Voltaire in Love

by Nancy Mitford

  At last young Arouet’s high spirits and contempt for office-hours got so much on his father’s nerves that he packed him off, as unpaid attaché, to the French embassy at The Hague (1713). Here he fell in love, more, perhaps, than ever again, with a girl he could not marry. He caused a scandal by trying to elope with her and came home in disgrace. His father then put him into a solicitor’s office where, without much enthusiasm, he acquired a knowledge of business and legal matters which was to be invaluable during the rest of his chequered, quarrelsome existence. He also acquired a crony. Nicolas-Claude Thieriot was a fellow-clerk in the office; the two boys soon became inseparable. Thieriot was a charmer; a funny, lazy, cynical, dishonest ne’er-do-well. Of Voltaire’s other intimate friends, Cideville and d’Argental were exceptionally high-minded, while Richelieu was a Duke; he was slightly in awe of all three, for these different reasons. Thieriot appealed to the lower side of his nature. He could boast and brag to him about things which would not have impressed the others in the least; could engage in doubtful transactions with him, and shriek with laughter at doubtful jokes. For years the two young men were so close that if one were ill the other would have a sympathetic fever. In Voltaire’s youth Thieriot and Cideville were his chief correspondents; the worthlessness of the former, the goodness of the latter, are evident in every line.

  From the age often, when he first went to Louis-le-Grand with a tutor and a man-servant, as boys used to go to Eton, Voltaire began to gravitate towards high society. At twenty-one he was its darling. He had every qualification, except that of birth. His appearance was delightful, a droll, impertinent, inquisitive look, dancing black eyes, a turned-up nose, elegant little figure, beautifully dressed, nothing out of place, he was like a creature of spun glass. His conversation matched his looks, droll, impertinent, inquisitive, dancing, elegant, and brittle. He was the greatest amuser of his age and all history does not record a greater. Dukes and Duchesses, Marshals of France, Ministers, and Royal Princes fell over themselves to invite the lawyer’s clerk to their supper-parties and country-houses. Only the Church hung back. There were rumours that young Arouet’s impertinence extended even to sacred matters. Cardinal Fleury, who knew and liked him, and the Fathers at Louis-le-Grand said with sorrow that this excellent material was being spoilt. Poor Arouet thought so, too. It seemed to him that his son did nothing but get into scrapes with the kind of friends who do a young man no good, older than himself and far above him in rank. As for the poetry which the idle fellow scribbled from morning to night, it brought in no money and led to trouble. Voltaire was often to say that those who make names for themselves in literature and the arts have generally cultivated them against the wishes of their parents.

  The first of Voltaire’s writings to get him into serious difficulties was a satirical poem called Le Bourbier (muddy ditch) attacking the fabulist, Lamotte-Houdar. He had given a poetry prize, which Voltaire coveted, to somebody else. There was such a to-do about Le Bourbier in Paris that it was thought prudent for its author to make himself scarce. A rich old magistrate, the Marquis de Saint-Ange, offered to shelter him in his country house near Fontainebleau. He was the uncle of Voltaire’s two friends, the d’Argenson brothers. Voltaire stayed with him several months; it was a profitable sojourn. M. de Saint-Ange, having held important political posts, had been in and out of Versailles all his life. He knew every detail of the long reign, now (1714) drawing to its close, from his own experience, and a great deal about the reigns of Henri IV and Louis XIII from his father, who had been a friend of Cardinal de Retz. He loved to tell about old times, and Voltaire loved to listen. The idea of writing history came to him at Saint-Ange and it was there that he began his Henriade, the epic poem on Henri IV which brought him fame and fortune.

  Voltaire’s troubles with the authorities all followed much the same pattern. He would write a play, a short story, a poem, or an epistle pouring contempt on some branch of established authority, either of Church or State. He knew that he was exposing himself to severe risks. The poet Jean-Baptiste Rousseau had been in exile since 1707 for writing libellous verses; nearly all men of letters with anything new to say cooled their heels from time to time behind bars. Voltaire, in his perpetual game of Tom Tiddler’s Ground with the government, ventured further than most of his contemporaries. His intolerance of stupidity and superstition, his hatred of cruelty, his love of teasing, and his desire to be read combined to make him intensely rash. He thought his own work stunning, especially the manuscript on which he was engaged, and longed to see the effect it would have on his friends. He could never resist reading it aloud, under the seal of secrecy. The friends, particularly Thieriot, who offended in this way over and over again, could never, in their turn, resist talking about Voltaire’s latest masterpiece, quoting and misquoting as much of it as they could remember. Voltaire always pretended to be furious, but publicity was the breath of life to him, and his fury was apt to be much exaggerated.

  Men’s thoughts were becoming a valuable commodity and the publishers would prick up their ears; another best-seller was in the making. Then came the dingy and complicated business of stolen sheets and pirated editions and soon a garbled version of the work, sometimes with chapters added by an alien hand, would be for sale under the counter. Had Voltaire himself arranged for the sheets to be ‘stolen’? The whole affair was apt to become so involved that even his close friends could make neither head nor tail of it. When the work had been read by everybody that mattered and made its full effect, the police would step in. According to how tendentious it was supposed to be, it would be confiscated, or burnt by the public hangman; the publisher warned to be more careful, fined, or sent to prison; and a lettre de cachet issued against the anonymous author. Voltaire would become more and more agitated, and tell more and more lies. ‘As soon as there is the slightest danger,’ he wrote, on one of these occasions, to d’Alembert, ‘I beg you to warn me, so that with my habitual candour and innocence I can disavow the work’; and again: ‘It is not the exile that I mind, but that such infamous verses should be attributed to me.’ He would fly for shelter to the country house of some Prince or Duke so powerful that the police were unlikely to make an arrest there without due warning. After a while, largely owing to the efforts of Voltaire’s friends at Court (Richelieu, the d’Argenson brothers, or, later on, Mme de Pompadour, prodded into action by the faithful d’Argental) the affair would blow over; he would creep back to Paris and presently settle down to write his next attack on authority.

  It was two years after the exile to Saint-Ange before Voltaire was in trouble again. The reign of the Regent, the Duc d’Orléans, had begun, scandalous from a moral point of view, a reaction from the old King’s sternly religious rule. Verses and libels about the Regent’s private life circulated in the capital and some of these were attributed to Voltaire. They went too far, with references to Lot, insinuating that d’Orléans was having an affair with his daughter, as indeed he was. Voltaire strenuously denied having written them, at the time and ever after, but nobody believed him. He was formally exiled from Paris by the Regent, who ordered him to go and live at distant Tulle. Voltaire pulled strings and got himself sent to Sully, on the Loire, instead. It was understood that he had relations there whose example would correct his impudence and temper his vivacity. We hear no more of these excellent folk, for as soon as Voltaire arrived at Sully, he moved into the château. The Duc de Sully was then forty-seven, a brave soldier but an unprincipled man. Member of a set known in Paris as les libertins du Temple, which had taken up Voltaire when he was hardly more than a child, the Duke loved the company of intellectuals. President Hénault said there was an odour about him, of having lived with clever men, like the odour which clings to a bottle that has contained scent. Voltaire, who loved the company of Dukes, was perfectly happy at Sully where there were continual balls and fêtes, hunting-parties and every sort of amusement. He said it was only fair that he should be allotted such an agreeable exile since he was innocent of the c
rime for which he was being punished. Before long the good-natured Regent allowed him to go back to Paris; he immediately began to cook up more mischief. He bore a grudge for the very mild correction he had received and soon the police were reporting that young Arouet could not speak of the Duc d’Orléans without transports of rage, and that he was given to reciting virulent rhymes about him all over Paris.

  Everything that appeared in print against the government began to be laid at Voltaire’s door. There was a satire entitled ‘J’ai vu’. ‘I have seen the State prisons crammed to bursting point. I have seen poor soldiers dying of hunger. I have seen the whole population crushed by taxes. I have seen the Jesuit worshipped as if he were God’ – etc. This was immediately attributed to him, and, for once, wrongly attributed. The real culprit, a certain Le Brun, confessed years later to having written it. Voltaire’s denials of its authorship, however, were again disbelieved. One afternoon the Regent, walking in the gardens of his Palais-Royal, came face to face with him. ‘Monsieur Arouet,’ he said, ‘I’m going to show you something that you have never seen before: the Bastille.’ ‘Ah! Monseigneur! I’ll take that as seen.’

  On the morning of Whit Sunday 1717, ‘twenty scavenging, starving black crows’ (in the poet’s imagination, really two policemen) appeared in his bedroom and carried him off to gaol. This, in the parlance of time, was his first Bastille. Voltaire was familiar with the inside of the fortress because the Duc de Richelieu, having got out of hand at the age of fifteen, had been sent there with his tutor for a year. Voltaire used to visit him. A spell in the Bastille could hardly be described as durance vile for anybody rich or important. Such ‘guests of the King’ were made very comfortable in a special part of the prison. There was room for fifty but this number was seldom reached, and there were generally about thirty. During the reign of Louis XIV they furnished their own apartments; in Voltaire’s time the rooms contained the necessities of life, but the prisoner was expected to provide tapestry, silver, books, cushions, screens, looking-glasses, and lamps. (Richelieu arrived with family portraits, musical instruments, and a backgammon board.) Women took their maids with them. Food and wine in vast quantities and of excellent quality, heating, light, and laundry were provided by the King. The prisoners were only shut in their rooms at night; during the day they were at liberty within the walls; they paid each other visits and received their friends from outside. It need hardly be said that Voltaire dined at the governor’s table.

  Captivity, however, is bad for those of an excitable nature. Although Voltaire lived well at the Bastille and managed to do a great deal of work there, he retained a nervous dread of prison to the end of his days. On 11 April 1718 he was set free but forbidden to stay in Paris. He went to Chatenay to a delightful house belonging to his father. But he was insensible to the charms of this summer in the country; he had a particular reason for wishing to be in Paris. His first play, Œdipe, had been accepted by the Comédie Française and was about to go into rehearsal.

  It was at this point that young Arouet decided to take another name. He said that he had been unhappy under his own and furthermore did not wish to be confounded with the poet Roy. (Roi, in Court parlance, was pronounced Roé.) Younger sons often changed their names in order not to be confused with their brothers; there was also the precedent of Molière, born Poquelin. More pretentious than he, Voltaire gave himself a particle and called himself Arouet de Voltaire. He never told anybody why he chose that name; probably it was an anagram of Arouet l.j. (le jeune); J’s and I’s, U’s and V’s being then interchangeable. The first letter of his that exists with the new signature was written to an Englishman, Lord Ashburnham, and concerns the loan of a horse. It is dated from Chatenay, 12 June 1718. The change of name was accepted quite calmly in society; no mockery or laughter is heard of until the silly insolence of the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot seven years later. Even the Minister responsible for his exile from Paris, the Marquis de La Vrillière, addressed him as Arouet de Voltaire, in October 1718.

  Œdipe came on in November. Voltaire was not quite free to live where he liked, but, largely owing to the good offices of the Baron de Breteuil, he was allowed to go to Paris for a few days at a time to help with the production. Always apt to fall in love with his leading ladies, he was having an affair with Mlle Livry, who played Jocaste. Œdipe contained some passages that would never have been allowed under Louis XIV, but it got the author into no further trouble and was a startling triumph. It received the kind of publicity that makes for success, pamphlets either violently for or violently against; it ran for forty-two nights and was seen by 27,000 paying spectators. (Five or six performances were an average run.) On the first night Old Arouet sat in a corner of the theatre, weeping with pride and ejaculating ‘le coquin’, in the time-honoured manner of the goose that has hatched a swan. After this, until his death some three years later, father and son were on good terms. The Regent now forgave Voltaire, allowed him to come and pay his court, presented him with a gold medal and a pension from the King. This was often done for people who were recognized to have been unjustly imprisoned. Voltaire rather cheekily remarked that, while he was all in favour of the King paying for his food he would prefer, in future, to find his own lodging. The Regent laughed heartily. The two men might have been friends had they been on a more equal footing. Voltaire was always at his worst with royalty; besides, the Regent was trying to govern France in the face of great difficulties and Voltaire did not make this task any easier.

  During the next few years all went well for Voltaire. His father died without disinheriting him as he had often threatened to do. A quarrel with his elder brother over the will was no sadness to him as he had never been fond of that sour Jansenist, ten years older than himself. He loved his sister, Mme Mignot, and there was no quarrel with her. He neither made nor lost money through following the famous Scotchman, Law, whose ‘système’, introducing paper money, was the sensation of the 1720s. Voltaire kept his capital intact through dangerous years. Finally, when there was a scramble to sell the notes, it was his remark ‘they are reducing paper to its intrinsic value’ that proved the death knell of the système.

  A little banishment, of a few weeks only, was spent again at Sully, again with his ‘adorable Duke’ rather than with the nebulous relations. There was more country-house life in France during the minority of Louis XV than later in his reign, when he attracted the nobles to Versailles. It suited Voltaire to stay in luxurious châteaux where he found the peace and fresh air that his nervous system required, combined with agreeable company. When he had had enough and began to be bored, or wanted a pretext to go back to Paris, his wretched health would be called into play; he would make his excuses and go home for treatment. There was no question of his ever outstaying his welcome; his hosts only allowed him to leave their houses with the greatest reluctance. He was a constant guest at Vaux-le-Vicomte, or Villars as it was then called, belonging to the Duc de Villars, Marshal of France, whose Duchess was, for a time, Voltaire’s mistress. Richelieu was another château where he went regularly; he thought it the most beautiful of all. It had been built, together with a little town in the same style, by the Duke’s great-uncle the Cardinal. He stayed at La Source, where Lord Bolingbroke lived with his French wife, and at La Rivière-Bourdet, near Rouen, with the Marquis de Bernières. Voltaire made love to Mme de Bernières, was on very friendly terms with her husband, and had rooms in their Paris house (now no. 27 Quai Voltaire) where, by a curious chance, he was to die. Thieriot was a constant fellow guest at La Rivière-Bourdet, and Cideville, a member of the Rouen parlement, was a neighbour.

  Voltaire, so industrious himself, was for ever trying to find work for his beloved Thieriot – the last thing that lazy fellow wanted. He basked in the fame of his friend and led a parasitical existence with various rich, vulgar financiers who were ready to put him up for the pleasure of his company. Very occasionally he did some little job; he edited the Grande Mademoiselle’s memoirs when they appeared in 1729, and
became the greatest living expert on Voltairiana.

  All this time Voltaire was busy with the Henriade. It might have been supposed, and no doubt he hoped, that a poem in praise of that King of France from whom the reigning King was five times descended would have been well-received at Court. Had Voltaire been an obscure scribbler living in some garret his work might have been taken at its face value. But his iconoclastic point of view was well known and prejudiced the authorities against his books. Everything that he wrote was regarded with the deepest suspicion, every phrase examined for a subversive meaning. The Henriade, subjected to this treatment, was supposed to smell of Jansenism; Coligny, the Protestant Admiral, was overrated while the King was presented as a mere human being and not a demigod. The first set-back was when Voltaire was refused leave to dedicate the poem to Louis XV. Worse still, he was also refused a privilège, the guarantee of royal permission to print. So it seemed wiser to have it published at Rouen and not at Paris; an edition of 4,000 copies was then secretly brought to Paris and circulated from hand to hand. Another startling triumph. Every woman of fashion displayed the Henriade on her dressing-table when she received her friends during the ‘toilette’, while the literary pundits could not praise it enough. Henri IV who, in the course of years, had been forgotten by the French, now sprang to the position of Best and Favourite King from which he has never since been ousted. The poem was frowned on but not normally forbidden by the police. In this case Voltaire made the best of both worlds; he benefited from the publicity caused by any sort of official disapproval and at the same time was free to arrange for new editions to be printed. But the whole affair had been nervous work. On the other hand his Marianne was given at the Comédie Française without let or hindrance; it was a failure and Voltaire realized when he saw it on the boards that this had been inevitable.