The Portable Voltaire (Portable Library) Page 3

  Arouet père had been eager to buy his younger son a profitable legal post, to obviate the possibility of his starving in the lean paths of literature. He need never have worried. Voltaire wielded one of the most powerful pens of his or any age, but we may be sure that had he chosen, instead, to give all his strength to a pursuit that claimed no more than half of it, he would have met the greatest financiers on even terms, and probably outmaneuvered them into the bargain. He made himself not merely a remarkably rich writer, but a rich man by any standards. The sources of his wealth were various, for he did not live by words alone, and they were often dark and devious as well. The record is far from clear, authorities do not agree, but a few fairly certain facts may be cited.

  Money began moving in his direction when he was still a child, when Ninon de Lenclos left him two thousand francs with which to buy books. The Regent gave him a pension of two thousand francs; a few years later another pension, from the Queen, amounted to fifteen hundred francs; when he was appointed historiographer-royal, due to the influence of Madame de Pompadour, the post paid two thousand francs annually; and while he was the guest of Frederick the Great he was paid twenty-odd thousand francs a year and his keep. The Henriade, as we have seen, brought him in a large amount of money; his plays were a steady, if not a great, source of revenue; and, despite the difficulties and subterfuges under which many of his books and pamphlets were published, he made them yield a considerable profit. When his father died, Voltaire fell heir to an income of four thousand francs a year, and he was annually enriched by another six thousand francs at his brother’s death. But it was shrewd speculation that was chiefly responsible for the swelling of his capital. He is credited with one coup, in army contracts, which netted him six hundred thousand francs; a sum which, it is said, he promptly reinvested at a profit of thirty-three per cent.5 Military uniforms, trading vessels, land, pictures, corn—these are a few of the items in which he speculated, while he made a pretty business of lending money to friends and acquaintances at high interest.

  Through the years, it all added up enormously. At Ferney he went in for manufacturing on an ambitious scale: from the artisans, whose work he financed and whose products he distributed by means of high-power salesmanship, came silk stockings, cloth, lace, and the fine watches which he sold to distinguished purchasers throughout Europe; to Catherine of Russia, and to Catherine’s enemy, Mustapha of Turkey. Towards the last, his annual income is calculated to have run between one hundred and sixty and two hundred and twenty thousand francs, while his household expenses amounted to less than forty thousand. He left his niece, Madame Denis, a yearly income of a hundred thousand francs, and six hundred thousand francs in cash and other assets. No, the good lawyer need never have worried about his younger son.

  That Voltaire was extremely avaricious, there can be no doubt. Grimm declared that he worked less for reputation than for money, that he hungered and thirsted after wealth; and there is ample evidence that his fingers began to itch whenever he thought there were sous to be made; that he could not keep them out of shady deals, one of which embroiled him with his royal patron, Frederick, shortly after his arrival in Berlin. But Voltaire was no miser, nor was he even selfish. He was generous to his relatives, his friends, his tenants, the refugees who fled the rigors of Geneva to breathe the free air of Ferney, and men and women of all kinds who came within reach of his assistance. However much he might haggle over trifles, he could give with an open hand.

  It was at Demoulin’s that Voltaire met and fell in love with the Marquise du Châtelet; and it was at Cirey, the Châtelet manor on the border of Lorraine, that he found refuge shortly after the stir caused by the English Letters had made him hurriedly quit Paris to escape arrest and imprisonment. Gabrielle Emilie, daughter of the Baron de Breteuil, was twenty-six and her lover was thirty-eight when the famous liaison began. Married young to the Marquis du Châtelet, she had borne him three children and matched his infidelities with her own; the Duc de Richelieu being among Voltaire’s predecessors in the field of her favors. A model of eighteenth-century husbandly decorum, the Marquis was quite content to have the famous author spend his money on rehabilitating Cirey, and settle down there with the Marquise in a union which embraced most of the values which man and woman have to offer each other. The union could be so complete because the lady was no mere femme galante, but also a femme savante. Having learned Italian and Latin at an early age, she was busy translating Virgil when she was fifteen, and she was to live to translate Newton’s Principia; for the strict sciences of mathematics, physics, and astronomy excited her intelligence no less than did poetical flights, theatrical displays, historical researches, and excursions into Biblical criticism. An understanding reader of Leibnitz, she was friend and correspondent of the most learned men in Europe. Herself a tireless worker, she knew how to channel the powers of the man she loved and immeasurably admired. Indeed, in describing this union, we might well borrow Helen Wad-dell’s fine phrase, descriptive of Abelard and Heloise, and speak of “the mating of eagles.” In the Marquise du Châtelet, Voltaire found at first a passionate mistress, more enduringly a perfect intellectual companion, and the best friend of his whole, long life. That they could quarrel, even violently, merely completed the circle of their felicity.

  The lady, like her lover, knew how to make enemies. Madame du Deffand, for example, whose claws were always sharp, has left a wicked physical portrait of Emilie, in which every feature—from head to feet, with all intermediate territory maliciously surveyed—is pictured as a masterpiece of ugliness. Such a portrait can have been inspired only by an intense personal dislike. Madame du Deffand is not borne out by the artists who have perpetuated Madame du Châtelet’s likeness, nor by the record of her attractiveness to men. She was no great beauty, certainly, but she was a desirable woman; and it may be mentioned in passing that she was sure enough of her own good looks to bathe with aristocratic unconcern in the presence of a manservant.

  Of course, the ménage at Cirey had its humorous aspects, which have been preserved by gossiping visitors and handed down from biographer to biographer. There are even those who have managed to find amusement in the spectacle of Emilie betraying her aging lover with a younger, lustier man, and seen high comedy in the old lover’s devoted attendance at the childbed, which proved the deathbed, of a faithless mistress. The amusement of such persons is in direct proportion to their lack of understanding. The affair with Saint-Lambert began as a trivial incident; it happened to end fatally, as trivial incidents sometimes do. However much pain it may have caused Voltaire at the outset, the pain was fleeting, while the union with Emilie was above and beyond such intrusions. Indeed, Saint-Lambert could not really intrude in the relationship he destroyed. He could and did annihilate it, but only from without, and by accident.

  The years spent at Cirey, and in frequent journeys with Madame du Châtelet to Brussels, Lunéville, Paris, Sceaux, and Versailles, were important in the history of Voltaire’s intellectual development: they were years at once of consolidation and exploration. Hard work, regular work, was the rule of the household; interludes of gaiety and relaxation were well earned. Voltaire concerred himself more seriously than ever with moral philosophy, with the central problem of “happiness,” and, striving to reach bedrock, he grappled with “the four traditional problems of the Paduan School: the proofs of the existence of God, the nature and immortality of the soul, free-will, and the origin of evil.”6 With his mistress he sought to thread the mazes of metaphysics, which he always approached with suspicion; and with her he followed, at a distance, in the experimental footsteps of Newton, fitting up a laboratory which they furnished with all the latest scientific instruments and gadgets procurable. Together they read Leibnitz, Madame taking the lead in a study which was naturally uncongenial to her distinguished companion. Together they tried to weigh fire. With fimilie’s erudite assistance, Voltaire prepared his major scientific work, Elements of Newton’s Philosophy, designed to acquaint France wi
th the system of the great Englishman. Meanwhile, history was not abandoned: work went forward on the Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations, The Century of Louis XIV, and The Century of Louis XV. The Joan of Arc epic made ribald progress, by way of continual additions and revisions, providing its author with a constant means of diversion and refreshment.

  During these same years, Voltaire won and lost favor at Court, was appointed royal historiographer, and was belatedly welcomed by the immortal company of the French Academy. With brilliantly successful productions of Mahomet and Mérope, he added new laurel leaves to his dramatist’s crown; and, in the tale of Zadig, he proved himself master of a literary form which was to find its perfect flowering in Candide. His correspondence with Frederick of’ Prussia flourished. The prince sat at his feet for instruction, they spurred each other on to hyperboles of mutual flattery, and the king wooed the man of letters by post, presents, and ambassador; but the pursued stood fast against all blandishments, refused to part from her whom the monarch called “la sublime Émilie,” and made Frederick content himself, for the time being, with only brief glimpses of his “divin Voltaire.” Distinguished visitors came to Cirey, while correspondence linked the industrious household with a wide circle of famous and learned men. And, in addition to all these activities, there was another of prime importance that went steadily forward: a systematic, scholarly, textual demolishment of the Bible as the basis of an acceptable religion.

  This sustained excursion into recently opened regions of criticism bore fruit in a number of works later published by Voltaire, and in a huge manuscript, Examen de la Genèse, sometimes attributed to him, but now pretty definitely proved 7 to be the product of Madame du Châtelet’s industry; a product which, of course, came into existence assisted by endless conversational collaboration on the part of the lovers of Cirey. Biblical criticism, indeed, was to them as much an unfailing source of delight as it was an ever-present object of serious endeavor. They never tired of quoting the pioneer explorers in the field, chief among them Thomas Woolston, on whom they drew extensively; or of subjecting the scriptural Commentaries of Dom Calmet to the joint assault of their logic, their wit, and their historical knowledge. Verse by verse, chapter by chapter, book by book, they put Holy Writ under their rational microscope and found it a confused and confusing mass of incredible happenings, barbarous histories, contradictory testimony, and immoral anecdotes. Over their findings and conclusions there played the light of a lethal irony. They looked upon their work and found it good.

  During this protracted study, Voltaire confirmed ideas which he had long held without thorough documentation, and stored an armory from which he was to draw, for purposes of offensive and defensive warfare, for the rest of his life. His rejection of the Bible, which of course meant the complete rejection of Christianity, was at the heart of his thinking, and was a powerful spring of action. Had he believed that the fanatical churchmen against whom he fought were merely corrupt or degenerate representatives of a true religion, he might have wielded his weapons less furiously than he did. But he was convinced that they were entrenched impostors who fattened on the exploitation of a false religion; one whose foundations could not be reasonably defended for an hour against the assaults of history and logic. So he fought to kill.

  This brings us to the question of what Voltaire meant precisely by his famous term l‘infâme. Some shrinking writers have refused to face his meaning squarely, and have identified l’infâme with superstition and fanaticism in general. Others have come closer to the truth, without closing their fists firmly upon the nettle.

  “What was this famous thing?” asks one of Voltaire’s popular biographers.8 “A first rough answer to this question is easy. L’infâme was the accursed power that had bound Calas to a wheel and broken his limbs. It was the power that had tossed the spirited head of young De la Barre into the flames, and thrown the Philosophical Dictionary after it. It was the dark force, as stupid as it was cruel, that had robbed France of the hands and brains of half a million industrious Huguenots. It was a power with a venerable history behind it, yet still it lived in this happy century of enlightenment, rabid in Toulouse, brutal in Abbeville, and firmly entrenched in the highest law court of the capital. Call it, as you please, intolerance or superstition, every philosopher knew what it meant. It had dogged him through all the years of his mental life. It burned his books. It imposed on him constant resort to humiliating subterfuges and disguises. It stood over him with the perpetual threat of exile or prison. The time had come, Voltaire felt, to make an end.”

  In another popular Life,9 we read: “Friend and foe still remember him by that motto. [Ecrasez l’infâme.] The one has idly forgotten, and the other carefully misunderstands, what it means and meant. To many Christians, ‘Écrasez l’infâme’ is but the blasphemous outcry against the dearest and most sacred mysteries of their religion; and l’infâme means Christ. But to Voltaire, if it meant Christianity at all, it meant that which was taught in Rome in the eighteenth century, and not by the Sea of Galilee in the first. If it was Christianity at all, it was not the Christianity of Christ.”

  In such definitions as these, the nettle is indeed exposed, even seen for what it is; but it is dodged. No such evasive action is possible to those who read, without prejudice or fear, Voltaire’s own words.

  On January 5, 1767, he wrote to Frederick: “You are perfectly right, Sire. A wise and courageous prince, with money, troops, and laws, can perfectly well govern men without the aid of religion, which was made only to deceive them; but the stupid people would soon make one for themselves, and as long as there are fools and rascals there will be religions. Ours is assuredly the most ridiculous, the most absurd and the most bloody which has ever infected this world.” And Frederick replied, a month later: ”The Englishman Woolston calculated that the infamous would last two hundred years; he could not calculate what has happened quite recently. The question is to destroy the prejudice which serves as foundation to this edifice. It is crumbling of itself, and its fall will be but the more rapid. Bayle began this; he was followed by a number of Englishmen, and you were reserved to complete it.”

  These passages are sufficient to show that when Voltaire and Frederick traded remarks regarding l’infâme, they meant not merely intolerance or fanaticism, but established Christianity; and that they understood each other perfectly. They also show that both men felt the need of striking at the roots which nourish all religions. But let us look at another letter, which disposes once and for all of the pious idea that, “If it was Christianity at all, it was not the Christianity of Christ” that Voltaire opposed. On April 6, 1767, he wrote to his royal friend at Potsdam: “You are right to say that the infamous will never be destroyed by force of arms, for it would be necessary to fight for another superstition which would be accepted only if it were more abominable. Arms can dethrone a Pope, dispossess an ecclesiastical Elector, but not dethrone a delusion. I cannot conceive why you did not take some good bishopric, for the cost of the war, in the last treaty; but I realize that you will destroy the Christ-worshipping superstition only by the arms of reason.”

  No, one cannot dodge. Whether one likes it or not —and multitudes have disliked it, and do, and will dislike it, with all their being—Voltaire’s meaning is clear beyond argument. When he said, Écrasez l’infâme, he meant that Christianity must be wiped out root and branch; the whole structure—not only the Roman Catholic hierarchy with the Pope at its head, but the belief in Biblical revelation and “the Christ-worshipping superstition” (solace of millions) upon which organized Christianity was based, without which it would be nothing. To tear down the superstructure only, while leaving the foundations unassailed, would be an act of halfheartedness and folly.

  This one particular religion was Voltaire’s target because it was the one in power in the Europe of his day. Had another religion been dominant, he would have despised and attacked it with equal vigor. Of course, he did not condemn Christian morality, because he bel
ieved that the laws of right and wrong are known to all mankind, including Christians; a belief which he summed up in the statement, which may sound uninformed to a later generation, that there is only one morality just as there is only one geometry. Nor was he, according to his own thinking and that of his fellow deists, an atheist. He believed in the existence of God —a prime mover—for the homely reason that he found it impossible to conceive of a watch without a watchmaker. And did he not see the great watch of the universe, running marvelously, if not always beneficently as regarded mankind? The Church, quite naturally, could not distinguish for better or for worse between deism and atheism, any more than it can today; but this was hardly calculated to disturb a philosopher who looked upon the Church itself as a tower of falsehood, a fortress of superstition, while remaining comfortably sure that his own simple, if somewhat imprecise, belief in deity was the pure and inevitable product of self-sufficient reason.

  Frederick’s courtship of Voltaire had been long and ardent. The prince had offered himself unstintingly as a pupil and a friend; the king was able to offer far more as a powerful patron and protector. He would not be content until he had plucked from France this rare jewel among writers and set him down in Potsdam and Berlin as the brightest ornament of his very new Academy. If their words are to be believed, the admiration of the two men for each other was without bound, at least during the early stages of their intercourse. Voltaire, having addressed Frederick as a Horace, a Catullus, a Maecenas, an Alexander, a Socrates, a Trajan, an Augustus, and as the Solomon of the North; having, indeed, exhausted human comparisons, could only take leave of earth and salute his mighty friend by the supreme name of Gott-Frederick. The object of this eulogy returned the compliment by deferring to Voltaire as the wisest of men living or dead, and by declaring that the world could hope to look upon his like but once or twice in a thousand years. It was, of course, an age of gross flattery, but, after making all due allowances for the fashion of the day, we may still be fairly sure that the two men thought well of each other. Voltaire was genuinely tempted by what Frederick could give him, and Frederick yearned to stand before Europe as the patron of Voltaire. The victor of the Silesian Wars longed to be favored by the muses no less than by the god of battles. But, between the king’s desire and its satisfaction, there was always the sublime Emilie. And then, suddenly, she died at Lunéville.