The life of Voltaire. Evelyn Beatrice Hall
the one as the other.
The correspondence, once started, went on its way with a will. On Voltaire’s side it was from the first profoundly philosophic. His style was as clear, easy, and lucid when he wrote on the deepest and subtlest problems of free-will and personal identity as when he wrote scandal to Theriot or bagatelles to Mademoiselle Quinault. He wrote on the most abstruse subjects with a limpid simplicity of language, unachieved by any other writer before or since. It is the greatest glory of Voltaire as an author in general, as well as the author of the letters to Frederick the Great, that he made profound truths, common truths, and the knowledge that had been the heritage of a few, the heritage of all.
Madame du Châtelet read the letters, of course, before they were despatched from Cirey. One fills eleven large pages of print and is practically an Essay on Personal Liberty—reasonable enough, said Madame, to bring its author to the stake. Theriot showed Frederick’s letters about the salons of Paris: the prudent Voltaire thinking that the correspondence with a king might just as well do him all the good it could, and proclaim to his enemies that all temporal powers did not hate and fear him. At Cirey, the royal association certainly gave pleasure at first. Madame was singularly superior to kingly attractions: but Frederick was a thinker as well as a prince and loved philosophy as she did. She had not begun to look upon him as a rival in her lover’s affections. In his very first letter Voltaire had declined an invitation to be his visitor on the score that friends should always be preferred before kings.
The bloom of that summer of 1736 came and went on Cirey. Jore was hardly silenced and by no means forgotten when Voltaire flung aside his princely philosopher, as it were, to reply to a long, scandalous, and very personal attack which bitter old J. B. Rousseau, infuriated by the “Temple of Taste,” had made upon his rival, in a publication called the “Bibliothèque Française.” That attack dated from the May of this year. It was not until September 20th Voltaire decided to answer it. He had been very patient, or had crouched awhile for a surer spring. His answer is a masterpiece of gay and biting satire. “Rousseau has printed in your journal a long letter on me in which, happily for me, there are only calumnies, and, unfortunately for him, there is no wit. What makes the thing so bad, gentlemen, is that it is entirely his own … it is the second time in his life he has had any imagination. He has no success when he is original. … As for his verses, I can only wish for the sake of all the honest people he attacks, that he should go on writing in the same style.”
And in answer to Rousseau’s insinuations on Voltaire’s origin, “I have a valet who is his near relative and a very honest man. The poor youth begs me every day to pardon his relation’s bad verses.”
And in reply to that little story Rousseau had once circulated about Voltaire’s profane behaviour at a mass, “Do you think … it sits well on the author of the ‘Moïsade’ to accuse me of having talked in church sixteen years ago? … Thank God, that Rousseau is as clumsy as he is hypocritical. Without this counterpoise he would be too dangerous.” The letter finishes by recalling all the humiliating episodes in Rousseau’s life he would have most wished forgotten.
From which it will be seen that Voltaire did not scruple to employ his adversaries’ weapons—and to use them with a most deadly skill and finish.
On October 10, 1736, a play called “Britannicus” could not be played at the Théâtre Français in Paris on account of the illness of the principal actress. A new comedy called “The Prodigal Son” by an anonymous author was therefore produced in its stead, and performed to a crowded house with enormous success.
It had been acted already by a company beaten up in that desolate neighbourhood of Cirey. Voltaire had written reams of letters about it to Mademoiselle Quinault, filled with rather doubtful jokes—which were apparently, however, to the taste of Mademoiselle and of the period. The “Prodigal” is in verse and five acts, and perhaps reaches a higher level than most of Voltaire’s easy comedies. There were many surmises as to its authorship. Voltaire himself suggested that it was by one Gresset. Before he withdrew the veil of anonymity, “The Prodigal Son” had been lavishly praised by most of its father’s enemies.
He had other pleasures just now, too, besides that success, to distract him from the thoughts of his health which, as usual, “went to the devil.” “Émilie, reading Newton, … terraces fifty feet wide, balconies, porcelain baths, yellow and silver rooms, niches for Chinese trifles, all that takes a long time,” he wrote to Theriot. Passing travellers too came to Cirey, and told travellers’ tales about it when they returned to Paris. In this year, 1736, Voltaire began an immense correspondence with a Parisian agent of his, an Abbé Moussinot, to whom he wrote about investments and speculations, and whom he commissioned to buy tapestries, diamond shoe-buckles, and scrubbing brushes; reflecting telescopes and hair powder; thermometers, barometers, scent, sponges, dusters—everything in the world. “If you do not want to commit suicide, always have something to do” was one of his own axioms.
Even now, unfortunately for him, all these varied occupations did not give him so much to do that he could not read, re-read, delight in, and talk about until it became public property, a certain little bizarrerie of his versatile mind called “Le Mondain.” A gay little piece is the “Mondain,” three or four pages long, in very flowing verse, a little impertinent, perhaps, and quite volatile and careless. It was written about the same time as “Alzire.” It contains a flippant allusion to Adam and Eve, and the famous expression “le superflu, chose très nécessaire.” Those are the most memorable things in it. The most memorable thing about it is the fury of persecution it brought down on the author and the storm of hatred it excited. The offence was supposed to lie in the allusion to our first parents. The real offence was the name and reputation of Voltaire.
On December 21, 1736, he received a warning letter from his friend d’Argental in Paris, telling him that the “Mondain” rendered its author’s position once more unsafe. It is said that the authorities thought of warning the Marquis that he must no longer give refuge to such a firebrand. Voltaire and Madame had a hurried consultation. Madame wept not a little: for though she was a philosopher she was also a woman, and as a woman, and after her capacity, she loved Voltaire. She strongly opposed the idea of his taking refuge with Prince Frederick: but agreed that he must fly across the frontier. She went with him as far as four-mile distant Vassy, and they parted there, with many tears. The man’s heart was hot with anger and bitterness. The old serpent of injustice and oppression entered into every Eden he found. Madame only remembered that she loved him and that he must leave her. The strange convenances of the day, which permitted so many things, had a few rules, and those few had to be observed rigidly to make up for many laxities. If the Marquise could have gone with Voltaire to England or Prussia, all would have been well. But that was not permitted. Neither she could go with him nor he stay with her. They said good-bye in a bitter cold. It was winter—the winter had come so soon! A few days later there arrived in Brussels, in deep snow, one M. Renol, merchant.
No personal injustice which he ever suffered so deeply affected Voltaire as this one. In some cases if he did not deserve, he at least tempted, the anger of the authorities. But here! “Is it possible that anyone can have taken the thing seriously?” he wrote. “It needs the absurdity and denseness of the golden age to find it dangerous, and the cruelty of the age of iron to persecute the author of a badinage so innocent.” He went to Antwerp, to Amsterdam, and to Leyden. At Brussels “Alzire” was performed in his honour—for all that he was travelling incognito, and M. Renol, merchant, had no reason to be more interested in “Alzire” than anybody else. At Leyden crowds flocked to see him, and he was introduced to Boerhaave, the great doctor. He was at Amsterdam in January, 1737, received with all honour, “living as a philosopher,” studying much, working at Newton—as Voltaire alone knew how to work—at any hour of the night and day, passionately, thoroughly, devotedly. He superintended the printing of his “Elements of Newton’s Philosophy” then in the Dutch press. He tried to forget. But he could not. The offence was rank and smelt to heaven. He was abroad until March. Then in answer to the tears and prayers of his Marquise, he gave out he was going to England—and went to Cirey. But for those tears, but for that faith unfaithful which kept him falsely true, he would have gone to England as he said. “If friendship stronger than