Nous eumes une musique charmante, une dame qui joue de la harpe a merveille; elle me fit tant de plaisir que j"eus du regret que vous ne l"entendissiez pas; c"est un instrument admirable. Nous eumes aussi un clavecin, mais quoiqu"il fut touche avec une grande perfection, ce n"est rien en comparaison de la harpe. Je fus fort triste toute la soiree; j"avais appris en partant que Mme. de Luxembourg, qui etait allee samedi a Montmorency pour y pa.s.ser quinze jours, s"etait trouvee si mal qu"on avait fait venir Tronchin, et qu"on l"avait ramenee le dimanche a huit heures du soir, qu"on lui croyait de l"eau dans la poitrine. L"anciennete de la connaissance; une habitude qui a l"air de l"amitie; voir disparaitre ceux avec qui l"on vit; un retour sur soi-meme; sentir que l"on ne tient a rien, que tout fuit, que tout echappe, qu"on reste seule dans l"univers, et que malgre cela on craint de le quitter; voila ce qui m"occupa pendant la musique.
Here are no coloured words, no fine phrases--only the most flat and ordinary expressions--"un instrument admirable"--"une grande perfection"--"fort triste." Nothing is described; and yet how much is suggested! The whole scene is conjured up--one does not know how; one"s imagination is switched on to the right rails, as it were, by a look, by a gesture, and then left to run of itself. In the simple, faultless rhythm of that closing sentence, the trembling melancholy of the old harp seems to be lingering still.
While the letters to Voltaire show us nothing but the brilliant exterior of Madame du Deffand"s mind, those to Walpole reveal the whole state of her soul. The revelation is not a pretty one. Bitterness, discontent, pessimism, cynicism, boredom, regret, despair--these are the feelings that dominate every page. To a superficial observer Madame du Deffand"s lot must have seemed peculiarly enviable; she was well off, she enjoyed the highest consideration, she possessed intellectual talents of the rarest kind which she had every opportunity of displaying, and she was surrounded by a mult.i.tude of friends. What more could anyone desire? The harsh old woman would have smiled grimly at such a question. "A little appet.i.te," she might have answered. She was like a dyspeptic at a feast; the finer the dishes that were set before her, the greater her distaste; that spiritual gusto which lends a savour to the meanest act of living, and without which all life seems profitless, had gone from her for ever. Yet--and this intensified her wretchedness--though the banquet was loathsome to her, she had not the strength to tear herself away from the table. Once, in a moment of desperation, she had thoughts of retiring to a convent, but she soon realised that such an action was out of the question. Fate had put her into the midst of the world, and there she must remain. "Je ne suis point a.s.sez heureuse," she said, "de me pa.s.ser des choses dont je ne me soucie pas." She was extremely lonely. As fastidious in friendship as in literature, she pa.s.sed her life among a crowd of persons whom she disliked and despised, "Je ne vois que des sots et des fripons," she said; and she did not know which were the most disgusting. She took a kind of deadly pleasure in a.n.a.lysing "les nuances des sottises" among the people with whom she lived. The varieties were many, from the foolishness of her companion, Mademoiselle Sanadon, who would do nothing but imitate her--"elle fait des definitions," she wails--to that of the lady who hoped to prove her friendship by unending presents of grapes and pears--"comme je n"y tate pas, cela diminue mes scrupules du peu de gout que j"ai pour elle." Then there were those who were not quite fools but something very near it.
"Tous les Matignon sont des sots," said somebody one day to the Regent, "excepte le Marquis de Matignon." "Cela est vrai," the Regent replied, "il n"est pas sot, mais on voit bien qu"il est le fils d"un sot." Madame du Deffand was an expert at tracing such affinities. For instance, there was Necker. It was clear that Necker was not a fool, and yet--what was it? Something was the matter--yes, she had it: he made you feel a fool yourself--"l"on est plus bete avec lui que l"on ne l"est tout seul." As she said of herself: "elle est toujours tentee d"arracher les masques qu"elle rencontre." Those blind, piercing eyes of hers spied out unerringly the weakness or the ill-nature or the absurdity that lurked behind the gravest or the most fascinating exterior; then her fingers began to itch, and she could resist no longer--she gave way to her besetting temptation. It is impossible not to sympathise with Rousseau"s remark about her--"J"aimai mieux encore m"exposer au fleau de sa haine qu"a celui de son amitie." There, sitting in her great Diogenes-tub of an armchair--her "tonneau" as she called it--talking, smiling, scattering her bons mots, she went on through the night, in the remorseless secrecy of her heart, tearing off the masks from the faces that surrounded her. Sometimes the world in which she lived displayed itself before her horrified inward vision like some intolerable and meaningless piece of clock-work mechanism:
J"admirais hier au soir la nombreuse compagnie qui etait chez moi; hommes et femmes me paraissaient des machines a ressorts, qui allaient, venaient, parlaient, riaient, sans penser, sans reflechir, sans sentir; chacun jouait son role par habitude: Madame la d.u.c.h.esse d"Aiguillon crevait de rire, Mme. de Forcalquier dedaignait tout, Mme. de la Valliere jabotait sur tout. Les hommes ne jouaient pas de meilleurs roles, et moi j"etais abimee dans les reflexions les plus noires; je pensai que j"avais pa.s.se ma vie dans les illusions; que je m"etais creusee tous les abimes dans lesquels j"etais tombee.
At other times she could see around her nothing but a ma.s.s of mutual hatreds, into which she was plunged herself no less than her neighbours:
Je ramenai la Marechale de Mirepoix chez elle; j"y descendis, je causai une heure avec elle; je n"en fus pas mecontente. Elle hait la pet.i.te Idole, elle hait la Marechale de Luxembourg; enfin, sa haine pour tous les gens qui me deplaisent me fit lui pardonner l"indifference et peut-etre la haine qu"elle a pour moi. Convenez que voila une jolie societe, un charmant commerce.
Once or twice for several months together she thought that she had found in the d.u.c.h.esse de Choiseul a true friend and a perfect companion. But there was one fatal flaw even in Madame de Choiseul: she _was_ perfect!--"Elle est parfaite; et c"est un plus grand defaut qu"on ne pense et qu"on ne saurait imaginer." At last one day the inevitable happened--she went to see Madame de Choiseul, and she was bored. "Je rentrai chez moi a une heure, penetree, persuadee qu"on ne peut etre content de personne."
One person, however, there was who pleased her; and it was the final irony of her fate that this very fact should have been the last drop that caused the cup of her unhappiness to overflow. Horace Walpole had come upon her at a psychological moment. Her quarrel with Mademoiselle de Lespina.s.se and the Encyclopaedists had just occurred; she was within a few years of seventy; and it must have seemed to her that, after such a break, at such an age, there was little left for her to do but to die quietly. Then the gay, talented, fascinating Englishman appeared, and she suddenly found that, so far from her life being over, she was embarked for good and all upon her greatest adventure. What she experienced at that moment was something like a religious conversion.
Her past fell away from her a dead thing; she was overwhelmed by an ineffable vision; she, who had wandered for so many years in the ways of worldly indifference, was uplifted all at once on to a strange summit, and pierced with the intensest pangs of an unknown devotion.
Henceforward her life was dedicated; but, unlike the happier saints of a holier persuasion, she was to find no peace on earth. It was, indeed, hardly to be expected that Walpole, a blase bachelor of fifty, should have reciprocated so singular a pa.s.sion; yet he might at least have treated it with gentleness and respect. The total impression of him which these letters produce is very damaging. It is true that he was in a difficult position; and it is also true that, since only the merest fragments of his side of the correspondence have been preserved, our knowledge of the precise details of his conduct is incomplete; nevertheless, it is clear that, on the whole, throughout the long and painful episode, the princ.i.p.al motive which actuated him was an inexcusable egoism. He was obsessed by a fear of ridicule. He knew that letters were regularly opened at the French Post Office, and he lived in terror lest some spiteful story of his absurd relationship with a blind old woman of seventy should be concocted and set afloat among his friends, or his enemies, in England, which would make him the laughing-stock of society for the rest of his days. He was no less terrified by the intensity of the sentiment of which he had become the object. Thoroughly superficial and thoroughly selfish, immersed in his London life of dilettantism and gossip, the weekly letters from France with their burden of a desperate affection appalled him and bored him by turns. He did not know what to do; and his perplexity was increased by the fact that he really liked Madame du Deffand--so far as he could like anyone--and also by the fact that his vanity was highly flattered by her letters. Many courses were open to him, but the one he took was probably the most cruel that he could have taken: he insisted with an absolute rigidity on their correspondence being conducted in the tone of the most ordinary friendship--on those terms alone, he said, would he consent to continue it. And of course such terms were impossible to Madame du Deffand. She accepted them--what else could she do?--but every line she wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion.
Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment.
Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the same fury was repeated, and the same submission. One wonders what the charm could have been that held that proud old spirit in such a miserable captivity. Was it his very coldness that subdued her? If he had cared for her a little more, perhaps she would have cared for him a good deal less. But it is clear that what really bound her to him was the fact that they so rarely met. If he had lived in Paris, if he had been a member of her little clique, subject to the unceasing searchlight of her nightly scrutiny, who can doubt that, sooner or later, Walpole too would have felt "le fleau de son amitie"? His mask, too, would have been torn to tatters like the rest. But, as it was, his absence saved him; her imagination clothed him with an almost mythic excellence; his brilliant letters added to the impression; and then, at intervals of about two years, he appeared in Paris for six weeks--just long enough to rivet her chains, and not long enough to loosen them. And so it was that she fell before him with that absolute and unquestioning devotion of which only the most dominating and fastidious natures are capable. Once or twice, indeed, she did attempt a revolt, but only succeeded in plunging herself into a deeper subjection. After one of his most violent and cruel outbursts, she refused to communicate with him further, and for three or four weeks she kept her word; then she crept back and pleaded for forgiveness. Walpole graciously granted it. It is with some satisfaction that one finds him, a few weeks later, laid up with a peculiarly painful attack of the gout.
About half-way through the correspondence there is an acute crisis, after which the tone of the letters undergoes a marked change. After seven years of struggle, Madame du Deffand"s indomitable spirit was broken; henceforward she would hope for nothing; she would gratefully accept the few crumbs that might be thrown her; and for the rest she resigned herself to her fate. Gradually sinking into extreme old age, her self-repression and her bitterness grew ever more and more complete.
She was always bored; and her later letters are a series of variations on the perpetual theme of "ennui." "C"est une maladie de l"ame," she says, "dont nous afflige la nature en nous donnant l"existence; c"est le ver solitaire qui absorbe tout." And again, "l"ennui est l"avant-gout du neant, mais le neant lui est preferable." Her existence had become a hateful waste--a garden, she said, from which all the flowers had been uprooted and which had been sown with salt. "Ah! Je le repete sans cesse, il n"y a qu"un malheur, celui d"etre ne." The gra.s.shopper had become a burden; and yet death seemed as little desirable as life.
"Comment est-il possible," she asks, "qu"on craigne la fin d"une vie aussi triste?" When Death did come at last, he came very gently. She felt his approaches, and dictated a letter to Walpole, bidding him, in her strange fashion, an infinitely restrained farewell: "Divertissez-vous, mon ami, le plus que vous pourrez; ne vous affligez point de mon etat, nous etions presque perdus l"un pour l"autre; nous ne nous devions jamais revoir; vous me regretterez, parce qu"on est bien aise de se savoir aime." That was her last word to him. Walpole might have reached her before she finally lost consciousness, but, though he realised her condition and knew well enough what his presence would have been to her, he did not trouble to move. She died as she had lived--her room crowded with acquaintances and the sound of a conversation in her ears. When one reflects upon her extraordinary tragedy, when one attempts to gauge the significance of her character and of her life, it is difficult to know whether to pity most, to admire, or to fear.
Certainly there is something at once pitiable and magnificent in such an unflinching perception of the futilities of living, such an uncompromising refusal to be content with anything save the one thing that it is impossible to have. But there is something alarming too; was she perhaps right after all?
NOTES:
[Footnote 2: _Lettres de la Marquise du Deffand a Horace Walpole_ (1766-80). Premiere Edition complete, augmentee d"environ 500 Lettres inedites, publiees, d"apres les originaux, avec une introduction, des notes, et une table des noms, par Mrs. Paget Toynbee. 3 vols. Methuen, 1912.]
VOLTAIRE AND ENGLAND[3]
The visit of Voltaire to England marks a turning-point in the history of civilisation. It was the first step in a long process of interaction--big with momentous consequences--between the French and English cultures. For centuries the combined forces of mutual ignorance and political hostility had kept the two nations apart: Voltaire planted a small seed of friendship which, in spite of a thousand hostile influences, grew and flourished mightily. The seed, no doubt, fell on good ground, and no doubt, if Voltaire had never left his native country, some chance wind would have carried it over the narrow seas, so that history in the main would have been unaltered. But actually his was the hand which did the work.
It is unfortunate that our knowledge of so important a period in Voltaire"s life should be extremely incomplete. Carlyle, who gave a hasty glance at it in his life of Frederick, declared that he could find nothing but "mere inanity and darkness visible"; and since Carlyle"s day the progress has been small. A short chapter in Desnoiresterres" long Biography and an essay by Churton Collins did something to co-ordinate the few known facts. Another step was taken a few years ago with the publication of M. Lanson"s elaborate and exhaustive edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_, the work in which Voltaire gave to the world the distilled essence of his English experiences. And now M. Lucien Foulet has brought together all the extant letters concerning the period, which he has collated with scrupulous exact.i.tude and to which he has added a series of valuable appendices upon various obscure and disputed points. M. Lanson"s great attainments are well known, and to say that M. Foulet"s work may fitly rank as a supplementary volume to the edition of the _Lettres Philosophiques_ is simply to say that he is a worthy follower of that n.o.ble tradition of profound research and perfect lucidity which has made French scholarship one of the glories of European culture.
Upon the events in particular which led up to Voltaire"s departure for England, M. Foulet has been able to throw considerable light. The story, as revealed by the letters of contemporary observers and the official doc.u.ments of the police, is an instructive and curious one. In the early days of January 1726 Voltaire, who was thirty-one years of age, occupied a position which, so far as could be seen upon the surface, could hardly have been more fortunate. He was recognised everywhere as the rising poet of the day; he was a successful dramatist; he was a friend of Madame de Prie, who was all-powerful at Court, and his talents had been rewarded by a pension from the royal purse. His brilliance, his gaiety, his extraordinary capacity for being agreeable had made him the pet of the narrow and aristocratic circle which dominated France. Dropping his middle-cla.s.s antecedents as completely as he had dropped his middle-cla.s.s name, young Arouet, the notary"s offspring, floated at his ease through the palaces of dukes and princes, with whose sons he drank and jested, and for whose wives--it was _de rigueur_ in those days--he expressed all the ardours of a pa.s.sionate and polite devotion. Such was his roseate situation when, all at once, the catastrophe came. One night at the Opera the Chevalier de Rohan-Chabot, of the famous and powerful family of the Rohans, a man of forty-three, quarrelsome, bl.u.s.tering, whose reputation for courage left something to be desired, began to taunt the poet upon his birth--"Monsieur Arouet, Monsieur Voltaire--what _is_ your name?" To which the retort came quickly--"Whatever my name may be, I know how to preserve the honour of it." The Chevalier muttered something and went off, but the incident was not ended. Voltaire had let his high spirits and his sharp tongue carry him too far, and he was to pay the penalty. It was not an age in which it was safe to be too witty with lords. "Now mind, Dancourt," said one of those _grands seigneurs_ to the leading actor of the day, "if you"re more amusing than I am at dinner to-night, _je te donnerai cent coups de batons._" It was dangerous enough to show one"s wits at all in the company of such privileged persons, but to do so at their expense----! A few days later Voltaire and the Chevalier met again, at the Comedie, in Adrienne Lecouvreur"s dressing-room. Rohan repeated his sneering question, and "the Chevalier has had his answer" was Voltaire"s reply. Furious, Rohan lifted his stick, but at that moment Adrienne very properly fainted, and the company dispersed. A few days more and Rohan had perfected the arrangements for his revenge. Voltaire, dining at the Duc de Sully"s, where, we are told, he was on the footing of a son of the house, received a message that he was wanted outside in the street. He went out, was seized by a gang of lackeys, and beaten before the eyes of Rohan, who directed operations from a cab. "Epargnez la tete," he shouted, "elle est encore bonne pour faire rire le public"; upon which, according to one account, there were exclamations from the crowd which had gathered round of "Ah! le bon seigneur!" The sequel is known to everyone: how Voltaire rushed back, dishevelled and agonised, into Sully"s dining-room, how he poured out his story in an agitated flood of words, and how that high-born company, with whom he had been living up to that moment on terms of the closest intimacy, now only displayed the signs of a frigid indifference. The caste-feeling had suddenly a.s.serted itself. Poets, no doubt, were all very well in their way, but really, if they began squabbling with n.o.blemen, what could they expect? And then the callous and stupid convention of that still half-barbarous age--the convention which made misfortune the proper object of ridicule--came into play no less powerfully. One might take a poet seriously, perhaps--until he was whipped; then, of course, one could only laugh at him. For the next few days, wherever Voltaire went he was received with icy looks, covert smiles, or exaggerated politeness. The Prince de Conti, who, a month or two before, had written an ode in which he placed the author of _Oedipe_ side by side with the authors of _Le Cid_ and _Phedre_, now remarked, with a shrug of the shoulders, that "ces coups de batons etaient bien recus et mal donnes." "Nous serions bien malheureux," said another well-bred personage, as he took a pinch of snuff, "si les poetes n"avaient pas des epaules." Such friends as remained faithful were helpless. Even Madame de Prie could do nothing.
"Le pauvre Voltaire me fait grande pitie," she said; "dans le fond il a raison." But the influence of the Rohan family was too much for her, and she could only advise him to disappear for a little into the country, lest worse should befall. Disappear he did, remaining for the next two months concealed in the outskirts of Paris, where he practised swordsmanship against his next meeting with his enemy. The situation was cynically topsy-turvy. As M. Foulet points out, Rohan had legally rendered himself liable, under the edict against duelling, to a long term of imprisonment, if not to the penalty of death. Yet the law did not move, and Voltaire was left to take the only course open in those days to a man of honour in such circ.u.mstances--to avenge the insult by a challenge and a fight. But now the law, which had winked at Rohan, began to act against Voltaire. The police were instructed to arrest him so soon as he should show any sign of an intention to break the peace. One day he suddenly appeared at Versailles, evidently on the lookout for Rohan, and then as suddenly vanished. A few weeks later, the police reported that he was in Paris, lodging with a fencing-master, and making no concealment of his desire to "insulter incessamment et avec eclat M.
le chevalier de Rohan." This decided the authorities, and accordingly on the night of the 17th of April, as we learn from the _Police Gazette_, "le sieur Arrouet de Voltaire, fameux poete," was arrested, and conducted "par ordre du Roi" to the Bastille.
A letter, written by Voltaire to his friend Madame de Bernieres while he was still in hiding, reveals the effect which these events had produced upon his mind. It is the first letter in the series of his collected correspondence which is not all Epicurean elegance and caressing wit.
The wit, the elegance, the finely turned phrase, the shifting smile--these things are still visible there no doubt, but they are informed and overmastered by a new, an almost ominous spirit: Voltaire, for the first time in his life, is serious.
J"ai ete a l"extremite; je n"attends que ma convalescence pour abandonner a jamais ce pays-ci. Souvenez-vous de l"amitie tendre que vous avez eue pour moi; au nom de cette amitie informez-moi par un mot de votre main de ce qui se pa.s.se, ou parlez a l"homme que je vous envoi, en qui vous pouvez prendre une entiere confiance.
Presentez mes respects a Madame du Deffand; dites a Thieriot que je veux absolument qu"il m"aime, ou quand je serai mort, ou quand je serai heureux; jusque-la, je lui pardonne son indifference. Dites a M. le chevalier des Alleurs que je n"oublierai jamais la generosite de ses procedes pour moi. Comptez que tout detrompe que je suis de la vanite des amities humaines, la votre me sera a jamais precieuse. Je ne souhaite de revenir a Paris que pour vous voir, vous embra.s.ser encore une fois, et vous faire voir ma constance dans mon amitie et dans mes malheurs.
"Presentez mes respects a Madame du Deffand!" Strange indeed are the whirligigs of Time! Madame de Bernieres was then living in none other than that famous house at the corner of the Rue de Beaune and the Quai des Theatins (now Quai Voltaire) where, more than half a century later, the writer of those lines was to come, bowed down under the weight of an enormous celebrity, to look for the last time upon Paris and the world; where, too, Madame du Deffand herself, decrepit, blind, and bitter with the disillusionments of a strange lifetime, was to listen once more to the mellifluous enchantments of that extraordinary intelligence, which--so it seemed to her as she sat entranced--could never, never grow old.[4]
Voltaire was not kept long in the Bastille. For some time he had entertained a vague intention of visiting England, and he now begged for permission to leave the country. The authorities, whose one object was to prevent an unpleasant _fracas_, were ready enough to subst.i.tute exile for imprisonment; and thus, after a fortnight"s detention, the "fameux poete" was released on condition that he should depart forthwith, and remain, until further permission, at a distance of at least fifty leagues from Versailles.
It is from this point onwards that our information grows scanty and confused. We know that Voltaire was in Calais early in May, and it is generally agreed that he crossed over to England shortly afterwards. His subsequent movements are uncertain. We find him established at Wandsworth in the middle of October, but it is probable that in the interval he had made a secret journey to Paris with the object--in which he did not succeed--of challenging the Chevalier de Rohan to a duel.
Where he lived during these months is unknown, but apparently it was not in London. The date of his final departure from England is equally in doubt; M. Foulet adduces some reasons for supposing that he returned secretly to France in November 1728, and in that case the total length of the English visit was just two and a half years. Churton Collins, however, prolongs it until March 1729. A similar obscurity hangs over all the details of Voltaire"s stay. Not only are his own extant letters during this period unusually few, but allusions to him in contemporary English correspondences are almost entirely absent. We have to depend upon scattered hints, uncertain inferences, and conflicting rumours. We know that he stayed for some time at Wandsworth with a certain Everard Falkener in circ.u.mstances which he described to Thieriot in a letter in English--an English quaintly flavoured with the gay impetuosity of another race. "At my coming to London," he wrote, "I found my d.a.m.ned Jew was broken." (He had depended upon some bills of exchange drawn upon a Jewish broker.)
I was without a penny, sick to dye of a violent ague, stranger, alone, helpless, in the midst of a city wherein I was known to n.o.body; my Lord and Lady Bolingbroke were into the country; I could not make bold to see our amba.s.sadour in so wretched a condition. I had never undergone such distress; but I am born to run through all the misfortunes of life. In these circ.u.mstances my star, that among all its direful influences pours allways on me some kind refreshment, sent to me an English gentleman unknown to me, who forced me to receive some money that I wanted. Another London citisen that I had seen but once at Paris, carried me to his own country house, wherein I lead an obscure and charming life since that time, without going to London, and quite given over to the pleasures of indolence and friendshipp. The true and generous affection of this man who soothes the bitterness of my life brings me to love you more and more. All the instances of friendshipp indear my friend Tiriot to me. I have seen often mylord and mylady Bolinbroke; I have found their affection still the same, even increased in proportion to my unhappiness; they offered me all, their money, their house; but I have refused all, because they are lords, and I have accepted all from Mr. Faulknear because he is a single gentleman.
We know that the friendship thus begun continued for many years, but as to who or what Everard Falkener was--besides the fact that he was a "single gentleman"--we have only just information enough to make us wish for more.
"I am here," he wrote after Voltaire had gone, "just as you left me, neither merrier nor sadder, nor richer nor poorer, enjoying perfect health, having everything that makes life agreeable, without love, without avarice, without ambition, and without envy; and as long as all this lasts I shall take the liberty to call myself a very happy man."
This stoical Englishman was a merchant who eventually so far overcame his distaste both for ambition and for love, as to become first Amba.s.sador at Constantinople and then Postmaster-General--has anyone, before or since, ever held such a singular succession of offices?--and to wind up by marrying, as we are intriguingly told, at the age of sixty-three, "the illegitimate daughter of General Churchill."
We have another glimpse of Voltaire at Wandsworth in a curious doc.u.ment brought to light by M. Lanson. Edward Higginson, an a.s.sistant master at a Quaker"s school there, remembered how the excitable Frenchman used to argue with him for hours in Latin on the subject of "water-baptism,"
until at last Higginson produced a text from St. Paul which seemed conclusive.
Some time after, Voltaire being at the Earl Temple"s seat in Fulham, with Pope and others such, in their conversation fell on the subject of water-baptism. Voltaire a.s.sumed the part of a quaker, and at length came to mention that a.s.sertion of Paul. They questioned there being such an a.s.sertion in all his writings; on which was a large wager laid, as near as I remember of 500: and Voltaire, not retaining where it was, had one of the Earl"s horses, and came over the ferry from Fulham to Putney.... When I came he desired me to give him in writing the place where Paul said, _he was not sent to baptize_; which I presently did. Then courteously taking his leave, he mounted and rode back--
and, we must suppose, won his wager.
He seemed so taken with me (adds Higginson) as to offer to buy out the remainder of my time. I told him I expected my master would be very exorbitant in his demand. He said, let his demand be what it might, he would give it on condition I would yield to be his companion, keeping the same company, and I should always, in every respect, fare as he fared, wearing my clothes like his and of equal value: telling me then plainly, he was a Deist; adding, so were most of the n.o.blemen in France and in England; deriding the account given by the four Evangelists concerning the birth of Christ, and his miracles, etc., so far that I desired him to desist: for I could not bear to hear my Saviour so reviled and spoken against.
Whereupon he seemed under a disappointment, and left me with some reluctance.
In London itself we catch fleeting visions of the eager gesticulating figure, hurrying out from his lodgings in Billiter Square--"Belitery Square" he calls it--or at the sign of the "White Whigg" in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, to go off to the funeral of Sir Isaac Newton in Westminster Abbey, or to pay a call on Congreve, or to attend a Quaker"s Meeting. One would like to know in which street it was that he found himself surrounded by an insulting crowd, whose jeers at the "French dog" he turned to enthusiasm by jumping upon a milestone, and delivering a harangue beginning--"Brave Englishmen! Am I not sufficiently unhappy in not having been born among you?" Then there are one or two stories of him in the great country houses--at Bubb Dodington"s where he met Dr. Young and disputed with him upon the episode of Sin and Death in _Paradise Lost_ with such vigour that at last Young burst out with the couplet:
You are so witty, profligate, and thin, At once we think you Milton, Death, and Sin;
and at Blenheim, where the old d.u.c.h.ess of Marlborough hoped to lure him into helping her with her decocted memoirs, until she found that he had scruples, when in a fury she s.n.a.t.c.hed the papers out of his hands. "I thought," she cried, "the man had sense; but I find him at bottom either a fool or a philosopher."
It is peculiarly tantalising that our knowledge should be almost at its scantiest in the very direction in which we should like to know most, and in which there was most reason to hope that our curiosity might have been gratified. Of Voltaire"s relations with the circle of Pope, Swift, and Bolingbroke only the most meagre details have reached us. His correspondence with Bolingbroke, whom he had known in France and whose presence in London was one of his princ.i.p.al inducements in coming to England--a correspondence which must have been considerable--has completely disappeared. Nor, in the numerous published letters which pa.s.sed about between the members of that distinguished group, is there any reference to Voltaire"s name. Now and then some chance remark raises our expectations, only to make our disappointment more acute. Many years later, for instance, in 1765, a certain Major Broome paid a visit to Ferney, and made the following entry in his diary:
Dined with Mons. Voltaire, who behaved very politely. He is very old, was dressed in a robe-de-chambre of blue sattan and gold spots on it, with a sort of blue sattan cap and ta.s.sle of gold. He spoke all the time in English.... His house is not very fine, but genteel, and stands upon a mount close to the mountains. He is tall and very thin, has a very piercing eye, and a look singularly vivacious. He told me of his acquaintance with Pope, Swift (with whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough"s) and Gay, who first showed him the _Beggar"s Opera_ before it was acted. He says he admires Swift, and loved Gay vastly. He said that Swift had a great deal of the ridiculum acre.
And then Major Broome goes on to describe the "handsome new church" at Ferney, and the "very neat water-works" at Geneva. But what a vision has he opened out for us, and, in that very moment, shut away for ever from our gaze in that brief parenthesis--"with whom he lived for three months at Lord Peterborough"s"! What would we not give now for no more than one or two of the bright intoxicating drops from that n.o.ble river of talk which flowed then with such a careless abundance!--that prodigal stream, swirling away, so swiftly and so happily, into the empty s.p.a.ces of forgetfulness and the long night of Time!
So complete, indeed, is the lack of precise and well-authenticated information upon this, by far the most obviously interesting side of Voltaire"s life in England, that some writers have been led to adopt a very different theory from that which is usually accepted, and to suppose that his relations with Pope"s circle were in reality of a purely superficial, or even of an actually disreputable, kind. Voltaire himself, no doubt, was anxious to appear as the intimate friend of the great writers of England; but what reason is there to believe that he was not embroidering upon the facts, and that his true position was not that of a mere literary hanger-on, eager simply for money and _reclame_, with, perhaps, no particular scruples as to his means of getting hold of those desirable ends? The objection to this theory is that there is even less evidence to support it than there is to support Voltaire"s own story. There are a few rumours and anecdotes; but that is all. Voltaire was probably the best-hated man in the eighteenth century, and it is only natural that, out of the enormous ma.s.s of mud that was thrown at him, some handfuls should have been particularly aimed at his life in England. Accordingly, we learn that somebody was told by somebody else--"avec des details que je ne rapporterai point"--that "M. de Voltaire se conduisit tres-irregulierement en Angleterre: qu"il s"y est fait beaucoup d"ennemis, par des procedes qui n"accordaient pas avec les principes d"une morale exacte." And we are told that he left England "under a cloud"; that before he went he was "cudgelled" by an infuriated publisher; that he swindled Lord Peterborough out of large sums of money, and that the outraged n.o.bleman drew his sword upon the miscreant, who only escaped with his life by a midnight flight. A more circ.u.mstantial story has been given currency by Dr. Johnson. Voltaire, it appears, was a spy in the pay of Walpole, and was in the habit of betraying Bolingbroke"s political secrets to the Government. The tale first appears in a third-rate life of Pope by Owen Ruffhead, who had it from Warburton, who had it from Pope himself. Oddly enough Churton Collins apparently believed it, partly from the evidence afforded by the "fulsome flattery" and "exaggerated compliments" to be found in Voltaire"s correspondence, which, he says, reveal a man in whom "falsehood and hypocrisy are of the very essence of his composition.
There is nothing, however base, to which he will not stoop: there is no law in the code of social honour which he is not capable of violating."
Such an extreme and sweeping conclusion, following from such shadowy premises, seems to show that some of the mud thrown in the eighteenth century was still sticking in the twentieth. M. Foulet, however, has examined Ruffhead"s charge in a very different spirit, with conscientious minuteness, and has concluded that it is utterly without foundation.
It is, indeed, certain that Voltaire"s acquaintanceship was not limited to the extremely bitter Opposition circle which centred about the disappointed and restless figure of Bolingbroke. He had come to London with letters of introduction from Horace Walpole, the English Amba.s.sador at Paris, to various eminent persons in the Government. "Mr. Voltaire, a poet and a very ingenious one," was recommended by Walpole to the favour and protection of the Duke of Newcastle, while Dodington was asked to support the subscription to "an excellent poem, called "Henry IV.,"
which, on account of some bold strokes in it against persecution and the priests, cannot be printed here." These letters had their effect, and Voltaire rapidly made friends at Court. When he brought out his London edition of the _Henriade_, there was hardly a great name in England which was not on the subscription list. He was allowed to dedicate the poem to Queen Caroline, and he received a royal gift of 240. Now it is also certain that just before this time Bolingbroke and Swift were suspicious of a "certain pragmatical spy of quality, well known to act in that capacity by those into whose company he insinuates himself,"
who, they believed, were betraying their plans to the Government. But to conclude that this detected spy was Voltaire, whose favour at Court was known to be the reward of treachery to his friends, is, apart from the inherent improbability of the supposition, rendered almost impossible, owing to the fact that Bolingbroke and Swift were themselves subscribers to the _Henriade_--Bolingbroke took no fewer than twenty copies--and that Swift was not only instrumental in obtaining a large number of Irish subscriptions, but actually wrote a preface to the Dublin edition of another of Voltaire"s works. What inducement could Bolingbroke have had for such liberality towards a man who had betrayed him? Who can conceive of the redoubtable Dean of St. Patrick, then at the very summit of his fame, dispensing such splendid favours to a wretch whom he knew to be engaged in the shabbiest of all traffics at the expense of himself and his friends?
Voltaire"s literary activities were as insatiable while he was in England as during every other period of his career. Besides the edition of the _Henriade_, which was considerably altered and enlarged--one of the changes was the silent removal of the name of Sully from its pages--he brought out a volume of two essays, written in English, upon the French Civil Wars and upon Epic Poetry, he began an adaptation of _Julius Caesar_ for the French stage, he wrote the opening acts of his tragedy of _Brutus_, and he collected a quant.i.ty of material for his History of Charles XII. In addition to all this, he was busily engaged with the preparations for his _Lettres Philosophiques_. The _Henriade_ met with a great success. Every copy of the magnificent quarto edition was sold before publication; three octavo editions were exhausted in as many weeks; and Voltaire made a profit of at least ten thousand francs.
M. Foulet thinks that he left England shortly after this highly successful transaction, and that he established himself secretly in some town in Normandy, probably Rouen, where he devoted himself to the completion of the various works which he had in hand. Be this as it may, he was certainly in France early in April 1729; a few days later he applied for permission to return to Paris; this was granted on the 9th of April, and the remarkable incident which had begun at the Opera more than three years before came to a close.
It was not until five years later that the _Lettres Philosophiques_ appeared. This epoch-making book was the lens by means of which Voltaire gathered together the scattered rays of his English impressions into a focus of brilliant and burning intensity. It so happened that the nation into whose midst he had plunged, and whose characteristics he had scrutinised with so avid a curiosity, had just reached one of the culminating moments in its history. The great achievement of the Revolution and the splendid triumphs of Marlborough had brought to England freedom, power, wealth, and that sense of high exhilaration which springs from victory and self-confidence. Her destiny was in the hands of an aristocracy which was not only capable and enlightened, like most successful aristocracies, but which possessed the peculiar attribute of being deep-rooted in popular traditions and popular sympathies and of drawing its life-blood from the popular will. The agitations of the reign of Anne were over; the stagnation of the reign of Walpole had not yet begun. There was a great outburst of intellectual activity and aesthetic energy. The amazing discoveries of Newton seemed to open out boundless possibilities of speculation; and in the meantime the great n.o.bles were building palaces and reviving the magnificence of the Augustan Age, while men of letters filled the offices of State.
Never, perhaps, before or since, has England been so thoroughly English; never have the national qualities of solidity and sense, independence of judgment and idiosyncrasy of temperament, received a more forcible and complete expression. It was the England of Walpole and Carteret, of Butler and Berkeley, of Swift and Pope. The two works which, out of the whole range of English literature, contain in a supreme degree those elements of power, breadth, and common sense, which lie at the root of the national genius--"Gulliver"s Travels" and the "Dunciad"--both appeared during Voltaire"s visit. Nor was it only in the high places of the nation"s consciousness that these signs were manifest; they were visible everywhere, to every stroller through the London streets--in the Royal Exchange, where all the world came crowding to pour its gold into English purses, in the Meeting Houses of the Quakers, where the Holy Spirit rushed forth untrammelled to clothe itself in the sober garb of English idiom, and in the taverns of Cheapside, where the brawny fellow-countrymen of Newton and Shakespeare sat, in an impenetrable silence, over their English beef and English beer.