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HOW ENGLAND FELL OFF THE MAP OF VOLTAIRE'S ENLIGHTENMENT

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 April 2018

DAN EDELSTEIN  and
BILIANA KASSABOVA
DAN EDELSTEIN
Affiliation:
Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University E-mail: danedels@stanford.edu, bilianak@stanford.edu
BILIANA KASSABOVA
Affiliation:
Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Stanford University E-mail: danedels@stanford.edu, bilianak@stanford.edu
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Abstract

Voltaire's Letters Concerning the English Nation (Lettres philosophiques) have left the indelible impression that the French philosophe was fundamentally marked by his exposure to English thought in the late 1720s. On the map of his epistolary correspondence, however, England is hardly to be found. What are we to make of this discrepancy? In this article, we demonstrate that the missing letters to England are unlikely to be the result of a data glitch, but rather reflect a lack of interest in contemporary English matters. The only England that Voltaire seems to have cared about lay in the past, during the reign of Charles II. Moreover, this period of English history was (in his view) intrinsically French, given the English monarch's close ties to Versailles. Voltaire's limited admiration of English thought, accordingly, formed part of his broader philosophy of history, which was centered at the court of Louis XIV.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 2020 , pp. 29 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

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Footnotes

Dan Edelstein presented versions of this paper in the French departments at Brown University, Yale University, Princeton University, and the University of Pennsylvania; he would like to thank the participants for their helpful comments and questions. This article has a companion website, containing interactive visualizations of Voltaire's correspondence network, and datasets: http://republicofletters.stanford.edu/publications/voltaire.

References

1 See notably Jacob, Margaret, The Newtonians and the English Revolution, 1689–1720 (Ithaca, 1976)Google Scholar; and Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans (London, 1981); Porter, Roy, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London, 2000)Google Scholar; and Shank, J. B., The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment (Chicago, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a dissenting view see Edelstein, Dan, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 See notably Michel Rousseau, André, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 145–7, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1976)Google Scholar; Braun, Theodore E. D., “Voltaire: The English Connection,” in Anthony Strugnell, ed., From Letter to Publication, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2001:10 (Oxford, 2001), 219–25Google Scholar; and Dédéyan, Charles, Le Retour de Salente, ou Voltaire et l'Angleterre (Paris, 1988)Google Scholar. The older work by Ballantyne, Archibald, Voltaire's Visit to England, 1726–1729 (London, 1893)Google Scholar, contains useful details.

3 See Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English nation, by Mr. de Voltaire (London, 1733); and Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, par M. de V . . . (Amsterdam [Rouen], 1734). Another French edition, based on this one, appeared in Amsterdam that same year; Jore himself would reedit this text in 1737. A slightly different French edition appeared in 1734 under the title Lettres écrites de Londres sur les Anglois (Basle [London], 1734). This edition would be reprinted the following year in Amsterdam; pirate editions of this version were published in 1737 and 1739 in Rouen. An eighteenth-century reader, encountering this text in the 1730s, would have been equally likely to know it under one of the two French titles. Bibliographic details in Bengesco, Georges, Voltaire: Bibliographie de ses oeuvres, 4 vols. (Paris, 1885)Google Scholar, 2: no 1558.

4 For this figure see Pearson, Roger, Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (New York, 2005), 118Google Scholar.

5 Braun, “Voltaire: The English connection,” 225.

6 Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, 2.

7 Ibid., 38.

8 Voltaire, Lettres philosophiques, 291. “J'ose prendre le parti de l'humanité contre ce misantrope sublime.”

9 Voltaire, La Henriade de Mr. de Voltaire (London, 1728), first canto. A shorter, clandestine edition had already circulated in Paris in 1723: see La Ligue ou Henry le Grand, poëme épique, par M. de Voltaire (Geneva [Rouen], 1723). The section on England in this earlier edition is much shorter than in the 1728 edition. Among the books Voltaire read before leaving for England was The Present State of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1711): see Pearson, Voltaire Almighty, 67.

10 Letter from Voltaire to Marguerite Madeleine du Moutier, marquise de Bernières, 7 Oct. 1722 (D128): “Nous avons ici un opéra détestable mais en revanche je voi des ministres calvinistes, des arminiens, des sociniens, des rabins, des anabaptistes qui parlent tous à merveille et qui en vérité ont tous raison.”

11 See, for instance, Henriade, second canto: “Tis not for Me the Question to decide, / Whether Geneva's in the Right, or Rome” (26); “I've seen our Citizens in Battle join, / And cut each other's Throats with Holy Zeal . . . You know the Populace, and what they dare / When Vengeance in the Cause of Heav'n they vow, / And blinded by Religion break the Rein / Of due Obedience, and renounce all Rule,” Voltaire, Henriade: An Epick Poem, trans. John Lockman (London, 1732), 27.

12 See Edelstein, The Enlightenment, 34–5.

13 For a good introduction to the different roles of Voltaire's correspondence see Mervaud, Christiane, “Voltaire's Correspondence,” in Cronk, Nicholas, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Voltaire (Cambridge, 2009), 153–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Electronic Enlightenment Project: www.e-enlightenment.com. Special thanks to Robert McNamee. For a longer discussion of the methodology behind this project see Dan Edelstein, Paula Findlen, Giovanna Ceserani, Caroline Winterer, and Nicole Coleman, “Historical Research in a Digital Age: Reflections from the Mapping the Republic of Letters Project,” American Historical Review 122/2 (2017). 400–24.

15 Besterman, Theodore, “Le vrai Voltaire par ses lettres,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 10 (Oxford, 1959), 9–48, at 17Google Scholar.

16 If Voltaire received as many letters as he sent, the total number of missing letters could even be as high as 11,843 (or 66 percent of his existing total correspondence). The Electronic Enlightenment Project's edition of Voltaire's correspondence continues to grow, so these figures may not match those presently available.

17 de Beer, Gavin and Rousseau, André M., eds., Voltaire's British Visitors, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 49 (Geneva, 1967)Google Scholar.

18 A list of the English works found in Voltaire's library can be found in M. P. Alekseev and T. N. Kopreeva, eds., Bibliothèque de Voltaire (Moscow, 1961), 1113–17.

19 Letter of 15 Dec. 1735 (D961): “En attendant nous n'avons cessé de parler de vous pendant toute La traversée. C’étoit notre seul passetems que de citer des traits de La Henriade, de Zaïre, d'Adelaïde et Le seul moyen de charmer notre ennuy.”

20 We revised some of the nationality categories to reflect a more precise cultural identity, hence the hyphenated “Swiss-Genevans.”

21 According to our database, the exact numbers are seventy-two Italian, eighty-five German, and seventy-one British (forty-seven English) correspondents.

22 See e.g. Pearson, Voltaire Almighty, 23.

23 Over the course of fifteen years, they would exchange at least twenty-three letters (more have undoubtedly been lost). Fawkener was famous enough in his own time to have an entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9228. See also Perry, Norma, Sir Everard Fawkener, Friend and Correspondent of Voltaire, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 133 (Banbury, 1975)Google Scholar; and Mason, Haydn, “Voltaire and Sir Everard Fawkener,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 23/1 (2000), 1–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Keate is the only Englishman to squeak into the list of Voltaire's top hundred correspondents (he ranks ninety-seventh). Keate, too, has an entry in the DNB: www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/15217.

25 See Gilbert Dapp, Kathryn, George Keate, Esg.: Eighteenth-Century English Gentleman (Philadelphia, 1939)Google Scholar. Voltaire admired Keate's work on Geneva (D9723).

26 Voltaire hints at as much himself, telling Keate that “it will be a great consolation for me to find in you the sentiments which he [Fawkener] granted me.” Letter of June 20, 1759 (D8367). The full French passage is rather amusing: “J'ai appris par les papiers publics la mort de Mr Fakner mon ancien ami. J'en suis sensiblement affligé. Ce sera une grande consolation pour moi de retrouver en vous les sentiments dont il m'avait toujours honnoré.” (“I have learnt from the newspapers about the death of my old friend Mr. Fakner. I am deeply afflicted. It will be a great consolation for me to find in you again the feelings with which he had always honored me.”)

27 Letter of 16 Jan. 1760 (D8716). With the exception of the closing paragraph, this letter is entirely written in English. For comparable statements regarding his unchanging admiration for Locke and Newton see, for instance, D15055 and D15140.

28 Voltaire, Candide and Other Stories, ed. Roger Pearson (Oxford, 2008), 82. Original: “Je serais content de la liberté qui inspire les génies anglais, si la passion et l'esprit de parti ne corrompaient pas tout ce que cette précieuse liberté a d'estimable.”

29 Ibid., 65.

30 Williams, David, “Voltaire's War with England: The Appeal to Europe, 1760–1764,” in Voltaire and the English, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 179 (Oxford, 1979): 79–100Google Scholar. Williams's article deals primarily with aesthetic issues.

31 In his Oxford introduction to Voltaire, Cronk underscores the care Voltaire took to learn and master English, once on English soil, and the pride he took in addressing his English guests in their language. See Cronk, Nicholas, Voltaire: A Short Introduction (Oxford, 2017), 31–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 44. At the same time, much of this enthusiasm for English seems to have been motivated predominantly by a need to create connections to the London world of publishing (ibid., 32–4). See also Perry, Norma, “Voltaire's View of England,” Journal of European Studies 7/26 (1977), 77–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 81–4; details about Voltaire's Huguenot publishers are from this article. And see Rousseau, L'Angleterre et Voltaire, 1: 136–40 and, for his impressive list of English contacts, 84–109.

32 Earlier scholarship assumed that Voltaire was familiar with Caroline, but Cronk recently discovered a letter by Voltaire to the queen that seems to imply that they had never met: Voltaire writes, apropos his dedication of La Hendriade to the queen, “heureux si j'avois pu moymeme avoir lhonneur de le presenter a Votre Majesté, et voir en vous faisant ma cour le modele des vertus que je tache de peindre.” See Cronk, Nicholas, “Une lettre inédite de Voltaire à la reine Caroline (D330a),” French Studies Bulletin 36/135 (2015), 17–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 Then home to an illustrious group of singers notorious for their rivalries. See Nicholas Cronk, “Voltaire, Lord Hervey et le paradoxe du modèle anglais,” La revue française, at http://revuefrancaise.free.fr/Cronk.htm, from whom this observation about Voltaire's oversight of current political affairs is taken.

34 Cronk, “Voltaire, Lord Hervey et le paradoxe du modèle anglais.”

35 See esp. Mervaud, Christiane, “Des relations de voyage au mythe anglais des Lettres philosophiques,” SVEC 296 (1992), 1–15Google Scholar.

36 See letter of 23 May 1734 to the marquise du Deffand (D745); see also the “Preface” to the Letters Concerning the English Nation.

37 Cronk, Nicholas, “The Letters Concerning the English Nation as an English Work,” in From Letter to Publication, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 10 (Oxford, 2001), 226–39Google Scholar, esp. 232–9.

38 Cronk, Nicholas and Leclerc, Paul, “La correspondance de Voltaire dans les collections de la New York Public Library,” Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France 112 (2012–13), 653–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 See his letter of 18 April 1729 (D357). The other letter to an English correspondent written that year was to Lord Bathurst (18 Oct. 1729, D355-N)

40 Voltaire befriended Lord Hervey in London, and saw him again in Paris in 1729. They subsequently corresponded, with Voltaire sending him two letters in 1732–3 (15 Jan. 1732, D455; and 14 Sept. 1733, D652). On Voltaire's relations with Hervey see Cronk, “Voltaire, Lord Hervey et le paradoxe du modèle anglais.”

41 See Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation (London, 1733), 195–6 (ECCO).

42 See Voltaire, La Henriade de Mr. de Voltaire (London, 1728) (ECCO).

43 Voltaire at the time was in poor financial shape, and was desperately seeking to receive payment on a royal pension granted to him by Queen Marie Leczinska in 1725, but that had been mysteriously blocked: see his letters of 31 March 1729 (D348) and 2 April 1729 (D350) to Thieriot; see also Pearson, Voltaire Almighty, 65–6. His financial troubles would end later that year, when he became rich by speculating on a government lottery. See Shank, The Newton Wars, 259–60.

44 More than anything, Voltaire was envious of the relative freedom of expression that English authors enjoyed: see, for instance, his poem on La mort de mademoiselle Lecouvreur, as discussed in René Pomeau, “Les Lettres philosophiques: le projet de Voltaire,” in Voltaire and the English, 20–21. For Pope, compare the Essay on Man with the Poème sur la loi naturelle.

45 There is also Locke, but he was already well known in France before Voltaire came to England. See Hutchinson, Ross, Locke in France, 1688–1734, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 290 (Oxford, 1991), 204Google Scholar. On Voltaire and Newton more generally see Shank, The Newton Wars.

46 See for example his letter of 28 April 1760 (D8881), to the Marquis d'Argence: “Il n'est pas permis encor en France d'imprimer des véritez anglaises.”

47 Voltaire, Élémens de la philosophie de Neuton (London [Paris], 1738), 95–6: “Est-ce parce qu'on est né en France qu'on rougit de recevoir la vérité des mains d'un Anglais? Ce sentiment serait bien indigne d'un Philosophe. Il n'y a, pour quiconque pense, ni Français, ni Anglais: celui qui nous instruit est notre compatriot.” Voltaire would make a similar point in his letter of 1[?] Oct. 1738 to Maupertuis (D1622): “Il ne s'agit point de combattre pour un Anglais contre un Français . . . Il n'appartient pas à ce siècle éclairé de suivre tel ou tel philosophe; il n'y a plus de fondateur de secte, l'unique fondateur est une démonstration.” This letter would be published in the Bibliothèque française in 1739.

48 See the letter to Maupertuis (D1622): “s'il [Descartes] avait même daigné lire ses contemporains, il n'aurait pas fait passer le sang des veines lactées par le foie, quinze ans après qu'Azellius [Gaspare Aselli] avait découvert leur route; que Descartes n'a ni observé les lois de la chute des corps & vu un nouveau ciel comme Galilée, ni deviné les règles du mouvement des astres comme Kepler, ni trouvé la pesanteur de l'air comme Torricelli, ni calculé les forces centrifuges & les lois du pendule comme Huygens &c.” This criticism would be repeated in the Siècle de Louis XIV: see below. On the Voltaire's (and the period's) growing sense of “European cultural unity” see Bell, David A., The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680–1800 (Cambridge, MA, 2001), 93–4Google Scholar.

49 See Pierse, Síofra, Voltaire Historiographer: Narrative Paradigms, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 2008:05 (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar.

50 See Edelstein, The Enlightenment; on the quarrel itself see notably Norman, Larry, The Shock of the Ancient: Literature and History in Early Modern France (Chicago, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

51 See, in particular, Voltaire's letter of 20 Oct. 1738 to Dubos (D1642). The key text by Dubos is his Réflections critiques sur la poésie et la peinture (Paris, 1719), 2 vols.; a second, expanded edition was published in 1733.

52 See Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV, 2 vols. (London, 1752), 1: 1–5 (the quotes in the following two paragraphs are taken from this chapter) (ECCO). An earlier edition had been published in Berlin the year before. Compare with the Dubos, Réflections critiques, 2: 422.

53 Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV, 1: 4–5: “Le quatrième siècle est celui qu'on nomme le siècle de Louis XIV, et c'est peut-être celui des quatre qui approche le plus de la perfection. Enrichi des découvertes des trois autres, il a plus fait en certains genres que les trois ensemble.”

54 Ibid.: “il s'est fait dans nos arts, dans nos esprits, dans nos mœurs, comme dans notre gouvernement, une révolution générale qui doit servir de marque éternelle à la véritable gloire de notre patrie. Cette heureuse influence ne s'est pas même arrêtée en France; elle s'est étendue en Angleterre; elle a excité l’émulation dont avait alors besoin cette nation spirituelle et hardie.”

55 Ibid., chap. 29, 2: 160–61.

56 Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et l'esprit des nations, ed. René Pomeau (Paris, 1990), 2 vols., chap. 182, 2: 689. Subsequent quotes are from 687–9. For the complex publication history of this work see Pomeau's introduction. Much of this chapter was revised in subsequent editions, but the passages quoted here (with the exception of the discussion of Charles's theism) are from the original, 1756 edition published by Cramer.

57 “L'esprit français qui régnait à la cour, la rendit aimable et brillante . . . Une maîtresse française, l'esprit français, et surtout l'argent de la France, dominaient à la cour.” Indeed, Voltaire suggests that England at this time was excessively beholden to France: the introduction of l'esprit français “asservit [Charles II] aux intérêts de Louis XIV; et le gouvernment anglais vendu longtemps à celui de France, fit quelquefois regretter le temps où l'usurpateur Cromwell rendait sa nation respectable” (“made [Charles II] subservient to the interests of Louis XIV; and the English government which was for a long time sold to the French, made one often long for the time when the usurper Cromwell was making his nation respectable”).

58 “Comme des productions du climat de la France.” It is worth emphasizing the use of the term esprit throughout this passage, as it is with this same term that Voltaire summarizes the cultural gains made by England under Charles (l'esprit de la nation . . .). The one caveat that Voltaire appends to this assessment concerns the lasting English commitment to commerce: “ce qui a fait la puissance de l'Angleterre, c'est que tous les partis ont également concouru depuis le temps d'Elizabeth à favoriser le commerce.” But this commercial spirit favors English power, not English letters or science.

59 See Pincus, Steve, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven, 2009)Google Scholar.

60 See Bell, The Cult of the Nation in France, 40.

61 Encyclopédie, “Discours préliminaire,” l: xxviii: “l'Angleterre nous doit la naissance de cette Philosophie que nous avons reçue d'elle.”

62 In an interesting, little known text, the Lettre de M. de Voltaire au peuple d'Angleterre . . . (1755), 23, Voltaire argues that the excessive spirit of commerce is “eclipsing” the arts and sciences in England. A copy of this work can be found at the Beinecke Library at Yale University.

63 Lettres philosophiques, 145. The French reads, “Les anglais ont beaucoup profité des ouvrages de notre langue, nous devrions à notre tour empruntr d'eux après leur avoir prêté: nous ne sommes venus, les anglais et nous, qu'après les italiens qui en tout ont été nos maîtres, et que nous avons surpassés en quelque chose. Je ne sçai à laquelle des trois nations il faudra donner la préférence; mais heureux celui qui sait sentir leurs différens mérites.”