“Here ’s a portrait of my Émilie:
She ’s both a beauty and a friend to me.
Her keen imagination is always in bloom.
Her noble mind brightens every room.
She ’s possessed of charm and wit,
Though sometimes shows too much of it.
She has, I assure you, a genius rare.
With Horace and Newton, she can compare.
Yet, she will sit for hours and hours
With people who bore her
And card-playing gamblers. ”
– Voltaire, The Divine Émilie
Gabrielle Émilie Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet, was born to Louis Nicolas Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Principal Secretary and Introducer of Ambassadors to Louis XIV, on December 17, 1706. Due to her father ’s status, Émilie was raised in the Paris high aristocracy, growing up in a townhouse with more than 30 rooms and overlooking the Tuileries gardens.
Said to be an awkward child with no promise of being beautiful, she exasperated her mother by preferring to listen to their educated guests instead of joining the other children or young women in talking of more accepted topics. Her father, however, doted on his only daughter and had her educated in fencing, riding, and gymnastics, as well as Latin, Italian, Greek, German, mathematics, literature, science, dancing, singing, and acting to satisfy her voracious mind. He wrote, “My youngest flaunts her mind, and frightens away the suitors. ” However, her black curly hair and rapid-fire speech won her many admirers at Versailles >.
On June 20, 1725, Émilie entered an arranged married with the Marquis Florent-Claude du Chastellet (Voltaire later re spelled it Châtelet). The Marquis was a soldier, often away on assignment, and accepted his wife ’s intellectual hunger. Émilie understood the rare privilege his indulgence in a time when higher studies were off-limits to women. His tolerance allowed her to be the first woman to be published by the Académie Royale des Sciences with her 1739 Dissertation sur la nature et la propagation du feu. In her Discours sur le bonheur (written in 1746 and published in 1779), she stated, “A ll the passions, the love of learning contributes the most to our happiness. ”
Having little in common, Émilie and the Marquis observed the proprieties in accordance with contemporary mores. After Émilie bore him children, they agreed to live separate lives while maintaining one household. As was an acceptable practice in their society, both took on lovers.
Émilie had a string of lovers, the fourth being Voltaire >. Their love affair was both romantic and intellectual, with Émilie finding a medium where she could exercise her intelligence. Voltaire wrote the following about Emilie: “Everything about her is noble, her countenance, her tastes, the style of her letters, her discourses, her politeness … her conversation is agreeable and interesting. ”
Émilie and Voltaire set up a “research institute ” at her country house , Château de Cirey >.They collected a library of more than 21,000 books and acquired all the modern scientific research equipment. The intellectual respect they had for each other meant that, even as their sexual desire for each other dissipated, they continued to live with each other, with both taking on additional lovers.
Émilie ’s scientific inquiries made her unpopular for multiple reasons: her gender; her heretical and vocal statement that some of Newton ’s equations were fundamentally wrong; and her active belief in the German Gottfried Leibniz’s > theories. Fundamentally, she was embracing and working on the principles that would eventually lead to Einstein ’s theory of relativity >.
Émilie ’s final lover was
Jean François de Saint-Lambert >. Madly in love, she is said to have behaved like a schoolgirl in love for the first time, leaving notes on lace-edged papers for him to find. When she became pregnant at age 42, the life expectancy of a woman giving birth past age 40 was almost zero. She began to work almost 17 hours a day to complete her translation of Newton ’s
Principia Mathematica >, finishing it days before she gave birth. She died six days later, with the child following shortly afterward .
Ten years after her death, Émilie’s translation of Newton ’s
Principia Matematica was discovered and published. It is the translation still used in France today.
“History should be written as philosophy. ” –Voltaire
François- Marie Arouet (pen name Voltaire) was born in Paris on November 21, 1694, the youngest son of notary François Arouet. As his father wished, Voltaire followed his father’s footsteps into the legal profession with a classical education at Collège Louis-le-Grand in 1704. For the next seven years, under the guidance of Jesuit priests, Voltaire ’s rebellious and questioning spirit evolved. He left school at 17 and soon made friends among the Parisian aristocrats >.
He developed a love of theater and started writing satirical poems, despite the strict censorship laws of the time. He was imprisoned in the infamous Bastille for 11 months in 1717, for writing a scathing satire of the French government. While in prison, he wrote Henriade, his epic poem celebrating the life of Henry IV, and worked on his first successful theatrical work, the tragedy Oedipe, first performed in 1719 . With Oedipe, he started us ing his pen name Voltaire, an anagram of Arouet l(e) j(eune); in the 18th century, both “i ” and “j ” and “u ” and “v ” were typographically interchangeable . The play on the verb “volter, ” to turn abruptly, evokes a playful or “volatile ” quality that foretells the quick style, pervasive humor, and irony that make Voltaire such an important figure in the history of the Enlightenment >.
In 1726, a young nobleman took offens e at Voltaire ’s writing and had him imprisoned in the Bastille, to be released only if he promised to leave France, so Voltaire left for England , where he was welcomed by many literary figures and attended many of Shakespeare’s plays. He was attracted to the philosophy of John Locke > and ideas of mathematician and scientist Isaac Newton >. Voltaire was particularly interested in the philosophical rationalism of the time and in the study of the natural sciences. After returning to Paris, he wrote a book praising English customs and institutions, Letters on England >, a defining literary work of the Enlightenment . It was interpreted as a criticism of the French government, and in 1734, Voltaire was forced to leave Paris again.
At Émilie du Chatelet’s invitation, Voltaire moved into Château de Cirey. During his stay, he developed his Élements de la philosophie de Newton (1736). It was an intense period of writing and research for him; during this time, he also wrote Sept discours en vers sur l’h omme (1738) and Zadig (1748). He then gained the notice of Mme. de Pompadour, through whose influence he won a position as Royal Historiographer and membership in the esteemed L ’Académie française in 1746. After Émilie’s death in 1749, he accepted King Frederick II of Prussia’s invitation and moved to Potsdam, near Berlin.
For the rest of his life, Voltaire spent little time in France, often living just across the border. He worked continuously, producing a constant flow of books, plays, and other publications, including The Age of Louis XIV (1752), Micromégas (1752), and his best-known work, Candide > (1759). Candide is a satirical examination of religion, philosophy, and government, written in the mordant wit and skepticism that Voltaire employs in so many of his works.
Voltaire returned to a hero ’s welcome in Paris at age 83. The excitement of the trip was too much for him, and he died there on May 30, 1778. Because of his criticism of the church, Voltaire was denied burial in church ground and was interred at an abbey in Champagne.
