Chevalier de St. Georges
Chevalier de St. Georges
DAZZLING BLACK NOBLEMAN OF VERSAILLES (1745-1799)
THE ADVENTURES of Chevalier de St. Georges were so astonishing, his talents so superlatively brilliant, that an account of his life reads like an incredibly romantic novel with a perfect hero. He was the most dazzling and fascinating figure at the most splendid court in Europe. As a violinist, pianist, poet, musical composer, and actor, he was phenomenal; as a swordsman he so far eclipsed the best of his time that in his prime none could match him; as a marksman none could pull a trigger with such unerring aim; as a soldier and commander he performed prodigious feats on the field of battle; as a dancer, swimmer, horseman, and skater he was the most graceful in a land supreme for its grace and elegance; in the matter of dress he was the model of his day, setting the fashions of England and France; a King of France, a future King of England, and royal princes sought his company; and to crown all, he possessed a spirit of rare generosity, kindliness, and rectitude.
Chevalier de St. Georges was born in Guadeloupe, West Indies, on Christmas Day, 1745. His mother was a black woman of extraordinary beauty named Naomi; his father was the rich Marquis Jean de Boullogne, governor of the island, later King’s Counsellor, Grand Chancellor of France, and High Treasurer of the Order of the Holy Spirit.
At the age of thirteen St. Georges went to France. According to one report he was a runaway; according to another his father, proud of his offspring’s precocity, took him there to study. The latter version is probably true, for the best tutors in Paris were engaged for him. His mornings were devoted to the study of music literature, science, and similar subjects; afternoons were spent in fencing, marksmanship, riding, and physical exercises, in all of which the West Indian lad excelled his fellows. At fifteen he had defeated the best amateur swordsmen in Paris and at seventeen there was no professional in that city to equal him. When only twenty-one he defeated Faldoni, the renowned fencing champion of Italy. His prowess in other branches of sports was also remarkable.
Without a rival out-of-doors, he became also the star of drawing rooms, fetes, and spectacles. He played the violin, improvised verses, and in the favorite pastime of the period, conversation, he was one of the most sparkling. His witticisms were keen but never offended the sensibilities of ladies. He was never coarse or vulgar.
At twenty he was appointed esquire to the Duchess of Orléans, wife of the brother of Louis XVI, and became the confidant of the duke himself and of his son, the Duke of Chartres. Then he entered into the whirl of the brilliant life of the Court of Versailles, where his physical charm, his talents, and his taste in dress made him the most striking figure in that scintillating throng. During this time he wrote plays and musical compositions, some of which became the most famous of the day. “St. George,” says Larousse, “was a master on the violin, and a story is told of him so remarkable that it borders on the improbable; he played one evening a bit of music with his whip, a fact certified by several present. This whip became famous; the handle is ornamented with a great number of precious stones, and the nobleman declared that each stone in the dazzling collection represented a woman who loved him.” Among those who fell under his charm was the wife of his patron, Madame de Montesson,
Duchess of Orléans.
In a similar vein of praise, Biographe de Musiciens says:
None could equal him at running; in the dance he was the model of perfection: he could mount horses bareback and break the wildest of them; he skated with perfect grace and distinguished himself among the best swimmers. Trained by Leclair for the violin, he acquired on this instrument a skill equal to that of the best French violinists of his time and shone at concerts with his playing and his concertos alike.
To the added delight of the gay French aristocracy, he brought a band of colored musicians from the West Indies which he trained himself and which became a leading attraction at Versailles. In winter it was considered one of the most thrilling sights at Versailles to see St. Georges skate on the large artificial lake. Tall, lithe, and graceful, he would skim over the ice with the ease of a swallow, describing marvelous rhomboids, flowers, portraits, and sometimes “whole lines from Racine.”
According to Jean de Beauvois, who knew him:
As soon as St. Georges appeared in any circle, a murmur, to which all had long been accustomed, circulated through the room. They recognized him; and the expression of an unforgettable joy shone on his handsome brown face. The women, on seeing him, had the appearance of hiding behind their fans, as if to convey a secret to one another, while the men, the most distinguished in nobility, mentality, and intelligence, came forward to shake his hand. In an instant he had become the lion of the assembly.
He was a master at everything, and his conduct was so perfect withal that his enemies could find but one thing to pin their meanness on, and that was his birth and racial descent. Visiting London with the Duke of Chartres, St. Georges’ social success there equaled that in Paris. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV, welcomed him as a special guest. In the most elegant salons hosts and hostesses and their guests fought for the honor of entertaining him; people called him “the most seductive of colored gentlemen.” The prince himself, enthusiastic over the accomplishments of his guest, wished to decorate him with the Order of the Bath, but St. Georges had the modesty to refuse.
When St. Georges arrived in England he adopted the English hat and shoes, and discarded the French broidered jacket and culotte for the English pantaloon and frock coat. He gave to these garments a style of his own which at once became the prevailing mode. Lords copied his dress. Indeed, it has been said that St. Georges was the forerunner of the English Beau Brummell. To France, in turn, St. Georges brought the English style, which replaced the French one. After three months St. Georges returned home, by no means richer than when he had left it. Extremely generous, he had spent lavishly, and the only sum he brought back with him was 200 guineas that he had won from the Prince of Wales on a bet that he could jump a wide ditch in Richmond with his knees closed. Among his expenditures were fabulous sums spent on fetes and games.
English engravers strove for the honor of doing his portrait, and dozens were made of him, several of them showing him in the company of the Prince of Wales. One showed him doing a favorite trick of his-shooting off pistols with both hands at two swallows and bringing both birds down. Another showed him in a comic duel with the chef of the Prince de Conti. St. Georges, who was an epicure, had found fault with the chef’s dishes, and the latter, in a fit of rage, had seized a sword and attacked him, whereupon the famous swordsman picked
up an écumoire, or iron strainer, and proceeded to disarm his enemy.
“ This master of arms, whom they surnamed the inimitable and the invincible, never had a duel,” says Larousse. “No one dared risk one with him. Indeed his historic duel with the Count de la Morliére was only a comedy.”
The count, offended by a remark, had challenged St. Georges, and the encounter took place under the bridge of St. Marie. But the count proved so poor an opponent that St. Georges seized him bodily, put him across his knees, and spanked him like a child to the great amusement of the onlookers.
The only man before whom St. Georges is said to have quailed was another colored man, Alexandre Dumas, father of the novelist. The latter, in his Memoirs, asserts that St. Georges evaded a duel with his father, pleading illness. At that time, however, Dumas, a master swordsman himself, was twenty-two, while St. Georges was near fifty.
Despite St. Georges’ prestige and position he was sometimes taunted about the dark color of his skin. On one occasion while walking on the Rue de Bac, a pedestrian, trying to be funny, called him a moricaud, the French equivalent of “darky.” St. Georges seized the offender, rubbed his face in the gutter, and laughingly remarked, “There you are now! As black as I am.” A more serious instance of racial discrimination against him occurred in 1776. At that time the Royal Academy of Music was under the direction of the city of Paris. St. Georges, who was the director of a musical company, wished to make the Academy a national theatre, and because of his influence, easily assembled a group of capitalists to finance the project. But incited by his enemies, several of the performers, headed by Mlles. Arnould, La Guimard, and Levasseur, sent a petition to the queen, Marie Antoinette, in which they indignantly declared that their “honor and privileges were opposed to their submitting to the dictation of a mulatto.” The queen upheld them and the project fell through. Up to that time Marie Antoinette had been one of the warmest friends of St. Georges. Several reasons have been given for her stand in the affair. One is that St. Georges was too friendly with the Duke of Orleans, brother of the king and the king’s leading opponent; the other is that the queen’s vanity as a woman had been hurt by St. Georges’ too marked attention to another woman.
On still another occasion St. Georges was snubbed because of his color and illegitimacy. When sent by the Duke of Orldéans to a group of emigrés,
discontented nobles who had left the court, they refused to receive him.
According to some writers, it was the queen’s support of color discrimination that drove him into the ranks of the republicans. It is also said that he imbibed his republicanism from the Duke of Orleans, “Philippe Egalité.” Both assertions are wrong, as St. Georges’ correspondence shows. The truth is that he was a democrat at heart though reared as an aristocrat. A man of color, he had been born among the common people, and in sympathy he remained one of them.
Despite the queen’s conduct toward him St. Georges did all in his power to warn her and the king of the coming revolution. One day while skating at Versailles he came close to the box in which the queen was sitting and with his skates scratched on the ice the word “peril” in German, hoping that she might thereby realize the imminent danger. A few days later Marie Antoinette, in a touching scene, expressed to him her deep regret for having sided against him.
When the Revolution came, St. Georges threw himself heart and soul into the people’s cause. Going to the West Indies, he raised a regiment of black cavalry, which he called the Black Legion. As lieutenant-colonel, he appointed another prominent young nobleman, Count de Pailletérie, later General Alexandre Dumas. With their dashing cavalry, St. Georges and Dumas soon distinguished themselves by saving Lille for the republicans after the defection of General Dumouriez, an ex-royalist leader. In the war with the Prussians St. Georges proved himself as brilliant on the field of battle as in the salon. Later, however, when the Revolution got out of hand, even his impeccable conduct did not suffice to save him from suspicion. He was thrown into prison and came near having his head chopped off, the fate suffered by the king, Marie Antoinette, his patron, the Duke of Orléans, and thousands of others of the nobility. His life was saved in the nick of time. Just as he was being led up to the guillotine, the counter-revolutionists, having triumphed, rushed up and saved him.After this experience St. Georges retired from public life. His father had left him an annuity equivalent to $150,000, but the Revolution had swept this away. He suffered extremely from poverty, and died on June 12, 1799, from bladder trouble and neglect. The news of his passing revived all the old interest in him. E. M. yon Arndt, the noted German poet, patriot, and traveler, who knew him well and happened to be in Paris at the time, wrote:
St. Georges, the great Georges, died a few days after my arrival. St. Georges, the representative and favorite of the French nation...
St. Georges was dead and so great was public interest that the news made people forget the battles of Verona and Stockhart. All the day they talked about nothing else but that. In all the theatres, promenades, cafes and gardens resounded the name of the great, the amiable St. Georges. In the streets they stopped to exchange the news. For three, four days, his name echoed in all the newspapers. They lauded his skill in all the arts, his fine manner, his force, his generosity and gaiety, and generally concluded with these words: “He was the perfect Frenchman, that is to say, the most amiable of mortals. He was the Voltaire of equitation, music, dancing, and skill in the use of weapons.’’ In truth, St. Georges is an astonishing figure in the eyes of a German, whose education is so silly that he considers skill in bodily exercises as one of the little supplementary things of life. St. Georges was the handsomest, the strongest, and the most agreeable man of his times (he died at the age of 58). He was a faithful friend, a good citizen, a man of society, full of so many charms and virtues that any single one of them would have caused us to mourn his death. He was the Alcibiades of his time, he loved pleasure, but never abused it. Oh! Such marvellous gifts merit immortality and a people with a
keen and ever ready recognition of beauty as the French will admire him eternally.
Talleyrand, Napoleon’s great chancellor, declared that St. Georges was the most accomplished human being he had ever met. Perhaps his only defect was that he stammered slightly. Like Dumas, the novelist, St. Georges gave pensions from his private purse to several poor people. Larousse says, “He distinguished himself among the personages of his time, selfish, wicked, and corrupt for the most part, by a generosity and a rectitude of character very rare. To the end of his days he did good and he had a special list of poor people, whom he supported entirely.” Biographie Universelle says, “He was unselfish and benevolent. He suffered privations to relieve the unhappy, and several indigent old people were his pensionaires as long as his money lasted.” His nobility of character never shone brighter than in the manner in which he received his humble black mother, once a slave, when she came to Paris. Taking her into the most brilliant salons, he presented her to his aristocratic friends, letting it quietly be known that whoever attempted to snub her would in turn be snubbed by him. “Who refuses her, refuses me,” he said.
Biographie de Musician gives a list of his works, principal among which were the “St. Georges Minuet,” two operas, several symphonies, and a comedy, FilIe Garçon. His plays, according to several critics of the day, lacked originality, and were a failure, but his concertos, which became the rage of the day, possess genuine merit. As a technician of the violin, he is considered one of the most brilliant in the history of music. Neither King Arthur nor Lancelot nor any traditional figure of chivalry was more gallant than he. His conduct at all times was exemplary, and for that portion of humanity, which admires nobility of character and excellence in attainment, he will ever remain a model.
Chevalier de St. Georges was ( Prince Charming ) come to life.
"Le Mozart( Noir-Black) :Reviving A Legend" - Joseph Boulogne, Le Chevalier des St. Georges (Part 1 of 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vILAgsHUlt8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSsbCLZXPDA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mSHwrY1Yx8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKE6s-D7xsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJ1SoM7BRXY
Known as the Black Mozart, Joseph Boulogne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges (December 25, 1745 June 10, 1799) was one of the most important figures in the Paris musical scene in the second half of the 18th century. In this video learn about this influential composers of all time.
http://www.chevalierdesaintgeorge.com/index_unabridged.php
THE BLACK MOZART/AND PROBABLY; THE REAL MOZART
http://www.urbanlife.se/en/black-history/black-icons/270-joseph-boulogne-the-black-mozart
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