The life of Voltaire. Evelyn Beatrice Hall
months out of the thirty-four he spent in England he stayed at Lord Peterborough’s. He was constantly at Lord Bolingbroke’s, either at his town house in Pall Mall or in the country. He speaks himself of having known Bishop Berkeley, and Gay of the “Beggar’s Opera.” Before he left England he had visited almost every celebrated person in it.
It is easy to understand Voltaire’s passionate admiration for a country in which genius was everywhere the best passport to glory, riches, and honour. He had lived under a system so different! Here his own talent immediately procured him an entrance into that noblest aristocracy, the aristocracy of intellect. When was it that he went to stay at Bubb Dodington’s at Eastbury in Dorsetshire, and at that Liberty Hall of the Muses met Young of the “Night Thoughts” and Thomson of the “Seasons”? The man who was to be English parson and author of those solemn religious periods of the “Thoughts” was now writing his “Satires” and had not a little in common with the sceptical, cynic Frenchman of the “Epistle to Uranie.” The one was as brilliant a conversationalist as the other. As for the “Seasons,” though Voltaire politely praised them, he considered Nature an ill-chosen subject for a Scotchman who knew nothing of the warmth and glow of the South.
At Lord Peterborough’s Voltaire met Swift—“Rabelais in his Senses,” that greater than any Rabelais—“one of the most extraordinary men that England has produced.” That was Voltaire’s judgment of him. He did not like him the less because he was “a priest and mocked at everything.” At bottom, the dark and awful genius of Swift and the vivid and passionate inspiration of Voltaire had something in common. At Peterborough’s table there sat then the two finest masters of invective who ever lived.
Voltaire was still quite new to the country when he made the acquaintance of little, crooked, papist Mr. Pope of Twit’nam. It has been maliciously said that on the occasion the visitor talked so blasphemously and indecently that he sent Pope’s poor old mother shuddering from the room. But as at the time Voltaire did not know English and Pope and his mother did not know French, the story may be taken for what it is worth. A great and very natural admiration had the French author, to whom precision, the unities, and poetical neatness were so dear, for the polished easy rhythm of Mr. Pope; but that did not prevent him, long after, when he was talking to James Boswell of Auchinleck at Ferney, from diagnosing the respective merits of Pope and Dryden in a truly Voltairian criticism. “Pope drives a handsome chariot with a couple of neat nags, and Dryden a coach and six stately horses.” Nor did his love of Mr. Pope’s style prevent him loathing Mr. Pope’s philosophy.
One day he went to see old Sarah Marlborough at Blenheim, and audaciously asked her to let him see the memoirs she was writing. “You must wait,” answered Sarah; “I am just altering my account of Queen Anne’s character. I have begun to love her again since the present lot have become our rulers.” Is it hard to fancy the delighted cynic humour on her guest’s shrewd face at that naïve reply?
Goldsmith says that she did show him the memoirs, and when he remonstrated with her for abusing her friends therein, seized them out of his hands in a rage. “I thought the man had sense, but I find him at bottom either a fool or a philosopher.”
Presently Gay was reading aloud to him that “Beggar’s Opera” before its publication; and he went to see old Congreve, who spoke of his plays as trifles beneath notice, “and told me to look upon him merely as a private gentleman.” That literary snobbishness was very little to the taste of a Voltaire. “If you had the misfortune to be only a gentleman like any other,” he answered, “I should never have come to see you.” It is to be hoped the foolish old playwright felt duly snubbed.
The great Lord Chesterfield—“the only Englishman who ever recommended the art of pleasing as the first duty of life”—invited Voltaire to dinner. When he was asked a second time, he had to decline, as the gratuities expected by the servants were too much for his slenderly equipped pockets.
He visited Newton’s niece, Mrs. Conduit, who told him the famous story of Newton and the apple. Voltaire twice repeated it in his works, and thus preserved it for posterity. He frequently met and talked with Newton’s friend and disciple, Clarke.
In 1727, he was introduced at the English Court. Had he not dedicated “Œdipe” to its King? Just as in 1728 he was to dedicate his English edition of the “Henriade” to “that amiable philosopher on the throne,” Caroline, the wife of George II. At Court, doubtless, he met that lean malice, my Lord Hervey, and Lady Hervey, “beautiful Molly Lepell.” He met everybody, in fact, and saw everything. He went to Newmarket races and to a Quakers’ meeting. He was continually at the play. He mixed with bishops and boatmen, lords, play-actors, merchants and politicians. When on one of his rambles round London he was insulted by a mob, he mounted on a few handy steps: “Brave Englishmen!” said he, “am I not already unfortunate enough in not having been born among you?” And they were with him at once.
Perhaps he was not sorry to get away from the wits and the parties, to the quiet of Falkener’s villa. He had always something better to do than to be a social light for his own or other men’s entertainment.
When he was at Wandsworth he wrote, in English prose, the first act of “Brutus.” In these thirty-four months he composed nearly the whole of his “History of Charles XII.” of Sweden. In 1727, he took up his abode for a time at the Sign of the White Peruke, Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, that he might the more conveniently arrange for the publication by subscription of the new edition of his “Henriade.” “The English generally make good their words and promises,” he said long after. They did in 1728. The book went into three editions. From them Voltaire had omitted the tale of the noble exploits of Rosny, the ancestor of his false friend Sully.
Swift pushed the “Henriade” in Ireland. The English were inclined to think it too Catholic, as the Catholics had thought it too Protestant. But, in their character of a free and generous people, they bought and read it not the less.
After a few months’ residence in the country this amazing Frenchman was turning “Hudibras” into French verse.
After eighteen months, he wrote, in English, a little volume containing two essays: “An Essay upon the Civil Wars of France,” and upon “The Epick Poetry of the European Nations.” A presentation copy of the first edition of this daring little work, published in 1727, may still be seen in the British Museum with a few words in Voltaire’s handwriting in the corner—“to Sr. hanslone from his most humble servant voltaire.” Sir Hans Sloane was the President of the Royal Society. This book is now so rare as to be practically unobtainable. It went into a second edition in 1728, and into a fourth in 1731.
By it, by “Brutus,” and the “Henriade” Voltaire gained a sum of about two thousand pounds.
The chronology of the events of his English visit remains, and must remain, very imperfect. He wrote very few letters during that period and dates are not the forte of his English hosts. So much, however, is certain. He arrived in England about the end of the first week in May, 1726. By September, he had paid his stolen visit to France and returned to these shores. In January, 1727, he was presented at Court. On March 28th, he was at Newton’s lying-in-state in Westminster Abbey. In July the French authorities gave him permission to return to France for a while to see to some business, but he did not go. He spent the greater part of the year preparing his English edition of the “Henriade” and writing “Charles XII.” In December, 1727, appeared the two English essays. The year 1728 saw the publication of the English edition of his “Henriade.”
Archibald Ballantyne’s “Voltaire’s Visit to England” gives the best and most exhaustive account of that visit yet published.
By far the most momentous and the most influential, both on Voltaire’s own fortunes and on the public intellect, of any of his works written for the most part in England, were his “English Letters” or the “Philosophical Letters.”
They were originally written to Theriot; but they must always have been meant for publication. They are not the best example, but they are no bad example, of the Voltairian manner—polished, easy, witty, sarcastic, not so much daring in word