Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some Blanks

by Henry W. Wolff

The Court itself was modelled entirely on the pattern of the superior Olympus of Versailles. "On ne croyait pas avoir changé de lieu quand on passait de Versailles à Lunéville," says Voltaire. There was splendour, display, lavishness, gilding everywhere—only in Lorraine there was an absolute absence of etiquette and restraint—"ce qui complétait le charme." At Lunéville the etiquette was of the slightest. From the other palaces it was wholly banished—"me voici dans un beau palais, avec la plus grande liberté (et pourtant chez un roi)—à la Cour sans être courtisan." "C'est un homme charmant que le roi Stanislas," Voltaire goes on, in another letter. And not without cause. For Stanislas had placed himself and all his household at the great writer's service. The king entertained a perfect army of Court dignitaries, who had scarcely anything to do for their salaries. He had his gardes-du-corps, resplendent in scarlet and silver, his cadets-gentilhommes, who were practically pages, half of them Lorrains, the remainder Poles, his regular pages, two of whom must always stand by him, when playing at tric-trac, never moving a muscle all the while. He had his pet dwarf "Bébé," decked out in military dress, with a diminutive toy-coach and two goats to carry him about, and a page in yellow and black always to wait upon him. This dwarf the king would for a joke occasionally have baked up in a pie. Upon the pie being opened Bébé would jump out, sword in hand, greatly frightening the ladies and performing on the dinner-table a sort of war-dance, which was his great accomplishment. Then he had his musique, headed by Anet, the particular friend of Lulli, and with Baptiste, another friend of Lulli, for "premier violon." The Lorrain court had always been noted for its concerts, its theatricals and its sauteries—that was at the time the fashionable name for balls. Adrienne Lecouvreur, Mademoiselle Clairon, Fleury, had all come out first on the Lorrain stage. Lunéville it was which invented the "Cotillon," which has become so popular all over the continent. Lunéville also was the birthplace of the aristocratic and graceful "Chapelet." And king Stanislas' orchestra enjoyed a European reputation. "Do you pay your musicians better than I do?" asked Louis Quinze of his father-in-law with a touch of jealousy. "No, my brother; but I pay them for what they do, you pay them for what they know." There was wit and fashion in abundance, and a galaxy of beauty—the royal-born Princesse de Roche-sur-Yon, the Princesse de Lützelburg, the fascinating Princesse de Talmonde, Stanislas' cousin, who subdued the heart of our young Pretender, the Countess of Leiningen, the Princesse de Craon, Madame de Mirepoix, Madame de Chimay, and others. But what of all things Stanislas prided himself upon most were his table and his kitchen. He was, as I have said, fond of gimcracks and he was a great eater, though he often concentrated all his eating upon one Gargantuan meal. The dinner-hour never came round fast enough for him, which made Galaizière say, "If you go on like that, Sire, we shall shortly have you dining the day before." His particular delight were quaint culinary refinements, "imitations" and "surprises," which were only to be achieved with the help of so accomplished a master as his supreme chef de cuisine (there were five other chefs besides) Gilliers, the author of that unsurpassed cookery-book, Le cannaméliste français. Every dining-table at Court was a mechanical work of art. Touch a spring, when the cloth was removed, and there would start up a magnificent surtout—there were some measuring five feet by three—a silversmith's chef d'œuvre, covered with rocks, and castles, and trees, and statuary, a swan spouting water at a beautiful Leda, and the like. And between these ornaments was set out a rich array of dessert, likewise so shaped as to represent every variety of figures, like Dresden China. One year, when all the fruit failed—I believe it was while Voltaire was in Lorraine, in 1749, which was a year of unparalleled distress—Gilliers kept the Court supplied with a continual succession of imitation fruit, which did service for real plums and peaches. Stanislas had introduced such "bizarreries septentrionales" as raw choucroûte and unsavoury messes of meat and fruit, and imitation plongeon (great northern diver), produced by plucking a goose alive, beating it to death with rods, and preparing it in a peculiar way. A turkey treated in the same manner found itself transformed into a sham capercailzie. But the chefs d'œuvre were Gilliers' "surprises," prepared after much thought, to which Stanislas contributed his share. Voltaire makes out that "bread and wine"—which he did not always get—would have been amply sufficient for his modest wants; but what we hear of the Lorrain Court shows him to have been by no means indifferent to the products of Gillier's inimitable cuisine. We read of Voltaire's eyes glistening with delight when, after the removal of the cloth, what looked like a ham was brought upon the table, and a truffled tongue. The ham turned out to be a confectionery made up of strawberry preserve and whipped cream, pané with macaroons; the tongue something of the same sort, truffled with chocolate. I must not forget the coffee, to which Voltaire, like most great writers, was devoted. Swift declared that he could not write unless he had "his coffee twice a week." Voltaire consumed from six to eight cups at a sitting—which is nothing compared with the performance of Delille, who, to keep off the megrim, swallowed twenty. Stanislas employed a special chef du café, La Veuve Christian, who was responsible for its quality. Then, there was the wine, Stanislas' special hobby. Of course, he had all the Lorrain crûs. The best of these, that grown on the famous Côte de Malzéville, close to Nancy, he had made sure of by bespeaking the entire produce in advance for his lifetime, at twelve francs the "measure." His peculiar pride, however, was his Tokay. Every year his predecessor, Francis, become Emperor of Germany, sent him a large cask, escorted all the way by a guard of Austrian grenadiers. As soon as ever that cask arrived, Stanislas set personally to work. What with drugs, and syrups, and sugar, and other wine, he manufactured out of one cask about ten, which he drew off into bottles specially made for the purpose. Some he kept for his own use at dessert. The larger portion he distributed among his friends, who every one of them becomingly declared upon their oath that better Tokay they had never tasted.

But there were better things to entertain the Lorrain Court. There were fêtes; there were theatricals—at some of which Voltaire and du Châtelet performed in person, Voltaire as the "Assesseur" in L'Etourderie, du Châtelet as "Issé"; there was brilliant conversation, music, everything that money could buy and good company produce. And Voltaire was the fêted of all. "Voltaire était dieu à la Cour de Stanislas," says Capefigue. He could do as he liked—sleep, wake, work, mix with the company, stroll about alone—without any restraint; the king and all were at his beck, all eager for his every word, taking everything from him in the best part, appreciating, admiring, worshipping. His plays were put upon the stage. He was allowed to drill the actors at his pleasure. In this way, Le Glorieux was produced with great pomp; also Nanine, Brutus, Mérope, and Zaïre, the last-named, for a novelty, by a troupe of children. Whatever he wrote, he could make sure that he would have an attentive audience of illustrious personages to hear him read out.

Je coule ici mes heureux jours,
Dans la plus tranquille des Cours,
Sans intrigue, sans jalousie,
Auprès d'un roi sans courtisans,
Près de Boufflers et d'Emilie;
Je les vois et je les entends,
Il faut bien que je fasse envie.

If Voltaire was "god," Madame du Châtelet was "goddess"—waited upon, petted, having her every wish and every whim studied and gratified. There could seemingly be no more congenial, mutually appreciative group of persons than Stanislas and Voltaire, the Marquise de Boufflers and the Marquise du Châtelet.

Stanislas was then already an oldish man—according to one of his biographers, Abbé Aubert, sixty-six; according to another, Abbé Proyart, seventy-one. He was not quite the robust hero that he had been when he accompanied Charles XII. on his trying ride to Bender, and shared rough camp-life with Mazeppa. When, in 1744, Charles Alexander of Lorraine crossed the Rhine at the head of 80,000 Austrians, and sent out manifestos which gladdened his countrymen's hearts, proclaiming that he was coming to take possession of the old Duchy—when signal-fires blazed on every hilltop of the Vosges to bid him welcome, and all Lorraine was throbbing with patriotic excitement; when Galaizière mustered what scratch forces he could improvise for defence, and dragged the twelve ornamental pieces of cannon out of the Lunéville Park to point against the foe—then Stanislas, remembering his age, had discreetly retired, in a sad state of tremor, behind the safe walls of Nancy. But in 1748 he was at any rate still hale and hearty, and bore the weight of his years with an easy grace. He managed to gallop to the Malgrange at a pace which left all his younger companions far behind. He is described as of winning manners, rather majestic in figure and bearing, of an engaging countenance, exceedingly good-natured and affable. It was said that "il ne savait pas haïr." "Je ne veux pas," he declared when multiplying charities and hospitals, "qu'il y ait un genre de maladie dont mes sujets pauvres ne puissent se faire traiter gratuitement." Among such "maladies" he included "the law"—for he paid advocates to give gratuitous advice to the poor.

Voltaire is described as about at his best at that period. The air of Lorraine is said to have suited him particularly well. He was just turned fifty—a little too old, as Madame du Châtelet was cruel enough to inform him, to act the part of an ardent lover, but appearing to less exacting persons still in the very vigour of manhood. "Après une vie sobre, réglée, sagement laborieuse," he is represented as "well preserved"—slim, straight, upright, of a good bearing, with a well-shaped leg and a neat little foot. His features, we know, were wanting in regularity; but they wore a benevolent and pleasing expression. His greatest charm is said to have lain in his brilliant and expressive eyes, which seemed by their play to be ever anticipating the action of his lips. His mind certainly was still young, and so were his tastes. He is described as a most fastidious dandy, irréprochablement poudré et parfumé, affecting clothes of the latest cut and richly embroidered with gold. To his factotum at Paris, Abbé Moussinot, he writes from Lunéville: "Send me some diamond buckles for shoes or garters, twenty pounds of hair-powder, twenty pounds of scent, a bottle of essence of jessamine, two 'enormous' pots of pomatum à la fleur d'orange, two powder puffs, two embroidered vests,"—&c. He was, moreover, an accomplished courtier. Properly to ingratiate himself with his new host, he made his appearance at Commercy with a complimentary copy of his Henriade in his hand, on the flyleaf of which were penned these lines:

Le ciel, comme Henri, voulut vous éprouver:
La bonté, la valeur à tous deux fut commune,
Mais mon héros fit changer la fortune
Que votre vertu sut braver.

Of Madame du Châtelet's appearance we have two hopelessly irreconcilable accounts. She was certainly past forty-two; if her ill-natured cousin, the Marquise de Créqui, speaks truly (and she refers doubters to the parish register of St. Roch), she was even five years more. Voltaire's portrait of her, painted with the brush of admiration, is probably more complimentary than strictly truthful. Madame du Deffand limns her in very different lines:—"Une femme grande et sèche, une maîtresse d'école sans hanches, la poitrine étroite, et sur la poitrine une petite mappe-monde perdue dans l'espace, de gros bras trop courts pour ses passions, des pieds de grue, une tête d'oiseau de nuit, le nez pointu, deux petits yeux verts de mer et verts de terre, le teint noir et rouge, la bouche plate et les dents clair-semées." This hideous portraiture, it is true, Sainte Beuve protests against as a "page plus amèrement satirique" than any to be found in French literature. But Madame de Créqui has even worse to say of her cousin, adding, by way of further embellishment, "des pieds terribles, et des mains formidables"—let alone that, if Emilie was "une merveille de force," she was also at the same time "un prodige de gaucherie." "Voilà la belle Emilie!" Even Voltaire speaks of her "main d'encre encore salie." However, everybody agrees in praising the grace of her manner, the remarkably attractive play of her expressive eyes—Saint Lambert calls her "la brune à l'œil fripon"—and her peculiar skill in becomingly dressing her dark hair. She spoke with engaging animation and quickly—"comme moi quand je fais la française," says Madame de Grafigny (who was always proud of being a Lorraine)—"comme un ange," she completes the sentence. If during the day, while wholly engrossed upon her Newton, Emilie showed a little too much of the pedant, according to the same lady's testimony—"le soir elle est charmante."

The advent of the brilliant couple from Cirey, it need not be stated, added further strength to the philosophe party. Abbé Menoux found out that he had reckoned without his host. Between the two Marchionesses, De Boufflers and du Châtelet, in the place of the expected jealousy and rivalry, there proved to be nothing but sincere, close, and demonstrative friendship. To some extent Madame du Châtelet's amiability towards the Duke's favourite was a piece of diplomacy. She had not come into Lorraine without a very material object in view. Her husband was not as well off as either he or she might have wished; and, although in other matters she showed herself very indifferent to the dull "bonhomme"—that is what she used to call him—in matters of money she thoroughly supported his interest. As in some respect a vassal of the Duke of Lorraine, and a member of one of those four distinguished families which were known in Lorraine as "Les grands Chevaux"—the Lignivilles, the Lenoncourts, the Haraucourts and the du Châtelets—she considered that her husband had something like a claim upon king Stanislas. One of King Stanislas' best pieces of patronage, the post of grand maréchal des maisons, worth 2,000 écus a year, had at the time fallen vacant, and for her husband la belle Emilie resolved to secure it. It cost her a tough struggle, for there was a formidable rival in the field in the person of Berchenyi, a Hungarian, and one of the King's old favourites. However, her woman's persistence triumphed in the end. Apart from such cupboard love, the two women, both of them possessing esprit, both born courtiers, and both, moreover, sharing a sublime contempt for the prosaic rules of what has become known as the "Nonconformist Conscience," seemed thoroughly made for one another. And their alliance told upon the Court. The Jesuits became alarmed. Menoux put himself upon his defence, and threw himself into the contest, more particularly with Voltaire, with a degree of vigour and energy which taxed all the combative power of his opponent. Others might eye the infidel askance and profess a holy horror of the opinions of one whom Heaven was fully expected some day to punish in its own way. There is an amusing anecdote of an unexpected encounter between Madame Alliot, the wife of the "Jesuit" intendant, and Voltaire, both of whom rushed for shelter, in a sudden and exceptionally violent storm, under the same tree. At first the lady shrank from the atheist as from an unclean thing. The rain, however, was inexorable. She revenged herself by preaching to the infidel, attributing the entire displeasure of Heaven, as evidenced in that fearful storm, to his unbelief. Voltaire, it is said, not feeling quite sure of his ground while lightnings were flashing, and in no sort of mood to play the Ajax, contented himself with meekly pleading that he had "written very much more that was good of Him to whom the lady referred than the lady herself could ever say in her whole life." Such harmless little hits the philosophe had now and then to put up with; but for serious fighting few besides Menoux had any stomach. Devaux (Panpan), however "dévot," was disarmed by being—quite on the sly, but no less ardently—one of Madame de Boufflers' chosen admirers. Galaizière was taken up with other things. Solignac was too much of a dependent. "Mon Dieu" Choiseul did not carry sufficient weight. There was, indeed, another Abbé at Court, who might have been expected to help: Porquet, who became the Duke's almoner, a most amusing person in a passive way. But he was by no means cut out for a champion. Besides, being tutor to the young de Boufflers, he was scarcely a free agent. He himself describes himself as an "homme empaillé." When first appointed almoner, and called upon to say grace, he found that he had quite forgotten his Benedicite. Stanislas made him occasionally read to him out of the Bible, with the result that, half-dozing over the sacred page, he fell into mis-readings such as this: "Dieu apparut en singe à Jacob." "Comment," interrupted the Duke, "c'est 'en songe' que vous voulez dire!" "Eh, Sire, tout n'est-il pas possible à la puissance de Dieu?"

There was one sturdy supporter of Catholicism, however, who never flinched from the fight: that was Alliot, the Duke's intendant, who, by virtue of his office, had it in his power to make his dislike sharply felt. With what abhorrence he regarded the infidel guest, for whom he had to cater, we may learn from the contemporary records of his clerical allies, narratives which do not ordinarily come under the notice of persons reading about Voltaire. One can scarcely help drawing the inference that King Stanislas, with all his goodness and all his affected devotion to periculosa libertas, was a little bit of a "Mr. Facing-both-ways," using very different arguments in different companies—a Pharisee to the Pharisees, a philosophe to the philosophes. Only thus could it come about that we have such extraordinary stories, altogether inconsistent with known facts, vouched for on the authority of reverend divines like Abbé Aubert and Abbé Proyart. "On vit quelquefois," says Abbé Proyart, "à la Cour du roi de Pologne certains sujets peu dignes de sa confiance, et le Prince les connoissoit; mais il trouvoit dans sa religion même des motifs de ne pas les éloigner." It was represented to him (by Alliot) that Voltaire "faisoit l'hypocrite." "C'est lui même, et non pas moi qu'il fait dupe," replied the king. "Son hypocrisie du moins est un hommage qu'il rend à la vertu. Et ne vaut-il pas mieux que nous le voyions hypocrite ici que scandaleux ailleurs?" But "le vrai sage," the Abbé goes on, found himself compelled at last to dismiss "le faux philosphe, qui commençoit à répandre à sa Cour le poison de ses dangereuses maximes." Under this clerical gloss the well-known story of Alliot stopping Voltaire's supply of food and candles assumes a totally new shape. "Ce ne fut pas une petite affaire que d'obliger Voltaire à sortir du château de Lunéville." In vain did the king treat his guest with marked coldness; the philosopher would not take the hint. In his predicament Stanislas appealed to the intendant for advice. "Sire," replies Alliot, "hoc genus dæmoniorum non ejicitur nisi in oratione et jejunio," which means, he explains, that "pour se débarrasser de pareilles pestes," having "prayed" them to go without avail, he should now enforce a "fast," which would certainly drive them out of the place. Stanislas is alleged to have fallen in with the Jesuit's counsels; hence that open tiff with Alliot over the stoppage of provisions, which made Voltaire complain that he had not been allowed "bread, wine and candles." In truth, of course, all this clerical story is pure invention. Of the stopping of the provisions Stanislas knew nothing till advised by Voltaire, when he quickly set the matter right.