CHAPTER XVIII.
FRENCH POETS.
VOLTAIRE AND MADAME DU CHATELET.
If we take a rapid view of French literature, from the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, down to the Revolution, we are dazzled by the record of brilliant and celebrated women, who protected or cultivated letters, and obtained the homage of men of talent. There was Ninon; and there was Madame de Rambouillet; the one galante, the other precieuse. One had her St. Evremond; the other her Voiture. Madame de Sablière protected La Fontaine; Madame de Montespan protected Molière; Madame de Maintenon protected Racine. It was all patronage and protection on one side, and dependance and servility on the other. Then we have the intrigante Madame de Tencin;[137] the good-natured, but rather bornée Madame de Géoffrin; the Duchesse de Maine, who held a little court of bel esprits and small poets at Sçeaux, and is best known as the patroness of Mademoiselle de Launay. Madame d'Epinay, the amie of Grimm, and the patroness of Rousseau; the clever, selfish, witty, ever ennuyée, never ennuyeuse Madame du Deffand; the ardent, talented Mademoiselle de l'Espinasse, who would certainly have been a poetess, if she had not been a philosopheress and a Frenchwoman: Madame Neckar, the patroness of Marmontel and Thomas:—e tutte quante. If we look over the light French literature of those times, we find an inconceivable heap of vers galans, and jolis couplets, licentious songs, pretty, well-turned compliments, and most graceful badinage; but we can discover the names of only two distinguished women, who have the slightest pretensions to a poetical celebrity, derived from the genius, the attachment, and the fame of their lovers. These were Madame du Châtelet, Voltaire's "Immortelle Emilie:" and Madame d'Houdetot, the Doris of Saint-Lambert.
Gabrielle-Emilie le Tonnelier de Bréteuil, was the daughter of the Baron de Bréteuil, and born in 1706. At an early age she was taken from her convent, and married to the Marquis du Châtelet; and her life seems thenceforward to have been divided between two passions, or rather two pursuits rarely combined,—love, and geometry. Her tutor in both is said to have been the famous mathematician Clairaut; and between them they rendered geometry so much the fashion at one time, that all the women, who were distinguished either for rank or beauty, thought it indispensable to have a geometrician in their train. The "Poëtes de Société" hid for a while their diminished heads, or were obliged to study geometry pour se mettre à la mode.[138] Her friendship with Voltaire began to take a serious aspect, when she was about eight-and-twenty, and he was about forty; he is said to have succeeded that roué par excellence, the Duc de Richelieu, in her favour.
This woman might have dealt in mathematics,—might have inked her fingers with writing treatises on the Newtonian philosophy; she might have sat up till five in the morning, solving problems and calculating eclipses;—and yet have possessed amiable, elevated, generous, and attractive qualities, which would have thrown a poetical interest round her character; moreover, considering the horribly corrupt state of French society at that time, she might have been pardoned "une vertu de moins," if her power over a great genius had been exercised to some good purpose;—to restrain his licentiousness, to soften his pungent and merciless satire, and prevent the frequent prostitution of his admirable and versatile talents. But a female sceptic, profligate from temperament and principle; a termagant, "qui voulait furieusement tout ce qu'elle voulait; "a woman with all the suffisance of a pedant, and all the exigeance, caprices, and frivolity of a fine lady,—grands dieux! what a heroine for poetry!
To a taste for Newton and the stars, and geometry and algebra, Madame du Châtelet added some other tastes, not quite so sublime;—a great taste for bijoux—and pretty gimcracks—and old china—and watches—and rings—and diamonds—and snuff-boxes—and—puppet-shows![139] and, now and then, une petite affaire du cœur, by way of variety.
Tout lui plait, tout convient à son vaste genie:
Les livres, les bijoux, les compas, les pompons,
Les vers, les diamants, le biribi,[140] l'optique,
L'algêbre, les soupers, le latin, les jupons,
L'opéra, les procès, le bal, et la physique!
This "Minerve de la France, la respectable Emilie," did not resemble Minerva in all her attributes; nor was she satisfied with a succession of lovers. The whole history of her liaison with Voltaire, is enough to put en déroute all poetry, and all sentiment. With her imperious temper and bitter tongue, and his extreme irritability, no wonder they should have des scênes terribles.[141] Marmontel says they were often à couteaux tirés; and this, not metaphorically but literally. On one occasion, Voltaire happened to criticise some couplets she had written for Madame de Luxembourg. "L'Amante de Newton"[142] could calculate eclipses, but she could not make verses; and, probably, for that reason, she was most particularly jealous of all censure, while she criticised Voltaire without manners or mercy; and he endured it, sometimes with marvellous patience.
A dispute was now the consequence; both became furious; and at length Voltaire snatched up a knife, and brandishing it exclaimed, "ne me regarde donc pas avec tes yeux hagards et louches!" After such a scene as this one would imagine that Love must have spread his light wings and fled for ever. Could Emilie ever have forgiven those words, or Voltaire have forgotten the look that provoked them?
But the mobilité of his mind was one of the most extraordinary parts of his character, and he was not more irascible than he was easily appeased. Madame du Châtelet maintained her power over him for twenty years; during five of which they resided in her château at Cirey, under the countenance of her husband; he was a good sort of man, but seems to have been considered by these two geniuses and their guests as a complete nonentity. He was "Le bon-homme, le vilain petit Trichateau" whom it was a task to speak to, and a penance to amuse. Every day, after coffee, Monsieur rose from the table with all the docility imaginable, leaving Voltaire and Madame to recite verses, translate Newton, philosophise, dispute, and do the honours of Cirey to the brilliant society who had assembled under his roof.
While the boudoir, the laboratory, and the sleeping-room of the lady, and the study and gallery appropriated to Voltaire, were furnished with Oriental luxury and splendour, and shone with gilding, drapery, pictures, and baubles, the lord of the mansion and the guests were destined to starve in half-furnished apartments, from which the wind and the rain were scarcely excluded.[143]
In 1748, Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet paid a visit to the Court of Stanislas, the ex-king of Poland, at Luneville, and took M. du Châtelet in their train. There Madame du Châtelet was seized with a passion for Saint-Lambert, the author of the "Saisons," who was at least ten or twelve years younger than herself, and then a jeune militaire, only admired for his fine figure and pretty vers de société. Voltaire, it is said, was extremely jealous; but his jealousy did not prevent him from addressing some very elegant verses to his handsome rival, in which he compliments him gaily on the good graces of the lady.
Saint-Lambert, ce n'est que pour toi
Que ces belles fleurs sont écloses,
C'est ta main qui cueille les roses,
Et les épines sont pour moi![144]
Some months afterwards, Madame du Châtelet died in child-birth, in her forty-fourth year.
Voltaire was so overwhelmed by this loss, that he set off for Paris immediately pour se dissiper. Marmontel has given us a most ludicrous account of a visit of condolence he paid him on this occasion. He found Voltaire absolutely drowned in tears, and at every fresh burst of sorrow, he called on Marmontel to sympathise with him. "Helas! j'ai perdu mon illustre amie! Ah! ah! je suis au desespoir!"—Then exclaiming against Saint-Lambert, whom he accused as the cause of the catastrophe—"Ah! mon ami! il me l'a tuée, le brutal!" while Marmontel, who had often heard him abuse his "sublime Emilie" in no measured terms, as "une furie, attachée à ses pas," hid his face with his handkerchief in pretended sympathy, but in reality to conceal his irrepressible smiles. In the midst of this scene of despair, some ridiculous idea or story striking Voltaire's vivid fancy, threw him into fits of laughter, and some time elapsed before he recollected that he was inconsolable.
The death of Madame du Châtelet, the circumstances which attended it, and the celebrity of herself and her lover, combined to cause a great sensation. No elegies indeed appeared on the occasion,—"no tears eternal that embalm the dead;" but a shower of epigrams and bon mots—some exquisitely witty and malicious. The story of her ring, in which Voltaire and her husband each expected to find his own portrait, and which on being opened, was found, to the utter discomfiture of both, to contain that of Saint-Lambert, is well known.
If we may judge from her picture, Madame du Châtelet must have been extremely pretty. Her eyes were fine and piercing; her features delicate, with a good deal of finesse and intelligence in their expression. But her countenance, like her character, was devoid of interest. She had great power of mental abstraction; and on one occasion she went through a most complicated calculation of figures in her head, while she played and won a game at piquet. She could be graceful and fascinating, but her manners were, in general, extremely disagreeable; and her parade of learning, her affectation, her egotism, her utter disregard of the comforts, feelings, and opinions of others, are well pourtrayed in two or three brilliant strokes of sarcasm from the pen of Madame de Stael.[145] She even turns her philosophy into ridicule. "Elle fait actuellement la revue de ses Principes;[146] c'est un exercise qu'elle réitère chaque année, sans quoi ils pourroient s'échapper; et peut-être s'en aller si loin qu'elle n'en retrouverait pas un seul. Je crois bien que sa tête est pour eux une maison de force, et non pas le lieu de leur naissance."[147]
That Madame du Châtelet was a woman of extraordinary talent, and that her progress in abstract sciences was uncommon, and even unique at that time, at least among her own sex, is beyond a doubt; but her learned treatises on Newton, and the nature of fire, are now utterly forgotten. We have since had a Mrs. Marcet; and we have read of Gaetana Agnesi, who was professor of mathematics in the University of Padua; two women who, uniting to the rarest philosophical acquirements, gentleness and virtue, have needed no poet to immortalize them.
Of the numerous poems which Voltaire addressed to Madame du Châtelet, the Epistle beginning
Tu m'appelles à toi, vaste et puissant génie,
Minerve de la France, immortelle Emilie,
is a chef d'œuvre, and contains some of the finest lines he ever wrote. The Epistle to her on calumny, written to console her for the abuse and ridicule which her abstractions and indiscretions had provoked, begins with these beautiful lines—
Ecoutez-moi, respectable Emilie:
Vous êtes belle; ainsi donc la moitié
Du genre humain sera votre ennemie:
Vous possédez un sublime génie;
On vous craindra; votre tendre amitié
Est confiante; et vous serez trahie:
Votre vertu dans sa démarche unie,
Simple et sans fard, n'a point sacrifié
A nos dévots; craignez la calomnie.
With that famous ring, from which he had afterwards the mortification to discover that his own portrait had been banished to make room for that of Saint-Lambert, he sent her this elegant quatrain.
Barier grava ces traits destinés pour vos yeux;
Avec quelque plaisir daignez les reconnoitre:
Les vòtres dans mon cœur furent gravés bien mieux,
Mais ce fut par un plus grand maitre.
The heroine of the famous Epistle, known as "Les tu et les vous," (Madame de Gouverné,) was one of Voltaire's earliest loves; and he was passionately attached to her. They were separated in the world:—she went through the usual routine of a French woman's existence,—I mean, of a French woman sous l'ancien régime.
Quelques plaisirs dans la jeunesse,
Des soins dans la maternité,
Tous les malheurs dans la vieillesse,
Puis la peur de l'éternité.
She was first dissipated; then an esprit fort; then très dévote. In obedience to her confessor, she discarded, one after the other, her rouge, her ribbons, and the presents and billets-doux of her lovers; but no remonstrances could induce her to give up Voltaire's picture. When he returned from exile in 1778, he went to pay a visit to his old love; they had not met for fifty years, and they now gazed on each other in silent dismay. He looked, I suppose, like the dried mummy of an ape: she, like a withered sorcière. The same evening she sent him back his portrait, which she had hitherto refused to part with. Nothing remained to shed illusion over the past; she had beheld, even before the last terrible proof—
What dust we doat on, when 'tis man we love.
And Voltaire, on his side, was not less dismayed by his visit. On returning from her, he exclaimed, with a shrug of mingled disgust and horror, "Ah, mes amis! je viens de passer à l'autre bord du Cocyte!" It was not thus that Cowper felt for his Mary, when "her auburn locks were changed to grey:" but it is almost an insult to the memory of true tenderness to mention them both in the same page.
To enumerate other women who have been celebrated by Voltaire, would be to give a list of all the beautiful and distinguished women of France for half a century; from the Duchess de Richelieu and Madame de Luxembourg, down to Camargo the dancer, and Clairon and le Couvreur the actresses: but I can find no name of any poetical fame or interest among them: nor can I conceive any thing more revolting than the history of French society and manners during the Regency and the whole of the reign of Louis the Fifteenth.