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Mme de Graffigny was a middle-aged woman who lived at the provincial court of Stanislas in Lorraine, and had long dreamt of what a more elegant way of life might be like. After long wangling she managed to get herself invited to Cirey.
Once she got there, she wrote her closest friend, 'I shall describe everything that I see... I will tell you everything, not day by day, but hour by hour!' And that she did...
In her first letter she recounts her calamitous voyage to the chateau, where the mud on the road was so deep that the driver told her she had to get out and walk. When she said she wasn't going to do that (she was almost exactly as old as Voltaire), he explained that the carriage would flip over if she insisted on staying in, and that anyway, if she didn't get out, he would throw her out. So, in her one fine dress, she had to wade beside the carriage, 'almost paddling through the mud', with her loyal maid beside her, and holding her little dog.
She arrived only at 2 in the morning, soaked in mud and exhausted, but Emilie met her cheerfully at the carved stone doorway of the Château de Cirey; her long hair piled up from behind on the top of her head ('it suits her very well'). Voltaire came to see her soon after, holding a candlestick in his hand; he kissed de Graffigny's hands repeatedly, and asked of her news 'with an interest that was quite touching to me'.
De Graffigny was in heaven. The most noticeable thing about Emilie, she recorded, is that 'her conversation is astonishing...She speaks like an angel!' There's Voltaire's elegance to recount as well ('he makes as much display as though he were in Paris.'), and then - in her letters it's the highlight of her life to that point - the first supper:
'I was seated at the table...and what we talked about! Poetry, science - and all in such a joking, easy tone. The meal wasn't large, but it was elegant and tasty; and everything came from silver serving vessels. When I looked up I saw five huge spheres and all the physics instruments, for we ate in Voltaire's research laboratory. He sat beside me, always polite and attentive, while the Marquis [Emilie's husband] sat on my other side... Voltaire's personal valet stood behind his master (and the other servants handed what was needed to him).'
There's her detailing of Voltaire's private rooms, and also of Emilie's - reproduced in chapter eight of 'Passionate Minds' - and then, as the days and weeks go on, there's ever more recounting, of Emilie and Voltaire's arguments and reconciliations; her complaints about her own suite of rooms (which were far too draughty), and her boredom when she found out that her host and hostess expected to write for hours on end without interruption; the theatrical evenings together up in the attic, which served as a break from all the work; there's Emilie's accompanying herself on the harpsichord when she sang in the evenings, and Voltaire making shadow puppets with the light from a magic lantern (and burning himself when the hot oil inside it spilled out); there's the visit of Emilie's beloved brother, the Abbé de Breteuil, which Emilie excitedly prepared for days in advance; volume after volume of books pressed on her by her hosts; the experiments with microscopes, and afternoons out with horses; etc, etc.
- De Graffigny's voluble letters recounting her nine week stay sprawl across 100 pages in volumes 5 and 6 of Besterman's edition of Voltaire's correspondence; excellent brief paraphrases in English are in Frank Hamel's, An Eighteenth-Century Marquise: A Study of Emilie du Châtelet and Her Times (London, 1910).
- For modern scholarly views, Jonathan Mallinson's edited Francoise de Graffigny, femme de lettres. Écriture et réception (SVEC 2004:12. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation) is a good companion for this most exasperating, blunt, and kindly of guests. |
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