Passionate Minds

by David Bodanis

  She and Fontenelle talked, and probably sat down for the old man to rest. In the end it was simple. When Voltaire was in form, he shone more than anyone she knew. In the poem he'd written to get her back after their first argument, he'd pointedly asked, referring to Maupertuis:

  … He's shown you the heavens

  he's uncovered their secrets, …

  But where is your happiness

  Does he know that secret?

  Voltaire did know. She resolved to drop everything else from her life, take her children with her, and move. “Perhaps there's folly in my shutting myself up at Cirey,” she wrote immediately afterward, while packing, “… but I've made this decision.” With Voltaire, she'd be strong enough, finally, to create the new life she'd always sought.

  8

  Château de Cirey

  CIREY, 1735+

  What happened when they first settled at Cirey is woven through dozens of letters and memoirs…

  Mme du Châtelet has arrived, just at the moment when I received her letter informing me that she would not be arriving yet. Her coach was rough, and she's bruised and shaken, but she laughs and is charming.

  —Voltaire to Madame Champbonin, Cirey neighbor

  Voltaire says I'm busy as a queen ant. But the lodgings aren't finished, and we still have 100 workers.

  —Emilie to Paris friend

  Madame wishes to order a dressing-case from Hébert [the goldsmith]… who has moved and lives in the Rue Saint-Honoré. You must give him 1,200 francs in advance for the silver to make it…. Sell shares to get these 1,200 francs.

  —Voltaire to the Abbé Moussinot, his Paris purchasing agent

  Now she is putting windows where I've put doors; she's changing staircases into chimneys, and chimneys into staircases. Then she is going to plant lime trees where I proposed to place elms, and where I have planted herbs she is going to make a flower-bed…. We have found the secret of furnishing Cirey out of nothing.

  —Voltaire to Madame de la Neuville, Cirey neighbor

  There are whispers that madame forgets herself so far as to throw such handy portables as plates and forks at M. de Voltaire when she is roused.

  —Visitor recounting servants' gossip

  I would add more, but I have to go hammer in some planks now…. Emilie says she would append some words herself, if the workers weren't keeping her so busy.

  —Voltaire to their mutual friend Cideville

  Please remember to buy two small…tweezers. But we don't want the tweezers from the quai de Gèvres, only those sold in the Rue SaintHonoré…To the parcel please add two little powderpuffs.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot, Paris agent

  I spend my time with masons, carpenters, stonemasons—there's no time to think of anything else!… But however difficult I may be to live with—and I can assure you I've been almost as difficult for Voltaire as for you—visit us and you will see a strange phenomenon: two individuals who've spent three months together, and who love each other more than ever…

  If someone had told me two years ago I would be living like this, I wouldn't have believed them.

  —Emilie to Richelieu

  Would you please send the thermometers and barometers—I must insist very strongly on this. If I can have the thermometers made according to the modern method of Fahrenheit I should be very much obliged to you. Would you also send a good air-pump.

  May I now speak frankly? You must do me the kindness to accept a small annual honorarium for all your help.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  I stopped at Cirey. The architecture is surprisingly magnificent. Voltaire's quarters end in a gallery resembling Raphael's fresco of the school of Athens, where scientific instruments of all kinds are assembled. The two of them are there…. One writes verse in his corner, the other triangles in hers. I assure you it is like a dream.

  —Charles-Jean-François Hénault, court official

  Would you very kindly send me a hundred trimmed quills, two reams of foolscap paper and two reams of large letter-papers. Also some toothpicks, and three or four dozen little flat buttons for shirts.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  Cirey is four leagues from any other house. It's a terrifying solitude where my uncle lives, though admittedly with a spirited woman…and very pretty.

  —Marie-Louise Denis, Voltaire's newly married niece, recounting a visit after the main construction was finished

  Please have two good copies made of [the portrait]…. As soon as the first is done, have it examined and retouched by La Tour. In the meanwhile send me the original well framed, well packed, and from the first copy have a miniature made for a brooch…. Also, why not add a dozen and a half oranges to the dozen and a half lemons.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  I only got there at two in the morning, covered in mud: the coachman had said that if I didn't get off and walk he'd have thrown me out! You can imagine my state. But the nymph [Emilie] greeted me very graciously, and soon Voltaire arrived, a candle in his hand. He's as elegant as if he were in Paris. (I think he powdered his wig for me.) As for her, well, she speaks so fast!

  —Madame de Graffigny, excitable houseguest

  Could you please send twenty pounds of wig powder, finely ground and ready to use, and ten pounds of wig powder suitable for grinding later?…It would be most kind.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  Voltaire called a half hour before lunch, and said I could see his rooms now, since we were going downstairs to dine. Well, I didn't say boo! You go in through a little antechamber by the grand staircase, and then his bedroom—oh, what luxury! what expense! There are tapestries and mirrors and gilded paneling. It's all so clean I wanted to kiss the parquet floor! Then there's a grand gallery, forty feet long, with strange physics machines.

  —Madame de Graffigny

  I don't know, Voltaire said he had to go off and write, so Madame let me see her rooms (until then I'd only dreamed of them). Well, oh my God! Voltaire's rooms are nothing compared to hers! The main bedroom's wood-paneled, varnished in light yellow, with edges of the palest blue. Everything matches—even the dog's basket! I swear I could fall on my knees it's so gorgeous. The big window's curtains are embroidered with muslin—the view outside is wonderful. And her diamonds!

  —Madame de Graffigny finds a fresh victim

  Once I began to live in solitude…I was astonished at how much time I used to waste [in Paris], just tending my hair, or worrying about my appearance…

  —Emilie, unpublished manuscript

  Yes, Hébert [the goldsmith] is expensive, but he has taste, and one must pay for that. So give him the 1,200 francs… but tell him the rest will only be paid when he delivers the dressing case. (Though he can have 50 more louis in advance if he really insists.)

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  The next morning, when Madame woke up, I went into her room at the same time as her chambermaid, who drew the blinds. While my sister [also a servant] got a blouse ready, Madame suddenly let what she'd been wearing on her body fall off, and was entirely nude…. I didn't dare lift my eyes to see. I have of course seen a woman change her blouse before—only never in quite this fashion.

  When I was alone with my sister, I asked her if Madame du Châtelet always changed her blouse like this. She said not always, but that Madame wasn't embarrassed. She added that if a similar thing happened again, I should try harder not to stare.

  —Sébastien Longchamp, valet and secretary, memoirs

  So after coffee, the goddess of this place [Emilie] got the idea to [leave me and] go for a ride; I wanted to accompany her, but wasn't sure because the horses didn't seem as if they had been very well trained. Then oh my gracious! When I saw the wildness of her stallions! I was scared—but I still couldn't decide if I should stay behind. Luckily the kind Voltaire was there, and he said it was ridiculous to force people to take pleasures which they found pains. He's always full of such good lines! Anyway, I stayed behind with the chubb
y lady [Mme Champbonin]. We were a cowardly pair, and took our promenade on foot.

  —Madame de Graffigny

  Then at four p.m. they sometimes meet for a little snack, but not always. Dinner's at nine p.m., and then they stay together talking till midnight…. They just don't want to be disturbed in the middle of the day at all.

  —Madame de Graffigny

  Reflect on the advantages we enjoy. Your whole body is sensitive— your lips enjoy a voluptuousness that nothing wearies. We can have sexual intercourse at all times.

  —Voltaire reminiscing

  This morning M. de Voltaire was going to read aloud for me, but Madame was so carried away with a happy mood [from last night], that she began to giggle and interrupt M. de Voltaire, and parody what he was trying to read. He quickly looked at the text, and just as quickly began to parody it back against her. I was convinced no one could do this better, but it roused her so much that she came back with even more twists, until he was unable to continue he was laughing so much…. The lady said that for herself, she can't bear odes. Exactly, said Voltaire. He couldn't understand how any civilized person could read such ridiculous stuff! I think this shows pretty clearly that they're in love.

  —Madame de Graffigny

  They're making fun of me now and…I think it's Madame's fault: She can be so imperious…. Why, when Voltaire came into Madame's room today to read out from his play, she told him he should wear a different jacket. But he said he didn't want to change it: that he'd be cold and would probably catch the flu. Madame repeated herself, and he stormed out of the room, saying he was ill, and to hell with the play…I left too.

  …When we went back into Madame's room, Voltaire looked away from her, and wouldn't say a word. But then they began to speak with each other, in English for some reason—it's a language I don't understand—and suddenly everything was fine: Voltaire happily began reading his play aloud.

  —Madame de Graffigny; she left only five weeks later.

  By the way, is Maupertuis really going to the Pole? I think he's better at measurement and calculations than at being in love.

  —Emilie to Richelieu

  Come on: you know Voltaire admires you, and he's worth being your friend. Don't jump directly from France to the Pole without stopping here.

  —Emilie to Maupertuis

  Our vessel being provisioned at Dunkirk by order of the king, we set sail on the second of May, 1736.

  —Maupertuis, discourse to the Royal Academy of Sciences, on the Measurement of the Earth at the Arctic Circle

  How many hardships accompany such an enterprise! What glory must not redound to the new Argonauts!

  —Fontenelle, speech on the departure of academicians measuring the Earth's curvature

  This voyage would hardly suit me if I was happy… but it seems the best I can do in my present situation.

  —Maupertuis to his mentor Johannes Bernoulli, Swiss mathematician

  Can I really still write to you at the Pole? Voltaire says he would have liked to come—he could have been the expedition poet—but it would have been too cold and he'd have caught a chill. We'll drink to your safety, though. And do tell us about everything.

  —Emilie to Maupertuis (letters were sent to Stockholm, then forwarded to outposts the expedition reached in northern Lapland)

  It's not hard to drag and even to carry the flexible thin boats which one uses in the rivers of Lapland. We survived whirling rapids in these frail machines—at one moment lost in the water, the next tossed entirely in the air.

  After [many adventures on] the river, we arrived at the foot of Mt. Niwa, and [following a stiff climb] we met two Lapp girls on the mountain, who were tending a flock of reindeer. They showed us how to avoid the insects that had plagued us (our food had instantly been black with them). The young women had simply built a huge smoldering fire. Soon we found ourselves comfortable in a smoke as thick as theirs.

  —Maupertuis, discourse to the Academy

  It says in the gazette that you were in danger of being eaten by mosquitoes. Perhaps the mosquitoes didn't feel the same desire that you feel for your Lapp ladies? Honestly, you can tell me everything. All the letters you write to Paris are apparently full of elegies for them.

  —Emilie to Maupertuis

  I will say nothing more of the rigors of traveling in the deepest snow as the winter came. The Lapps use curious long shoes—narrow planks of wood, about eight feet long—to keep from getting stuck. One walks on them, or rather glides. It's a manner of proceeding which requires long practice.

  —Maupertuis, discourse to the Academy

  I do ask you to continue to send me news. The accounts in your last letter made me worry for your safety.

  —Emilie to Maupertuis

  When one has travelled, Madame, only from one's home to the Tuileries or to the Opéra, one has very limited ideas about all the wonderful things there are to see.

  —Maupertuis, letter sent from Arctic Circle

  Now you've written from Stockholm to Madame de Richelieu, but she only wants your letters to brag about them. I genuinely want to learn your news—despite, that is, your pride, your vanity, and your infuriating flippancy.

  —Emilie to Maupertuis

  I shall respond to the most spirited letter with which you honor me. The spring here is a bit chilly—the thermometers always give a reading far below what they'd reach in Paris even in the greatest winter…. But although the ground is bitterly cold, when I look in the sky there's a fabulous spectacle. Fires of a thousand different colors light it up, making ripples like drapes across the sky…. It is from such explorations, that we will understand the universe.

  —Maupertuis, letter sent from Arctic Circle

  All right, I have one more thing to tell you. That morning the nymph was reading aloud to Voltaire, a mathematical calculation for the size of the supposed inhabitants of Jupiter. The reasoning was roughly that since the eyes are in proportion to the body, and they knew the size of the pupil of the eye, and they knew the distance of the Earth from the sun, and they could work out the distance of Jupiter from the sun and so how much light it received…oh, I just don't know about something so useless!

  —What Madame de Graffigny also reported

  And my good Moussinot, do also send a large reflecting telescope… It must be strong enough to detect the satellites of Jupiter clearly.

  —Voltaire to Moussinot

  The text was written in Latin, and yet she read it (aloud) in French. She hesitated a moment at the end of each sentence. I didn't understand why, then saw it was to work through the calculations on the pages. That's how fast she was. Nothing could stop her.

  —Visitor to Cirey, 1738

  9

  Newton at Cirey

  CHâTEAU DE CIREY, 1735–1736

  It's unsettling moving in with someone new, and even more so when you have children with you, let alone a husband who's a trained soldier, “friends” in Paris who want your relationship to fail, one ex-partner (Richelieu) who keeps on killing people in duels, and another who's decided to abandon you for the Arctic Circle.

  Worst of all, despite all the social acceptance in their circle, and the way that Florent-Claude was content that his wife was safely with a decent man in this out-of-the-way château, the relation remained officially illegal. The punishment for adultery could include whipping and being beaten with rods through the streets. It was always the woman who suffered most, for in the French code of the time, “adultery is punished in the person of the wife, and not that of the husband.” Yet given how much court officials were angry at Voltaire, he too could expect to be attacked if the law was ever fully turned against him as well.

  Although in fact the two of them were likely to be protected by Emilie's family name, as well as by Florent-Claude (busy with his own extramarital relations at the army's frontier postings), there still was no certainty they would be left alone. Both she and Voltaire, accordingly, were ready to look closer at why it was that
the nation they lived in had come up with such a harsh system. It was based on the Bible, of course—that's where the king and all his officials said their authority came from—so it was only natural that in these first months at Cirey, Emilie and Voltaire decided to examine the Bible.

  It was hard for Emilie to get started at first. She'd spent a long time in Paris believing she could be creative, yet not doing much about it. “The yogis of India,” she mused at Cirey now, “stop being able to use their leg muscles when they stay in the same position for too long without moving. We're like that too, and lose our ability to think afresh when we don't practice it. It's like a fire that dies out when we stop feeding it fresh wood.”

  Now slowly that changed, and their work was fun as only a shared adventure for new lovers can be. They had texts of the Bible in French and Latin, and they ordered commentaries from Paris, all sorts of them, and reports in English, and texts printed in Latin—especially those of Spinoza—and they began to collate them and read sections aloud to each other, starting at their regular 11 a.m.coffee. (Voltaire especially was partial to coffee, and sometimes a little quinine powder before snacks; Emilie would sip her coffee but preferred fresh fruit, though it's unclear if she shared Voltaire's great passion for rhubarb.)