MADAME DU CHÂTELET
In 1706, there was born one Émilie, the daughter of the Baron de
Breteuil. Émilie grew up into a tall slip of a girl with very long legs,
very bright eyes, very little grace, and a great deal of intelligence.
She was about eight years old, and presumably living in Paris with her
parents, when she saw one day, possibly at the house of Caumartin, that
lean-faced scapegrace, François Marie Arouet, of twenty. Arouet was not
yet out of love with Pimpette Dunoyer. Émilie was a child who ought to
have been thinking about games and dolls and was thinking, with a quite
undesirable precocity, of lessons and learning. The meeting made not the
slightest impression on either of them. Arouet went on climbing the
steep and rugged way that leads to glory. Émilie learnt Latin and
Italian, devoted herself to the Muses, and at fifteen began to write a
versified translation of the “Æneid.”
In the eighteenth century learning was a mode among women which they put
on exactly as they put powder on their hair and patches on their cheeks.
They talked philosophy as charmingly as they had once talked chiffons.
They sentimentalised over the Rights of Men, neglected their children,
and treated their servants like dogs. Culture was hardly a pose with
them, as it has been with less clever women since, but it was a garment
which they wore when and as they chose. There have been few women in any
age “devoted from all eternity to the exact sciences,” impassioned for
learning for learning’s sake, capable of that keen delight in the
discovery of a new truth which is like the delight of the sportsman when
he has run his quarry to earth. There were few such women even in the
eighteenth century. But there were some: and Émilie de Breteuil was one
of them.
She was married at nineteen to the Marquis du Châtelet. It was hardly
even an episode in her career. This _bonhomme_ was so stupid and so
earthy! Madame always appears to have agreed with him well enough. But
there were so many other things to think about! First of all, there was
a Marquis de Guébriant. When he was false, his vehement young mistress
took so much opium that she would have died, but for his timely
assistance. The brilliant Duke of Richelieu became her lover presently:
and she wore his portrait in a ring and loved him, temporarily, but
sincerely enough, and exacted from him, if this girlish Marquise was
anything at all like a later Madame du Châtelet, a quite extraordinary
amount of attention and devotion. Pretty early in her career she became
addicted to that modish pastime, gaming. She played on the spinet and
sang to it. She loved dress and had a very bad taste in it. She loved
society and talked in it much and brilliantly. She was an amateur
actress of no mean ability. She had three children who interfered with
her scheme of life not at all and on whom she seems to have wasted none
of that effervescent emotion she felt for her lovers. There are many
strange portraits in the great gallery of eighteenth-century France
before the Revolution, but no one stranger than that of this bony,
long-limbed woman, whose flashing intelligence made her harsh-featured
face almost beautiful, who was familiar with Horace and Virgil, with
Cicero, Tasso and Ariosto, with Locke, with Newton and with Euclid--a
philosopher with a passion for metaphysics--a being at once excitable
and sensual, who united to an entire lack of the moral sense,
intellectual passions the most pure and sincere that ever raised a woman
above the pettiness, the backbitings, and the meannesses common to her
sex.
In 1731, before Voltaire knew her personally, her learned reputation had
reached him and he had written her some lines on the Epic Poets. To 1732
belongs an “Ode on Fanaticism,” also addressed to the “charming and
sublime Émilie.”
Early in 1733, when Madame was seven-and-twenty years old, studying
mathematics under Maupertuis, one of the courtiers of the Duchesse du
Maine at Sceaux reintroduced her to Voltaire, famous and forty. Then,
with her modish Duchess and Marquis as chaperons, she visited him in his
rooms. It took the man but a very little while to recognise in her a
kindred passion for that noblest liberty, enlightenment; to see
reflected in her his own genius for hard work; to find out that she too
was tired of this Paris “at once idle and stormy” and would fain find a
life where there should be more of the gods’ best gift--time--to think,
to write, to speak one’s message for the benefit of that world which
_must_ listen at last.
He had soon written her an Epistle on her scientific connection with
Maupertuis, as well as that one dated 1733, to the “respectable Émilie,”
on Calumny.
By August 14, 1733, he was writing to his dear Cideville “You are Émilie
in a man and she is Cideville in a woman”: and a few days later to the
Abbé de Sade giving his brilliant first impressions of his Marquise. In
November he was writing to Sade again, proudly telling him how Émilie
had learnt English in a fortnight.
Then she was with him at Richelieu’s wedding. Far from finding the
situation embarrassing, she was in heaven, she said--until the fear of
Voltaire’s arrest, and the news that it would not be safe for him to
remain in France made her discover that men were insupportable. “I shall
retire at once to my château,” she added. For her Château of Cirey was
on the extreme edge of France; on the borders of Lorraine, and but a
stone’s throw from safety.
Its position thus decided two destinies.
Of what did Voltaire think as he fled from Montjeu through the pleasant,
budding country on those spring days, towards that desolate spot he was
to make famous? The Marquise was not with him. She was going to Paris to
use her noble name and influence at Versailles to obtain the revocation
of that horrible _lettre de cachet_. Voltaire was already her lover;
though he was not now, any more than he was hereafter, in love with her.
He had a boundless and most generous admiration for her talents--the
warmest enthusiasm for her whom he called “a great man whose only fault
was being a woman.” He was indeed as faithful to her person as he was
faithful to his belief in her great intellectual gifts. She was for ever
his ideal of feminine erudition--“who listens to Virgil, and Tasso, and
does not disdain a game of picquet,” “who understands Newton and loves
verses and the wine of Champagne as you do”--the sorceress whose charms
worked all their magic on his mind, but never touched his heart. To be
at once a great creative genius and capable of an all-absorbing love
passion is given to few men. It was not given to Voltaire. No doubt, as
his carriage jolted along the roads under the May sunshine towards
quiet, peace, and safety, he honestly supposed himself to be devotedly
in love with his “divine Émilie.” He had chosen her to be the companion
of life. Those eight volumes of his letters to her, which were destroyed
at her death, were very likely in some sort the letters of a lover; but,
arguing from the known to the unknown, they must have been the letters
of the lover who worshipped his mistress’s scientific acquirements, her
passion for knowledge, and her matchless intellectual industry, a
thousand times more than any qualities of her heart and soul.
By May 23, 1734, Voltaire was at Bâle and writing from there to Madame
du Deffand. She, as well as Madame du Châtelet, was doing her best to
get him back into ministerial favour. They were of the opinion that the
usual disavowal would be the best thing. Very well! “I will declare that
Pascal was always right ... that all priests are disinterested: that the
Jesuits are honest ... that the Inquisition is the triumph of humanity
and tolerance: in fact I will say anything they like, if they will but
leave me in peace.” Of course, no one could believe the disavowal. But
they could pretend they believed it. Madame du Châtelet worked harder
than ever among her influential friends and, when her mind grew easier
respecting her lover, continued her lessons from Maupertuis. She spent
the summer at Versailles. The government no doubt had never been very
anxious to bring back such a troublesome fugitive as Voltaire. The
matter dropped.
In June, 1734, Voltaire first saw the Château of Cirey. No one was there
when he arrived. The obliging Marquis was with his regiment. He was
generally with his regiment when he was not wanted at home. And he was
very seldom wanted at home. It was the custom of the day for a fine lady
to have a lover. The husband was the last person in the world to object
to an arrangement so ordinary. Provided everything was done with a
decent respect for the _convenances_--why, then, one might do anything.
“Modesty has fled from our hearts and taken refuge on our lips” said
Voltaire. The words may stand as the motto of French eighteenth-century
morality. It shuddered horror-struck at the ill-bred word and connived
gaily at the coarse thing. No one thought the worse of Émilie for her
lovers; and rather thought the better of her for keeping them so long.
One of Voltaire’s biographers has adduced as an excuse for that
“Pucelle” of his that chastity was the peculiar boast of the Church, so
that Voltaire, hating the Church, despised chastity too. Perhaps that
excuse might serve for his attachment to Madame du Châtelet. But he
himself considered that no excuse was needed at all. He was following
the usual custom of his age. If the Church objected to immorality it was
in theory only. In practice, the abbés who had influenced his boyhood
and been the companions of his youth were a thousand times more vicious
than he had ever been. That he never showed himself to better advantage
than in that position, does not make his long connection with the
Marquise less reprehensible. But it remains a fact, that he was loyal
and patient when she was shrewish and unreasonable: that he was true to
what he knew was no bond, and had long become a bondage: faithful when
she was faithless: abundantly generous in appreciation of her mental
gifts: and staunch to her false memory to the end.
Cirey-sur-Blaise is situated in Champagne, to the south of the wine
country. It is surrounded by almost impenetrable forests. It lies one
hundred and forty bad miles from Paris, four from Vassy, the nearest
village, eight from St. Dizier, a little town. It is near Domrémy, the
birthplace of Joan of Arc. In 1734, a coach came two or three times a
week from Paris, bringing news of the world, some of the necessaries
and a few of the luxuries of life. The château itself was utterly
tumbledown, old, huge, bare, and desolate. A chapel adjoined it, and the
gardens had long fallen into overgrown neglect. A lady visitor, who came
there in 1738, spoke of the place in words which were at least admirably
descriptive of her own character, and said it was “of a desolation
shocking to humanity, four miles from any other house, in a country
where you can see nothing but mountains and uncultivated land and where
you are abandoned by all your friends and hardly ever see anyone from
Paris.” The last words denoted the climax of horror in the vulgar little
mind of roundabout Madame Denis, Voltaire’s niece. _She_ had not “the
insurance of a just employment” against ennui and melancholy.
The first sight of its solitary beauty may have been delighting her
uncle’s soul when in Paris his “English Letters” were being burnt by the
hangman and himself denounced by every opprobrious term in the
vocabulary of the government. He had been there but a very short time
when he heard news of a duel in which the Duke of Richelieu was engaged;
and hastened to the camp of Philippsburg near Baden, where he arrived on
July 1, 1734. The duel had arisen out of Richelieu’s marriage: so
Voltaire, having made that, felt responsible for the duel too. Richelieu
was at Philippsburg with his regiment. His injuries were not serious.
The camp received Voltaire with so much _éclat_ and delight that Madame
du Châtelet warned him the French authorities were offended and he
returned to Cirey. He had scarcely set foot in its tangled garden before
he became a gardener, busily setting it to rights: or looked at the
tumbledown château, before he was, in his own words, “mason and
carpenter.” He had never had a home before. What matter if the place
were desolate, ruined, and forlorn? It was on the borders of safety; it
could be repaired, improved, beautified. He fell in love with it, with
that impulsive idealism which was always a part of his nature and always
at variance with the gay, deadly, careful cynicism of nearly all his
writings. He had “a passion for retirement,” he said. He lent the
absent Marquis forty thousand francs (at five per cent. interest,
“never paid”) that the repairs might be set on foot. By August they were
well in train and the house becoming habitable.
Voltaire hunted boar in the forest and exchanged country produce with an
amiable neighbour, Madame de la Neuville. He wrote gallant letters to
another, the fat and good-natured Madame de Champbonin, who was to be
hereafter, a constant visitor at Cirey. He was working of course--at his
“Century of Louis XIV.”--at new plays--at a certain “Treatise on
Metaphysics” and some “Discourses on Man,” at once light and wise. The
glory of summer was on the land. Voltaire was now a man of substance
through his shrewdness and economy rather than through his writings. To
the money he derived from them he was always strangely indifferent. For
them he was to be paid, not by gold, but by their gigantic influence on
the human mind.
On the whole, those first few solitary months at Cirey must have been
some of the happiest he knew. The future shone rosy like dawn. Peace,
love, and work--there is no better life. That was the life to which
Voltaire looked forward now.
In October he spent, for some reason not certain, a few weeks at
Brussels: and then returned to Cirey.
In November, there arrived from Paris, laughing and vigorous, not having
slept a single wink on the journey, and preceded by mountains of
chiffons and books, boxes, pictures, necessities, luxuries, and
superfluities--Madame du Châtelet.
The extraordinary pair wasted no time at all in sentiment. They turned
their energetic attention to the dilapidated house and grounds at once.
Madame became “architect and gardener.” She found the secret, with
plenty of old china and tapestry to help her, “of furnishing Cirey out
of nothing.” Voltaire had valuable pictures to contribute to the general
effect. Both workers were so thoroughly practical, so indefatigable, so
clever! It was in these early days of happiness that Voltaire wrote a
blissful quatrain which was placed over one of the summer-houses in the
garden and which may be broadly translated by the quatrain of another
poet:--
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough,
A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread--and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness--
Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!
The du Châtelet children, little Pauline of eight and Louis of six (the
third had died a baby in the January of this year, 1734), kept much in
the background, were, if anything, an additional charm to the
illustrious visitor. He found Louis a _doux_ and sensible little boy:
discovered him a tutor on one occasion: gave him a silver watch on
another: and saved his life, for the guillotine, by dosing him with
lemonade when he had smallpox. Pauline, early sent to Joinville, sixteen
miles away, to be educated, was frequently recalled therefrom when, a
little later, she was wanted to act in the Cirey theatricals, for which,
like her mother, she had a pretty talent.
Madame la Marquise did not herself pretend at any time to a great
interest in her offspring. When her husband foolishly returned presently
from his regiment she wrote to her old lover, Richelieu, that her
situation was very embarrassing, “but love changes all thorns into
flowers.” She and Voltaire both spoke of the Marquis as _le bonhomme_.
Beyond being a sad bore in conversation, and as incapable of
appreciating wit in others as he was of originating any himself, he
seems to have given no trouble provided he had his meals regularly: and
remains for posterity what he was for his contemporaries--a stupid,
good-natured, complacent, slip-slop person whom one could neither much
dislike nor at all respect.
When he was at home, his wife and her famous guest left him to his
sport, his dinner, and his nap, and themselves plunged into work of
every kind, but particularly into that intellectual work which was the
passion of their lives. It was a strange household in that tumbledown
château in the depths of primæval forests--a strange mixture of the
laxity and wickedness of the evil Paris of the day and of the highest
mental effort and enjoyment--of the meanest sensual indulgence and the
noblest aspirations towards light and liberty--the clear voices of
children and the biting and dazzling sarcasms of a Voltaire against
those who would keep men in bondage and ignorance, children for ever.
In the December of 1734, Madame du Châtelet went to Paris, taking with
her to d’Argental a new tragedy Voltaire had written, called “Alzire.”
At the end of 1734, Voltaire first makes allusion in his letters, to one
of the most famous--and certainly the most infamous--of his works, the
“Pucelle.” The idea of it had been suggested at a supper at
Richelieu’s--Richelieu, equally celebrated for both kinds of
gallantry--in 1730. The “Pucelle” is Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans.
Dull Chapelain had spoilt the subject already. It did not occur as a
promising one to poet Voltaire. Richelieu and his guests over-persuaded
him to try his hand upon it. In a very short time, he was reading aloud
to them the first four cantos of that gay masterpiece of indecent
satire. How very little he could have guessed then what a plague,
danger, torment, solace and delight “my Jeanne,” as he called her, was
to be to him for the rest of his days! He had indeed many other things
to think of. “Jeanne” could only be an interlude to weightier
occupations. He turned to her as one man turns to gaming and another to
dissipation. She was the self-indulgence of his life, and it must be
owned a very pernicious one.
He must have found Cirey’s neighbourhood to Domrémy inspiring. By
January, 1735, eight cantos were complete.
Voltaire received in March the revocation of his _lettre de cachet_--the
end for which his friends had used all their influence. He was told
almost in so many words that he might go back to Paris if he would be a
good boy. On March 30, 1735, he _did_ go back. The capital was always to
him the gorgeous siren who fascinated him from far and disillusioned him
near. Cantos of that dangerous “Pucelle” were already flying about the
salons. Voltaire busied himself in finding a tutor for little Louis du
Châtelet and characteristically engaged that Linant, his unsatisfactory
_protégé_--ignorant and indolent--“for fear he should starve”--and
trusting to the Marquise’s Latin to improve the master’s. The Marquis
had desired that the tutor should be an abbé. It looked more
respectable! But when Voltaire said decisively “No priests chez les
Émilies!” the _bonhomme_ contented himself with the stipulation that the
youth should have a _penchant_ for religion.
One night when in Paris, Voltaire supped with the famous Mademoiselle
Quinault, actress of the Théâtre Français. She told him how she had seen
at a fair a dramatic sketch with a good idea in it--and of which she was
going to tell Destouches, the comic playwright. The other playwright
listened in silence: but the next morning he brought her the plan of a
comedy on the subject and vowed her to secrecy. Not only was the idea
not to be divulged, but the very name of the author of the play, which
was called “The Prodigal Son,” was to be a mystery. Theriot knew of
course, and one Berger. “It is necessary to lie like the devil,”
Voltaire wrote to them, “not timidly or for a time but boldly and
always. Lie, my friends, lie. I will repay you when I can.”
He thought, not wrongly, that if its authorship were known, the play,
good, bad, or indifferent, would be hissed from the stage. “I made
enough enemies by ‘Œdipe’ and the ‘Henriade,’” he said.
He was weary, as he might well be, of quarrels, of dangers, and of
jealousies. The visit to Paris was a very flying one. He left there on
May 6th or 7th. On May 15th he was writing to Theriot from Lunéville,
soon to be the Court of Stanislas, ex-King of Poland, and where Voltaire
now found a few philosopher friends and the charming and accomplished
bride, Madame de Richelieu. He was there but a very short time.
How good it was to see the Cirey forest again--the garden growing daily
into order and beauty--balconies and terraces being built here--an
avenue planted there--and within, everywhere delightful evidence of
Madame’s clever touch! He rode about the country on her mare,
Hirondelle. He urged on the workmen--and enjoyed doing it. He flung
himself with ardour and enthusiasm into small things as into great. He
had so many interests and was so much interested in them, no wonder he
was happy. There was that idle Linant to spur to industry, and Mesdames
de la Neuville and de Champbonin to vary the home party. Cirey was
_Cirey-en-félicité_--Cireyshire, in memory of that dear England. Émilie
was still “the divine Émilie,” “the goddess,” the cleverest, the only
woman in the world.
In August, 1735, Voltaire’s play “The Death of Cæsar,” imitated from
(Voltaire thought it an improvement on) the “Julius Cæsar” of
Shakespeare, was played by the pupils of the Harcourt College on the day
of their prize-giving. “I have abandoned two theatres as too full of
cabals” wrote the author gaily, “that of the Comédie Française and that
of the world.” The truth was “The Death of Cæsar” was unsuited to the
stage, and of what its author called “a Roman ferocity.” It had no love
interest and no female characters.
Voltaire was not a little indignant when the piece appeared in print in
Paris--totally unauthorised and shamefully incorrect. “The editor has
massacred Cæsar worse than Brutus and Cassius ever did,” said he. Its
appearance was the chief trouble of this autumn of 1735. In its
November, Algarotti, the Italian _savant_, and the friend of Prince
Frederick of Prussia, came to stay at Cirey. He read aloud his
“Dialogues on Philosophy”: and Voltaire read aloud a canto of the
“Pucelle,” or “Louis XIV.,” or a tragedy. The rest of the time they
laughed over their champagne and studied Newton and Locke. What
extraordinary people! The _bonhomme_, if he was there at all, did not
count. The Marquise, who, as has been seen, had learnt English in a
fortnight, already translated at sight and had her inborn genius for
philosophy and science.
The year waned in such studies. Algarotti left. In eighteen months,
besides the seventy-five pages of the “Treatise on Metaphysics” which he
had written in answer to Émilie’s question as to what she was to think
on life, death, God, man, and immortality, Voltaire had also written a
comedy--“my American Alzire,” “my savages”--the three-act tragedy “The
Death of Cæsar,” cantos of the “Pucelle,” chapters of “Louis XIV.,” some
part of “The Prodigal Son” and at least four of the rhymed “Discourses
on Man.” His letters of the period which survive, and which only include
a single fragment out of the number he must have written to Madame du
Châtelet, fill a fourth of a large volume. Add to this that he was
personally supervising the building and decorating, that he was the
lover of the Marquise--a position that always occupied a good deal of
time with that _exigeante_ lady--correcting the incorrigible Linant,
busy making all kinds of chemical experiments and collecting old
pictures by proxy in Paris, and it will be seen that he was the living
proof of his own saying, “One has time for everything if one chooses to
use it.”