The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

On November 11th, Voltaire, Collini, Madame Denis, a lady’s maid, and a servant left Colmar to visit the Duke of Richelieu at Lyons. Voltaire had lived at Colmar on and off for thirteen months—among Jesuits who five years earlier had publicly burnt the works of Bayle, the prophet of tolerance. He could not have left with regret. Just as they were starting off, Collini declares that his master, finding the travelling carriage overladen with luggage, gave orders that everything should be taken out except his own trunk and Madame Denis’s; and that he told Collini to sell his portmanteau and its contents. The hot-tempered young Italian refused to do so, and gave notice on the spot. On his own showing, his impetuous master made at once the handsomest apologies for his little burst of temper; gave the secretary generous presents of money as a peace-offering; and made him re-pack his portmanteau and put it back in the carriage. The storm blew over; but Collini, like almost all Voltaire’s servants, was beginning to take advantage of his master’s indulgence, and to trespass on a kindness which Voltaire made doubly kind to compensate for his irritability.

By November 15th, the party were installed in a very bad inn, called the “Palais Royal,” at Lyons. Voltaire complained that it was “a little too much of a joke for a sick man to come a hundred lieues to talk to the Maréchal de Richelieu.” But he and Richelieu were not only very old friends but, in spite of little disagreements such as that affair of the “Panegyric of Louis XV.” at Court in 1749, very faithful friends. The brilliant author and the brilliant soldier had still for each other the attraction which had been potent twenty years earlier in those June days at Montjeu, when Voltaire had negotiated the marriage between Mademoiselle de Guise and the gallant Duke. The charming wife had died young; and her husband and Voltaire had met little of late. But Voltaire received Richelieu in the bad inn, and clever Richelieu made the five days he stayed at Lyons so infinitely soothing and agreeable for his much tried and harassed friend, that when Richelieu left, Voltaire said he felt like Ariadne in Naxos after the desertion of Theseus.

While he was at Lyons the enterprising traveller also went to call on Cardinal de Tencin, head of the Church there, uncle of d’Argental, and brother of that famous Madame de Tencin who had played Thisbe to Voltaire’s Pyramus when Voltaire was in the Bastille in 1726. The wary Lord Cardinal stated to M. de Voltaire that he could not ask a person in such ill-favour with his Majesty of France to dine with him. Voltaire replied that he never dined out, and knew how to take his own part against kings and cardinals; and, so saying, turned his back on his Eminence and went out of the room. As he and Collini were returning from that brief visit, the visitor observed absently that this country was not made for him. The officer in command of the troops in Lyons received him in much the same way. All the authorities were cold, in fact, to propitiate that Highest Authority at the Court of France, who was colder still. However, their disapproval was not very afflicting. The town of Lyons saw Voltaire with bolder eyes. It acted his plays at the theatre; and when he appeared in his box there, loudly applauded him. On November 26th, he formally took his seat in the Lyons Academy, of which he had long been an honorary member. Then, too, Wilhelmina was in Lyons; and Wilhelmina used her shrewd influence with de Tencin, and at a second interview, behold! the Church and Deism on quite friendly terms.

As a whole, the Lyons visit was a success; or would have been but for Voltaire’s ill-health and “mortal anxieties” about “that cursed ‘Pucelle.’” He was afraid that it was in the possession of Mademoiselle du Thil, once companion to Madame du Châtelet, who had found it among Émilie’s effects. The ill-health, too, which took the form of gouty rheumatism this time, was so painful and annoying that many of his friends had strongly recommended him to try for it the waters of Aix-in-Savoy. In the meantime he had been lent “a charming house halfway.” On December 10, 1754, he, Madame Denis, and Collini left Lyons for ninety-three miles distant Geneva, which they reached on December 13th and found gaily celebrating a victory gained in 1602 over the Duke of Savoy. The gates of the city were shut for the night when they arrived. But the great M. de Voltaire was expected: and they were flung open for him. He supped that night in Geneva with a man who was to be till his death one of the best and wisest friends he ever had, the famous Dr. Tronchin.

No account of Voltaire’s life in Switzerland could be complete without mention of that honourable and celebrated family, who in the eighteenth century nobly filled many important posts in the Swiss republic and whose descendants are well known in it to the present day. One Tronchin, the Swiss jurisconsult, is celebrated as having provoked, by certain “Letters from the Country,” the famous “Letters from the Mountain” of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Another, the Councillor François Tronchin, the most delightful and hospitable of men, was at once the constant correspondent, the legal adviser—in brief, the factotum of Voltaire.

But the most famous of the family, as well as the one most intimately associated with Voltaire, was Theodore Tronchin, the doctor. Handsome face, noble mind, fearless spirit, with the stern uprightness of the Puritan, and an infinite benevolence and compassion all his own—if greatness meant only goodness, friend Theodore was a greater man than his great patient, Voltaire.

Yet, though no spark of the Voltairian genius was in him, he was the most enlightened doctor of his age. It is not only as the intimate of that “old baby” as he called him, the Patriarch of Ferney, that Tronchin may well interest the present day: but as the earliest discoverer—after eighteen centuries of stuffiness—of the value of fresh air; as the first of his class who preached the Gospel of Nature; recommended temperance, exercise, cleanliness in lieu of the drugs of the Pharmacopœia; and, after years of labour, taught the woman of his age to be very nearly as good a mother to her children as is the lioness to her cubs. Tronchin deserves to be famous.

It was he who discountenanced the idea of Voltaire trying the waters of Aix. Tronchin’s diagnosis always went through the body to the soul. No doubt he saw that this vif, irritable, nervous patient—torn to pieces with the quarrels and the excitement of the last five years—wanted, not the waters of Aix, but of Lethe: peace, quiet, monotony, and a home.

After four days’ stay in Geneva, Voltaire and suite reached the “charming house” which had been lent him, and which was ten miles from Geneva and called the Château of Prangins. It stood on very high ground, overlooking the lake from thirteen immense windows. There was too much house and too little garden. The house was only half furnished, and beaten by every wind that blew. And it was mid-winter in Switzerland. Was it really so charming? Madame Denis was volubly discontented. Italian Collini, who felt he had been cheated out of going to Paris, was extremely cross and cold. His master and mistress were always calling him to make up the fires, shut the windows, and bring them their furs. The draughts were really abominable. And what was one to do here? “Be bored; in a worse temper than usual; and write a great deal of history; be as bad a philosopher as in the town; and have not the slightest idea what is to become of us.” This was discontented Collini’s account of Prangins. He was pluming his wings for flight, and not at all in the mood to make the best of things.

It was Voltaire who did that. Between the grumbling niece and secretary, acutely sensitive himself to physical discomfort, not a little worried by the memory of that “abortion of a Universal History,” compelled to wait for a package of absolutely necessary books that ought to have come from Paris and had not, so ill that by January 3, 1755, he could not even hold a pen, he was still, in spite of angry Collini’s insinuations, the same true philosopher who had astronomised with Madame du Châtelet sitting by the roadside on a January evening on the cushions of their broken-down carriage. He was still busy and cheerful. “They have need of courage,” he wrote of his companions, very justly. As for himself, he worked and forgot the cold. It was in these early days of his life in Switzerland that he arranged with the Brothers Cramer, the famous publishers of Geneva, to bring out the first complete edition of his writings. Then he heard from d’Argental that the public of Paris resented his exile. What warmth and comfort in that! “Nanine” was played there with success; and a play of Crébillon’s was a failure. That would have made one glow with satisfaction in any climate. And if Prangins was cold, two at least of the influential persons in the neighbourhood had written warmly to assure the famous newcomer of their good offices.