The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

In that wicked world of the eighteenth century there were few good bishops. But the Prelate of Annecy was one of them. He was also of strong character and of sound judgment and reason, with a fine capacity for irony.

On April 11, 1768, he wrote Voltaire a very excellent letter. He could not take, he said, as hypocrisy a deed which, if hypocritical, would tarnish a great man’s glory and make him despicable in the eyes of all thoughtful persons. “I hope your future life will give proof of the integrity and sincerity of your act”; and then, in language of great dignity and even beauty, he attempted to recall the sinner to a sense of sin, and reminded him of that hour which could not now be far distant, when the faith would be his only hope, and his fame and glory the shadows of a dream.

Voltaire replied on April 15th, purposely misunderstanding the Bishop’s letter and taking his remarks as compliments. He felt the act needed excuse. To d’Alembert, who was as freethinking as any man in Paris, he wrote apologetically, that, finding himself between two fourteenth-century bishops, he was obliged to “howl with the wolves.” He abused Biort as a fanatic and an imbecile. But he knew very well that he was neither. He was not so imbecile, at least, that he put any faith in a devout and serious letter M. de Voltaire was pleased to write to him on April 29th, and replied on May 2d in terms which showed very clearly that he knew his Voltaire—to the soul.

He had already issued a mandate to the clergy of his diocese forbidding them to give the Sacrament to this profane person. He now sent the whole correspondence to the King, and, as the only punishment adequate to the offence, he begged for a lettre de cachet for M. de Voltaire. Saint-Florentin was bidden to write the culprit a formal epistle, saying that the King strongly condemned “this enterprise” on the part of his ex-Gentleman-in-Ordinary. But there was no lettre de cachet. The incident had amused the Court. That covered a multitude of sins.

For the time the affair was over. But alas! only for the time.

Though there were few visitors in Madame Denis’s absence, there were some. In the August of this 1768 two very lively young men, both about twenty years old, came over from Geneva to call upon the Patriarch of Ferney. One of them, named Price, told a friend more than forty years after, the little he recollected of the occasion. His companion was then known as the son of Lord Holland, but later and now as Charles James Fox. He had first visited Ferney in 1764 when he was sixteen.

Voltaire was delighted to see his visitors, but, as usual, declared that they had only come to bury him; and though he walked about the garden and drank chocolate with them, did not invite them to dinner.

The only part of their conversation Price recollected after that interval of forty years was that the host gave them the names of such of his works as might open their minds and “free them from religious prejudice,” adding, “Here are the books with which to fortify yourselves.”

Charles paid other visits to Ferney, and Voltaire soon learnt to love him, as all the world loved that generous and brilliant youth. “Yʳ son is an English lad and j an old Frenchman,” the Patriarch wrote to Lord Holland after Charles’s next visit. “He is healthy and j sick. Yet j love him with all my heart, not only for his father but himself.” Voltaire gave the young man dinner this time, in his “little caban”; and Charles became a persona grata at Ferney, as in all the world.

Another Englishman with whom Voltaire was brought into relation in the summer of 1768 was Horace Walpole. Voltaire had seen Horace’s “Historic Doubts on Richard III.,” and characteristically wrote that it was fifty years since he took a vow to doubt, and reminded Horace that he had known his father and uncle in England. Horace sent a copy of his book, and the correspondence drifted on to that favourite topic of contention between literary Englishmen and Voltaire—Shakespeare. Voltaire, who wrote in his own language—what need to write in English to “the best Frenchman ever born on English soil”?—pointed out with just pride in reply that he had been the first to make Shakespeare, Locke, and Newton known to the French, and that, in spite of the persecutions of a clique of fanatics. “I have been your apostle and your martyr: truly English people have no reason to complain of me.”