Geneva.
Considered as a matter, Voltaire appears in a very amiable light. He is
affable, humane, and generous to his tenants and dependants. He loves to
see them prosper; and takes part in their private and domestic concerns,
with the attention of a patriarch.—He promotes industry and manufactures
among them, by every means he can devise: by his care and patronage
alone, Ferney, from a wretched village, whose inhabitants were sunk in
sloth and poverty, is become a flourishing and commodious little town.
That acrimony, which appears in some of Voltaire’s works, seems to be
excited only against rival wits, and contemporary writers, who refuse
him that distinguished place on Parnassus, to which his talents entitle
him.
If he has been the author of severe satire, he has also been the object
of a great deal. Who has been the aggressor, it would be difficult
to determine; but it must be confessed, that where he has not been
irritated as a writer, he appears a good-humoured man; and, in particular
instances, displays a true philanthropy.—The whole of his conduct
respecting the Calas family;—his protection of the Sirvens, his patronage
of the young lady descended from Corneille, and many examples, which
might be mentioned, are all of this nature.
Some people will tell you, that all the bustle he made, on these, and
similar occasions, proceeded from vanity; but in my mind, the man who
takes pains to justify oppressed innocence, to rouse the indignation of
mankind against cruelty, and to relieve indigent merit, is in reality
benevolent, however vain he may be of such actions.—Such a man is
unquestionably a more useful member of society, than the humblest monk,
who has no other plan in life, than the working out his own salvation in
a corner.
Voltaire’s criticisms on the writings of Shakespear do him no honour;
they betray an ignorance of the author, whose works he so rashly
condemns. Shakespear’s irregularities, and his disregard for the
unities of the drama, are obvious to the dullest of modern critics;
but Voltaire’s national prejudices, and his imperfect knowledge of the
language, render him blind to some of the most shining beauties of
the English Poet; his remarks, however, though not always candid nor
delicate, are for the most part lively.
One evening, at Ferney, the conversation happening to turn on the genius
of Shakespear, Voltaire expatiated on the impropriety and absurdity of
introducing low characters and vulgar dialogue into Tragedy; and gave
many instances of the English bard’s having offended in that particular,
even in his most pathetic plays. A gentleman of the company, who is a
great admirer of Shakespear, observed, by way of palliation, that though
those characters were low, yet they were natural (dans la nature, was his
expression). Avec permission, Monsieur, replied Voltaire, mon cul est
bien dans la nature, et cependant je porte des coulottes.
Voltaire had formerly a little theatre at his own house, where dramatic
pieces were represented by some of the society who visited there, he
himself generally taking some important character; but by all accounts
this was not his fort, nature having fitted him for conceiving the
sentiments, but not representing the actions of a hero.
Mr. Cramer of Geneva sometimes assisted upon these occasions.—I have
often seen that gentleman act at a private theatre in that city with
deserved applause. Very few of those who have made acting the study and
business of their lives, could have represented the characters in which
he appeared, with more judgment and energy.
The celebrated Clairon herself has been proud to tread Voltaire’s
domestic theatre, and to display at once his genius and her own.
These dramatic entertainments at Ferney, to which many of the inhabitants
of Geneva were, from time to time, invited, in all probability increased
their desire for such amusements, and gave the hint to a company of
French comedians, to come every summer to the neighbourhood.
As the Syndics and Council did not judge it proper to license their
acting, this company have erected a theatre at Chatelaine, which is on
the French side of the ideal line which separates that kingdom from the
territories of the Republic, and about three miles from the ramparts of
Geneva.
People come occasionally from Savoy and Switzerland to attend these
representations; but the company on which the actors chiefly depend,
are the citizens of Geneva. The play begins at three or four in the
afternoon, that the spectators may have time to return before the
shutting of the gates.
I have been frequently at this theatre. The performers are moderately
good. The admired Le Kain, who is now at Ferney, on a visit to Voltaire,
sometimes exhibits:—but when I go, my chief inducement is to see
Voltaire, who generally attends when Le Kain acts, and when one of his
own tragedies is to be represented.
He sits on the stage, and behind the scenes; but so as to be seen
by a great part of the audience. He takes as much interest in the
representation, as if his own character depended on the performance. He
seems perfectly chagrined and disgusted when any of the actors commit a
mistake; and when he thinks they perform well, never fails to mark his
approbation with all the violence of voice and gesture.
He enters into the feigned distresses of the piece with every symptom of
real emotion, and even sheds tears with the profusion of a girl present
for the first time at a tragedy.
I have sometimes sat near him during the whole entertainment, observing
with astonishment such a degree of sensibility in a man of eighty.
This great age, one would naturally believe, might have considerably
blunted every sensation, particularly those occasioned by the fictitious
distresses of the drama, to which he has been habituated from his youth.
The pieces represented having been written by himself, is another
circumstance which, in my opinion, should naturally tend to prevent
their effect on him. Some people indeed assert that this, so far from
diminishing, is the real cause of all his sensibility; and they urge, as
a proof of this assertion that he attends the theatre only when some of
his own pieces are to be acted.
That he should be better pleased to see his own tragedies represented
than any others, is natural; but I do not readily comprehend, how he
can be more easily moved and deceived, by distresses which he himself
invented. Yet this degree of deception seems necessary to make a man shed
tears. While these tears are flowing, he must believe the woes he weeps
are real: he must have been so far deceived by the cunning of the scene,
as to have forgot that he was in a playhouse. The moment he recollects
that the whole is fiction, his sympathy and tears must cease.
I should be glad, however, to see Voltaire present at the representation
of some of Corneille or Racine’s tragedies, that I might observe whether
he would discover more or less sensibility than he has done at his own.
We should then be able to ascertain this curious, disputed point, whether
his sympathy regarded the piece or the author.
Happy, if this extraordinary man had confined his genius to its native
home, to the walks which the muses love, and where he has always been
received with distinguished honour, and that he had never deviated from
these, into the thorny paths of controversy! For while he attacked the
tyrants and oppressors of mankind, and those who have perverted the
benevolent nature of Christianity to the most selfish and malignant
purposes, it is for ever to be regretted, that he allowed the shafts of
his ridicule to glance upon the Christian religion itself.
By persevering in this, he has not only shocked the pious, but even
disgusted infidels, who accuse him of borrowing from himself, and
repeating the same argument in various publications; and seem as tired of
the stale sneer against the Christian doctrines, as of the dullest and
most tedious sermons in support of them.
Voltaire’s behaviour during sickness has been represented in very
opposite lights, I have heard much of his great contrition and
repentance, when he had reason to believe his end approaching. These
stories, had they been true, would have proved, that his infidelity was
affectation, and that he was a believer and Christian in his heart.
I own I could never give any credit to such reports; for though I have
frequently met with vain young men, who have given themselves airs of
free-thinking, while in reality they were even superstitious, yet I
never could understand what a man like Voltaire, or any man of common
understanding, could propose to himself by such absurd affectation. To
pretend to despise what we really revere, and to treat as human, what we
believe to be divine, is certainly, of all kinds of hypocrisy, the most
unpardonable.
I was at some pains to ascertain this matter; and I have been assured, by
those who have lived during many years in familiarity with him, that all
these stories are without foundation. They declared, that although he was
unwilling to quit the enjoyment of life, and used the means of preserving
health, he seemed no way afraid of the consequences of dying. That he
never discovered, either in health or sickness, any remorse for the works
imputed to him against the Christian religion.—That, on the contrary, he
was blinded to such a degree, as to express uneasiness at the thoughts
of dying before some of them, in which he was at that time engaged, were
finished.
Though this conduct is not to be justified upon any supposition, yet
there is more consistency, and, in my opinion, less wickedness in it,
if we admit the account which his friends give, than there would be in
his writing at once against the established opinions of mankind, the
conviction of his own conscience, and the inspirations of the Deity,
merely to acquire the applause of a few mistaken infidels.
However erroneous he may have been, I cannot suspect him of such
absurdity. On the contrary, I imagine, that as soon as he is convinced of
the truths of Christianity, he will openly avow his opinion, in health as
in sickness, uniformly, to his last moment.