Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

In 1729, when he was thirty-five, he obtained a license to return to France, which he had only been able to visit secretly, now and then, during his stay in England. He devoted the next four years to great literary activity. Whatever he wrote always produced a certain sensation, and often brought him into trouble. Among the best of his productions were Zaïre, the most successful of all his plays, and The Temple of Taste, a brilliant burlesque, in which he satirized the overrated celebrities of the day. Owing to the death of one of his patrons with whom he had been staying, he was obliged to go into uncomfortable lodgings in a poor quarter of Paris. But whether he was in a castle or a garret, his genius for hard work never left him. The censor kept his eye on this man, who seemed bent on startling and shocking the authorities, so that Voltaire was often obliged to get his writings privately printed and secretly distributed, and even on some occasions to deny the authorship of the offending works. Things came to a head when his English Letters appeared. They were by way of being criticism and praise of England, but at the same time they were a vehement attack on everything established in Church and State in France. The printer was thrown into the Bastille. The book was denounced and publicly burnt by the hangman as “scandalous, contrary to religion, to morals, and respect for authority.” His lodgings were searched, but when the officer came to arrest him the author was found to have escaped.

France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, more than any other country at any other time, produced a number of women who occupied a very leading position, not only in the high society of Paris, but in the intellectual and political life of the nation. They collected in their houses all the eminent men of letters and science and politics, who not only came to meet one another, but were attracted by the charm, the beauty, the wit, and the intelligence of their hostesses. Attempts have been made at other times and in other countries to imitate these French salons, but without anything like the same success. The names of some of these women have become historical—Madame de Sévigné, Madame de Staël, Ninon de l’Enclos, Madame du Châtelet, Madame du Deffand, Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse—to mention only a few of them. Voltaire was a favorite with those of his time, more especially with Madame du Châtelet, who went so far as to place her castle at Cirey at his disposal. She was a very clever woman, wrote books on philosophy, and at the same time she was extremely frivolous—just the sort of combination Voltaire loved. At Cirey he interested himself in refurnishing the house and in gardening. He set up a laboratory and experimented in physics; he busied himself with iron-founding; he studied astronomy and philosophy with his hostess, made love to her, quarreled with her over trifles, for she had a very hot temper; and all the while kept on producing an almost incredible amount of writings. Cirey became his home and headquarters till Madame du Châtelet died in 1749. During this period he came again into Court favor, wrote a play which was performed before the King, and was made Historiographer and Gentleman of the Chamber.

One of the most curious and interesting incidents in Voltaire’s life was his friendship with Frederick the Great of Prussia. After the exchange of many enthusiastic and ridiculously complimentary letters, they met first in 1740, and subsequently Voltaire went over to Berlin on a diplomatic mission. But it was not till 1751 that he went and stayed for any length of time with his royal friend. Half the world watched the meetings of the two most prominent men of the day. They were very different, and this made their intimacy all the more surprising. The very slender link that united them was little more than flattery. The worst qualities of both soon came to the front, and led finally to their separation. Frederick was an arrogant disciplinarian, combining with his genius as a soldier an artistic sense and some literary talent. He welcomed Voltaire because he liked to gather round him celebrated men of every description, and he hoped to gain advantage from the advice and amusement from the company of the greatest writer and wit of his age. Voltaire, on his side, loved appreciation, especially from great people. The pomp and display of Courts attracted him; he was taken in by the honors and praise that were lavishly showered on him. He was content to correct Frederick’s writings, and to be in close contact with the great man. But, like a spoilt child, he became mischievous, and the harmony between the two men, which was only on the surface, became a hideous discord.

Voltaire was given apartments in the palace; he was made a royal chamberlain, decorated with an order, and granted a pension. Royal servants attended on him; he supped with the King, and took part in an endless round of feasts and entertainments. But foolishly delighted as he was with all these honors, he noticed that the King was apt to give a sly scratch with one hand while patting and stroking with the other. Voltaire used to refer to him by the nickname “Luc,” after an ape which had a knack of biting. “The supper parties are delicious,” he wrote; “the King is the life of the company. I have operas and comedies, reviews and concerts, my studies and books: Berlin is fine, the princesses charming, the maids of honor handsome, but ... !”

The magnificence of his style of living gradually began to fall off, and Frederick cut down his allowance of sugar, coffee and chocolate, and the philosopher stooped to pocketing candle-ends from the royal apartments. Voltaire began quarreling with others at the Court. Plots and intrigues, petty jealousies and rivalries began to make his life intolerable. He was mixed up in a discreditable affair connected with money matters which came out in a sordid dispute between him and a Jew named Hirsch. In fact, all the glamour was fading; the glitter was proving to be very far from gold. He never took the trouble to learn German, as French was the language of the Court and good German books were rare. Lessing, the founder of modern German literature, was still quite a young man. The two men met and made friends, but the inevitable quarrel soon separated them.

At last Voltaire became bored to death with correcting Frederick’s verses: “See,” he exclaimed when a batch was sent to him, “what a quantity of dirty linen the King has sent me to wash.” The remark reached the royal ear, while on the other hand Voltaire was told that Frederick when speaking of him had said something about “sucking an orange and throwing away the rind.” The finishing touch to the growing estrangement was put by Voltaire’s wittiest and most pitiless personal satire on Maupertuis, the president of the Berlin Academy, a vain but worthy individual. Frederick could not help laughing at it, but he forbade its publication. Voltaire pretended to agree, but in a few days the Diatribe of Doctor Akakia appeared. It was received with great applause and merriment, but Frederick was furious. He ordered the pamphlet to be burned by the hangman and insisted on an apology from Voltaire, who in his turn sent back his order and chamberlain’s key. This was the last straw, and Voltaire left Berlin. But he carried off with him a volume of Frederick’s verses, probably as a curiosity. He was arrested at Frankfurt and treated with uncalled-for brutality by order of the King.

The whole visit reflects no credit whatever on either of the parties. Voltaire’s foolish vanity and hot temper seem to have obscured an intellect shrewd enough to have known that such a life as he lived in the Prussian capital was empty, profitless, and utterly vain. For Frederick there was more excuse, because monarchs at all times have claimed service and homage in return for a passing smile of friendship; Court attendance they have considered a sufficiently rich reward for any devotion; and thrones have ever been surrounded by the refuse of orange-rinds out of which the juice has been sucked.

Voltaire, now over sixty, entered upon the last phase of his life, which was the calmest and certainly the noblest. After wandering from place to place, he settled down at last in a house just outside Geneva, which he called Les Délices. Here he entertained many visitors and had a private theater in which his own plays were performed, he himself always taking a part and stage managing. He kept up a voluminous correspondence and continued to exchange letters with Frederick, quarreling as usual but finally making it up. He wrote at this time one of his most famous works, “Candide,” which was inspired by an earthquake at Lisbon, and in it he ridiculed the idea that everything was for the best in the best possible of all worlds. The book was burned by order of the Council of Geneva. But Voltaire was now accustomed to his writings being treated in this way.

In appearance he must have been a very peculiar figure. He was very thin, he had a long nose and protruding chin, and his face always wore an amused but rather mischievous smile. His sparkling eyes, peering from under his heavy wig, showed he was very much alive. His health always troubled him, and nobody spoke about dying so much or thought so little about death. From Les Délices he would drive into Geneva in an extraordinary old-fashioned carriage painted blue with gold stars and drawn by four horses. On one occasion a crowd assembled to see him alight. “What do you want to see, boobies?” he cried. “A skeleton? Well, here is one!” And he threw off his cloak.

A few years later he bought another property near by, called Ferney, and erected a château, where he spent the remainder of his days. Here he developed into a complete country gentleman, and came to be known all over Europe as the Squire of Ferney. He took great pride in all the details of the arrangements in the house. He had a bath-room made, which in those days was an almost unknown luxury, but he was very particular in matters of cleanliness and was very neat and tidy. His niece, Madame Denis, however, who kept house for him, was slovenly and a bad manager. She was an ugly and tiresome woman, without humor or even common sense. She actually wrote a comedy, which the players, out of respect for Voltaire, declined to act. She was responsible for a good deal of extravagance in the household, as well as neglect in keeping the house clean. Her uncle, who could not bear the sight of a cobweb, took advantage of her absence in Paris at one time to have the whole house cleaned from top to bottom. There were a large number of servants, and two of them once robbed their master. The police having got wind of the matter, Voltaire sent a message to the culprits to fly directly, or else he would not be able to save them from hanging. He even sent them money for the journey. So touched were they by his generosity that, having got away successfully, they settled down to live honest lives. Gardens, park, farms, nurseries, bees and silkworms, all received personal attention from this wonderful little old philosopher. An immense number of visitors, many of them celebrated people, were entertained, and after theatricals, sometimes as many as eighty people sat down to supper. Indeed, he became a little weary of being what he called “an hotel-keeper.” Some visitors stayed with him for a considerable time, and the grand-niece of the poet Corneille he adopted as a daughter.