Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze-Lavoisier

MARIE-ANNE PIERRETTE PAULZE-LAVOISIER,

COMTESSE DE RUMFORD (1758-1836)

A BEACON EMERGING FROM THE SHADOWS

(translated by Allan Masri)

I know what I was, I know what I am,

I want what I should, I do what I can.

-Bouscal, La Mort de Cleomene

The history of the sciences presents, more than any other discipline, a constellation of portraits of great people whose character, intelligence, works, and influence inspire admiration. Behind these well-known figures, however, other beings, ignored by nearly all the conoscenti, patiently wait to be placed in the spotlight. In the 18^th century, many wives performed this modest role, kept themselves in the shadow of their husbands, guided their careers, encouraged almost anonymously the development of the sciences, began the inevitable movement toward women’s emancipation, and without fanfare contributed to the progress of the human spirit and the happiness of the human race. Others, less shy, brightened history with their courage and exceptional strength of character. Although little known to the historians of science, Marie-Anne Pierrette Paulze belongs to this last category of women, glowing in their midst, a beacon emerging from the shadows.

The daughter of Jacques Paulze de Chastenolles (1719-1794) and Claudine Thoynet (d. 1761), Marie-Anne was born at Montbrisson (Loire) on 20 January 1958. She had three brothers. Her father, a well-known parliamentary judge and manager of the French East India Company, was the general manager of the Ferme Generale, a private company entrusted by the king with collecting, for a compensation, indirect taxes: the gabelle (salt tax), taxes on tobacco, licensing rights, and the aides (taxes on alcohol). His function as tax collector brought him very substantial revenues. For her part, her mother, married to Jacques Paulze in 1752, was the niece of Abbé Joseph-Marie Terray (1715-1778), one of the most powerful ministers of the day. Thanks to family connections, Marie-Anne should have enjoyed an easy and happy life. But she lost her mother when she was only three. Her father decided she should be educated in a convent, where she could receive the classical education typical of a young woman of the haute bourgeoisie. It was there that she forged her character, becoming interested especially in the sciences and drawing, maturing more rapidly than children pampered by their parents. At the age of twelve, she was already an accomplished young lady, sure of herself, with a lively intelligence and blossoming and filled with talents. At the receptions that the Paulze family organized regularly, she sparkled through her wit and her charm, and she attracted numerous admirers.

In 1770, the baroness of la Garde decided that her brother, the count of Amerval, should remarry. Penniless, 50 years old, this person had nothing that might attract a young and intelligent girl who happened to be heiress of an enviable fortune. Marie-Anne resisted this marriage as best she could. Taking advantage of the influence of Abbé Terray, the Baroness threatened Jacques Paulze with the loss of his lucrative position at the heart of the Ferme Générale if the union was not accomplished. Outraged by the exxpress intentions of the Baroness, Paulze disapproved of this union and, moreover, did not wish to allow his daughter to suffer such an imposition; he therefore decided to marry her quickly to a brilliant young man who was much more compatible, Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), who regularly attended his salon, and who had often played music with Marie-Anne and conversed with her about geology, chemistry, and astronomy.

The two young people, who had already liked each other for some time, readily assented to the plan. The betrothal took place in November, 1771, the marriage contract was signed on December 4, 1771, and the marriage took place on the 16th. Resigned to his defeat, Abbe Terray performed the marriage in his private chapel, with himself and his brother acting as witnesses. Two hundred guests from among the most illustrious in France attended the banquet. The couple established their residence in rue Neuve-des-Bons-Enfants, near the Palais-Royal, in a house that the father of the groom had bought when his declining health had necessitated the sale of his office as Solicitor General of Parlement.

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier was born August 26, 1743, in Paris. He was the son of Emilie Punctis (d. 23 March 1746). He belonged to a rich and influential family. He attended classes at College Mazarin (or College des Quatre-Nations, now Institut de France) where the faculty of the sciences enjoyed an exalted reputation. His professor of mathematics and astronomy was Abbe de La Caille; he also followed the botany course of Bernard de Jussieu, and that of the academician Jean-Etienne Guettard in geology and mineralogie, and of Rouelle in Chemistry. When he was 18, he abandoned his secondary studies. On the advice of his father, he began studying law and earned his licence three years later (1764). He could have started a practice, but continued to study botany, mineralogy, meteorology, and medicine. He was eager to learn everything. He loved mathematics, natural sciences, strictly controlled experiments. He analysed criticized, and compared theories concurrently. He also loved the tangible and experiments having positive results.

At the age of 21, he started research that were submitted to the Academy of Science. At the age of 23, he presented his work on the analysis of gypsum and plaster of Paris, and, in a contest, a paper on “the best way to illuminate the streets of a large city at night,” a work which earned him a gold medal from the Academy of Sciences. At 24, he accompanied Guettard in a trip to the East of France, to prepare an inventory of the mineral resources of the kingdom. In 1768, he was 25 years old; he purchased a half-share in the Ferme Generale and became assistant to the general manager of the ferme, Baudon. At the same time, having received the support of Jussieu, Lelande, and Macquer, he applied for the post of assistant-chemist at the Academy after the death of Theodore Baron; he became a full-fledged member at the age of 29. when he married, a year later, Marie-Anne, he already had impressive successes to his credit and his career was among the most promising.

Antoine had also lost his mother when he was three years old and found himself in his infancy, in the same position as his young wife. He had been raised by his aunt, Constance Punctis. Both Marie-Anne and Antoine belonged to families with many childless relatives.The couple was likewise childless. Perhaps this circumstance explains the exclusive devotion that they mutually shared during the twenty-three years of their happy union. They were never the object of scandalous rumors in the Gazette, however anxious it was for such stories. It was above all their common passion for science that bound them together forever, even after the death of the scientist in 1794.

Marie-Anne quickly became an indispensable assistant for her husband, in a role that far surpassed that of a mere devoted spouse. The pair arose at 5 o’clock and worked in the laboratory from 6 to 9 and from 7 to 9 in the evening. The afternoon was reserved for business of the Ferme Generale and numerous administrative tasks of Antoine, such as preparing powder; twice during the week, Marie-Anne held a salon, entertaining the most illustrious scientists of the epoch from France and other countries: Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours (1739-1817), sir Charles Blagden (1748-1820), the English author Arthur Young, Gouverneur Morris, etc.During the course of these dinners, Marie-Anne sparkled by her wit, her grace, and her wisdom. After a visit that he made to Lavoisier in October 1787, Arthur Young wrote: “Madame Lavoisier, a person full of animation, of science and knowledge, had prepared an English breakfast with tea and coffee, but the best part of that breakfast, was, without contradiction, her conversation, either on the essay on phlogiston by Monsieur Kirwan that she was in the process of translating from the English, or on other subjects that an intelligent woman working in the laboratory of her husband knows how to make interesting”.

In the evening, Antoine conducted experiments, often in the company of his guests while Marie-Anne drew or took notes touching the experiments undertaken by her husband. Her writings often appeared in the registers of the laboratory, mixed with those of Antoine and his collaborators. We know by her correspondence that Marie-Anne accompanied Antoine on his numerous journeys. Beginning in 1772, she took notes in notebooks on their travels, describing at each halte the temperature and pressure on the thermometers and barometers carried in their baggage ; she also described remarks on the terrain, the crops, the work of the men and everything of interest to Lavoisier.

In 1775, the scientist was named director of Powder and Salpeter. The couple decamped to the Arsenal and Antoine set up his laboratory in it: it was there that he carried out most of his important experiments.

Lavoisier had no gift for languages. Marie-Anne asked her brother, Balthazar Paulze, for lessons in Latin. She also learned English and Italian and so was able to translate the works of Priestley, Cavendish, Henry, and other European chemists. She also commenced studies in chemistry with Jean-Baptiste Bucquet and Philippe Gingembre, colleagues of her husband. In 1788, her translation of the Essay on Phlogiston of the Irish chemist Richard Kirwan (Essay on Phlogiston, London, 1787), permitted Lavoisier, assisted by Guyton de Morveau, Laplace, Monge, Berthollet and Fourcroy, to refute each of the arguments in the Essay and to publish his Elementary Treatise on Chemistry in 1789. Marie-Anne translated as well, in 1790, Strength of Acids and the Proportion of Ingredients in Neutral Salts, by Kirwan, and published her translation in the Annals of Chemistry. The first French edition of Kirwan gave her no credit, her name not even being mentioned. However, the marginal notes added by Marie-Anne prove that she has all the qualifications of an excellent translator as well as a knowledge of chemistry sufficient to comment intelligently on the work of a specialist such as Kirwan.

A talented illustrator, she drew her self-portrait at the beginning of their marriage. In this drawing, she appears rather slight of build, with very fine blue eyes, a small mouth, a slightly turned up nose, clear skin, and chestnut hair. In the course of the 1780s, she improved her skill under the tutelage of Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825), who presented the couple, in December 1788, with the celebrated portrait of the married pair that today is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. A portrait that she painted of Benjamin Franklin, which the subject mentioned in an unusual thank-you note, dated 23 October 1788: “Those who have viewed this painting have declared that it has great merit and is worthy of consideration; but what makes it particularly precious to me is the hand that held the brush”.

The pictorial output of Marie-Anne demonstrates definitively that the arts and the sciences are inextricably linked and that it is important to understand this fact. The thirteen engravings on copper modestly signed, “Paulze Sculptis” that illustrated the Treatise of Elementary Chemistry, were made by her hand, as were all the sketches that preceded the final proof. Each design exists in at least four different versions, with various details and corrections made.

Marie-Anne first drew the instruments freehand, then filled in the outlines with watercolors. She recopied this mixture on graph paper to match the dimensions of the copper negatives. It is probable that she herself had drawn the fine grid of her tracing paper. This design was copied onto wax paper, then, with a stylus, onto the copper plate. The letters were added by hand to the negative. The final proof of the negative included the word “good”, followed by her signature. In some of these illustrations, she engraved at least two scenes taken from life in the laboratory of the Arsenal, showing the experiments that Lavoisier performed on respiration in company with Pierre Simon de Laplace and Armand Seguin. In these two scenes, “The man at work” and “The man at rest”-- “astonishing foretelling the actual experiments of measuring work in the real situation of the workroom” --, Marie-Anne depicted herself, in the background, as a secretary recording notes in the laboratory registers.

The frequent receptions that the couple organized attracted numerous admirers to Marie-Anne. One of them, P. S. Dupont de Nemours, sent her, beginning in 1781. numerous letters where he declared tender feeling to her. It was still probables that Marie-Anne had no relationship with him, neither before nor after Antoine’s execution.

Antoine and his father-in-law, Jacques Paulze, were arrested November 28, 1793, with twenty-six other members of the Ferme General. They were judged and executed on 8 May 1794. The third head to fall was that of Paulze. Antoine followed him immediately under the guillotine ; he was 51 years old.

The condamnation and execution of her father and her husband on the same day was for Marie-Anne an extraordinary shock that changed her forever. Stunned, she protested vociferously against their arrest ; then, in a virulent pamphlet, signed by many widows and children of the condemned, she denounced Antoine Dupin (1758-1820), the member of the Convention responsible for executions.

Unjustly arrested on 24 June 1794, she was imprisoned. She revealed herself thus “full of courage, audacious, sometimes daring and not afraid to hold her head with composure”. After letters of protest that she sent in August to the Bureau of Piques, to the Committee of Public Safety and to the Committee of General Security, she was released on 17 August, after 65 days of detention. Her arrest was probably due to the correspondence found when her papers were seized along with her family effects. Rendered helpless by the seizure of all her belongings, she could do nothing but plead to her most faithful servant for assistance.

At the end of September, Marie-Anne left secretly to take refuge near Lons-le-Saunier, in the Jura Mountains, where the modest community of Moutonne hastily made its report: “35 years old; 5 feet, 1 inch tall; hair and eyebrows black; eyes blue; nose well made; mouth small and chin round.” She was not so much fleeing her situation as the urgent, almost obsessive, advances of P. S. Dupont de Nemours, who bitterly resented her repeated rejections. Meanwhile, the inventory of Lavoisier’s property dragged on until the end of November.

In August 1795, she was finally able to reclaim the estate of Freschines. Her goods, the instruments, and the scientific notes of her husband, but not the money, were returned to her in April 1796. The years that followed this tragedy were not easy. She had to confront another ticklish problem: P. S. Dupont, who had proposed in 1791 to create a printing shop, had gotten a loan from Lavoisier, backed by a mortgage of 71,000 francs on the estate of the Duponts at Bois-des-Fosses. As he himself had been ruined by the Revolution, P. S. Dupont was unable to reimburse Marie-Anne. It wasn’t until 1805 that the problem was resolved, primarily thanks to his son, Eleuthere Irenee Dupont de Nemours (1771-1834) who had emigrated to the United States and opened a very successful gunpowder factory there in 1802. At that time, Marie-Anne asked P. S. Dupont to finance the publication of the first two volumes of Memoirs of Chemistry by lavoisier. In the vitriolic preface that she wrote for this edition, she denounced all those who should have been able to help her husband and did not have the courage to do so: Fourcroy, Guyton de Morveau, Monge, etc.

Ten years after her husband’s execution, she dedicated to the inventor a veritable cult where she revealed his masonic ideals: “A soul so just,” she wrote in the preface ”with a talent so pure, with a genius so elevated. It was in his conversations that the beauty of his character could be assessed and the depth of his morale principles. If some of the people those who attend these reunions would ever read these memoirs, their memory could not be recalled without emotion...If the laws which he was compelled to execute [in his function as a magistrate] had been occasionally too harsh, his efforts always tended to ameliorate them. One had to see him in the midst of his renters, acting as justice of the peace to repair the friendship of two neighbors, to reconcile a son with his father, giving an example of all the patriarchal virtues, caring for the sick, not only using of his own funds but also with visits, his own attentions, and his urging them to have patience and hope”.

Between 1796 and 1800, Marie-Anne led a relatively withdrawn life. She had fewer receptions, traveled widely in Italy, in Germany, and England. Every return became the occasion for joyous reunions. She continued to hold a salon in the image of former times, where people met together and exchanged ideas freely. The character of Marie-Anne changed also, insensibly. She became brusque, authoritarian, ill-tempered. After 1801, she could be seen surrounded by many suitors, when her social life regained some of its former exuberance. Among these were, of course, P. S. Dupont de Nemours, but also sir Charles Blagden, who made discreet inquiries. Among the regular visitors to her salon could be noticed Benjamin Thompson, Count of Rumford (1763-1814), a famous physicist.

Born in Woburn (Massachusetts), Thompson was self-taught. At the age of 18, he was appointed as schoolmaster in Rumford (Massachusetts). He married a wealthy 31-year old widow. He spied for the British during the American Revolution. Exposed as a spy, he left America immediately in 1776, abandoning his wife and his young daughter, Sarah, and found refuge in England, where he was ennobled. Received into society, he met often with Maximilien, Elector of Bavaria, who appointed him to a ministerial post at the court in Munich. His life then took another orientation. In Bavaria, he cleverly used his technical knowledge to propose very avant-garde social reforms. He organized the public works, military and social reforms (notably a system of social security) and the construction of lodgings for the poor ; he equipped houses with modern kitchens and effective systems of heating and light ; he invented new artillery pieces and new boats. He also established public gardens at Munich, the Park of the People, which still exists, and the English Garden.

As recompense for his work, the Duke of Bavaria named him a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, but Thomson chose for himself the name of the town whence he had fled: Rumford (today Concord, capital of New Hampshire). The Count of Rumford also won some renown by a discovery that overthrew the Physics of the epoch : while working on a firing range, he noticed that when a cannon that had just been bored was plunged into a basin it made the water therein boil and even kept hot for awhile. Proposing thus the foundation of the first law of thermodynamics, he refuted the Aristotelian theory holding that heat, like the other essences (earth, water, air, fire) could neither be created nor destroyed. [The caloric theory was born].

In Scientific circles, he was recognized as a talented physicist. He founded the Royal Institute of Great Britain and also endowed a professorship at Harvard University. The Royal Society and American Academy of Arts and Sciences both named medals after him. Many institutions owe their survival to his generosity.

In 1801, while he was basking in his glory, he proposed marriage to Madame Lavoisier. Legal complications prolonged their engagement. In 1804, Marie-Anne left the apartment that she had occupied in the Boulevard de la Madeleine since 1792, when she was required, with Antoine, to leave the Arsenal. The marriage was performed at the Hotel de Ville in Paris on 24 October 1805. The Rumford couple lived at 39, rue d’Anjou-Saint-Honoré, property of Anne-Marie. During this time, she received annually 6,000 livres (US$ 2 million in 2010 dollars) in rents from her properties. She also deposited 125,000 livres (US$ 40 million ) at 5% to an account in the name of Rumford. This money was supposed to be paid to the last survivor of the Rumford family -- Marie-Anne, the Count of Rumford, or his daughter, Sarah. Maximilien of Bavaria approved the marriage and added 4,000 florins (US$ 885,800) per year to the pension of the Count. The marriage of Marie-Anne and Rumford was a good deal for Rumford…

The new husband had a difficult personality, rather different from that of Lavoisier. Arrogant, irascible, unpredictable, egoistic, and condescending toward women, he could also be very generous, altruistic, and charming. For her part, Marie-Anne ws torn between her devotion to the memory of Antoine (hadn’t she insisted on declaring her new married name, written on the marriage contract, as “Marie-Anne Lavoisier de Rumford”, a demand that strongly offended the Count?) and her unspoken desire to “turn the page”. On the one hand, she endeavored to publish “Memoirs of Chemistry”, but on the other she left the estate of Freschines and her apartment in Rue de la Madeleine--places that held memories of Antoine for her.

After January 1806, The marriage showed signs of weakness. Marie-Anne realized that the Count had married her primarily for her money. Alarmed by the extravagance of Marie-Anne, Rumford forbade the admittance of guests who came each week to her salon to talk about science and recall the memory of the deceased Antoine--which did not fail to arouse the jealousy of the Count. Marie-Anne responded by pouring boiling water on the flowers which her husband cultivated with loving care in their garden. Their frequent arguments now aroused public notoriety. The couple separated in 1806 ; the divorce was finalized on 30 June 1809. Rumford died in Paris on 21 August 1814 of a “nervous fever.” He was 51 years old, just as Lavoisier was when he was executed.

After this unfortunate experience, nothing further troubled the life of Marie-Anne. She continued to entertain her friends. But nothing was ever the same again. Later in life, her interests turned more toward charity than science. Nevertheless, she had participated in one of the greatest scientific accomplishments in history. Her husband’s work succeeded in overturning the theory of chemistry that had been accepted since it was propounded by Aristotle, 2500 years earlier. The edifice of ignorance was certainly ready to fall, but Lavoisier was there when it did. Marie-Anne Paulze was there as well.