I've been finishing the Davidson bio of Voltaire (I stopped after Frankfurt when I first picked it up a couple months ago), and ran into some random facts, that I will collect here, because if I try to thread things, I'll never get done (I'm already not making German quota tonight, omg).
[ETA: I made German quota! I raced through 20 pages in an hour and 15 minutes, determined that if I got yelled at, it would be for as few pages as possible. :D :D :D And now I'm off to bed! I'm only slightly behind on comments now, though of course I will be more behind when I wake up. ;)]
* Davidson reminds me that the huge earthquake in Lisbon that killed 30,000 people, and left Europe reeling with the news, took place in 1755. Which means Peter Keith, who had lived there for 4 years in the 1730s, was still alive, and no doubt wondering how his old friends and acquaintances had fared. Possibly relevant for fanfic.
* As a contribution to our Six Degrees game, Benjamin Franklin met Voltaire! This was in 1778, when Voltaire returned to Paris to die.
On Monday 16 February he was visited by Benjamin Franklin, the celebrated statesman from the recently founded United States of America. ‘He has seen Mr Franklin, who brought his little grandson, and asked the old man [Voltaire] to bless him. The old man gave his blessing in the presence of twenty people, and pronounced these words for a blessing: “God and Liberty”.’
He ended up dying on May 30, so Franklin caught him right near the end.
* Remember when Voltaire was trying to support the young lady who was Corneille's poverty-stricken descendant, and he decided to produce an edition and commentary of all Corneille's plays and get all his rich friends to subscribe?
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.
Per Davidson,
The king duly put his name down for 200 copies, the Tsarina Élisabeth Petrovna for 200, the Empress Maria Theresa for 100, but Frederick the Great for only six.
Hard to tell what the citation is, but it seems to be René Pomeau et al., Voltaire en son temps.
Since this was published in 1764, and the subscriptions seem to have taken out sometime between 1761 and 1763, I believe would actually believe Fritz only forked over for 6. (cahn: Seven Years' War ends in 1763.) But I have no hard data. And none for Louis and Pompadour.
* I enjoyed Voltaire's description of what he was looking for in a tutor for the young Corneille:
If you know of some poor man who knows how to read and write, and who may even have a smattering of geography and history, or who is at least capable of learning some, and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before, we will house him, heat him, launder him, feed him, water him and pay him, but pay him very modestly, for I have ruined myself in building châteaux and churches and theatres.
"and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before": This is what selenak and I do! :D
* On building churches,
By October of the following year, 1761, the new church and the new theatre at Ferney had both been built...Deo erexit Voltaire (‘Voltaire built it for God’), in which Voltaire’s name was carved on a much larger scale than the word for God.
For those who are new here, I never tire of pointing out the funerary monument for Algarotti that Fritz had commissioned. Zoom in and check out the font sizes on the carving! As a friend of mine put it, "Second billing on your own grave," lol.
* Since I'm always into heights: Voltaire was 5'6" using English measurements, 5'2" using the French units of the time. This is 167.5 cm for our European friends.
* Davidson: Never can a 65-year-old have been so busy: doing up Ferney, researching his history of Peter the Great, writing and acting plays, writing his Dictionnaire Philosophique, campaigning against L’Infâme and, on top of that, the most voluminous letter-writing.
Fritz: Try me.
:P
* Voltaire to a doctor acquaintance:
You make me love life, Sir, through the interest you deign to take in my ailments.
I immediately recognized this as a line from sick Suhm to Fritz:
When my life is odious to me, the interest you deign to take in it would be enough to make it dear to me.
Looks like we have a Rococo formula.
* In Candide the Château of Thunder-ten-tronckh was over-run by the invading Bulgars. Voltaire’s ‘Bulgars’, were in fact code for the Prussians, in an allusion to Frederick’s homosexuality: ‘Bulgars’ = bougres = buggers.
* In 1757, Tsarina Elizabeth wants a history of Peter the Great from Voltaire. He agrees, but only wants to treat Peter's reforms, not his wars or his personal life, since then he'd have to go into how he killed his son. Comments Davidson:
Voltaire’s instinct to bow and scrape to despots, even allegedly enlightened despots, remained with him for ever. Just as he did not want to tell ‘odious truths’ about Peter, so later, in the reign of Catherine the Great, he would not want to go too deeply into why her husband, Peter III, was murdered in 1762, and by whom; nor into why the imprisoned ex-Emperor Ivan VI was murdered in 1764, and by whom.
Fritz: I wish!
* Davidson's commentary in the bibliography section, which I thought would entertain selenak:
Many books have been written about Voltaire’s life, but it is surprising, considering the interest of the subject, how few of them make for really good reading; none, so far as I am aware, can stand comparison, for example, with Boswell’s Life of Johnson. There may be three reasons for this: first, if you want to catch your Boswell, you must catch him young, and for Voltaire it is now too late...
Random things
[ETA: I made German quota! I raced through 20 pages in an hour and 15 minutes, determined that if I got yelled at, it would be for as few pages as possible. :D :D :D And now I'm off to bed! I'm only slightly behind on comments now, though of course I will be more behind when I wake up. ;)]
* Davidson reminds me that the huge earthquake in Lisbon that killed 30,000 people, and left Europe reeling with the news, took place in 1755. Which means Peter Keith, who had lived there for 4 years in the 1730s, was still alive, and no doubt wondering how his old friends and acquaintances had fared. Possibly relevant for fanfic.
* As a contribution to our Six Degrees game, Benjamin Franklin met Voltaire! This was in 1778, when Voltaire returned to Paris to die.
On Monday 16 February he was visited by Benjamin Franklin, the celebrated statesman from the recently founded United States of America. ‘He has seen Mr Franklin, who brought his little grandson, and asked the old man [Voltaire] to bless him. The old man gave his blessing in the presence of twenty people, and pronounced these words for a blessing: “God and Liberty”.’
He ended up dying on May 30, so Franklin caught him right near the end.
* Remember when Voltaire was trying to support the young lady who was Corneille's poverty-stricken descendant, and he decided to produce an edition and commentary of all Corneille's plays and get all his rich friends to subscribe?
Per
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.
Per Davidson,
The king duly put his name down for 200 copies, the Tsarina Élisabeth Petrovna for 200, the Empress Maria Theresa for 100, but Frederick the Great for only six.
Hard to tell what the citation is, but it seems to be René Pomeau et al., Voltaire en son temps.
Since this was published in 1764, and the subscriptions seem to have taken out sometime between 1761 and 1763, I believe would actually believe Fritz only forked over for 6. (
* I enjoyed Voltaire's description of what he was looking for in a tutor for the young Corneille:
If you know of some poor man who knows how to read and write, and who may even have a smattering of geography and history, or who is at least capable of learning some, and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before, we will house him, heat him, launder him, feed him, water him and pay him, but pay him very modestly, for I have ruined myself in building châteaux and churches and theatres.
"and of teaching the next day what he had learned the day before": This is what
* On building churches,
By October of the following year, 1761, the new church and the new theatre at Ferney had both been built...Deo erexit Voltaire (‘Voltaire built it for God’), in which Voltaire’s name was carved on a much larger scale than the word for God.
For those who are new here, I never tire of pointing out the funerary monument for Algarotti that Fritz had commissioned. Zoom in and check out the font sizes on the carving! As a friend of mine put it, "Second billing on your own grave," lol.
* Since I'm always into heights: Voltaire was 5'6" using English measurements, 5'2" using the French units of the time. This is 167.5 cm for our European friends.
* Davidson: Never can a 65-year-old have been so busy: doing up Ferney, researching his history of Peter the Great, writing and acting plays, writing his Dictionnaire Philosophique, campaigning against L’Infâme and, on top of that, the most voluminous letter-writing.
Fritz: Try me.
:P
* Voltaire to a doctor acquaintance:
You make me love life, Sir, through the interest you deign to take in my ailments.
I immediately recognized this as a line from sick Suhm to Fritz:
When my life is odious to me, the interest you deign to take in it would be enough to make it dear to me.
Looks like we have a Rococo formula.
* In Candide the Château of Thunder-ten-tronckh was over-run by the invading Bulgars. Voltaire’s ‘Bulgars’, were in fact code for the Prussians, in an allusion to Frederick’s homosexuality: ‘Bulgars’ = bougres = buggers.
* In 1757, Tsarina Elizabeth wants a history of Peter the Great from Voltaire. He agrees, but only wants to treat Peter's reforms, not his wars or his personal life, since then he'd have to go into how he killed his son. Comments Davidson:
Voltaire’s instinct to bow and scrape to despots, even allegedly enlightened despots, remained with him for ever. Just as he did not want to tell ‘odious truths’ about Peter, so later, in the reign of Catherine the Great, he would not want to go too deeply into why her husband, Peter III, was murdered in 1762, and by whom; nor into why the imprisoned ex-Emperor Ivan VI was murdered in 1764, and by whom.
Fritz: I wish!
* Davidson's commentary in the bibliography section, which I thought would entertain
Many books have been written about Voltaire’s life, but it is surprising, considering the interest of the subject, how few of them make for really good reading; none, so far as I am aware, can stand comparison, for example, with Boswell’s Life of Johnson. There may be three reasons for this: first, if you want to catch your Boswell, you must catch him young, and for Voltaire it is now too late...