THE BATTLE OF PARTICLES, AND THE BATTLE OF COMEDIES
On March 10, 1760, M. le Franc de Pompignan took the seat in the French
Academy left vacant by the death of Maupertuis, and delivered an opening
address which was nothing but an attack on the philosophic party.
Marquis and county magnate was Pompignan, rather a good minor poet, a
native of Montauban, and, in his own province and his own estimation, a
very great man indeed. In 1736, he had written a play with which he had
tried, vainly, to supplant Voltaire’s “Alzire.” He and Voltaire met
afterwards, in amicable fashion enough, at the house of a mutual friend.
And then Voltaire retired to Cirey and Madame du Châtelet: and Le Franc
to his magisterial duties in Montauban.
But by the year 1758 Montauban, and his own vanity, had so impressed the
noble Marquis with the idea that his genius was wasted in a province,
that he came up to Paris: stood for a vacant chair in the Academy;
failed to gain it; stood again for another chair in 1760, and, as has
been seen, won it, in succession to Maupertuis. When it is added that Le
Franc was also Historiographer of France in place of Voltaire, and that
he was practically the only nobleman in the kingdom who was at once
clever, educated and orthodox, his design to use that Academical chair
as a stepping-stone to the tutorship of the Dauphin’s sons--always one
of the most influential posts in the kingdom--was not at all a wild
ambition. He began his speech by praising his predecessor, Maupertuis,
as in duty bound, and also as being sure to raise the ire of that
arch-fiend of philosophers, Voltaire; and then abused those philosophers
and their works roundly, soundly, and at length.
The chairman of the Academy made reply in a very fulsome speech, in
which he compared Le Franc to Moses, and his younger brother, the Bishop
of Puy, a not illiberal churchman, to Aaron. “The two brothers are
consecrated to work miracles, the one as judge, the other as pontiff, in
Israel.”
Moses was then granted an interview with the King, in which his Majesty
highly praised that Academical discourse as little likely to be
applauded by the impious, “or by strong minds”--which he took to be the
finest compliment he could pay it.
On March 28th, one of those “esprits forts” was writing comfortably from
Délices that he saw all storms, but saw them from the port. The port! Of
course someone sent him that Academical discourse. He applied the
remarks on the philosophers particularly to himself (to be sure, the cap
fitted), and took upon himself to avenge them all.
One fine day there appeared in Paris, without date, without any
indication as to the place in which it had been printed, a little
_brochure_ of seven deadly pages entitled the “Whens: or Useful Notes on
a Discourse pronounced before the French Academy on March 10, 1760.”
They were the little skiff in which Voltaire sailed into the teeth of
the storm.
All his works are characteristic in a high degree, but hardly any are so
characteristic as those he wielded in this Battle of the Particles.
Exquisitely dainty and gay: as fine and as sharp as needles from my
lady’s work-basket, and yet as “biting and incisive as a poignard”: such
are the hall-marks of those little instruments of torture of which the
“Whens” was the first.
“_When_ one has the honour to be admitted into a respectable company of
literary men, one need not make one’s opening speech a satire against
them.”
“_When_ one is hardly a man of letters and not at all a philosopher, it
is not becoming to say that our nation has only a false literature and a
vain philosophy.”
“_When_ one is admitted into an honourable body, one ought, in one’s
address, to hide under a veil of modesty that insolent pride which is
the prerogative of hot heads and mean talents.”
Voltaire would not have been Voltaire, nor of his century, if he had not
gone on to remind this highly correct Marquis that in a free youth he
had himself coquetted with Deism and translated and circulated “The
Universal Prayer”--then commonly called “The Deists’ Prayer”--of Mr.
Pope. He also added that for his Deistic opinions this proper Le Franc
had been deprived of the charge of his province; which was not true, but
made the story much better.
It is hardly necessary to say that Voltaire denied the “Whens.” “I did
not write them,” he told Theriot on May 20th, “but I wish I had.”
They had roused his party very effectively. If “the shepherd, the
labourer, the rat retired from the world in a Swiss cheese,” was pushed,
as the rat said, into the “deluge of monosyllables,” how should the
philosophers in Paris escape it? The famous Morellet, abbé, writer,
freethinker, one of the “four theologians of the Encyclopædia,” whom
Voltaire called _Mords-les_ (Bite them) from the caustic nature of his
wit, rushed into the fray with the “Ifs” and the “Wherefores”; and a
reproduction of the luckless Le Franc’s translation of “The Universal
Prayer.” Délices followed up at once with the “Yeses” and the “Noes,”
the “Whats,” the “Whys,” and the “Whos.” Délices said that chuckling
sustained old age: no wonder _his_ old age was so vigorous. There was
not a vulnerable inch in the body or soul of that unhappy Marquis which
one of those particles did not wound. A riddle ran through Paris, “Why
did Jeremiah weep so much during his life?” “Because, as a prophet, he
foresaw that after death he would be translated by Le Franc”--Le Franc
having compensated for that “Universal Prayer” by writing the most
devout works ever since. Later were to come the “Fors” and the “Ahs.”
Some were by other hands than Voltaire’s. But his was the spirit that
inspired them all. Some were in verse. All were brief. Then he published
extracts from an early tragedy of Le Franc’s, making them as absurd as
he alone knew how. The affair was the talk of Paris: the most delicious
farce in the world. Madame du Deffand spoke of Le Franc as buried under
“mountains of ridicule.” Wherever he was recognised he excited shouts
of laughter. He solemnly and prosily defended his translation of “The
Universal Prayer” as a mere exercise in English, which it very likely
was. And Paris laughed afresh. Voltaire declared that Tronchin had
ordered him to hunt Pompignan for two hours every morning for the good
of his health. Poor Pompignan, goaded to madness, presented a petition
to the King in which he asked the assistance of their Majesties and
recalled to them the splendid welcome they had accorded to himself and
his Academical discourse.
But Louis XV. could not prevent Paris laughing nor Voltaire answering by
what purported to be an extract from a newspaper of Le Franc’s native
Montauban, wherein the natives of that place were represented as
appointing a committee to go to Paris and inquire into the mental
condition of the unfortunate Marquis. But this thing was a _brochure_--a
nothing.
Délices had not done with Montauban yet. There was a pause. And then
Voltaire produced one of the most scathing and trenchant satires of
which even he was capable. It was in verse, and it was called “Vanity.”
It began:
Well, what’s the matter, little bourgeois of a little town?
and contains many lines which still form part of the common talk of
France.
Gay, fluent, contemptuous--written scornfully in a colloquialism which,
in that day of set and formal phrases, was in itself an
insult--Pompignan, like Maupertuis, was stifled with badinage, and
laughed--to death.
Though all the wit of the thing, and more than half its significance,
are lost in a translation, even in a translation some idea of the
sufferings of that wretched provincial Marquis may be gained still.
The Universe, my friend, thinks of you not at all:
The future less. Look to your house and diet:
Drink: sleep: amuse yourself: be wise: be quiet.
* * * * *
Oh, but my beautiful Discourse, they laugh at it!
The malice of their vulgar gibes hurts so,
That, sure of justice, to the King I’ll go.
* * * * *
He’ll make it law to find my writing good
I’ll tell him of it all without delay
And get the laugher’s licence ta’en away.
The poem ends with lines which, as Voltaire wrote them, stabbed straight
to the enemy’s heart:
Ruined great Alexander’s tomb and town:
And for great Cæsar’s shade no home there be,
Yet Pompignan thinks a great man is he.
He thought so no longer. “Vanity” was his deathblow. The very Dauphin
laughed at it. The Marquis went home to his province, and never again
dared to appear at the Academy.
In 1769, when his play, “Dido,” was acted in Paris, the Comédie
Française announced quite innocently that it would be followed by “The
Coxcomb Punished” of Pont-de-Veyle. Everything was against poor
Pompignan. He died in 1784. The turn of his priestly brother, Aaron, was
yet to come.
If Pompignan had been nothing but a self-satisfied nobleman who
over-estimated his own talents and under-estimated those of the
philosophers and the Academicians, he would certainly not have deserved
the fury of ridicule with which he was assailed, and the laugh would
have turned against the laughers.
But this was no harmless fool. It may have been a small thing that, as
Voltaire wrote, “if Le Franc had not been covered with ridicule, the
custom of declaiming against the philosophers in the opening discourse
of the Academy would have become a rule.” But it would have been no
small thing that a Pompignan should be tutor to the Dauphin’s sons;
should teach the boy who was to rule France a narrow hatred for the
light and learning which alone could save it; and preach the principles
of _l’infâme_ to the susceptible youth who would one day practise them
to the ruin of a great kingdom.
_Écrasez l’infâme!_ Pompignan was but a victim to that purpose. Voltaire
kicked him aside with his foot, and looked out for other foes to
vanquish.
There were always plenty of them. He had on hand at the moment a satire
called “The Poor Devil,” which set out to be an account of the
adventures of that Valette, the friend of d’Alembert and the guest of
Délices, but which ended as a fiercer “Dunciad,” “more than a satire,
more than a _chef d’œuvre_ of incomparable verve and malignity,” and
which reveals to our own day many an ugly secret of the literary life
and men of that strange epoch.
But the general satisfaction of whipping a multitude is nothing to the
personal satisfaction of whipping a unit.
While the Pompignan affair was still running high, news came one
morning--on April 25, 1760--that a comedy by a certain Charles Palissot,
entitled “The Philosophers” and bitterly ridiculing that party, was
about to be played in Paris. “Very well,” says Délices; “I cannot
prevent that. But what I can and will do is to withdraw “Tancred,”
already in rehearsal.” So “Tancred” is withdrawn.
On May 2d, Palissot’s “Philosophers” was performed for the first time.
A clever journalist was Charles Palissot, who, in 1755, had been
Voltaire’s guest at Délices with Patu the poet. His play was clever too,
a rollicking comedy in three acts, which not only laughed at the
philosophic party but represented them as dangerous to society and the
State. Helvétius, Diderot, Duclos, Madame Geoffrin, and Mademoiselle
Clairon were openly satirised. J. J. Rousseau, declared Voltaire, was
represented on all fours, with a lettuce in his pocket for provender.
The “Encyclopædia” was mentioned by name. Two noble ladies openly gave
the play their patronage. One was the Princess de Robecq, the mistress
of Choiseul the minister, and so a force to be reckoned with.
“The Philosophers” had carefully omitted to attack the two greatest of
the philosophers, d’Alembert and Voltaire. But the one wrote an account
of the thing to the other, and that Other began to inspect his weapons.
True, he tried mild measures at first. Palissot sent him a copy of the
play. And Voltaire wrote back trying to win its author over to the right
side, or at least to an impartial attitude of mind. But Palissot did not
mean to be convinced. Then Abbé Morellet-Mords-Les-Bite-Them was flung
into the Bastille, at the instigation of the Princess de Robecq and the
command of Choiseul, for having sneered at the Princess in his comic
answer to Palissot’s comedy, called “The Preface to The Philosophers.”
These things were not precisely soothing. To meet ridicule with reason
had failed. Gibe for gibe, then; foolery for foolery! If Voltaire was
one of the two who could play at that game, he was always the winner
when he played.
He had another, older, deadlier foe than Palissot, who would also be the
better for a beating. The older foe was Fréron. And the beating he
received with Palissot was called “The Scotch Girl.”
Fréron was still a very cool, clever, opulent, successful Parisian
journalist: still the bitterest and shrewdest foe of the philosophers,
and the sharpest tool of the Court. Voltaire, it will be remembered, had
no reason to love this “worm from the carcase of Desfontaines,” the
defender of Crébillon, the supporter of d’Arnaud, the founder of “The
Literary Year,” that review which, appearing every ten days, had been
for twenty-three years “a long polemic against the Encyclopædia in
general and Voltaire in particular.” But Voltaire seldom made the
mistake of underrating his enemy’s powers. He spoke of Fréron as the
only man of his party who had literary taste. He acknowledged him to be
of an amazing energy and courage, of great self-command, and an
excellent critic.
But when it came to sharply criticising “Candide” in that “Literary
Year” and scornfully twitting “Candide’s” author with his dear title of
Count of Tourney, the Count was foolish enough not only to lose his
temper but to enumerate his grievances against Fréron in a letter to
“The Encyclopædic Journal,” the rival organ of “The Literary Year.”
There was certainly a fine air of coolness and indifference in the
letter. But the _vif_, warm genius of a Voltaire only assumed these
qualities. Fréron really had them. Hence, Fréron was a powerful foe.
Athirst for revenge, then, alike on Palissot and on Fréron, Voltaire
wrote “The Scotch Girl” in eight days. An English play, if you please,
by Mr. Hume, brother of the historian; translated into French by Jérôme
Carré; and before it appears, to be read, discussed, laughed over, and
recognised in every boudoir in Paris as a satire on Fréron and on
Palissot’s “Philosophers.” Everything fell out as the author had
desired, and laboured that it should. If he _was_ buried at Délices and
hundreds of miles of vile roads from Paris, he had friends there only
something less active and angry than himself. He had in himself the
vigour and genius which can span space and move mountains.
On July 25th, the day before the play was to appear, he caused to be
circulated in Paris a letter in which Carré, the translator, complained
of the immense efforts Fréron had made to damn “The Scotch Girl” in
advance. These advertisements were perfectly successful. On the first
night--Saturday, July 26th--crowds besieged the door of the theatre
before it opened; some, the friends of Fréron, some of Palissot, some of
Voltaire; and all knowing enough of the piece to be quite sure they
should be amused. In a prominent place in the auditorium shrewd Fréron
had placed his pretty wife, to excite compassion for himself, and anger
against his foes. He himself sat among the orchestra. Malesherbes, the
minister, had a place hard by him. Palissot was in a box. Many neutral
persons, piqued only by curiosity, found seats in the house. It was upon
their pulse Fréron kept his finger. It was their displeasure or approval
which would give the real verdict of the piece.
“The Scotch Girl” is not at all a good play. But it is witty, topical,
and infinitely audacious. “It is not sufficient to write well: one must
write to the taste of the public,” said Voltaire. He had not written
well: but he had written for the psychological moment. His audience had
expected him to take a bold spring from the footboard: and he jumped
from the roof. His old experience of England enabled him to give one of
the first sketches of a comic Englishman ever seen on the French stage.
The character of Freeport is the best in the piece: and the saving of
it. The scene is laid in a London coffee-house--the sub-title of the
play being “Le Café.” Fréron appeared as Frelon: which, being
translated, is wasp or hornet. Wasp is a Grub Street hack “always ready
to manufacture infamy at a pistole the paragraph.” “When I discover a
trifle, I add something to it: and something added to something makes
much.” The tactics of scandalous journalism are unaltered to this day.
“The Philosophers” was broadly burlesqued: and to philosophy were
gravely ascribed all the evils under the sun.
The play was received with delight. Foe as well as friend laughed aloud.
Pretty Madame Fréron nearly fainted when she saw her husband thus
travestied; and did not make matters better by naïvely replying to a
friend, who assured her that Wasp did not in the least resemble her
husband who was neither slanderer nor informer, “Oh! Monsieur, it is too
well done! He will always be recognised.”
The performance took place at five o’clock in the afternoon. The next
day, July 27th, was a Sunday, and the day for the appearance of a number
of “The Literary Year.” It contained an account of that first night
under the title of “The Account of a Great Battle,” written in that cool
and easy style, principally remarkable for its moderation and
self-restraint, which was the finest weapon in Fréron’s armoury. It
ended with a “Te Voltairium,” a sort of parody of the Te Deum, which was
licensed by the censor, to the great indignation of the philosophers who
had so often been profane--and unlicensed.
Meanwhile, at his Délices, Voltaire wrote _his_ account of that first
night--“An Advertisement to the Scotch Girl.” The little, pricking,
red-hot needles of his style were much less effective for his purpose
now than the judicial calm of M. Fréron. But, after all, Voltaire was
the winner. “The Scotch Girl” had what d’Alembert called “a prodigious
success.” The provinces received it with rapture. It was played three
times a week in Paris. Its last performance there took place on
September 2d.
And on September 3d it was replaced by “Tancred.”
No man in the world better understood the force of contrast, and the
infinite value of the striking and the _bizarre_ upon the minds of his
countrymen, than Voltaire. In France, if anywhere, he who strikes must
strike at once; must appeal immediately to emotions which are sooner at
boiling point and sooner cooled than the emotions of any other nation in
Europe. “The Scotch Girl” had made Paris laugh: and Paris loved
laughter. It had quite forgotten for the moment that it had also loved
Fréron, its dear, clever, sociable, amusing journalist, who was
pleasantly renowned for giving charming little suppers, and as the
favourite of the great. Here, then, was the moment for this Swiss exile,
who belonged to the wrong party, who persistently thought--and said--the
wrong things, and was infinitely able and dangerous, to strike in with
his “Tancred.” To ensure its success a hearing was all that it wanted.
Its genius could be trusted to do the rest. Voltaire took at the tide
that flood which leads on to fortune, and sailed straight into harbour.
He began “Tancred,” it is said, in his joy on learning of that decree
which, in April, 1759, forbade spectators henceforth to sit on the
stage. On the 19th of the next month, May, he wrote that this day an old
fool finished a tragedy begun on April 22d. At first he called it
“Aménaïde,” or “My Knights,” or “The Knighthood,” and designed to have
it played by Lekain or Lauraguais as the work of “a young unknown.” “I
have changed the metre,” he wrote on May 29, 1759, “so that that cursed
public shall not recognise me by my style.”
In the October of 1759 he and his amateur company had acted it at
Tourney. It moved the author and Madame Denis to tears; but as he very
justly observed, they were too near relations to the piece for their
emotion to count for much. When Marmontel had stayed at Délices in the
summer of 1760 he, too had wept over it--had returned the manuscript
with his face bathed in tears, which told the author, he said, all he
wanted to know.
Every omen was good. For several weeks during the summer of 1760 the
d’Argentals had the manuscript in their charge in Paris. They had seen
it put into rehearsal. Then Voltaire had withdrawn it to punish a
company which dared to produce “The Philosophers.” But that brave
“Scotch Girl” had effectually killed “The Philosophers.” The time was
ripe indeed.
The theatre was crowded to the full. No more piquant contrast could be
imagined than between the rough English burlesque of last night and the
polished, romantic Sicilian tragedy of this. Yesterday there had not
been a grave face in the house, and to-day every eye was wet. Madame
d’Épinay was there, in the most fascinating grief. “Satan, in the guise
of Fréron,” who was in the amphitheatre, spoke of the thing as having
“the simplicity and natural beauty of the classic, above all of the
Odyssey.” When d’Alembert saw it for the third time the whole audience
was in tears. Mademoiselle Clairon surpassed herself as the heroine: so
that the author, always largely generous in such appreciations, said
that the piece owed to her all its success; and d’Olivet, Voltaire’s old
schoolmaster, declared there had been no such acting since the days of
Roscius. As for Lekain--“nothing is comparable to Lekain, not even
himself.” The truth was, luckily for Voltaire, that the play was so
moving that few were sufficiently masters of themselves to criticise
coolly, and did not even carp at the author for writing in a metre with
which they were wholly unfamiliar. Marmontel, who wept over it, had
declared very justly not the less, that the style was not equal to that
of Voltaire’s earlier tragedies; that it was sometimes tedious, and a
little wanting in vigour. But, after all, he had wept. Marmontel’s
attitude describes “Tancred” exhaustively.
Satan in the amphitheatre criticised the piece with the only criticism
that need ever really hurt--a just one. He had mingled praise with his
blame. Voltaire was sensible enough to recognise the weight of censure
so tempered.
Fréron continued to conduct his “Literary Year” until his death in 1776.
When he gave any of the actors--such as Lekain or Clairon--a bad notice,
they simply revived “The Scotch Girl.” And M. Wasp mended his manners at
once.
In September Voltaire dedicated his “Tancred” to Madame de Pompadour.
But that “chicken-hearted fellow” as he called her, made, at the time,
no acknowledgment of the compliment. The truth was, as twice before in
their history, some jealous scandal-monger about the Court had read an
evil meaning into his flatteries.
Meanwhile the hermit of Délices, if ever in his life, was independent of
her favours. Délices was charming: Ferney nearly finished: and Tourney
the most histrionic place in Europe.
In the June of 1760 Marmontel had come to stay at Délices. Marmontel was
a great man now: a successful playwright; and the author of that once
much read and now wholly forgotten novel, “Bélisaire.” He was not
ungrateful to the benefactor who fourteen years earlier had launched him
on the literary sea of Paris; while Voltaire on his side had always a
fellow-feeling for that brave heart which at eighteen had begun the
world on a capital of six louis, hope, cleverness, and a translation.
Marmontel brought with him one Gaulard; and found at Délices a M.
Lécluse, the King of Poland’s dentist, who, when he was not mending
Madame Denis’s teeth acted and sang most agreeably.
Of course, Marmontel found Voltaire in bed, dying. And of course the
moribund read aloud the “Pucelle” in the most lively and delightful
manner in the world; took the visitors to see the view from Tourney, and
discussed with them theatres, Frederick the Great, J. J.
Rousseau--everything under heaven. He also played chess with Gaulard,
and listened to Marmontel’s poetry. And after a three days’ visit,
thereafter recorded in minutest detail by Marmontel, the visitors left.
Another burst of gaiety marked the autumn. “To get rid of public
misfortunes and my own,” the arch-foe of Fréron conducted another
theatrical season, and asked so many people as actors or audience that,
one night at least, Délices, Tourney, and Ferney all together would not
hold them, and they had to be drafted into neighbouring houses. Ferney
was neither finished nor furnished, but there were attics ready which
accommodated a few guests and their servants. Sometimes the plan was to
dine at Délices, see a play at Tourney, and sleep at Ferney--“on the top
of each other,” as the host said. The theatrical troupe would stroll
about the gardens of Tourney in the moonlight in the intervals of their
labours; and as they were young, and of both sexes, they no doubt took
advantage of so excellent an opportunity for a little love-making.
Corrupter of youth! cried Geneva, who was by no means best pleased just
now with a Voltaire who a little earlier had fought Dr. Tronchin tooth
and nail to establish a troupe of comedians of doubtful morals, only a
quarter of a league from Geneva, though on French soil. Dr. Tronchin
won--for the time; the comedians were ordered away, and Voltaire and his
good doctor were excellent friends again; but it is not in the
Calvinistic temperament in general to forget or to forgive easily.
And then this autumn season was marked by the presence of a most
dissipated _roué_ of a duke, the Duke of Villars, who was a patient of
Tronchin’s, and considerably madder upon theatricals than his host
himself. He had acted from his earliest youth at Vaux Villars, where a
Voltaire of five-and-twenty had fallen in love with that gracious
Maréchale, Villars’s mother. But her son, though he thought great things
of himself and _would_ coach the company in general, was a poor
performer. He casually asked Voltaire one day how he thought he acted.
“Why, Sir, like a duke and a peer,” answers Voltaire. Poor Cramer, the
actor-publisher, was so misinstructed by his noble friend, that it took
him a fortnight to unlearn the lesson of this bad master. When he had
done so, Voltaire cried out to Madame Denis, “Niece, thank God! Cramer
has disgorged his Duke!”
Also of the company was Mademoiselle de Bazincourt, Madame Denis’s
pretty, poor companion, who was destined to a convent from which
Voltaire could not save her, and who meantime played the parts of
“Julia, her friend,” to perfection.
On September 29th, a house-warming took place at Ferney, in the shape of
the marriage there of M. de Montpéroux, the envoy of France. Voltaire
gave a great dinner in his new house to celebrate the event, and from
henceforth lived there--at first generally, and at last entirely.
On October 20th, he and his theatrical company were sharply reminded by
the Council of Geneva that “Sieur de Voltaire had yesterday a piece
played at Saint Jean, the territory of the republic, in distinct
violation of a promise he had made in August, 1755.” They went on acting
as gaily and continuously as ever. It is to be feared that to this
wicked Voltaire prohibitions were only sauce to the _plat_, and made it
a hundred times the more irresistible.
In the December of this 1760, which was one of the most full, varied,
and active years of one of the most energetic lives ever lived by man,
Voltaire appeared in a new _rôle_. He adopted a daughter.
In estimating his character no trait in it has been more lost sight of
than that which, for want of a better word, may be called his
affectionateness. Yet the man who was the lifelong friend of false
Theriot, as well as of faithful d’Argental, who kept a warm corner in
his heart for ungrateful servants and ne’er-do-weel relatives, who
supported tiresome nephews and at least one trying niece, to say nothing
of that crippled profligate d’Aumard, had that quality in a very high
degree. Satire and cynicism were in his every lively utterance. But in
his acts were a tenderness, a generosity, and a charity, to which better
men than he have not attained.
Mademoiselle Marie Corneille was the great-niece of the great Corneille.
Poor and provincial, her father came up one fine day to Paris and
claimed his cousinship with the great Fontenelle. But Fontenelle had so
long lost sight of this branch of the Corneille family that he thought
the man an impostor, and left his money elsewhere. Then who but Fréron
must needs take compassion on this hapless little family of three
persons--father, mother, and daughter--and have a play of their uncle’s
performed for their benefit? But even five thousand five hundred francs
do not go far, when out of the sum debts have to be paid, three persons
to live, and one to be educated. Marie, of nearly eighteen, had to be
removed from her convent. A friend took charge of her for a while. And
then Le Brun, secretary to the Prince of Conti and a second-rate poet,
conceived the happy idea of enlisting Voltaire’s sympathy for her in an
ode.
It is not an exaggeration to say that Voltaire adopted her on the spot.
His only feeling seems to have been one of complete delight at having
the opportunity of doing good in such a charming way; and he considered
it, he said, an honour for an old soldier to serve the granddaughter of
his general.
On November 5th, he was arranging details for her journey and her
education with Le Brun.
He wrote to her direct to assure her she should have every facility for
the practice of her religion, for reading, and for music; that Madame
Denis would supply her with a wardrobe; that she should have masters for
accomplishment; and learn to act so that in six months she would be
playing _Chimène_.
In the second week in December Mademoiselle arrived. Quiet, gentle, and
good, as naïvely ignorant as she was ingenuously ready to learn,
tenderly and faithfully attached to the father she had left as she was
to grow girlishly fond of the father she had found, Marie Corneille
comes like a fresh and virgin air across the tainted and heated
atmosphere of that eighteenth century, like some human angel to the
Voltaire who hardly ever, perhaps never before, had intimately known a
good woman.
He began at once to give her lessons in reading and writing, and in
grammar. Mademoiselle had not much aptitude for that “sublime science,”
or for any science. She had come out of her convent as widely and
profoundly ignorant as even those good nuns could leave a girl. And the
cleverest man of his age taught her to write, and made her send him
little notes, which he returned to her with her very doubtful
orthography corrected; made history as amusing as a novel, and all the
teaching go gaily “without the least appearance of a lesson.” She was to
have a tutor presently, when one good enough could be found. Meanwhile
Voltaire taught her by word of mouth, while she looked up into his lean
face with her clear candid eyes, and he looked back and delighted in her
round girlish prettiness--“a plump face like a puppy’s”--and her
adorable _naïveté_. Madame Denis forgot her comforts and her flirtations
to nurse her when she was “a little ill,” and to teach her needlework
when she was well. All the servants adored her, and vied with each other
to serve her. Presently she had her own _femme de chambre_. Every Sunday
Voltaire and his niece took her to mass. Voltaire did not only preach
tolerance. He did more even than leave her, when she prayed, “her early
Heaven, her happy views.” He made every careful provision, as he had
said he would, for her to follow the faith of her fathers. The sneer on
his lips and the scorn in his soul died as he looked at Marie Corneille.
Trust, simplicity, innocence, appealed not in vain to Voltaire, as they
have appealed not in vain to far worse men. There is a noble touch in
that confession of his that, though he loved her well enough to set a
very high value on her love for him, he liked nothing more in her than
her unforgetting attachment to her father. To that father (who was, it
may be added, a very cavilling and trying person) he wrote himself,
thanking him with the finest tact and delicacy for a loan so delightful,
and repeatedly congratulating himself on being the host of so charming a
visitor. Voltaire certainly knew how to confer a favour.
It was not unnatural that, when the news of this adoption reached them,
the devout should call out loudly at a lamb being entrusted to such a
wolf. But it is noticeable that none of the devout offered to support
the lamb in their own sheepfold. They only demanded a _lettre de cachet_
to get her away from Voltaire.
There was another trouble too. Fréron, though he had helped her himself,
was bitterly angry and jealous at Voltaire’s adoption. In his “Literary
Year” he inserted, with a very venomous pen, calumnies on her father,
and on the mode of education Voltaire was providing for her. Without the
smallest ground for such a charge he declared that her tutor was to be
Lécluse, the dentist and amateur actor, whom Fréron represented as a
kind of disreputable mountebank.
Voltaire instantly rose to the provocation. He always rose. But when its
subject was an innocent girl, he may be forgiven that he was more
furious than wise. He demanded justice from the minister Malesherbes,
and a formal apology from Fréron: and failed to get either. So there
appeared first a cutting epigram, and then an exceedingly scurrilous
publication called “Anecdotes of Fréron,” which Voltaire vehemently
denied, but which that very best and most trustworthy of all possible
editors, Beuchot, has included, not the less, in his Works.
Fréron’s calumnies were not without effect. They lost Marie Corneille a
husband: who must have been well lost, since the sting of a wasp
frightened him away.
Meanwhile the life at Ferney and Délices went a busy and tranquil way;
and Papa Voltaire began to cast about in his mind the means for
providing a _dot_ for his daughter.