Fulton in Love

— If Robert Fulton remained a bachelor till on the wrong side of forty, it was not entirely his own fault. At one-and-thirty, though his biographers know nothing of it, he had offered his hand to a Frenchwoman, under romantic circumstances related by her more than half a century afterwards for the entertainment of her descendants. The lithographed memoirs of the Duchesse de Gontaut-Biron, a stray copy of which has lately found its way to the Paris National Library, describe how, in 1797, on her embarking incognito at Dover to see what had become of the family property, a fellow-passenger, seeing that she spoke both French and English, asked her to be his interpreter. She readily consented, but at Calais her passport, which represented her to be Madame François, a lace-dealer, was found informal, and she was detained three weeks as a suspected émigrée. The passenger whom she had obliged interested himself in her. He informed her that his name was Fulton, and that he had letters of recommendation to Barthélemy, one of the Directors of the French Republic. Learning that there was an idea of sending her under escort to Paris, he pondered over the means of saving her. One day he knocked at the door of her cell, through the peephole of which he could see her busy writing. He said, “ Madame François, listen to me.” “ I am listening.”“ You are in a critical position, and I am come to save you.” “ Many thanks, but please explain.” “ You are about to be taken to Paris to be imprisoned, and once there all is lost. Now nothing is easier than to avoid this danger : marry me.” “ Thank you, but I am already married.” The lady might have added that she had left in London not only a husband, but twins nine months old. “ Oh, what a pity ! I could make you rich. I have a secret invention which will revolutionize the world. I have a grand plan of blowing up an enemy’s fleet by submarine batteries and then capturing it. Only speak a word, and I claim you and marry you, and you are free.” The viscountess (as she then was) laughed, but could not help being grateful for so evidently cordial an offer; and we may assume that she was not only young, but handsome. She obtained her release in another fashion, and some weeks or months later, walking on the Paris boulevards with her husband’s brother, the Marquis de Gontaut, she encountered Fulton. “ Dear me, dear me ! ” he exclaimed, grasping both hands, even the one which was on her brother-in-law’s arm. “Dear Madame François, how glad I am to see you ! ” The marquis, unaccustomed to these frank American manners, stiffly said, “ Monsieur, the lady you have the honor of addressing is Mademoiselle de Montault,” — for she had found it prudent to resume her maiden name. “ No, no,” replied Fulton, “ it is Madame François; she is married,— she told me so at Calais. But what is it you say, — Mademoiselle what ? ” “ Mademoiselle de Montault.” Fulton entered the name in his notebook, spelling it “Montot,” and then began expatiating on his schemes. “ Look here, monsieur. I have got a sublime idea : I am going to blow up vessels into the air, run boats under water and propel them by steam.” The marquis took him for a madman, cut short the conversation, and bowed him off. Several years elapsed. Fulton, who had made money by panoramas for his steam and torpedo experiments, had sold his panoramas to his fellow-countryman James Williams Thayer, and, scouted by Napoleon as a charlatan, had gone back to London. One day at the opera, Madame de Gontaut espied him and bowed to him. He hastened to her box. “ What a pleasure, Mademoiselle de Montault, to see you again ! I could hardly believe my eyes ! ” “ Monsieur must have made a mistake,” said the French nobleman accompanying her, “ for madame is the Vicomtesse de Gontaut."’ “ Dear me !舡 rejoined Fulton, “ this beats all ; constantly changing names, — it is enough to drive one mad ; but as I see that these gentlemen with you are in the secret, if it is a joke I will laugh too.” The lady gave full explanations, and introduced him to Lord Clarendon and others, who facilitated his experiments; but not finding proper appreciation in Europe, he returned to America, and she saw no more of him. Fulton died at fifty. His French “ flame ” wrote her sprightly reminiscences at eighty, and lived some years afterwards.