FLYING VISITS TO FREDERICK
Since that first letter of the August of 1736 the correspondence and
friendship between Voltaire and Prince Frederick of Prussia had grown
more and more enthusiastic. The devoted pair had from the first
interspersed abstract considerations on the soul and “the right divine
of kings to govern wrong” with the most flattering personalities and
hero-worship. Each letter grew more fervent and more adoring than the
last. By 1740 Voltaire was Frederick’s “dearest friend,” “charming
divine Voltaire,” “sublime spirit, first of thinking beings.” In
Voltaire’s vocabulary Frederick was Marcus Aurelius, the Star of the
North, not a king among kings but a king among men. Voltaire dreamt of
his prince “as one dreams of a mistress,” and found his hero’s
Prussian-French so beautiful “that you must surely have been born in the
Versailles of Louis XIV., had Bossuet and Fénelon for schoolmasters, and
Madame de Sévigné for nurse.”
Not to be outdone, Frederick announced that his whole creed was one God
and one Voltaire.
There was indeed no extravagance of language which this Teutonic
heir-apparent of six or seven and twenty and the brilliant withered
Frenchman of six-and-forty did not commit. They _did_ adore each other.
For Voltaire, Frederick was Concordia, the goddess of Peace--the
lightbringer--the hope of the world--veiled in the golden mist of
imagination, unseen, unknown, and so of infinite possibility and capable
of all things. While heir-apparent Frederick was quite shrewd enough to
know that a Voltaire might add lustre even to a king’s glory, and be as
valuable a friend as he was a dangerous foe.
By 1740 and the return of Voltaire and the Marquise from Paris to
Brussels, Frederick had begun compiling the most sumptuous and beautiful
_édition de luxe_ of the “Henriade” ever seen. He counselled his author
friend to omit a too daring couplet here and there, and his author would
have none of such prudence. Then Frederick must turn writer himself, and
sent his Voltaire a prose work called “Anti-Machiavelli” and an “Ode on
Flattery.”
“A prince who writes against flattery is as singular as a pope who
writes against infallibility,” said Voltaire. The “Anti-Machiavelli” is
a refutation in twenty-six prosy chapters of the entire Machiavellian
system. Voltaire called it “the only book worthy of a king for fifteen
hundred years,” and declared it should be “the catechism of kings and
their ministers.” He wept tears of admiration over it. He had it bound
and printed. He wrote a preface for it. His transports of delight were
sincere enough, no doubt. He was also sincere enough to criticise it to
Frederick pretty freely, and to recommend “almost a king” to be a little
less verbose, and to cut out unnecessary explanations. It must be
confessed that the “Anti-Machiavelli” appears a very dull and trite
composition to-day, and that the beautiful moral sentiments on the
iniquities of war and the kingly duty of keeping peace lose a good deal
of their weight when one knows that a very few months after they were
written their author invaded Silesia and plunged Europe into one of the
most bloody wars in history.
But when Voltaire waxed enthusiastic over the princely periods at
Brussels in the January of 1740 he had no premonition of that future.
Compared with other royal compositions “Anti-Machiavelli” _is_ a
masterpiece. Even to one of the shrewdest men who ever breathed it might
well have given hopes that its author would be a king not as other
kings, a benefactor and not an oppressor of humanity, a defender of all
liberal arts, a safeguard of justice, freedom, and civilisation. Old
Frederick William was dying. The time was at hand when his son might
make promise, practice. On June 6, 1740, he wrote to Voltaire: “My dear
friend, my fate is changed, and I have been present at the last moments
of a king, at his agony and at his death”; and prayed friend Voltaire
to regard him not as king but as man. And Voltaire replied to him as
“Your Humanity” instead of “Your Majesty,” and saw in the heavens the
dawn of a golden day, and on earth all things made new.
On July 19th, Voltaire arrived at The Hague to see about recasting and
correcting a new edition of the “Anti-Machiavelli,” now being printed
there. There were certain things in it safe enough for a crown prince to
have written anonymously, but hardly prudent to appear as the utterances
of a king.
Voltaire was quite as active and thorough on that King’s behalf as on
his own. He wasted a whole fortnight of his precious time on Frederick’s
business in Holland. He had infinite trouble with the printer, Van
Duren, and stooped to trickery (to be sure, Voltaire thought it no
abasement) to get the necessary alterations made in the royal
manuscript. At length this most indefatigable of beings himself brought
out an authorised version of the “Anti-Machiavelli.” Voltaire’s
corrected edition and Frederick’s original version both appear in a
Berlin issue of the Works of King Frederick the Great. A comparison of
the two shows the versatile Voltaire to be the most slashing and daring
of editors. He cut out, as imprudent, as much as thirty-two printed
pages of the royal composition. The time had not yet come when Frederick
was grateful for such a hewing and a hacking as that. But the time was
very soon to come when he would have been but too glad if Voltaire had
flung into the fire the whole of “Anti-Machiavelli,” and the memory
thereof.
The friendship between editor and author grew apace, meanwhile, daily.
They sent each other presents of wine and infallible medicines. Voltaire
had an escritoire, designed by Martin, specially made in Paris for
Frederick’s acceptance. But they had long discovered that the handsomest
of presents and the most adoring of letters were but a feeble bridge to
span the space that separated them, and the question of a meeting, long
and repeatedly urged by Frederick, became imminent.
Since Frederick’s first letter it had been the _rôle_ of Madame du
Châtelet to stand by and watch a comedy in which she was not offered a
part. To be a passive spectator was little to the taste of her supremely
energetic temperament. It was not long before she learnt to be jealous.
She was a great deal too clever not to know from very early times that,
but for her, Voltaire would have been a satellite to the Star of the
North, instead of to any woman in the world. When his friendship with
Frederick began he was no doubt true to her because he wished to be
true. But how short a time was it before he was true only from a sense
of duty! Madame du Châtelet, with her vigorous passions, was not the
woman to be satisfied with a cold, conscientious affection like that.
She must be first--everything! Her woman’s instinct told her to mistrust
Frederick, and she did mistrust him. Then the mistrust grew to dislike;
dislike to hate; and hate, war to the knife.
Oh what beautiful compliments that pair exchanged through Voltaire, or
directly in the most flattering letters to each other--in those four
years between 1736 and 1740! Frederick said the most charming things
about Émilie. She was always the goddess, the sublime, the divine.
Flattery costs so little and may buy so much.
When he read her “Essay on the Propagation of Fire,” he wrote to
Voltaire that it had given him “an idea of her vast genius, her
learning--and of your happiness.”
Did Madame look over her lover’s shoulder and smile not a little grimly
with compressed lips at those last words? “Of your happiness”! Very
well. Leave him to it then. What can your court or kingship give him
better than happiness, after all? It is to be feared that if Émilie had
rendered Voltaire’s life “un peu dure” in the time of Madame de
Graffigny she rendered it much harder now, and that there was not much
question of real happiness between them. To be fought over was a much
more trying position for a nature like Voltaire’s than to be one of the
fighters. And there is no hell on earth like that made by a jealous
woman.
Within easy reach too, in tempting sight, were the pleasures of a king’s
congenial society, honours to which a worldly-wise Voltaire could be by
no means insensible. Yet in almost all his letters to Frederick he
reiterates his decision that he will not leave his mistress; that he is
bound to her in honour and gratitude; that he has chosen his fate and
must abide by it.
In the spring of 1740 she had published her “Institutions Physiques,” in
which she now championed Leibnitz against Newton, as Voltaire had
championed Newton against Leibnitz. Frederick went into ecstasies over
it--to its authoress; and damned it with very faint praise indeed to his
confidant, Jordan. Madame may have suspected that perfidy. King
Frederick, when he became king in that May of 1740, guessed he had met
his match in that resolute woman whom he addressed variously as “Venus
Newton” and the “Queen of Sheba.” If Frederick wanted to see
Voltaire--well, then, he must have Venus too. Of that, Venus was
determined. Voltaire returned to Brussels from The Hague in the early
days of August, 1740. It was not the slightest use Frederick’s writing
to him on the 5th of that month from Berlin: “To be frank ... it is
Voltaire, it is you, it is my friend whom I desire to see, and the
divine Émilie with all her divinity is only an accessory to the
Newtonian Apollo”; and more plainly still the next day, “If Émilie
_must_ come with Apollo, I agree; although I would much rather see you
alone.” Madame du Châtelet was for Voltaire a sovereign far more
absolute than any on earth. He pulled a very wry face, shrugged his
shoulders, and resigned himself to her determination with as much
good-humour and nonchalance as he could compass. It was arranged that
Frederick should meet Voltaire and Venus at Antwerp on September 14th,
and should return with them for a brief visit, _incognito_, to the du
Châtelet’s hired house in Brussels.
One can fancy the baffled rage of the Marquise when at the very last
moment the news arrived that that subtle Frederick had artfully
developed an attack of ague which would quite prevent him meeting Émilie
at Antwerp and Brussels, but need be no obstacle in the way of Voltaire,
alone, coming to see his sick friend for two or three days at the
Château of Moyland, near Cleves. Even Madame du Châtelet’s jealousy and
resource could find no excuse to keep her lover now. He went--feeling no
doubt rather guilty and very glad to get away--the precise sensations
of a schoolboy who has escaped for a day’s holiday from a very exacting
master. He was not going to play truant for long! After all, Madame
_had_ been dreadfully _exigeante_! One thinks of her with pity
somehow--Voltaire thought of her with something very like pity too--left
alone in Brussels, beaten, angry, and restless, and adding daily to an
already magnificent capital of hatred for Frederick.
That meeting at Moyland is one of the great _tableaux_ of history.
Voltaire himself painted it in letters to his friends when its memory
was green and delightful; and twenty years after, with his brush dipped
in darker colours. The ague, though convenient, was not a sham. Voltaire
found Solomon, Marcus Aurelius, the Star of the North, huddled up in a
blue dressing-gown in a wretched little bed in an unfurnished room,
shivering and shaking and most profoundly miserable. “The sublime spirit
and the first of thinking beings” sat down at once on the edge of the
royal pallet, felt the King’s pulse and suggested remedies. The day was
Sunday, September 11, 1740: very cold and gloomy, as was the disused
château itself. It is said Voltaire recommended quinine. Any how, the
fit passed, and by the evening Frederick was well enough to join a
supper of the gods.
Three men, who had been visitors at Cirey and were all renowned for
learning or brilliancy, were of it--Maupertuis, Algarotti, and
Kaiserling. Frederick forgot his ague, and Voltaire his Marquise. They
discussed the Immortality of the Soul, Liberty, Fate, Platonics. On the
two following nights the suppers were repeated. At one of them Voltaire
declaimed his new tragedy “Mahomet.” Frederick wrote of him just after
as having the eloquence of Cicero, the smoothness of Pliny, the wisdom
of Agrippa, and spoke, with a more literal truth, of the astounding
brilliancy of his conversation. As for Voltaire, he found for a brief
space the realisation of his dream--the incarnation of his ideal. Here
was the philosopher without austerity and with every charm of manner,
forgetting he was a king to be more perfectly a friend. Writing after
twenty years--after strife and bitterness--Voltaire still spoke of
Frederick as being at that day witty, delightful, flattering--aye,
still felt in some measure what he felt in fullest measure at the
Château of Moyland in 1740, the siren seduction of the King’s “blue
eyes, sweet voice, charming smile, love of retirement and occupation, of
prose and of verse.” With a mind keenly acute and searching, Voltaire
was youthfully susceptible to fascination. He had to the end a sort of
boyish vanity, and Frederick greatly admired him. But that alone would
not account for the fond pride and affection with which he regarded this
young King--and which might have been almost the partial and sanguine
love of a father for a promising son. No man ever wore better than
Frederick the Great that fine coat called Culture. He fitted it so well
that even a shrewd Voltaire thought it his skin, not his covering; and
when he flung it on the ground and trampled on it, still regretfully
loved him--not for what he had been, but for what he had seemed.
The three days came to an end. On September 14th, Frederick took
Maupertuis to Paradise, or Potsdam, with him, and condemned Voltaire to
Hell, or Holland (this is how Voltaire put it), where he was to stay at
The Hague in an old palace belonging to the King of Prussia and complete
his arrangements for the publication of his edition of the
“Anti-Machiavelli.” The Marquise was at Fontainebleau paving the way for
Voltaire’s return to Paris, and writing to Frederick to ask him to use
his influence to win Cardinal Fleury, the Prime Minister’s, favour, for
“our friend.” Fleury had formerly met Voltaire at the Villars’, “where
he liked me very much”; but that liking had since turned to dislike.
Madame worked at once with enthusiasm and with wisdom--that rare
combination of qualities which can accomplish everything. She said
herself, not a little bitterly, that she gave her lover back in three
weeks all he had laboriously lost in six years: opened to him the doors
of the Academy; restored to him ministerial favour. He sent a
presentation copy of the “Anti-Machiavelli” to Cardinal Fleury
presently, and the powerful Cardinal, now that Voltaire was a great
King’s friend and the active Marquise was at Court, suddenly discovered
that he never had had any fault but youth. “You have been young; perhaps
you were young a little too long”--but nothing worse than that; really
nothing. The two exchanged flattering letters. Then came events which
changed the face of Europe. On October 20, 1740, died the Emperor
Charles VI. He was succeeded by Maria Theresa of three-and-twenty. The
Powers were looking hard into each other’s faces to see if peace or war
were written there. “The slightest twinkle of Fleury’s eyelashes” was
hint sufficient for this daring and versatile Voltaire to try a new
_rôle_. When he started off to Remusberg on November 4 or 5, 1740, to
pay another little visit, already arranged, to friend Frederick, he went
not only as a visitor, but to discover the pacific or bellicose
disposition of Anti-Machiavelli who had already written, a little oddly,
that the Emperor’s death upset all his peaceful ideas.
The journey from The Hague to Remusberg took a fortnight. Voltaire had
as companion a man called Dumolard, whom Theriot had recommended for the
post of Frederick’s librarian. Their travelling carriage broke down
outside Herford, and Voltaire entered that town in the highly
picturesque and unpractical costume of his day on one of the carriage
horses. “Who goes there?” cried the sentinel. “Don Quixote,” answered
Voltaire.
Remusberg was _en fête_ when they reached it. There were suppers,
dances, and conversation, a little gambling, delightful concerts--the
gayest Court in the world. Frederick played on the flute and was
infinitely agreeable. The Margravine of Bayreuth, his sister, was of the
party. Voltaire showed Frederick Cardinal Fleury’s complimentary letter
on the “Anti-Machiavelli.” There was no change on the King’s face as he
read it; or if there was a change, it escaped even a Voltaire. If
Voltaire had been brilliant at Moyland he was twice as brilliant
here--in spite of the fact that he could only describe himself to
Theriot as “ill, active, poet, philosopher, and always your very sincere
friend.” He busied himself in procuring for that faithless person a
pension from Frederick, for having been the King’s agent in Paris. All
the time, through the suppers and the talk and the parties, he was
watching, watching, watching. The visit lasted six days. Voltaire had
never in his life tried to find out anything for so long without finding
it. But when he parted from Frederick at Potsdam he had not the faintest
suspicion that that invasion of Silesia upon which the King was to start
in twelve days’ time was even a possibility.
Frederick pressed his guest to prolong his stay. He went to Berlin for a
brief visit to pay his respects to the King’s mother, brother, and
sisters; but left there on December 2 or 3, 1740, and then returned to
Potsdam to say good-bye to his royal host--and to look into the royal
heart, if that might be. But it was not to be.
Voltaire was anxious to be back in Brussels in time to receive Madame du
Châtelet on her return from Paris, where her husband had just bought a
fine new house. He wrote a little epigram to his host before he left, in
which he gaily reproached the King as a coquette who conquers hearts but
never gives her own. He had been at least astute enough to divine that
there was Something his master hid from him. And his master responded
with a little _badinage_ on that other coquette who was drawing Voltaire
to Brussels.
They parted friends--and warm friends. But there was a highly practical
side to both their characters which came to the fore when Frederick bade
Voltaire send him the bill of his expenses at The Hague, and Voltaire
added to that bill the expenses of the journey to Remusberg, taken at
Frederick’s request. It was a large total--thirteen hundred écus--but it
was not an unjust one. It has been happily suggested that it at least
contained no charge for Man’s Time, and this man’s time was of quite
exceptional value. “Five hundred and fifty crowns a day” grumbled
Frederick to Jordan; “that is good pay for the King’s jester, with a
vengeance.” But when the King’s jester is a Voltaire, the King must
expect to pay for him. That was Voltaire’s view of the question, no
doubt.
A series of accidents befell him on his journey home. He was a whole
month getting from Berlin to Brussels, and twelve days of the time
ice-bound in a miserable little boat after leaving The Hague. In a
wretched ship’s cabin he worked hard on “Mahomet” and wrote voluminous
letters.
One of them, dated “this last of December,” 1740, was to
Frederick--cordial, flattering, and expansive. Having been dutiful
enough to tear himself away from “a monarch who cultivates and honours
an art which I idolise” for a woman “who reads nothing but Christianus
Wolffius,” Voltaire was a little disposed to grudge that act of virtue,
and to make the most of it. He was anxious, too, to prove to Frederick
that he had left him chiefly to finish the du Châtelet lawsuit--not
merely “to sigh like an idiot at a woman’s knees.” “But, Sire ... there
is no obligation I do not owe her. The head-dresses and the petticoats
she wears do not make the duty of gratitude less sacred.” The last cloud
of illusion must have been dispelled long before the Marquise du
Châtelet’s ex-lover could have written those words.
He saw her now not only as she was, but at her worst. “Men serve women
kneeling: when they get on their feet they go away.” Shall it not be
accounted for righteousness to a Voltaire that he got on his feet and
went back to her?