The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

On September 7th he returned to Brussels, not having been absent a week. Madame du Châtelet longed to get back to the gaieties of Paris, though Voltaire, who was ill enough to be able to write nothing but verses, said Madame, was well content in Brussels.

He went back to the capital, however, in this November of 1742, and was not a little vif and active in getting imprisoned certain publishers who had produced “the most infamous satire” on himself and Madame du Châtelet.

He was soon also busy on a scheme which he had tried successfully ten years before. When “Êriphyle” failed he brought out “Zaire.” When the authorities damned “Mahomet” he produced “Mérope. “ Ten years—ten years of battles and disappointments, of wretched health and domestic vicissitudes—had not robbed him of one iota of his pluck, energy, and enterprise. He flung off that lassitude and despair of life which came upon him in those few dismal days in Brussels: searched among his manuscripts: discovered “Mérope,” and went out to meet the enemy with that weapon in his hand. It had been written in the early days at Cirey, between 1736 and 1738. It was the play over which Madame de Graffigny had “wept to sobs.” Voltaire had wept over it himself. He felt what he wrote when he wrote it, so acutely that there was no wonder his readers were moved too. His own wit and pathos always retained their power to touch him to tears or laughter whenever he read them, which is more unusual.

“Mérope” is a classic tragedy—“a tragedy without love in it and only the more tender for that,” wrote Voltaire to Cideville. It turns on maternal affection. The idea is uncommon and daring enough. Would the venture be successful? Madame de Graffigny had wept indeed; but then Graffignys weep and laugh easily, especially when the author is also the host. Mademoiselle Quinault and d’Argental had told him that “Mérope” was unactable to a French parterre.

The Marquise had mocked at it; but then the Marquise had happened to be in a very bad temper with the playwright. Who could tell? If taking pains could make it succeed, a success it would be. The author, himself no mean actor, attended the rehearsal and coached the players. When Mademoiselle Dumesnil, who was cast for “Mérope,” failed to rise to the height of tragedy demanded in the fourth act where she has to throw herself between her son and the guards leading him to execution, crying “Barbare! il est mon fils!”—she complained she would have to have the devil in her to simulate such a passion as Voltaire required. “That is just it, Mademoiselle,” cried he. “You must have the devil in you to succeed in any of the arts!” There was never a truer word. He did manage to put a good deal of the devil into Mademoiselle. She became a famous actress. His own fervour was infectious. The players, who had disliked the play at first, caught his own enthusiasm for it at last. On February 20, 1743, it was first represented to a house crowded with persons who had admired “Mahomet” and sympathised with the treatment of “Mahomet’s” author. It was the best first night on record. Mademoiselle Dumesnil kept the house in tears throughout three acts, it is said. For the first time in any theatre the enthusiastic audience demanded the appearance of the author. He was in a box with the Duchesse de Boufflers and the Duchesse de Luxembourg and entirely declined to present himself on the stage. His Duchesses tried to persuade him, with no better success than the audience. He kissed the Duchesse de Luxembourg’s hand and left the box, “with a resigned air,” and tried to hide himself in another part of the house. But he was discovered, and drawn into the box of the Maréchale de Villars for whom he had once felt something more than the feelings of a friend. How long ago that was—Villars and its white nights—a young man of five-and-twenty, and Madame, gracious, svelte, and woman of the world to the tips of her fingers! She had become dévote since. “She was made to lead us all to Heaven or Hell, whichever she chooses,” wrote Voltaire airily. As for himself, he had his Marquise du Châtelet. The moment was not one for reminiscences in any case. The parterre was not to be silenced. The story runs that it vociferously insisted that Madame de Villars, the young daughter-in-law of his old love, should kiss M. de Voltaire. The Maréchale ordered her to do so, and Voltaire wrote after that he was like Alain Chartier and the Princess Margaret of Scotland—“only he was asleep and I was awake.”

He enjoyed that evening as only a Frenchman can enjoy. He was all his life intensely susceptible to the emotions of the moment; vain with the light-hearted vanity of a very young man; loving show and glitter, applause and flattery—a true child of France, though one of the greatest of her great family. Was it not a triumph over his enemies too? What might not follow from it? Voltaire said thereafter that the distinction between himself and Jean Jacques Rousseau was that Jean Jacques wrote in order to write, and he wrote in order to act. Of what use was the dazzling success of “Mérope” if it could not buy him a place he had long coveted and gratify one of the darling desires of his soul?

On January 29th of this same year 1743 had died Voltaire’s friend, Cardinal Fleury. He left vacant one of the forty coveted chairs in the French Academy. Who should aspire to it if not the man who had written the “Henriade” and the “English Letters,” “Zaire,” “Alzire,” “Mahomet,” and “Mérope”? It would be no empty honour, but a safeguard against his enemies: the hall-mark of the King’s favour.

The King was for his election; so was the King’s mistress, Madame de Châteauroux; but against it, and bitterly against it, were Maurepas, Secretary of State, and Boyer, Bishop of Mirepoix, and tutor of the Dauphin. Voltaire always called Boyer the “âne de Mirepoix” from the fact that he signed himself “anc: de Mirepoix,” meaning that he was formerly bishop of that place—and it must be conceded that, if conscientious, he was one of the most narrow-minded old prelates who ever fattened at a court. He has been well summed up as a man who “reaped all the honours and sowed none.” His argument was that it would offend Heaven for a profane person like M. de Voltaire to succeed a cardinal in any office. To be sure, the chairs in the Academy were designed to reward literary, not ecclesiastical, merit. But what was that to a Boyer?

Voltaire wrote long letters which are masterpieces of subtlety and special pleading to prove what a good Christian and Churchman he was, and how suited in character, as well as ability, to be the successor of a prelate. He did not stop at a lie. In a letter to Boyer written at the end of February he declared himself a sincere Catholic, and added that he had never written a page which did not breathe humanity (which was true enough) and many sanctified by religion (which was very untrue indeed). He conclusively proved (cannot one fancy the twinkle in his eager eyes as he penned the words?) that “the ‘Henriade’ from one end to the other is nothing but an éloge of a virtue which submits to Providence,” and that most of the “English Letters,” current in Paris, were not written by him at all. The mixture of the false and the true is so clever that it might have deceived anybody. Voltaire may have argued with himself that since he knew it would deceive nobody, the lying was very venial indeed. What did it matter what he said now? It was the master motives which had ruled his life, the passion for freedom of thought and action, the sceptical temper, the burning longing for light and knowledge which panted in every page of every play, in every line almost of his graver works, which counted against him. He was excluded from the Academy. The Ass of Mirepoix won M. de Voltaire’s seat for a bishop—of very slender literary capacity indeed. Voltaire wrote lightly that it was according to the canons of the Church that a prelate should succeed a prelate, and that “a profane person like myself must renounce the Academy for ever.”

But he was bitterly disappointed not the less. Frederick the Great, in a kingly pun, said that he believed that France was now the only country in Europe where “âncs” and fools could make their fortunes. In 1743 England elected Voltaire a member of her Royal Society. During the year four other chairs fell vacant at the French Academy. But the greatest literary genius of the age, perhaps of any age, was not even mooted as a candidate. It was Montesquieu, the famous author of “L’Esprit des Lois,” who said scornfully of the occasion and of Voltaire: