cement, it is that of our souls.” He must indeed appease the beauty. His later writings would be more “anatomical,” risking shocking those “prudish women.” The intensely blue sky of passion gives way to dark domestic quarrels. The wife demands the respect of marriage, the mistress demands the same exclusivity, even motherhood, “that sacred act” capable of “rendering their passion more august.” After a suicide attempt, Beaumarchais installs her at home. A temporary solution for a few months, time for the author of “The Marriage of Figaro” to resolve matters as political as embarrassing during this time of revolutionary turmoil. She soon accuses him of having deceived her about the authenticity of his love: “what your enchanting mind knew to say, I took for the expression of true love.” She finally reproaches him for his tastes for “tiberiades,” sexual practices she would deem “disgusting,” preferring “love without pleasure to pleasure without love.” He officially breaks off in 1792 and departs for London where he will remain until July 1796, to let the situation calm down…on all fronts. Their liaison resumes upon his return. Proof that the letters exchanged served as a link and maintained the relationship while analyzing it. “We have a thousand things to say to each other, let’s deal with them in writing,” he advised her at the start of their liaison. He would add in 1788: “friend, you must write, it is necessary and sure.” Maurice and Evelyne Lever even mention “a writing that acts as an aphrodisiac for him.” Amélie would express to him the horror those letters full of passion inspired in her, which he addressed to all those women, “circular letters.” Proof, if any were needed, that this link would never be broken, Amélie, though younger, would only survive a few weeks beyond Beaumarchais’s death.
Evelyne and Maurice Lever, “Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais et Amélie Houret de La Morinaie,” “Love Letters,” Editions Fayard, 2007, 140 pages, 15 euros.
