Chapter XXVIII: The Délices, and the “poem on the Disaster of Lisbon”

In 1755, the little republic of Geneva contained twenty thousand of some of the most simple, honest, frugal, and industrious persons in the world. Calvin had been dead two centuries. But his influence yet lived in laws which regulated not only the worship but the food and the drink of his followers; which bade them rise at five in summer and at six in winter, under penalty of a fine; allowed but two dishes at their tables; and made more than one fire in a house appear unjustifiable extravagance. In many respects the Genevan Calvinists of the time of Voltaire were not unlike a certain section of Scottish society. Austere in morals, and shrewd in mind, narrow, laborious, economical, equally exempt from degrading poverty and degrading luxury, content with stern pleasures, and a brief and rigid creed--the Calvinist was but a severer Presbyterian after all. By the middle of the eighteenth century, indeed, one party of the Genevans had been influenced not a little, on the side of their intellect, by the new science, the new literature, the new philosophy, which were remoulding Europe; and beneath the Calvinistic gloom still felt the gay heart-beats of the Frenchman. But the other and larger party were Puritan to the marrow--who believed, with all the morbid intensity of their founder, that enjoyment was sinful, musical instruments had been invented by the devil, and play-acting was the abomination of desolation.

It was among such a people that this cynic Voltaire, whose motto was “Rire et fais rire,” whose darling amusement was the drama, and whose incorrigible indulgence was the “Pucelle,” had elected to live.

On the very day, February 9, 1755, when he completed his negotiations for buying the lease of Délices, a certain Pastor Vernet wrote to him, begging him to respect religion, and saying that the serious persons of the neighbourhood were not without their apprehensions on that count. But when it came to writing, Voltaire was more than a match for any pastor who ever lived. He responded by a letter brilliantly ambiguous; to which Vernet could take no exception, but in which he must have found much food for thought.

Les Délices stood on the top of a hill on the Lyons road and quite near to the town of Geneva. It was therefore in that republic, while it was ten minutes’ walk from the Sardinian province of Savoy, half an hour’s ride into France, and an hour’s ride into Vaud. Altogether, a most prudent situation for a Voltaire. Lake Leman lapped the foot of its terraces. It was surrounded by gardens, whose beauty was only marred by high walls which shut out the lovely surrounding country. His signature on the lease was still wet when this enthusiastic Voltaire began pulling down those walls that he might look uninterruptedly upon one of the most beautiful views in Switzerland--across the city of Geneva, the junction of the rivers Arne and Rhone, to the Jura and the Alps. He called the place the Délices, he said, because “there is nothing more delightful than to be free and independent.” Certainly, the Delights were his torments in some respects. He complained that the architect of Prangins had forgotten to make a garden, and the architect of Délices had forgotten to make a house. Its builder had built for himself; and the guest-rooms were inadequate and uncomfortable. But such defects could be remedied. The last occupant of Délices was the son of that Duchess of Saxe-Gotha who had inspired the “Annals.” _That_ seemed like a good omen.

Monrion, the second purchase, was on the way from Lausanne to Ouchy--at the other end of the lake from Délices. “Les Délices will be for the summer, Monrion for the winter, and you for all seasons,” Voltaire wrote to Lawyer de Brenles, the very day he acquired Délices. “I wanted only one tomb. I shall have two.” Monrion was comfortable and “sheltered from the cruel north wind”--“my little cabin,” “my winter palace”--a “clean, simple house” such as its master loved. After his time it was inhabited by Tissot--a celebrated doctor, only second in reputation to Tronchin.

It is pleasant to see the keen youthful enjoyment and ardour with which Voltaire turned to the improvement of his new homes. The first letter he wrote from Délices is dated March 5, 1755, but, as has been noted, even before that date he was enthusiastically pulling down walls in the garden and planning new rooms for the house. By March 24th, he and Madame Denis were actually in the midst of building the “accommodation for our friends and our chickens--planting oranges and onions, tulips and carrots. One must found Carthage.” The new fascination--the safest and best he had ever known--the fascination of home and garden, of country life, of pride in simple things--took possession of the most susceptible of men. He said with his cynic smile that he “was born faun and sylvan.” He was at least strangely free from love of the pavement for a man who had spent on it all the most pliable years of his life. He wrote in this March that his whole conversation was of “masons, carpenters, and gardeners.” Even Madame Denis, whose “natural aversion to a country life” her poor uncle was to have bitter cause to lament, liked the hurry and bustle of moving, and was for a while content.

There was much to be done, too, within doors. For himself, Voltaire’s own tastes were always quite frugal and simple. He wanted neither fine furniture nor many servants. And as for rich eating and drink, from those, if he had ever desired them--which he had not--his health would have precluded him. His sternly frugal fare and love of simplicity about him should have pleased his Calvinistic neighbours. But he was a friend before all things. And Délices and Monrion were to be open to all his friends--who must be received with every hospitality and with every generous comfort of which their host could think. For them he would live like a rich man. For them he began spending that comfortable fortune he had acquired with so much sagacity, and very often with so much self-denial. He bought half a dozen horses and four carriages. He kept a couple of lackeys, a valet called Boisse, a French cook, and a cook’s boy; maidservants, coachmen, a postilion, and gardeners; beside Collini, whose duties were only less universal than Longchamp’s had been. That French cook soon had to provide a great many dinners for a great many diners; and generous suppers after evening theatricals. The carriages had to be sent to bring the economical, quiet-going neighbours to and from the dinner parties. The carriage Voltaire kept for his own use was of antique build, with a blue ground speckled with gold stars; but it was his fancy always to drive this remarkable equipage into Geneva with four horses to it--to the great excitement and astonishment of the grave little republic. On one occasion the people so crowded round him to see him alight from this extraordinary conveyance, that he called out, “What do you want to see, boobies? A skeleton? Well, here is one,” and he threw off his cloak. The establishment of Délices was further completed by a tame bear and a monkey. The monkey, who bit the hand that caressed him, was called Luc. So in his letters of the time Voltaire soon began to allude to a certain royal friend as Luc too.

Voltaire had been established at Délices about a month, when in April his first visitor, Lekain the actor, came to stay with him. Lekain, who in 1750 had been nobody at all but a clever young dependent on the bounty of the famous M. de Voltaire, was himself famous now, as one of the best tragedians in Paris. Of course the amateur dramatic talents of Délices took advantage of the professional genius of Lekain. “Zaire” was rehearsed; and then read aloud in one of the large rooms of the house. Denis and Lekain were in the principal parts. Voltaire took his favourite _rôle_ of Lusignan, and declared gaily that no company in Europe had a better old fool in it than himself. The frigid Calvinists and the Tronchins, who formed the audience, were in tears. Lekain had more sentiment than voice, said Voltaire; and was so moved sometimes as to be inaudible. But then he moved his audience too. That was the great thing. He and his amateurs also read some part of the new play, “The Orphan of China”; and when Lekain left he carried away most of it in his box with the view of producing it in Paris.

But even at Délices the man who had written the “Pucelle” could not long expect to find only the pleasures of play-acting and the agreeable troubles of an estate. Since he began it, in 1730, the thing had been copied, and miscopied, read, re-read, quoted, and travestied a thousand times. It had been imitated by King Frederick in the “Palladium”; and read aloud to the Prussian princesses and the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha. It had been transcribed _for_ Prince Henry, and _by_ Longchamp. It was everybody’s secret; but still it _was_ a secret. There was one indecorum it had not yet committed--that of print.

And in this January of 1755 had come that unpleasant news that a manuscript _was_ in the possession of Mademoiselle du Thil; and then, like a clap of thunder, the announcement that the thing “was printed and being sold for a louis in Paris.”

The publication of such a work would have been disastrous for Voltaire at any moment; but it was doubly disastrous now. Here he was just settling down upon his estate as a sober, respectable country gentleman, very much minded to stand well with his strait-laced neighbours, very fond of his new home, not at all inclined to leave it, and having nowhere to go if he did leave it--yet holding his land and his right to live on it only at the “good pleasure” of a very strict Seigneury. To make matters worse, the printed “Pucelle” was (of course) full of errors; and while it was much less witty than the original, was not at all less indecent. At first there seemed to be nothing to be done but to follow the old, old plan. The thing is not mine at all! Here, for instance, is a passage abusing Richelieu--and Richelieu is my friend! And then, to make assurance doubly sure, Voltaire tried another very artful and most characteristic _ruse_. He employed hundreds of copyists in Paris to copy it as incorrectly as possible. Then all his friends, as well as himself, denied loudly and vehemently that he was the author thereof. A Voltaire write such bad verse--so _fade_, so _plat_, so prosy! Impossible! At the same time, Voltaire sent copies of such a “Pucelle”--or such parts of _the_ “Pucelle”--as he wished to avow, to all his acquaintance and all persons in authority. It was a very good idea. It cost a great deal of money, and a great deal of trouble; and might have been of some use if M. de Voltaire’s character and writings had not been known and feared these forty years.

On July 26th, Grasset, a publisher of Lausanne, appeared at the Délices and kindly offered to sell M. de Voltaire the incorrect copy of his own “Pucelle” for fifty louis. Voltaire had already written to Grasset to tell him in no mild terms that those “rags of manuscript” were not his “Pucelle” at all, but the work of some person who had neither “poetic art, good sense, nor good morals”; and that of such a thing Grasset would not sell a hundred copies. His rage, therefore, may be imagined. He denounced Grasset to the Genevan authorities; and had the satisfaction of seeing that misguided person made fast in prison--for a time. On July 27th, factotum Collini was sent up to Paris to see if he could not better matters there. But Paris burnt the “Pucelle.” The Pope prohibited it; and it sold lustily. It is not a little curious that Voltaire himself never in all his life suffered anything worse from it than frights: though of those he had enough and to spare. In 1757, a Parisian printer was sentenced to nine years at the galleys for printing an edition. Geneva--pretending to believe, and trying to believe, that M. de Voltaire was not its author--burnt the accursed thing as Paris had done; knowing that M. de Voltaire could only be glad to see the destruction of such a wicked travesty of his respectable poem. With what a wry smile he must have watched that bonfire!

The republic, however, for the moment, ostensibly gave him the benefit of the doubt. And then in this very July, just when he ought to have been most cautious and circumspect, if this imprudent, mischievous person does not begin making a stage of inverted wine-barrels, painting scenery, getting together theatrical costumes, flashing sham lightning in a dust-pan, preparing sham thunder by means of the rims of two cartwheels--and, worse than all, a thousand times worse--recruiting a theatrical company from among the young people of Geneva! The young people were only too willing. The Council of State had swallowed--in disapproving silence--that reading of “Zaire” when Lekain had reduced “Tronchins and syndics” to tears. But this was a little too much. So on July 31st the Council met, and, as the result of a solemn confabulation, reminded M. de Voltaire that the drama, played publicly or privately, was contrary to their regulations, and that no Calvinists were allowed to take part in, or to witness, the same. Voltaire replied with a suspicious meekness that his only desire was to obey the “wise laws” of the government. He further wrote to Councillor Tronchin in terms quite abject. “No man who owes to your honourable body the privilege of living in this air ought to displease anyone who breathes it.”

In brief, there was a different and quite as good an air in Lausanne, where the “wise laws” of Geneva had no sway. Lausanne loved play-acting; and M. de Voltaire had a house at Monrion.

In Paris, too, on August 20th, “The Orphan of China” was performed with brilliant success. Here was excellent consolation for the solemn resolutions of Genevan Councils. They might take offence at “Zaire,” but Paris applauded “my Chinese baboons” to the echo. Poor Marie Leczinska, indeed, who not unnaturally saw evil in everything this sceptic, this Pompadour’s favourite, did, saw it here too. But even her objections, that the piece contained lines hostile to religion and to the King, were too obviously unjust to harm it. The censor had passed it. Its first performance declared it Voltaire’s greatest success since “Mérope.” If Lekain _did_ fall into his old fault and speak dreadfully indistinctly, Mademoiselle Clarion made the most charming of heroines, and the play was “all full of love”--tender, graceful, picturesque. It was played twelve or thirteen times in Paris; and when it was moved to Fontainebleau the Court delighted in it as much as the capital had done. In the annals of the French stage it is still remembered as the first play in which the actresses consented to forego their _paniers_.

Collini was present on the opening night. Even his grumbling pen allows that his master had made a very palpable hit. The pleasure-loving secretary had spent six weeks in Paris, almost entirely engaged in enjoying himself, before Voltaire recalled him in the friendliest of terms.

On August 30, 1755, Voltaire wrote from Délices one of his most famous letters; perhaps one of the most famous letters in the world. It was to Jean Jacques Rousseau, and thanked him for the “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men,” which Rousseau had written as a prize essay at the Academy of Dijon, and now sent for the approval of the great master. The “Discourse” was nothing but an elaboration of Rousseau’s famous theory--the advantage of savage over civilised life. Years before, at the French Court in 1745, Voltaire and Rousseau had had dealings with each other. They now renewed that acquaintance. Voltaire’s letter began, “I have received, Sir, your new book against the human race.... No one has ever employed so much wit in trying to make us beasts: one longs to go on four paws when one reads your book, but, personally, it is sixty years since I lost the habit, and I feel it is impossible for me to resume it.” He went on to agree with Jean Jacques that literature and science brought many troubles to their votaries; and instanced his own case with as quick a feeling as if all his wrongs were of yesterday. But, “literature nourishes, rectifies, and consoles the soul ... one must love it, in spite of the way it is abused, as one must love society, though the wicked corrupt its sweetness: as one must love one’s country, though one suffers injustice from it; and one’s God, though superstition and fanaticism degrade His service.”

On September 10th, Rousseau replied from Paris in warm terms of friendship, and agreeing with the superior wisdom of his master’s argument. As yet, each could see the other’s genius--and reverence it. They could disagree and be friends.

The autumn at Délices was further marked by the visit of Patu, a poet, who was a friend of David Garrick’s and wrote him an ecstatic account of his boyishly energetic host; and by a _fracas_ with Madame Denis.

The facts that that foolish person was fat, short, forty-five years old, and squinted, did not, it has been said, make her less fond of admiration from the opposite sex, or less prone to make a fool of herself in a flirtation when opportunity offered.

In the present case Uncle Voltaire suspected her of being a party to a theft her old admirer, the Marquis de Ximenès, had made of some manuscript notes for Voltaire’s “Campaigns of the King.” Ximenès had sold the notes to a publisher. Madame Denis’s voluble denials would certainly prove nothing. Voltaire was already quite aware of what Madame d’Épinay discovered after a very short acquaintance with her, that his niece was constitutionally a liar.

And then, on November 24th, came news which staggered Voltaire’s soul; and beside which all petty trouble seemed shameful. On November 1, 1755, Lisbon was destroyed by an earthquake. It was All Saints’ Day, and the churches were full. In six minutes, fifteen thousand persons were dead; and fifteen thousand more were dying.

In these days, when every morning has its “crisis” and every evening its “appalling disaster,” it is difficult to realise the effect of the earthquake at Lisbon upon the eighteenth century. The less news there is, the more is that news felt. In the eighteenth century, too, all thoughtful persons saw signs in the heavens and the earth of some great change; and felt in the social order throes, which might be the death pangs of the old world, or the birth pains of a new. Further, men had begun to think and to reason for themselves: to ask why? from whence? to what end? and to brush aside the answers of the old theologies to those ancient questions as trite, unproven, and inadequate.

And if this was the temper of mind of most thoughtful persons, how much more of a Voltaire!

The news took nearly a month to reach him. For many months after he received it, there is hardly one of his letters which does not allude to it in terms of a passionate horror or a passionate inquiry. “The best of all possible worlds!” “If Pope had been there would he have said ‘Whatever is, is right’?” “All is well seems to me absurd, when evil is on land and sea.” “I no longer dare to complain of my ailments: none must dare to think of himself in a disaster so general.” “Beaumont, who has escaped, says there is not a house left in Lisbon--this is _optimism_.” Over and over again he reverts to the comfortable dogmas of Mr. Pope’s “Essay on Man”--conceived sitting safe and easy in a Twickenham villa. The stories of the earthquake reached Voltaire exaggerated. But the bald truth was enough. “Voltaire,” said Joubert, “is sometimes sad; he is moved; but he is never serious.” He was serious once--over the Earthquake of Lisbon.

When the horrors were still fresh in his mind, when the burning questions to which they gave rise were still loudly demanding an answer, he wrote the most passionate and touching of all his compositions; one of the most vigorous and inspired works of any author of the age.

The “Poem on the Disaster of Lisbon” is only two hundred and fifty lines long; but it contains a statement of almost all those searching problems which every thinking man, of whatever belief or unbelief he be, has to face at last.

What am I? Whence am I? Whither go I? What is the origin of evil? What end is accomplished by the suffering and sorrow I see around me? “Why is Lisbon engulfed while Paris, no less wicked, dances?” Your “whatever is, is right” may be an easy doctrine for the happy, the rich, the healthy; but a hard saying for the poor, the sick, and the wretched. I will none of it! All Nature gives it the lie. The lips that utter it in prosperity to-day will deny it in misery to-morrow. At the end, the note of consolation is struck in the story of the caliph who, dying, worshipped God in the prayer “‘I bring to Thee all that which Thou hast not in Thy immensity--faults, regrets, evils, ignorance.’ He might have added also Hope.”

The philosophy of “The Disaster of Lisbon” is the philosophy of “In Memoriam.”

Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last--far off--at last, to all,
And every winter change to Spring.

Voltaire’s poem has not the tender beauty of the other: but it is not less reverent, and not less religious.

One line of it, at least, has found a place in the immortalities of poetry:

Que suis-je, où suis-je, où vais-je, et d’où suis-je tiré?

and one phrase, “Autres temps, autres mœurs,” has become part not only of the French language, but of our own.

On January 1st of the new year 1756, Voltaire sent an incomplete copy of the poem to the Duchess of Saxe-Gotha. On the margin he wrote the word “Secret.” But on January 8th he was telling d’Argental, “My sermon on Lisbon was only for the edification of your flock. I do not throw the bread of life to dogs.” So many confidences and so many confidential friends had their usual result. “The Disaster of Lisbon” appeared in Paris. With it was also published the “Poem on Natural Law,” begun in Prussia in 1752.