Laperouse | Page 9

arranged by the families of two young people who had never even
seen each other. An example of that kind will appear presently.
The idea that the Comte de Laperouse, one of the smartest officers in
the French King's navy, should marry out of his rank and station,
shocked his relatives and friends as much as it would have done if he
had been detected picking pockets. He could not, without grave risk of
social and professional ruin, marry until he had obtained the consent of
his father, and--so naval regulations required--of his official superiors.
Both were firmly refused. Monsieur de Ternay, who commanded on the
Ile-de-France station, shook his wise head, and told the lover "that his
love fit would pass, and that people did not console themselves for
being poor with the fact that they were married." (This M. de Ternay, it
may be noted, had commanded a French squadron in Canada in 1762,
and James Cook was a junior officer on the British squadron which
blockaded him in St. John's Harbour. He managed to slip out one night,
much to the disgust of Colville, the British Admiral, who commented
scathingly on his "shameful flight.")
The father of Laperouse poured out his forbidding warnings in a long
letter. Listen to the "tut-tut" of the old gentleman at Albi:--
"You make me tremble, my son. How can you face with coolness the
consequences of a marriage which would bring you into disgrace with
the Minister and would lose you the assistance of powerful friends?
You would forfeit the sympathies of your colleagues and would
sacrifice the fruit of your work during twenty years. In disgracing
yourself you would humiliate your family and your parents. You would

prepare for yourself nothing but remorse; you would sacrifice your
fortune and position to a frivolous fancy for beauty and to pretended
charms which perhaps exist only in your own imagination. Neither
honour nor probity compels you to meet ill-considered engagements
that you may have made with that person or with her parents. Do they
or you know that you are not free, that you are under my authority?" He
went on to draw a picture of the embarrassments that would follow
such a marriage, and then there is a passage revealing the cash-basis
aspect of the old gentleman's objection: "You say that there are forty
officers in the Marine who have contracted marriages similar to that
which you propose to make. You have better models to follow, and in
any case what was lacking on the side of birth, in these instances, was
compensated by fortune. Without that balance they would not have had
the baseness and imprudence to marry thus." Poor Eleonore had no
compensating balance of that kind in her favour. She was only beautiful,
charming and sweet-natured. Therefore, "tut-tut, my son!"
In the course of the next few months Laperouse covered himself with
glory by his services on the AMAZON, the ASTREE, and the
SCEPTRE, and he hoped that these exploits would incline his father to
accede to his ardent wish. But no; the old gentleman was as hard as a
rock. He "tut-tutted" with as much vigour as ever. The lovers had to
wait.
Then his mother, full of love for her son and of pride in his
achievements, took a hand, and tried to arrange a more suitable match
for him. An old friend of the family, Madame de Vesian had a
marriageable daughter. She was rich and beautiful, and her lineage was
noble. She had never seen Laperouse, and he had never seen her, but
that was an insignificant detail in France under the old Regime. If the
parents on each side thought the marriage suitable, that was enough.
The wishes of the younger people concerned were, it is true, consulted
before the betrothal, but it was often a consultation merely in form, and
under pressure. We should think that way of making marriages most
unsatisfactory; but then, a French family of position in the old days
would have thought our freer system very shocking and loose. It is
largely a matter of usage; and that the old plan, which seems so faulty

to us, produced very many happy and lasting unions, there is much
delightful French family history to prove.
Laperouse had now been many months away from Ile-de-France and
the bright eyes of Eleonore. He was extremely fond of his mother, and
anxious to meet her wishes. Moreover, he held Madame de Vesian in
high esteem, and wrote that he "had always admired her, and felt sure
that her daughter resembled her." These influences swayed him, and he
gave way; but, being frank and honest by disposition, insisted that no
secret should be made of his affair of the heart with the lady across the
sea.