Monsieur Beaucaire by Booth Tarkington

First published: 1900

Type of work: Novelette

Type of plot: Period romance

Time of work: Early eighteenth century

Locale: Bath, England

Principal Characters:

• Louis-Phillipe de Valois, the Duke of Orleans, alias Victor, M. Beaucaire, and M. de Chateaurien; the nephew of King Louis XV of France
• Duke de Winterset, an English scoundrel
• Lady Mary Carlisle, a shallow aristocrat
• Molyneaux, a sympathetic Englishman
• Beau Nash, the social arbiter of Bath

The Story

Victor, alias Monsieur Beaucaire, the barber of the French ambassador to England, gambled with the socially elite of Bath for any amount. It was the early eighteenth century, when Bath society was under the leadership of Beau Nash. One night, M. Beaucaire caught the English Duke de Winterset cheating at his table. Instead of hush money, however, Beaucaire exacted Winterset’s promise to take him, a barber in disguise, to Lady Malbourne’s ball, and there to introduce him to the young and beautiful Lady Mary Carlisle.

Winterset was disgusted beyond words, for he was sure the barber would be recognized and he himself shamed before his acquaintances. Beaucaire then shed the disguise he wore and appeared before Winterset as an entirely different person. He declared that he would be Monsieur le Duc de Chateaurien.

It was dawn when the ball ended. The gallant M. de Chateaurien, assisting Lady Mary to her sedan chair, begged her for a rose. She refused but managed to drop a flower to the ground for him to retrieve. Within a short time, M. de Chateaurien became, along with Winterset, the cynosure of Bath society. Yet Winterset planned revenge for the way in which this upstart barber had blackmailed him. Unable to expose Beaucaire without ruining his own reputation, Winterset had a captain in his debt provoke M. de Chateaurien by insulting French womanhood. In the ensuing duel, Chateaurien was victorious; he sent Winterset a basket of roses. Another of Winterset’s minions then daringly suggested that M. de Chateaurien was an impostor. The Frenchman, avowedly fighting to defend the honor of his sponsor, Winterset, was victorious a second time.

All the while, M. de Chateaurien gained favor with Lady Mary. After a grand fete, he was granted the privilege of riding beside her coach. As they talked, Lady Mary more than tacitly confessed her love for the supposed duke. Armed and masked horsemen suddenly attacked M. de Chateaurien and shouted that they intended to kill the barber. He defended himself skillfully but was finally overcome by superior numbers. As he was being prepared for a lashing, his servants rode up in force and dispersed the attackers. Winterset, who was the leader of the attackers, returned to the coach and disclosed to Lady Mary that M. de Chateaurien was an impostor who had blackmailed Winterset into sponsoring his introduction to Bath society. To the horror of Lady Mary, M. de Chateaurien confessed that he was really a barber. Also, he promised to see Winterset at the assembly in a week’s time.

The assembly progressed under the watchful eye of Beau Nash. The Chateaurien affair was on every tongue, and Winterset, now the hero of Bath, was again Lady Mary’s favorite. Beau Nash assured Winterset that the house and grounds were being guarded and that it would be impossible for the ridiculous barber to enter.

As the Marquis de Mirepoix, the French ambassador, and the Comte de Beaujolais entered the house, Lady Mary retired to a side room where she discovered Molyneaux, a Bath dandy, and M. de Chateaurien playing cards. She vilified Molyneaux for associating with a common barber, and she refused to heed M. de Chateaurien’s plea to her to consider him not as a name but as a man.

Winterset, upon being told of the barber’s presence at the assembly, prepared to eject the impostor forcibly. The decorations and orders on the Frenchman’s chest aroused indignations among the English gentry. Molyneaux returned from a ballroom with the Comte de Beaujolais, who addressed M. de Chateaurien as Phillipe. It soon became evident that M. de Chateaurien and de Beaujolais were brothers, and that de Beaujolais had come to England to escort Phillipe back to France now that certain family problems had been resolved.

M. de Chateaurien, or Prince Louis-Phillipe de Valois, Duke of Orleans, shamed the Englishmen present for their blindness. He said that the humblest French peasant would have recognized his high nobility if he had seen the sword fight of a week previous. He exposed Winterset as a base coward and a cheat. When Lady Mary asked the prince’s forgiveness, he said that he would return to France and marry the lady that his uncle, King Louis XV, had chosen for him; he was sure that she would accept him whether he were Victor, the barber; M. Beaucaire, the gambler; M. Chateaurien, the gentleman; or Prince Louis-Phillipe, nephew of the king.

Critical Evaluation:

MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE, an elegant but sprightly novelette, is quite different from Booth Tarkington’s realistic, morally earnest fiction such as THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS (1918) or ALICE ADAMS (1921), just as it is unlike the robustly comic juvenile novels treating the misadventures of Penrod, Sam, or Willie Baxter. Rather, the short novel resembles the mannered romantic comedy of Max Beerbohm or Leonard Merrick. Style rather than content is important. On the one hand, Tarkington imitates the genteel Romanticism of Clyde Fitch’s BEAU BRUMMEL (1890); on the other, he satirizes Romantic conventions popular in fiction and the theater. With self-parodying elegance, he writes that the duke’s mouth “foamed over with chaotic revilement.” The scoundrel Winterset reveals anger when his “white lip showed a row of scarlet dots upon it.” When Beaucaire is forced to remove his disguise, he regrets that he must “assassinate” his poor mustache. Because Tarkington’s language strains after effects of Romantic hyperbole, his descriptions are often comic, even farcical. For example, Beaucaire, challenged to a duel by a “ruffing buck,” laughs in his face and at twilight of the same day “pinks” the man “carefully through the right shoulder.” Beaucaire then hands his “wet” sword over to his lackey and, bending over his fallen adversary, caps his insult to the unfortunate by calling him a “naughty man.” In another scene, Mr. Molyneaux, brought low by the intrepid Beaucaire, confesses that he and his men have been rewarded their just desserts, “his mouth full of dust and philosophy.”

Tarkington not only exaggerates the heroic exploits of Beaucaire, but he also exaggerates his hero’s courtesy. In the final recognition scene, when Beaucaire identifies himself as the Duke of Orleans, he expresses his contempt for Lady Mary’s snobbery. Then, feeling that he may have injured her feelings, he walks her to the door, “her hand fluttering faintly in his.” In a scene of culminating romantic silliness, suddenly a great “hum of voices” can be heard, fiddles weave a wandering air, “a sweet French song of the voyageur,” and the onetime barber takes his majestic leave of the gasping multitudes.

Although Tarkington’s readers appreciated the satire and humor woven into the romance, they also took seriously the author’s main idea; that a person should be judged by his own merit not by his social station. For the audience of a democracy, this message was particularly ingratiating. MONSIEUR BEAUCAIRE was enormously successful both as a short novel and as a play with the same title (1901). Although Tarkington’s hero is a Frenchman of the noble class, he is egalitarian and unpretentious; above all, he makes fools of the British aristocracy. For Americans of 1900, who had often been the butt of ridicule in the English press for their supposed vulgarity, Beaucaire’s—and Tarkington’s—revenge was sweet.