Very early in the morning, before beginning his work, Toussaint could be seen going to Saint Peter’s Church on Barclay Street where every day for sixty years he attended Holy Mass (daily Communion becoming a custom of fervent Catholics only after the pontificate of Saint Pius X [1904–1914]) and prayed his rosary. Only after this did he begin his professional activities.
With the conditions created by Toussaint, Madame Bérard’s shaken health slowly recovered and, with his encouragement, she could once again open her parlors to guests. Toussaint, having labored during the day as a hairdresser, worked gratuitously at night as a butler. Superbly dressed, with very gentle and pleasant manners, he served all his mistress’s guests, and then delighted them with his violin, which he played excellently.
St. Peter’s Church, south side of Barclay Street at east corner of Church Street, New York City, 1785.
In time, a French refugee named Gabriel Nicolas, a skilled musician whose talent provided him a well-to-do life in New York, obtained the hand of the widow Bérard, who thus became Madame Nicolas. Although relieved for some time with the new marriage, misfortune returned to visit the noble lady. Due to the passing of an abstruse law, several New York theaters were closed and, with this, the main source of her husband’s income disappeared. Toussaint’s faithfulness was once again her support.
His work with the ladies of the high society of New York continued and he exercised a beneficent influence. During the work they talked about various subjects, and in everything he answered with so much correctness and made such wise commentaries that many regarded him as a counselor, asking his opinion about delicate personal problems. Some even went to his home when, surprised by some new problem, they urgently needed a judicious solution from Toussaint.
As one can imagine, Toussaint accumulated some savings. With this, he could have acquired his own freedom, but, ever a model of self-denial, he preferred to remain in his condition as a slave and buy instead the freedom of his sister, who had come with him from Saint Domingue, and that of his future wife! Toussaint only acquired his own freedom much later, in 1807 at age 41.
In July of that year, shortly before dying, Madame Nicolas made it a point to grant Toussaint’s freedom, in agreement with her husband.
In 1811, Tousssaint married. Without ceasing to render services to Monsieur Nicolas as long as he remained in New York, Pierre established his own home. He was a model husband. The death of his wife in 1851, two years before his own, was a moral blow to Toussaint from which he never fully recovered. From then on his previously flourishing health began to deteriorate. This provides a measure of the richness of Toussaaint’s sentiments.
This richness of sentiments almost reaches the unimaginable. A part of the Bérard family had scattered in Europe with the French Revolution. Afterward, when the Terror ended and the emigrants began to return, Toussaint made efforts to know if these loved ones had survived and, if so, where and how.
What was his contentment when, through a French lady who passed through New York and whom Toussaint attended, he found out that Aurora Bérard, his old master’s sister and his godmother in Baptism, had not died as he had supposed but lived in Paris. She wrote her first letter to her godson as soon as she learned about him. Toussaint answered this letter and sent with it a dozen Madras handkerchiefs, highly esteemed by the French ladies of the time. Toussaint kept up a long correspondence with his godmother that ceased only with her death in 1834. One of her brothers, also living in France, was the object of Toussaint’s epistolary watchfulness as well.
As one can see, a more exemplary dedication cannot be imagined.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira, foreword to Memoir of Pierre Toussaint, Born a Slave in St. Domingo by Hannah Sawyer Lee, 2nd rev. ed. (Sunbury, Penn.: Western Hemisphere Cultural Society, Inc., 1992), 15–16.
Short Stories on Honor, Chivalry, and the World of Nobility—no. 899
