History Lessons

The French Coffee Romance

Coffee has had a rather dramatic existence.  Maybe not necessarily as a plant, it seems rather dramatic to say a plant is dramatic in the first place.  However, coffee as a commodity has had a very dramatic existence.  All throughout history, coffee has been causing strife and happiness.  Unfortunately it has been mostly drinkers that get the happiness and mostly the farmers and workers that get the strife. 

There is one man in particular that had a rather dramatic life because of coffee.  His was Captain Gabriel de Clieu.  Wikipedia.org has a small smattering of information about de Clieu but very little insight to his involvement.  If you will, take a moment to see just how one man let coffee take him half way around the world.

In the year 1706 A.D., the Dutch had received a coffee plant grown in Java to the botanical gardens in Amsterdam.  This plant propagated many seeds that were distributed to botanical gardens and private conservatories throughout Europe.  The Dutch proceeded to cultivate their coffee plants in their colonies, mostly in the Indies, Sumatra, the Celebes, Timor, Bali, etc., and in their holdings in the New World.  In the mean time, the French were looking to do the same in their colonies.  There were numerous early attempts to transplant some young coffee plants from the Amsterdam botanical gardens to the Paris botanical gardens, but they were not to be.

Then, in 1714, there was a breakthrough.  The French government and the municipality of Amsterdam reached an agreement for a young and vigorous plant of about five feet to be sent to Louis XIV at the chateau of Marly by the burgomaster of Amsterdam.  This plant was then transferred to Paris to the Jardin des Plantes, where much ceremony was made by the professor of botany in charge, Antoine de Jussieu.  The tree’s offspring can be found in almost all of the French colonies, as well as of those of South America, Central America, and Mexico.

This is where we pick up Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, a young Norman gentleman and naval officer, serving at the time as captain of infantry at Martinique, which he received in 1720.  Having to make a trip to France for personal reasons, de Clieu came up with the idea of returning with coffee for cultivation in Martinique.  In order to do this he had to procure several of the plants being cultivated.  This was finally accomplished by de Clieu personally writing a letter to M. de Chirac, royal physician, and delivered  by a lady of quality to whom Chirac could give no refusal.  The plants selected for this fateful voyage were to be kept at Rochefort by the commissary of the department until the time of departure of de Clieu for Martinique.  The exact date is of de Clieu’s arrival at Martinique with the plant, or plants, is not exactly known.  It could have been as early as 1720 or as late as 1723.  This discrepancy could be that there were possibly two voyages, the first a failure with the plants not surviving the trip.  Although no record of two voyages is given in de Clieu’s personal records, given in a letter written to the Année Littéraire in 1774, this could be backed up by the story that the plants survived “due, they say, to his having given of his scanty ration of water to moisten them” leading one to believe that maybe the first died due to lack of water. 

In 1723, de Clieu embarked at Nantes, his precious plant in a miniature greenhouse, a box covered with a glass frame.  It is said that among the passengers was a man who was envious of de Clieu and did all that was within his power to sabotage the young officer.  An excerpt from a letter by de Clieu to the Année Littéraire states, “It is useless to recount in detail the infinite care that I was obligated to bestow upon this delicate plant during a long voyage, and the difficulties I had in saving it from the hands of a man who basely jealous of the joy I was about to taste through being of service to my country, and being unable to get this coffee plant away from me, tore off a branch.”

Being a merchantman, the vessel carrying de Clieu and his plant had many trials in its voyage.  It was beset upon by a corsair of Tunis and narrowly escaped.  There was a violent tempest that threatened to tear them apart.  Finally, they entered a calm to which both previous events were more welcomed.  Their drinking water was all but gone and had been rationed for the remainder of their voyage when le Clieu wrote, “Water was lacking to such an extent that for more than a month I was obligated to share the scanty ration of it assigned to me with this my coffee plant upon which my happiest hopes were founded which was the source of my delight.  It needed such succor the more in that it was extremely backward, being no larger than a slip of a pink.”  This statement gave rise to many stories and songs recording and glorifying the generous sacrifice that have given luster to the name of de Clieu.

Having arrived on Martinique, de Clieu planted his precious cargo on his estate in Prêcheur, one of the cantons of the island.  Here it was extraordinarily successful and multiplied rapidly.  It was from these seeds that most of the coffee of Antilles was grown, having its first harvest in 1726.  The success of the coffee plant was furthered by an unfortunate devastation to the local cocoa trees, the resource and occupation of the people, having been uprooted and totally destroyed by a horrible tempest accompanied by an inundation which submerged all the land where these trees were planted, partly due to an earthquake in 1727.  The land was immediately turned into coffee plantations by the natives.  Coffee did so well that they were able to send plants to Santo Domingo, Guadeloupe, and several other islands where they were also cultivated with great success.

By 1777 it is said that there were 18,791,680 coffee trees in Martinique.

About de Clieu

De Clieu was born in Angléqueville-surSaane, Seine-Inférieure (Normandy), in 1686 or 1688.  In 1705 he was a ship’s ensign; in 1718 he became a chevalier of St. Louis; in 1720 he was made a captain of infantry; in 1726, a major of infantry; in 1733 he was a ship’s lieutenant; in 1737 he became governor of Guadeloupe; in 1746 he was a ship’s captain; in 1750 he was made honorary commander of the order of St. Louis; in 1752 he retired with a pension of 6000 francs; in 1753 he re-entered the naval service; in 1760 he again retired with a pension of 2000 francs.

In 1746 de Clieu, having returned to France, was presented to Louis XV by the minister of marine, Rouillé de Jour, as “a distinguished officer to whom the colonies, as well as France itself, and commerce generally, are indebted for the cultivation of coffee.”

Reports to the king in 1752 and 1759 recall his having carried the first coffee plant to Martinique, and that he had ever been distinguished for his zeal and disinterestedness. In the Mercue de France, December, 1774, was the following death notice:

Gabriel d’Erchigny de Clieu, former Ship’s Captain and Honorary Commander of the Royal and Military Order of Saint Louis, died in Paris on the 30^th of November in the 88^th year of his age.

A notice of his death appeared also in the Gazette de France for December 5, 1774, a rare honor in both cases; and it has been said that at this time his praise was again on every lip.

One French historian, Sidney Daney, records that de Clieu died in poverty at St. Pierre at the age of 97; but this must be an error, although it does not anywhere appear that at his death he was possessed of much, if any, means.  Daney says:

This generous man received as his sole recompense for a noble deed the satisfaction of seeing this plant for whose preservation he had shown such devotion, prosper throughout the Antilles.  The illustrious de Clieu is among those to whom Martinique owes a brilliant reparation.

Pardon, in his La Martinique says:

Honor to this brave man!  He has deserved it from the people of two hemispheres.  His name is worthy of a place beside that of Paramentier who carried to France the potato of Canada.  These two men have rendered immense service to humanity, and their memory should never be forgotten—yet alas!  Are they even remembered?

Tussac, in his Flora de las Antillas, writing of de Clieu, says, “Though no monument be erected to this beneficent traveler, yet his name should remain engraved in the heart of every colonist.”

In 1774 the Année Littéraire published a long poem in de Clieu’s honor.  In the feuilleton of the Gazette de France, April 12 1816, we read that M. Donns, a wealthy Hollander, and a coffee connoisseur, sought to honor de Clieu by having painted upon a porcelain service all the details of his voyage and its happy results.  “I have seen the cups,” says the writer, who gives many details and the Latin inscription.

That singer of navigation, Esménard, has pictured de Clieu’s devotion in the following lines:

Forget not how de Clieu with his light vessel’s sail,
Brought distant Moka’s gift—that timid plant and frail.
The waves fell suddenly, young zephyrs breathed no more,
Beneath fierce Cancer’s fires behold the fountain sore,
Exhausted, fails; while now inexorable need
Makes her unpitying law—with measured dole obeyed.

Now each soul fears to prove Tantalus torment first.
De Clieu alone defies: While still that fatal thirst,
Fierce, stifling, day by day his noble strength devours,
And still a heaven of brass inflames the burning hours.
With that refreshing draught his life he will not cheer;
But drop by drop revives the plant he holds more dear.
Already as in dreams, he sees great branches grow,
One look at his dear plant assuages all his woe.

All this information I have obtained from the book All About Coffee by William H. (William Harrison) Ukers, a public domain book published in 1922.  It is a fun read if you feel like there is never enough information about coffee to cram into your head.