Voltaire: A biographical fantasy

by Laura Riding, Laura (Riding) Jackson

30 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1927

About the author

Laura (Riding) Jackson was an American poet, critic, novelist, essayist and short story writer.

1923-1926 as Laura Riding Gottschalk
1927-1939 as Laura Riding
1963-1991 as Laura (Riding) Jackson

She also published under the pseudonym Madeleine Vara.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

THE ARGUMENT

I
Voltaire is born.

II
Voltaire goes to school and is courted by two old rivals; but gives satisfaction to neither.

III
A cunning old lady, detecting a kindred cunning in Voltaire, gives him some sound advice.

IV
Voltaire goes to Holland and plays nonsense with Pimpette. He is sent back to Paris; but bears his disgrace lightly.

V
Voltaire is sent to prison for honourably insulting a duke and is later exiled to England. English men of letter anticipate a sensation; and are rebuked.

VI
Voltaire returns to Paris; and learns how to gladden the ladies of the Court, and his purse.

VII
Paris grows uncomfortable for Voltaire, who falls opportunely in love with Madame du Châtelet; and departs for Cirey.

VIII
Voltaire at home in Cirey walks in the garden with Emilie; and is troubles by his dreams, and Emilie, and philosophy. He pines for the perfect compromise. After God, Emilie. From a transport more philosophical than amorous, he is pulled rudely back to earth by the nature of things, which he deplores. The lovers, reconciled, return to their guests. He attends the ladies with his wonted tenderness; but seems troubled as he mumbles over every lady's hand. Emilie intervenes and scolds; but he remembers that he is a philosopher.

IX
A certain morning, Voltaire is slow in waking. Emilie is an early riser, she is at his door already. He received her tenderly: Emilie is worried, she has heard him talk in his sleep, his complexion gives her concern. Her persistence provokes him to a witticism. But Emilie is cross: his clothes, his silly rhymes. Science is the only apt employment of the mind. But what of mind itself, the immense science? Emilie makes a face at him. He pouts; but is forced to yield.

X
'Le superflu, chose très nécessaire': Voltaire believes that life is, or must be made, splendid. But secretly he nurtures a simple heart. Like any plain man, he encourages mysteries. He is even encouraged in them by Emilie, to whom he is one himself. Puzzles multiply around him; which he explains not satisfactorily.

XI
Voltaire has other troubles. Is he more ill than he believes himself, or does he believe himself more ill than he is? His enemies plague him even more than his body. But philosophy restores his love of society; and poetry, his love of himself.

XII
Voltaire begins to worry about his soul. He appeals to God; but he receives no answer. He exhorts the contemporary spirit of truth; but is too advanced for his time. He is also, alas, too difficult for the Devil. So there he is left to die - like any other.

***

I
The wind blew through the House of Humorous Things
And a little dry laugh touches its broom-tail.

'I'm tired of too much wise company
In the House of Humorous Things.
Wisdom and wit need schools
Full of dull fools.'

A dry laugh creaked at the edge of the wind and broke,
And the wind put it together again with words,

And fastened it to its broom-tail
And loosed it again over France.

II
God put on the robe of a Jesuit.
(The Devil had won his own early.)
God and the Devil chatted together
And directed each other
To the College of Louis-le-grand.

And Marie Arouet pretended to sleep.
But God blew in one ear
And the Devil bit at the other
With the cold point of a fire blanched tooth.

Marie Arouet pretended to listen to both.
Marie Arouet went on listening to himself.
(Flat-tongued Devil and flat-tongued God
Could not understand his epigrams.)

Marie Arouet ground out with a smile
The flakes of a little dry laugh,
And God and the Devil walked away
Under one umbrella.

III
Ninon de l'Enclos said to herself
(Having taken Old Age for her last love,
Coquetting with Death to make frailty
A fair occasion for jealousy)

Somewhere there was a House of Humorous Things
Where she would go when Death to her
Was a rejected lover,
Riding the wind,
Having lost her words or wings
(But not wit, the long key
For those who come back after travelling
To the House of Humorous Things).

The Abbé de Châteauneuf,
Interrupting the timely reverie of a timeless flirt,
Introduced François-Marie Arouet
And a little dry laugh.
(It was only the laugh that Ninon kissed,
It being more of an age.)

So she pinned her flower on Marie Arouet,
And gave advice to a laugh let loose
To hire a small and elegant coach
With comic wheels
And sober spokes
For Earth's serious hills.

IV
Humour grew young
With a borrowed desire for boyish adventure.
A boy and a laughing accompaniment
Went travelling to Holland
On a serious diplomatic mission.

'Pimpette, Pimpette!'
Humour lost self-possession
And a dry laugh wept,
Having tears enough
for young loving in Holland.

Humour was sent back to Paris again,
Somewhere near or inside of Arouet,
Humour grown young
(Or deprived of some of its privileges),
And a dry laugh wept
(Having taken a body to live in and ride in)
For a body's punishment
For young loving in Holland
On a serious diplomatic mission.

V
What is dust already
Cannot crumble.

Prison won't cure wisdom-wit.
Prison won't cure tongue-waggery.
(Sleep, Bastille,
Sleep, grumble,
Mumble,
Sleep.)

'I'm making a new name,
You're breaking an old one.'

A poet may speak to a duke
(For a beating).
Beatings and a grumbling warder,
Mumbling warder,
Cannot silence mumbling, grumbling.

Mumbling and grumbling
Went travelling to England.
English men of letters - Pope, Congreve, Swift -
Rounded their ears
And heard the wind playing tag with itself
Around English shores.
François-Marie Arouet
(Or - briefer elegance - Voltaire)
Left his tongue with the wind
And greeted the English men of letters -
Pope, Congreve, Swift.

'There's a dry laugh coughing a breeze
Behind you, Voltaire,'
Said the English men of letters
With their ears deaf-trumpeted
To hear mysteries.

Voltaire tipped the tops of his eyes
To a high surprise.

'I don't know what you're talking about,
English men of letters.
I have learned your language
And loved your Shakespeare
And pledged your liberal faith,
But I can't understand your levity,
English men of letters.'

And who can say which was most unaware:
The English men of letters,
Voltaire,
Or the slight commotion
In the air?

VI
Voltaire sand two songs,
One for Kings' mistresses:

Love has two ways,
One way with husbands
One way with Kings.
Love has two ways,
One way with Queens
One way with mistresses.
Queens become mistresses,
Mistresses, Queens.

Voltaire sang two songs,
One for Kings' mistresses,
One for money,
This song for money:

Money has one way:
Play before pay.
The labour of song
Conducts to labour's ease
The reward of song's ease
Is in whom it can please.

The private pay was neither of these,
But author's whim confirmed
In industry - wig on right, pen to write.

And something laughed at the reckoning,
Having taught Voltaire
How to satisfy sums
Bu variable equations
In love and literature.

VII
Laughter grew hoarse
And laughter's lips
Thirsted in Paris.

Laughter wetted its lips again
On a wicked, ironic, respectable kiss
And sent it to Madame du Châtelet
(By deputy).
Laughter wetted its lips again
While Voltaire reconsidered his heart
In a prudent arithmetic.

'One, two, three, and more,'
Voltaire, enamoured accurately,
Kept balancing.

'When hearts and sums agree,
Travelling the measured road together,
To Cirey in the fair Lorraine
Of that fair Emilie . . .'

But first Voltaire took a holiday
(By deputy)
And went home visiting.
(Or was it a little dry laugh
That Voltaire knew nothing about -
In cautious pretence
Of an actual ignorance?)

'Goodbye, goodbye,'
He - it - said
To the House of Humorous Things
And the Humorous Things
In that Humorous House.
'I have found me a job
On the crooked back stairs
Of a perpendicular house in Lorraine.'
(Hush, an earnest heart,
Hark, a frivolous beat!)

Voltaire, locking his boxes,
Heard a little dry laugh in one of them.
'Shall I take it out and throw it away?'
Oh, safe and dangerous jettison!)

VIII
Scrub, scrub,
Rain, rain,
Old washerwoman,
SIlver-knuckled.
Scrub, scrub,
The world is spotted with footprints.
Rub, rub,
God's washerwoman,
The Devil steps deep.

Do you see them, Voltaire,
As you walk with Emilie
Into daybreak air?

Chill, chill,
Twist buttons tighter,
Though love and Emilie
Are warm at your elbow.
Chill, chill,
Dawn has cold fingers
Of burying dead dreams.
Twist buttons tighter,
Cold, cold awakening.

Hop out of sleep.
Sleep is a cemetery.
Hop off, awakening.
Keep warm, remembering,
Keep warm, Voltaire,
Twist buttons, tighter.

'Do you see them, Voltaire?'
Cries Emilie at the frozen footprints
Fast in the garden
'Thieves, devils, lovers -'
(Or dreams?)
'Was it you that made them,
Voltaire?'

Keep warm, remembering,
Keep warm, Voltaire.
Can you do the rain's work
Better than herself?
Scrub, scrub,
Dig, dig,
Deep, deep,
Have footprints roots?
How far would you dig, Voltaire,
For the tips of those roots?
How deep do they go?
Too deep for digging,
Too deep for following?

What reconciles the garden
Does not reconcile the mind,
Which demands instruction
The more it is blind,
Sets little store by speeches,
Can understand
Only what it knows,
Knows only what is secret.

Open self-instruction
Confers mad laurel.
To keep sane counsel
Voltaire advises privately
With a tutelary power.
'Lord of sweet gifts,
King of the two rivers
Having their source in Thee
And their ending -
God, is there no middle way for me
Or land between,
King of the two rivers?
God, is there no middle way
Or land between for travelling
At least by day?'

And something laughed.
And something whispered in Voltaire's ears:
'And what of the night?'

And something made Voltaire hold his tongue
And bite his lips
And refill his lung.

Now gently, gently, gently,
Breathe softer prayer to Emilie
As to sacred cat arrived with fiiat
Perhaps immemorial.

'Ah, Emilie, Emilie.
Man is a poor portion of disintegrated whole,
And wanders, wanders,
While woman waits
Still in her soil,
Waits, waits
The seal.

'Even as a tree wanders not nor waits,
And as the double principle shares one delight
Of growth, of love,
We are a single tree together -
Ah, Emilie, EMilie -
And sum an amorous dichotomy,
Barkbound and severally
Branched and entwined,
Leafy as for an everlasting spring . . .'

'Ah, Voltaire, Voltaire -'
And something smiled -
'And what of the roots?'
How deep do they go
Too deep for digging,
Too deep for following?

'Ah, Voltaire, Voltaire,
Will you climb in the air
With the leaves and your fair
And let conscience take care of the roots?'

With a mental frown
Voltaire noted down
The true cause of melancholy:
Soul and mind not one,
The mind too fierce opinion,
The soul too hopeful of the angel.

(Hush, hush, eternal spite -
House and hall on my right@
Tongue, to your scabbard,
Laughter, to your locker.
There are twenty ladies listening
Just behind the knocker,
And my fair, fair Emilie at my left
With ears in her eyes and eyes in her ears
And vinegar shuddering in her tears.
Then hush, hush,
Twenty ladies listening,
And one other.
Hush, hush.)

Duty grows sharp and counts her kisses.
Three, six, nine, twenty.
Bend low, bow deeply.
A kiss for the little right hand
Of each lady.
Good-morning, good-morning,
The weather, the time,
Wipe that dream from your lips,
Too much like a kiss.

(Hands must be kissed,
Life must be lived.
Bow right, bow left.
Certain things must be done -
Breakfast and babbling
And powdered wigs, for
Life must be lived
Or Life lives it herself
Quite without us, without us, if
Certain things aren't done.
Hush, hush,
O mysterious tongue,
Twenty ladies listening,
And one other,
Hush, hush.
Certain things must be done
In wooden heels and finger-frills,
Breakfast, books and gardening
And twenty little hands to kiss.)

'Voltaire, Voltaire,
Your wig's awry,
Your lace is limp,
There's a button off,
And need you have kissed
All twenty, Voltaire?'

(Certain things must be done,
Certain things must be done.)

'And need you have taken so long?'

(Hush, hush,
For on the back stairs
You may take as long as you please.)

Might he not in his sleep any night
Follow a little dry laugh
Down the back stairs
And untie his tongue
On the bottom step?
Saying, he surely slept in his bed,
And that it happened in a dream,
That so some nights next morning seem?

IX
'Arise, arise!
Open your eyes a miser's slit,
Open your eyes and admit
The things you denied all night.
Some metaphysical adjustment
Under the cover -
Then up,
Plum-coloured lover,
And good-day to the naughty carved cupids over your bed.'

'I admit.
I confess (for present purpose)
That from one point of view
I have lied about what I denied from another.
I confess,
I admit -
Like a plum-coloured lover
Going white, going white.'

Knuckle-point, pale lover.
Tap, tap, sharp morning rap,
Should morning ghosts hover.

'Ah, EMilie,
My sun has risen.
Un-ice these fingers.'

Knuckle-point.
Tap, tap, sharp morning rap.

'Voltaire, Voltaire,
As I listened outside your door,
Whom did I hear laughing inside?'

White, white, Voltaire,
A ghost in his cheek
For what he forgot to deny
When remembering what not to admit.

What laughed?
Under the bed, in cupboard, in chest -
Is it hidden away in you, Voltaire,
In a place that you can't find yourself?

'What laughed?
What dreamed?
What lived?
What secret heat does the sun conceal
On the side that is turned away from us?
Discover these things in your laboratory,
Fair Emilie, in that petulant glass
Which will break if you look a moment too long.'

Knuckle-point,
Tap, tap, sharp morning rap
On Voltaire's fingers.

'And a plum-coloured coat with two buttons off,
And your wig uncurled in the weather!

'Scraps, quills and inky finger-tips,
Untidy proofs of literature,
The devil's self in manuscript -
Voltaire, Voltaire,
Out of the window,
To the wind, to the wind with your words,
To be blown to the birds
And sung out foolish.

'Scraps, quills and inky finger-tips,
Damp verse, dark history.
Science, sun of my laboratory!
What does the world live by?
Oh, Voltaire,
The deep geometries of space
You cannot embrace
In the shallow round of a line.'

'Madame,
Your sun is small, by distance.
I hold the deep geometries of space
In the near circle of my mind,
Which is a gift to see
Brighter than by the sun of chemistry.

'Pray, Emilie,
My fair, fair Emilie,
Don't laugh at me.
My pomp is a habit of melancholy.
My melancholy is
A habit of humour.'

Yet she laughed,
And something laughed with her,
Deserting Voltaire
To keep whole the pair.

Oh, prompt, prompt surrender
And prompt, prompt kiss
To recover her favour
And the salt smack of laughter.

X
Two talked ina house in Lorraine.

One said:

Life is royal-born
To an elegant station -
A silver spoon, a golden cradle,
An ebony casket to bury it in,
All the muses at the funeral.

But the other:

Life's beggar-born,
A miserable urchin,
With death for his fortune
And the earth for his coffin.
But a rhyme, a crown,
Will make it forget its forlorn beginning
And seem a little more worthy of living.

Two talked in a house in Lorraine
And agreed in an argument
That, high-born or low-born,
Life was either true-titled
Or should else be ennobled.

Life has need of so much
To redress an acquired (or inherited) dearth -
A feast is the least
Can persuade the palate
Where the palate's judge:
Life needs or is much.

Next a play, a play from the pen of Voltaire
While the palate's in prime:
Olympie, Zaïre,
To model the tear;
Or the magic lantern, or will Emilie sing
From the opera Voltaire
Wrote expressly for her;
Next a pyrotechnical hour is lit
While Voltaire rehearses
For an hour of his verses.
But what then to do
With a hundred and fifty flagging guests
Until morning dew?
Put them to sleep,
Put them to sleep
In the dirtiest house in Lorraine,
Or in Europe.

But the back stairs are lone
And awake, awake,
Or awake when Voltaire
Steals in the night with a candle there.

Voltaire, Voltaire,
Cover the wick,
Crouch on the stair
And bewail, bewail -
Fair Emilie is haunting your trail.

'Voltaire, Voltaire,
What do you there?'

'I gave chase to a ghost
That I heard treading here
As I listened in sleep.'

'Did you find on, Voltaire?'

'I am certain I did,
For something escaped on the stair
Just a minute ago, when you came
And prevented my capturing it.'

'Hurry, hurry, Voltaire,
Soft, soft,
And I'll go quietly back to bed.
Hurry, hurry into the garden, Voltaire,
But look sharp and beware
Of the less-than-air hidden in the air,
The ghosts that can talk as wall as walk.'

'Do you see them, my love?'
Cried Emilie, inspecting the garden
Early next morning.
'The footprints are deep,
Like a man's long standing,
And ragged, like a man's long laughing.'

'I think,' said Voltaire, 'they are mine.
For in following the ghost I forgot----'

'Forgot what?'

'To come in again. I got lost
And misled by the ghost.
I forgot--'

'Forgot what?'

'That I wasn't a ghost
And understood all but--'

'All but what?'

'I forget.
I've a cold in my head.
My feet are wet.
You must put me to bed.'

XI
'Oh, I must be dying, dying or dead -
Am I dead, and not aware of it?
Is this argue or a laughing fit?'

Hurry, Voltaire,
For fair Emilie's ever
Haunting your trail.
Dispatch the gout,
Throw off the irk,
Dispute the pain -
Fitter to run than to complain
With Emilie only a pace behind.

But now circle and hum
The waspish swarm
Of his enemies,
Each retreating the better
To serve him a letter,
Approaching to sting.
Fréron, and the Abbé Desfontaines,
And Rousseau all a-buzz
With a primitive poison.

'My mirrors, my money,
My laces, my verses!
He'd rob me of these,
As if life, common-born, msut be kept in its place,
Or, royal-born, must be swiftly democratized
To the state of a knave.

'Oh, my mirrors, my money -
I am truly ashamed to know he exists.
When he's dead I shall have to unbury him
And see that he's hanged
In respect of his rank
And decently fed to the crows.'

(Not to speak of his enemies at Rome
And at court, and his name
Like a heresy, with no home.)

'Oh my mirrors, my money,
My verses, my name!'

Hurry, hurry,
To the front hall.
Ah, the liberty of each lady's hand
(The distant pain, the distant pleasure) -
By such intrigue and folly must man sow
The forbidden hours of to-night and to-morrow.

But of all vanities rhymes most renew
The gallant flesh, prolong the charm
To keep old enemies, entice new.