Voltaire in Love

by Nancy Mitford

  His star continued to rise. At the age of thirty young Arouet had become the famous M. de Voltaire, France’s greatest living writer. His little love affairs prospered. Except for that with Mme de Bernières they were quite unimportant; in all of them it was he who called the tune and the women who made the jealous scenes. After the Regent’s death in 1723 France was ruled by the Duc de Bourbon whose mistress, Mme de Prie, was very much attached to Voltaire. She took him to Versailles where he was made welcome. The young Queen, Marie-Leczinska, told him that she had wept at Marianne and laughed at his L’Indiscret; she called him ‘mon pauvre Voltaire’ and settled a pension on him. His influence seemed unlimited, and in 1725 he put it to the proof.

  A literary acquaintance, the Abbé Desfontaines, was arrested and sent to the criminal prison at Bicêtre for corrupting little chimneysweeps. Voltaire said he must have mistaken them for Cupids, with their bandaged eyes and iron rods. The current, rather excessive punishment for sodomy was burning at the stake in the Place de la Grève outside the Hôtel de Ville; Desfontaines trembled in his shoes and wrote frantic letters to all his friends, begging them to help him. Nobody lifted a finger except Voltaire. Although he was ill, he got up and went to Fontainebleau where the Court was in residence. He saw people, pulled strings, and rescued Desfontaines from an unpleasant death. The trial was stopped and the Abbé set free. Thieriot, who had introduced the two men in the first place, now took it upon himself to make mischief between them. It seemed that no sooner was Desfontaines out of Bicêtre than he had written a disgusting pamphlet against Voltaire. He showed it to Thieriot who very properly threw it in the fire, but then could not resist telling Voltaire about it, thus laying up misery for all concerned. Voltaire brooded over the Abbé’s ingratitude and hated him.

  Voltaire’s health was a good deal better than when he had been younger. The nervous indigestion which was his chief complaint was cured by happiness and success. He began to understand his own body, an unfailing source of interest to him; he knew that it needed rest, regular exercise, and a careful diet. He had sensible ideas about health, greatly in advance of his time. Most illness, in his view, came from overeating. ‘Good cooks are poisoners, they ruin whole families with ragoûts and hors-d’œuvre.’ When he was ill he went to bed and starved himself. He was never at war with the doctors and said the advice of a sensible one was by no means to be despised, but he mocked at all medical superstitions. He thought it ridiculous to pretend that animals enjoy better health than human beings. Stags and crows were supposed to have exceptional longevity – he would like to see the stag or the crow which had lived as long as the Marquis de Saint-Aulaire (nearly a hundred). In 1723 Voltaire recovered from a virulent form of smallpox, which carried off one-third of the population of Paris; he attributed his cure to eight emetics and two hundred pints of lemonade. Probably he loved life too much to die. But his happy, industrious existence was soon to suffer a very disagreeable interruption.

  In December 1725, Voltaire was at the Opera with Adrienne Lecouvreur, one of the most famous actresses in the history of French drama. The Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot came into her box, evidently anxious to pick a quarrel with him. Rohan-Chabot was a stupid, peppery soldier and man-about-town, ten years older than Voltaire. He was well connected and had many friends at Court. As Mlle Lecouvreur had been, possibly still was, Voltaire’s mistress, there may have been jealousy between the two men; Voltaire may have been giving himself airs or perhaps Rohan-Chabot was one of those people who could not endure him. During the evening the Chevalier said, insultingly and several times: ‘M. de Voltaire, M. Arouet, or whatever you call yourself.’ In the end, Voltaire lost his temper and said that he was the first of his name while the Chevalier was the last* of his. This stung Rohan-Chabot on the raw. His grandmother had been the only child of the Duc de Rohan, an ancient family descended from Kings of Brittany. She had married a Chabot; the family was no longer Rohan at all. The Chevalier, furious, lifted his cane and said that such an insult could only be wiped out by a good hiding. Voltaire put his hand to his sword; Mlle Lecouvreur tactfully fainted away and the Chevalier left the box.

  Two or three days later Voltaire was dining at the Hôtel de Sully, with his adorable duke, when he received a message asking him to go outside as somebody wished to see him. He went out; there was a hired carriage drawn up in the street and Voltaire, supposing that whoever had sent for him was sitting in it, put his foot on the step. At this moment several ruffians fell upon him from behind and roundly whacked him with sticks. The Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, watching the scene from his own coach, called out, ‘Don’t hit him on the head, something might come out of that one day,’ at which the bystanders are supposed to have said, ‘Oh! the gracious Lord!’ Describing the scene later to his friends, Rohan-Chabot said, ‘I commanded the labour-corps†” in person.’

  When Voltaire had finally struggled away from his tormentors he rushed back into the house and told his host and fellow guests what had happened. He was received with cold embarrassment. Nobody took his side, sympathized with him, or even agreed that he had been vilely treated. The Duke behaved outrageously. He had been like a father to Voltaire for years, yet he would not raise a finger to obtain justice for his guest. The police, whom Voltaire bombarded with complaints, did nothing whatever, nor did his friends at Court. Mme de Prie was on his side, but the Due de Bourbon’s position was weak and he could not afford to alienate any supporters.

  Like a herd of cows, one of which has got into a shindy with a small, furious dog, the French aristocracy now drew together, staring sadly but inertly at the fray. Nearly all Voltaire’s friends would have been glad to help him to justice, but nobody cared to make the first move. Unluckily for him, Richelieu, who had nothing bovine in his make-up and who might have rallied to his friend, was now French Ambassador at Vienna. He was kept informed of the affair by Mme de Prie, entirely sympathetic to Voltaire.

  Voltaire’s nerves began to give way under the strain of so much humiliation. He wandered about Paris, frequenting low haunts and curious company, continually changed his lodging, and presently went to stay in the house of a fencing master. The police, hitherto so torpid over this affair, now began to take notice; he was obviously learning to fence in order to fight with Rohan-Chabot. They informed the Chevalier and his family who immediately caused Voltaire to be arrested and put into protective custody. It was his second Bastille. The Governor again treated his prisoner very well, entertained him at his own table, and allowed him as many visitors as he wanted, until the crowd became unmanageable and had to be cut down. The Comte de Maurepas, Minister of the Interior, who never got on with Voltaire, had the decency to write to the Governor suggesting special treatment for him, adding that his character called for a good deal of tact. Voltaire’s imprisonment lasted less than a fortnight. He asked permission to go to England, and this was granted.

  * le dernier, which also means the lowest.

  † Travailleurs, a military term for the men who dig trenches.

  3. Voltaire in England

  In the month of May 1726, Voltaire sailed up the Thames. It was one of those perfect days of early summer which make our island seem like fairyland. The aspect of London as he saw it from his ship is familiar to us in the pictures of Canaletto: a low skyline of brick houses, overshadowed by the huge white dome of St Paul’s Cathedral and punctuated by the white spires of innumerable churches. The Thames was crowded with boats; flags were flying in honour of the King and Queen,* who presently came down the river in a gilded barge. Voltaire said it was easy to see by their faces that the boatmen were not slaves and furthermore that they lived on the fat of the land. They held their heads high, knowing that not a hair could be touched. When he landed, it seemed that the streets were full of lords and ladies who, he soon discovered, were merely the honest burghers going about their ordinary occasions. Voltaire’s whole view of England was for ever coloured by this smiling first impression. But a shock awaited him when he presented hims
elf at the house of a Jew to whom he had a letter of credit.

  ‘My damned Jew’, he wrote, in English, to Thieriot, ‘was broken. I was without a penny, sick to death of a violent ague, a stranger, alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to nobody. My lord and my lady Bolingbroke were in the country. I could not make bold to see our Ambassador in so wretched a condition. I had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all the misfortunes of life. In these circumstances, my star, that among all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London citizen that I had seen but once at Paris carried me to his own country house, where I lead an obscure and charming life since that time, without going to London and quite given over to the pleasures of indolence and friendship. The true and generous affection of this man, who soothes the bitterness of my life, brings me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendship endear my friend Tiriot to me . . .’

  The ‘other London citizen’ of whom Voltaire speaks was Everard Fawkener, a merchant. While Voltaire was in England he met Pope, Gay, Swift, Congreve, Wilkes, Lord Hervey, Lord Oxford, the Duchess of Marlborough, Lord Peterborough (with whom he stayed for three months), and many other prominent and charming people, but far the best he loved Everard Fawkener. Fawkener was ten years older than he and came from the same class; his father was a mercer, as Voltaire’s grandfather had been, and his grandfather a druggist. Like Voltaire, but more mysteriously, as it is not recorded that he was particularly brilliant in any way, he cut a figure in society. He was knighted in 1735, became English Ambassador to the Porte, then secretary to the Duke of Cumberland. Later in life he married a natural daughter of General Charles Churchill and, although he died poor, their children made good marriages. His daughter, Mrs Bouverie, was both fast and fashionable, the bosom friend of Mrs Crewe.

  ‘Hypochondriacs’, said Voltaire, ‘are very well received here.’ So were exiled French poets; the English were not at all averse from showing their old enemies across the Channel how a famous man of letters ought to be treated. King George II sent him 100 guineas and Queen Caroline a gold medal. England then was regarded by writers rather as France is now: the only country in the world where there was a real respect for literature, where it was encouraged, and where anything, however outspoken, could be printed without fear of the police.

  Voltaire noted the ‘difference between their liberty and our slavery, their sensible toughness and our mad superstition, the encouragement that all the arts receive at London and the shameful oppression under which they languish at Paris’. He really loved and admired England, no doubt, but he also made the most of this love and admiration in order to tease his fellow countrymen. He laid it on very thick, writing to his French friends in English and referring to France as ‘your nation’. ‘I write and think as a free Englishman.’ He arrived knowing English like a dead language, able to read and write but not to speak it. An interview with Pope, who had no French, was so frustrating that Voltaire retired to Mr Fawkener’s house at Wandsworth for three months, and only reappeared in London society when he could speak fluently.

  You are so witty, profligate and thin

  At once we think you Milton, Death and Sin.

  So wrote Edward Young after a discussion in which Voltaire had held forth about Milton’s dialogue between Sin and Death. His English must have become very good as it is not easy to be witty in a foreign language.

  A meeting with Congreve is on record. Voltaire, rather gushingly, no doubt, said that he had long wished to meet one whom he put on a par with Molière and regarded as the greatest living playwright. Congreve: ‘I had rather you wished to meet me because I am an English gentleman.’ Voltaire: ‘But there are so many of them!’

  Voltaire could not live without working and as soon as he was settled in England he took up his Henriade once more. He re-wrote the part already published, eliminated all references to the great Duc de Sully, ancestor of the ex-adorable, and added to the poem. When it was ready he applied for, and received, permission to dedicate it to Queen Caroline. A limited edition was very soon subscribed by English bibliophiles, while the popular edition on sale in London had to be reprinted three times in the first three weeks. In France Voltaire’s agent for the new Henriade was Thieriot. Eighty copies of the limited edition there, all subscribed, were stolen while Thieriot was at Mass or in other words by the wretched fellow himself. This was a financial blow to Voltaire, but the Henriade earned large sums in England, which he invested cleverly, laying the foundation of his riches. His love for his friend was not affected. ‘I always forgive the weak and am only inflexible towards wickedness . . . Men, in general, are so treacherous, so envious, and so cruel that it is a comfort to find one who is only weak.’ A few months later he was writing, in English, to Thieriot: ‘We fall out for ever if you do not take 500 French livres from the arrears which the Queen owes me. You must have an hundred crowns beside from Bernard . . . that must be so or we are no friends’. Later, when Thieriot went to England, he lived entirely on Voltaire’s royalties there.

  In March 1729, Voltaire was allowed to go back to France. In spite of his love for England, he had become homesick; like many a Frenchman, he could not stand the austerity. In well-to-do houses, according to him, there was no silver on the table; tallow candles were burnt by all but the very rich; the food everywhere was uneatable. The arts of society, the art of pleasing were hardly cultivated and social life very dull compared with that in France. Furthermore, the weather did not suit his ‘unhappy machine’. He often said that his unhappy machine demanded a Southern climate but that between the countries where one sweats and those where one thinks, he was obliged to choose the latter. The climate of Paris was bad enough but that of London was killing him. So, all in all, he was glad to go home. He never crossed the Channel again.

  Warned that it would be better, for the present, if he did not go to Paris itself, Voltaire took lodgings at Saint-Germain-en-Laye, appearing from time to time ‘like a hobgoblin’ at the town houses of such faithful friends as the Duc de Richelieu. Soon, however, he was allowed ‘to drag my chain in Paris’, that is to say full liberty to resume his old life of work and pleasure. Richelieu took him down to Fontainebleau and arranged that he should pay his court to the Queen; this put him on the same social footing as before the exile. The Duc de Bourbon had been overthrown while Voltaire was in England. He had been banished to Chantilly, and Mme de Prie to her husband’s château, where she very soon committed suicide. The boredom of country life was more than she could endure. The young King made his tutor, Cardinal Fleury, chief Minister. The Cardinal had been Bishop of Fréjus, an obscure diocese in Provence, most of his life; at seventy-three he found himself dictator of France. He ruled for seventeen years.

  Everything Voltaire touched now turned to gold. He won an enormous state lottery, his investments prospered and his books were selling better than ever. Zaïre, the best of his tragedies, was published. It is about a Christian-born slave in Turkey who reverts to the faith and dies: the censor could find no objection to it. But of course Voltaire provided one. He dedicated it to Mr Fawkener (‘I like to dedicate my works to foreigners because it gives me the opportunity to speak of the follies of my fellow-countrymen’). He used the opportunity, in this case, to compare French intolerance with English freedom; the preface was seized by the police. Voltaire, however, made the necessary cuts and they withdrew their objections. Another play, Brutus, received a privilège; the Histoire de Charles XII, one of the most readable of all Voltaire’s books, appeared without the formal consent of the authorities but without any unpleasant consequences. He then settled down to write his next two works, Le Temple du Goût and Lettres philosophiques, for both of which unpleasant consequences were in store.

  In spite of his prosperity, however, Voltaire was unhappy. ‘My misery embitters me and makes me shy.’ He told Thieriot
that he had more friends in Constantinople than in Paris, since there he had two and in Paris only Thieriot – who, however, was well worth two Turks. He wandered from lodging to lodging; he needed an anchor. His affair with Mme de Bernières did not begin again; hardly had he left for England than she was seen at the Opera with the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot. Voltaire had forgiven her, but she belonged to the past. His sister, whom he was so fond of, had died while he was away. Matters were made worse for him by two more deaths, those of Adrienne Lecouvreur and of the Marquis de Maisons who, having nursed Voltaire through the smallpox in 1723, was himself carried off by that disease in 1731. Both these dear friends ‘died in my arms’. As always when he was unhappy his health began to suffer and sometimes he wondered whether he would be able to go on working at all.

  In the winter of 1731—2 Voltaire took up with an old Baronne de Fontaine-Martel. He went to live in her house in the rue des Bons-Enfants, looking over the gardens of the Palais-Royal, acted as host at her supper parties, conducted rehearsals of his plays in the drawing-room, and generally dug himself in. She was most unattractive. She had been obliged to give up having lovers, not because of old age, which is never taken into account in these matters by the French, but because of her eczema. She was rich and miserly, her suppers were nasty, unless a Prince of the Blood happened to announce himself, when they became just eatable. Voltaire said the passport to her favour was impotence; she had a morbid fear that some man would cut her throat in order to give her money to an actress. She put up with Voltaire (according to him) because he was too ill to make love.