Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature - 1. The Emigrant Literature

by Georg Brandes

Healthy-minded as she was, she came in time to take a brighter view of life. A relative who knew her well writes: "Possibly there was a time when life, death, melancholy, and passionate self-sacrifice played too great a part in her conversation; but when these words spread like a contagion throughout her whole circle, and actually began to be heard amongst the servants, she took a deadly loathing to them."[1] She succeeded in advancing beyond the intellectual stage at which so many of her French contemporaries stopped short.

It is, indeed, one of the most noticeable things about her, this development of her critical faculty in the spirit and direction of the nineteenth century. Originally she was a true Parisian, with no real appreciation of the beauties of nature. When, after her first flight from Paris, she saw the Lake of Geneva for the first time, she exclaimed in her home-sickness: "How much more beautiful were the gutters of the Rue du Bac!" Not many years later she described the scenery of Italy, in Corinne, in truly glowing language. In her earlier years she was in love with, infatuated with, Paris, which to her represented civilisation, yet it was she who first taught the Frenchman to appreciate the characteristic and the good qualities of the other European nations. For she possessed the true critical gift, that is, she had the power of steadily enlarging her mind, increasing her receptivity, and destroying her prejudices in the bud, thereby holding herself in constant preparedness to understand.

It is to this we must ascribe her marvellous power of attraction; and this explains how, banished and disgraced as she was, she enjoyed the power and influence of a queen at Coppet. Although our countryman Oehlenschläger does not seem to have had any clear appreciation of the real greatness of the woman whose guest he was, he gives a very charming description of Mme. de Staël and his visit to her in 1808. "How intellectual, witty, and amiable Mme. de Staël was," he says, "the whole world knows. I have never met a woman possessed of so much genius; but, probably on that very account, there was something masculine about her. She was square built, with marked features. Pretty she was not, but there was something most attractive in her bright brown eyes, and she possessed in a very high degree the womanly gift of winning, subtly ruling, and bringing together men of the most different characters. That in matters of the heart she was the true woman, she has shown us in Delphine and Corinne. Rousseau himself has not depicted love with more fire. Wherever she appeared she collected round her all the men of intellect, drawing them away even from young and beautiful women. When one remembers that in addition to all this she was very rich and very hospitable, giving magnificent entertainments every day, one does not marvel that, like some queen or fairy, she drew men to her enchanted castle. One is almost tempted to believe that it was to indicate this dominion of hers that she always had a little leafy branch by her at meals, which she took in her hand and played with. The servants had to lay one beside her plate every day, for it was as necessary to her as knife, fork, and spoon."

Men made their way to Coppet, as some fifty years earlier they had made their way to the adjacent Ferney, where Voltaire, also an exile dwelling as close to the frontiers of France as possible, gathered the picked men of Europe round him in the last years of his life. One is irresistibly tempted to compare the influence which emanated from the aged man at Ferney with that exercised by the owner of Coppet. The years spent at Ferney are in every respect the most glorious period of Voltaire's life. It was from there that he, as the champion of justice and toleration, compassed achievements which no one could have believed to be within the power of a private individual whose only weapon was his pen.

Three years of his life at Ferney were devoted to litigation on behalf of Jean Calas. Calas was a merchant of Toulouse, aged sixty-eight, a Protestant. His youngest son had become converted to Catholicism, and was completely estranged from his family. The eldest son, a wild, dissipated young man, committed suicide. The Catholic clergy immediately spread a rumour among the people that the father had strangled his son out of hatred for the Romish faith, which the latter, it was said, had intended to embrace on the following day. The whole family was imprisoned. The suicide's corpse lay in state, and performed one miracle after another. The bi-centenary of the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Toulouse occurred at the time of the trial, and in their fanatical excitement, thirteen judges, despite all proofs of his innocence, and without a shadow of evidence of his guilt, condemned Calas to be broken on the wheel. The sentence was carried out, the old man protesting his innocence to the last. His children, under the pretext of a reprieve, were shut up in a monastery and forced to adopt the Catholic faith. Then Voltaire at Ferney wrote his celebrated treatise on tolerance, and moved heaven and earth to get the case tried over again. He appealed to the public opinion of the whole of Europe. He compelled the Council of State in Paris to demand the minutes of the trial from the Parliament of Toulouse. They were refused; there were delays of every kind; but in the end, after three years of unwearied fighting, Voltaire gained his point. The Toulouse sentence was pronounced unjust, the dead man's honour was cleared, and an indemnification was paid to his family. All who desire to be just to Voltaire ought to remember that it is during this period that the phrase, Écrasez l'infâme, perpetually recurs in his letters.

It was at Ferney that Voltaire gave shelter to the Sirven family. The father was a Calvinist, but one of his daughters had been forced into a convent. Upon her becoming insane, she was released, whereupon she drowned herself in a well not far from her father's house. The father, mother, and sister are accused of murdering the nun, are tried, and all condemned to death. The unhappy family, knowing of no sanctuary in the whole of Europe except Voltaire's house, escape to Ferney, the mother dying of grief upon the way. Voltaire, the banished man, by his eloquence and his ardour compels the French courts to try this case also again, and the family is acquitted.

Three years later Étalonde found refuge at Ferney. Two young men, De la Barre and Étalonde, were accused in 1765 of having passed a church procession without taking off their hats, which was a true accusation, and of having thrown a crucifix into the water, which was a false one. They were both examined under torture, and afterwards De la Barre was broken on the wheel. He went bravely to his death, his only words being: "I could not have believed that they would kill a young man for such a trifle." Étalonde, who was condemned to lose his right hand and have his tongue cut out, escaped to Ferney, and no one dared to lay hands on him in Voltaire's house.

Yet another human life did Voltaire succeed in saving while he lived at Ferney. A young married couple named Montbailli were condemned to death on a false accusation of murder. The man was first broken on the wheel and then burned, but the burning of the woman was deferred because she was pregnant. Voltaire hears of the case, sees through the infamous charge with his lightning glance, appeals to the French ministry, proves that an innocent man has been put to death, and saves the woman from the stake.

Besides protecting the life of the accused, he defended the honour of the dead. One of the last pieces of news that he received on his own deathbed was, that his appeal against the unjust sentence which had cost General Lally his life had been successful, that the sentence was reversed, the dead man acquitted. During these years Voltaire also found time to transform Ferney from a poor village into a prosperous town, to labour zealously for the abolition of serfdom in France, and to write a number of his most important books, in all of which his one aim was to undermine the dogmas of Christianity, which appeared to him to be at the root of the power of the priesthood and all the evils resulting therefrom. Nor did he neglect the claims of polite society; he built a private theatre, and engaged the best actors to play in it; and he was visited at Ferney by the most gifted and able men of the day.

The renown of Coppet cannot be compared with that of Ferney, but none the less it is a fair renown. From this place of banishment also, emanated the ardent desire for justice, the love of freedom and the love of truth.