Private Life
Beaumarchais married three times. His first wife was Madeleine-Catherine Franquet (née Aubertin), whom he married on 22 November 1756; she died under mysterious circumstances only 10 months later. He married Geneviève-Madeleine Lévêque (née Wattebled) in 1768. Again, the second Mme. de Beaumarchais died under mysterious circumstances two years later, though most scholars believed she actually suffered from tuberculosis. Before her death in 1770, she bore a son, Augustin, but he died in 1772. Beaumarchais lived with his lover, Marie-Thérèse de Willer-Mawlaz, for twelve years before she became his third wife in 1786. Together they had a daughter, Eugénie.
Beaumarchais was accused by his enemies of poisoning his first two wives in order to lay claim to their family inheritance. Beaumarchais, though having no shortage of lovers throughout his life, was known to care deeply for both his family and close friends. However, Beaumarchais also had a reputation of marrying for financial gain, and both Franquet and Lévêque had previously married into wealthy families. While there was insufficient evidence to support the accusations, whether or not the poisonings took place is still the subject of debate.
Read more about this topic: Pierre Beaumarchais
Famous quotes containing the words private life, private and/or life:
“Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In certain almost supernatural states of the soul, the profundity of life reveals itself entirely in the spectacle, however ordinary it may be, before one’s eyes. It becomes its symbol.”
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)