253 Sunk in the depths of self-pity… his one consolation: Ibid., pp. 215–19.
253 Emilie had little sympathy: Though she did probably send a lackey, just in case Voltaire wasn't pretending this time.
254 By now, Voltaire recognized that something was going on: He'd noticed at least one occasion when Emilie's fireplace had not been used all night, even though the weather had turned chilly—which made it pretty clear that she'd slept somewhere else.
255 “Finding no servant outside Emilie's door”: Longchamp and Wagnière, Mémoires, pp. 200–3.
255 Only when he left them alone…or so he said: I'd trust him here, for the geometry was as he described; furthermore, it's very much how Emilie and Voltaire reasoned and argued. It also matches the poem Voltaire wrote soon thereafter for Saint-Lambert.
257 He told Saint-Lambert to enjoy those pleasures: Longchamp and Wagnière, Mémoires, p. 204.
258 “How is my beloved?… thinking of you”: Besterman, Voltaire's Love Letters to His Niece, pp. 87, 103.
258 One of the worst offenders had been: Vaillot, Avec Madame du Châtelet, p. 350, corrects Longchamp here.
259 The swindlers… had been outswindled: Such finesse is crucial in any activity illegal enough to preclude turning to police law courts in case of disagreement. As with the drug trade today, the response “What are you going to do, sue me?” needed nimble preplanning to avert.
260 “some verses written by a young man”: Hamel, Eighteenth-Century Marquise, p. 334.
260 He knew he was failing: In his poems and stories Saint-Lambert liked describing himself as a confident, world-wise traveler—and that made his inability to be like that when he was finally given the opportunity in real life even more galling. Consider the tone in his tale of a proud sea voyager landed in rural Scotland, Contes de Saint-Lambert (Paris, Librairie des bibliophiles, 1883), pp. 5–12.
260 “I send you a thousand greetings, fine sir”: Emilie's Lettres, vol. 2, p. 234.
261 Saint-Lambert was just using her…he tried to insist: It's likely that her previous contraception had depended on the man respecting her when she said it was an unsafe time of month, or exercising control when practicing withdrawal. This is what Saint-Lambert would have violated.
266 Abortion would only have been considered as a desperate resort: See Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 62ff.
267 “I believe,” Longchamp remembered: Longchamp was mocking about this, and pretended that Florent-Claude had been fooled into believing the child was his. But not only was Florent-Claude a thoughtful man, attuned to Emilie's feelings; he also knew the ins and outs of Lunéville gossip, for he kept close contacts there in his efforts to influence Stanislas's military appointments. It would have been impossible for him not to know of this very public affair. Furthermore, neither Emilie nor Voltaire had mocked him in all the years they'd been together; it would have been out of character for her to have abruptly done so now. A final giveaway is that Longchamp shifts abruptly to a gleeful and even more than usually unctuous tone at this point.
268 It was Voltaire, informing everyone that he was alive: Back in Paris afterward, he complained to one and all about his sore legs and back.
269 “the new baby shall be… [Emilie's] miscellaneous works”: The phrase seems to have originally been Frederick's, though used back and forth by the two men.
270 The blades were…released in groups: Information kindly supplied by Michael Stephens, archive assistant at the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, Glasgow.
270 But he'd been paying attention… finished his own book!: Emilie was partly aware of this, for Stanislas had asked Voltaire for editorial help on portions of the manuscript the year before.
271 Stanislas's daughter… had been furious… blaming those visitors: A fact that Father Menou, who'd started it all, found uncomfortably accurate.
273 Isaac Newton had been a resentful… his mother: In a brief confessional he wrote at Cambridge, Newton lists the sin of having bad thoughts toward his mother.
273 where he'd been bullied: Newton had fought back when he was picked on as a child, selecting the worst offender, one Arthur Storer, and although being shorter, Newton “had so much more… resolution that he beat [Storer] till he declared he would fight no more.” Instead of stopping, the furious Newton then began to treat Storer “like a Coward, & rub his nose against the wall.” In a brutal fit, he kept on pulling Storer “along by the ears…thrust[ing] his face against the side of the Church.” Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980), pp. 62–63.
273 so little money…forced to work as a servant: It's possible he managed to sidestep the worst of these duties, and especially the onerous emptying of chamber pots; see A. Rupert Hall's discussion in Isaac Newton: Adventurer in Thought (Cambridge, 1992), p. 12.
273 Within six months: My phrasing here is largely from Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 106.
273 “pleased Almighty God in his just severity”: E. S. Shuckburgh, Emmanuel College (London, 1904), p. 114; cited in Westfall, Never at Rest, p. 141.
274 “In the beginning of the year 1665”: Perhaps the most famous quotation from Newton (along with his remark about being like a young child collecting seashells). It's been much critiqued (see, e.g., D. T. Whiteside, “Newton's Marvellous Year: 1666 and All That,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 21 [1966], pp. 32–41). But one has to watch out for revisionism for revision's sake. In true creativity there's lots of preparation and then—in a rush incomprehensible to outsiders—it all comes together.
276 Now, in her limited time, she made sure she didn't miss: They were central to her old controversy with Marain, and at the core of her interest in physics.
276 As a result, it was possible to treat the whole planet: She was right about the importance of these theorems. In a letter unknown to her, Newton had written to Halley in 1686 that a major reason he'd delayed publishing his Principia was, in fact, that he had never extended his work “lower than to the superficies of the earth, and [until] a certain demonstration I found last year [the key theorem number 75], had suspected it did not reach accurately enough down so low, and therefore…never used it nor considered the motions of heavens.” See S. Chandrasekhar, Newton's Principia for the Common Reader (Oxford, 1995), p. 12.
277 There had been hints… but Emilie wanted to go further: The key concept is what's now termed “least action”: the way that a system appears to “ensure” that certain overall quantities, such as the amount of time it takes an object to travel a certain path, are kept to a minimum. Maupertuis, Fermat, and others were important in applying and clarifying the early suggestions. The concept's significance, for the birth of energy conservation, is the way it shifts our focus away from “mere” forces, to concentrate instead on these wider, unitary quantities. (Again note the similarity with Emilie's work on the fire prize in 1737: while Voltaire had stuck to one small part of a system—the heated iron block—she had been stretched further, imagining the range of possible lights hitherto unseen.)
277 How important was her health, anyway?: “She believed that death was coming long before she was taken from us. From then on her one idea was to use the little time she thought remained to complete the work she had undertaken and so cheat death of stealing what she considered to be part of herself. Hard and unrelenting work, and continual lack of sleep when rest might have saved her life, led to the death she had foreseen.” From Voltaire's later introduction to her (posthumously published) Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle de Newton (Paris, 1759), p. 175.
277 “It's rare to admit it”: Robert Mauzi, ed., Discours sur le bonheur (Paris, 1961), p. 22.
278 “I feel an emptiness”: D3876.
278 “it was the wish of Madame…in these nocturnal hours”: Longchamp and Wagnière, Mémoires, pp. 240–41.
279 “She believed that death was striking”: Voltaire's introduction, Principes mathéma
tiques de la philosophie naturelle, p. 175.
279 “My God, you treated me cruelly”: Mix from Emilie's Lettres, vol. 2, p. 300, n. 479, and a slightly earlier letter to Saint-Lambert, D3879.
279 “Lunéville had the most excellent facilities”: Longchamp and Wagnière, Mémoires, pp. 245, 248.
279 Saint-Lambert, now in full cowardice: He had even hinted that he would stay closer to her—if, that is, she paid him (ostensibly it was to make up for the paid military service he would be forgoing in Nancy).
280 “The admirable arrangement of the sun”: Voltaire's introduction, Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle, p. 175.
280 “I'm terrified …”; “It would be most kind”: Emilie's Lettres, vol. 2, p. 306, n. 485; pp. 306–7, n. 486.
280 “I walked to my little summer house today”: Ibid., p. 306, n. 485.
281 “I've lost the half of myself”: Hamel, Eighteenth-Century Marquise, p. 370.
281 Months later… plaintively calling her name in the dark: Longchamp and Wagnière, Mémoires, p. 262.
284 The following year…a long essay: His Letter on the Blind: For the Use of Those Who Can See.
285 Visitors came by: Most of what follows is merged from accounts by Charles Burney and John Moore; in Theodore Besterman, Voltaire (London, 1969; rev. ed., 1976) pp. 500, 506. The final two paragraphs about Newton are from Martin Sherlock's account in Ballantyne, Voltaire's Visit to England.
285 “When the weather is favorable he takes an airing in his coach”: Voltaire, in 1775: “The harshness of the climate in which I live, within forty leagues of the icy mountains… obliges me to take precautions that one would not take in Siberia. I deprive myself of communication with the outside air during six months of the year. I burn incense in my rooms. I make my own particular climate, and that is how I have achieved a fairly advanced age despite a delicate temperament.” Libby, The Attitude of Voltaire to Magic and the Sciences, p. 253.
287 When the public executioner burned…he obtained an illegally printed extra copy: Indeed, Pomeau (D'Arouet à Voltaire, p. 329) presents indirect evidence that the Letters from England were never burned at all.
Rather, the suggestion—based on a marginal note found in an old text—is that since copies of Voltaire's work were so hard to obtain, Ysabeau kept the original that was supposed to be burned, and substituted an innocuous volume on Spanish history instead.
288 Brought back in old age… thin-hulled French naval vessels: The gamble was that fast ships that could shoot high and destroy sails would impair enemy mobility. It was a plausible strategic choice, but often failed against the more bulldog-solid British ships. (Though battles where sheer maneuverability and speed were of central importance, as with Yorktown, showed that not all the funds invested in the French navy had been misguided.)
288 He became Britain's emissary… also served the English commander: George II's son, the duke of Cumberland; best known in later life as the “Butcher of Culloden.”
288 His daughter married… same family tree as Winston Churchill: The link is distant, but proudly recorded. Fawkener's daughter Henrietta married the third son of the third duke of Marlborough. That third son was named Robert, and his brother was the fourth duke. The title proceeded normally through the generations to the seventh duke, who had two sons: the older became the eighth duke; the younger was Randolph, Winston Churchill's father. Thanks are due to John Forster, archivist at Blenheim Palace.
289 “perhaps in fourteen more years”: D1410. Voltaire, Collected Letters, vol. 4, pp. 430–31.
289 When the results were announced: D2015 and 2016.
290 “I gave her my house in Paris, my silver”: An aged Voltaire lamenting to an equally aged Richelieu; Besterman, Select Letters, p. 112.
290 He converted to Protestantism: It was during his secret trip to London, a few years after the catastrophe at Culloden. Charles had never respected Catholicism—taking a view similar to Voltaire's about the excesses of the clergy—and thought that his conversion would remove obstacles for English supporters of the Stuart line. Frank McLynn's Bonnie Prince Charlie (London, 2003) is excellent on the background.
290 Despite constant slurs…; “He finds me very cold”: Pompadour to Mme du Hausset; in C. P. Algrant, Madame de Pompadour (New York, 2002), p. 97.
291 Richelieu's successful assault on the British base…in Minorca: It was after this encounter that the unfortunate British admiral Byng was arrested for cowardice, and shot to death on his own quarterdeck. It's what led Voltaire to the scene in Candide where he described the British “shooting an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others”; unfortunately, he and Richelieu were partly to blame. For although the new Pitt administration was trying to get Byng freed, Voltaire had Richelieu write a letter attesting to Byng's bravery. When that letter was intercepted, it made the court martial suspect Byng appear to be engaged in treason as well.
As to the name mayonnaise, there's also a suggestion that it honors Charles of Lorraine, Duc de Mayenne, famous for insisting he would finish his chicken with cold sauce before taking the field at the battle of Arques (which he lost to Henri IV) in 1589.
292 for Bellinzani had been young… and was still alive: See the wondrous volume, Présidente Ferrand ed., Lettres, Notice par Eugène Asse (Paris, 1880), including Histoire des amours de Cléante et de Bélise (Paris, 1689), p. xxvi.
292 During the Revolution he was guillotined in the Place de la Révolution: Its name changes summarize a century of commotion: first it was the Place du Roi, then the Place de la Révolution; now, with the American Embassy on the north side, it's the Place de la Concorde.
Guide to Further Reading
Voltaire
Candide is the most famous of Voltaire's writings, but it has so much slapstick that modern readers often put it down after just a few pages. I'd recommend instead starting with his brief fable “Micromégas” (in many collections, e.g., Micromégas and Other Short Stories, tr. Theo Cuffe, ed. Haydn Mason (London, 2002)), which is about an innocently wise giant who has come to Earth.
Voltaire's creature notices a tiny wooden splinter flipping over in a shallow salty puddle—that's Maupertuis's mighty sailing ship, which in fact was nearly shipwrecked in the stormy Baltic in July 1737. The giant is amazed that the minuscule bipeds on that wooden vessel know geometry and mathematics, and he's even more amazed when, trodding further across their tiny globe, he learns of their species' beliefs. It's a theme with wide resonance, from Hollywood's The Day the Earth Stood Still to Ted Hughes's The Iron Man.
After that, I'd ramble through one of the many one-volume collections of Voltaire's work, looking out particularly for extracts from his Philosophical Dictionary or from The Century of Louis XIV. To go with that, do try to find a copy of Select Letters of Voltaire, tr. and ed. by Theodore Besterman (London, 1963)—the ideal way for the anglophone reader to glimpse the oft delighted, sometimes petulant individual behind the flashing pen.
One of Besterman's great discoveries was a collection of letters that the elderly Marie-Louise had carefully put aside when she sold the rest of her late uncle's papers to the Russian empress Catherine. Those letters remained unread for almost two centuries; the selection published in Voltaire's Love Letters to His Niece, tr. and ed. by T. Besterman (London, 1958), makes clear that Voltaire's literary skill did not always correspond with wise judgment. The pastel sketch reproduced therein, showing an attractive though unenamored MarieLouise beside a harassed yet accepting Voltaire, is a masterpiece of psychological observation (and is reproduced on page 6 of the photo insert). The magisterial The Complete Works of Voltaire (Oxford, 1968) includes over fifty volumes of his letters, and is ideal for the reader who wants to further explore a particular episode.
Voltaire's life was so exciting that a lot of famous writers have produced quick potboilers about him, recycling one unsubstantiated story after another. The biography by Maurois is just about acceptable; the one by A. J. Ayer is most politely left unment
ioned. The number of worthwhile biographies is really quite small. In French, aside from contemporary accounts such as that of Condorcet, the best for a century was Gustave Desnoiresterres's Voltaire et la société au XVIIIe siècle (8 vols.; Paris, 1867–76), which builds diligently from original sources, and most notably from the deliciously revealing accounts of two key assistants, the former of whom we've met: it's Longchamp and Wagnière's Mémoires sur Voltaire (2 vols.; Paris, 1826). Several biographers—most notably Mitford—used Longchamp too uncritically; important provisos are to be found in the footnotes of Vaillot's 1988 volume mentioned below, as well as in William H. Barber's “Penny Plain, Two-pence Colored: Longchamp's Memoirs of Voltaire,” in Studies in the French Eighteenth Century Presented to John Lough (Durham, 1978).
After Desnoiresterres's eight-volume study there was a long gap till Voltaire studies were rejuvenated in France with the works of René Pomeau. These began with La Religion de Voltaire (Paris, 1956; 2nd ed., 1969), and then, as he got government funding, led to the series Voltaire en son temps (5 vols., Oxford, 1985–94; reissued and revised in 2 vols., 1995). Pomeau wrote the first volume, D'Arouet à Voltaire: 1694–1734 (Oxford, 1985), while the second is by René Vaillot: Avec Madame du Châtelet, 1734–1749 (Oxford, 1988). (Vaillot's volume here builds on his earlier Madame du Châtelet [Paris, 1978].)
Pomeau and Vaillot are thoughtful researchers and had much of Besterman's collected correspondence to work with. But my personal favorite of the French biographers is Jean Orieux's Voltaire ou la royauté de l'esprit (Paris, 1966). Orieux writes like Voltaire would, if he could channel a bit of Falstaff along the way. It's a robust, delightful work.
In English, the best twentieth-century biography is Theodore Besterman's Voltaire (London, 1969; revised ed., 1976), which built on his immense decades-long effort of collecting and annotating not just all of Voltaire's letters but relevant accounts by guests, spies, friends, servants, and others. Ira O. Wade's The Intellectual Development of Voltaire (Princeton, 1969) is also an excellent resource, though written in his usual style—at one point Wade succeeds in making the de Rohan incident boring, which takes some doing.
Passionate Minds Page 33
