History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 10

"His Biographer Duvernet says, he decided on doing two things: learning English and the small-sword exercise. [La Vie de Voltaire, par M—(a Geneve, 1786), pp. 55-57; or pp. 60-63, in his SECOND form of the Book. The "M—" is an Abbe Duvernet; of no great mark otherwise. He got into Revolution trouble afterwards, but escaped with his head; and republished his Book, swollen out somewhat by new "Anecdotes" and republican bluster, in this second instance; signing himself T. J. D. V—(Paris, 1797). A vague but not dark or mendacious little Book; with traces of real EYESIGHT in it,—by one who had personally known Voltaire, or at least seen and heard him.] He retired to the country for six months, and perfected himself in these two branches. Being perfect, he challenged Duc de Rohan in the proper manner; applying ingenious compulsives withal, to secure acceptance of the challenge. Rohan accepted, not without some difficulty, and compulsion at the Theatre or otherwise:—accepted, but withal confessed to his wife. The result was, no measuring of swords took place; and Rohan only blighted by public opinion, or incapable of farther blight that way, went at large; a convenient LETTRE DE CACHET having put Arouet again in the Bastille. Where for six months Arouet lodged a second time, the innocent not the guilty; making, we can well suppose, innumerable reflections on the phenomena of human life. Imprisonment once over, he hastily quitted for England; shaking the dust of ungrateful France off his feet,—resolved to change his unhappy name, for one thing.

"Smelfungus, denouncing the torpid fatuity of Voltaire's Biographers, says he never met with one Frenchman, even of the Literary classes, who could tell him whence this name VOLTAIRE originated. 'A PETITE TERRE, small family estate,' they said; and sent him hunting through Topographies, far and wide, to no purpose. Others answered, 'Volterra in Italy, some connection with Volterra,'—and seemed even to know that this was but fatuity. 'In ever-talking, ever-printing Paris, is it as in Timbuctoo, then, which neither prints nor has anything to print?' exclaims poor Smelfungus! He tells us at last, the name VOLTAIRE is a mere Anagram of AROUET L. J.—you try it; A.R.O.U.E.T.L.J.=V.O.L.T.A.I.R.E and perceive at once, with obligations to Smelfungus, that he has settled this small matter for you, and that you can be silent upon it forever thenceforth.

"The anagram VOLTAIRE, gloomily settled in the Bastille in this manner, can be reckoned a very famous wide-sounding outer result of the Rohan impertinence and blackguardism; but it is not worth naming beside the inner intrinsic result, of banishing Voltaire to England at this point of his course. England was full of Constitutionality and Freethinking; Tolands, Collinses, Wollastons, Bolingbrokes, still living; very free indeed. England, one is astonished to see, has its royal-republican ways of doing; something Roman in it, from Peerage down to Plebs; strange and curious to the eye of M. de Voltaire. Sciences flourishing; Newton still alive, white with fourscore years, the venerable hoary man; Locke's Gospel of Common Sense in full vogue, or even done into verse, by incomparable Mr. Pope, for the cultivated upper classes. In science, in religion, in politics, what a surprising 'liberty' allowed or taken! Never was a freer turn of thinking. And (what to M. de Voltaire is a pleasant feature) it is Freethinking with ruffles to its shirt and rings on its fingers;—never yet, the least, dreaming of the shirtless or SANSCULOTTIC state that lies ahead for it! That is the palmy condition of English Liberty, when M. de Voltaire arrives there.

"In a man just out of the Bastille on those terms, there is a mind driven by hard suffering into seriousness, and provoked by indignant comparisons and remembrances. As if you had elaborately ploughed and pulverized the mind of this Voltaire to receive with its utmost avidity, and strength of fertility, whatever seed England may have for it. That was a notable conjuncture of a man with circumstances. The question, Is this man to grow up a Court Poet; to do legitimate dramas, lampoons, witty verses, and wild spiritual and practical magnificences, the like never seen; Princes and Princesses recognizing him as plainly divine, and keeping him tied by enchantments to that poor trade as his task in life? is answered in the negative. No: and it is not quite to decorate and comfort your 'dry dung-heap' of a world, or the fortunate cocks that scratch on it, that the man Voltaire is here; but to shoot lightnings into it, and set it ablaze one day! That was an important alternative; truly of world-importance to the poor generations that now are; and it was settled, in good part, by this voyage to England, as one may surmise. Such is sometimes the use of a dissolute Rohan in this world; for the gods make implements of all manner of things.

"M. de Voltaire (for we now drop the Arouet altogether, and never hear of it more) came to England—when? Quitted England—when? Sorrow on all fatuous Biographers, who spend their time not in laying permanent foundation-stones, but in fencing with the wind!—I at last find indisputably, it was in 1726 that he came to England: [Got out of the Bastille, with orders to leave France, "29th April" of that year (OEuvres de Voltaire, i. 40 n.).] and he himself tells us that he 1728.' Spent, therefore, some two years there in all,—last year of George I.'s reign, and first of George II.'s. But mere inanity and darkness visible reign, in all his Biographies, over this period of his life, which was above all others worth investigating: seek not to know it; no man has inquired into it, probably no competent man now ever will. By hints in certain Letters of the period, we learn that he lodged, or at one time lodged, in 'Maiden Lane, Covent Garden;' one of those old Houses that yet stand in Maiden Lane: for which small fact let us be thankful. His own Letters of the period are dated now and then from 'Wandsworth.' Allusions there are to Bolingbroke; but the Wandsworth is not Bolingbroke's mansion, which stood in Battersea; the Wandsworth was one Edward Fawkener's; a man somewhat admirable to young Voltaire, but extinct now, or nearly so, in human memory. He had been a Turkey Merchant, it would seem, and nevertheless was admitted to speak his word in intellectual, even in political circles; which was wonderful to young Voltaire. This Fawkener, I think, became Sir Edward Fawkener, and some kind of 'Secretary to the Duke of Cumberland:'—I judge it to be the same Fawkener; a man highly unmemorable now, were it not for the young Frenchman he was hospitable to. Fawkener's and Bolingbroke's are perhaps the only names that turn up in Voltaire's LETTERS of this English Period: over which generally there reigns, in the French Biographies, inane darkness, with an intimation, half involuntary, that it SHOULD have been made luminous, and would if perfectly easy.

"We know, from other sources, that he had acquaintance with many men in England, with all manner of important men: Notes to Pope in Voltaire-English, visit of Voltaire to Congreve, Notes even to such as Lady Sundon in the interior of the Palace, are known of. The brightest young fellow in the world did not want for introductions to the highest quarters, in that time of political alliance, and extensive private acquaintance, between his Country and ours. And all this he was the man to improve, both in the trivial and the deep sense. His bow to the divine Princess Caroline and suite, could it fail in graceful reverence or what else was needed? Dexterous right words in the right places, winged with ESPRIT so called: that was the man's supreme talent, in which he had no match, to the last. A most brilliant, swift, far-glancing young man, disposed to make himself generally agreeable. For the rest, his wonder, we can see, was kept awake; wonder readily inclining, in his circumstances, towards admiration. The stereotype figure of the Englishman, always the same, which turns up in Voltaire's WORKS, is worth noting in this respect. A rugged surly kind of fellow, much-enduring, not intrinsically bad; splenetic without complaint, standing oddly inexpugnable in that natural stoicism of his; taciturn, yet with strange flashes of speech in him now and then, something which goes beyond laughter and articulate logic, and is the taciturn elixir of these two, what they call 'humor' in their dialect: this is pretty much the REVERSE of Voltaire's own self, and therefore all the welcomer to him; delineated always with a kind of mockery, but with evident love. What excellences are in England, thought Voltaire; no Bastille in it, for one thing! Newton's Philosophy annihilated the vortexes of Descartes for him; Locke's Toleration is very grand (especially if all is uncertain, and YOU are in the minority); then Collins, Wollaston and Company,—no vile Jesuits here, strong in their mendacious mal-odorous stupidity, despicablest yet most dangerous of creatures, to check freedom of thought! Illustrious Mr. Pope, of the Essay on Man, surely he is admirable; as are Pericles Bolingbroke, and many others. Even Bolingbroke's high-lacquered brass is gold to this young French friend of his.—Through all which admirations and exaggerations the progress of the young man, toward certain very serious attainments and achievements, is conceivable enough.

"One other man, who ought to be mentioned in the Biographies, I find Voltaire to have made acquaintance with, in England: a German M. Fabrice, one of several Brothers called Fabrice or Fabricius,—concerning whom, how he had been at Bender, and how Voltaire picked CHARLES DOUSE from the memory of him, there was already mention. The same Fabrice who held poor George I. in his arms while they drove, galloping, to Osnabriick, that night, IN EXTREMIS:—not needing mention again. The following is more to the point.

"Voltaire, among his multifarious studies while in England, did not forget that of economics: his Poem LA LIGUE,—surreptitiously printed, three years since, under that title (one Desfontaines, a hungry Ex-Jesuit, the perpetrator), [1723, VIE, par T. J. D. V. (that is, "M—" in the second form), p. 59.]—he now took in hand for his own benefit; washed it clean of its blots; christened it HENRIADE, under which name it is still known over all the world;—and printed it; published it here, by subscription, in 1726; one of the first things he undertook. Very splendid subscription; headed by Princess Caroline, and much favored by the opulent of quality. Which yielded an unknown but very considerable sum of thousands sterling, and grounded not only the world-renown but the domestic finance of M. de Voltaire. For the fame of the 'new epic,' as this HENRIADE was called, soon spread into all lands. And such fame, and other agencies on his behalf, having opened the way home for Voltaire, he took this sum of Thousands Sterling along with him; laid it out judiciously in some city lottery, or profitable scrip then going at Paris, which at once doubled the amount: after which he invested it in Corn-trade, Army Clothing, Barbary-trade, Commissariat Bacon-trade, all manner of well-chosen trades,—being one of the shrewdest financiers on record;—and never from that day wanted abundance of money, for one thing. Which he judged to be extremely expedient for a literary man, especially in times of Jesuit and other tribulation. 'You have only to watch,' he would say, 'what scrips, public loans, investments in the field of agio, are offered; if you exert any judgment, it is easy to gain there: do not the stupidest of mortals gain there, by intensely attending to it?'

"Voltaire got almost nothing by his Books, which he generally had to disavow, and denounce as surreptitious supposititious scandals, when some sharp-set Book-seller, in whose way he had laid the savory article as bait, chose to risk his ears for the profit of snatching and publishing it. Next to nothing by his Books; but by his fine finance-talent otherwise, he had become possessed of ample moneys. Which were so cunningly disposed, too, that he had resources in every Country; and no conceivable combination of confiscating Jesuits and dark fanatic Official Persons could throw him out of a livelihood, whithersoever he might be forced to run. A man that looks facts in the face; which is creditable of him. The vulgar call it avarice and the like, as their way is: but M. de Voltaire is convinced that effects will follow causes; and that it well beseems a lonely Ishmaelite, hunting his way through the howling wildernesses and confused ravenous populations of this world, to have money in his pocket. He died with a revenue of some 7,000 pounds a year, probably as good as 20,000 pounds at present; the richest literary man ever heard of hitherto, as well as the remarkablest in some other respects. But we have to mark the second phasis of his life [in which Friedrich now sees him], and how it grew out of this first one.

"PHASIS SECOND (1728-1733).—Returning home as if quietly triumphant, with such a talent in him, and such a sanction put upon it and him by a neighboring Nation, and by all the world, Voltaire was warmly received, in his old aristocratic circles, by cultivated France generally; and now in 1728, in his thirty-second year, might begin to have definite outlooks of a sufficiently royal kind, in Literature and otherwise. Nor is he slow, far from it, to advance, to conquer and enjoy. He writes successful literature, falls in love with women of quality; encourages the indigent and humble; eclipses, and in case of need tramples down, the too proud. He elegizes poor Adrienne Lecouvreur, the Actress,—our poor friend the Comte de Saxe's female friend; who loyally emptied out her whole purse for him, 30,000 pounds in one sum, that he might try for Courland, and whether he could fall in love with her of the Swollen Cheek there; which proved impossible. Elegizes Adrienne, slightly, and even buries her under cloud of night: ready to protect unfortunate females of merit. Especially theatrical females; having much to do in the theatre, which we perceive to be the pulpit or real preaching-place of cultivated France in those years. All manner of verse, all manner of prose, he dashes off with surprising speed and grace: showers of light spray for the moment; and always some current of graver enterprise, Siecle de Louis Quatorze or the like, going on beneath it. For he is a most diligent, swift, unresting man; and studies and learns amazingly in such a rackety existence. Victorious enough in some senses; defeat, in Literature, never visited him. His Plays, coming thick on the heels of one another, rapid brilliant pieces, are brilliantly received by the unofficial world; and ought to dethrone dull Crebillon, and the sleepy potentates of Poetry that now are. Which in fact is their result with the public; but not yet in the highest courtly places;—a defect much to be condemned and lamented.

"Numerous enemies arise, as is natural, of an envious venomous description; this is another ever-widening shadow in the sunshine. In fact we perceive he has, besides the inner obstacles and griefs, two classes of outward ones: There are Lions on his path and also Dogs. Lions are the Ex-Bishop of Mirepoix, and certain other dark Holy Fathers, or potent orthodox Official Persons. These, though Voltaire does not yet declare his heterodoxy (which, indeed, is but the orthodoxy of the cultivated private circles), perceive well enough, even by the HENRIADE, and its talk of 'tolerance,' horror of 'fanaticism' and the like, what this one's 'DOXY is; and how dangerous he, not a mere mute man of quality, but a talking spirit with winged words, may be;—and they much annoy and terrify him, by their roaring in the distance. Which roaring cannot, of course, convince; and since it is not permitted to kill, can only provoke a talking spirit into still deeper strains of heterodoxy for his own private behoof. These are the Lions on his path: beasts conscious to themselves of good intentions; but manifesting from Voltaire's point of view, it must be owned, a physiognomy unlovely to a degree. 'Light is superior to darkness, I should think,' meditates Voltaire; 'power of thought to the want of power! The ANE DE MIREPOIX (Ass of Mirepoix), [Poor joke of Voltaire's, continually applied to this Bishop, or Ex-Bishop,—who was thought, generally, a rather tenebrific man for appointment to the FEUILLE DES BENEFICES (charge of nominating Bishops, keeping King's conscience, &c.); and who, in that capacity, signed himself ANC (by no means "ANE," but "ANCIEN, Whilom") DE MIREPOIX,—to the enragement of Voltaire often enough.] pretending to use me in this manner, is it other, in the court of Rhadamanthus, than transcendent Stupidity, with transcendent Insolence superadded?' Voltaire grows more and more heterodox; and is ripening towards dangerous utterances, though he, strives to hold in.

"The Dogs upon his path, again, are all the disloyal envious persons of the Writing Class, whom his success has offended; and, more generally, all the dishonest hungry persons who can gain a morsel by biting him: and their name is legion. It must be owned, about as ugly a Doggery ('INFAME CANAILLE' he might well reckon them) as has, before or since, infested the path of a man. They are not hired and set on, as angry suspicion might suggest; but they are covertly somewhat patronized by the Mirepoix, or orthodox Official class. Scandalous Ex-Jesuit Desfontaines, Thersites Freron,—these are but types of an endless Doggery; whose names and works should be blotted out; whose one claim to memory is, that the riding man so often angrily sprang down, and tried horsewhipping them into silence. A vain attempt. The individual hound flies howling, abjectly petitioning and promising; but the rest bark all with new comfort, and even he starts again straightway. It is bad travelling in those woods, with such Lions and such Dogs. And then the sparsely scattered HUMAN Creatures (so we may call them in contrast, persons of Quality for most part) are not always what they should be. The grand mansions you arrive at, in this waste-howling solitude, prove sometimes essentially Robber-towers;—and there may be Armida Palaces, and divine-looking Armidas, where your ultimate fate is still worse.

'Que le monde est rempli d'enchanteurs, je ne dis rien d'enchanteresses!'

To think of it, the solitary Ishmaelite journeying, never so well mounted, through such a wilderness: with lions, dogs, human robbers and Armidas all about him; himself lonely, friendless under the stars:—one could pity him withal, though that is not the feeling he solicits; nor gets hitherto, even at this impartial distance.

"One of the beautiful creatures of Quality,—we hope, not an Armida,—who came athwart Voltaire, in these times, was a Madame du Chatelet; distinguished from all the others by a love of mathematics and the pure sciences, were it nothing else. She was still young, under thirty; the literary man still under forty. With her Husband, to whom she had brought a child, or couple of children, there was no formal quarrel; but they were living apart, neither much heeding the other, as was by no means a case without example at that time; Monsieur soldiering, and philandering about, in garrison or elsewhere; Madame, in a like humor, doing the best for herself in the high circles of society, to which he and she belonged. Most wearisome barren circles to a person of thought, as both she and M. de Voltaire emphatically admitted to one another, on first making acquaintance. But is there no help?

"Madame had tried the pure sciences and philosophies, in Books: but how much more charming, when they come to you as a Human Philosopher; handsome, magnanimous, and the wittiest man in the world! Young Madame was not regularly beautiful; but she was very piquant, radiant, adventurous; understood other things than the pure sciences, and could be abundantly coquettish and engaging. I have known her scuttle off, on an evening, with a couple of adventurous young wives of Quality, to the remote lodging of the witty M. de Voltaire, and make his dim evening radiant to him. [One of Voltaire's Letters.] Then again, in public crowds, I have seen them; obliged to dismount to the peril of Madame's diamonds, there being a jam of carriages, and no getting forward for half the day. In short, they are becoming more and more intimate, to the extremest degree; and, scorning the world, thank Heaven that they are mutually indispensable. Cannot we get away from this scurvy wasp's-nest of a Paris, thought they, and live to ourselves and our books?

"Madame was of high quality, one of the Breteuils; but was poor in comparison, and her Husband the like. An old Chateau of theirs, named Cirey, stands in a pleasant enough little valley in Champagne; but so dilapidated, gaunt and vacant, nobody can live in it. Voltaire, who is by this time a man of ample moneys, furnishes the requisite cash; Madame and he, in sweet symphony, concert the plans: Cirey is repaired, at least parts of it are, into a boudoir of the gods, regardless of expense; nothing ever seen so tasteful, so magnificent; and the two withdraw thither to study, in peace, what sciences, pure and other, they have a mind to. They are recognized as lovers, by the Parisian public, with little audible censure from anybody there,—with none at all from the easy Husband; who occasionally even visits Cirey, if he be passing that way; and is content to take matters as he finds them, without looking below the surface. [See (whosoever is curious) Madame de Grafigny, Vie Privee de Voltaire et de Madame du Chatelet (Paris, 1820). A six months of actual Letters written by poor Grafigny, while sheltering at Cirey, Winter and Spring, 1738-1739; straitened there in various respects,—extremely ill off for fuel, among other things. Rugged practical Letters, shadowing out to us, unconsciously oftenest, and like a very mirror, the splendid and the sordid, the seamy side and the smooth, of Life at Cirey, in her experience of it. Published, fourscore years after, under the above title.] For the Ten Commandments are at a singular pass in cultivated France at this epoch. Such illicit-idyllic form of life has been the form of Voltaire's since 1733,"—for some three years now, when Friedrich and we first make acquaintance with him. "It lasted above a dozen years more: an illicit marriage after its sort, and subject only to the liabilities of such. Perhaps we may look in upon the Cirey Household, ourselves, at some future time; and"—This Editor hopes not!

"Madame admits that for the first ten years it was, on the whole, sublime; a perfect Eden on Earth, though stormy now and then. [Lettres Inedites de Madame la Marquise du Chastelet; auxquelles on a joint une Dissertation (&c. of hers): Paris, 1806.] After ten years, it began to grow decidedly dimmer; and in the course of few years more, it became undeniably evident that M. de Voltaire 'did not love me as formerly:'—in fact, if Madame could have seen it, M. de Voltaire was growing old, losing his teeth, and the like; and did not care for anything as formerly! Which was a dreadful discovery, and gave rise to results by and by.

"In this retreat at Cirey, varied with flying visits to Paris, and kept awake by multifarious Correspondences, the quantity of Literature done by the two was great and miscellaneous. By Madame, chiefly in the region of the pure sciences, in Newtonian Dissertations, competitions for Prizes, and the like: really sound and ingenious Pieces, entirely forgotten long since. By Voltaire, in serious Tragedies, Histories, in light Sketches and deep Dissertations:—mockery getting ever wilder with him; the satirical vein, in prose and verse, amazingly copious, and growing more and more heterodox, as we can perceive. His troubles from the ecclesiastical or Lion kind in the Literary forest, still more from the rabid Doggery in it, are manifold, incessant. And it is pleasantly notable,—during these first ten years,—with what desperate intensity, vigilance and fierceness, Madame watches over all his interests and liabilities and casualties great and small; leaping with her whole force into M. de Voltaire's scale of the balance, careless of antecedences and consequences alike; flying, with the spirit of an angry brood-hen, at the face of mastiffs, in defence of any feather that is M. de Voltaire's. To which Voltaire replies, as he well may, with eloquent gratitude; with Verses to the divine Emilie, with Gifts to her, verses and gifts the prettiest in the world;—and industriously celebrates the divine Emilie to herself and all third parties.