GLAMOUR
Clean, quiet Potsdam stands on the river Havel and is sixteen miles from
Berlin. In 1745, the great Frederick had begun to build there the
little, white, one-storied palace called Sans-Souci. He desired to be
buried at the foot of a statue of Flora on one of its terraces--“when I
am there I shall be _sans souci_.”
The French tastes of the royal architect are everywhere evident.
Sans-Souci is a kind of miniature Versailles. It stands on a hill.
Formal terraces slope to a formal park. Here are statues, and a
fountain--all the artificial and no natural beauties. Within the palace
may still be seen, almost unaltered, the rooms where the great King
lived and died--his chair, his clock, his portrait. In the picture
gallery he walked and talked with Voltaire. And in the west wing is the
room occupied by that favoured guest, and before him by the Maréchal de
Saxe.
Voltaire arrived then at Sans-Souci on July 10th, after a journey which
cost thrifty Frederick 600_l._, and during which the traveller had
visited the famous battlefields of Fontenoy, Raucoux, and Lawfeld.
It was ten years since Voltaire had escaped from his Madame du Châtelet
to first see in the flesh the hero of his dreams. It was fourteen years
since the pair had first exchanged adoring letters. Their friendship was
of European fame. They were the two greatest men of their age. Half the
world watched their meeting--and awaited results.
The pair fell metaphorically, and perhaps literally too, into each
other’s arms. This day had been so long delayed. The host had worked for
it so persistently, doggedly, and consistently! The visitor had so
warmly wanted it when it had been wholly impossible--and when it was
inevitable had done his best to recall that early enthusiasm.
The enthusiasm may well have come back to him now. It did come back.
Instead of sulky Louis’s cold shoulder, was “_my_ Frederick the Great,”
flattery, honour, and consideration. Potsdam was gay and busy with
preparations for a splendid _fête_ to be held in Berlin in August. But
it forgot gaiety and business alike to do honour to Voltaire.
Saxe’s apartments left nothing to be desired. The royal stables were at
the guest’s disposal. There were music and conversation. On July 24th,
the guest sketched Potsdam for d’Argental--“one hundred and fifty
thousand soldiers ... opera, comedy, philosophy, poetry, grandeur and
graces, grenadiers and muses, trumpets and violins, the suppers of
Plato, society and liberty--who would believe it? Yet it is very true.”
And on August 1st to Thibouville, “To find all the charms of society in
a king who has won five battles; to be in the midst of drums and to hear
the lyre of Apollo; ... to pass one’s days half in _fêtes_, half in the
delights of a quiet and occupied life”--here was glamour indeed.
And then on a day before August 14th, and before Voltaire had been five
weeks at Potsdam, Frederick, who perfectly understood the policy of
striking while the iron is hot, offered his dearest friend, if he would
but stay with him for ever, the post of Chamberlain, a Royal Order,
twenty thousand francs per annum, and niece Denis a yearly pension of
four thousand francs if she would come and keep her uncle’s house in
Berlin.
The offer was so sudden and so brilliant! That impetuosity which had
made all his shrewdness of no avail a hundred times before, was still at
once Voltaire’s charm and stumbling-block. He forgot “Anti-Machiavelli”
and d’Arnaud. Everything that makes life delightful surrounded him at
the moment. Behind him lay the Bastille of his youth, flight to Holland,
hiding at Cirey, the “English Letters” burnt by the hangman, the fierce
persecution for that babbling trifle the “Mondain,” the Pompadour’s
false smile, the kingly scowl, Crébillon, Desfontaines, Boyer. At its
best his country had given him grudging and empty honours. If he had won
fame and fortune, it had been in spite of Courtly malice and for ever at
the point of the sword. He was sick to the soul of gagging and
injustice. It was not the least part of his bitterness against his
Louis, that he had cringed to and flattered such a creature--in vain. He
was fifty-six years old. The fifty-six years had been one long
persecution. He had still the daring spirit of a boy. He had still such
deeds to do that the gods would make him immortal, if need be, to do
them. A new heaven and a new earth lay before him. He accepted the
offer--and began the world again.
There is still preserved his letter to Madame Denis, dated August 14,
1750, wherein he tells her of Frederick’s bounty. It has the spontaneous
enthusiasm of youth. “You _must_ come, niece Louise,” it says in effect.
“Think of the magnificence of the offer! And then--Berlin has such
operas!” (shrewd Uncle Voltaire!) He had hardly been given time to
breathe, much less to think, since he arrived at Potsdam. Pleasure had
succeeded to pleasure and flattery to flattery. For three hours at a
time he would criticise his royal host’s writings. Crafty Frederick gave
up whole days to _belles-lettres_. There was everything to intoxicate
the excitable brain of this French child of genius. The great Frederick
was cool enough. _He_ had no glamour. Does it make the great Voltaire
less lovable that he saw things all _en rose or en noir_, was led
dangerous lengths by his emotions, and for all that rasping cynicism
could be a dreamer of dreams, a visionary, and a sentimentalist?
Practical niece Denis, with her vulgar, shrewd instincts, wrote back and
said that no man could be the friend of a king. Toady or slave--but
friend, never. And Voltaire, carried to Berlin in the whirl of the Court
for the Carrousel, wrote to d’Argental begging him to persuade her, and
asking d’Argental’s forgiveness for the course upon which he was
resolved.
On August 23d, Frederick, having read Madame Denis’s letter,
condescended to write with his own royal hand from his private
apartment to beg Voltaire to stay with him. What more flattering? Yet
even now Voltaire was not quite sure he was wise. He took such immense
pains to prove himself so. But he had decided irrevocably--and flung the
responsibility of that choice on destiny at last. “I abandon myself to
my fate,” he wrote on August 28th, “and throw myself head foremost into
that abyss.”
The fall was soft enough at first.
The Carrousel had begun about August 8th.
Berlin was crowded with noble and distinguished guests from all lands.
Frederick rode about the city on horseback, personally supervising the
preparations for the _fête_. Red of face, portly of figure,
eight-and-thirty years old, and much addicted to snuff--one of his
English guests thus described him, not ungraphically. With his five
great battles behind him and such a future before him as might well
surpass the wildest flights of fancy, he was a great man to call
“friend.”
And in Berlin, among the notables of all Europe convened to celebrate a
Carrousel which should make Louis XIV.’s famous _fête_ of the Tuileries
dull and obscure, the great Voltaire was only less honoured than the
great Frederick himself. He may be forgiven for thinking he had chosen
well.
Among the guests was the Margravine of Bayreuth, Frederick’s sister, and
very much Voltaire’s friend. In 1743, he had spent ten days with her at
Bayreuth. French plays were acted--but, strangely enough, no plays by M.
Arouet de Voltaire. He was a spectator on the occasion. He had said
truly of himself that he loved good verses so much that he loved other
people’s--“which is a great deal for a poet.” On August 17th the French
players acted the “Mauvais Riche” of his vain little rival, Baculard
d’Arnaud. But Voltaire was in the mood when he was ready to be pleased
with anything. On August 26th was played the “Iphigénie” of Racine, and
on the 27th the “Médecin Malgré Lui.”
“The language least talked at Court was German,” said Voltaire. “Our
tongue and literature have made more conquests than Charlemagne.” He
wrote delightedly of the King’s brother and sister, Henry and Amelia, as
the most charming reciters of French verse. His spectacles were
rose-coloured indeed.
August 25th was the crowning point of the _fête_, one of those splendid
revelries which were the boast of the old _régime_--and died with it.
The Carrousel of the Sun King had been glorious. The Berlin Carrousel
far outvied it. It was, too, one of the golden nights of Voltaire’s
life, and lives in history for that reason.
The courtyard of the great palace in Berlin had been turned into an
amphitheatre. Three thousand soldiers under arms lined the approaches to
the place. Forty-six thousand lights illuminated it. Tier above tier,
brilliantly apparelled, blazing with jewels, the nobility of all lands,
sat the spectators. Among them were Lord Melton and Jonas Hanway--“a
chiel amang ye, takin’ notes”--and Collini, a young Florentine. Save
only the royal box, every seat was occupied. The hush of expectation was
on the audience. And then, on a sudden, gorgeous in dress, as that
period alone knew how to be gorgeous, “among a group of great lords,” a
lean figure moved towards the King’s enclosure. For an instant the house
was silent. And then there swept through it a murmur like the wind among
the trees--“Voltaire!” “Voltaire!”
It was a moment worth life and worth death. A stranger and foreigner
raised by genius alone to that mighty eminence of fame to which genius,
a proud line of royal ancestors, and five great battles had raised
Frederick the King! Every eye was upon this son of a notary, this Paris
_bourgeois_, Voltaire. Collini noticed the delight in the piercing eyes,
and a certain modesty of demeanour very pleasing. Voltaire _had_ chosen
rightly after all! There could have been no doubt in his impressionable
mind at that magnificent minute.
Then in the arena the tournament began. Voltaire described it as
fairyland, the _fête_ of Chinese lanterns, and the Carrousel of Louis
the Magnificent, all in one. The competitors in the fray were royal, and
a princess--Venus and the apple--gave away the prizes. After the
tournament was a supper, and after the supper a ball. Voltaire did not
go to that. He was surfeited with delight--_las_ with adulation. He had
already written of his great host that he scratched with one hand and
caressed, with the other. To-night it had been all caresses. And would
surely be caresses for ever! “When a clever man commits a folly, it is
not a small one.”
The plan as now formed was that Voltaire, with Prussia as home, should
travel in Italy in this autumn of 1750 and so gratify a desire of years,
and that in the spring of 1751 Madame Denis should join him in Berlin.
In the meantime, Prussia was heaven.
On September 12th, he wrote again to his niece earnestly trying to
persuade her of its charms. And would have succeeded very likely if she
had not had particular reasons of her own at the time for preferring
Paris.
Even at Berlin and during a Carrousel Voltaire had entire liberty. Or at
least as much liberty as fame and distinctions allow any man. His days
were his own. In the morning he studied “to the sound of the drum.” In
the evening queens asked him to supper, he said, and were not offended
when he denied them. He spent hours correcting Frederick’s works, and
observed gallantly “Cæsar supra grammaticam” to excuse the noble pupil’s
defects in that department. He gave up the kingly dinners
presently--there were too many generals and princes, forsooth, for this
M. de Voltaire.
On September 14th, “Rome Sauvée” was played in the rooms of the Princess
Amelia at Berlin and on a stage especially erected by its author, who
took the part of Cicero as he had done at Sceaux and in the Rue
Traversière. He also trained the company and lost his temper with them,
exactly as he had lost it with his troupe in Paris. When the tumult of
_fêtes_ was past the Court went back to Potsdam. Life was a thousand
times more delightful than ever. “I have my whole time to myself, I am
crossed in nothing.” “I find a port after thirty years of storm. I find
the protection of a king, the conversation of a philosopher, the charms
of an agreeable man united in one who for sixteen years consoled me in
misfortune and sheltered me from my enemies.... If one can be certain of
anything it is of the character of the King of Prussia.” “I have the
audacity to think that nature has made me for him. I have found so
singular a likeness between his tastes and mine that I have forgotten he
is the ruler of half Germany and the other half trembles at his
name....” “The conqueror of Austria loves _belles-lettres_, which I love
with all my heart.” “My marriage is accomplished then. Will it be happy?
I do not know. I cannot help myself saying ‘Yes.’ One had to finish by
marriage after coquetting for so many years.”
Even the d’Arnaud affair “does not prevent the King of Prussia from
being the most amiable and remarkable of men.” Nay, d’Arnaud himself was
“bon diable” after all. And the Prussian climate so rigorous? Not a bit
of it. What are a few rays of sunshine more or less to make us give
ourselves such airs? The glamour was complete.
All the letters from which these extracts are taken were written less
than four months after Voltaire’s arrival in Prussia, and when the
contrast between his treatment there and the treatment meted to him in
France, was fresh and glaring. All the letters were written to persons
who only half approved or wholly disapproved, of what Lord Chesterfield
called Voltaire’s “emigration.”
His friends, enemies, and niece were all united in fearing and disliking
it. In Paris a caricature was being sold in the street: “Voltaire the
famous Prussian! Look at him with his great bear skin bonnet to keep out
the cold! Six sous for Voltaire the famous Prussian!”
At the French Court the offended attitude of King Louis had not changed.
King Frederick wrote very civilly to borrow the great Voltaire from his
brother of France. And his brother of France, says d’Argenson, replied
he should be very glad to make the loan, and turning to his courtiers,
added that there would be one fool more at the Court of the King of
Prussia “and one fool less at mine.”
On October 27th, Voltaire wrote to tell the d’Argentals that his post of
Historiographer had been taken away from him; though Madame de Pompadour
had told him, in a little note, that King Louis had had the goodness to
allow him to keep an old pension of two thousand livres.
“I do not know why the King should deprive me of the Historiographership
and let me retain the title of his Gentleman-in-Ordinary,” Voltaire
wrote rather disgustedly to Madame Denis on October 28th. But after all,
what did it matter? In return for the Historiographership he had the
post of Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, that Royal Prussian Order,
and that yearly Prussian pension.
He had exchanged strife for peace; slights for honour; and Louis XV. for
Frederick the Great. How _could_ he be wrong?
It is always far harder to guess the mind of Frederick on any given
occasion than the mind of Voltaire. Frederick at least was sure that
Voltaire was worth keeping even at a heavy price to be “the glory of
one’s own Court and the envy of the world.” Gay, witty, and easy--a past
master of the art of conversation--and with an impulsive susceptibility
to the impressions of the moment wholly fascinating--the King was not
wrong in placing a high estimate on the companionship of Voltaire. The
King knew genius when he saw it. He meant to keep it now he had it. So,
after a day spent in the ardours of government and military duty, at
five he became the verse-maker, the man of ease and letters, the
polished Frenchman instead of the great German soldier.
At seven, he had his evening concert, small, select, delightful. “If you
think the King loves music,” said someone, “you are wrong. He loves only
the flute and only his own flute.” (To be sure, such an egoism has been
known as a love of music both before and since.) No women were admitted.
Frederick the Great’s dislike of that sex is historical, and was always
consistent and unmoved. And then, at nine o’clock began those immortal
suppers of the gods. Voltaire was of course of them from the earliest
days of his stay in Prussia.
Half Europe watched them from afar. Much more than half the genius of
Europe would have paid a high price to have been of them. They generally
consisted of about ten persons. The only language spoken was French, and
more than half the _habitués_ were of that favoured nation. The other
half included two Scotchmen, one Prussian, and that great
Prussian-Frenchman, Frederick himself. Baculard d’Arnaud, though living
at Potsdam and under the immediate eye and favour of the King, was not
invited. The meal was severely sober and frugal. The King rose at
twelve, as clear-headed as he had sat down. Sometimes his guests
prolonged that feast of reason far into the morning. The servants who
waited on them contracted, it is said, swellings in the legs from too
much standing. Occasionally, Frederick was not of the party at all. He
supped with Colonel Balby instead. “What is the King doing this
evening?” it was asked of Voltaire. “Il balbutie” was the ready answer.
Great among the _convives_ of the supper was Maupertuis, the pompous and
touchy geometrician, the President of the Berlin Academy, and once the
friend and the tutor of Madame du Châtelet. He had stayed at Cirey in
1739. Voltaire had never liked anything about him but his talents.
Surly, solemn, and unsociable, he was already antipathetic in every
attribute of his character to the brilliant Frenchman.
Another visitor of Cirey, was also of the suppers--Algarotti, the
amiable Italian, the agreeable man of the world, the “Swan of Padua,”
whose “Newtonianism for Ladies” Émilie’s Newton had so completely
eclipsed.
Here too was La Mettrie, a freethinking French doctor of medicine, with
his ribald rollicking stories and his bold atheism, “the most frank and
the most foolish of men.” He had become notorious as the author of a
book called “The Man Machine” in which he had gaily proved, to his own
satisfaction, the material nature of the soul.
Then there was “the brave Major Chasot,” an excellent type of a gallant
eighteenth-century French gentleman. He had saved the King’s life at the
battle of Mollwitz, but owed the coveted _entrée_ to the suppers less to
that heroism than to the facts that he was French and flute-player.
Here too was d’Argens, a profligate French marquis, whom Frederick loved
for “his wit, his learning, and his person”; and who was at once
credulous and sceptical, freethinking and superstitious.
The other Frenchman was Darget, reader, confidant, and secretary to the
royal host, very discreet, reserved, and judicious, a man to be
trusted. It did not take a subtle Voltaire long to recognise the value
of the friendship of this friend of the King. Frederick often wrote to
Voltaire through Darget, and Voltaire replied to Darget in terms of
tenderness and admiration.
Then there was the French ambassador of Irish birth--Lord
Tyrconnel--famous for giving heavy dinners, whose _rôle_ “was to be
always at table,” and who had the brusque honest speech of British
forbears. Lady Tyrconnel had receptions in Berlin and presently acted in
Voltaire’s company of noble amateurs.
The Scotchmen were the two brothers George and James Keith, Jacobites
and gentlemen, “not only accomplished men, but nobles and warriors,” the
only friends of the King whom his bitter tongue spared. Nay more, George
Keith was, says Macaulay, “the only human being whom Frederick ever
really loved.” Earl Marischal of Scotland, he had fought with his brave
young brother for that forlorn hope, the cause of the Stuarts, in 1715.
They had long wandered on the Continent, and at last found a home in
Potsdam with Frederick.
The only Prussian of the suppers was Baron Pollnitz, and he was
cosmopolitan, had many times visited Paris, and had a rich store of
travellers’ tales. Clever and well born, he was extravagant and
miserably poor; and since he could not afford to lose Frederick’s
favour, was the butt of his royal master’s cruellest jokes--the wretched
scapegoat who could not escape and whose very helplessness goaded
Frederick’s bitter wit to new effort.
Of such an assembly as this, versatile and brilliant though it was,
Voltaire and the King were the natural leaders.
Sulzer, who had listened to it, declared that it was better to hear the
conversation of Voltaire, Algarotti, and d’Argens than to read the most
interesting and best written book in the world. The talk was on “morals,
history, philosophy.” It was the boast of the talkers that they had no
prejudices. They explored all subjects as one explores a newly
discovered country, knowing neither whether it be sterile or fertile,
rich or poor--eager to learn, sharp-set to see--and without fear of
consequence. No topic was debarred them. The only intoxication was of
ideas. “One thinks boldly, one is free,” said Voltaire. “Wit, reason,
and science” abounded. Frederick stimulated the conversation by always
taking one side of a question when his guests took the other. His own
tongue was so caustic that it has been said that it is difficult to
conceive how “anything short of hunger should have induced men to bear
the misery of being the associates of the great King.” But that is to
take a very one-sided view of his character. If one hand could scratch,
the other could caress. If on one side of his nature he was a brutal
jester, an untamed barbarian, on the other he was a thinker and a
philosopher with all the light, the ease, the charm, and the cultivation
of France.
Besides, there was one man at the suppers whom the King feared.
Frederick’s satire was a saw; but Voltaire’s was a knife: and the
clumsier instrument dreaded the finer. A needy Pollnitz or a patient
Darget might bear the royal insolence in silence. But it did not yet
dare to encounter that “most terrible of all the intellectual weapons
ever wielded by man, the mockery of Voltaire.” Saw and knife seem both,
for the while, to have been quietly put away.
A Voltaire with his splendid capacity for living in the present moment
may sometimes have forgotten the very existence of the King’s weapon.
“No cloud,” “far less a storm,” marred the harmony of those suppers.
Between them, operas, receptions, correcting the royal compositions, and
spending long days with his own, the September and October of this
autumn of 1750 passed away. Now and again a courtly Voltaire went to pay
his devoirs at the Court of the Queen Mother and read her cantos of the
“Pucelle,” which he assured the good Protestant lady was nothing in the
world but a satire on the Church of Rome. Nor did he neglect to attend
the dull and frugal receptions of Frederick’s unhappy wife, the pretty
and accomplished Elizabeth Christina. Hanbury Williams was in Berlin in
September as English envoy, and made Voltaire complimentary verses on
“Rome Sauvée.” The exile continued to write long letters to his
friends, speaking of his speedy return to France and of the thousand
delights of life in his present “paradise of philosophers.”
He _had_ chosen rightly after all! All would be well. All _was_ well.
But----