The life of Voltaire

by Evelyn Beatrice Hall

At seven, he had his evening concert, small, select, delightful. “If you think the King loves music,” said someone, “you are wrong. He loves only the flute and only his own flute.” (To be sure, such an egoism has been known as a love of music both before and since.) No women were admitted. Frederick the Great’s dislike of that sex is historical, and was always consistent and unmoved. And then, at nine o’clock began those immortal suppers of the gods. Voltaire was of course of them from the earliest days of his stay in Prussia.

Half Europe watched them from afar. Much more than half the genius of Europe would have paid a high price to have been of them. They generally consisted of about ten persons. The only language spoken was French, and more than half the habitués were of that favoured nation. The other half included two Scotchmen, one Prussian, and that great Prussian-Frenchman, Frederick himself. Baculard d’Arnaud, though living at Potsdam and under the immediate eye and favour of the King, was not invited. The meal was severely sober and frugal. The King rose at twelve, as clear-headed as he had sat down. Sometimes his guests prolonged that feast of reason far into the morning. The servants who waited on them contracted, it is said, swellings in the legs from too much standing. Occasionally, Frederick was not of the party at all. He supped with Colonel Balby instead. “What is the King doing this evening?” it was asked of Voltaire. “Il balbutie” was the ready answer.

Great among the convives of the supper was Maupertuis, the pompous and touchy geometrician, the President of the Berlin Academy, and once the friend and the tutor of Madame du Châtelet. He had stayed at Cirey in 1739. Voltaire had never liked anything about him but his talents. Surly, solemn, and unsociable, he was already antipathetic in every attribute of his character to the brilliant Frenchman.

Another visitor of Cirey, was also of the suppers—Algarotti, the amiable Italian, the agreeable man of the world, the “Swan of Padua,” whose “Newtonianism for Ladies” Émilie’s Newton had so completely eclipsed.

Here too was La Mettrie, a freethinking French doctor of medicine, with his ribald rollicking stories and his bold atheism, “the most frank and the most foolish of men.” He had become notorious as the author of a book called “The Man Machine” in which he had gaily proved, to his own satisfaction, the material nature of the soul.

Then there was “the brave Major Chasot,” an excellent type of a gallant eighteenth-century French gentleman. He had saved the King’s life at the battle of Mollwitz, but owed the coveted entrée to the suppers less to that heroism than to the facts that he was French and flute-player.

Here too was d’Argens, a profligate French marquis, whom Frederick loved for “his wit, his learning, and his person”; and who was at once credulous and sceptical, freethinking and superstitious.

The other Frenchman was Darget, reader, confidant, and secretary to the royal host, very discreet, reserved, and judicious, a man to be trusted. It did not take a subtle Voltaire long to recognise the value of the friendship of this friend of the King. Frederick often wrote to Voltaire through Darget, and Voltaire replied to Darget in terms of tenderness and admiration.

Then there was the French ambassador of Irish birth—Lord Tyrconnel—famous for giving heavy dinners, whose rôle “was to be always at table,” and who had the brusque honest speech of British forbears. Lady Tyrconnel had receptions in Berlin and presently acted in Voltaire’s company of noble amateurs.

The Scotchmen were the two brothers George and James Keith, Jacobites and gentlemen, “not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors,” the only friends of the King whom his bitter tongue spared. Nay more, George Keith was, says Macaulay, “the only human being whom Frederick ever really loved.” Earl Marischal of Scotland, he had fought with his brave young brother for that forlorn hope, the cause of the Stuarts, in 1715. They had long wandered on the Continent, and at last found a home in Potsdam with Frederick.