Part 17

She had met Voltaire when she was a child--at least she said so, and he, being a gentleman, remembered perfectly. She read to him a little manuscript she had just dashed off. It was deep, profound and full of reasons--that is the way learned women write--they write like professors of rhetoric. Really great men write lightly, suggestively, and with a certain amount of indifference, dash, froth and foam. When women evolve literary foam, it is the sweet, cloying, fixed foam of the charlotte russe--not the bubbling, effervescent Voltaire article.

Could M. de Voltaire suggest a way in which her manuscript might be lightened up so the public executioner would deign to notice it?

M. de Voltaire responded by reading to her a little thing of his own.

The next day she called again.

Some say that Madame called on Voltaire to secure a loan on her husband's estate at Civey. No matter--she got the loan.

Doubtless she did not know where she was going--none of us do. We are all sailing under sealed orders.

The Madame had been married eight years. She was versed in Latin and knew Italian literature. She was educated; Voltaire was not. She offered to teach him Italian if he would give her lessons in English.

They read to each other things they had recently written. When men and women read to each other and mingle their emotions, the danger-line is being reached. Literary people of the opposite sex do not really love each other. All they desire is to read their manuscript aloud to a receptive listener.

Thus are the literary germs vitalized--by giving our thoughts to another we really make them our own. Only well-sexed people produce literature--poetry is the pollen of the mind. Meter, rhythm, lilt and style are stamen, pistil and stalk swaying in the warm breeze of springtime.

An order for arrest was out for Voltaire. Pamphlets which he had been refused permission to publish in Paris were printed at Rouen and were setting all Paris by the ears.

With Madame du Chatelet he fled to Civey, where was the tumbledown chateau of the Marquis--the Madame's complaisant husband. Voltaire advanced the Marquis sixteen hundred pounds to put the place in order, and then on his own account fitted up two sumptuous apartments, one for himself and one for Madame. The Marquis went away with his regiment, and occasionally came back and lounged about the chateau. But Voltaire was the real master of the place.

Voltaire was neither domestic nor rural in his tastes, but the Du Chatelet seemed to fill his cup to the brim, and made him enjoy what otherwise would have been exile. He wrote incessantly--poems, essays, plays--and fired pamphlets at a world of fools.

All that he wrote during the day he read to Madame at night. One of her maids has given us a vivid little picture of how Voltaire, at exactly eleven o'clock each night, would come out of hiding, and entering the Madame's room, would partake of the dainty supper that was always prepared for him. The divine Emilie had the French habit of receiving her visitors in bed, and as her hours were much more regular than Voltaire's, she usually enjoyed a nap before he entered. After his supper he would read aloud to her all he had written since they last met. If the piece was dramatic he would act it out with roll of r's, striding walk, grimace and gesticulations gracefully done, for the man was an actor of rare talent.

Emerson says, "Let a man do a thing incomparably well, and the world will make a path to his door, though he live in a forest." There was no lack of society at Civey--the writers, poets and philosophers found their way there. Voltaire fitted up a little private theater, where his plays were given, and concerts and lectures held from time to time.

The divine Emilie's forte was science and mathematics--and on these themes she wrote much, competing for prizes and winning the recognition of various learned societies. It will be seen that the man and the woman were not in competition with each other, which, perhaps, accounts, in degree, for their firm friendship.

Yet they did quarrel, too, as true lovers will, I am told. But their quarreling was all done in English, so the servants and His Inertia, the Marquis, did not know the purpose of it. It is probable that the accounts of their misunderstandings are considerably exaggerated, as the rehearsal of a tragedy by this pair of histrions would be taken by the servants for a sure-enough fight.

And they were always acting--often beginning breakfast with a "stunt." The Madame sang well, and her little impromptu arias pleased her thin little lover immensely and he would improvise and answer in kind, and then take the part of an audience and applaud, calling loudly, "Bravo! Bravo!"

Mornings they would ride horseback through the winding woods, or else hunt for geological and botanical specimens. About all of Voltaire's science he got from the lady and this was true of languages as well.

To a nervous, irritable and intense thinker a certain amount of solitude seems necessary. Voltaire occasionally grew weary of the delicious quiet of Civey, and the indictment against him having been quashed, he would go away to Paris or elsewhere. On these trips if he did not take Madame along she would grow furious, then lacrimose and finally submissive--with a weepy protest. If he failed to write her daily she grew hysterical. Two winters they spent together in Paris and another at Brussels.

A lawsuit involving the estate of the Marquis du Chatelet, that had been in the courts for eighty years, was pushed to a successful issue by Voltaire and Madame. Four hundred fifty thousand dollars were secured, but of this Voltaire, strangely enough, took nothing.

That the bond between Emilie and Voltaire was very firm is shown by the fact that, after they had been together ten years, he declined to leave her to accept an invitation to visit Frederick the Great at Berlin. Frederick was a married man, but his was a strictly bachelor court--for prudential reasons. Frederick and Emilie had carried on a spirited correspondence, but this was as close as he cared for her to come to him. All of his communications with females were limited to letters, and Voltaire once said that that was the reason he was called Frederick the Great.

Madame du Chatelet died when she was forty-two; Voltaire was fifty-five. For fifteen years this strange and most romantic friendship had continued, and to a degree it had worn itself out. Toward the last the lady had been exacting and dictatorial, and thinking that Voltaire had slighted her by not taking her more into his confidence, she had accepted another lover, a man ten years her junior. If she had thought to make Voltaire jealous, she had reckoned without her host--he was relieved to find her fierce supervision relaxed.

When she passed away he worked his woe up into a pretty panegyric, closed up his affairs at Civey, and left there forever.

* * * * *

So far as the government was concerned, Voltaire seems to have passed his days in accepting rewards and receiving punishments. Interdict, exile, ostracism were followed by honors, pension and office.

His one lasting love was the drama. About every two years a swirl of excitement was caused at Paris by the announcement of a new play by Voltaire. These plays seemed to appeal mostly to the nobility, the clergy and those in public office. And the object in every instance was to get even with somebody, and place some one in a ridiculous light. Innocent historical dramas were passed by the censor, and afterward it was found that in them some local bigwig was flayed without mercy. Then the play had to be withdrawn, and all printed copies were burned in public, and Voltaire would flee to Brussels or Geneva to escape summary punishment.

However, he never fooled all of the people all of the time. There was always a goodly number of dignitaries who richly enjoyed the drubbing he gave the other fellow, and these would gloat in inward glee over the Voltaire ribaldry until it came their turn. Then the other side would laugh. The fact is, Voltaire always represented a constituency, otherwise his punishment might have been genuine, instead of forty lashes with a feather, well laid on.

About the time Madame du Chatelet passed away, Voltaire seemed to be enjoying a period of kingly favor. He had been made a Knight of the Bedchamber and also Historiographer of France. The chief duty of the first office consisted in signing the monthly voucher for salary, and the other was about the same as Poet Laureate--with salary in inverse ratio to responsibility. It was considered, however, that the holder of these offices was one of the King's family, and therefore was bound to indulge in no unseemly antics.

On June Twenty-sixth, Seventeen Hundred Fifty, Voltaire applied to the King in person for permission to visit Frederick of Prussia.

Tradition has it that the King replied promptly, "You may go--the sooner the better--and you may remain as long as you choose."

Voltaire pocketed the veiled acerbity without a word, and bowing himself out, made hot haste to pack up and be on his way before an order rescinding the permission was issued.

Frederick was a freethinker, a scientist, a poet, and a wit well worthy of the companionship of Voltaire. In fact, they were very much alike. Both had the dual qualities of being intensely practical and yet iconoclastic. Both were witty, affable, seemingly indifferent and careless, but yet always with an eye on the main chance. Each was small, thin and bony, but both had the intellect of the lean and hungry Cassius that looked quite through the deeds of man.

Frederick received Voltaire with royal honors. Princes, ministers of state, grandees and generals high in office, knelt on one knee as he passed. Frederick tried to make it appear that France had failed to appreciate her greatest philosopher, and so he had come to Prussia--the home of letters. His pension was fixed at twenty thousand francs a year, he was given the Golden Key of Chamberlain, and the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit. He was a member of the King's household, and was the nearest and dearest friend of the royal person.

Frederick thought he had bound the great man to him for life.

Personality repels as well as attracts. Voltaire's viper-like pen was never idle. He wrote little plays for the court, and these were presented with much eclat, the author superintending their presentation, and considerately taking minor parts himself, so as to divide the honors. But amateur theatricals stand for heart-burnings and jealousy. The German poets were scored, other writers ridiculed, and big scientists came in for their share of pen-pricking.

Voltaire corrected the King's manuscript and taught him the secret of literary style. Then they fell into a controversy, done in Caslon old-style, thundering against each other's theories in pamphlets across seas of misundertandings. Neither side publicly avowed the authorship, but nobody was deceived. The King and Voltaire met daily at meals, and carefully avoided the topics they were fighting out in print.

Voltaire was rich and all of his wants were supplied, but he entered the financial lists, and taking advantage of his inside knowledge, speculated in scrip and got into a disgraceful lawsuit over the proceeds with a man he should never have known. Frederick was annoyed--then disturbed. He personally chided Voltaire for his folly in mixing with the King's enemies.

Voltaire had tired of the benevolent assimilation--he craved freedom. A friend who loves you, if he spies upon your every action, will become intolerable. Voltaire intimated to Frederick that he would like to go.

But Frederick had a great admiration for the man--he considered Voltaire the greatest living thinker, and to have such a one in the court would help give the place an atmosphere of learning. He recognized that there were two Voltaires--one covetous, quibbling, spiteful and greedy; and the other the peerless poet and philosopher--the man who hated shams and pretense, and had made a brave fight for liberty; the charming companion, the gracious friend. Frederick was philosopher enough to realize that he could not have the one without the other--if he had the angel he must also tolerate the demon. This he would do--he must have his Voltaire, and so he refused the passports asked for, and sought to interest his literary lion in new projects. Finally, court life became intolerable to Voltaire, as life is to anybody when he realizes that he is being detained against his will. Voltaire packed his effects, secured a four-horse carriage, and with his secretary, departed by night, without leaving orders where his mail should be forwarded.

When Frederick found that his singing bird had flown, he was furious. Fear had much to do with the matter, for Voltaire had taken various manuscripts written by the King, wherein potentates in high places were severely scored. The first thought of Frederick evidently was that Voltaire had really been a spy in the employ of the French government. He sent messengers after him in hot haste--the fugitive was overtaken, and arrested. His luggage was searched, and after being detained at Frankfort for three weeks he was allowed to depart for pastures new.

The news of his flight, arrest and disgrace became the gossip of every court of Christendom. Who was disgraced more by the arrest--Voltaire or Frederick--the world has not yet decided. Carlyle deals with the subject in detail in his "Life of Frederick," and exonerates the King. But Taine says Carlyle wrote neither history nor poetry, and certainly we do not consider the sage of Cheyne Row an impartial judge.

Voltaire took time to cool, and then wrote a history of the affair which is published in his "My Private Life," that is one of the most delicious pieces of humor ever written. That he should have looked forward to life at the Prussian Court as the ideal, and then after bravely enduring it for three years, make his escape by night, was only a huge joke. Nothing else could have been expected, he says. Men of fifty should know that environment does not make heaven, and people who expect other people to make paradise for them are forever doomed to wander without the walls.

Voltaire acknowledges that he got better treatment than he deserved, and makes no apology for working the whole affair up into good copy. The final proof that Voltaire was a true philosopher is that he was able to laugh at himself.

* * * * *

When Voltaire left Prussia, it was voluntary exile. Paris was forbidden--all of France was for him unsafe; England he had hopelessly offended. By slow stages he made his way to Switzerland. But on the way there his courage failed him and he wrote back to Frederick, suggesting reconciliation. But Frederick promptly reminded him that he had repeatedly broken promises by writing about Frederick's personal friends, and "Voltaire and Frederick had better keep apart, that their love for each other might not grow cold"--a subtle bit of sarcasm.

At Geneva, where Calvin had instituted a little tyranny of his own, Voltaire was made welcome. Nominally no Catholics were allowed in Geneva, and when Voltaire wrote to the authorities, explaining that he was a good Catholic, the matter was taken as a great joke. He bought a beautiful little farm a few miles away, on the banks of the river Rhone, overlooking the city of Geneva and the lake. It was an ideal spot, and rightly he called it "Delices." Here he was going to end his days amid flowers and birds and books and bees, an onlooker and possibly a commentator on the times, but not a doer. His days of work were over. Of the world of strife he had had enough--thus he wrote to Frederick.

Visitors of a literary turn of mind at Geneva began to come his way. He established an inn, and later built a theater out of the ruins of an old church that he had bought and dismantled. "This is what I am going to do with all the churches in France," he explained with a smile.

His pen was never idle. He wrote plays that were presented at his own little theater, and on such occasions he would send word to his Geneva friends not to come, as they could not be accommodated. Of course they came.

He wrote a history of Peter the Great, and this brought him into communication with Queen Catherine of Russia, with whom he carried on quite an animated correspondence. This worthy widow invited him to Saint Petersburg, and he slyly wrote to Frederick for advice as to whether he should go or not. It is said that Frederick advised him to go, pay court to the Queen, marry her, seize the throne, and get his head cut off for his pains, thus achieving immortality and benefiting the world at one stroke.

Voltaire had no intention of going to Saint Petersburg; he had created a little Court of Letters, of which he himself was the Czar, and for the first time in his life he was experiencing a degree of genuine content. His flowers, bees, manuscripts and theater filled every moment of the day from six in the morning until ten at night. He had arrived in Switzerland broken in health, with mind dazed, his frail body undone. There at the little farm at Delices, overlooking the lake, health came back and youth seemed to return to this man of three-score.

Some of the nobility in Paris, to whom he had loaned money, took advantage of his exile to withhold payments, but Voltaire secured an agent to look after his affairs, so his losses were not great.

He bought the tumbledown chateau of Tournay, near at hand, which carried with it the right to call himself Count Tournay. Frederick, with mock respect, so addressed his letters.

His next financial venture, begun when he was sixty-eight, might well have tested the strength of a much younger man. A few miles from Geneva, at Ferney, just over the border from Switzerland, Voltaire had bought a large tract of waste land, intending to use it for pasturage. Here he built a cottage and lived a part of the time when visitors were too persistent at Delices. Ferney was on French soil, Delices in Switzerland. Voltaire had criticized the Protestants of Geneva, and given it as his opinion that a Calvinistic tyranny was in no wise preferable to one built on Catholicism. Some then said, "This man is really what he professes--a Catholic." There had also been a demonstration to drive him out of Switzerland, since it was pretty well known that Voltaire's crowds of visitors were neither Catholic nor Protestant. "Delices is infidelic," was the cry, and this doubtless had something to do with Voltaire's establishing himself at Ferney. If Protestant Switzerland drove this Catholic over to France, why, Catholic France would not molest him.

Every country, no matter how tyrannical its government, prides itself on being the home of the exile, just as every man thinks of himself as being sincere and without prejudice.

It is now believed that Voltaire had much to do with inciting the civil riots in Geneva against the Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire--he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded Voltaire as an infidel, it never occurred to the authorities that he would take up the cudgel of the Catholic Church that had burned his books. The real fact was, the pamphlet wasn't a defense of Catholicism--it was only a drubbing of Calvinism, and the wit was too subtle for the Presbyterians to digest.

Very soon another pamphlet appeared, answering the first. It arraigned the Catholics in scathing phrase, suggested that they were getting ready to burn the city--hinted at a repetition of Saint Bartholomew, and declared the order had gone forth from Rome to scourge and kill. It was as choice an A.P.A. document as was ever issued by a relentless joker. The result was that the workers in the watch-factory and silk-mills who were Catholics found themselves ostracized by the Protestant workmen. I do not find that the authorities drove the Catholics out of Geneva, it was simply a species of labor trouble--Protestants would not work with Catholics.

At this juncture Voltaire comes in, and invites all persecuted Catholic watch-workers and silk-weavers to move to Ferney. Here Voltaire laid out a town--erected houses, factories, churches and schools. In two years he had built up a town of twelve hundred people, and had a watch-factory and silk-mill in full and paying operation.

The problem of every manufacturer is to sell his wares--Voltaire knew how to release purse-strings of friends and enemies alike. He sent watches to all of his enemies in Paris, bishops, priests and potentates, explaining that he had quit literature forever, and was now engaged in helping struggling, exiled Catholics to get an honest living--he was doing penance as foreman of a watch-factory--would the Most Reverend not help in this worthy work? Money flowed in on Ferney--Frederick ordered a consignment of watches, Queen Catherine did the same, and the Bishop of Paris sent his blessing and an order for enough silk to keep Voltaire's factory going for six months.

Voltaire really got the pick of the workmen of Geneva--the goods made were of the best, and while at first Catholics only were employed, yet in five years Ferney was quite as much Protestant as Catholic. Voltaire respected the religious beliefs of his workmen, and there was liberty for all. He paid better wages and treated his workers better than they had ever been treated in Geneva. Voltaire built houses for his people and allowed them to pay him in monthly instalments. And not only did he himself make much money out of his Ferney investment, but he established the town upon such a safe financial basis that its prosperity endures even unto this day.

* * * * *

It was at Ferney, in his old age, that Voltaire first made open war upon "revealed religion." All religions that professed a miraculous origin were to him baneful in the extreme, the foes of light and progress, the enemies of mankind. He did not perceive, as modern psychology does, that the period of supernaturalism is the childhood of the mind. Myths and fairy-tales are not of themselves base--the injury lies with the men who seek to profit by these things, and build up a tyranny founded on innocence and ignorance--seeking to perpetuate these things, issuing threats against growth, and offers of reward to all who stand still.

Voltaire called superstition "The Infamy," and he summoned the thinkers of the world to crush it beneath a heel of scorn. Letters, pamphlets, plays, essays, were sent out in various languages, by his own printing-presses. The wit of the man--his scathing mockery--were weapons no one could wield in reply. The priests and preachers did not answer him--they could not--they only grew purple with wrath and hissed.

Says Victor Hugo, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled." To which Bernard Shaw has recently rejoined, "Jesus wept; Voltaire smiled; William Morris worked."