For general interpretative books, Alfred Cobban's In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (London, 1960) is wise and clear, while Dorinda Outram's The Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1995) is much more thoughtful than its short format would suggest. The best introduction to French approaches is Daniel Roche's France in the Enlightenment, tr. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass., 1980), where chapter headings such as “Time,” “Spaces,” and “Powers” immediately make it clear you've left the Anglo-Saxon world behind.
The ebullient Roy Porter contests France's importance vis-à-vis England in his less than compromising Enlightenment: Britain and the Making of the Modern World (London, 2000), while Gertrude Himmelfarb accepts France's importance, yet bemoans the way it got everything so wrong, especially through not being as inductive and practical as the British: her The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments (New York, 2004) is fluent, and not quite as reactionary as her marriage to Irving Kristol would suggest. A calm intermediate view, as seen from more neutral cantons, is The Enlightenment: An Historical Introduction, tr. William E. Yuill (Oxford, 1994), by the Swiss specialist Ulrich Im Hof, who mixes the best of English and Continental approaches in his text.
American writers often treat the whole matter as a prelude to the events in Philadelphia of 1776: cautiously in the case of Ralph Lerner in his Revolutions Revisited: Two Faces of the Politics of Enlightenment (Chapel Hill and London, 1994), more chauvinistically—but with good evidence—by the sturdy historian of a previous generation, Henry Steele Commager, in The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment (New York, 1977).
Science
Fontenelle's dialogue On the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds (in many editions since its original publication in the seventeenth century, e.g., Berkeley, 1990) is gracefully written, and imagines the author strolling on moonlit evenings with a beautiful young marquise, who has never learned the new astronomy that Galileo has recently discovered but is eager to see her horizons lifted outward. David F. Noble's A World Without Women: The Christian Clerical Culture of Western Science (New York, 1992) offers a fresh take on the background of the intellectual world Emilie was trying to join; Thomas L. Hankins's Science and the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1985) is a clear and workmanlike account of the topics and approaches taken in the period in which she was working.
The key ideas here are those of Newton, who—in a neat match with the secretive manner of his own life—is the hidden yet most powerful protagonist of this book. Richard Westfall's volume Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge, 1980) is comprehensive, but more for reference than for continuous reading. James Gleick's biography Isaac Newton (New York, 2003) is a better read, and laden with insight; the volume that Westfall co-edited with I. Bernard Cohen, Newton: Texts, Backgrounds, Commentaries (New York, 1995), enriches the science and crucial theology even more.
Best of all, to understand what Emilie lived for, is S. Chandrasekhar's Newton's Principia for the Common Reader (Oxford, 1995), the finest biography of an idea I've ever read.
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn't have been conceived if it weren't for the fact that Sam Bodanis and Florence Passell, although they loved girls—so much that they had five of them—were also keen on having a boy, and so continued their family until a son was born. This meant that I grew up in a house with lots of women, at one point having five teenage sisters—which is pretty impressive for anyone, let alone a chatty kid brother—getting glimpses of their hopes, arguments, dating, and dreams. Whatever insight I may have had into Emilie's life began from that.
What love meant to me came more surprisingly: blindsiding me first in high school, then a few times after, most notably in France for a decade, where living on the isolated, beautiful Rue de la Vanade also taught me a little about what life at Cirey may have been like. Later, years in Oxford and then London gave me some feel for the journeys between scholarly and practical life Voltaire and Emilie regularly took. None of that was planned as leading to this book, but looking back, I see that—just as with the family I grew up in— none of what I've written could have taken shape without it.
Planning the book was easy, once I'd made a first survey of the letters and other sources, but when I started the writing I was still unsure whether the mix of romance, science, and history I had in mind was actually working. That's why—and I recommend this to all writers, though I suspect she's too busy, so you'll have to find equivalents of your own—I sent the first few chapters to my friend Julia Bindman, who mixes a warm, analytical mind with the extraordinary trait of being unable not to tell the truth.
When she told me those first chapters succeeded I was happy, and thanked her and said I'd send the rest of the book when it was done; when she went on to declare, “Like hell I'm waiting that long,” and that she'd like to read each new chapter as I finished them—and then, quite independently, when Sue Liburd, Larissa Thomas, Julia Stuart, Rebecca Abrams, and Digby Lidstone said pretty much the same—I knew I was on to something that worked. As the book went on and the readership for each finished chapter grew, I began e-mailing what I'd written at near-weekly intervals to friends, officemates of friends, roommates of the officemates of friends, and others even more tenuously connected. That combined interest was the greatest of inspirations.
Even so, the first complete version wasn't quite right, not least because it was nearly twice as long as the present book. There was too much toing and froing, too much textual analysis and historical background, and too much elaboration of science and the biographer's evidence. I was slipping away from the central story. Suzanne Levy and Rhonda Goldstein did wonders in bringing me back on track; so too did Gabrielle Walker, the closest of friends, who knows a great deal about being an adventurous, bright woman. In long canal-side walks, and over many teas, she helped me keep sight of the core points; at one point, near the end of the project, she crucially helped me focus the first chapter more directly on Emilie.
Other friends who commented on all or part of the book include Sunny Bates, Robert Cassen, Michael Goldman, Tim Harford, Frank McLynn, Leanne Savill, and Simon Singh (taking time before a round-the-world trip). Colette Blair helped, one sunny morning, with a graceful translation of de Bouffler's proposed epitaph; Mary Park showed what style could mean to a power couple in any era; new friends MeiLi and Robert Hefner further demonstrated how an elegant, thoughtful life could be lived. Larry Bodanis was a breath of fresh air throughout. Research help came from Sarah Dickinson Morris and Iona Hamilton; Tim Whiting and Sarah Rustin in London, and Rachel Klayman in New York, did wonders with the editing. Subeditors have a reputation of being narrowly concerned with grammar, but this is far from accurate in describing Sue Phillpott and Steve Cox. Steve helped shape the entire main text; Sue made a vast number of phrasing changes and editorial selections that greatly improved the endnotes. Katinka Matson and John Brockman supported this project from the very beginning. For all, many thanks.
While I was doing my revised draft, Gary Johnstone was filming a previous book of mine, which included a section at the château de Cirey. It was through his kindness, as well as that of Cirey's present owners, that I was able to explore the building for hours on end, looking at old letters of Emilie's, thumping on load-bearing walls and chimney foundations, examining the ceiling beams and scraped layers of paint in the upstairs theater. After strolling through some of the adjacent forests in a freezing February and seeing the marks of old forges and paths, when I found myself at the end of the day sharing coffee in plastic cups with characters dressed as Emilie and Voltaire and Maupertuis, it seemed entirely fitting.
I don't know what my kids made, at first, of having all the individuals from the book take up home with us for so many months, but soon it was natural for stories of sieges and sword fights and how God slides beads down suspension bridges to join our usual repertoire of stories on the way strolling, scooting, and—when a quick glance
at the watch showed we'd dawdled for too long, again—sprinting to school.
When the time came for the final chapter, I had the key information and story in my head, but knew I needed several uninterrupted hours to get it written out. Due to travel plans, it had to be written in one day; due to school being over for the winter holidays, it was also a day the kids expected to hang out, and indeed we spent the morning strolling here and there around the center of London. Normally we'd have hot chocolate and puzzles and drawing when we got back, but this afternoon I needed to write. I explained the situation, and put my fate in their hands.
When we got home and thawed out, Sam and Sophie, suitably bribed, were happy to provide a few hours of quiet, and turned to their books and Game Boys and drawing pads; I packed the pillows up against the headboard of my bed, got out my writing pad, and then—for the final time in full freshness—let myself enter back in to the world I'd come to love: feeling what Emilie lived for, and trusting what she had wished. Knowing the tragedy that the chapter led up to, I don't think I could have written it, let alone finished, without knowing that my two beloved children were around me in our home, enjoying their youth.
Awaiting their life.
Illustration Credits
La Marquise de Châtelet, Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil (1706– 1749), by Nicholas de Largillière (1656–1746). Undated image. Bettmann/ Corbis. Portrait of Voltaire (François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, 1694–1778), after
Nicholas de Largillière (1656–1746). Oil on canvas, 1718. Musée de la Ville de Paris; Musée Carnavalet, Paris, France; Lauros/Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library.
Louis XV, King of France (1715–1774), by Hyacinthe Rigaud (1659–1743).
Portrait in coronation robes. Oil on canvas, 208 × 154 cm. Versailles
15.2.1710; Versailles 10.5.1774; Château et Trianons/akg-images. The Taking of the Bastille, 14 July 1789. French School (eighteenth century), oil on canvas. Château de Versailles, France; Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library. View of the Comédie Française Theatre in 1790, after an original by Gaudet and Prudent. French School (nineteenth century), color engraving. Bibliothèque de la Comédie Française, Paris, France. Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library.
Portrait of Frederick II, King of Prussia, after Vanloo Michael Nicholson. Corbis.
Louis-François Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu (1696– 1788,) by Swedish painter Alexander Roslin (1718–1798). Topfoto.
Jeanne Poisson, la Marquise de Pompadour (1721–64), by Maurice Quenton de la Tour (1704–1808). Pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 1755. Louvre, Paris, France. Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library.
Portrait of Sir Isaac Newton, by Godfrey Kneller (1689). Bettmann/Corbis.
Eighteenth-century French lithograph of the King's Games, published by Firmin Didot/Gianni Dagli Orti. Corbis.
View of the Château de Sceaux. French School (nineteenth century), photograph. Giraudon/Bridgeman Art Library.
Voltaire with Madame Denis (Marie-Louise Mignot Denis, 1712–1790), by Charles Nicolas Cochin II (1715–1790), ca. 1758–1770. Crayon on paper.
© New York Historical Society, New York; USA/Bridgeman Art Library.
Postcard depicting the Château of Cirey-sur-Blaise, formerly the residence of Madame du Châtelet and sojourn of Voltaire between 1733 and 1740, before 1914. French School (twentieth century), black-and-white photograph. Bibliothèque des Arts Décoratifs, Paris, France; Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Art Library. Le métamorphose de la Place Stanislas de Nancy. Gamma/Camera Press. Le Marquis de Saint-Lambert (1763–1803), by an unknown artist. Courtesy of the Visconte Foy/British Library.
La Marquise de Boufflers, née Beauvan (1711–1787), by J. M. Nattier. Courtesy of M. Knoedler & Co./British Library.
Title page of Emilie's final work. Courtesy of the British Library.
Emilie du Châtelet. The Largillière portrait.
Voltaire. Also by Largillière.
Louis XV, age five.
The Bastille, 1789.
The Comédie Française, where many of Voltaire's plays were premiered.
Frederick the Great.
Richelieu in old age.
Madame de Pompadour, by de la Tour.
Isaac Newton, shortly after finishing his Principia. The Kneller portrait.
Card playing at Versailles. The picture is from late February 1745; Emilie was likely to have been there that evening.
Château de Sceaux, where Voltaire began his philosophical fables while in hiding.
Voltaire and his niece, Marie-Louise.
Château de Cirey. Voltaire's doorway is straight ahead; Emilie's rooms are on the right.
Stanislas's gardens at Lunéville, 1740s, where Emilie met Saint-Lambert.
Saint-Lambert.
Catherine, Marquise de Boufflers, Emilie's supposed friend, who turned against her.
Title page of Emilie's final work, completed just days before her death.
Copyright © 2006 by David Bodanis
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Originally published in 2006 in Great Britain by Little, Brown,
an imprint of Time Warner Book Group UK, London.
Crown is a trademark and the Crown colophon is a registered
trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bodanis, David.
Passionate minds : Emilie du Châtelet, Voltaire, and the Great Love Affair of the Enlightenment / David Bodanis.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Voltaire, 1694‒1778—Relations with women. 2. Du Châtelet, Gabrielle Emilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise, 1706‒1749.
3. Authors, French—18th century—Biography. 4. Scientists— France—Biography. 5. Mistresses—France—Biography. I. Title.
PQ2103.D7B63 2006
848′.509—dc22 2006008059
eISBN: 978-0-307-49724-6
v3.0
Passionate Minds Page 35