CHAPTER XX
LATER MEN OF LETTERS
One would be tempted, if space permitted, to say something of the later literary luminaries of Geneva: of Amiel, the ‘virtuous Don Juan,’ as his friends called him, who, after living rather a futile life, acquired posthumous fame through his ‘Journal’; of Cherbuliez, the novelist, once very popular, though now somewhat out of fashion; of Marc Monnier, the sparkling and versatile father of Dr. Philippe Monnier who has inherited his wit; of Toepfer, author of ‘Nouvelles Genevoises,’ described by one critic as ‘a sort of Swiss Ally Sloper,’ and by another as ‘a sort of Swiss Max O’Rell, with just a dash of Mr. Barlow’; of Emile Javelle, who climbed the Alps diligently and wrote of them poetically; of MM. Eugène Ritter and Albert de Montet, the pillars of historical research in French Switzerland. But space does not permit. What little space remains is claimed by certain distinguished strangers who have shed lustre upon Geneva by living in the neighbourhood. We must visit Voltaire at Ferney, and Madame de Staël at Coppet. Let the patriarch come first.
CHAPTER XXI
VOLTAIRE
Voltaire was sixty years of age when he settled on the shores of the lake, where he was to remain for another four-and-twenty years; and he did not go there for his pleasure. He would have preferred to live in Paris, but was afraid of being locked up in the Bastille. As the great majority of the men of letters of the reign of Louis XV. were, at one time or another, locked up in the Bastille, his fears were probably well founded. Moreover, notes of warning had reached his ears. ‘I dare not ask you to dine,’ a relative said to him, ‘because you are in bad odour at Court.’ So he betook himself to Geneva, as so many Frenchmen, illustrious and otherwise, had done before, and acquired various properties—at Prangins, at Lausanne, at Saint-Jean (near Geneva), at Ferney, at Tournay, and elsewhere.
He was welcomed cordially. Dr. Tronchin, the eminent physician, co-operated in the legal fictions necessary to enable him to become a landowner in the republic. Cramer, the publisher, made a proposal for the issue of a complete and authorized edition of his works. All the best people called. ‘It is very pleasant,’ he was able to write, ‘to live in a country where rulers borrow your carriage to come to dinner with you.’ Yet his desire to ‘score off’ the ministers of religion, who no doubt struck him as pretentious persons of sluggish intellect, soon set him at loggerheads with his hosts.
The first trouble arose in connection with the article on Geneva published in the encyclopædia edited by Diderot and d’Alembert. It was in the course of a short visit to Voltaire that d’Alembert gathered the materials for that article. He was encouraged, and afforded every facility for pursuing his researches, alike by the ministers and by the magistrates. ‘He is the curiosity of the town,’ a contemporary letter-writer declared, ‘and it is quite the fashion to go and call on him.’ In particular he was entertained by the clergy, and talked theology with them after dinner. Their views were broad, thanks to the influence of that eminent theologian, Turretini; probably their views were broader after dinner than before. At all events, the encyclopædist drew them out to his satisfaction, with the result that, when his article appeared, and the divines made haste to read it, it was found that their theological position was expounded in the following startling paragraph:
‘There is less complaint of the advance of infidelity at Geneva than elsewhere; but that is not surprising. Religion there—unless it be among the common people—is reduced to the worship of one God; a certain respect for Jesus Christ and the Scriptures is, perhaps, the only thing that distinguishes the Christianity of Geneva from pure Deism.’
This in the city of Calvin. It was as though the encyclopædist had stirred a hornets’ nest. To change the metaphor, the fat was in the fire, and the flame blazed up at once. The Consistory met and appointed a Commission ‘to consider what were the best steps to take in the matter.’ The Commission deputed Dr. Tronchin to try and obtain an apology and retraction from the offending author; and Dr. Tronchin applied to Voltaire for help. Seeing that Voltaire had already written to d’Alembert congratulating him on his success in arousing the ‘murmurs of the synagogue,’ this was not a very hopeful step. Voltaire, in fact, had inspired the statements which he was now asked to invite his collaborator to withdraw. He temporized, enjoyed the fun, and tampered with the truth, to keep it up. He protested that he knew nothing about the article; that he wanted nothing but a quiet life, for himself and for everybody else, including ‘Trinitarians, Unitarians, Quakers, Moravians, Turks, Jews, and Chinamen.’ He also, in the friendliest manner, warned his correspondent that, if d’Alembert were pressed too hard, he might, instead of apologizing, prove that the things which he had said were true.