BUILDING A CHURCH, AND ENDOWING A DAUGHTER
_The_ novel of the winter season of 1760-61, was “The New Eloïsa,” by
Jean Jacques Rousseau.
It is hardly possible to write a life of Rousseau or of Voltaire without
comparing them. Voltaire, all sharp sense: and Rousseau all hot
sensibility; Rousseau, visionary, dreamer, sensualist, sentimentalist,
madman: and Voltaire, the sanest genius who ever lived, practical,
businesslike, brilliant, easy, sardonic. The one’s name stands as a
synonym for a biting wit, the other’s for a wild passion.
Yet they had much in common. Both belonged to the great philosophic
party. In the burning zeal of their mutual hatred of _l’infâme_ Voltaire
sometimes lost his head; and Rousseau lost his heart. Both fought tooth
and nail all their lives for Tolerance and for Liberty. Both foresaw
that stupendous change called the French Revolution, and both foresaw it
bloodless, serene, and glorious.
By January 21, 1761, “Eloïsa”, which had been written in the little
cottage Madame d’Épinay had lent Rousseau in the Montmorency forest, had
been read at Ferney.
Rousseau had already been in opposition to Voltaire both on the subject
of a theatre in Geneva, and on optimism.
But still, though they had greatly disagreed, they had not been
(“Candide” notwithstanding) exactly enemies.
And then, in the October of 1760, Voltaire had written gaily on the
theatre subject--“Jean Jacques showed that a theatre was unsuitable to
Geneva: and I, I built one.” Jean Jacques was at once too womanish, too
impulsive, and too vain to keep long on good terms with a cynical person
who could airily agree to differ in that way. He admired his rival’s
“_beaux talents_,” but he was jealous of them. He was jealous, too, of
his power and influence in Geneva. By the June of 1760 he had worked
himself into something like hating this Voltaire; and, Rousseau-like, he
sat down and wrote a letter to tell him so. Voltaire, still perfectly
cool, observed to Theriot on June 26th that Jean Jacques had become
quite mad. “It is a great pity.”
And then came “The New Eloïsa.”
That tissue of absurdities and genius, of fine, false sentiments and
highly ridiculous social views--set forth with the warmth, the energy,
and the passion which are Rousseau’s alone--would in any case have
aroused Voltaire’s contempt.
But when he added to it their present differences on the theatre topic,
and their past differences on optimism, and the childish rancour of
Rousseau’s last letter--above all, when he saw that those owls, the
public, opened their stupid eyes and were quite dazzled and delighted
with the sham glitter of this false romance about the highly improper
Julie and her no more respectable tutor--his ire was roused.
He dubbed “Eloïsa” “foolish, _bourgeois_, impudent, and wearisome.” It
was “one of the infamies of the century” to have admired it. And he
wrote to Theriot: “No novel of Jean Jacques, if you please. I have read
him for my misfortune; and it would have been for his if I had the time
to say what I thought of it.”
The last words were only the blind which hoodwinked nobody. “There is
time for everything if one likes to use it.” Staying at Ferney at the
moment was the Marquis de Ximenès, ex-admirer of Madame Denis and now
forgiven that unpleasant little business of the stolen manuscript of a
few years back.
There quickly appeared four letters on (or rather against) “The New
Eloïsa,” the first of which bore the signature of the Marquis, and all
of which bore unmistakable traits of a famous style.
Voltaire denied them, according to custom.
But it was the denial _pour rire_.
The wise d’Alembert wrote and remonstrated with his friend for
“declaiming openly” against Jean Jacques, who, after all, was of their
party and with a warmth and ardour which might serve it well.
But Rousseau had begun to sting and irritate the sensitive skin of his
great rival, and would by no means be shaken off. In the October of 1761
Voltaire said that Jean Jacques wrote about once a fortnight to incite
the Genevan ministers against theatres.
In the meantime, fortunately for them both, Voltaire had interests which
eclipsed even that excited by a sentimental rival’s annoying Puritanism
or long-winded romance.
He was fighting the Jesuits and building a church.
On January 1, 1761, he wrote to tell Helvétius that he had reclaimed
from the Jesuits of Ornex, his neighbours, with whom he had hitherto
been on good terms, the estate belonging to six poor brothers, of which
the Jesuits had robbed them during their minority.
To compass this act the Jesuits had allied themselves with a Calvinistic
Councillor of State of Geneva. There is no doubt at all that Voltaire
delighted, as he said, in thus triumphing over both Ignatius and Calvin;
or that the defeat of the Jesuits gave him as much pleasure as the
victory of the brothers. But when it is added that he had lent those
brothers, without interest, all the money necessary to reclaim their
heritage: that he spent on them an incalculable amount of that time
which was more valuable to him than any money, it must be allowed that
if his motives were mixed, good preponderated in the mixture.
And then he turned his extraordinary mind towards building a church.
The church scheme had been on the _tapis_ as far back as the August of
1760. The truth was that the old church at Ferney was not only very
hideous and tumbledown, but spoilt a very good view from the château. If
churches there must be to enslave men’s souls, thinks Voltaire, why,
they need not offend their eyes as well. I will build a new one!
Every Sunday it was now his habit not only to attend mass with Marie
Corneille and Madame Denis, but to be duly incensed thereat as lord of
the manor. He also looked after his poor, and behaved very much as a
conscientious country landowner ought to behave, but as, in the
eighteenth century, he very seldom did.
But still this sceptic, this freethinker, this wicked person who had
just successfully brought home to the good Jesuits an accusation of
robbery, was certainly a character whose every act the devout might well
eye suspiciously.
Voltaire cautiously obtained the permission of the Bishop of Annecy to
change the site of the church, and then began pulling down with a will.
He was to bear all the expenses himself. If the deed was not strictly
right in law, it was so excellent in morals that it had been done with
impunity hundreds of times before.
In the rasing operations, part of the churchyard wall had to be taken
down, and a large cross, which dominated the churchyard, removed.
All would have been well, however, if this unlucky Voltaire had not had,
as usual, an enemy on the spot. When he first came to Ferney, it will be
remembered that he had successfully fought Ancian, the curé of the
neighbouring parish of Moens, for a tithe of which Ancian had long
deprived the poor of the neighbourhood. Ancian, whom Voltaire vigorously
described as “brutal as a horse, cross-grained as a mule, and cunning as
a fox,” had not forgiven that affront easily. But worse was to come.
On December 28, 1760, a young man, wounded and nearly bleeding to death,
had been brought to the doors of Ferney. Voltaire did not only take him
in and care for his body. With that passionate love of fair-play which
was so fatal to the ease and comfort of his life, he determined to
ferret out the rights of the case and get justice done.
It appeared that three young men had been supping, after a day’s
hunting, at the house of a woman of whom Ancian was commonly reported
the lover. Ancian, and “some peasants his accomplices,” rushed in and
violently attacked the three men, nearly killing Decroze, the one who
had been brought to Ferney.
Here is a pretty state of things! says Voltaire. A priest who is not
only thief but murderer as well! He set to work at once. He moved
heaven, earth, and the authorities to get M. Ancian “employment in the
galleys.” He found out Decroze’s father and sister. He tried to rouse
the father’s timidity and apathy to action. The sister told him, on her
oath, that her confessor had refused her absolution if she did not force
that father to renounce his son’s cause.
By January 3, 1761, Voltaire was passionately complaining that a “feeble
procedure” against the criminal had hardly been begun. The province was
divided on the subject. All Voltaire’s letters of the time are full of
it. But Ancian was protected by his order. It was thought, as it has
been often thought before and since, that the scandal of punishing the
crime would be greater than the scandal of leaving it unpunished.
Ancian had to pay Decroze a sum down; but he kept his living, and nursed
his revenge.
When he saw M. de Voltaire pulling down the churchyard wall and removing
the cross, he knew that the time had come. He assured his brother curé
of Ferney and the simple people of the place that this atheist of a
Voltaire had profaned their church; that he had not only moved the cross
without first fulfilling the usual formalities, but had cried out, “Take
away that gibbet!” Ancian, therefore, on the biblical principle of an
eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, denounced Voltaire to the
ecclesiastical judge of Gex as guilty of sacrilege and impiety, and
involved him in a “criminal suit of a most violent character.”
But Ancian did not know, though he ought to have known, the sort of man
with whom he had to deal. Voltaire’s blood was up. A criminal lawsuit,
forsooth, for “a foot and a half of churchyard and two mutton cutlets
which had been mistaken for disinterred bones”! There was an angry note
in that laugh which meant fight. Further, his enemies were saying
publicly that they hoped to see him burned, or at least hanged, for the
glory of God and the edification of the faithful; and meanwhile his
church-building operations were stopped.
It was an old principle of his always to turn their own weapons against
his foes. He had not forgotten it. He put himself into correspondence
with an able ecclesiastical lawyer of Lyons. He read up ecclesiastical
histories, and ancient volumes of Church law; and then suddenly flung at
the head of the enemy such a mass of rules and precedents, of dreary old
parallel cases of mouldering decrees which councils had forgotten to
revoke, of long-winded formulas and by-laws whose existence and
orthodoxy were as indisputable as they had been unheeded, and of
authorities who were infinitely sound, obscure, and confusing--that the
priestly party put its hands to its ears, cried “Peccavi!” and confessed
itself beaten on its own ground.
In the meanwhile its surprising little foe, who “passionately loved to
be master,” had rased the whole church at Ferney to the ground, “in
reply to the complaints of having taken down half of it,” had removed
the altars, the confessional boxes, and the fonts, and sent his
parishioners to attend mass elsewhere.
To crown all, and to leave nothing undone that could be done, by June
21st he had forwarded the plan of his church to the Pope and applied to
his Holiness for a bull granting him absolute power over his churchyard,
permission for his labourers to work on _fête_ days, instead “of getting
drunk in honour of the Saints” according to custom, and for sacred
relics to place in the church.
The letters to Rome are, very unfortunately, lost. But, through
Choiseul, they reached there; and the requests were granted in part. On
October 26, 1761, the Holy Father sent a piece of the hair shirt of St.
Francis of Assisi--the patron saint of François Marie Arouet. On the
same day, in tardy recognition for the dedication of “Tancred,” came a
present of the portrait of Madame de Pompadour. “So you see,” wrote
Voltaire, “I am all right both for this world and the next.”
When his church was finished he inscribed on it _Deo Solo_ (sic), which
by September 14, 1761, he had altered to _Deo erexit Voltaire_. He was
fond of saying that it was the only church in the universe which was
dedicated to God alone, and not to a saint. “For my part I had rather
build for the Master than for the servants.”
He had designed his own tomb jutting out from the wall of the church.
“The wicked will say that I am neither inside nor out.”
In March a public event distracted his thoughts for a moment from
“Eloïsa,” Ancian, and the church building. The Dauphin’s eldest son
died; and Pompignan, as Historiographer of France, lifted his diminished
head from Montauban and from those “mountains of ridicule” which covered
him, and wrote a eulogium of the little boy, which alas! for foolish
Pompignan, was also another attack on the philosophers. Voltaire waited
a little. Then he wrote two pieces of “murderous brevity”--the “Ah!
Ahs!” and the “Fors.”
Down went the head of Pompignan again. If it even peeped up for a
moment, which it still did now and then, Ferney shot an arrow at it from
the richest quiver and with the deadliest aim in the world.
But he had better things to do now than hitting an enemy who was down.
That dear spoilt daughter of the house, who might interrupt even the
chess or the verse reading of _vif_ Papa Voltaire with impunity--who was
pretty and naïve enough to do anything in the world she liked with
him--still had no _dot_.
On April 10, 1761, Voltaire wrote to Duclos, secretary of the Academy,
and proposed that he (Voltaire) should edit and annotate Corneille’s
works, in an edition of the classics then appearing under the patronage
of the Academy, for the benefit of the great Peter’s great-niece.
To say that Voltaire put his whole heart, soul, and body into the thing
and worked at it like a galley slave, and worked till he made all Europe
work too, is no exaggeration. He began by getting up a subscription,
which remains one of the best managed, if not _the_ best managed, and
certainly the most successful thing of its kind ever undertaken. He
advanced all money for preliminary expenses himself. The King of France,
the Empress of Russia, the Emperor and Empress of Austria, Choiseul, and
Madame de Pompadour figured imposingly and attractively on his list.
The nobles and notables of France, courtiers, farmers-general, and
literary men quickly followed suit. In England the givers included good
Queen Charlotte, Lords Chesterfield, Lyttelton, Palmer, Spencer, and the
great Mr. Pitt. To Pitt, Voltaire wrote, in the English he was always
clever enough to remember, when expedient; and Pitt replied favourably.
By May, only a month after the subscription was started, and before a
single copy of the work was ready, enough money had come in to afford
Marie Corneille a yearly income of fifteen hundred francs.
Voltaire was far from finding the labour congenial. To the vigour of his
creative genius work that was so largely mechanical soon became
irritating and tiresome. Still, it consoled him, as he said, for those
public disasters in the Seven Years’ War which were fast making France
the fable of the nations and the laughing stock of Europe; and presently
for that crushing defeat of the French by Frederick the Great at
Villinghausen on July 15th.
That he was an excellent commentator is proved by the fact that his
Commentary remains unrivalled, and is still _the_ text-book on
Corneille. With an ear as exquisitely delicate for a harmony as a
discord, with that single-minded love of good literature which equally
prevented him being flatterer or caviller, Voltaire was the critic who,
like the poet, is born, not made. He admired warmly; but he blamed
candidly. “It is true that Corneille is a sacred authority; but I am
like Father Simon, who, when the Archbishop of Paris asked him what he
was doing to prepare himself for the priesthood, replied, ‘Monseigneur,
I am criticising the Bible.’”
When Martin Sherlock was at Ferney in 1776 he observed that the English
preferred Corneille to Racine. “That,” said Voltaire, “is because the
English do not know enough of the French language to feel the beauties
of Racine’s style or the harmony of his versification. Corneille pleases
them better because he is more striking; but Racine for the French
because he has more delicacy and tenderness.”
When the Commentary was finished it numbered many volumes, and “served
to marry two girls, which never before happened to a Commentary,” said
the Commentator, “and never will again.”
By a peculiarly delicate thought, _poor_ literary men received copies as
gifts.
The autumn of 1761 was not dull at Ferney. Among the visitors were Abbé
Coyer and Lauraguais, wit and playwright, and one of those highly
unsatisfactory clever people who _can_ do everything, and do nothing.
Besides the visitors, the autumn was marked by the progress of the
quarrel with de Brosses, from whom Voltaire had bought Tourney, and with
whom he was still deeply engaged in a lawsuit for “fourteen cords of
firewood.”
The man who gave a home to d’Aumard, to Marie Corneille, and to Father
Adam, and who pensioned his poor relations without in the least
accounting it to himself for righteousness, was incredibly sharp and
mean over this firewood with de Brosses, and wasted his time and his
talents in the fight. The details of the quarrel are long,
uninteresting, and profitless. But it must in justice be said that it
shows Voltaire “at his very worst: insolent, undignified, low-minded,
and untruthful.” Besides quarrelling with de Brosses, with Ancian, and
Rousseau, editing Corneille, writing “Peter the Great,” revising the
“Essay on the Manners and Mind of Nations,” and looking after three
estates, this wonderful man also found time in 1761 for his usual
gigantic correspondence, and to write two plays. The correspondence
alone comprises letters to a king and cardinals, prime ministers, and
actresses, _savants_ and _salonières_, besides letters to old friends
like Panpan and Madame de Champbonin; letters in English and Italian,
and in rhyme; and letters _from_ people he had never seen. In this July
a burgomaster of Middleton had written to inquire of him if there is a
God; if, supposing there be one, He troubles about man; if Matter is
eternal; if it can think; and if the soul is immortal. The burgomaster
added that he would like an answer by return of post. “I receive such
letters every week,” Voltaire wrote to Madame du Deffand. “I have a
pleasant life.”
From 1760 until 1768 he was also writing constantly to that Damilaville
who was so steady a foe of _l’infâme_, and who took Theriot’s place as
Voltaire’s Parisian correspondent. Theriot had long sunk into a
good-natured parasite of any rich man who would give him a good dinner
and an idle life; while Damilaville, if he _was_ heavy and mannerless,
as Grimm said, was a patient and tireless disciple; who ran all
Voltaire’s errands in Paris for him; despatched to Ferney constant
packets of books, manuscripts, and news; and, in brief, loved and worked
for Voltaire as sincerely as he loathed, and worked against, _l’infâme_.
On October 20, 1761, Voltaire wrote to tell his Angels that the fever
took him on Sunday and did not leave him till Saturday--which, being
interpreted, meant that at sixty-seven years old he had composed in six
days the tragedy of “Olympie.”
But even in a Voltaire--a Voltaire of whom Joubert justly said that “his
mind was ripe twenty years sooner than other men’s and that he kept it,
in all its powers, thirty years later”--such quick work could not mean
his best work.
The Angels recommended revision.
“It was written in six days,” wrote Voltaire to a friend whose opinion
he desired. “Then the author should not have rested on the seventh,” was
the answer. “He did, and repented of his work,” replied Voltaire. The
play written in six days took six months to correct.
In the meantime, and for fear one should get idle and the brain rust, he
flung on to paper a versified comedy called “Seigneurial Rights” (“Le
Droit du Seigneur”). It had been rehearsed at home by December 17th. It
was to pose as the work of one Picardet, an Academician of Dijon, until
its success was established.
But once again Voltaire had to reckon with an old enemy. Crébillon of
eighty-eight was still envious, and now censor of plays. He recognised
the style of Picardet, Academician of Dijon, and refused to license his
play unless a scene from his (Crébillon’s) hand was added. Chafing
Voltaire called this scene a carnage of all his best points.
Early in the new year 1762, Crébillon died, at peace with all the world,
it was said, even his profligate of a son--and M. de Voltaire. But
Voltaire had too much to forgive in return. He wrote the “Éloge de
Crébillon,” and once more peaceful d’Alembert had to complain of his
_vif_ friend’s losing his temper--“a satire under the name of a eulogy.”
“I am sorry you chose the moment of his death to throw stones on his
corpse.” “He had better have been left to rot of himself: it would not
have taken long.”
D’Alembert was right, as he had been before.
Meanwhile “Seigneurial Rights” had been produced on January 18, 1762,
and had met with a success far above its slender merits.
January also saw another temporary resurrection of poor Pompignan. It
was Voltaire himself who had provoked the poor man to turn in his grave
this time, by writing to a popular tune and in a catching metre “A Hymn
Sung at the Village of Pompignan.”
This he sent round to his friends with a guitar accompaniment. It became
_the_ air of Paris; and the street boys, it is said, sang it _at_ the
Pompignans as they passed. A little later Voltaire wrote a burlesque
“Journey of M. le Franc de Pompignan from Pompignan to Fontainebleau,”
and replied to an attack Brother Aaron de Pompignan, Bishop of Puy, had
been foolhardy enough to make upon the philosophers, with such a running
fire of pamphlets, epigrams, and irony as might have slain a far abler
foe.
And so _exeunt_ the Pompignans for ever.
In January, too, Voltaire published a pamphlet called “The Extract of
the Opinions of Jean Meslier,” Meslier having been a curé who left at
his death papers seeking to prove the falsehood of the religion which he
had professed. Voltaire put it into shape. It was a curious and a very
human document. He was not a little disgusted that “tepid” Paris did not
receive it with more enthusiasm.
But if Paris was tepid, that cold King seemed to be getting a little
warmer. Voltaire wrote to tell Duclos on January 20th that his Majesty
had restored to him an old pension.
“What will Fréron say to _that_? What will Pompignan?” wrote the
delighted pensioner naïvely. There was also a rumour that his Majesty
has been pleased to recall M. de Voltaire. That was false. And Voltaire,
since he could not reach the grapes, took the very sensible _rôle_ of
declaring that they were sour. No doubt they really were. The fruit of
his own labours was at least far sweeter. To work in the Ferney garden
with Lambert, his stupid gardener--“my privateer”--was safer too. “Love
like a fool when you are young--work like a devil when you are old,” was
one of Voltaire’s rules of life. He had to his hand new work, beside
which even gardening at Ferney was dull and useless, and waiting in a
king’s antechamber a shame and a contempt.
On March 10, 1762, Jean Calas was broken on the wheel.