TWO PLAYS AND A FAILURE
Before Voltaire reached Brussels--nay, before he had written to
Frederick that letter from the ice-bound boat off the coasts of
Zealand--he had received one of the greatest mental shocks of his life.
The news of the invasion of Silesia came upon him like a thunderclap.
This--after the “Anti-Machiavelli”! This--after all they had hoped,
planned, dreamed! Where was that smiling kingdom, Arcadia, wherein all
liberal arts were to flourish, where were to be for ever peace,
tolerance, plenty? Where indeed? But Voltaire was nothing if not
recuperative. There is not a single instance in his life when he sat
down and cried over spilt milk. He was disillusioned now--and bitterly
disillusioned. “After all, he is only a King,” he wrote; and again, “He
is a King, that makes one tremble. Time will show”; and to English
Falkener, in English, “My good friend the King of Prussia, who wrote so
well against Machiavelli and acted immediately like the heroes of
Machiavelli ... fiddles and fights as well as any man in Christendom.”
Fiddles and fights! Well, since it was impossible to adore Frederick as
Concordia, one might as well admire him as Mars. Making the best of it
was part of Voltaire’s creed. He did what he could to live up to it now.
He congratulated Frederick on his victories. The pair continued to write
each other long letters, much interspersed with facile rhymes. They were
still friends. But it was no longer the boy-hero, the Messiah of the
North, the youthful benefactor of human kind whom Voltaire adored: it
was a far cleverer and a far less lovable person--the real Frederick the
Great.
Voltaire’s interminable journey did near its end at last. By January 3,
1741, he was in Brussels. Did he feel a little bit like the truant
schoolboy returning in the evening expecting a whipping, and all his
excuses for so long an absence disbelieved? Of course Madame du Châtelet
disbelieved them! A month getting back from Berlin to Brussels! That was
a very likely story indeed, and quite on a par with friend Frederick’s
artful ague at Moyland! Had quite planned to be back in Brussels before
I arrived from Paris! Had you indeed? And you expect me to believe that
too?
The unhappy Marquise had been eating her heart out in suspicion and
impatience, waiting for him. “I have been cruelly repaid for all I have
done for him,” she wrote to d’Argental out of this angry solitude; and
again, “I know the King of Prussia hates me, but I defy him to hate me
as much as I have hated him these two months.” She overwhelmed Voltaire
with reproaches directly she saw him. Her tongue was dreadfully voluble
and clever. The Marquis was away, as usual. There was nothing to
distract her attention, and Voltaire’s excuses _did_ sound very lame
indeed. He had a very bad quarter of an hour; but, after all, it was
only a quarter of an hour. They were reconciled--and tenderly. If Madame
was scolding and exacting, devoted to the metaphysics of Christianus
Wolffius, extraordinarily clad and with a painful taste in headgear, she
loved her lover and had done much for him. And Frederick the Great had
invaded Silesia. If that invasion was a triumph for him, it was also a
triumph for one of the bitterest foes he had, Madame du Châtelet.
At Brussels, in that January of the year 1741, there was then, for a
time, some sort of renewal of the brief honeymoon days of Cirey, before
the Prussian heir-apparent’s earliest letter, when the chains that bound
the first man in Europe to his Marquise were forged of warm admiration
and not barren duty.
Voltaire was soon writing that it was not Frederick’s perfidy that had
hastened his return--that if he had been offered Silesia itself he would
have come back to his mistress just the same. She had never seemed so
far above kings as she did now. Her unjust reproaches even were sweeter
than the flatteries of all courts. He had left her once for a monarch,
but he would not leave her again for a prophet. And she--a true woman
after all--wrote that Frederick could take as many provinces as he
pleased, provided he did not rob her of the happiness of her life.
Voltaire was busy in these early months of 1741 with his play “Mahomet,”
for which he had a quite fatherly love and admiration. The English Lord
Chesterfield, with whom he had dined in London, was a visitor at Madame
du Châtelet’s Brussels establishment, and to him Voltaire read
selections from the new drama. It would have been immediately produced
in Paris; but the best actors were unable to take part in it, and it was
judged better to postpone its appearance there.
In this April Voltaire and Madame du Châtelet went to Lille, to stay
with Madame Denis and her husband. At Lille, “Mahomet” was performed by
a company of French players, who had been half engaged by Voltaire to go
to Prussia in the employ of Frederick, and then thrown over by that busy
monarch. The audience, each of the three nights the play was performed,
was numerous and passionately enthusiastic. The clergy of Lille were
powerfully represented and entirely approving. M. Denis and his plump
three years’ bride of course came to clap the latest effort of Uncle
Voltaire. Uncle Voltaire had a keen eye on the face, and a lean
forefinger on the pulse of that audience to see how certain daring
passages affected it. What Lille applauded, Paris might pass. On the
first night, at the end of the second act, a despatch from the King of
Prussia was handed to M. de Voltaire in his box. He read it aloud. “It
is said the Austrians are retreating, and I believe it.” It was the
declaration of the victory of Mollwitz. Lille had its own reasons for
being passionately Prussian, and received the news with shouts of
delight. If anything had been needed to complete the success of
“Mahomet,” that despatch would have done it. The bearer of good news is
always a popular person. But nothing was needed. The clergy of Lille
begged, and were granted, an extra performance of the play for their
especial benefit at the house of one of the chief magistrates. Orthodoxy
seemed to be taking this Voltaire under her strong wing at last, and
Voltaire accepted the situation with a very cynic grimace and a great
deal of satisfaction. He and Madame du Châtelet left Lille with the most
sanguine hopes of seeing “Mahomet” shortly and successfully produced in
Paris. Until November, 1741, they were mostly in Brussels, watching the
progress of the du Châtelet lawsuit. Madame had a little quarrel on hand
with her tutor Koenig, in which Maupertuis joined.
In November they went to Paris and stayed, not in that splendid Palais
Lambert which the Marquis du Châtelet had bought, but which was not yet
completely furnished, but in Voltaire’s old quarters--the house which
had belonged to Madame de Fontaine Martel. In December they returned to
Cirey for a month; and in the January of the new year 1742 were again in
Brussels. The lawsuit was positively progressing, and so favourably that
they felt justified in spending the rest of the winter in Paris.
Immediately on their arrival in the capital they were plunged into that
“disordered life” which the Marquise loved and Voltaire loathed.
“Supping when I ought to be in bed, going to bed and not sleeping,
getting up to race about, not doing any work, deprived of real pleasures
and surrounded by imaginary ones”--as a description of fashionable life
the words hold good to this day. “Farewell the court,” he wrote again;
“I have not a courtier’s health.” He spoke of himself as being always at
the tail of that lawsuit--which the indefatigable and persistent
Marquise _must_ pursue to the bitter end.
They lingered in Paris through May, June, July--in their fine Palais
Lambert now--and all the time no “Mahomet.” Voltaire should have been
used to disappointments and delays, if any man should. He brought out
everything he ever wrote at the point of the sword. There were always
anxiously waiting to take offence the acutely susceptible feelings of a
Church, a king, a court, a nobility, and a press censor. This time,
first of all, it was the Turkish envoy who was being _fêted_ in Paris,
“and it would not be proper to defame the Prophet while entertaining his
ambassador,” said the polite Voltaire. The second cause of delay was
much more serious. Exactly at a moment when the policy of Frederick the
Great appeared peculiarly anti-French and that monarch was enjoying the
brief but vivid hatred of Paris, there crept out one of Voltaire’s
rhyming letters to the Prussian King, in which the courtly writer
lavishly praised and flattered his correspondent. M. de Voltaire had to
be alert and active in a moment. He pursued his old line of policy.
First of all, I did not write the letter. Secondly, if I did, it has
been miscopied. Thirdly, if I did write it and it has not been
miscopied, the reigning favourite of Louis XV., Madame de Mailly, must
help me out of my dilemma. Voltaire wrote and asked her assistance. She
could not do much. But Cardinal Fleury still looked upon Voltaire as a
person to be conciliated as an influence on Prussia. He read the play,
and approved. The censor did likewise. The murmur of the streets and the
_cafés_ was still against the too Prussian Voltaire. But for once the
authorities actually seemed to be with him.
On August 19, 1742, “Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet” was performed
to a house crammed with the rank, wit, and fashion of Paris, who
applauded it to the echo. D’Alembert appeared for literature. The Bar
and the Church were generously represented. The author himself was in
the pit. This might be another “Zaire,” only a “Zaire” written in the
plenitude of a man’s mental powers--stern, not tender--grand, not
pathetic--the expression of matured and passionate convictions, instead
of vivid, impulsive feelings. Voltaire was eight-and-thirty when he
produced “Zaire,” and eight-and-forty when he produced “Mahomet.” How
fully he had lived in those ten years! Then he felt: now he knew. He had
often dared greatly in his plays: in “Mahomet” he dared all.
Lord Chesterfield had regarded the tragedy as a covert attack on
Christianity. It must have been the sceptical reputation of M. de
Voltaire which made Lord Chesterfield so think. No impartial person
reading it now could find an anti-Christian word in it. It is a covert
attack on nothing. It is an open attack on the fanaticism, bigotry,
intolerance, which degrade any religion. It is a battle against the
“shameful superstition which debases humanity.” Worth, not birth, is
its motto. “All men are equal: worth, not birth, makes the difference
between them,” says Omar, one of the characters. In this play is found
that famous and scornful line, “Impostor at Mecca and prophet at
Medina.” There is scarcely a sentence in it which is not a quivering and
passionate protest against the crafty rule of any priesthood which would
keep from the laity light, knowledge, and progress. “I wished to show in
it,” said Voltaire to M. César de Missy, “to what horrible excess
fanaticism can bring feeble souls, led by a knave.”
If there were dissentient voices--and there were--the applause of that
brilliant first night drowned them. The play was repeated a second time
and a third. Voltaire may have begun to feel safe: to congratulate
himself that at last free thought uttered freely was permissible even in
France. He was always hopeful. But his enemies were too mighty for him.
Working against him always, untiring, subtle, malicious, was the whole
envious Grub Street of Paris led by beaten Desfontaines and jealous
Piron. The man in the street was now bitterly against him too. The
Solicitor-General, who, on his own confession, had not read a word of
the play, much less seen it acted, was soon writing to the Lieutenant of
Police that he “believed it necessary to forbid its performances.” On
the valuable evidence of hearsay, he found “Mahomet” “infamous, wicked,
irreligious, blasphemous,” and “_everybody says_ that to have written it
the author must be a scoundrel only fit for burning.” It was still in
the power of this remarkable officer of most remarkable justice to
prosecute Voltaire for the “Philosophic Letters,” which he threatened to
do, if “Mahomet” were not removed. Feeling ran so high that friend
Fleury himself was compelled to advise the withdrawal of the play. It
was performed once more--that is, in all four times--and then withdrawn.
A man of much more placid disposition might have been roused now. But
this time Voltaire was too disgusted, too sick at heart with men and
life, to have even the strength to be angry. He and Madame du Châtelet
left for Brussels on August 22d. He was ill in bed by August 29th--ten
days after that first brilliant performance--trying to sit up and make
a fair copy of the real “Mahomet” to send to Frederick the Great.
The spurious editions, shamefully incorrect, which were appearing all
over Paris, must have been the overflow of the invalid’s cup of
bitterness.
“It is only what happened to ‘Tartuffe,’” he wrote from that sick bed to
Frederick. “The hypocrites persecuted Molière, and the fanatics are
risen up against me. I have yielded to the torrent without uttering a
word.... If I had but the King of Prussia for a master and the English
for fellow-citizens! The French are nothing but great children; only the
few thinkers we have among us are so splendid as to make up for all the
rest.” And a day or two later to another friend: “This tragedy is
suitable rather for English heads than French hearts. It was found too
daring in Paris because it was powerful, and dangerous because it was
truthful.... It is only in London that poets are allowed to be
philosophers.”
The words sound as if the writer were weary, _las_, at the end of his
tether. On September 2, 1742, he went for a very few days’ rest and
refreshment to Aix-la-Chapelle to see Frederick the Great, who had just
signed a treaty of peace. Madame du Châtelet did not object to that
brief holiday, and entertained no idea of making a third person thereat
herself. She was more confident of her Voltaire now--hopeful that he was
hers, body and soul, for ever. When he was at Aix, Frederick offered him
a house in Berlin and a charming estate--peace, freedom, and honour for
the rest of his life. And Voltaire said he preferred a second storey in
the house of his Marquise--slavery and persecution in Paris, to liberty
and a king’s friendship in Berlin. “I courageously resisted all his
propositions,” was his own phrase. For this man when he was virtuous
always knew it, and keenly felt how much pleasanter it would have been
to be wicked instead. Fleury approved of the little visit, and though it
_was_ a holiday and Frederick _was_ his friend, Voltaire did still his
best to subtly find out the royal disposition towards France.
On September 7th he returned to Brussels, not having been absent a
week. Madame du Châtelet longed to get back to the gaieties of Paris,
though Voltaire, who was ill enough to be able to write nothing but
verses, said Madame, was well content in Brussels.
He went back to the capital, however, in this November of 1742, and was
not a little _vif_ and active in getting imprisoned certain publishers
who had produced “the most infamous satire” on himself and Madame du
Châtelet.
He was soon also busy on a scheme which he had tried successfully ten
years before. When “Êriphyle” failed he brought out “Zaire.” When the
authorities damned “Mahomet” he produced “Mérope. “ Ten years--ten years
of battles and disappointments, of wretched health and domestic
vicissitudes--had not robbed him of one iota of his pluck, energy, and
enterprise. He flung off that lassitude and despair of life which came
upon him in those few dismal days in Brussels: searched among his
manuscripts: discovered “Mérope,” and went out to meet the enemy with
that weapon in his hand. It had been written in the early days at Cirey,
between 1736 and 1738. It was the play over which Madame de Graffigny
had “wept to sobs.” Voltaire had wept over it himself. He felt what he
wrote when he wrote it, so acutely that there was no wonder his readers
were moved too. His own wit and pathos always retained their power to
touch him to tears or laughter whenever he read them, which is more
unusual.
“Mérope” is a classic tragedy--“a tragedy without love in it and only
the more tender for that,” wrote Voltaire to Cideville. It turns on
maternal affection. The idea is uncommon and daring enough. Would the
venture be successful? Madame de Graffigny had wept indeed; but then
Graffignys weep and laugh easily, especially when the author is also the
host. Mademoiselle Quinault and d’Argental had told him that “Mérope”
was unactable to a French _parterre_.
The Marquise had mocked at it; but then the Marquise had happened to be
in a very bad temper with the playwright. Who could tell? If taking
pains could make it succeed, a success it would be. The author, himself
no mean actor, attended the rehearsal and coached the players. When
Mademoiselle Dumesnil, who was cast for “Mérope,” failed to rise to the
height of tragedy demanded in the fourth act where she has to throw
herself between her son and the guards leading him to execution, crying
“Barbare! il est mon fils!”--she complained she would have to have the
devil in her to simulate such a passion as Voltaire required. “That is
just it, Mademoiselle,” cried he. “You _must_ have the devil in you to
succeed in any of the arts!” There was never a truer word. He did manage
to put a good deal of the devil into Mademoiselle. She became a famous
actress. His own fervour was infectious. The players, who had disliked
the play at first, caught his own enthusiasm for it at last. On February
20, 1743, it was first represented to a house crowded with persons who
had admired “Mahomet” and sympathised with the treatment of “Mahomet’s”
author. It was the best first night on record. Mademoiselle Dumesnil
kept the house in tears throughout three acts, it is said. For the first
time in any theatre the enthusiastic audience demanded the appearance of
the author. He was in a box with the Duchesse de Boufflers and the
Duchesse de Luxembourg and entirely declined to present himself on the
stage. His Duchesses tried to persuade him, with no better success than
the audience. He kissed the Duchesse de Luxembourg’s hand and left the
box, “with a resigned air,” and tried to hide himself in another part of
the house. But he was discovered, and drawn into the box of the
Maréchale de Villars for whom he had once felt something more than the
feelings of a friend. How long ago that was--Villars and its white
nights--a young man of five-and-twenty, and Madame, gracious, _svelte_,
and woman of the world to the tips of her fingers! She had become
_dévote_ since. “She was made to lead us all to Heaven or Hell,
whichever she chooses,” wrote Voltaire airily. As for himself, _he_ had
his Marquise du Châtelet. The moment was not one for reminiscences in
any case. The _parterre_ was not to be silenced. The story runs that it
vociferously insisted that Madame de Villars, the young daughter-in-law
of his old love, should kiss M. de Voltaire. The Maréchale ordered her
to do so, and Voltaire wrote after that he was like Alain Chartier and
the Princess Margaret of Scotland--“only he was asleep and I was awake.”
He enjoyed that evening as only a Frenchman can enjoy. He was all his
life intensely susceptible to the emotions of the moment; vain with the
light-hearted vanity of a very young man; loving show and glitter,
applause and flattery--a true child of France, though one of the
greatest of her great family. Was it not a triumph over his enemies too?
What might not follow from it? Voltaire said thereafter that the
distinction between himself and Jean Jacques Rousseau was that Jean
Jacques wrote in order to write, and he wrote in order to act. Of what
use was the dazzling success of “Mérope” if it could not buy him a place
he had long coveted and gratify one of the darling desires of his soul?
On January 29th of this same year 1743 had died Voltaire’s friend,
Cardinal Fleury. He left vacant one of the forty coveted chairs in the
French Academy. Who should aspire to it if not the man who had written
the “Henriade” and the “English Letters,” “Zaire,” “Alzire,” “Mahomet,”
and “Mérope”? It would be no empty honour, but a safeguard against his
enemies: the hall-mark of the King’s favour.
The King was for his election; so was the King’s mistress, Madame de
Châteauroux; but against it, and bitterly against it, were Maurepas,
Secretary of State, and Boyer, Bishop of Mirepoix, and tutor of the
Dauphin. Voltaire always called Boyer the “âne de Mirepoix” from the
fact that he signed himself “anc: de Mirepoix,” meaning that he was
formerly bishop of that place--and it must be conceded that, if
conscientious, he was one of the most narrow-minded old prelates who
ever fattened at a court. He has been well summed up as a man who
“reaped all the honours and sowed none.” _His_ argument was that it
would offend Heaven for a profane person like M. de Voltaire to succeed
a cardinal in any office. To be sure, the chairs in the Academy were
designed to reward literary, not ecclesiastical, merit. But what was
that to a Boyer?
Voltaire wrote long letters which are masterpieces of subtlety and
special pleading to prove what a good Christian and Churchman he was,
and how suited in character, as well as ability, to be the successor of
a prelate. He did not stop at a lie. In a letter to Boyer written at the
end of February he declared himself a sincere Catholic, and added that
he had never written a page which did not breathe humanity (which was
true enough) and many sanctified by religion (which was very untrue
indeed). He conclusively proved (cannot one fancy the twinkle in his
eager eyes as he penned the words?) that “the ‘Henriade’ from one end to
the other is nothing but an _éloge_ of a virtue which submits to
Providence,” and that most of the “English Letters,” current in Paris,
were not written by him at all. The mixture of the false and the true is
so clever that it _might_ have deceived anybody. Voltaire may have
argued with himself that since he knew it _would_ deceive nobody, the
lying was very venial indeed. What did it matter what he said now? It
was the master motives which had ruled his life, the passion for freedom
of thought and action, the sceptical temper, the burning longing for
light and knowledge which panted in every page of every play, in every
line almost of his graver works, which counted against him. He was
excluded from the Academy. The Ass of Mirepoix won M. de Voltaire’s seat
for a bishop--of very slender literary capacity indeed. Voltaire wrote
lightly that it was according to the canons of the Church that a prelate
should succeed a prelate, and that “a profane person like myself must
renounce the Academy for ever.”
But he was bitterly disappointed not the less. Frederick the Great, in a
kingly pun, said that he believed that France was now the only country
in Europe where “âncs” and fools could make their fortunes. In 1743
England elected Voltaire a member of her Royal Society. During the year
four other chairs fell vacant at the French Academy. But the greatest
literary genius of the age, perhaps of any age, was not even mooted as a
candidate. It was Montesquieu, the famous author of “L’Esprit des Lois,”
who said scornfully of the occasion and of Voltaire:
“Voltaire n’est pas beau, il n’est que joli. It would be shameful for
the Academy to admit him, and it will one day be shameful for it not to
have admitted him.”
In what a far different and far larger spirit it was that Voltaire
criticised his critic--“Humanity had lost its title-deeds. Montesquieu
found them and gave them back.”