This biography was reccommended to me by shezan after she commented on my Voltaire tale, as "opinionated but never bettered" as far as French Voltaire biographies go. It has nearly a thousand pages, and does qualify as a magnum opus. It's stylish by itself; Jean Orieux can tell a tale. It's also visibly a product of its time; Jean Orieux was born in 1907, lived through two world wars, and while providing narrative room for the women in this tale hardly qualifies as a feminist. (For example, he adores Émilie, and defends her against various often quoted malicious gossip - including one description of her which I had indeed encountered in the "Day to Day in the life of Fritz" book Mildred recently added to the library which basically goes "thin, little green eyes, bad legs, way too many beauty spots and jewelry, bad hairstyle, and that was the woman Voltaire kept raving about!" and the accusation that Maupertuis and König wrote her articles and books for her. (Orieux: Émiliie was worth ten of these small-minded gossip mongers!) But it doesn't occur to him to do a bit more research to find out what was so particular about her take on Newton and on Leipzig, or why it was sensational that she could unite the two, so he describes her as a really smart amateur rather than a scientist. Granted, this is a Voltaire biography, not a "Voltaire and Émilie biography", but I do think a more current biographer would take the trouble to find out more about what a two decades life partner of their subject was working so hard on.
A similar thing is noticable with Fritz. When I after finishing the book had a look at the - gigantic - biblography - I wasn't surprised that a) it' s all in French (including Boswell's diaries - Orieux does quote the hilarious Voltaire-Boswell - "he's a wise man" encounter, and thus I learned André Maurois has done a French translation of Boswell's diaries, go Maurois!), and b) the letters aside, the Fritzian titles are all "...and Fritz", i.e. "Voltaire and Fritz", or "Louis XV: political relationshiips with Fritz" and so forth. No individual biography. Which means you get glitches like "Marie Christine" instead of "Elisabeth Christine" (and yes, Voltaire did meet her, but he didn't see her often, unsurprisingly; basically, he was curious enough to ask to be presented, but that was that, one or two more occasions aside). Or, when quoting from a Fritz to Wilhelmine letter written early after Voltaire's arrival about Voltaire being brilliant and "my brothers doing histrionics/histrionisizing" (meaning the court performance of "La Rome Sauvée" where Heinrich played Catiline and Ferdinand the imaginary naiv young male ingenue to Amalie's young female ingenue), Orieux adds "as long as they were acting, at least they couldn't scheme". (Without making clear whether he thinks that's what Fritz thought or whether that's what he assumes; either way, I suspect it's most likely that Orieux, well familiar with French history where most of the royal brothers of the various Louises did indeed scheme day in and day out, made an automatic conclusion without bothering to look up what Fritz' brothers were doing in 1750. (Without looking it up and based on memory: AW, who didn't take part in the Voltairian play-acting, was busy trying to talk Ulrike out of organizing a coup d' etat, Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by a 50 tweets thread publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars, and Ferdinand did his drilling service and otherwise partied with Lehndorff. Heinrich's pamphlets aside, for which playing Catiline on stage left him ample time, there's not a single anti Fritz action detectable.
Similarly, when we get to Frankfurt, Orieux writes "Fredersdorf, the King's secretary, who hated Voltaire" sent word to Freytag the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt etc. At which point of course yours truly rolls her eyes, because not only is the job description wrong (and while the English word "secretary" can be used for "minister", the German word "Sekretär" can not, and I was reading a German translation of a French book, so I doubt the mistake was in the translation) but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it, because people charmed by Voltaire usually needed to talk to him first. But since no personal letter of Fredersdorf's mentioning his feelings re: Voltaire exists, this is guess work, and in a non-fiction work I want my speculation indicated as such.
Then again, Orieux writes an old school biographee romancée, which reminds me of Stefan Zweig's masterpieces of the type fron the 1920s and 1930s, when Orieux was young,, i.e. biographies unabashedly using novelistic language "her beautiful eyes shed tender tears" etc. He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing. His take on Voltaire includes all the pettiness and shadiness and vengefulness and vanity and histrionics - good lord, all the histrionics. (By which I don't mean the occasional acting in private performances. Btw, Cahn: Émilie could and did indeed sing very well, including in operas privately performed, whereas Voltaire only acted in speaking roles on such occasions, so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.) It also provides the heroics and kindnesses and amazingly modern cosmopolitism (indeed Orieux more than once feels a bit uneasy about that, though he's also admiring, but let's just say he is stretching things a bit when speculating that Voltaire's thing for Germans might be connected in a German grandmaman he never met, and keeps reassuring his French readers that Voltaire being impressed by French defeats such as Roßbach instead of being crushed in patriotic gloom is not comparable to 20th century type of situations). No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death. The only useful things these plays did, for Orieux, was making Voltaire famous, because no one would have read his essays, pamphlets, letters and of course Candide later if he hadn't already become famous via the plays. (Orieux is a big fan of Voltaire's prose, though. Candide being his favourite, but he also adores the letters and tremendously enjoyed the trashy tell all about Fritz.) He's equally opionated on the literary works of other writers. Saint-Lambert's poems, for example, are also deemed both drippy and boring (and the one reason Saint-Lambert made it into literary history, twice, is a) his affair with Émilie and b) his later relationship with the woman Rousseau was after, leaving Orieux to conclude that well, if you can't score via your literary talents...), Fritz' Maupertuis-defending, Voltaire-attacking pamphlets are mediocre. And Orieux is opinionated about characters - Madame Denis is a stupid, greedy cow (German translation uses "eine dumme Pute", but English doesn't go for the fowl to convey the same idea, I don't think - "a goose" is even affectionate and doesn't contain the contempt of the German phrase), Monsieur Arouet didn't deserve his son's hostility, he was doing his best with the enfant terrible he was given under the circumstances, Voltaire's older brother Armand otoh was nuts and a self flaggelating pious fanatic thoroughly deserving of being disliked and ignored by younger brother, etc.
And Fritz? As opposed to Bodanis, he doesn't present this as Machiavellian Fritz luring poor naive idealistic Voltaire to him and says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other (Voltaire's repeated spy offers, Fritz not only writing that supposedly Voltairian poem but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia - he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever. All that getting Voltaire into trouble could have resulted not with Voltaire in Prussia but with Voltaire in prison (again), or worse. (The laws in France being terrible, of which this book has a lot of demonstrations, not least because of Voltaire's big justice for other people campaigns in his later life.) And of course Frankfurt demonstrated what Fritz could do even outside his own kingdom, if he wanted to. Overall, Orieux' take on Fritz is "cruel, brilliant and unique among the kings of his century" (der Einzige strikes again!), and indeed far too similar to Voltaire for them to ever be at peace with another.
New-to-me stuff:
Voltaire and Richelieu - (grandnephew of the Cardinal, temporary lover of Émilie, life long friend of them both, provider of opium in Voltaire's last painful week of life) - actually were at school together, both a Louis-le-Grand, the famous Jesuit school. Orieux, when describing Voltaire returning from his three years in Prussia where most of France actually was still sulking that he'd left in the first place, says Richelieu was an exception: "Voltaire, like Punch in the puppet show, showed up and cried "here I am again, who still loves me?" and Richelieu replied "I love you as ever".
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive"; this at the same time as writing other letters raving about Voltaire havingt the eloquence of Cicero, the sweetness of Pliny (when he means Ovid) etc." (See, this kind of son-of-FW thing is why I had Voltaire being determined he wouldn't end up as the French Gundling.) Conversely, Orieux also notes that as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Orieux about Voltaire and Fritz taking leave of each other after their 1740 encounter: "They were cooing like pigeons. We will later see that they had beaks like eagles."
Jealous Fritz, still writing to Jordan in 1740: "The poet's mind is as smooth as the style of his works, and I flatter myself that Berlin seduces him enough to bring him back soon, especially since the Marquise's purse isn't as well equipped as mine."
(As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.)
Jealous Émilie, writing to D'Argental, also in 1740, re: Fritz: "I think he's indignant about me, but he should only try whether he can hate me more than I have hated him these last two months. You will admit this is a pretty rivalry we have."
(In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz. They're both still there, or were as of the writing of that biography, in the Voltaire museum there.) (No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Orieux regrets that Émilie didn't come with Voltaire in 1743. True, Fritz still hadn't invited her, but Voltaire was visiting Bayreuth as well, and Orieux thinks Wilhelmine would have been glad to host Émilie as well. Re: Voltaire finding German aristos nicer than French ones at this point:
He found in these exquisit courts a charm he didn't know from France; they loved him there more. The aristocracy was less stiff, less intellectual than ours, but more sensitive and simpler, despite being just as well educated and hospitable. Voltaire had loved England, but he'd been bored there. He was never bored in Germany. This, Émilie knew and was afraid of. She was jealous of Friedrich, of Ulrike and the Margravine, and of all of Germany. Why didn't she come with her poet? She would have certainly been received. Her scientific studies would not have been ridiculed, au contraire; she would have been spared the Parisian mockery and the poisonous darts of du Deffand. (Madame du Deffand was the one who ridiculed Émilie's looks and claimed Maupertuis and König had written her scientitic writings.) But alas! Germany loved Voltaire too much for Émilie to love Germany - jealousy is relentless. Which is a pity, for Germany would have loved them both.
Sidenote by me: Germany might have, Orieux, but Fritz surely would not, and he really did not want to have her there. Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.
Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by a 50 tweets thread publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars,
I... kind of need this sequel to "Very Secret Chat" now :P
but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it
My headcanon is that he was amused and/or exasperated by Voltaire, depending on how much he had to calm Fritz down at any given time, and that's where I'm staying :D But I'm also not writing nonfiction :P
so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.
Or that he couldn't sing well enough not to look foolish next to Émilie, which I am also happy to be the case :D
but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia
...waaaaait, what! I didn't realize this!
(der Einzige strikes again!)
heeee!
As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.
*nods* Zinsser and Bodanis both pointed out, I think, that Voltaire had a ton of money. Did Orieux go into any detail regarding his government bonds thing?
Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.
(1) ...now I want Wilhelmine & Émilie! mildred, I exepect this from your fix-it :) (2) but can you imagine the letters? Fritz: Wilhelmine, I heard you were hosting THAT WOMAN. How could you?? Wilhelmine: Huh? The Queen of Hungary isn't anywhere near here -- Fritz: I mean EMILIE, of course. Wilhelmine: Oh. Well, I figured since you were hosting Voltaire -- Fritz: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT.
I... kind of need this sequel to "Very Secret Chat" now :P
When I wrote it, I hadn't even been aware that Gessler the Anti actually was bff with (P)Russian Pete's wife the fake fangirl who hadn't gotten him Fritz' autograph. The possibilities for the flame war to end all flame wars certainly are rising.
Or that he couldn't sing well enough not to look foolish next to Émilie, which I am also happy to be the case :D
Either way works, though Voltaire's type of vanity did allow playing the clown if it suited him. (He also had no illusions about being a great acting talent - he enjoyed participating in the occasional private (in Cirey) or court performance (though he played supporting roles rather than main parts -in La Rome Sauvée, for example, Cicero while being the nominal hero has limited text, whereas Catiline as the chief villain has the biggest part, and the play at some stage hat indeed been called Catiline - , and he certainly kept telling professional actors how he wanted them to play the parts he'd written for them if he was around, but he also had a solid respect towards actors. Which wasn't a given in the day and age. (Hence young Voltaire being horrified when the most admired actress of France, like the rest of the profession, ends up refused a Christian burial and writing one of his most biting essays about this.) And they returned the favour. Le Kain, one of the most popular French actors in the mid-18th century, kept visiting him once a year in Geneva, then Ferney to perform for him (since Voltaire at that point couldn't come to France to see him act).
...waaaaait, what! I didn't realize this!
So, the tale of the leaked letter, according to Orieux:
All Paris was in uproar: the copy of a letter by Voltaire to the King of Prussia was in everyone's hands. The later had just made separate peace with Austria, without bothering to even notify his ally France about this. (...) The effect of this letter was terrible. The current maitresse en titre, Madame de Mailly - this was years before Reinette appeared on the scene - was outraged, she demanded that he should be made an example of. He of course swore that he had nothing to do with it, that the style of the letter wasn't worthy of him. In ain. Even Madame du Chatelet accepted the letter. Since he couldn't play the courtier in Versailles, he'd played one in Berlin. It was just a temporary measure, as Friedrich would have put it, but the timing couldn't have been worse to congratulate the King of Prussia for his betrayal of France.
(The immediate effect is that Voltaire's play Mahomet, the decorations of which had already been made, couldn't be staged in Paris since the theatre people got cold feet. This was a blow to Voltaire, but he naturally was afraid worse was to come:)
He wrote to the favourite, he cajoles, he flatters, he swears, he calms down! All who counted in Paris were against him. Madame du Deffand sums the problem with intelligent malice: the point wasn't to know whether or not the letter had been written by Voltaire, since the entire world, other than Voltaire, already accepted that it had been. The point was to learn how it had gotten from Friedrich's pockets to the salons, receptions and streets of Paris. "The only thing I can't comprehend is how it could have gotten into circulation," the Marquise said.
Suspicion fell on the police, on thieves, on possible jealous rivals Voltaire might have at the Prussian court. Voltaire suspected the old Cardinal. No one suspect the true guilty party, who laughed behind his cloak: Friedrich. Friedrich himself had ordered via his agent copies of the letter to be depsosed at every embassy in Paris, including, as a red herring, at the Prussian embassy. Why? For the reasons we already know: in order to create a permanent split between Voltaire and France, and to get him banished from his country for his entire life. Since he'd then not know where else to go, "du Chatelet's lover", as Friedrich put it, would then fall into the arms or rather paws of his crowned philosopher.
The ending is confusing: Louis XV. showed no interest in the poet. Be it from lethargy or indifference, he did not take any measures against the writer, whom he neither admired, nor loved, no esteemed, nor hated. Thus he did Friedrich a bad turn without even meaning to: Voltaire remained peacefully in Paris.
That both Louis XV and Louis XVI basically had no interest in Voltaire beyond a general mild dislike (which never got fervent enough to be called hate) is a source of frustration to Orieux; he admits that his own inner Frenchman would have prefered it if Voltaire had the type of relationship he had with either Fritz or Catherine with a French King. But neither King ever had the actual interest in the arts Louis XIV had had (who was a despot but one with the great taste to support Moliere, Racine and on the musical side Lully). Meanwhile, both Fritz and Catherine of course had propaganda purposes in mind (among other things) when starting their relationships with Voltaire, but there's no doubt that they were real readers (and we have letters from Catherine in her Grand Duchess era to various friends proving she was a Voltaire reader before needing someone to tell Europe she was an enlightened monarch), did engage with his works (and ideas), and chose him to read not because someone told them he was fashionable but because they cared for the books.
Government bonds: there are details those and all of Voltaire's other businesses, the legal and the shady alike. (I admit I skipped over most of the explanations after checking whether Orieux holds Voltaire to account for his behavior re: Hirschel.) As Orieux put it in the preface, even as a schoolboy young Francois had come to the conclusion that talent without money and money without talent were both undesirable and he firmly intended to have both. Which, as opposed to most other writers, he managed. (And not via inheritance. Brother Armand got most of the money from Dad the notary, and he in turn left it to various other people rather than to his already scandalous kid brother the writer.)
Here's a great example of Voltaire's mixture of business sense, PR sense, artistic sensibility and generosity at their best (i.e. the light side counterpart to such stunts as those he pulled off in Prussia). Background: Pierre Corneille the dramatist, author of "Le Cid",contemporary of Louis XIII and Richelieu, was in Voltaire's time already firmly acknowledged as the first of the great classic French dramatists (to be followed by the younger Racine in tragedy and of course by Moliere in comedy) from French literature's golden age.
Jean-Francois Corneille, post officer & carpenter: I'm a great nephew of the poet. Dad fell on hard times, now I have to suport my kids by wood carvings because my day job of post officer doesn't pay much, and I don't even have a dowry for my dear daughter. I did try to send her to school when the actors of the Comedie Francaise did a charity performance, but that money covered only a short time. Now my girl won't have an education or a marriage!
Voltaire (hears about it via Parisan friends, has them check out the tale only to find this is indeed so and the oldest daughter is smart and pretty): Well, we can't have that happening to a Mademoiselle Corneille! Send her to me! I'll provide the education and the dowry.
Mademoiselle Corneille: *arrives in Ferney, age 18, truly nice and of a cheerful temper, is embraced by Voltaire's household and integrated into same*
Fréron (one of those enemies Fritz listed in his "if you had an army, you so would make war against them" statement)*writes article*: Scandal! What kind of education will she get from Voltaire, that of an ATHEIST ACTRESS? Better for a descendant of Corneille to die than THIS!
Family of first potential husband, reading this article: Sorry, our boy won't propose to Mademoiselle Corneille (nicknamed Rodogune by Voltaire) after all.
Voltaire: Okay, now it's on! Firstly, Rodogune, in addition to your school lessons, you and I are going to mass every Sunday from now on. Secondly, Fréron, it's vicious pamphlet time, is it? I can write those in my sleep. *publishes "Anecdotes sur Fréron' Thirdly, Academéi Francaise, you know, that complete edition of Corneille's works you've been dragging out for years and years without an end in sight? How about I take over, write a critical commentary to every single work, I'm publishing this with my own money as a very special expensive edition, the profits of which will go to Rodogune for her dowry and then future life?
Academie Francaise: Well, "Voltaire/Corneille" sounds like a must have to all literati, and God knows we're glad to have found a witty workoholic to write all the footnotes but "expensive"? With gold cut? Privately printed? Who's going to buy that?
Voltaire: Glad you asked! Dear royal pen pals: you know what to do.
Fritz: buys 200 copies. Catherine: 200 copies for me. MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies. Marquise de Pompadour: 50 copies for me. Sorry, but my fellow won't budge, so I'm paying this out of my own money.
French aristocracy: We suppose we can't stay behind? *plenty of orders arrive*
Voltaire: at age 67, for the first time since his schoolboy days, reads every single Corneille play. Now, remember, Corneille is an icon. The first of the great classics. He's a holy cow you do not, in any circumstances, critisize.
Voltaire: actually does do a critical edition, in that while there's ample applause for Corneille, he actually, for the first time since Corneille's life time, citisizes him as well where he thinks this is due*
Orieux: Look, I've made no secret of the fact Voltaire's own plays are in my opinion dead boring, but as a critic - and critical editor - he was brilliant. That edition contains some of the most insightful Corneille commentary ever, he blew off the dust and treated him as a writer, not an icon. I love that edition!
Academie Francaise: Glad the edition is now published but... hang on! OMG. YOU SAY CRITICAL THINGS ABOUT DIVINE CORNEILLE IN IT! WHAT HAVE YOU MADE US COMPLICIT IN?
Voltaire: I'm me. What did you expect? Also: did you notice this is the first complete edition of a writer a century dead which is a bestseller today? Marketing, people!
Colonel Henri-Camille de Colmont: Mademoiselle Corneille, I hear you've been granted the rights to the Voltaire-Corneille edition and 1400 Livres per year as a dowry, which makes you all in all a bride with 40 000 Livres per year. I'll even lower myself to marrying the daughter of a post officer who sells wood carvings. How about it?
Rodogune: Must I? You're greedy and gloomy. Aso too old for me.
Voltaire: *investigates prospective groom* Nope. You must not. We'll wait till someone better shows up.
Meanwhile, hardcore Corneille fans: THAT MAN IS OF THE DEVIL. HE CRITISIZES THE DIVINE. NOW HIS FANS ARE SWAMPING OUR FANDOM!
Monsieur Dupuits de la Chaux, age 23, officer, 8000 Livres per year income, owns estate near Ferney: Mademoiselle Corneille, I'd be honored.
Mademoiselle Corneille: I like him.
Voltaire: WEDDING TIME! Who says I can't write happy endings?
Wedding and happily ever after for Rodogune (with permanent rights to Corneille/Voltaire): Happens.
Lots and lots of people with last name of Corneille: Hey, Voltaire, how about you finance us as well? We're, like, totally related to THE Corneille, too!
Voltaire: Nope. Off with you, little crows! (Pun with the name "Corneille, which means crow.) I'm generous, if I want to be, but a sucker, I'm not.
(2) but can you imagine the letters?
ROTFLOL. Yes, that's about how it would go. Especially since the time of Voltaire's second visit falls right into the beginning of the critical enstrangement phase. Now where "hosting Émilie" would rank in the list of "lunch with MT", "not arresting Erlangen journalist who keeps critisizing me", and "marrying female Marwitz to Austrian nobleman", I don't know, but I suppose beneath "Lunch with MT" but at least equal to "marrying Marwitz to an Austrian"...
Wooow. That is the best of all possible anecdotes. It just keeps getting better. I love it to death. Voltaire at his best indeed! (And also the royals, for once.)
MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies.
Hee, MT.
Now where "hosting Émilie" would rank in the list of "lunch with MT", "not arresting Erlangen journalist who keeps critisizing me", and "marrying female Marwitz to Austrian nobleman", I don't know, but I suppose beneath "Lunch with MT" but at least equal to "marrying Marwitz to an Austrian"...
Voltaire at his best indeed! (And also the royals, for once.)
Except for one. Looking at you, Louis XV!
(Voltaire is also at his best in the Calas story, which in the biography gets told more extensively than I have ever seen it before, but that one has gruesome deaths, torture and horrible prosecution, so it has plenty of other people at their worst. (Think Dreyfus Affair. J'Accuse indeed.) BTW, I see Youtube has a French movie based on it, and that one also has Mademoiselle Corneille in the cast, as her time with Voltaire overlaps with the start of the saga.
He really did go with her to church every Sunday, thus refuting, in public, the accusation that he was seducing her to godlessness and neglecting her Christian education (which would have ruined her marriage chances). Incidentally, when the Jesuits were banned by the Pope and Fritz was hosting them in Prussia, Voltaire was also hosting one, Father Adam, in Ferney (as Boswell among others noticed with a ?!?); Oriexu points out that as much as Voltaire had a go at the Jesuits (and other orders) while they were still in power, the moment they were out of power he changed his tune. Before that, he'd always made an exception for his Jesuit teachers, whom he'd liked as much as he disliked his father, and had kept in contact with his favourit teachers. Who kept getting signed copies of his works and were in a strange mixture of pride and facepalm about young Arouet all the time.
As most biographies did, this one had various reproductions of Voltaire portraits, both painted ones and the most famous bust - made shortly before his death - as well as the statue by Pigalle made several years before that, and I was reminded again that in an age where so many portraits look alike or at least very similar, courtesy of the wigs and the portrait painters flattering their subjects, Voltaire actually is always distinguishable as him. I mean, you really can tell that the man from the portrait in my icon is also this guy. (And also this earlier depiction, in the nude, for which Fritz paid a share.)
According to Orieux, who however does not give a citation as to the source of that anecdote, Fritz had ordered a copy of Houdun's bust (which I linked along with the statue in the earlier comment), but by the time it arrived in Prussia, he'd read the memoirs, so he ordered the box with the bust to remain closed, and it wasn't openened until after Fritz' death. (Madame Denis: had great fun selling that manuscript to a publisher. For once, Orieux doesn't begrudge it to her.)
Jesuit teachers: writes Orieux: Between him and his teachers, there was a silent understanding. They loved the same authors and for the same reasons. H was born as a great writer. If he'd been educated in a Janesenite or in a Calvinist school, he still would have become famous. But in order to become Voltaire, little Arouet had to be educated by Jesuits. He learned this highest form of intelligence and art from them, which is commonly referred to as taste. (...) The language in which he'd later write "Merope" and "Candide", he learned at the grammar school; not just the language, but a specific way of thinking, a technique of hints, a restraint which aims at making things all the more visible by remaining hidden. (...) School was a happy time for Francois. He didn't regard work as a burden, he enjoyed working and being liked even then - and he pleased by flattering his teachers through the brilliant successes he achieved. He loved them and was loved by them. His entire life he retained affection and gratitude for them: "I was educated for seven years by men who kept trying unceasingly to educate the mind of youth. Since when shouldn't one be grateful to one's teachers? NOthing will extinguish in my heart the memory of Father Porée, who is dear to all who have learned from him. No one has managed to make studies and virtue more charming. HIs lessons were marvellous hours for us, and I wish that he'd have had a position in Paris as he'd have had in ancient Athens, and that people of every age could have participated in his lessons: I'd have gone back often to listen." (...)
He wrote this in 1746, a beautiful homage to his teachers (...) They had no more devoted student, he sent them his books, he awaited their judgement full of impatience. To Father Tournenmine, he writes: "My very dear worthy Father, is it true that you like my 'Merope'?" (...)When he isn't in Paris, he sends his friend Thiériot with his latest tragedy to Father Brumoy: "In God's name, run to Father Brumoy, to the Patres who must never become my enemies. (...) Assure them of my unchanged affection, I do owe it to them, they have educated me, and one must be a monster if one isn't grateful to those who have nourished one's mind." His father never had a right to such a proof of his gratitude - his true fathers were those who nourished his mind; the other - or others, since he declared three candidates for his biological father - not worth talking about! (...) And how could his teachers have forgotten him? With twelve, he was already unforgettable. He didn't often play during breaks, he talked to the teachers. THey tell us that he was interested in contemporary events, or, as we would put it today, "in politics". "He enjoyed putting the great interests of Europe into his small scales," Father Porée says.
He really did go with her to church every Sunday, thus refuting, in public, the accusation that he was seducing her to godlessness and neglecting her Christian education (which would have ruined her marriage chances).
Why do you keep telling me all these endearing stories about him? This is a really endearing story :P
Before that, he'd always made an exception for his Jesuit teachers, whom he'd liked as much as he disliked his father, and had kept in contact with his favourite teachers. Who kept getting signed copies of his works and were in a strange mixture of pride and facepalm about young Arouet all the time.
And this <3 Heh, I can imagine his teachers' faces, lol.
(also, okay, I find Fritz paying a share of a nude Voltaire totally hilarious)
Okay, the leaked letter story is fascinating, but the Mlle Corneille story is MADE OF AWESOME. Both the actual story and your hilarious rendition of it!
Voltaire: Glad you asked! Dear royal pen pals: you know what to do.
Fritz: buys 200 copies. Catherine: 200 copies for me. MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies. Marquise de Pompadour: 50 copies for me. Sorry, but my fellow won't budge, so I'm paying this out of my own money.
I did not see this coming and I laughed SO HARD, okay fine this is an extremely endearing story, Voltaire
Voltaire: I'm me. What did you expect?
HAHAHAHAHA so true
Meanwhile, hardcore Corneille fans: THAT MAN IS OF THE DEVIL. HE CRITICIZES THE DIVINE. NOW HIS FANS ARE SWAMPING OUR FANDOM!
AHAHAHAHA
Voltaire: WEDDING TIME! Who says I can't write happy endings?
Awwww. This is super charming in addition to being hilarious!
Now I really want to read this book! But I already have at least three things in this fandom to read first, not even counting Hugo nominees!
(1) ...now I want Wilhelmine & Émilie! mildred, I exepect this from your fix-it :)
Ahem. :P We'll see how it develops (mostly if it runs that late chronologically), but I'll keep that in mind.
Fritz: Wilhelmine, I heard you were hosting THAT WOMAN. How could you?? Wilhelmine: Huh? The Queen of Hungary isn't anywhere near here -- Fritz: I mean EMILIE, of course. Wilhelmine: Oh. Well, I figured since you were hosting Voltaire -- Fritz: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT.
Wonderful, thank you so much for reading this book and telling us all about it. It's been such an unexpected and welcome gift from the universe to have a royal reader just when my reading ability is seriously crippled.
I also love how this fandom is about historiography almost as much as history. It really makes me feel like you two are my people. If we were just recounting what we read without analyzing it, it would be interesting, but I'd feel less at home here in the salon.
On to the book!
He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing...No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death.
I would have to check (and since it was a library book, would be non-trivial), but Bodanis is pretty critical, as I recall, of Voltaire's verse. If my memory is correct, it's a mixture of "it's hard for us to appreciate this style now" and outright criticism of the French alexandrine as overly formal, laborious, and repetitive. I don't remember what he thought of the dramas.
says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other
I approve!
he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever.
I agree with this. As you said, Fritz never learned that punching down was different. All he ever learned was that punching was necessary to stay alive.
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive";
We had discussed the quote before, but you're right, I hadn't mentioned the year. I approve of your three exclamation marks. He's only just beginning to pay off his debts to half the sugar daddies of Europe, and he's thinking, "Wow, what a money-grabber Voltaire is."
You're right: he prefers those who pay to those who are paid precisely because those who are paid are the competition! :P
as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Awww. Well, I really think Hille (back in 1730) was right, Fritz wanted to be a poet even more than he wanted to be a musician, he just lacked the talent, and that frustrated him to no end. I mean, it's not just Hille, but Fritz's behavior throughout his life, in his correspondence and everyone's memoirs. (Remember Mitchell? "He made me offer up my opinion on his poetry! It was nerve-wracking, but at least he takes criticism well." Catt: "At least he didn't insist on playing Cyrano for you!" Lucchesini: "I actually liked his poetry! No lie.") Fritz wrote verse like he was running out of time, to adapt a line from a popular musical. ;)
It's sad but not surprising to me that he never stopped thinking Voltaire could have brought him up to a higher level if only they'd had enough time. He apparently unquestioningly adopted all of Voltaire's changes whenever the dirty linen returned to him with cleaning suggestions. And, subconscious addiction aside, improving his poetry and French in general was the overt reason for wanting Voltaire so badly, and was what he meant by "squeeze the orange." I seem to recall him saying to someone (d'Argens? Mitchell?) after the Seven Years' War that he would rather have written (an opera? a drama? something artistic/literary) than won a war.
Oh, Fritz. :-( <3
All the additional information on the relationships between other people that we didn't know about was really interesting! Thank you for all that. It's good to keep fleshing out our knowledge of the actors.
(No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Darts and kisses, you heard it here first. :P
In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz.
It's amaaazing how not only do Fritz and Émilie treat each other like romantic rivals, but Voltaire treats them like the two great loves of his life even after moving on. It also reminds me of your wonderful line, which may be my favorite line in the fic and one of my all-time favorite lines from you, from the Fraire fic: "Yet twice in his life, he has touched fire itself." <3
outright criticism of the French alexandrine as overly formal, laborious, and repetitive
If so, that was what Goethe thought, too. ("Like a tapeworm" was what he once actualyl said.) Mind you, he made an exception for Racine, much like everyone else I've seen, who keep on about how Racine is the most beautiful French in existence. (I've never learned enough French to judge these things, but I do know Racine has a reputation of being fiendishly difficult to translate. Schiller tried with Phèdre once, and failed, and if SCHILLER can't do it...
He's only just beginning to pay off his debts to half the sugar daddies of Europe, and he's thinking, "Wow, what a money-grabber Voltaire is."
I think that's probably another reason why 1740!Fritz assumes Voltaire is getting money from Émilie, because if not (and if Voltaire is even willing to invest money there), it does translate into "he likes her better than me!". Meanwhile, Voltaire might be writing to about to become King Fritz that he's dreaming of his prince like of a mistress but he's not yet addicted and thus would like to be compensated for his travelling expenses by royalty, thanks a lot.
You're probably already familiar with a version of this from Bodanis, but here's how Orieux sums up the situation just before Émilie's death, i.e. ten years later:
Friedrich is convinced that Émilie is the only obstacle (to Voltaire joining him) and so he suggests a bargain to her. She should send him the poet, and he will send her a survevyor (einen Geometer, which is what Fritz called Maupertuis) from his new Academy in Berlin. Will she accept? Voltaire replies that she needs to give birth to her child before she can make a decision, and Friedrich easily replies: "Mme du CHatelet will give birth in September. You are not a midwife, she will be perfectly fine doing that without you." And since he is tired of always begging without getting something, he adds: "Moreover, be assured that the joys someone causes voluntarily without having to be prodded all the time are received with more gratitude and are more pleasant than those for which one has to beg for so long." Whereupon Voltaire returns not without firmness: "Neither M. Bartenstin nor M. Bastuchef, as powerful as they are, nor Frederick the Great, who makes them tremble, can stop me right now from fulfilling a duty which I regard as binding. No, I'm not the childmaker, or a doctor, or a midwife, but I am her friend, and even for your majesty's sake I will not leave a woman who can die this September. The birth seems to be very dangerous."
And I think there you have a reason why Fritz, ten years after her death, is still gossiping about Émilie with D'Argens. Much as it hurt her that Voltaire despite Fritz' misogyny made these trips in 1740 and 1743, it evidently hurt Fritz that for as long as Voltaire still did have a choice, he picked Émilie.
(On a less tragic note, the offer of "a surveyor" in trade for Voltaire: oh Fritz. Presumably this was less rethorical than offering "all my new possessions" in 1740, but seriously, the one "Geometer" whom I know Fritz had at his disposal in the year of Émilie's death was Maupertuis, and the idea he offered a trade, presumably without consulting Maupertuis, does crack me up.)
It's amaaazing how not only do Fritz and Émilie treat each other like romantic rivals, but Voltaire treats them like the two great loves of his life even after moving on. It also reminds me of your wonderful line, which may be my favorite line in the fic and one of my all-time favorite lines from you, from the Fraire fic: "Yet twice in his life, he has touched fire itself." <3
Aw, thank you. I think he did love them both. Mind you, he also loved his niece, which Orieux along with every biographier and article writer I've come across so far treats as incomprehensible (not because of the niece factor, but because: unlike Émilie, not a genius, unlike Fritz and Émilie, not charismatic and witty, after her youth had passed, downright fat, and openly greedy for money; to which one can say that Madame Denis throughout her life never had a problem attracting lovers - she and Voltaire were never exclusive -, so she probably was sexy in whichever shape she was in, that she liked money would have been very hypocritical of Voltaire to condemn, and since the letters which finally outed their relationship to the world when they were published were written in Italian, unlike the "regular" letters, means she was fluent enough to correspond on that language, so she can't have been stupid, though yes, definitely not a genius. Anyway, the biographers and journalists writing about Voltaire that I've read so far sound about her the way Lehndorff sounds about Kaphengst, so the reply to "but what did he see in her?" was probably the same.
(Orieux, when quoting the Fritz letter where he goes "I'm tired hearing about your niece!" (re: Frankfurt): So with you there, Fritz, so with you there. Orieux, otoh, whenever Fritz is insensitive about Émilie: such a bastard. Orieux: does not even pretend biographical impartiality.)
In addition to keeping in contact with Saint-Lambert, Voltaire also kept in contact with the Marquis du Chatelet for as long as he lived. (Btw, I couldn't believe it when I spotted him in Austrian Trenck's memoirs!). And no offense to either gentleman, but I think that was about Émilie, about missing her. Just like he couldn't even pretend indifference to any news about Fritz. And I think the main reason why Voltaire kept bitching about Maupertuis even after the guy was dead was because Fritz had picked his side.
(On a less tragic note, the offer of "a surveyor" in trade for Voltaire: oh Fritz. Presumably this was less rethorical than offering "all my new possessions" in 1740, but seriously, the one "Geometer" whom I know Fritz had at his disposal in the year of Émilie's death was Maupertuis, and the idea he offered a trade, presumably without consulting Maupertuis, does crack me up.)
HA. That is hilarious, indeed.
Zinsser thought that Voltaire liked Mme Denis partially because she was so very different from Émilie, and one of her pieces of (weak) evidence was their writing in Italian, the "language of love" rather than the language of intellect. Though that may be going a bit far into speculation, it certainly is plausible, although of course Zinsser has a very strong pro-Émilie and anti-Voltaire bias :)
Orieux, otoh, whenever Fritz is insensitive about Émilie: such a bastard. Orieux: does not even pretend biographical impartiality.)
ahahahaha I have to say I like you, Orieux
And no offense to either gentleman, but I think that was about Émilie, about missing her. Just like he couldn't even pretend indifference to any news about Fritz.
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timeasmymeasure
Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-04 06:44 pm (UTC)A similar thing is noticable with Fritz. When I after finishing the book had a look at the - gigantic - biblography - I wasn't surprised that a) it' s all in French (including Boswell's diaries - Orieux does quote the hilarious Voltaire-Boswell - "he's a wise man" encounter, and thus I learned André Maurois has done a French translation of Boswell's diaries, go Maurois!), and b) the letters aside, the Fritzian titles are all "...and Fritz", i.e. "Voltaire and Fritz", or "Louis XV: political relationshiips with Fritz" and so forth. No individual biography. Which means you get glitches like "Marie Christine" instead of "Elisabeth Christine" (and yes, Voltaire did meet her, but he didn't see her often, unsurprisingly; basically, he was curious enough to ask to be presented, but that was that, one or two more occasions aside). Or, when quoting from a Fritz to Wilhelmine letter written early after Voltaire's arrival about Voltaire being brilliant and "my brothers doing histrionics/histrionisizing" (meaning the court performance of "La Rome Sauvée" where Heinrich played Catiline and Ferdinand the imaginary naiv young male ingenue to Amalie's young female ingenue), Orieux adds "as long as they were acting, at least they couldn't scheme". (Without making clear whether he thinks that's what Fritz thought or whether that's what he assumes; either way, I suspect it's most likely that Orieux, well familiar with French history where most of the royal brothers of the various Louises did indeed scheme day in and day out, made an automatic conclusion without bothering to look up what Fritz' brothers were doing in 1750. (Without looking it up and based on memory: AW, who didn't take part in the Voltairian play-acting, was busy trying to talk Ulrike out of organizing a coup d' etat, Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by
a 50 tweets threadpublishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars, and Ferdinand did his drilling service and otherwise partied with Lehndorff. Heinrich's pamphlets aside, for which playing Catiline on stage left him ample time, there's not a single anti Fritz action detectable.Similarly, when we get to Frankfurt, Orieux writes "Fredersdorf, the King's secretary, who hated Voltaire" sent word to Freytag the Prussian Resident in Frankfurt etc. At which point of course yours truly rolls her eyes, because not only is the job description wrong (and while the English word "secretary" can be used for "minister", the German word "Sekretär" can not, and I was reading a German translation of a French book, so I doubt the mistake was in the translation) but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it, because people charmed by Voltaire usually needed to talk to him first. But since no personal letter of Fredersdorf's mentioning his feelings re: Voltaire exists, this is guess work, and in a non-fiction work I want my speculation indicated as such.
Then again, Orieux writes an old school biographee romancée, which reminds me of Stefan Zweig's masterpieces of the type fron the 1920s and 1930s, when Orieux was young,, i.e. biographies unabashedly using novelistic language "her beautiful eyes shed tender tears" etc. He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing. His take on Voltaire includes all the pettiness and shadiness and vengefulness and vanity and histrionics - good lord, all the histrionics. (By which I don't mean the occasional acting in private performances. Btw, Cahn: Émilie could and did indeed sing very well, including in operas privately performed, whereas Voltaire only acted in speaking roles on such occasions, so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.) It also provides the heroics and kindnesses and amazingly modern cosmopolitism (indeed Orieux more than once feels a bit uneasy about that, though he's also admiring, but let's just say he is stretching things a bit when speculating that Voltaire's thing for Germans might be connected in a German grandmaman he never met, and keeps reassuring his French readers that Voltaire being impressed by French defeats such as Roßbach instead of being crushed in patriotic gloom is not comparable to 20th century type of situations). No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death. The only useful things these plays did, for Orieux, was making Voltaire famous, because no one would have read his essays, pamphlets, letters and of course Candide later if he hadn't already become famous via the plays. (Orieux is a big fan of Voltaire's prose, though. Candide being his favourite, but he also adores the letters and tremendously enjoyed the trashy tell all about Fritz.) He's equally opionated on the literary works of other writers. Saint-Lambert's poems, for example, are also deemed both drippy and boring (and the one reason Saint-Lambert made it into literary history, twice, is a) his affair with Émilie and b) his later relationship with the woman Rousseau was after, leaving Orieux to conclude that well, if you can't score via your literary talents...), Fritz' Maupertuis-defending, Voltaire-attacking pamphlets are mediocre. And Orieux is opinionated about characters - Madame Denis is a stupid, greedy cow (German translation uses "eine dumme Pute", but English doesn't go for the fowl to convey the same idea, I don't think - "a goose" is even affectionate and doesn't contain the contempt of the German phrase), Monsieur Arouet didn't deserve his son's hostility, he was doing his best with the enfant terrible he was given under the circumstances, Voltaire's older brother Armand otoh was nuts and a self flaggelating pious fanatic thoroughly deserving of being disliked and ignored by younger brother, etc.
And Fritz? As opposed to Bodanis, he doesn't present this as Machiavellian Fritz luring poor naive idealistic Voltaire to him and says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other (Voltaire's repeated spy offers, Fritz not only writing that supposedly Voltairian poem but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia - he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever. All that getting Voltaire into trouble could have resulted not with Voltaire in Prussia but with Voltaire in prison (again), or worse. (The laws in France being terrible, of which this book has a lot of demonstrations, not least because of Voltaire's big justice for other people campaigns in his later life.) And of course Frankfurt demonstrated what Fritz could do even outside his own kingdom, if he wanted to. Overall, Orieux' take on Fritz is "cruel, brilliant and unique among the kings of his century" (der Einzige strikes again!), and indeed far too similar to Voltaire for them to ever be at peace with another.
New-to-me stuff:
Voltaire and Richelieu - (grandnephew of the Cardinal, temporary lover of Émilie, life long friend of them both, provider of opium in Voltaire's last painful week of life) - actually were at school together, both a Louis-le-Grand, the famous Jesuit school. Orieux, when describing Voltaire returning from his three years in Prussia where most of France actually was still sulking that he'd left in the first place, says Richelieu was an exception: "Voltaire, like Punch in the puppet show, showed up and cried "here I am again, who still loves me?" and Richelieu replied "I love you as ever".
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive"; this at the same time as writing other letters raving about Voltaire havingt the eloquence of Cicero, the sweetness of Pliny (when he means Ovid) etc." (See, this kind of son-of-FW thing is why I had Voltaire being determined he wouldn't end up as the French Gundling.) Conversely, Orieux also notes that as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Orieux about Voltaire and Fritz taking leave of each other after their 1740 encounter: "They were cooing like pigeons. We will later see that they had beaks like eagles."
Jealous Fritz, still writing to Jordan in 1740: "The poet's mind is as smooth as the style of his works, and I flatter myself that Berlin seduces him enough to bring him back soon, especially since the Marquise's purse isn't as well equipped as mine."
(As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.)
Jealous Émilie, writing to D'Argental, also in 1740, re: Fritz: "I think he's indignant about me, but he should only try whether he can hate me more than I have hated him these last two months. You will admit this is a pretty rivalry we have."
(In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz. They're both still there, or were as of the writing of that biography, in the Voltaire museum there.) (No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Orieux regrets that Émilie didn't come with Voltaire in 1743. True, Fritz still hadn't invited her, but Voltaire was visiting Bayreuth as well, and Orieux thinks Wilhelmine would have been glad to host Émilie as well. Re: Voltaire finding German aristos nicer than French ones at this point:
He found in these exquisit courts a charm he didn't know from France; they loved him there more. The aristocracy was less stiff, less intellectual than ours, but more sensitive and simpler, despite being just as well educated and hospitable. Voltaire had loved England, but he'd been bored there. He was never bored in Germany. This, Émilie knew and was afraid of. She was jealous of Friedrich, of Ulrike and the Margravine, and of all of Germany. Why didn't she come with her poet? She would have certainly been received. Her scientific studies would not have been ridiculed, au contraire; she would have been spared the Parisian mockery and the poisonous darts of du Deffand. (Madame du Deffand was the one who ridiculed Émilie's looks and claimed Maupertuis and König had written her scientitic writings.) But alas! Germany loved Voltaire too much for Émilie to love Germany - jealousy is relentless. Which is a pity, for Germany would have loved them both.
Sidenote by me: Germany might have, Orieux, but Fritz surely would not, and he really did not want to have her there. Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-06 05:25 am (UTC)Heinrich dealt with the joyful prospect of getting married as per his submission to Fritz the previous year by a 50 tweets thread publishing anonymous pamphlets about all the mistakes he thought Fritz made in the Silesian wars,
I... kind of need this sequel to "Very Secret Chat" now :P
but we simply have no idea how Fredersdorf felt about Voltaire. Maybe he hated him. Maybe he was indifferent. Maybe he had even liked him once upon a time, though I seriously doubt it
My headcanon is that he was amused and/or exasperated by Voltaire, depending on how much he had to calm Fritz down at any given time, and that's where I'm staying :D But I'm also not writing nonfiction :P
so I suspect it's safe to assume he couldn't sing.
Or that he couldn't sing well enough not to look foolish next to Émilie, which I am also happy to be the case :D
but also making sure a letter by Voltaire congratulating Fritz to his separate peace with MT - which was regarded as a betrayal of his ally France in Paris - was copied and spread all over Paris by Fritz' agents there, all to get Voltaire into enough trouble with the French authories so he'd be forced to flee to Prussia
...waaaaait, what! I didn't realize this!
(der Einzige strikes again!)
heeee!
As Orieux points out, actually Voltaire invested more of his money - an entire fortune, in fact - into Cirey than Émilie did, not least because as a man he had money of his own. But still, one thing no one can accuse Voltaire of is profiting from Émilie financially.
*nods* Zinsser and Bodanis both pointed out, I think, that Voltaire had a ton of money. Did Orieux go into any detail regarding his government bonds thing?
Otoh, I'm with you that Wilhelmine - who was always on the look out for interesting people and minds to draw to Bayreuth, and was a big supporter of the university at Erlangen, where she'd even given a speech - would have hosted Émilie.
(1) ...now I want Wilhelmine & Émilie! mildred, I exepect this from your fix-it :)
(2) but can you imagine the letters?
Fritz: Wilhelmine, I heard you were hosting THAT WOMAN. How could you??
Wilhelmine: Huh? The Queen of Hungary isn't anywhere near here --
Fritz: I mean EMILIE, of course.
Wilhelmine: Oh. Well, I figured since you were hosting Voltaire --
Fritz: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT.
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-06 08:43 am (UTC)When I wrote it, I hadn't even been aware that Gessler the Anti actually was bff with (P)Russian Pete's wife the fake fangirl who hadn't gotten him Fritz' autograph. The possibilities for the flame war to end all flame wars certainly are rising.
Or that he couldn't sing well enough not to look foolish next to Émilie, which I am also happy to be the case :D
Either way works, though Voltaire's type of vanity did allow playing the clown if it suited him. (He also had no illusions about being a great acting talent - he enjoyed participating in the occasional private (in Cirey) or court performance (though he played supporting roles rather than main parts -in La Rome Sauvée, for example, Cicero while being the nominal hero has limited text, whereas Catiline as the chief villain has the biggest part, and the play at some stage hat indeed been called Catiline - , and he certainly kept telling professional actors how he wanted them to play the parts he'd written for them if he was around, but he also had a solid respect towards actors. Which wasn't a given in the day and age. (Hence young Voltaire being horrified when the most admired actress of France, like the rest of the profession, ends up refused a Christian burial and writing one of his most biting essays about this.) And they returned the favour. Le Kain, one of the most popular French actors in the mid-18th century, kept visiting him once a year in Geneva, then Ferney to perform for him (since Voltaire at that point couldn't come to France to see him act).
...waaaaait, what! I didn't realize this!
So, the tale of the leaked letter, according to Orieux:
All Paris was in uproar: the copy of a letter by Voltaire to the King of Prussia was in everyone's hands. The later had just made separate peace with Austria, without bothering to even notify his ally France about this. (...) The effect of this letter was terrible. The current maitresse en titre, Madame de Mailly - this was years before Reinette appeared on the scene - was outraged, she demanded that he should be made an example of. He of course swore that he had nothing to do with it, that the style of the letter wasn't worthy of him. In ain. Even Madame du Chatelet accepted the letter. Since he couldn't play the courtier in Versailles, he'd played one in Berlin. It was just a temporary measure, as Friedrich would have put it, but the timing couldn't have been worse to congratulate the King of Prussia for his betrayal of France.
(The immediate effect is that Voltaire's play Mahomet, the decorations of which had already been made, couldn't be staged in Paris since the theatre people got cold feet. This was a blow to Voltaire, but he naturally was afraid worse was to come:)
He wrote to the favourite, he cajoles, he flatters, he swears, he calms down! All who counted in Paris were against him. Madame du Deffand sums the problem with intelligent malice: the point wasn't to know whether or not the letter had been written by Voltaire, since the entire world, other than Voltaire, already accepted that it had been. The point was to learn how it had gotten from Friedrich's pockets to the salons, receptions and streets of Paris. "The only thing I can't comprehend is how it could have gotten into circulation," the Marquise said.
Suspicion fell on the police, on thieves, on possible jealous rivals Voltaire might have at the Prussian court. Voltaire suspected the old Cardinal. No one suspect the true guilty party, who laughed behind his cloak: Friedrich. Friedrich himself had ordered via his agent copies of the letter to be depsosed at every embassy in Paris, including, as a red herring, at the Prussian embassy. Why? For the reasons we already know: in order to create a permanent split between Voltaire and France, and to get him banished from his country for his entire life. Since he'd then not know where else to go, "du Chatelet's lover", as Friedrich put it, would then fall into the arms or rather paws of his crowned philosopher.
The ending is confusing: Louis XV. showed no interest in the poet. Be it from lethargy or indifference, he did not take any measures against the writer, whom he neither admired, nor loved, no esteemed, nor hated. Thus he did Friedrich a bad turn without even meaning to: Voltaire remained peacefully in Paris.
That both Louis XV and Louis XVI basically had no interest in Voltaire beyond a general mild dislike (which never got fervent enough to be called hate) is a source of frustration to Orieux; he admits that his own inner Frenchman would have prefered it if Voltaire had the type of relationship he had with either Fritz or Catherine with a French King. But neither King ever had the actual interest in the arts Louis XIV had had (who was a despot but one with the great taste to support Moliere, Racine and on the musical side Lully). Meanwhile, both Fritz and Catherine of course had propaganda purposes in mind (among other things) when starting their relationships with Voltaire, but there's no doubt that they were real readers (and we have letters from Catherine in her Grand Duchess era to various friends proving she was a Voltaire reader before needing someone to tell Europe she was an enlightened monarch), did engage with his works (and ideas), and chose him to read not because someone told them he was fashionable but because they cared for the books.
Government bonds: there are details those and all of Voltaire's other businesses, the legal and the shady alike. (I admit I skipped over most of the explanations after checking whether Orieux holds Voltaire to account for his behavior re: Hirschel.) As Orieux put it in the preface, even as a schoolboy young Francois had come to the conclusion that talent without money and money without talent were both undesirable and he firmly intended to have both. Which, as opposed to most other writers, he managed. (And not via inheritance. Brother Armand got most of the money from Dad the notary, and he in turn left it to various other people rather than to his already scandalous kid brother the writer.)
Here's a great example of Voltaire's mixture of business sense, PR sense, artistic sensibility and generosity at their best (i.e. the light side counterpart to such stunts as those he pulled off in Prussia). Background: Pierre Corneille the dramatist, author of "Le Cid",contemporary of Louis XIII and Richelieu, was in Voltaire's time already firmly acknowledged as the first of the great classic French dramatists (to be followed by the younger Racine in tragedy and of course by Moliere in comedy) from French literature's golden age.
Jean-Francois Corneille, post officer & carpenter: I'm a great nephew of the poet. Dad fell on hard times, now I have to suport my kids by wood carvings because my day job of post officer doesn't pay much, and I don't even have a dowry for my dear daughter. I did try to send her to school when the actors of the Comedie Francaise did a charity performance, but that money covered only a short time. Now my girl won't have an education or a marriage!
Voltaire (hears about it via Parisan friends, has them check out the tale only to find this is indeed so and the oldest daughter is smart and pretty): Well, we can't have that happening to a Mademoiselle Corneille! Send her to me! I'll provide the education and the dowry.
Mademoiselle Corneille: *arrives in Ferney, age 18, truly nice and of a cheerful temper, is embraced by Voltaire's household and integrated into same*
Fréron (one of those enemies Fritz listed in his "if you had an army, you so would make war against them" statement)*writes article*: Scandal! What kind of education will she get from Voltaire, that of an ATHEIST ACTRESS? Better for a descendant of Corneille to die than THIS!
Family of first potential husband, reading this article: Sorry, our boy won't propose to Mademoiselle Corneille (nicknamed Rodogune by Voltaire) after all.
Voltaire: Okay, now it's on! Firstly, Rodogune, in addition to your school lessons, you and I are going to mass every Sunday from now on. Secondly, Fréron, it's vicious pamphlet time, is it? I can write those in my sleep. *publishes "Anecdotes sur Fréron' Thirdly, Academéi Francaise, you know, that complete edition of Corneille's works you've been dragging out for years and years without an end in sight? How about I take over, write a critical commentary to every single work, I'm publishing this with my own money as a very special expensive edition, the profits of which will go to Rodogune for her dowry and then future life?
Academie Francaise: Well, "Voltaire/Corneille" sounds like a must have to all literati, and God knows we're glad to have found a witty workoholic to write all the footnotes but "expensive"? With gold cut? Privately printed? Who's going to buy that?
Voltaire: Glad you asked! Dear royal pen pals: you know what to do.
Fritz: buys 200 copies.
Catherine: 200 copies for me.
MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies.
Marquise de Pompadour: 50 copies for me. Sorry, but my fellow won't budge, so I'm paying this out of my own money.
French aristocracy: We suppose we can't stay behind? *plenty of orders arrive*
Voltaire: at age 67, for the first time since his schoolboy days, reads every single Corneille play. Now, remember, Corneille is an icon. The first of the great classics. He's a holy cow you do not, in any circumstances, critisize.
Voltaire: actually does do a critical edition, in that while there's ample applause for Corneille, he actually, for the first time since Corneille's life time, citisizes him as well where he thinks this is due*
Orieux: Look, I've made no secret of the fact Voltaire's own plays are in my opinion dead boring, but as a critic - and critical editor - he was brilliant. That edition contains some of the most insightful Corneille commentary ever, he blew off the dust and treated him as a writer, not an icon. I love that edition!
Academie Francaise: Glad the edition is now published but... hang on! OMG. YOU SAY CRITICAL THINGS ABOUT DIVINE CORNEILLE IN IT! WHAT HAVE YOU MADE US COMPLICIT IN?
Voltaire: I'm me. What did you expect? Also: did you notice this is the first complete edition of a writer a century dead which is a bestseller today? Marketing, people!
Colonel Henri-Camille de Colmont: Mademoiselle Corneille, I hear you've been granted the rights to the Voltaire-Corneille edition and 1400 Livres per year as a dowry, which makes you all in all a bride with 40 000 Livres per year. I'll even lower myself to marrying the daughter of a post officer who sells wood carvings. How about it?
Rodogune: Must I? You're greedy and gloomy. Aso too old for me.
Voltaire: *investigates prospective groom* Nope. You must not. We'll wait till someone better shows up.
Meanwhile, hardcore Corneille fans: THAT MAN IS OF THE DEVIL. HE CRITISIZES THE DIVINE. NOW HIS FANS ARE SWAMPING OUR FANDOM!
Monsieur Dupuits de la Chaux, age 23, officer, 8000 Livres per year income, owns estate near Ferney: Mademoiselle Corneille, I'd be honored.
Mademoiselle Corneille: I like him.
Voltaire: WEDDING TIME! Who says I can't write happy endings?
Wedding and happily ever after for Rodogune (with permanent rights to Corneille/Voltaire): Happens.
Lots and lots of people with last name of Corneille: Hey, Voltaire, how about you finance us as well? We're, like, totally related to THE Corneille, too!
Voltaire: Nope. Off with you, little crows! (Pun with the name "Corneille, which means crow.) I'm generous, if I want to be, but a sucker, I'm not.
(2) but can you imagine the letters?
ROTFLOL. Yes, that's about how it would go. Especially since the time of Voltaire's second visit falls right into the beginning of the critical enstrangement phase. Now where "hosting Émilie" would rank in the list of "lunch with MT", "not arresting Erlangen journalist who keeps critisizing me", and "marrying female Marwitz to Austrian nobleman", I don't know, but I suppose beneath "Lunch with MT" but at least equal to "marrying Marwitz to an Austrian"...
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 01:09 pm (UTC)MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies.
Hee, MT.
Now where "hosting Émilie" would rank in the list of "lunch with MT", "not arresting Erlangen journalist who keeps critisizing me", and "marrying female Marwitz to Austrian nobleman", I don't know, but I suppose beneath "Lunch with MT" but at least equal to "marrying Marwitz to an Austrian"...
Sounds about right to me.
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 01:46 pm (UTC)Except for one. Looking at you, Louis XV!
(Voltaire is also at his best in the Calas story, which in the biography gets told more extensively than I have ever seen it before, but that one has gruesome deaths, torture and horrible prosecution, so it has plenty of other people at their worst. (Think Dreyfus Affair. J'Accuse indeed.) BTW, I see Youtube has a French movie based on it, and that one also has Mademoiselle Corneille in the cast, as her time with Voltaire overlaps with the start of the saga.
He really did go with her to church every Sunday, thus refuting, in public, the accusation that he was seducing her to godlessness and neglecting her Christian education (which would have ruined her marriage chances). Incidentally, when the Jesuits were banned by the Pope and Fritz was hosting them in Prussia, Voltaire was also hosting one, Father Adam, in Ferney (as Boswell among others noticed with a ?!?); Oriexu points out that as much as Voltaire had a go at the Jesuits (and other orders) while they were still in power, the moment they were out of power he changed his tune. Before that, he'd always made an exception for his Jesuit teachers, whom he'd liked as much as he disliked his father, and had kept in contact with his favourit teachers. Who kept getting signed copies of his works and were in a strange mixture of pride and facepalm about young Arouet all the time.
As most biographies did, this one had various reproductions of Voltaire portraits, both painted ones and the most famous bust - made shortly before his death - as well as the statue by Pigalle made several years before that, and I was reminded again that in an age where so many portraits look alike or at least very similar, courtesy of the wigs and the portrait painters flattering their subjects, Voltaire actually is always distinguishable as him. I mean, you really can tell that the man from the portrait in my icon is also this guy. (And also this earlier depiction, in the nude, for which Fritz paid a share.)
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 02:20 pm (UTC)My expectations of him doing anything, good or bad, are so low they're off the charts. :P Pompadour is the de facto royal here.
Who kept getting signed copies of his works and were in a strange mixture of pride and facepalm about young Arouet all the time.
That must have been fun. :D
this earlier depiction, in the nude, for which Fritz paid a share.)
"Paid a share," Fritz, pfff. I expect you to commission a copy and put it up next to MT in your bedroom. :P
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 03:24 pm (UTC)Jesuit teachers: writes Orieux: Between him and his teachers, there was a silent understanding. They loved the same authors and for the same reasons. H was born as a great writer. If he'd been educated in a Janesenite or in a Calvinist school, he still would have become famous. But in order to become Voltaire, little Arouet had to be educated by Jesuits. He learned this highest form of intelligence and art from them, which is commonly referred to as taste. (...) The language in which he'd later write "Merope" and "Candide", he learned at the grammar school; not just the language, but a specific way of thinking, a technique of hints, a restraint which aims at making things all the more visible by remaining hidden. (...) School was a happy time for Francois. He didn't regard work as a burden, he enjoyed working and being liked even then - and he pleased by flattering his teachers through the brilliant successes he achieved. He loved them and was loved by them. His entire life he retained affection and gratitude for them: "I was educated for seven years by men who kept trying unceasingly to educate the mind of youth. Since when shouldn't one be grateful to one's teachers? NOthing will extinguish in my heart the memory of Father Porée, who is dear to all who have learned from him. No one has managed to make studies and virtue more charming. HIs lessons were marvellous hours for us, and I wish that he'd have had a position in Paris as he'd have had in ancient Athens, and that people of every age could have participated in his lessons: I'd have gone back often to listen." (...)
He wrote this in 1746, a beautiful homage to his teachers (...) They had no more devoted student, he sent them his books, he awaited their judgement full of impatience. To Father Tournenmine, he writes: "My very dear worthy Father, is it true that you like my 'Merope'?" (...)When he isn't in Paris, he sends his friend Thiériot with his latest tragedy to Father Brumoy: "In God's name, run to Father Brumoy, to the Patres who must never become my enemies. (...) Assure them of my unchanged affection, I do owe it to them, they have educated me, and one must be a monster if one isn't grateful to those who have nourished one's mind."
His father never had a right to such a proof of his gratitude - his true fathers were those who nourished his mind; the other - or others, since he declared three candidates for his biological father - not worth talking about! (...)
And how could his teachers have forgotten him? With twelve, he was already unforgettable. He didn't often play during breaks, he talked to the teachers. THey tell us that he was interested in contemporary events, or, as we would put it today, "in politics". "He enjoyed putting the great interests of Europe into his small scales," Father Porée says.
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-08 05:21 am (UTC)Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-08 05:20 am (UTC)Why do you keep telling me all these endearing stories about him? This is a really endearing story :P
Before that, he'd always made an exception for his Jesuit teachers, whom he'd liked as much as he disliked his father, and had kept in contact with his favourite teachers. Who kept getting signed copies of his works and were in a strange mixture of pride and facepalm about young Arouet all the time.
And this <3 Heh, I can imagine his teachers' faces, lol.
(also, okay, I find Fritz paying a share of a nude Voltaire totally hilarious)
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-08 05:13 am (UTC)Voltaire: Glad you asked! Dear royal pen pals: you know what to do.
Fritz: buys 200 copies.
Catherine: 200 copies for me.
MT *not a pen pal, but informed*: Fine. For the girl. 200 copies.
Marquise de Pompadour: 50 copies for me. Sorry, but my fellow won't budge, so I'm paying this out of my own money.
I did not see this coming and I laughed SO HARD, okay fine this is an extremely endearing story, Voltaire
Voltaire: I'm me. What did you expect?
HAHAHAHAHA so true
Meanwhile, hardcore Corneille fans: THAT MAN IS OF THE DEVIL. HE CRITICIZES THE DIVINE. NOW HIS FANS ARE SWAMPING OUR FANDOM!
AHAHAHAHA
Voltaire: WEDDING TIME! Who says I can't write happy endings?
Awwww. This is super charming in addition to being hilarious!
Now I really want to read this book! But I already have at least three things in this fandom to read first, not even counting Hugo nominees!
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 01:02 pm (UTC)Ahem. :P We'll see how it develops (mostly if it runs that late chronologically), but I'll keep that in mind.
Fritz: Wilhelmine, I heard you were hosting THAT WOMAN. How could you??
Wilhelmine: Huh? The Queen of Hungary isn't anywhere near here --
Fritz: I mean EMILIE, of course.
Wilhelmine: Oh. Well, I figured since you were hosting Voltaire --
Fritz: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT.
OMG YES. THIS. THIS FOREVER.
LOLOLOL.
Hopelessly smitten. :P
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 12:53 pm (UTC)I also love how this fandom is about historiography almost as much as history. It really makes me feel like you two are my people. If we were just recounting what we read without analyzing it, it would be interesting, but I'd feel less at home here in the salon.
On to the book!
He also is indeed opinionated, and not in the sense of Bodanis' romantisizing...No, Orieux' being opinionated translates, for example, into his unabashedly declaring Voltaire's stage plays (a considerable part of his ouevre) as boring, the products of the dead end phase of French classical drama which deserved to die and be revolutionized not long after Voltaire's death.
I would have to check (and since it was a library book, would be non-trivial), but Bodanis is pretty critical, as I recall, of Voltaire's verse. If my memory is correct, it's a mixture of "it's hard for us to appreciate this style now" and outright criticism of the French alexandrine as overly formal, laborious, and repetitive. I don't remember what he thought of the dramas.
says if Voltaire wanted to have a clue that young Crown Prince Fritz was maybe not quite the ideal phiilosopher king in the making after all, he could have gotten it, that they both wanted to use each other while also both being highly receptive to each other's praise - and that they started to get addicted to each other which they couldn't break of. While describing the betrayals on both sides early on before they ever moved in with each other
I approve!
he still thinks Fritz was the more cruel of the two. Not least because Fritz had less to lose. Voltaire was, when it came down to it, a non-noble citizen with whom an absolute King could do whatever he wanted, with no legal protection in the modern sense whatsoever.
I agree with this. As you said, Fritz never learned that punching down was different. All he ever learned was that punching was necessary to stay alive.
Fritz as early as 1740 (!!!) writes to Jordan complaining that Voltaire wanted him to pay Voltaire's travel expenses and actually says "no court jester was ever so expensive";
We had discussed the quote before, but you're right, I hadn't mentioned the year. I approve of your three exclamation marks. He's only just beginning to pay off his debts to half the sugar daddies of Europe, and he's thinking, "Wow, what a money-grabber Voltaire is."
You're right: he prefers those who pay to those who are paid precisely because those who are paid are the competition! :P
as late as the 1770s, when Fritz was already a living legend and had been for decades, his fame assured in every way, he kept writing wistfull that if only Voltaire was still present in Sanssouci, "one could have become something". (Orieux wonders what else Fritz thinks he could have become with Voltaire at his side that he didn't become already, and finds this remark oddly touching.)
Awww. Well, I really think Hille (back in 1730) was right, Fritz wanted to be a poet even more than he wanted to be a musician, he just lacked the talent, and that frustrated him to no end. I mean, it's not just Hille, but Fritz's behavior throughout his life, in his correspondence and everyone's memoirs. (Remember Mitchell? "He made me offer up my opinion on his poetry! It was nerve-wracking, but at least he takes criticism well." Catt: "At least he didn't insist on playing Cyrano for you!" Lucchesini: "I actually liked his poetry! No lie.") Fritz wrote verse like he was running out of time, to adapt a line from a popular musical. ;)
It's sad but not surprising to me that he never stopped thinking Voltaire could have brought him up to a higher level if only they'd had enough time. He apparently unquestioningly adopted all of Voltaire's changes whenever the dirty linen returned to him with cleaning suggestions. And, subconscious addiction aside, improving his poetry and French in general was the overt reason for wanting Voltaire so badly, and was what he meant by "squeeze the orange." I seem to recall him saying to someone (d'Argens? Mitchell?) after the Seven Years' War that he would rather have written (an opera? a drama? something artistic/literary) than won a war.
Oh, Fritz. :-( <3
All the additional information on the relationships between other people that we didn't know about was really interesting! Thank you for all that. It's good to keep fleshing out our knowledge of the actors.
(No mention whether the Fritz one shows traces of darts.)
Darts and kisses, you heard it here first. :P
In Ferney, Voltaire had a portrait of Émilie and one of Fritz.
It's amaaazing how not only do Fritz and Émilie treat each other like romantic rivals, but Voltaire treats them like the two great loves of his life even after moving on. It also reminds me of your wonderful line, which may be my favorite line in the fic and one of my all-time favorite lines from you, from the Fraire fic: "Yet twice in his life, he has touched fire itself." <3
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-07 02:47 pm (UTC)If so, that was what Goethe thought, too. ("Like a tapeworm" was what he once actualyl said.) Mind you, he made an exception for Racine, much like everyone else I've seen, who keep on about how Racine is the most beautiful French in existence. (I've never learned enough French to judge these things, but I do know Racine has a reputation of being fiendishly difficult to translate. Schiller tried with Phèdre once, and failed, and if SCHILLER can't do it...
He's only just beginning to pay off his debts to half the sugar daddies of Europe, and he's thinking, "Wow, what a money-grabber Voltaire is."
I think that's probably another reason why 1740!Fritz assumes Voltaire is getting money from Émilie, because if not (and if Voltaire is even willing to invest money there), it does translate into "he likes her better than me!". Meanwhile, Voltaire might be writing to about to become King Fritz that he's dreaming of his prince like of a mistress but he's not yet addicted and thus would like to be compensated for his travelling expenses by royalty, thanks a lot.
You're probably already familiar with a version of this from Bodanis, but here's how Orieux sums up the situation just before Émilie's death, i.e. ten years later:
Friedrich is convinced that Émilie is the only obstacle (to Voltaire joining him) and so he suggests a bargain to her. She should send him the poet, and he will send her a survevyor (einen Geometer, which is what Fritz called Maupertuis) from his new Academy in Berlin. Will she accept? Voltaire replies that she needs to give birth to her child before she can make a decision, and Friedrich easily replies: "Mme du CHatelet will give birth in September. You are not a midwife, she will be perfectly fine doing that without you." And since he is tired of always begging without getting something, he adds: "Moreover, be assured that the joys someone causes voluntarily without having to be prodded all the time are received with more gratitude and are more pleasant than those for which one has to beg for so long." Whereupon Voltaire returns not without firmness: "Neither M. Bartenstin nor M. Bastuchef, as powerful as they are, nor Frederick the Great, who makes them tremble, can stop me right now from fulfilling a duty which I regard as binding. No, I'm not the childmaker, or a doctor, or a midwife, but I am her friend, and even for your majesty's sake I will not leave a woman who can die this September. The birth seems to be very dangerous."
And I think there you have a reason why Fritz, ten years after her death, is still gossiping about Émilie with D'Argens. Much as it hurt her that Voltaire despite Fritz' misogyny made these trips in 1740 and 1743, it evidently hurt Fritz that for as long as Voltaire still did have a choice, he picked Émilie.
(On a less tragic note, the offer of "a surveyor" in trade for Voltaire: oh Fritz. Presumably this was less rethorical than offering "all my new possessions" in 1740, but seriously, the one "Geometer" whom I know Fritz had at his disposal in the year of Émilie's death was Maupertuis, and the idea he offered a trade, presumably without consulting Maupertuis, does crack me up.)
It's amaaazing how not only do Fritz and Émilie treat each other like romantic rivals, but Voltaire treats them like the two great loves of his life even after moving on. It also reminds me of your wonderful line, which may be my favorite line in the fic and one of my all-time favorite lines from you, from the Fraire fic: "Yet twice in his life, he has touched fire itself." <3
Aw, thank you. I think he did love them both. Mind you, he also loved his niece, which Orieux along with every biographier and article writer I've come across so far treats as incomprehensible (not because of the niece factor, but because: unlike Émilie, not a genius, unlike Fritz and Émilie, not charismatic and witty, after her youth had passed, downright fat, and openly greedy for money; to which one can say that Madame Denis throughout her life never had a problem attracting lovers - she and Voltaire were never exclusive -, so she probably was sexy in whichever shape she was in, that she liked money would have been very hypocritical of Voltaire to condemn, and since the letters which finally outed their relationship to the world when they were published were written in Italian, unlike the "regular" letters, means she was fluent enough to correspond on that language, so she can't have been stupid, though yes, definitely not a genius. Anyway, the biographers and journalists writing about Voltaire that I've read so far sound about her the way Lehndorff sounds about Kaphengst, so the reply to "but what did he see in her?" was probably the same.
(Orieux, when quoting the Fritz letter where he goes "I'm tired hearing about your niece!" (re: Frankfurt): So with you there, Fritz, so with you there. Orieux, otoh, whenever Fritz is insensitive about Émilie: such a bastard. Orieux: does not even pretend biographical impartiality.)
In addition to keeping in contact with Saint-Lambert, Voltaire also kept in contact with the Marquis du Chatelet for as long as he lived. (Btw, I couldn't believe it when I spotted him in Austrian Trenck's memoirs!). And no offense to either gentleman, but I think that was about Émilie, about missing her. Just like he couldn't even pretend indifference to any news about Fritz. And I think the main reason why Voltaire kept bitching about Maupertuis even after the guy was dead was because Fritz had picked his side.
Re: Jean Orieux: The Life of Voltaire - I
Date: 2020-04-08 05:19 am (UTC)HA. That is hilarious, indeed.
Zinsser thought that Voltaire liked Mme Denis partially because she was so very different from Émilie, and one of her pieces of (weak) evidence was their writing in Italian, the "language of love" rather than the language of intellect. Though that may be going a bit far into speculation, it certainly is plausible, although of course Zinsser has a very strong pro-Émilie and anti-Voltaire bias :)
Orieux, otoh, whenever Fritz is insensitive about Émilie: such a bastard. Orieux: does not even pretend biographical impartiality.)
ahahahaha I have to say I like you, Orieux
And no offense to either gentleman, but I think that was about Émilie, about missing her. Just like he couldn't even pretend indifference to any news about Fritz.
<3333