La Place™s Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l™enfant …ecf.humanities.mcmaster.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/15/2015/11/... · Tom Jones is the story of a well-meaning, naive orphan boy,

E.M. Langille

Candide est un chef d’œuvre qui n’a pas d’histoire.1

Critics agree that the spirit of parody in Voltaire’s Candide is central to that tale’s meaning.2 Following André Morize, who

argued as early as 1913 that numerous eighteenth-century French novels present “analogies d’intrigue, d’ensemble ou de détail” with Candide, scholars have shown how Candide “either compresses or parodies conventions common to the general romance tradition.”3 William Barber thought that Candide makes more than passing reference to the picaresque genre, a view taken up by Jacques van den Heuvel and others.4 Philip Stewart and R.A. Francis have also examined the impact of Prévost’s Cleveland on Candide.5

1 Jean Sareil, Essai sur Candide (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 14. This article is dedicated to the memory of JFD. I thank T.E.D. Braun and the late J. Patrick Lee for their judicious comments.

2 See Dorothy M. McGee, Voltairean Narrative Devices as Considered in the Author’s Contes Philoso-phiques (1933; reprint, New York, 1973); William F. Bottiglia, Voltaire’s “Candide”: Analysis of a Classic SVEC 7 ( Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1959); Pierre de Saint Victor, “Candide : de la parodie du roman au conte philosophique,” Kentucky Romance Quarterly 15 (1968): 377–85; and Douglas A. Bonneville, Voltaire and the Form of the Novel SVEC 158 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1976).

3 André Morize, introduction to Candide, ou l’optimisme by Voltaire, ed. Morize (Paris: Hachette, 1913), xiii. Jack Lynch, “Romance Conventions in Voltaire’s Candide,” South Atlantic Review 50, no. 1 (1985): 35.

4 William H. Barber, Voltaire: Candide (London: Arnold, 1960), 14–15. See Jacques van den Heuvel, Voltaire dans ses contes (Paris: Armand Colin, 1967).

5 Philip Stewart, “Holding the Mirror Up to Fiction: Generic Parody in Candide,” French Studies 33 (1979): 411–18; and R.A. Francis, “Prévost’s Cleveland and Voltaire’s Candide,” in Miscellany/Mélanges SVEC 208 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1982): 296.

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At least one scholar has suggested that Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749) also directly influenced Candide. Manfred Sandmann presented the idea in 1973 that Candide’s early chapters recast key details from Tom Jones.6 Sandmann’s theory was based on several parallels that he observed in the texts. Parallels with such an exact concordance, he claimed, were unlikely to have arisen by chance.7 Sandmann was aware that Voltaire owned the four-volume Pierre-Antoine de La Place translation of Fielding’s novel, entitled Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé (hereafter referred to as L’Enfant trouvé). Surprisingly, it did not occur to him that La Place’s translation might prove highly revealing and lend support to his surmise. What may then be called a methodological oversight explains, in part at least, why Sandmann’s hypothesis has never been cited, let alone seriously taken up and discussed. The case is worthy of re-examination, however, for had he scrutinized La Place’s 1750 translation of Tom Jones, Sandmann would have been able to demonstrate that, because Candide consistently echoes La Place’s word choices, imagery, and idiosyncratic turn of phrase, the episodic structure and narrative con-catenation of Candide can be read as a direct parody of the narrative conventions evident in L’Enfant trouvé. Further, a detailed analysis of La Place’s handling of Fielding’s characters would have shown how anecdotes mentioned in both works link Candide’s principal char-acters to those of L’Enfant trouvé.

Tom Jones is the story of a well-meaning, naive orphan boy, raised in a nobleman’s house, but expelled from that house for wooing a young woman above his station. Published in 1749, the novel was avail-able in French the following year in a highly personal translation by La Place (1707–93). Voltaire was characteristically aware of this new publication by early 1750. Commenting on the book’s distribution

6 “Ce n’est qu’avec hésitation que nous prenons la plume pour communiquer la découverte d’une source du Candide de Voltaire. Ce petit conte, un des grands textes européens, a retenu l’attention de tant d’érudits et de critiques littéraires, que qui veut en parler se trouve devant un public distingué de tous pays. Proclamer par-dessus le marché devant ces experts qu’ils ont toujours connu cette source, sans toutefois la reconnaître comme telle, qu’elle est en fait un autre grand livre européen, frise l’effronterie et le sensationnalisme.” Manfred Sandmann, “La Source anglaise de Candide (i et ii),” Zeitschrift fur Fransösiche Sprache und Literatur 83 (1973): 255–59.

7 Sandmann, 257. “Les rapports entre le roman de Fielding et le texte de Voltaire sautent aux yeux. Ils sont indéniables à tel point que la question qu’il faut se poser maintenant n’est pas tant celle de l’existence d’une source de Candide, mais plutôt comment expliquer cette méconnaissance de la source de la part de tant de dix-huitiémistes distingués” (Sandmann, 258). According to Lynch, “In Candide as well as in such chronologically structured novels as Tom Jones, the journey itself takes on romance characteristics once the historical setting is established” (39–40).

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he wrote: “Le livre nouvellement traduit par m. de La Place est Tom-Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé, en 4 volumes. On en est assez content. L’édition vient d’être arrêtée à cause d’un conflit de juridiction entre m. Berrier et m. Mabout, on ne sait ce qui en arrivera, mais il y a déjà 2 500 exemplaires distribués.”8 La Place is a little-known figure, who nevertheless must be credited with contributing to the growing fashion for English literature in France during the second half of the eighteenth century.9 Educated by English Jesuits at St-Omer, La Place had a mastery of English reputed to be so convincing that some people said he learned it at the expense of his mother tongue.10 His first published work was a 1745 translation of Aphra Behn’s New World novel Oroonoko. Interested in making a name for himself in the theatre, La Place published Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved (1682) under the title of La Venise sauvée (1746). The successful performance of that work ensured La Place’s recognition in literary circles.11 At first, Voltaire encouraged the younger man, intervening, for example, on his behalf when the authorities seized his Théâtre anglais (1746–49).12 From the 1750s onward, however, as La Place increasingly assumed the role of French authority on Shakespeare, Voltaire was less kindly, and by the 1760s the two were completely at odds.13 As was often the case when Voltaire went out of his way to help a struggling littérateur, he ended up turning on La Place, and referred to him subsequently

8 Voltaire to Jean Bernard Le Blanc, [21 February 1750], in Correspondence and Related Documents, ed. T. Besterman, in The Complete Works of Voltaire, 135 vols. (Geneva, Ban-bury, Oxford: L’Institut et Musée Voltaire and Voltaire Foundation, 1968–77), 11:249 [D4117].

9 For details on the life of La Place, see Lillian B. Cobb, Pierre-Antoine de La Place: sa vie et son œuvre (1707–1793) (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1928).

10 J.C.F. Hoefer, Nouvelle biographie universelle, 46 vols. (Paris, 1852–66), 40:394–95.11 Tragedies: Venise sauvée (1746), Adèle de Ponthieu (1757); comedies: Les deux cousines (1746),

La Laideur aimable (1752), L’Épouse à la mode (1760), Les Desordres de l’amour, ou les étourderies du Chevalier de Brières” (1768). See Christian Biet, “Le Théâtre Anglois d’Antoine de La Place (1746–1749), ou la difficile émergence du théâtre de Shakespeare en France,” in Shakespeare et la France, actes du colloque 2000 de la Société française Shakespeare, éd. Patricia Dorval (Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 2000), 27–46.

12 “Le sr de La Place auteur du téâtre anglais a donné dès longtemps les trois premiers volumes sans que personne y ait trouvé à redire. C’est un ouvrage très estimé. Le public se plaindroit s’il n’avoit pas les derniers volumes, et l’auteur seroit ruiné. Il implore la protection de Monsieur de Marville.” Voltaire to Claude Henri Feydeau de Marville, [May 1746], Correspondence, 10:19 [D3383].

13 “Je vous envoie Mariamne pour vous amuser dans vôtre exil; vous avez dû recevoir le Jules cesar de Shakespear; je crois que vous serez convaincu que La Place est fort loin d’avoir fait connaître le théâtre anglais; avouez que l’éxces énorme de son extravagance était pourtant bon a connaître.” Voltaire to Charles Augustin Feriol, comte d’Argental, and Jeanne Grâce Bosc Du Bouchet, comtesse d’Argental, 29 August 1762, Correspondence, 25:193 [D10679].

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as one of the “Ostrogoths,” whose presence at the Comédie Française Voltaire angrily deplored.14

La Place’s translation of Fielding’s Tom Jones is a curious text. In the 1750 edition, the “author” states that his work is indeed a “traduction” of Fielding’s novel. And yet, as others have discovered, a comparative reading reveals that La Place’s version of Tom Jones is more adaptation than strict translation.15 The decision to significantly modify Fielding’s original text seems to have been based on two considerations: the shortage of time and the need to adapt Fielding’s English text for the French public. In a published letter to the English author, La Place explained the constraints under which he laboured: “La crainte qui me reste, si vous daignez m’excuser, naît du peu de tems que j’ai pu employer à un pareil Ouvrage. Il m’étoit absolument inconnu avant le 13 juin dernier (1749); et le bruit se répandoit déjà que les Libraires de Hollande, toujours attentifs à leurs intérêts, en faisoient faire une Traduction précipitée.”16 Tailoring Tom Jones for French readers, La Place eliminated the first chapter of all eighteen books. He also freely paraphrased Fielding’s lengthy descriptions and cut monologues, adding explanations where he felt these were necessary. The result was a text just over half the length of Fielding’s novel.17 Given this extensive truncation, there are, as Will McMorran has

14 “In one respect, La Place’s translation brought about an immediate effect; it awakened Voltaire’s resentment. Always sensitive where his personal vanity was concerned, he was hurt to the quick by the presumption of this unknown author, who wrested from him his laurels as the European authority on Shakespeare and the sole judge of how much the continent ought to know of the barbarian poet, and—what was worse—who ventured to speak of Shakespeare in terms of praise which he, Voltaire, regarded as dangerous.” J.G. Robertson, “The Translations of La Place, and Their Effect on Voltaire and French Criticism,” section 11 of chap. 12 “Shakespeare on the Continent 1660–1700,” in vol. 5 of The Drama to 1642, Part One, of The Cambridge History of English and American Literature An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1907–21) http://www.bartleby.com/215/1211.html . See also Voltaire to Pierre Robert Le Cornier de Cideville, 28 [January 1754], Correspondence, 14:378–79 [D5640].

15 See Shelly Charles, “Le Tom Jones de La Place ou la fabrique d’un roman français,” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 94, no. 6 (1994): 931–58; Will McMorran, The Inn and the Traveller: Digressive Topographies in the Early Modern European Novel (Oxford: Legenda, 2002), 153–59; and Nicholas Cronk, “Tom Jones in Eighteenth-Century France,” in Drottningholms Slottsteater Program 1995 (Stockholm: Drottningholms Slottsteater, 1995), 94–96.

16 Pierre-Antoine de La Place, letter to the author of Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé, trans. MDLP [P.-A. de La Place] from the English of Henry Fielding, tomes 1–4 (London: J. Nourse [Paris], 1750), 1:x. References are to this edition of Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé, cited in text as ET.

17 As La Place explains in his introduction: “L’histoire de Tom Jones est en 6 volumes, contenant 18 Livres, chacun des quels est précédé d’un discours préliminaire, en forme de dissertation, sur quelque point de littérature, ou de morale, souvent étranger au sujet. J’ai cru devoir supprimer ces morceaux, très-bons d’ailleurs, et dont on pourroit dans la suite former un petit volume détaché aussi instructif qu’amusant” (ET, 1:ix).

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pointed out, significant differences in tone. Whereas Fielding’s prose maintains a consistent, all-pervasive irony, La Place’s emotional self-indulgence suggests he was alert to the public’s growing taste for sentimental romance. To be sure, Tom Jones provided ample love interest and, not unexpectedly, La Place’s adaptation confers a rosy cast on Fielding’s love themes, quite foreign to the original text.18 La Place’s treatment of the following allegorical flourish from Tom Jones illustrates the general tendency. “But though this victorious Deity [Love] easily expelled his avowed Enemies from the Heart of Jones, he found it more difficult to supplant the Garrison which he himself had placed there”19 is “translated” in L’Enfant trouvé by the narrator’s larmoyant ejaculation: “Amour , amour ! qui peut te résister” (1:185), an utterance incidentally not unlike Pangloss’s indictment of love in chapter 4 of Candide : “Hélas! ... c’est l’amour; l’amour, le consolateur du genre humain.”20 Judging by the translation’s reception, however, La Place’s instincts were in line with contemporary taste for sentimental romance.21 Revised, re-edited, and reissued over forty years, L’Enfant trouvé enjoyed popular as well as critical success. Grimm and Fréron promptly reviewed the 1750 edition, and although Grimm criticized the work’s “vulgar episodes” and declared the translation “Gothic,” Fréron confessed to having read it twice with great pleasure, his only criticism being the “detestable” character of Partridge.22

Voltaire does not say when he read L’Enfant trouvé, but without doubt he did read it. The Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de Voltaire records traces of Voltaire’s handwritten corrections in the book numbered 1341.23 And the correspondence yields further proof. Voltaire confessed in a letter to the marquise Du Deffand that—unlike his arch-enemy Fréron—the only thing he liked about the novel was the barber Partridge: “il n’y a rien de passable que la caractère d’un barbier.”24 In 1750 another of Voltaire’s adversaries,

18 McMorran, 159.19 Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling, 6 vols. (London, 1749), 2:139.20 Voltaire, Candide, ou l’optimisme , ed. René Pomeau, in Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, 135 vols.

(Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1980), 48:130. References are to this edition of Candide, ou l’optimisme, cited in text as C.

21 McMorran, 159.22 Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, ed. Jean Maurice Tourneux,

16 vols. (Paris, 1877–82), 1:410. Élie Catherine Fréron, Lettres sur quelques écrits de ce temps (July 1751), 5:3–22.

23 M. Pavlovich, Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de Voltaire (BV) (Leningrad: Academy of Sciences, 1961), BV 1341.

24 Voltaire to Marie de Vichy de Chamrond, marquise Du Deffand, 13 October [1759], Correspondence, 20:398 [D8533].


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Abbé Desfontaines, had also translated Fielding’s Joseph Andrews (1742). In the same letter to Mme Du Deffand, Voltaire wrote: “Lire les romans anglais quand vous ne voulez pas lire l’ancien Testament. Dites-moi donc, s’il vous plait, où vous trouverez une histoire plus intéressante que celle de Joseph, devenu contrôleur général en Egypte, et reconnaissant ses frères. Comptez-vous pour rien Daniel qui confond si finement les deux vieillards? Quoi que Tobie ne soit pas si bon, cependant cela me parait meilleur que Tom Jones.”25 Knowing Voltaire’s gift for allusive self-disclosure, one can speculate if it were a mere coincidence that he directed this comment to his ever-alert marquise some few months after Candide’s appearance. Mme du Deffand does not appear to have picked up the hint.

Voltaire’s indebtedness to English literature has been given ample study.26 In his own lifetime the influence of Swift’s satire was noted.27 Since that time critics have also acknowledged the inspiration Voltaire drew from English fiction, the best-known case being chapter 20 of L’Ingénu, where the account of Mlle Saint Yves’s agony is derived from Richardson’s Clarissa.28 That L’Enfant trouvé is behind certain aspects of Candide, therefore, should not be a complete surprise. My reading reveals convincing evidence that links characters in La Place’s translation to the fictional types present in Candide. The process of discovering these links, however, was not entirely straightforward. Like Proust, Voltaire condenses two characters into one or distributes the traits of one character over two or more. Nor is it unusual for him to take a model, invert it, and then flesh out a portrait that stands out as an obvious parody of the original. Cunégonde is one of those composite characters, seemingly a fusion of two main characters in L’Enfant trouvé : Sophia Western and Jenny Jones, Tom’s supposed mother. Voltaire applied the same technique to his thumbnail

25 Voltaire to the marquise Du Deffand, 13 October [1759], Correspondence, 20:398 [D8533]. 26 See Ahmad Gunny, Voltaire and English Literature: A Study of English Literary Influences on

Voltaire SVEC 177 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1979).27 Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, considered Micromégas “a most poor

performance ... very unworthy of him; consist[ing] only of thoughts, stolen from Swift, but miserably mangled and disfigured.” The Letters of Chesterfield, ed. Bonamy Dobrée, 6 vols. (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1932), 5:1991. See also John Fletcher, “Humour and Irony in Swift and Voltaire,” Forum 17, no. 1 (1979): 27–33.

28 Gunny, 73. Regarding Richardson’s Clarissa Voltaire wrote, “pendant ma fièvre; cette lecture m’allumait le sang.” Voltaire to the marquise Du Deffand, 12 April 1760, Correspondence, 21:232 [D8846].

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portrait of M. le baron de Thunder-ten-tronckh, whose few traits can be traced to Squire Allworthy and Squire Western. Elsewhere, Pangloss owes more to Tom’s philosophical preceptors Square and Thwackum (Tuakum, en français) than he does, as Deloffre claims, to the obscure German philosopher Johann-Heinrich Meister.29 Added to this, several anecdotes involving Tom’s servant Partridge attach themselves to Candide’s valet Cacambo.

As previously argued, Voltaire drew inspiration not only from Field-ing’s characters, but also from the situational conflicts that drive the narrative. Consider first the remarkable similarity between the two eponymous heroes. Tom and Candide are orphans raised and edu-cated in a nobleman’s house, and yet, because they are illegitimate, they are excluded from the advantages of noble birth.30 In L’Enfant trouvé, Tom turns out to be the illegitimate son of his protector All-worthy’s noble sister Bridget (4:234–35), and Candide, we learn in chapter 1, was thought to be the “fils de la sœur de monsieur le baron, et d’un bon et honnête gentilhomme du voisinage” (C, 118). Other parallels include Tom and Candide’s shared physical beauty—“Jones étoit beau et fait à peindre” (ET, 2:123); “sa physionomie annonçait son âme,” “voilà un jeune homme très bien fait” (C, 118, 122)—and their essentially good and honest natures. Their resemblance is reinforced, moreover, when we learn that, while Tom and Candide are well-meaning, honest, trusting, and naive, both must swallow the bitter pill of life’s injustice. Neither, it turns out, becomes embittered. At the novel’s conclusion, the truth of Tom’s birth is revealed, and he is able to marry the lovely Sophia. Candide, similarly, is reunited at the end of the tale with Cunégonde, whom he also plans to marry.

Tom and Candide’s shared destiny is no coincidence; their status as gentlemen bastards bars them from engaging in the society in which they were raised and educated. In both narratives they fall in love with women above their station. Here again, the detail linking the two couples is similar enough to suggest that Candide’s passion for Cunégonde was inspired by Tom’s love for Sophia. Sophia and Cunégonde are both seventeen years old, and beautiful. There are, however, telling differences. La Place’s portrayal of the virginal Sophia stands in stark contrast with Voltaire’s overtly sexual Cunégonde. Here, to paraphrase Hodgson, we have an important

29 Frédéric Deloffre, “Aux origines de Candide: ‘une économie de roman,’” Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France 98, no. 1 (1998):79.

30 J.C. Weightman, “The Quality of Candide,” in Essays Presented to C.M. Girdlestone (University of Durham, 1960), 335–47.


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clue that Cunégonde was conceived as an “anti-Sophia.”31 In other words, Cunégonde’s character is best understood as inverted image of Fielding’s idealized heroine. Whereas Sophia is the very portrait of innocence—“C’est donc à l’âge de dix-sept ans que Sophie paroît ici sur la scène, accompagnée de tous ses charmes, qu’embellissent encore les attraits touchants de l’aimable innocence” (ET, 1:83)—Voltaire’s tongue-in-cheek description of Cunégonde suggests that the blushing seventeen-year-old is ripe for love: “Sa fille Cunégonde âgée de dix-sept ans était haute en couleur, fraîche, grasse, appétissante” (C, 119). Voltaire’s special brand of irony likewise domi-nates his version of the lovers’ first kiss. La Place gives a heightened over-romantic description of the first throes of passion, with certain particulars also evident in Voltaire’s more consciously ironic and much shorter parody of the same scene. The concordance of specific narrative details is noteworthy. The lovers turn pale, blush, stammer, and tremble before the protagonist kisses the maid’s hand:

Quoique rien, soit dans la contenance, soit dans le propos de Tom, ne dût le faire soupçonner d’avoir à parler d’amour; cependant, à peine eut-il ouvert la bouche, qu’une pâleur subite et un frisonnement intérieur qui s’empara tout-à-coup de Sophie, ne lui eût pas laissé la force de répondre ... Oui, Madame, je vous le jure; oui je jure par cette chère main que je voudrois sacrifier tous mes jours pour vous! Il s’était saisi, en s’exprimant ainsi, de la main de Sophie, qu’il baisoit et rebaisoit avec ardeur. C’étoit la première fois que ses lèvres l’avoient touchée. Ces mêmes joues, qui l’instant auparavant étaient pâles, se couvrirent tout-à coup d’une rougeur qui changea tous les lys en roses. (ET, 1:120-21, emphasis added)

Consistent with the spirit of parody, Voltaire reverses the protagonists’ roles, and has the “la plus belle des baronettes” make the first move: “Elle rencontra Candide en revenant au château”; “elle lui dit bonjour” (C, 121). The next day after dinner Cunégonde drops her handker-chief and then takes Candide by the hand: “Cunégonde laissa tomber son mouchoir, Candide le ramassa, elle lui prit innocemment la main, le jeune homme baisa innocemment la main de la jeune demoiselle avec une vivacité, une sensibilité, une grâce toute particulière; ... leurs genoux tremblèrent, leurs mains s’égarèrent” (C, 121).

A suggestive clue that Candide parodies Tom Jones is revealed when the discovery of Tom’s love for Sophia results in his banishment on

31 R.H. Hodgson, “The Parody of Traditional Narrative Structures in the French Anti-Novel from Charles Sorel to Diderot,” Neophilolgus 66 (1982): 340–48.

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foot from his childhood home. Voltaire’s description of Candide’s eviction relies on wording and syntax similar to those in the La Place translation. One important difference remains: La Place writes that Tom leaves the Allworthy estate without looking back. Candide, on the other hand, in the mock-dramatic pose of parody, cannot take his eyes off “le plus beau château”:

[Tom] partit ... et fit environ un quart de lieu sans se retourner ni sans savoir vers quel endroit il dirigeoit ses pas. (ET, 1:251)

Candide chassé du paradis terrestre, marcha longtemps sans savoir où, pleurant, levant les yeux au ciel, les tournant souvent vers le plus beau des châteaux, qui renfermait la plus belle des baronettes. (C, 122)

Tom’s banishment is more complicated than Candide’s, and, for a time, he hides in the neighbourhood and communicates with Sophia indirectly through her maid. Candide’s expulsion may owe something of its abruptness to the same punishment inflicted on the schoolmaster Partridge two hundred pages earlier. Accused of being Tom’s father, Partridge is summoned to appear before Allworthy and is immediately expelled from the parish. La Place’s translation, with similar wording to that found in Candide, states that he is expelled from the “castle” (Fielding never describes Allworthy’s estate as a “castle”): “Partridge, malgré ses pleurs et ses protestations fut déclaré coupable, indigne à l’avenir des bien faits de M. Alworthy, et chassé pour jamais du Château” (ET, 1:63). This is how Voltaire describes the parallel scene: “Monsieur le baron ... chassa Candide du château à grands coups de pied dans le derrière” (C, 121), a short scene that, again in the spirit of parody, emphasizes the farcical.

Once Candide’s alchemy is clear, other instances of Voltaire’s subtle borrowing are easily detectable. Jones’s first encounter on the road is with an honest Quaker. Quakers were an English sect issued from Anabaptism, towards which Voltaire maintained a life-long sympathy.32 Fielding’s Quaker—with due respect to Voltaire—is a pious hypocrite who can be seen to have engendered two separate characters present in Candide, chapter 3: the hypocritical Dutch Calvinist preacher—“un homme qui venait de parler tout seul une heure de suite sur la charité” (C, 127)—and the “bon anabaptiste Jacques.” These separate characters embody what Voltaire describes elsewhere as

32 Barber, “Voltaire and Quakerism: Enlightenment and the Inner Light,” in Transactions of the First international Congress on the Enlightenment SVEC 24–27 (Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1963), 24:81–109.


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the fundamental contradiction of Protestant morality.33 The orator exhibits Protestant intolerance, fanaticism, and hypocrisy, and the Anabaptist embodies Protestant industry, self-reliance, and charity. Not coincidentally, Tom’s Quaker, like Candide’s orator, speaks the language of charity; his behaviour, nevertheless, reveals his fanatical intolerance: “Que venez-vous faire ici? y êtes-vous pour la bonne cause? (C, 127).” Hence the Quaker’s initial kindness appears to anticipate the kindness and generosity exemplified by Candide’s good Anabaptist Jacques:34 “Après un assez long silence, le Quaker, poussé par un esprit de charité, peut-être entre-mêlé de curiosité, ouvrit la bouche et dit ... ami, j’apperçois qu’il t’est arrivé quelque infortune: mais pour quoi te laisser abattre? Si c’est un ami que tu pleures, tu dois songer que tout homme est né pour mourir. De quel secours lui sont tes larmes? L’homme doit aprendre à souffrir, l’affliction est son partage” (ET, 1:292). What we eventually learn, of course, is that the Quaker only speaks the language of charity because he senses Tom will make it worth his while. When he finds out that the well-dressed Jones has no money, he turns, like the Calvinist orator—“va, coquin; va, misérable, ne m’approche de ta vie” (C, 128)—and shows his true nature: “Le Quaker ne fut pas plûtôt désabusé sur la noblesse de Jones et instruit de la bassesse de sa naissance, que la pitié sortit tout-à-coup de son cœur, et fit place à l’indignation” (ET, 1:297).

Tom next encounters the company of recruits and officers gathering to fight the Jacobites in Scotland. Separated from his beloved Sophia, Tom dwells on her beauty and charms in the company of soldiers. As in Candide, his praise is linked to a toast followed by a physical altercation: “Les santés vinrent, on les solennisa à l’Anglaise, et le tour de Jones arrivant, il balança d’autant moins à porter celle de sa chère Sophie, qu’il ne s’imaginoit pas qu’elle pût être connue d’aucun des convives” (ET, 1:304). The company of recruits is represented by the two ensigns Adderly and Northerton, forerunners, I would argue, of the two bleus in Candide. This entire segment is curiously reminiscent of Candide’s encounter with the two Bulgars in chapter 2, where the undeviating assertion of his love for Cunégonde—“j’aime tendrement mademoiselle Cunégonde” (C, 123)—leads to his being brutally enrolled in the Bulgar army. In this case, La Place’s version of Tom’s

33 Graham Gargett, Voltaire and Protestantism SVEC 188 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1980), 66–74.

34 “Un homme qui n’avait point été baptisé, un bon anabaptiste, nommé Jacques, vit la manière cruelle et ignominieuse dont on traitait ainsi un de ses frères ... il l’amena chez lui, le nettoya, lui donna du pain et de la bière etc.” (C, 128).

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encounter with military life, entitled “Apprentissage Militaire” (ET, 1:301), appears to have provided Voltaire with narrative anecdotes and phrasing that he put to very different use in Candide.

Enthusiastic for the Hanoverian cause, Tom joins the recruits at their table: “On loua le courage du nouveau camarade. On but largement à la santé du Roi George et à la sienne” (ET, 1:300). In Fielding’s novel, Jones “paya l’écot pour sa bienvenuë” (ET, 1:300). In chapter 2, Candide has no money: “mais je n’ai pas de quoi payer mon écot” (C, 122). He is presently treated to a meal by two soldiers. That meal, as is military custom, is preceded by a toast to health of the King of the Bulgars, a reminder of the toast to George ii just quoted: “c’est le plus charmant des rois, et il faut boire à sa santé” (C, 123). Candide is then forced to join the Bulgar army. Jones, for his part, is presented to the recruiting officer, who immediately remarks on his well-turned figure: “Jones fut présenté au lieutenant de la compagnie, qui y étoit arrivé avant la troupe. Cet officier étonné de la bonne mine de ce nouveau Soldat, et de la recherche de son habillement, exalta son courage, l’assura qu’il seroit toujours libre dans son service, et après l’avoir embrassé cordialement, le retint à dîner avec le reste des officiers” (ET, 1:300). The soldiers in Candide comment enigmatically that Candide is “un jeune homme très bien fait et de la taille requise,” and they also remark to him that “les personnes de votre figure et de votre mérite ne paient jamais rien” (C, 122).35

Two more specific anecdotes provide further evidence that Candide owes personal details to L’Enfant trouvé. Having left the inn at Upton, Tom, in the role of the Good Samaritan, meets a beggar and, although almost penniless himself, is moved by pity and gives the beggar a shilling: “Un homme qui se dit Chrétien, peut-il voir son semblable dans cette affreuse misère, et ne pas le secourir? ... Notre héros tira en même-temps un shilling de sa poche, et le donna au mendiant” (ET, 2:288). La Place even adds that Christians have a duty to help those in distress: a theme evident at the conclusion of chapter 3 of Candide where, in wording similar to that just noted, the

35 Other passages in La Place’s translation resonate with specific details in Candide, chapter 3. For example, Partridge’s sermon on the evils of war following Tom’s departure from the inn at Upton (much altered by La Place) must have caught Voltaire’s attention. In Candide, he appended the double theme of charity versus “hardness of the human heart” to the chapter devoted to a description of the horrors of war. In Partridge’s sermon, the same ideas are presented, but in reverse order: “Son homélie roula d’abord sur la charité, et sur la dureté du cœur humain; de-là passant par une transition naturelle au chapitre de la guerre, il déclama contre ce fléau de l’humanité avec une véhémence qui l’étonna enfin lui-même au point de le faire arrêter tout court” (ET, 2:286–87).


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Anabaptist gives Candide two florins: “Un homme qui n’avait point été baptisé ... vit la manière cruelle et ignominieuse dont on traitait un de ses frères, un être à deux pieds, sans plumes, qui avait une âme; il ... lui fit présent de deux florins” (C, 128). Like the penniless Tom, Candide, in chapter 4, turns round and gives the syphilitic Pangloss (unrecognized at this point) the two florins he has just received from the Good Anabaptist.

One final anecdote shows further similarities: Tom and Candide draw swords and commit murder. Or at least Jones thinks he has. In book 16, the jealous Irishman Fitzpatrick provokes a duel. Tom, “quoi que absolument novice au métier des armes” (ET, 4:91), unintentionally gives Fitzpatrick a near mortal blow. He then expresses shock and sorrow at the idea that he could kill a fellow man: “quoique convaincu de n’être pas coupable aux yeux des Loix, le poids du sang que j’ai versé n’est pas moins un fardeau cruel pour mon cœur” (ET, 4:94). In Candide, chapter 9, an apparent rewriting of the same scene—in which Voltaire reiterates the conjunction quoique —sees Candide draw his sword in self-defence and in similar phrasing—“quoiqu’il eût des mœurs fort douces” (C, 148)—kills the Jew Don Issacar. He then kills M. l’Inquisiteur, and finally, in chapter 15, to the reader’s astonishment, Cunégonde’s brother. Having unintentionally killed three men, Candide, like Jones, expresses his feelings of innocence: “je suis le meilleur homme du monde, et voilà déjà trois hommes que je tue” (C, 175). Unlike Jones, however, Candide escapes prison.

We have already seen that Cunégonde is the same age as Fielding’s Sophia, and that the two are of similar, if not identical, social standing. But where does Cunégonde’s defining quality, her carnal appetite, come from? I believe it derives from Fielding’s portrait of Jenny Jones, the woman accused of being Tom’s natural mother. Jenny is described as having a natural inclination for study and, in her capacity as a servant in the house of local schoolmaster Partridge, she learns Latin. Fielding presents her as possessing certain natural talents that soon arouse the jealousy of the schoolmaster’s good wife. Compar-ing the two descriptions, it is easy to see how Voltaire only slightly altered La Place’s description of Jenny Jones’s aptitude for learning to create Cunégonde’s “désir d’être savante” (C, 120): “Jenny Jones avoit servi pendant quelques années chez un maître d’école, qui

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s’étant apperçu des talents naturels de cette jeune personne, et du désir extrême qu’elle avoit de s’instuire davantage, avait été assez généreux, ou assez fou, pour s’attacher à son éducation jusqu’au point de la faire parler latin beaucoup mieux qu’il ne le parloit lui-même” (ET, 1:18, emphasis added). Cunégonde, we learn following Pangloss’s outdoor lesson in “experimental physics,” “avait beaucoup de disposi-tions pour les sciences” (C, 120). Not only does La Place’s Jenny Jones want to be a “savante,” but he also specifically informs the reader that she has admirably achieved that distinction: “Jenny Jones avoit passé quelques années chez un maître d’école, qui s’étoit plû à lui enseigner le latin, et qui en fait avoit fait une écolière plus sçavante que son maître même” (ET, 1:53). Other narrative anecdotes link Cunégonde to Jenny. Accused of being Tom Jones’s mother, Jenny is summoned before Squire Allworthy, who gives her a lengthy sermon on her wickedness.36 Jenny, we learn, eventually leaves the parish with an itinerant recruiting officer: “cette fille (Jenny Jones) depuis quelques jours avoit abandonné le lieu de sa retraite, pour suivre un officier qui venait d’y faire recruë” (ET, 1:63). A similar detail is mentioned with respect to Cunégonde, who, in the aftermath of the Bulgar-Abare war, takes up with a captain in the Bulgar army (C, 144). Tom later encounters Jenny (now Mrs Waters), screaming and half-naked, at the mercy of the ruffian Northerton: “Les cris qui redoubloient, lui servoient de guide: il vit bientôt un spectacle aussi cruel qu’intéressant. C’étoit une femme demi nuë, se défendant encore à peine contre les efforts d’un homme, qui, à l’aide d’une jarretière passée au col de cette malheureuse, l’entraînoit vers un arbre où il paroissoit avoir dessin de l’attacher” (ET, 2:122). Certain details in this episode remind us of Cunégonde’s account of her treatment at the hands of the conquering Bulgars (C, 144). What other traits Cunégonde owes to Jenny Jones are made clear when we learn that Jenny’s disposition for learning is only matched by her lascivious appetite. Like Cunégonde, she literally takes up with any male whom destiny puts in her path, and among her many lovers is the young Jones himself.37

36 The sermon is qualified by La Place as “très-pathétique” (ET, 1:22), an unusual term also used to describe the sermon in chapter 6, when Candide and Pangloss appear before the Inquisition: “Ils marchèrent en procession ainsi vêtus, et entendirent un sermon très pathétique” (C, 139).

37 “Jones lui plaisoit par la figure, elle étoit sûre de ce point: elle connoissoit peu son cœur; eh, qu’importe? Jouissons toujours de ce que nous connaissons ... Que de femmes pensent comme elle” (ET, 2:141).


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L’Enfant trouvé anticipates other characters in Voltaire’s tale. A strik-ing example is Pangloss, normally seen as the prototype of the German pedagogue, but who can be seen to evolve from Philosopher Square. Square is a scholar of mediocre parts, whose outlook is usually regarded as loosely based on the Wolff-Pope philosophy of optimism. Square’s “favourite phrase,” to use Fielding’s words, is “the unalterable Rule of Right, and the eternal Fitness of Things.”38 The idea behind the comic reiteration of Pangloss’s famous motto “tout est au mieux,” and the indomitable optimism it conveys, are thus clearly discernible in La Place’s version of Square’s oft-repeated catchphrase, “la Régle inaltérable du Droit et l’éternelle convenance des choses”:39 “Le premier (Square) ne jugeait de toutes les actions que par la règle inaltérable du Droit, et de l’éternelle convenance des choses; l’autre (Tuakum) ne décidait de rien, que par les loix de l’expresse autorité” (ET, 1:82).40 La Place specifically calls Square and Tuackum “deux objets de dérision” (ET, 1:84), a word choice that adumbrates the preposterous role that Voltaire assigns to Pangloss in Candide. Also telling are the Square-Tuackum optimism versus pessimism debates, which foreshadow the Pangloss-Martin polemics in Candide’s final chapters:

Tuakum et lui ne se rencontroient guere sans disputer. Eh, eussent-ils été d’accord? Leurs principes étoient diamétralement contraires. (ET, 1:81)

Martin et Pangloss disputaient quelquefois de métaphysique et de morale. (C, 255) Finally, one scene involving Square, depicted by the famous

engraver Hubert Gravelot (1699–1773) in the 1750 La Place edition (figure 1), certainly seems to have influenced Voltaire. Endeavouring to bring comfort to Molly Seagrim (Moly, en français), a young girl to whom he believes he has given a child, Tom discovers Square en flagrant délit hiding naked in Moly’s room. Square’s exposure is a

38 Fielding, Tom Jones, 1:168.39 Square: “Oui, Monsieur, cet exemple me fait jurer en ce moment, de ne plus rien excuser

des foiblesses de la nature; de ne plus rien penser de vertueux, que ce qui quadrera dans la dernière exactitude avec La Régle inaltérable du Droit” (ET, 1:150).

40 “Il [Blifil] suivoit, en cela, les préceptes de Square et Tuakum: l’un, comme on le sçait, ne la (la justice) croyait pas compatible avec la Règle inaltérable du droit; l’autre tenoit toujours fermement pour la justice, laissant au Ciel seul le droit de faire grâce” (ET, 1:105–6).

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Figure 1. Henry Fielding, trans. Pierre Antoine de La Place, Histoire de Tom Jones, ou l’enfant trouvé (London [Paris], 1750), opp. p. 189, engr. Hubert Gravelot (1699–1773). Reproduced courtesy of The British Library.


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humorous adumbration of Pangloss’s “trousers down” outdoor lesson in “experimental physics” given to a “docile chamber maid” and witnessed, as we have already indicated, by the ever-curious Cunégonde. Moly is a likely model for Candide’s Paquette:

Ce morceau de tapisserie, mal attaché au haut du plancher, servoit de rideau au pied du lit de Moly, et cachoit un petit réduit où cette fille serroit ses hardes. Soit que ses pieds se fussent embarassés dans ce rideau, soit que Jones, sans y penser, l’eut un peu trop tiré, jugez de sa surprise, lorsque la chute de ce même rideau offrit à ses regards qui? ... le lira-t-on sans douleur, et puis-je l’écrire sans honte? le Philosophe Square! et dans la posture la plus ridicule (à cause de la petitesse du lieu) qu’il soit possible d’imaginer. (ET, 1:188–89)

The complex influences at play come into even sharper focus two chapters farther on, where Tom encounters the same seductive Moly in a little wood. He follows her amorous lead into a thicket where the two are discovered in a compromising situation by Tuackum and Blifil. Pangloss’s “outdoor lesson” can thus be seen as the distillation of these two closely related scenes: “La soirée était belle; et il se promenoit seul dans un petit bois, en rêvant aux charmes de sa chère Sophie, lorsque ses réflexions amoureuses furent interrompuës par l’apparition d’une femme, qui l’ayant regardé fixement, se sauva dans le plus épais du bois” (ET, 1:206).

Scholars have long been sensitive to Voltaire’s ability to construct compact portraits delineating the essence of a character in a few lines. Two of Fielding’s larger-than-life figures, squires Allworthy and Western, provide several characteristics present in the single para-graph that Voltaire devotes to M. le baron and his estate. Allworthy gives the Westphalian baron his social position; his castle can be seen as an inverted image of La Place’s description of the Allworthy domain; Western gives him his love of hunting and dogs, as well as his quick temper.

Transposing the first paragraph of La Place’s translation, Voltaire almost certainly rewrote La Place’s panoramic overview, using the opening lines of L’Enfant trouvé to situate Candide in a specific geographic space. The novelist’s eye then focuses on Squire Allworthy, whose facial appearance and moral character are described in details that are redolent of Voltaire’s description of Candide:

Dans cette Partie Occidentale de l’Angleterre, vulgairement appelée Comté de Somerset, vivoit dernièrement (et peut-être) vit encore un Gentilhomme nommé Alworthy, mortel si abondamment favorisé par la Nature et par la

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fortune, que l’une et l’autre sembloient s’être disputé la gloire de le combler de bienfaits. L’une l’avoit doué d’une figure agréable, d’un bon tempérament, d’un jugement sain et solide; mais il devait à l’autre la possession du plus ample et du plus riche domaine de la Province. (ET, 1:1–2)

The same conceptual sequence is detectable in Candide’s opening lines, where Allworthy’s judgment and noble mien are conferred by nature (if not by fortune) on the young Candide:

Il y avait en Vestphalie, dans le château de monsieur le baron de Thunder-ten-tronckh, un jeune garçon à qui la nature avait donné les mœurs les plus douces. Sa physionomie annonçait son âme. Il avait le jugement assez droit, avec l’esprit le plus simple; c’est, je crois, pour cette raison qu’on le nommait Candide. (C, 118)

Logic dictated that Voltaire grant Allworthy’s rank to M. le baron, but the baron’s prestige is unexpectedly undermined by Voltaire’s dis-missive description of his modest château: “Monsieur le baron était un des plus puissants seigneurs de la Vestphalie, car son château avait une porte et des fenêtres. Sa grande salle même était ornée d’une tapisserie” (C, 118–19). La Place, by contrast, composed an elaborate description of Allworthy’s “castle,” and his intention no doubt was to provide his French readers with a strong visual sense of Allworthy’s English estate. The result is an edifice grander than the typical country squire would have inhabited:

Ce que l’Architecture Gothique eut jamais de plus noble avait été employé dans la construction du Château de M. Alworthy. L’air de grandeur qui resultoit de son Ensemble, frappoit le spectateur d’une sorte de respect que nos Châteaux les plus modernes n’inspirent pas toujours; il étoit d’ailleurs aussi commode au-dedans que vénérable au dehors. Les jardins, les bois, les eaux, les terraces, enfin tout ce que la nature et l’Art, joint à la situation la plus avantageuse, peuvent produire d’utile et d’agréable aux yeux sembloit s’être réuni dans la vaste enceinte de ce Château, pour en former à la fois le plus beau et le plus champêtre de l’Angleterre. (ET, 1:7–8)

Voltaire seems to have subverted this description in Candide. On a conceptual plane, it follows La Place’s opening paragraph in linear sequence, a sequence that, once again, anticipates the flow of ideas in chapter 1 of Candide, where the picture of the baron’s castle is found in the first sentence of the tale’s second paragraph.

M. le baron himself is little more than a magic lantern silhouette. The scant personal details seem to have been inspired by La Place’s


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portrait of Sophia’s father, Squire Western: “Le M. Western, dont nous venons de parler, etoit un déterminé Chasseur, et passionné pour toutes les espèces d’exercices en usage en Angleterre” (ET, 1:107). Not only is Western an enthusiastic hunter, he loves his dogs and horses more than his only daughter Sophia: “il [Blifil] crut devoir faire la cour à la fille unique de M. Western, jeune demoiselle de dix-sept ans qu’après ses chiens et ses chevaux le Père aimoit et estimoit au-delà de toutes choses” (ET, 1:108). Like Squire Western, the baron has a pack of hounds of which we can assume he was duly proud; he also loves hunting: “Tous les chiens de ses basses-cours composaient une meute dans le besoin; ses palefreniers étaient ses piqueurs; le vicaire du village était son grand aumônier” (C, 119). The aforementioned Tuackum, one of Tom’s preceptors, chaplain to the Allworthy estate, may have provided Voltaire with the idea of the Baron’s “grand aumônier.” Lastly, the Baron’s temper, demon-strated at the conclusion of chapter 1 when he discovers Candide and Cunégonde behind the screen—“Monsieur le baron de Thunder-ten-tronckh passa auprès du paravent, et voyant cette cause et cet effet, chassa Candide à grands coups de pied dans le derrière” (C, 121)—can be seen in Western’s mercurial temperament, when he finds that his daughter has fallen in love with Tom Jones: “Quel coup de foudre pour M. Western. Quelle surprise! quelle chute d’idées pour le fougueux M. Western” (ET, 1:231).

It might be expected that Partridge, who eventually takes up with Tom, contributed to the overall picture of Candide’s Cacambo. The two share certain similarities. Partridge reappears in the story under the name of Benjamin, as a barber at the inn where Tom met the recruits and officers mentioned earlier: “Arrivée d’un barbier, digne confere de celui de Bagdad, et de celui de don Quichotte même” (ET, 2:16). Meeting the barber Benjamin, Tom exclaims: “Je t’aime de cette humeur; viens boire un coup après dîner, je serai charmé de te connaître mieux” (ET, 2:21). Later the barber reveals his talent as surgeon-schoolmaster-tailor: “Ah! ah! mon cher Raseur ... vous vous mêlez, à ce que je vois, de plus d’un métier” (ET, 2:32). Cacambo, we will recall, had been a jack-of-all-trades: “enfant de chœur, sacristain, matelot, moine, facteur, soldat, laquais” (C, 168). What also seems clear is that writing of Candide’s friendship with Cacambo, the only character in the tale described as Candide’s friend, Voltaire must have remembered Partridge and his avowed friendship for his “master” Tom— “Il [Cacambo] était au désespoir de se séparer d’un bon maître, devenu son ami intime” (C, 197). This

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seems especially plausible in light of La Place’s explicit references to that friendship. Bandaging the wounded Tom’s arm, Benjamin responds to Tom’s questions by asking: “Est-ce en Chirigien, ou en Ami, dit Benjamin, que vous voulez que je vous réponde? En Ami répliqua Jones” (ET, 2:33). Partridge later expresses consternation when he is taken for Tom’s servant: “Partridge offensé d’être pris pour un domestique, répondit qu’il n’avoit point de maître; que M. Jones étoit son ami” (ET, 2:138).

Partridge and Cacambo nevertheless offer a study in contrasts suggesting that Cacambo is the mirror-image of Partridge. Hence Partridge’s intolerable chattiness stands out against Cacambo’s taciturn reserve. Further, Cacambo’s knack of solving the many crises unfortunately arising from Candide’s innocence is the antithesis of Partridge’s reckless indiscretion, which repeatedly lands Jones in hot water. Lastly, Partridge’s plea on the road that Tom consider returning home: “Quand on est sûr d’un pareil gîte, c’est être fou de courir ainsi les champs comme des vagabonds” (ET, 2:283–84), anticipates the wording and syntax of the king’s admonition in Eldorado: “quand on est passablement quelque part, il faut y rester” (C, 192), in a chapter where Cacambo plays a leading role.

One could argue that Voltaire gleaned other anecdotes from L’Enfant trouvé before working them, sometimes quite altered, into Candide. For example, in the final paragraph of chapter 1, where the puppet-like protagonists do not exchange a single word, Candide is expelled from the castle without warning or explanation, and Cunégonde faints before her mother slaps her back to her senses. Consistent with what we have seen, this short scene represents the distillation of a whole sequence of confrontations on the subject of Sophia’s refusal to marry Allworthy’s nephew Blifil, confrontations during which Sophia is vigorously taken to task by her aunt and her father. In the course of one such interview with Squire Western, “tout fumant de colère” (ET, 1:232), Sophia faints. The puppet-like quality in Voltaire’s version of this scene can be read as a parody of La Place’s text, where Sophia’s fainting is the conventional larmoyant response to her father’s violent temper—“Sophie, que M. Western avoit laissée évanouie en sortant de chez elle, se relevoit avec bien de la peine” (ET, 2:233). And again in chapter 1 of Candide, Voltaire’s famous satire of aristocratic pride is conceivably a response to similar attitudes voiced in L’Enfant trouvé


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by Squire Western’s sister. In the course of a stormy interview with her niece, Mrs Western finally learns of Sophia’s love for Tom. Her anger and frustration pour out in a torrent of abuse—textual synonym of Mme la baronne’s slap—eloquently translating the family’s dynastic ambitions: “Ce que la surprise, le mépris, la rage, tout enfin ce qui peut inspirer une femme ambitieuse qui se voit si cruellement trompée dans ses espérances, fut employé pour accabler la triste Sophie et le malheureux Jones” (ET, 1:225).

The same aristocratic hauteur is given fuller expression in the letter Blifil writes to Jones, ordering him to leave the Allworthy estate. The priggish Blifil (“le religieux Blifil,” ET, 1:147) is a possible model for Cunégonde’s brother, who, even at the conclusion of Candide, refuses to allow Candide to marry Cunégonde on the grounds that he is un-worthy of her hand—“Je ne souffrirai jamais, dit le baron, une telle bassesse de sa part et une telle insolence de la vôtre” (C, 253). La Place couches Blifil’s letter in the following terms: “La présomption avec laquelle vous osez lui mander que vous renoncez à toutes vos prétentions sur certaine personne, lui [à M. Allworthy] paroît aussi admirable que rare: vous avez apparemment oublié ce que vous êtes, ainsi que ce qu’elle est” (ET, 1:268).

Lastly, Candide’s sojourn in Paris in chapter 22 displays unusual symmetry with Tom’s journey to London, where, in the second half of the novel, he hopes to find his beloved Sophia. Sandmann took the view that Fielding’s rakish Lady Bellaston has much in common with Candide’s marquise de Parolignac, though he thought the rapport too tenuous to be regarded as proof that Voltaire’s marquise was inspired by Fielding.41 Yet the similarities are well worth pointing out. Bellaston and Parolignac are older women who seduce younger, good-looking “gentlemen.” Lady Bellaston is motivated by lust. She nevertheless pretends to help Jones find Sophia: “La Dame promit de faire tous les efforts pour déterrer l’azile de Sophie” (ET, 3:64). This situation alone reminds us that in Candide the Perigourdine Abbé “finds” Cunégonde in the same chapter where Candide is introduced to the marquise’s salon; also “Cunégonde’s” letter (C, 219) reminds us that Jones and Sophie exchange billets doux during the entire second half of the novel. Returning to Jones, Bellaston inveigles herself into Tom’s affections and provides him with clothes and a banknote for fifty pounds. Admittedly, the situation is different in Candide, where the greedy Parolignac fleeces the unsuspecting Candide, both at the gaming table and in

41 Sandmann, 259.

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bed.42 The similarity in the two episodes, consequently, is that at the hands of a practised woman of the world, the rich but still innocent Candide is as easy a target as the penniless Jones. More striking still is that in the course of their respective relationships, each protagonist is unfaithful to his true love, and each expresses remorse.43 Consistent with my reading, Jones’s feelings are more complexly expressed than Candide’s. For without really apprehending all the implications of his relationship with the possessive and jealous Lady Bellaston, Jones nevertheless comes to feel towards her an oppressive sense of gratitude, underscored by guilt.

Of the accepted sources for Candide, none presents as many pertinent analogies as La Place’s L’Enfant trouvé. Nor are the analogies discussed here of peripheral interest. As we have seen, it can be argued that L’Enfant trouvé furnished Candide’s principal characters with their most memorable traits, including Candide, Cunégonde, and Pangloss. Significantly, all but a few of the affinities we have discussed are apparent in the first several chapters of Candide. That is to say, Voltaire appears to have borrowed from L’Enfant trouvé most heavily in the chapters that set Candide’s primary themes and conflicts in motion. It is as if Voltaire appropriated La Place’s principal characters, and, having isolated their defining qualities, set them on a course of his own invention. Candide and Tom could easily be narrative substitutes, the one notable difference in their characters being Candide’s inclination to philosophize. The creation of Cunégonde from fragments of two very different characters is more intriguing. Cunégonde is vain, unfaithful, and frivolous. She is also a repository for Voltaire’s barely concealed misogyny. Yet for Candide she symbolizes, until the end of the tale, the same ideal of female desirability embodied so perfectly by Sophia Western. We, the readers, may see through her affectations, but Candide does not. And that is precisely Voltaire’s point. Candide offers an unmistakable rebuttal to the partisans of the sentimental romance. Who could be more blindly “optimistic” than a young lover? Voltaire knew the pain

42 “La belle ayant aperçu deux énormes diamants aux deux mains de son jeune étranger, les loua de si bonne foi, que des doigts de Candide ils passèrent aux doigts de la marquise” (C, 218).

43 “Candide, en s’en retournant avec son abbé périgourdin, sentit quelques remords d’avoir fait une infidélité à mademoiselle Cunégonde” (C, 218).


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of disillusionment well, and it should come as no surprise that La Place’s sentimental version of Tom Jones provided him with models he could playfully and ironically undermine. Yet in order to do so, like the worm that bores into the apple, Voltaire first had to enter the model it was his intention to devour.44

Voltaire’s gift for pastiche makes this technique likely, though hard to prove conclusively. The “rapprochements d’expression,” word choices, and specific narrative anecdotes that we have examined offer reasonable evidence that, while writing fragments of Candide, Voltaire had—over and above the characters and plot—precise passages of the La Place translation in mind. Candide intermittently echoes La Place’s phrasing or word usage, and one need look no further for an explanation than Voltaire’s well-known talent for ironic mimicry. The technique is even more likely when one considers the pains Voltaire took in crafting a story where, as Ira Wade points out, “every word is chosen with infinite care.”45 Still, in the absence of incontrovertible evidence, we are left to speculate about the scope of the intermediary fragments that must have preceded the La Vallière manuscript of Candide.46

Why have scholars overlooked such a famous potential source of what is arguably the most widely read work in the entire canon of French literature? The question elicits a number of responses, the most obvious being that Voltaire’s mastery of the source material was so complete that the anecdotes borrowed from La Place are seamlessly woven into the warp and weft of a narrative scheme that, in effect, completely absorbs them. In other words, whatever specific details Candide may owe to L’Enfant trouvé, the end result is quintessential Voltaire. A case in point: the transposition of setting from Somerset to Westphalia gives ample scope for Voltaire’s highly sophisticated satire of Frederick the Great and Prussian militarism in chapter 3.

A more subtle reason, cited by Sandmann, for why critics have overlooked Tom Jones as an influence on Candide is the disparate natures of the two works. Even in an abridged translation, Fielding’s eighteen-book novel dwarfs Voltaire’s hundred-page conte . Tom Jones magnifies the storyline, doubling not only the main characters but

44 According to Sareil: “le comique détruit la matière romanesque à mesure qu’elle s’édifie.” Sareil, L’Écriture comique (Paris: puf, 1985), 124.

45 Ira O. Wade, Voltaire and Candide: Study in the Fusion of History, Art, and Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 141.

46 A handwritten version of Candide that Voltaire sent to the Duchess de la Vallière in 1758. Wade, “The La Vallière MS of Candide,” French Review 30, no. 1 (October, 1956), 3–4.

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also the settings in which they evolve. Thus in the first several books are two estates and two squires (Western, Allworthy), two sisters (Mrs Western, Bridgit), and two boys (Tom and Master Blifil). The two boys have two preceptors (Square and Tuackum), and Miss Bridgit two suitors (the brothers Blifil). When her husband Blifil dies, he is tended by two doctors, and so on. In its profuse length, the novel meanders from adventure to adventure, opening new channels wher-ever need arises. Like a mighty river, Tom Jones finds its level in an immense delta of complex, interconnected rivulets before achieving final unity in the sea—the “sea of life.” For it was Fielding’s aim to replicate in narrative form the intricate and often unseen pattern of events that form reality. In Candide, the opposite impulse is in play. Everything in Voltaire’s conte, from phrasing to chapter length, suggests compression, reduction, and distillation. Even the notion of time is abstract. None of Candide’s characters, with the notable exception of Cunégonde, ages in any significant way, and the reader has no idea how long the tale takes to unfold. If to the absence of time one adds the two-dimensionality of Voltaire’s characters, it soon becomes apparent that Voltaire focuses on conceptual reality in order to formulate (or reformulate) a response to the vicissitudes of life and, ultimately, to life itself. Rather than expand the narrative, it was Voltaire’s design to sketch his characters and the actions they engage in with a minimum of detail. The most important feature of the work is the narrative commentary that accompanies the characters and their actions. The paradox is that this essential feature of Voltaire’s art creates an impression of haste, used to justify the opinion of many that Candide was written at breakneck pace. Close reading creates precisely the opposite impression.

Only when one reads Fielding’s novel through the intermediary of the La Place translation does the influence of Tom Jones on Candide come into focus. Fielding, La Place, and Voltaire present three di-verse literary temperaments and three distinct fictional projects. And yet, to paraphrase the irrepressible Pangloss, had Fielding not written Tom Jones, had La Place not translated that novel as he did, when he did, and had Voltaire not read and transposed key elements of that same translation, he would not have conferred on Candide its immortal frame, and the best of all philosophical contes, had it been written at all, would have been a very different tale.

St. Francis Xavier University
