136 He had a word… this intense shame from the past was coming back: It didn't help that a very elderly Anne Bellinzani was still alive.
137 “M. du Châtelet…is leaving [for Paris]”: Emilie, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 187, n. 99.
142 “he was quite carried away”: D 894.
142 Then Linant's sister arrived…efficiency: Even Voltaire was moved to observe: “An extreme laziness of body and mind does seem to be the distinguishing characteristic of this family.”
142 “I don't want him to dedicate his tragedy”: Emilie, Lettres, vol. 1, p. 196, n. 107.
143 This was Crown Prince Frederick: He himself used the French-style Frédéric then.
143 He regularly punched his son: As reported by Frederick to his sister, Margharete; recorded in her memoirs.
143 Only at twenty-one…was he trusted: He hadn't been in the fortress the whole time, but his travel had been limited to just a few miles.
144 “and often at the same time”: Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la société, vol. 2, p. 128.
144 The Academy of Sciences… had recently declared its prize: It was officially termed the prize “for” 1738, since that was when it would be awarded, but the deadline for submission was September 1737.
145 It was an expenditure…several million dollars today: Estimating inflation rates over the centuries is nearly impossible, but there is some sense in asking what percentage of a population could afford a particular item. The equivalent of the high-tech laboratory equipment that Voltaire purchased would be out of reach of all but the wealthiest Silicon Valley or Wall Street individuals today. The era of the gifted amateur in physics was brief, Henry Cavendish in the late eighteenth century being one of the last independent top-level experimentalists; Oliver Heaviside, in the late nineteenth century, just managed to hold on as an independent theoretician.
146 “Draw him into a conversation”: Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la société, vol. 2, p. 123.
149 Metals do gain weight: The iron gained weight because oxygen from the air was joining with it. Voltaire lacked not just adequate scales, but also the very idea of weighing the encompassing air, for in his focusing on the iron he was missing the more important combined system of metal + air + smoke. He was close though, and Guyton de Morveau mentioned Voltaire's work in his 1772 paper, which finally showed that metals can gain weight when heated. Soon after, Lavoisier built on that finding to show that it was indeed oxygen from the air that caused this.
149 The effect is so slight: Voltaire had no chance, for the weight change was many trillions of times less than his scales could measure. There were over 1025 atoms in the iron blocks, and only the top few surface ones would combine with oxygen.
149 “I didn't want to be ashamed”: D1528; Voltaire's Collected Letters, vol. 5, p. 165.
150 Maupertuis had needed to hide… his true interests: For example, he'd had to pretend that his trip to the polar regions was only to investigate the “hypothesis” that Newton might be right.
150 “I couldn't perform any experiments”: D1528.
150 She'd helped Voltaire with this very calculation: The mathematician Alexis Claude Clairault was a friend of them both, and had spent time at Cirey. “I had two students there, of very unequal value. One was really quite remarkable, while I could never get the other one [Voltaire] to actually understand what was meant by mathematics.” P. Brunet, La Vie et l'oeuvre de Clairault (Paris, 1952), p. 14.
152 Other times she stood and paced up and down: Voltaire, Collected Letters, vol. 5, p. 469.
153 “fruitful experiments could be conducted”: Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la société, vol. 2, p. 157.
154 She even put in a suggestion…in the direction of Herschel: Herschel constantly tried to look beyond what was known, be it a new planet further than any then known, or new volumes of space beyond what was believed to exist—efforts rewarded by the discovery of the planet Uranus and the vast spaces in which our solar system resides. It's possible this reflex came from his own psychological dynamic, for he'd been raised to be a musician in Germany, yet had ventured beyond the confines of his family's assumptions and turned himself into an astronomer in England. Emilie too had broken from what was assumed to be right for her: she was no longer a proper aristocrat, and had left superficial female activities behind as well. That sheer phenomenology of “going into a new realm” may have helped Emilie—as perhaps with Herschel—to make this extraordinary conceptual leap to imagining supra-visible hues of light.
154 There was a new tutor… and the painter: D1677.
155 “There's so much to do when you have a family”: Emilie's Lettres, vol. 1, p. 267, n. 148.
155 “the originality of my ideas…would keep me from winning”: Desnoiresterres, Voltaire et la société, vol. 2, p. 159.
155 “The one and the other [of those two essays]”: Libby, Attitude of Voltaire to Magic, p. 153.
156 “Oh my God, Panpan”: D1686 and D1708.
157 “I am curious,” he eventually wrote to… Marain: This was in
1741, when Voltaire sent Marain his own essay on forces vives, which meandered around the division we now make between momentum and kinetic energy.
158 Did that not show… light could create magnetism?: This wasn't as foolish an idea as it was then taken to be. A century later Michael Faraday found that a magnetic field would change the polarization of a beam of light traveling through leaded glass—a crucial link between what had hitherto been believed to be two totally separate realms. Voltaire's guess, though, was just a rhetorical counterpunch, unlike Emilie's powerful analysis of the possibility of ultraviolet light.
159 Even before the Academy's results… one of these friends: The friend was Formont.
159 My friend I'll do what you advise: D1410, in a jaunty eighteenthcentury translation.
159 there were twists and turns… ancient Greek warlords: Parisian actors refused to be debased by playing in a chorus. When Voltaire had tried putting choruses in previous work, the roles had been taken by servants— who were often drunk.
160 It could be a great way: D1697.
160 Voltaire toned it down: As it was based on Desfontaines, the initial fervor is understandable.
161 the palace they live in is clearly built for them: Voltaire's theme of a mysteriously waiting beneficence has been interpreted in many ways, from similar mocking found elsewhere—as in Kafka's story about dogs who can't see humans and develop a whole theology about this invisible force lifting and feeding them—to more serious pondering, as with Einstein's image of our existing within a large library whose texts have already been written.
161 Voltaire was writing fast now: As evidenced by how quickly after the previous section he sent out Part 6, compared with the delays he'd experienced after each of the earlier parts.
161 Voltaire's writing became beautiful…dreams of his Emilie: Voltaire had a passion for such imagined visitors throughout his life—perhaps from having lost his beloved mother when he was only seven. Consider W. H. Barber's “Voltaire's Astronauts,” French Studies 30 (1976), pp. 28–42.
162 “he's such a sweet-natured boy”: Emilie's Lettres, vol. 1, p. 203, n. 112.
162 There was ever more construction…two young Lapp women: The categories of geographical and ethnic identity were less distinct then than now. Although called Lapps throughout their stay, the women were more likely to have been ethnic Swedes.
162 He knew that the main critic…was Jacques Cassini: Known as Cassini II, in distinction to his father, who'd also been a somewhat deluded head of the Observatory. The sequence of hereditary incompetence continued on to a Cassini IV, whose run was ended by the French Revolution.
162 “Maupertuis has flattened… Cassini”: Maupertuis's science was good, but he and Voltaire underestimated Cassini's pull over France's Academydependent scientists: the official word remained that Maupertuis's readings must have been inaccurate, and extra credence was given to a poorly designed expedition that Cassini himself s
upervised largely within France. Only when La Condamine staggered back from South America several years later were Maupertuis's findings independently confirmed, and Cassini, begrudgingly, had to give in. Bernoulli, observing the charade from distant Switzerland, wisely remarked that voyagers would always discover what they expected to discover.
163 On the day of performances, Emilie's son: De Graffigny reports only Champbonin's son, but it would have been surprising if he hadn't brought along the one other male youngster in the château, especially as Emilie's son had been underfoot during the earlier Newton experiments.
164 Their rooms weren't quite as demarcated: The trend toward more privacy is well discussed in Flandrin's Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality. A generation or two later and the transformation was nearcomplete, with Marie-Antoinette keeping a long gown on while she bathed and having a sheet stretched in front of her when she got out, so that no servants could see her.
164 When it came time for more hot water: Based on Longchamp's later description of her doing the same in Paris.
164 But her bath was not…in a purely public space: It was a significant cultural shift, but one can take matters too far. Daniel Roche described water closets being introduced in seventeenth-century Netherlands, and suggested that “secretions of the body were being privatised along with the cogitations of the mind.” Roche, France in the Enlightenment, tr. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1980).
164 She understood Maupertuis's calculations perfectly well: If the Earth were flat, you would never see new stars lift up over the horizon as you walked north. If, however, the Earth were very small with a tight curve, then you would regularly see new stars appear, for your line of sight—the tangent to the Earth's surface—would constantly be shifting as you walked up the curved surface toward the pole. Our planet has a curve that falls somewhere between these two extremes, and by measuring how quickly fresh stars appeared at different latitudes one could deduce how curved the Earth was at those varying locations.
165 “My uncle is lost to his friends”: D1488. She's confiding to Thieriot, just after the nine-day visit. Hamel, Eighteenth-Century Marquise, and a few others are vaguely polite about the niece, but Orieux, Voltaire ou la Royauté, p. 230, accurately demonstrates how much of a nitwit she was.
169 But even though Marie-Louise: The whispering words, and Voltaire's charm, are from Marie-Louise's letter to Thieriot; that they were standing close is a guess, but plausible for a couple newly in love—for despite what would come later, in choosing M. Denis she had followed her heart, turning down the far greater sums that she would have received for marrying others, such as Champbonin's son.
170 Leibniz had certainly published it… Newton, however, had the habit: If Newton had been a calm and sensible individual, he would have accepted the just claims of both sides—but if he had been calm and sensible he wouldn't have transformed the Western worldview. He was fierce about protecting his own glory, and for years used his position as head of the Royal Society to torment Leibniz and Leibniz's supporters as much as he could. You were either with him, or against him.
170 Yet in exchange… betrayed!: From de Graffigny's letters, composed either that night or the next day.
170 It went on, louder and louder: There have been attempts to exonerate her, but she loved passing on gossip, the more scurrilous the better; letters she received back from her sometime boyfriend Panpan make it pretty clear what she'd done.
173 He needed Emilie's enthusiastic support, but she was… learning law: She'd always liked languages, and when the young Italian Algarotti had come to Cirey a few years before, she'd spent several weeks perfecting her spoken Italian so she could put him at ease.
175 Emilie was far enough outside: If one's too isolated it's nearly impossible to be creative, but if one has no isolated space for reflection it's difficult too. If Kant, for example, had been in Berlin, he probably wouldn't have been able to grapple directly with Hume, and create his unique new philosophy: there would have been too many establishment figures immediately at hand to offend. Similarly, T. S. Eliot needed to leave America (where he was held back by what everyone expected of him) and move to England before he could be creative; Jonathan Ive, the British co-designer of Apple's iPod, had to leave the world of UK design schools before he could create his unique style. There are striking analogies with speciation in population biology: selective pressure that's too strong makes it hard for new forms to build up, while a total lack of pressure often keeps the incumbent in position.
176 Careers… seemed to be transforming: The view that the current era was uniquely fast-changing was especially strong in early eighteenthcentury France, not least because of Louis XIV's dramatic efforts to make the past seem relatively static.
176 Emilie was one of the very first: Leibniz had used the Latin optimum before, to mean “the greatest good”; the first mention of optimiste, though, is apparently in a 1737 issue of the Jesuit Journal de Trévoux (which regularly covered scientific matters).
177 But at times he couldn't help… letting Emilie know how inane: “Metaphysical writers are like minuet dancers; who being dressed to the greatest advantage, make a couple of bows, move through the room in the finest attitudes, display all their graces, are in continual motion without advancing a step, and finish at the identical point from which they set out.” Voltaire's reply to a friend who'd asked his opinion of a particular overly abstruse thinker, cited in Archibald Ballantyne, Voltaire's Visit to England, p. 316.
181 Then there was…a short ride to their house: And it's still there today: 2 Quai d'Anjou. Mme Curie later lived nearby, at 36 Quai de Béthune.
182 it “is without doubt the finest [house] of Paris”: Besterman, Select Letters, p. 64.
182 His son, however…Johann Bernoulli: The Bernoullis were to mathematics what the Bachs were to music, only here the talent was spread even more widely. Historians try to help by using numbers, e.g., Johann I and Johann II. But there were also several Daniels over the years, and as they all often complained about each other, and on at least one occasion plagiarized within the family, it's a messy business.
183 “Here you are back in Paris”: D2076.
183 “I hope, sir,” she wrote to him: D2117.
184 In Paris those five years before: There had been a brief period of excitement about science before, but it was more of a fashion than evidence of any deep interest; also, it had not been specifically Newtonian.
184 “All Paris resounds with Newton”: From the review of her and Voltaire's Elements of Newton in the Journal de Trévoux; cited in Mordechai Feingold, The Newtonian Moment (New York and Oxford, 2004).
184 “Paris,” he wrote, as if resignedly: D2082. Which prompted one biographer to note, “To kill Voltaire under compliments, one must really make a lot of them.”
185 Those monarchs, for example… deserved our deference because: As the sage Nealus O'Stephen once observed, of such systems that have accumulated over time: “Like Botany, they could be Memorized but not Understood.”
187 “Your Royal Highness, there is one thing”: Modified from D2110.
189 “I am Don Quixote!”: D2363.
189 he and the other young men “lost money at cards, danced till we fell”: Vaillot, Avec Madame du Châtelet, p. 204. What is translated here as “delicious moves” is literally “titillations.”
190 He wrote about Emilie… “like living in a chapel”: Modified from ibid., p. 205, and Hamel, Eighteenth-Century Marquise, p. 225.
191 Nothing that Frederick had presented…was true: Voltaire should have seen this coming, for even his very first visit to Frederick, not far from Liège, had been followed by an ultimatum against that town. (Prussian troops had been put in position before Voltaire arrived, and his presence was used as a cover for Frederick's arrival to supervise the possible attack.) But since Frederick did actually have a plausible legal claim to Liège—and because Voltaire wanted to believe in him—that aggressive ultimatum was take
n as of no significance.
191 This was Prussia's distinctive Paradeschritt: Literally “parade march.” Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford, 1996), examines this and other European marching traditions, p. 612.
191 Yet Frederick has created a true Newtonian machine: As compared to, e.g., Louis XIV's attacks on Spain in a previous generation, which he'd insisted were to reestablish the proper forms of inheritance and legal agreement.
191 Keyserlingk was a trusted emissary: Within, that is, Frederick's deeply distorted view of human nature. He mistreated Keyserlingk and called him a twit for being so incompetent. This meant he was nicer to him than he was to almost anyone else.
192 “I've been cruelly repaid”: D2365. She said this to Richelieu, but it would be surprising if she didn't also say it directly to the culprit.
192 And actually, did she have any idea: His view of physics as a crushing tyrant is expressed in a letter to Argental, August 22, 1741.
192 One wit said that there should be a clause: Charles-Jean-François Hénault, court official, to Mme du Deffand; Hamel, Eighteenth-Century Marquise, p. 227.
197 “[Monsieur de Voltaire] is in an appalling temper”: Archives de la Bastille (Paris, 1881), vol. 12, pp. 245–46.
198 “The Court's ladies,” as he'd noted: From Voltaire's introduction to her (posthumously published) Principes mathématiques de la philosophie naturelle de Newton (Paris, 1759).
198 But now, her concentration ruined… desperate for the sensation: As she wrote in her On Happiness, this is when she really came alive.
198 “Dear Lover, I'm so sorry for choosing to write you”: D2904.
199 “I don't know,” she wrote Richelieu quickly: This particular letter is earlier, but is consistent with her turning to Richelieu in times of stress, be it confiding her feelings when wondering whether to leave Paris for Voltaire, or propositioning him during one of his stays at Cirey. (Other letters of hers suggest she did go ahead with an affair at this time with her loyal lawyer from the Low Countries, M. Charlier.)
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