Theobald Wolfe Tone ( Dublin, 1763- Dublin, 1798) arrived in the U.S. on August 1, 1795 with the stated intention of earning a living from farming. But the revolutionary bug was too strong. He quickly contacted the French minister to the U.S., Pierre Auguste Adet, who arranged Tone’s passage to Le Havre under the assumed name of James Smith on January 1, 1796. He arrived in Paris on February 12, 1796, where he was to stay until the following September. Having left wife and children in the U.S., how did Wolfe Tone spend those seven months in Paris? If his diaries are anything to go by, he balanced between listlessness, increasing impecuniousness, battles with French officialdom and visits to the opera and theatre.
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| Site of Hôtel des Etrangers on r. de Vivienne |
Tone stayed first at one of the grandest hotels in Paris, the Hôtel des Etrangers on the rue de Vivienne (2nd arrondissement). It is “a magnificent house,” he writes, “but I foresee as dear as the devil.” Yet, to celebrate his arrival in the French capital, he treated himself to dinner at the Restaurant de Beauvilliers close by in the Palais Royal. This was one of the very first and most prestigious French restaurants. Tone chose “soup, roast fowl, fried carp, salad of two kinds, a bottle of Burgundy, coffee after dinner and a glass of liqueur with excellent bread (I forgot we had colliflowers [sic] in sauce).”
After contacting the U.S. ambassador, Munroe, the foreign ministry and a couple of local United Irishmen (most notably Nicholas Madgett, who worked as a translator at the foreign ministry), Tone seems to have had plenty of time to frequent the opera. But Tone quickly grew lonely. From February 18 to February 20, he notes that he “dined alone every day”. By mid-March, many entries in his diary begin with the word “blank”. For example, on March 16, he wrote “Blank! Dined alone in the Champs-Elysées”. The following day, the one-line entry reads “Patrick’s Day. Dined alone in the Champs Elysées. Sad! Sad!” And the day after, “Blank – theatre in the evening.”
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Menu from Restaurant de Beauvilliers
copied by Wolfe Tone in his diary |
According to his biographer, Marianne Elliott, it was Wolfe Tone’s tactic from the outset to remain totally isolated so as to preserve secrecy. Indeed, his success was so complete that the British and Irish authorities did not learn of his presence in Paris until 1797. But during those early months in the French capital Tone had no source of income. On April 20, he left the Hôtel des Etrangers, where, he writes, he had been “fleeced like 10,000 devils” and moved into much more modest accommodation at 7, petite rue Saint Roch, in the Poissonière district (street no longer exists, in present-day 2nd arrondissement), where fellow Irishman John Aherne was staying. But Wolfe Tone soon had problems there with his landlady, Mme. Brivet, - and they were not all of a monetary variety. On July 4, 1796, he wrote: “I want to change my domicile. I am lodged in the house of a little bossue, and she wants me to go to bed with her, and I won’t, for my virtue forbids it, and so she is out of humour and very troublesome sometimes. To tell the God’s truth, I have no great merit in my resistance, for she is as crooked as a ram’s horn…and as ugly as sin beside.” On July 6, he notes that he is down to his last two louis. But help was as hand: after much dilly-dallying, the French finally found him a military commission as chef de brigade, and at the end of July provided him with three month’s advance pay. He left for Brest shortly afterwards and partook in General Lazare Hoche’s hapless Bantry Bay expedition in December 1796.
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Site of cul-de-sac de Notre-Dame-des-Champs
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Tone made it back to Paris a chastened man on January 13, 1797. His mission had failed, he was short of cash, he had nowhere he could call home and the trunk containing his possessions did not turn up until the end of February. With the Paris Irish he had nothing in common, finding them “sad, vulgar wretches, and I have been used to rather better company in all respects”. For a short period, he stayed at the Hôtel des Etats-Unis in the rue de Tournon (6th arrondissement), near the Luxembourg gardens, before moving to the rue de Clery (2nd arrondissement), back on the Right Bank of the Seine. But by the end of March, Tone had left Paris again to join General Hoche’s army on the Rhine.
By this time, his wife and family had arrived in Europe from the United States. In Paris, they first stayed with an Irish colonel called Henry Shee in Nanterre, then moved to 139, cul-de-sac de Notre-Dames-des-Champs (street no longer exists, situated in present-day 6th arrondissement). But after falling out with the landlady, they moved to no. 29, rue des Batailles in the Chaillot district on the Right Bank (street no longer exists, situated in present-day 16th arrondissement).
After some time in Holland wistfully preparing for another Irish expedition, Tone was back in Paris in October 1797 and met Napoleon for the first time two months later. On March 25, 1798, Wolfe Tone received orders to join the Armée de l’Angleterre in Rouen. Just over six months later, the ship that was meant to disembark him in Lough Swilly was apprehended by the Royal Navy. Tone died of self-inflicted injuries in prison on November 18th, 1798 .
After his death, Tone’s family is recorded as living at 751, rue Plumet in the modern-day 15th arrondissement. The French government granted Tone’s widow an annual pension of FF1,200, increased to FF2,400 in 1811. Wolfe Tone's son, William, trained at the Imperial Cavalry School in Saint Germain, outside Paris, and won the Légion d’Honneur for his courage during the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. He – like his mother - supported Napoleon during the 100 Days, which perhaps explains why they both left France for the U.S. in 1816.
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