Free Anglomania by Ian Buruma

man, as though he were a shrine: first the great paintings in Paris, then Voltaire, and thence on to Italy. Charles James Fox came. As did Goldsmith. And Wilkes. And Gibbon. And Boswell, who asked Voltaire: “What, sir, would you do if you were shut up alone in a tower with a new-born baby?” (Voltaire’s answer is unknown.) But there were many others too, who simply came to gawk at the old Anglomane, wandering through his rooms in a blue satin dressing gown and a gold-tasseled cap, dusting his prize busts of Isaac Newton and Lady Coventry. The attention could be tiresome, but Voltaire was too flattered to turn many admirers down. And the national pride of his English visitors was tickled by Voltaire’s compliments to their country, made frequently in the bawdy English of early eighteenth-century libertines.
    Voltaire was a snob, like most Anglophiles. He enjoyed showing off his wealth. His table was waited on by liveried servants, and his silver plates all bore his family crest. He was an eccentric and often casual dresser, but on Sundays he would dress very grandly, with lace cuffs stretching to his fingertips, for this, in his opinion, gave him “a noble air.” In 1759, Voltaire celebrated the British victory over France in Quebec with a splendid fireworks display, depicting various Indian trophies, the Niagara Falls, and the star of St. George. The only fly in this rich, Anglomaniacal ointment was Shakespeare, whose works Voltaire would criticize at the slightest provocation.
    British worship at the shrine of Ferney was well suited to Voltaire’s old-fashioned expletives, for both were part of a style that was slowly slipping away. Voltaire’s Anglomania, as well as his popularity in Britain, were products of enlightened cosmopolitanism. This had set the tone in many French salons, Scottish drawing rooms, and English stately homes. But as the century wore on, more and more members of the English elite began to adopt the insular and anti-French attitudes of the lower orders—partly to ensure their continued dominance over those orders. The Seven Years War with France, ending in 1763, had done much to stir up popular Gallophobia in England. “Ancient” English liberties, going back to King Alfred and celebrated in Hogarth’s prints, had to be defended against France, with its popish despots, artificial manners, congenital insincerity, and foppish manners.
    Voltaire had fought against popish despotism all his life, but his style of Anglomania was hardly that of Hogarth’s Roast Beef and OldeEngland. He remained popular in Britain during his lifetime, especially among the Whiggish gentry. He was more popular even than native authors such as Pope, Arthur Young, or James Thomson. A translation of his complete works was published in 1770, and again in 1779. There is no doubt that Voltaire had a huge and lasting influence on the way the English liked to see themselves. But a decade or so later, his reputation in Britain was greatly damaged because of the revolution he had never actively promoted but had done so much to prepare.
    Voltaire did not live to see the French Revolution. Instead, he had a reconciliation of sorts with the court—though not with the Catholic church. After the death of Louis XV and the succession of Louis XVI, Voltaire was at last allowed to return to Paris. He was eighty-four, frail, cadaverous even, but still writing furiously. His latest play, Irene , was to be performed at the Comédie-Française. So he left Ferney, waving at the throng of weeping villagers as he passed them by in his coach. When he stopped to rest on the way, he was served by local grandees disguised as tavern waiters. In Paris he was greeted as though he were a returning king, rather like Newton’s funeral in London, except that Voltaire, in his Regency-style periwig and his fur-trimmed hat, was alive to see his own apotheosis. Women tried to pluck tufts of fur from the Patriarch’s coat to pass on as relics to their