FAUCHET, CLAUDE (1530–1601), French historian and antiquary, was born at Paris on the 3rd of July 1530. Of his early life few particulars are known. He applied himself to the study of the early French chroniclers, and proposed to publish extracts which would throw light on the first periods of the monarchy. During the civil wars he lost a large part of his books and manuscripts in a riot, and was compelled to leave Paris. He then settled at Marseilles. Attaching himself afterwards to Cardinal de Tournon, he accompanied him in 1554 to Italy, whence he was several times sent on embassies to the king, with reports on the siege of Siena. His services at length procured him the post of president of the chambre des monnaies, and thus enabled him to resume his literary studies. Having become embarrassed with debt, he found it necessary, at the age of seventy, to sell his office; but the king, amused with an epigram, gave him a pension, with the title of historiographer of France. Fauchet has the reputation of an impartial and scrupulously accurate writer; and in his works are to be found important facts not easily accessible elsewhere. He was, however, entirely uncritical, and his style is singularly inelegant. His principal works (1579, 1599) treat of Gaulish and French antiquities, of the dignities and magistrates of France, of the origin of the French language and poetry, of the liberties of the Gallican church, &c. A collected edition was published in 1610. Fauchet took part in a translation of the Annals of Tacitus (1582). He died at Paris about the close of 1601.
FAUCHET, CLAUDE (1744–1793), French revolutionary
bishop, was born at Dornes (Nièvre) on the 22nd of September
1744. He was a curate of the church of St Roch, Paris, when
he was engaged as tutor to the children of the marquis of Choiseul,
brother of Louis XV.’s minister, an appointment which proved
to be the first step to fortune. He was successively grand vicar
to the archbishop of Bourges, preacher to the king, and abbot
of Montfort-Lacarre. The “philosophic” tone of his sermons
caused his dismissal from court in 1788 before he became a
popular speaker in the Parisian sections. He was one of the
leaders of the attack on the Bastille, and on the 5th of August
1789 he delivered an eloquent discourse by way of funeral
sermon for the citizens slain on the 14th of July, taking as his
text the words of St Paul, “Ye have been called to liberty.”
He blessed the tricolour flag for the National Guard, and in
September was elected to the Commune, from which he retired
in October 1790. During the next winter he organized within
the Palais Royal the “Social Club of the Society of the Friends
of Truth,” presiding over crowded meetings under the self-assumed
title of procureur général de la vérité. Nevertheless,
events were marching faster than his opinions, and the last
occasion on which he carried his public with him was in a sermon
preached at Notre Dame on the 14th of February 1791. In
May he became constitutional bishop of Calvados, and was
presently returned by the department to the Legislative
Assembly, and afterwards to the Convention. At the king’s
trial he voted for the appeal to the people and for the penalty
of imprisonment. He protested against the execution of Louis
XVI. in the Journal des amis (January 26, 1793), and next
month was denounced to the Convention for prohibiting married
priests from the exercise of the priesthood in his diocese. He
remained secretary to the Convention until the accusation of
the Girondists in May 1793. In July he was imprisoned on the
charge of supporting the federalist movement at Caen, and of
complicity with Charlotte Corday, whom he had taken to see
a sitting of the Convention on her arrival in Paris. Of the
second of these charges he was certainly innocent. With the
Girondist deputies he was brought before the revolutionary
tribunal on the 30th of October, and was guillotined on the
following day.
See Mémoires . . . ou Lettres de Claude Fauchet (5th ed., 1793); Notes sur Claude Fauchet (Caen, 1842).
FAUCIT, HELENA SAVILLE (1817–1898), English actress,
the daughter of John Saville Faucit, an actor, was born in London.
Her first London appearance was made on the 5th of January
1836 at Covent Garden as Julia in The Hunchback. Her success
in this was so definitely confirmed by her subsequent acting
of Juliet, Lady Teazle, Beatrice, Imogen and Hermione, that
within eighteen months she was engaged by Macready as leading
lady at Covent Garden. There, besides appearing in several
Shakespearian characters, she created the heroine’s part in
Lytton’s Duchess de la Vallière (1836), Lady of Lyons (1838),
Richelieu (1839), The Sea Captain (1839), Money (1840), and
Browning’s Strafford (1837). After a visit to Paris and a short
season at the Haymarket, she joined the Drury Lane company
under Macready early in 1842. There she played Lady Macbeth,
Constance in King John, Desdemona and Imogen, and took
part in the first production of Westland Marston’s Patrician’s
Daughter (1842) and Browning’s Blot on the Scutcheon (1843).
Among her successful tours was included a visit to Paris in 1844–1845,
where she acted with Macready in several Shakespearian
plays. In 1851 she was married to Mr (afterwards Sir) Theodore
Martin, but still acted occasionally for charity. One of her last
appearances was as Beatrice, on the opening of the Shakespeare
Memorial at Stratford-on-Avon on the 23rd of April 1879.
In 1881 there appeared in Blackwood’s Magazine the first of her
Letters on some of Shakespeare’s Heroines, which were published
in book form as On Some of Shakespeare’s Female Characters
(1885). Lady Martin died at her home near Llangollen in Wales
on the 31st of October 1898. There is a tablet to her in the
Shakespeare Memorial with a portrait figure, and the marble
pulpit in the Shakespeare church—with her portrait as Saint
Helena—was given in her memory by her husband.
See Sir Theodore Martin’s Helena Faucit (1900).
FAUJAS DE SAINT-FOND, BARTHÉLEMY (1741–1819),
French geologist and traveller, was born at Montélimart on the
17th of May 1741. He was educated at the Jesuits’ College at
Lyons; afterwards he went to Grenoble, applied himself to the
study of law, and was admitted advocate to the parliament.
He rose to be president of the seneschal’s court (1765), a post
which he honourably filled, but the duties of which became
irksome, as he had early developed a love of nature and his
favourite relaxation was found in visits to the Alps. There he
began to study the forms, structure, composition and superposition
of rocks. In 1775 he discovered in the Velay a rich
deposit of pozzuolana, which in due course was worked by the
government. In 1776 he put himself in communication with
Buffon, who was not slow to perceive the value of his labours.
Invited by Buffon to Paris, he quitted the law, and was appointed
by Louis XVI. assistant naturalist to the museum, to which office
was added some years later (1785, 1788) that of royal commissioner
for mines. One of the most important of his works was the
Recherches sur les volcans éteints du Vivarais et du Velay, which
appeared in 1778. In this work, rich in facts and observations,
he developed his theory of the origin of volcanoes. In his
capacity of commissioner for mines Faujas travelled in almost
all the countries of Europe, everywhere devoting attention to
the nature and constituents of the rocks. It was he who first
recognized the volcanic nature of the basaltic columns of the
cave of Fingal (Staffa), although the island was visited in 1772
by Sir Joseph Banks, who remarked that the stone “is a coarse
kind of Basaltes, very much resembling the Giants’ Causeway
in Ireland” (Pennant’s Tour in Scotland and Voyage to the
Hebrides). Faujas’s Voyage en Angleterre, en Écosse et aux Îles
Hébrides (1797) is full of interest—containing anecdotes of Sir
Joseph Banks and Dr John Whitehurst, and an amusing account
of “The Dinner of an Academic Club” (the Royal Society), and
has been translated into English (2 vols., 1799). Having been
nominated in 1793 professor at the Jardin des Plantes, he held
this post till he was nearly eighty years of age, retiring in 1818
to his estate of Saint-Fond in Dauphiné. Faujas took a warm
interest in the balloon experiments of the brothers Montgolfier,
and published a very complete Description des expériences de la
machine aérostatique de MM. Montgolfier, &c. (1783, 1784).
He contributed many scientific memoirs to the Annales and the
Mémoires of the museum of natural history. Among his separate
works, in addition to those already named are—Histoire naturelle
de la province de Dauphiné (1781, 1782); Minéralogie des volcans
