Voltaire in Love

by Nancy Mitford

  ‘I live very easy at the Baronne’s house.’ He thought it would be a good idea for Thieriot to live easy there, too, but the Baronne was no fool; she refused to fall in with this plan. She also, quite rightly, refused to harbour a new friend and protégé of Voltaire’s, the Abbé Linant. Linant, who came from Rouen where his mother kept a tavern, was an unlucky find of Cideville’s. He had literary ambitions and was writing a tragedy of ancient Rome. Cideville sent him to Voltaire, who soon became quite obsessed with him, bothering all his friends to find some agreeable, well-paid job for the Abbé. He admitted to Cideville, however, that it was not easy to place Linant, who was neither attractive nor well-read, whose writing was too illegible for secretarial work, who stammered too much to be a reader and who possessed the amiable virtue of idleness. Never mind, this excellent fruit would no doubt ripen.

  In January 1733 Mme de Fontaine-Martel was taken ill, and Voltaire had to tell her that she was dying. She had no desire to see a priest, but he insisted that she should, fearing that if she did not people would say that he had prevented her from doing so. He went out himself and found one. He had never become fond of her and was jocular about the way in which she received the Sacrament. She did not die in his arms. His only regret was for the excellent house of which he had been master and the 40,000 livres a year which had been spent on his pleasures.

  Mme de Fontaine-Martel’s last words were very strange: ‘What time is it?’ ‘Two o’clock, Madame.’ ‘Ah,’ said she, ‘how consoling to think that whatever time it may be there is somebody preventing the extinction of our race.’

  *This Queen only existed in Voltaire’s imagination. George I was still on the throne.

  4. Émilie Inherits Voltaire

  The great question now was not who would inherit Mme de Fontaine-Martel’s fortune and furniture but who would inherit Voltaire? Her house had been a centre of merriment for the whole of Paris while he lived there; what lucky person would now carry off this fascinator? The answer was not long in coming. Voltaire took a lodging in a wretched neighbourhood and a hideous house, behind the Hôtel de Ville. Here, one summer evening, 1733, he received a surprise visit: the three angels appearing to Abraham, he said. Two of the angels were lovers, the Duchesse de Saint-Pierre and M. de Fourqualquiers; they were chaperoning Voltaire’s new friend, the Marquise du Châtelet. The occasion was very cheerful. Whereas the three angels had supped with Abraham, Voltaire’s angels, fearing perhaps that the food in his bachelor establishment would not be up to much, preferred to take him to an inn where they ate fricassée of chicken. Just as well: ‘Marianne, my cook, would have screamed at the idea of such a supper-party in this slum.’ Voltaire probably showed his visitors the view, from his window, of the façade of Saint-Gervais saying that it was the only friend his Temple du Goût had made him. It was a joke he was very fond of and had a certain truth.

  Le Temple du Goût had just appeared and hardly had a single supporter. Most people nowadays would agree with the choice of writers, artists, and monuments which Voltaire allowed into the temple. They include Mme de Lafayette, Mme de Sévigné, Pascal (with reservations), the inimitable Molière, Racine who was Voltaire’s favourite poet, La Fontaine; Poussin, Lebrun, Le Sueur, Le Vau, Perrault and his cour carrée at the Louvre, the fountains of Jean Goujon and Bouchardon, the Porte Saint-Denis, and the façade of Saint-Gervais. ‘All these monuments are neglected by the barbarous masses as well as by frivolous society people.’ His exclusions are more questionable. Notre Dame, ‘cluttered up with rubbishy old ornament’, is one. (The hatred of Gothic art in France during the eighteenth century was extravagant: one wonders that any was allowed to survive.) The chapel at Versailles and ‘that monument of bad taste’ which was being built by Servandoni, the church of Saint-Sulpice, were also excluded from the temple. Perhaps nothing arouses such strong feelings in the breasts of civilized human beings as questions of taste and Voltaire laid down the law in a very provocative manner. Even Cideville said that his feelings were hurt by some of the statements. The Comte de Caylus, a great collector and connoisseur but a disagreeable man, who was praised in the poem, asked that his name should be removed from it.

  Voltaire had rashly attacked the whole body of literary critics, ‘cowardly persecutors . . . who used to pretend that Scudéry was greater than Racine,’ as well as various contemporary writers, including Jean-Baptiste Rousseau and the Abbé Desfontaines. This stirred up a hornets’ nest and the hornets began to buzz. At the Marionettes there was a skit on Le Temple du Goût which was both coarse and cruel. Polichinelle is ill – comes the doctor – orders a good beating and a purge – after which the Temple du Goût is carried on to the stage, in the shape of an object that can be imagined. Voltaire, by bothering his powerful friends, had this parody taken off. Another one then appeared at the Comédie Italienne in which Voltaire, dressed as an Englishman in checks, made idiotic remarks on the subject of taste. Voltaire never could bear parodies of his works; he was now so furious that he became ill with inflammation of the bowels.

  In the middle of this fuss about his Temple,Voltaire was courting Émilie. The day after the angels’ visit he wrote a letter to the Duchesse de Saint-Pierre which was clearly meant to be read, over her shoulder, by another angel. ‘The charming letters that you write, Madame, and those sent you by somebody else turn the head of the people who see them . . . I no longer venture to write in prose since I have read yours and that of your friend.’ It was natural that he and Mme du Châtelet should be attracted to each other. He had come back from England imbued with the scientific discoveries of Newton and the philosophical teaching of Locke. There were few people in Paris with whom he could discuss such matters, certainly no woman except Émilie. The French academic scientists were still Cartesians and looked with the greatest suspicion at the new ideas from England. Émilie, however, young, ardent, with a brilliant scientific mind, not only understood what he was talking about but was quite ready to be convinced by his arguments. She loved to learn; the tutor-pupil aspect of their relationship was not the least of its charms in the eyes of both. Voltaire was gratified, too, by her rank and the enormous privileges which she enjoyed at Court. He was never insensible to such trivia, least of all now. It was soothing to his pride that a woman of genuine social importance should become his mistress. His love-affairs had hitherto been rather insignificant, but he had never been without one until his exile had put an end to that with Mme de Bernières. In England we hear of whores and Laura Harley, who, most likely, only provided him with an exercise in English verse:

  Laura, would you know the passion

  You have kindled in my breast?

  After that, for four years nothing at all (unless, indeed, he had a little fancy for the Abbé Linant? His preoccupation with the chubby fellow is so difficult to account for otherwise). Voltaire could not live without feminine company: ‘the only difference between men and women is that women are more amiable.’ But he was never a very ardent lover, even in his youth. He met Émilie only a few weeks after having announced that he was too ill to make love, and he once said: ‘I feel that it is ridiculous for me to be in love.’ A man who has had this feeling is incapable of passion such as Émilie would have liked to inspire. However, the compensations were great. Voltaire may never quite have satisfied her physical nature or her romantic cravings, but for many years she was contented with what he did give. The most famous, most amusing man in the world was pulling out his conjuring-tricks for her and her alone. It was not nothing.

  Falling in love inspired both of them to hard work. Émilie was learning English conversation from Voltaire; in three weeks she spoke fluently and thereafter they often talked together in English. She was also learning algebra from Maupertuis. Typical society woman, she had no compunction about eating up his time and picking his brains; she complained if he was not always at her disposal. Soon she wanted much more than lessons from him; she fell in love with him, too. Maupertuis was then about thirty-five, handsome, hard-hearted,
attractive to women. He does not seem to have responded to Émilie’s amorous advances very warmly, but we have only her letters, not his. ‘I shall be at home all day; come and see if you can teach me to elevate a nomos to a given force.’ ‘I have no more work unless you set me a task; I desire one extremely.’ ‘Come today at 6.00.’ ‘It is not surprising that when one leaves you one should think of nothing but the pleasure of seeing you again.’ ‘My life, at present, is very disorganized; I am dying; my soul needs you as my body needs repose.’ ‘I love you as much as if you had been here this evening.’

  Émilie was not only engaged in absorbing the lessons of two famous masters. She led an energetic social life, with her bosom friend the Duchesse de Saint-Pierre. They went together to the Opera, the Jardin du Roi (the Zoo), to various cafés, and to the meetings of the Académie des Sciences. At all these places Mme du Châtelet gave a rendezvous to Maupertuis. She also took him to see her mother, now a widow living at Creteil, near Paris. Émilie was always able to cram more into a single day than most women into a week; she was as strong as an ox and required very little sleep. If necessary she could work all night; indeed she liked to do so because then she knew she would be left in peace.

  Unfortunately, except for two or three little notes, the entire correspondence between Voltaire and Mme du Châtelet has disappeared. They were both enormous letter writers: even when living in the same house they wrote to each other. She was disconcertingly frank when she put pen to paper, saying all that came into her head. If we could see her letters to Voltaire at this time we should know more about her feeling for him. Those she wrote to Maupertuis make it hard for a twentieth-century reader to believe that she could have been engaged in an absorbing love affair with somebody else. But Émilie’s view of human relationships had not been muddled by the romantic movement. Voltaire had much to give, but he was ill, more than usually just then. Maupertuis gave something else. Émilie took what she wanted from both of them.

  Voltaire had many another reason for being jealous of Maupertuis, who shadowed his footsteps. They had been in England at the same time and Maupertuis had been made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He, too, was an enthusiastic disciple of Newton and no doubt understood his scientific teaching better than Voltaire did. He, too, was trying to convert the French from Descartes to Newton; he had already written several papers on the subject. He, too, was a favourite in society, though of bourgeois origins. Later on, when Voltaire went to Germany, there was Maupertuis, President of the Berlin Academy with a high-born Prussian wife. In the end the accumulated bile of some twenty years turned Voltaire against him and he literally killed the poor man with ridicule. But, in 1733, they were on friendly terms.

  Voltaire, surrounded by workmen in his new lodging, was finishing his Lettres philosophiques. He was also rehearsing Adélaïde du Guesclin; writing an opera for Rameau; writing a piece against Pascal, which he truly predicted would annoy everybody (even though he was good enough to pass over Pascal’s silly views on miracles); finding a lodging for Linant and sitting him down to write a tragedy on the subject of Rameses. He also showered poems on Émilie: ‘I write no verses now, except to her.’ No wonder he said that the days were too short and that writers ought to be given a double ration of them.

  His interest was centred in what he called his ‘Lettres philosophiques, politiques, critiques, hérétiques, diaboliques’; letters supposed to have been written to Thieriot while Voltaire was in England. Thieriot himself was now there with Voltaire’s authority to publish the Lettres in London and use the money which they earned. In August 1733 they appeared under the title of Letters Concerning the English Nation and were soon selling like hot cakes. Naturally enough, the English did not object to them. In Voltaire’s own words, they were heretics who did not care a fig for the Pope and who were quite ready to acclaim the works of the devil himself. Besides, the Lettres were nothing if not flattering to their race and nation. Voltaire knew that in France they would make a greater scandal than anything he had ever written. He half dreaded their appearance and half longed for it; he had unwisely given the manuscript to a publisher at Rouen called Jore, whom he then bombarded with letters, begging him in no circumstances to allow anybody to see it. In July he told Jore that a police spy had been sent to Rouen by the Garde des Sceaux* to find out what he could about the book. Jore must hide the manuscript and the copies already printed and above all not let a single copy out of his own hands. Public opinion must be prepared to receive the Lettres, the storm over Le Temple du Goût given time to subside, a suitable patron must be found, and above all a suitable moment chosen before they could appear in print. Voltaire repeated these arguments over and over again, to Jore himself and to Cideville, at Rouen, who was to impress them on the publisher. He also sent Jore quite a large sum of money so that he should not be out of pocket by the delay.

  Voltaire was ill all that winter, in bed off and on for months. He had not recovered from the intestinal troubles caused by the parodies of his Temple; he was worried about the Lettres philosophiques; Adélaïde du Guesclin came on in January and failed; there is no proof that Émilie was much of a comfort to him at this time, and the Abbé Linant, who was living with him, was thoroughly on his nerves. The wretched little fellow went to bed every evening at seven only to rise again after midday; he was eating his head off and constantly demanded more pocket-money. Voltaire got him a pass for the Comédie Française so that he could study the art of writing plays; he would go off there, dressed and powdered like the son of a prince, and gossip for hours with the actors and actresses at the Café Procope, opposite the theatre. Yet he made no headway at all with Rameses. Voltaire, to whom time was so precious, hated above everything to see it wasted.

  *Keeper of the Seals; but often, as in this case, possessing also the powers and pecuniary rewards of the Chancellor.

  5. The Richelieu Wedding

  The love affair, after its flourishing start, really seemed in danger of being submerged by the various distractions which beset the lovers. However, in April 1734, Voltaire rose from his sick-bed, which at one moment had looked like becoming his death-bed, and the two of them went jaunting off to a country wedding in Burgundy. The Duc de Richelieu was marrying Mlle de Guise. The bride was a relation of the Marquis du Châtelet; the bridegroom an old love of the Marquise and the marriage was made by Voltaire. The bride’s father, the Prince de Guise, was one of his debtors. As soon as Voltaire had any spare cash he hastened to invest it, and a favourite security was loans to noblemen; he used to say that he was never let down by ‘les grands’, and that even if they were not punctual about paying the interest they always did so in the end. Guise was a proper scoundrel; both he and his wife, who had died in 1732, were so well known for the irregularity of their conduct as to be almost déclassés, if such a thing were possible in that irregular century. These immoral people had produced a virtuous daughter with intellectual tastes and Voltaire had conceived the idea of marrying her to his friend Richelieu. He undertook all the negotiations, which were not easy. Richelieu was of mediocre origins, his dukedom having come from merit and not from ancient lineage; to make matters worse he was not even a Du Plessis (a noble but obscure county family) like the Cardinal himself, but a Vignerot, descended from the Cardinal’s sister. He minded; all his life it tormented him to feel that he was not as other dukes. He very much wanted this marriage which would improve his coat of arms. The family of Lorraine, however, to which Guise belonged and who considered themselves almost royal, refused to think of such an alliance. At last Voltaire, knowing that the Prince was in financial difficulties, made the magic suggestion that Richelieu should take the lady without a dowry. Guise allowed himself to be persuaded, the more readily because his daughter, to everybody’s astonishment, declared herself well suited by the Duke. He seemed the last man in the world who would attract her, but like many another she had fallen in love with him.

  Richelieu was one of the charmers of his age. Almost illiterate, though h
e knew a little astronomy, he was sharp and funny. He made both the Regent and Louis XV laugh so much that they forgave him everything; and there was a good deal to forgive, including treachery. He loved to invent mischievous anecdotes. It was he who put it about that Mme de Grignan hated her mother Mme de Sévigné; he also said he knew for a fact that Bossuet had secretly married a niece of Bussy-Rabutin, a story that was eagerly taken up by the Protestants. He swaggered through life like some hero of opéra bouffe, talking in a French equivalent of a cockney accent, which had been fashionable among the bloods of the Regency, killing his enemies in duels, and carrying off fair ladies under their husband’s noses. More than one royal princess had been in love with him. No woman of fashion felt that she was in the swim unless she had been his mistress, even if only for a few days. He was a dashing and successful, though unscientific, soldier; not for him the drudgery of reading maps, organizing supplies, or planning campaigns. Above all things he adored battles and afterwards he loved to pillage, rape, and loot with his soldiers. Unfaithful in most of his other dealings, he was a faithful friend to Voltaire from the days of Louis-le-Grand; their friendship survived everything, even the huge sums of money which Voltaire lent him. ‘A great betrayer of women but essential for men.’ Voltaire’s advice to the couple not to love each other too much, since that is the surest way of loving for ever, was intended no doubt for the bride. If Richelieu, however, were capable of loving one woman, rather than the whole female sex, that woman was his own dowdy wife. He went to a great deal of trouble to conceal his amorous escapades from her; and she was happy with him.