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USC Digital Voltaire

Ferney

Ferney-Voltaire (Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names ID: 7009178), a French suburb of Geneva, is in the canton of Ain, in the country of Gex, on the Swiss border, to the north of the airport of Geneva-Cointrin.

In 1758 Voltaire, then aged 64, purchased the estate of Ferney even though it was then, in his words, a “wretched village”. The area surrounding the estate had few residents, little industry, and was in dire financial need. In several letters, Voltaire expressed concern for the poor residents of the town and criticized their exploitation by a local church official who was known to use his position to extort extravagant tithes by violent means (Davidson 296). Voltaire frequently expressed a sense of responsibility for improving the lives of the local peasants; by 1759, he personally employed the majority of Ferney’s residents (Davidson 298).

Voltaire’s extensive renovations on the dilapidated property began immediately after his purchase of the property in 1758. Initial renovations on the château lasted until 1762. Voltaire’s improvements included a 300-seat theater and a church, the latter of which was inscribed with the message “DEO EREXIT VOLTAIRE” (“ERECTED TO GOD BY VOLTAIRE”), an eternal and imposing reminder of Voltaire’s contribution to the town.

It soon became all too clear to Voltaire that his château was too small to accommodate his many visitors. In 1765 he recruited the architect, Léonard Racle (30 November 1736 – 8 January 1791) who added two wings to the building, giving it its definitive aspect. For almost twenty years, until his death in 1778, Voltaire, hosted a large number of high-ranking visitors, admirers, and international dignitaries who documented their visits in their correspondence as well as in their own publications. Furthermore, as Jean-Claude Bonnet notes:

Inspirant un style nouveau d’entretiens littéraires, ‘la visite à Ferney’ devient aussi un sujet journalistique. La Gazette d’Utrecht décrit le séjour du duc de Villars. La Correspondance littéraire ~~annononce~~ annonce la venue des personnages célèbres en une véritable chronique. [1] (Bonnet 133)

Shortly after his passing, Madame Denis sold the Ferney estate to Charles Michel, Marquis de Villette (9 December 1736 – 7 July 1793, French writer and politician and a protégé of Voltaire), apart from her uncle’s library, which was sold to Catherine the Great, and carefully transported to Saint Petersburg under the supervision of Voltaire’s secretary, Wagnière (Davidson xix). The empress was so deeply moved by Voltaire’s death that she requested drawings, copies of plans, and details about Ferney’s interior in order to create an exact replica of the château near Tsarskoe Selo[2]. In a letter to Grimm (30 November [11 December] 1778) she wrote: “you need to tell me how each room in the castle was furnished and what was its purpose, so that my santa casa, as well as that of Lorette, may be a true representation” (Stroeve 17).

In honor of its most famous resident, the town of Ferney is today known as Ferney-Voltaire. The estate is currently owned and maintained by the Centre des monuments nationaux http://www.chateau-ferney-voltaire.fr/en, the French government body dedicated to conservation and preservation of historical landmarks. For more information and current pictures of Ferney-Voltaire, visit of the Tourism Office of Ferney-Voltaire: http://www.paysdevoltaire.com//en/discovery/voltaires-chateau.html

Danielle Mihram, April 2017

Sources:
Bonnet, Jean-Claude. “La Visite à Ferney.” Le Siècle de Voltaire – Hommage à René Pomeau, edited by Christiane Mervaud and Sylvain Menat, Vol. 1, The Voltaire Foundation, 1987, 126-135.

Davidson, Ian. Voltaire: A Life. New York, NY: Pegasus, 2010.

Stroev, Alexandre. Voltaire / Catherine II – Correspondance 1763-1778, Non-Lieu: Association des Amis de Paris-Méditerranée, 2006.

[1] “Inspiring a new style of literary conversations, 'the visit to Ferney' also becomes a journalistic subject. The Gazette d’Utrecht describes the sojourn of the Duke of Villars at Ferney. The Correspondance littéraire announces the coming of the famous personages in a full-fledged chronicle.”

[2] The town Tsarskoe Selo (now namedPushkin) is located 24 Kilometers (15 miles) south from the center of Saint-Petersburg. It contains a former Russian residence of the imperial family.

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Paris
Voltaire’s Paris
Voltaire was born in Paris in 1694, and died in Paris in 1778. Throughout his life, he had a complicated relationship with the city, for which he felt a simultaneous attraction and repulsion. Voltaire admired the worldly and artistic side of Paris, but he also resented what he perceived as idleness, pretentiousness and superficiality among its citizens (Soprani 1014).

Voltaire was a resident of Paris and its suburbs from the time of his birth (1694) until 1726. During this period, he lived in a number of different homes in the city, notably near the Palais-Royal in what is now the 1^st arrondissement; on the Rive Gauche near the Porte Saint-Michel; and on what is now the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in the 8^th arrondissement (Soprani 1015). He attended the famed secondary school, the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, which continues to operate today in the 5^th arrondissement of Paris <http://www.louislegrand.org/index.php/anglais-presentations-61>.

In 1717, Voltaire was imprisoned for the first time in the Bastille on charges of writing libelous poetry (rightfully) attributed to him and directed at the regent, Philippe II d’Orléans. Voltaire’s life-long criticism of the French justice system was certainly informed in part by this stay in the cruel prison that was the Bastille: locked up without a trial as a result of a lettre de cachet, the young philosopher was forced to endure months of isolation, darkness, and meager food portions. Upon his release 11 months later, he was temporarily banned from Paris and relegated to live at his father’s home in Châtenay, at that time a small parish southwest of the capital[1]. Although he appeared to publicly take his imprisonment in stride, Voltaire privately remarked to a close friend that the Bastille was a “place of distress” and added that he “discovered in myself a courage which I had not expected, after the frivolity and errors of my youth” (Davidson).

Throughout Voltaire’s life, Paris was the cultural and literary center of France. His plays Œdipe (1718), Zaïre (1732), Alzire (1732), and Mérope (1743), were all performed—and became great successes—in the city. Still, he frequently criticized the city and its citizens. In La Princesse de Babylone (1768), he satirized the superficiality of Parisians, called “frivolity” their “important and unique affair,” and joked that Parisians were like children who constantly needed new playthings to be kept from crying (Soprani 1015-1016). In a poem (“La vie de Paris et de Versailles” – Épitre [OCV 31B]) sent on 28 July 1749 to his niece, Madame Denis[2], Voltaire wrote wearily of the court life at Versailles and Paris and lamented the monotony of the “insipid” daily routine of a courtier: “Sort pour sortir, sans avoir rien à faire” (Going out just to go out, without having anything to do).

In 1754 after nearly two decades spent variously in Prussia, England, and at the home of Émilie du Châtelet in Cirey (in the Haute Marne District, about 270 km south-East of Paris), Voltaire was forbidden by the King from returning to Paris or Versailles. He did not return to Paris for more than 25 years.

In February of 1778, Voltaire came back to Paris for the premiere of his tragedy Irene. Three months later, too weak to return to Ferney following a long period of illness, Voltaire died in the capital on May 30, 1778.

Danielle Mihram and Emily Rucker, May 2017.

Sources
Davidson, Ian. "From the Court to the Bastille." Voltaire: A Life. New York, NY: Pegasus, 2012, pp. 51-58.

Soprani, Anne. “Paris.” Inventaire Voltaire, edited by Jean M. Goulemot, André Magnan, and Didier Masseau. Paris: Gallimard, 1995, pp. 1014-1016.

Waddicor, Mark. “La Vie de Paris et de Versailles,” critical edition by Mark Waddicor. OCV, vol. 31B.

[1] Today named Châtenay-Malabry, approx. 30 km southwest of Paris <http://www.chatenay-malabry.fr/notre-ville/histoire.html>

[2] “La Vie de Paris et de Versailles” (Waddicor). In his 28 July 1749 letter to Frederick (D3969), Voltaire notes that he is planning to send to Frederick this “épître”: “Vous y verrez sire la vie de Paris peinte assez au naturel” (“You will see therein, Sire, the life of Paris painted rather au naturel”).

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Château de Voltaire à Ferney