Rousseau's Dog

by David Edmonds

  At d’Holbach’s, Hume encountered Friedrich Grimm: Hume’s name had first surfaced in Grimm’s Correspondance littéraire in 1754 with a French translation of the Political Discourses, though a little later Grimm gave the Scotsman only a qualified vote of approval: “In spite of the fame that he has acquired in his country, and the reputation that he is beginning to have in France, he does not appear to be a man of the first power.” But by 1759, he was praising Hume as “one of the best intellects of England; and as philosophers belong less to their native country than to the universe which they enlighten, this man can be included in the small number of those who by their wisdom and by their works have benefited mankind.” As for his personality, after being exposed to Hume in Paris, the shrewd, clear-sighted Grimm reached an ambivalent verdict:

  M. Hume should like France; he has received there the most distinguished and flattering welcome. … What is still more pleasing is that all the pretty women have latched on to him, and the fat Scottish philosopher is so delighted to be in their company. This David Hume is an excellent man; he is naturally serene, he listens sensitively, he speaks sometimes with wit although he says little; but he is heavy, he has neither warmth, nor grace, nor anything suited to joining in the warbling of those charming little machines we call pretty women.

  Whatever their reservations, the philosophes sought Hume out. Next to d’Alembert, Turgot, then an enlightened royal administrator of the Limoges district in central France, was his closest friend. Their band included Suard (who later translated a crucial document for Hume) and the magistrate and chief censor for the French book trade, Lamoignon de Malesherbes. Early on in his stay, Hume told Hugh Blair that the men of letters there were really very agreeable: all of them men of the world; living in entire, or almost entire, harmony among themselves; and quite irreproachable in their morals.

  Ironically, the only cultural gap that Hume had difficulty in bridging was over religion. His problem was not that the philosophes were overly religious—quite the reverse. Hume squirmed at the disdain directed at believers. Once, dining with d’Holbach, Hume claimed he had never seen an atheist and questioned whether they really existed. But there were seventeen of them at that very table, replied d’Holbach. (Diderot, who recounted this anecdote, feared it would scandalize the English, who still believed a little in God, whereas, in his judgment, the French scarcely did at all.) It seems Hume was fated to be damned on one side of the Channel for having too little religion and on the other side for having too much.

  Mossner hazards that this—and the fact that his metaphysical skepticism was never fully embraced in Paris—contributed to an intellectual loneliness and might have been one reason why le bon David never returned to France. We might hazard another—that he wanted to avoid Mme de Boufflers.

  EVEN AT A distance of 250 years, it is impossible to resist the appeal of Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon, comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel. Hume’s odd relationship with her reveals the constraints on his capacity for sentiment. She also acted as an essential link between him and Rousseau.

  Mme de Boufflers exemplified the adage that in England marriage took place to end a young woman’s indiscretions, while in France it began them. In 1746, she had been married to Édouard, comte de Boufflers-Rouvel; but for over twenty years she was the mistress of a prince of the blood royal, Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de Conti. In Paris, he resided at the magnificent Temple—originally a fortified monastery of the Knights Templar. Hence Mme du Deffand’s dismissive reference to Mme de Boufflers as l’Idole du Temple.

  When in the capital, Mme de Boufflers lived in rue Notre-Damede-Nazareth in the Temple precincts. There she held her illustrious salon, serving tea à l’anglaise in the glittering Room of the Four Mirrors. One such séance can be seen at Versailles in Michel-Barthelémy Ollivier’s painting, commissioned by Conti in 1766, English Tea, in the Room of Four Mirrors, at the Temple, with All the Court of the Prince de Conti. Chaperoned by his father on his second European tour, the young Mozart is giving a recital. Her salon was in the grand style, an eclectic mix of high nobility, writers, and thinkers, including Hume, Gustav III of Sweden, Grimm, and d’Alembert. On Fridays, she entertained a chosen few—again including Hume—in her own house.

  Beautiful, clever, she was the adulée of many and the jealous target of some. Her taste for letters gave her another nickname, “Learned Minerva.” Walpole had reservations. “She is two women, the upper and the lower. I need not tell you that the lower is gallant, and still has pretensions. The upper is very sensible, too, and has a measured eloquence that is just and pleasing—but all is spoiled by an unrelaxed attention to applause. You would think she was always sitting for her picture to her biographer.” Mme du Deffand pronounced her drôle, having damned her with faint praise:

  Her good qualities, for she has several, result from the emptiness of her character and from the slight impression that everything around her makes on her. … She is occupied solely with herself and not with others. She is like a flute that pronounces laws and delivers oracles, in a voice so pretty and a manner so sweet.

  Mme de Boufflers did indeed devise moral maxims. She hung a copy of her “Rule of Life” on her bedroom wall. It was a litany of eighteenth-century manners and included: “In conduct, simplicity and reason; in appearance, propriety and decency; in manners, propriety and decorum; in actions, justice and generosity; in the use of wealth, economy and liberality; in conversation, clearness, truth, precision; in adversity, courage and pride; in prosperity, modesty and moderation; in society, charm, ease, courteousness; in domestic life, integrity and kindness without familiarity; to sacrifice everything for tranquillity of soul; to permit oneself only innocent railleries, which cannot wound.” She did not expect her friends to flout these standards.

  Madame de Boufflers opened contact with Rousseau in 1758. She was staying with Mme de Luxembourg at Montmorency and asked Rousseau if she could see him. In the Confessions, he records: “I sent the conventional reply, but I did not stir.” He then relishes his developing romantic attachment to her: “If I did not commit the foolishness of becoming [Conti’s] rival, I narrowly escaped doing so. … She was beautiful and still young. … I was nearly caught. I think that she saw it. … But for this once, I was sensible. … Having perceived the emotion she caused me, Mme de Boufflers could also see that I had triumphed over it.”

  Her dealings with Hume went back to March 1761, when she had taken the initiative in writing to him. “I dare only add that in all the products of your pen, you show yourself a perfect philosopher, a statesman, an historian of genius, an enlightened political scientist, a true patriot.” Thus began a correspondence that lasted until his death. In a letter eighteen months after opening communication, she offered a description of herself approaching forty.

  A great part of my youth is over. Some delicacy in features, mildness and decency in countenance, are the only exterior advantages, I can boast of. And as for interior, common sense, improved a little, by early good reading, are all I possess. [My English is confined but] if I am intitled [sic] to some elegancy I owe it to the repeated readings of your admirable works.

  Their correspondence took on a passionate note, though it is possible that Hume misread its significance for her. An editor of Walpole’s letters points out that in prerevolutionary Paris, a woman of fashion passed through well-delineated states. “When young she was galante; on becoming more mature, she became a bel esprit. These were as strictly defined and observed as changes of dress on a particular day of the different seasons. A woman endeavouring to attract lovers after she had ceased to be a galante would have been not less ridiculous than her wearing velvet when all the rest of the world were in demisaison.”

  So, lively and romantic language, expressions of attachment, could be used in the epoch of bel esprit without any fear of misunderstanding by society or the “loving” partner. Did Hume recognize this where Mme de Boufflers was concerned? Did he imagine that there was mor
e to her sentiments than the regard of an ardent spirit? Walpole appears to have been aware of the convention: in a letter of July 11, 1766, he describes her as “a savante, philosophe, author, bel esprit.” As for Hume’s own response, there is the curious episode of the encounter that did not take place during their burgeoning attachment.

  In the springtime of 1763, Hume had the opportunity to see his correspondent for the first time when she came to England on what became a celebrity tour. She traveled to London on April 17, confiding to her cousin and escort Lord Elibank that the true purpose of her journey was to meet Hume.

  In London, “Madame Blewflower” (as the mob called her) was the sensation of the moment, with the pick of the beau monde vying to entertain her. She visited Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill. She stayed with several dukes, and a play was put on in her honor. When she visited Dr. Johnson, the sage hurried to show her to her coach; this was considered a remarkable tribute.

  Elibank did his best to get Hume to London: “You cannot in decency neglect the opportunity of gratifying this flattering curiosity, perhaps passion, of the most amiable of God’s creation.”

  However, Hume did neglect it. Mme de Boufflers had intended only a two-month sojourn, but lingered on in hope of the absent Hume’s emerging. He had gone visiting in Yorkshire, and it was not until July 3 that he sent his rather feeble and evasive excuses for not seeking her out. “I am only afraid that, to a person acquainted with the sociable and conversible parties of France, the showy and dazzling crowds of London assemblies would afford but an indifferent entertainment, and that the love of retreat and solitude, with which the English are reproached, never appears more conspicuously, than when they draw together a multitude of 500 people.”

  Frustrated, she eventually returned to Paris on July 23.

  The philosopher and l’Idole still did not come face-to-face until several months after his transfer to Paris. She was away in the country suffering from measles and then depression, occasioning from Rousseau a pretty sympathy. “Ah! How could melancholy dare take up her abode in so beautiful a soul, adorned with a garment which so admirably becomes its wearer.”

  However, once they did get together, some of Hume’s letters suggest they grew so close that he felt the need to assure her of his rectitude. He probably again misinterpreted her bel esprit. The role she had for him was fond courtier, always subordinate to her governing relationship with the prince. (A recognized term had been coined for the constant but chivalrous attendant, cicisbeo, also used to mean a hanger-on.) While formally rejoicing in the role, Hume lacked commitment to the time it implied, as well as the willingness (and ability?) to make the needed emotional investment.

  The death of Mme de Boufflers’s husband in October 1764 shook her world to its foundations. Without the cover provided by marriage, her remaining with Conti risked being seen as improper: she was desperate to marry him. He was equally determined not to wed her.

  Hume’s part now evolved from fond courtier to compassionate adviser. Seemingly with some relief, he stepped back, and became objective, supportive, and shrewd. In a series of letters, he advised that without a husband in the background, she could no longer properly be at Conti’s side; she should set up on her own and build a new social life.

  It was not what she wanted to hear. Still fixed on marriage to Conti, and feeling ill and wretched, she then sought relief in England. In a letter to the Marquise de Barbantane, Hume remarked on her leaving in such a miserable state, and added, “I can hope for no event that will restore her peace of mind, except one, which is not likely to happen; and she herself is sensible of it. I have wrote in the terms, which the Prince desired [authors’ italics]; though I wonder he should expect a great effect from anything that can be wrote or said by anybody on that head. If he does not choose to apply the proper remedy, he need expect no cure.” In other words, when he counseled his unhappy friend so sympathetically, he seems to have been acting as the prince’s agent.

  No doubt this was a well-intentioned deceit by le bon David with the aim of helping the Minerve savante face up to unwelcome facts. Happily, she never knew of his deception. But later she was put out to discover another. He had promised to return to Paris, and she had arranged and lovingly furnished rooms for him. What he had not told her was that before leaving the capital, he had tried to rent other houses there with the assistance of other friends, no admirers of l’Idole.

  WITH THE ARRIVAL of the Duke of Richmond at the embassy on November 9, the end of Hume’s rapturous posting had come into sight. There were rumors in London, of which Hume was unaware, that he might be appointed embassy secretary in Lisbon. The man himself was vacillating. Home to Edinburgh? Rent a house in Paris? Take an Italian trip with d’Alembert? Of one thing he was certain. There was no question of London.

  But thither he went on January 4, 1766. He bade farewell to “the best place in the world,” its salons, its conversation, and its adoration.

  Bound for London, Rousseau at his side, Rousseau’s dog Sultan running ahead of the carriage.

  8

  Stormy Passage

  I was born for friendship.

  —ROUSSEAU

  His soul is made for yours.

  —MME DE VERDELIN to Rousseau

  HUME HAD BEEN kept abreast of Rousseau’s predicament. In March 1765, a brilliant young mathematician, Alexis-Claude Clairaut (working from Newtonian principles, he had predicted the return of Halley’s Comet in 1759), had shown Hume a “pathetic letter” from Rousseau, depicting the beleaguered exile as subsisting in abject misery and penury. Hume responded with a plan he circulated among friends of Clairaut’s and Rousseau’s in Paris. Aware of Rousseau’s reluctance to accept anything that smacked of charity, they intended a degree of subterfuge. The idea was to arrange for the London publication of his Dictionary of Music, and to slip the publisher additional money to pass off to the author as “royalties.”

  Urging Hume to assist Rousseau was yet another noblewoman, the Marquise de Verdelin. (She was close to Rousseau’s would-be amour, Sophie d’Houdetot.) He first encountered the marquise during his stay at the Hermitage in 1757. She was twenty-nine, and had a pale face and a strikingly long neck. Rousseau must have given an ill-mannered impression, stalking off when she turned up with Mme d’Houdetot. She then came to see him at Mont-Louis but did not catch him at home. When he failed to return her visits, she sent him pots of flowers for his terrace, forcing his acknowledgment.

  Rousseau thought Mme de Verdelin distinctly unappealing. “Spiteful remarks and witticisms rise so simply to her lips that one needs to be perpetually on the watch—a very tiring thing for me—to see when one is being laughed at.” The strictures in the Confessions run on. “I rarely heard her say anything good of her absent friends without slipping in some damaging word. What she did not construe in some bad sense, she turned to ridicule.” Her incessant notes and messages were a nuisance, “unendurable.”

  Mme de Verdelin’s father was an impecunious nobleman who had married her off at the age of twenty-two to a rich marquis more than four decades her senior. Her persistence and her many kind letters to Rousseau at Môtiers eventually won him over. She even became a soul mate. In times of trouble they consoled each other, and this need for each other’s company, Rousseau conceded, made him overlook her flaws. “Nothing draws two hearts together so much as the pleasure of weeping together.” He records the satisfaction it gave him when she and her daughter visited him at Môtiers, where they witnessed how he was persecuted. Mme de Verdelin implored him to flee to England.

  Clairaut’s untimely death on May 17 had put an end to the original project for rescuing Rousseau. At the express desire of Mme de Verdelin, after she returned to Paris from Môtiers in October, Hume began to collaborate on the scheme for Rousseau’s escape to England. (Curiously, Mme de Verdelin was one of the few French noblewomen immune to Hume’s charms. “Mr. Hume is the darling of all the pretty women here; that is probably why he is not one with me.”) Hume�
��s representative in London was to be John Stewart, who traveled from Paris with his instructions. Gilbert Elliot would lend a helping hand. The new idea was for Rousseau and his gouvernante to be provided with rooms and board in the country at fifty to sixty pounds a year, of which he would pay only twenty to twenty-five. Hume would privately make up the difference.

  Meanwhile, Rousseau had been driven on. Yverdon, Môtiers, Isle Saint-Pierre. Now his flight took him on October 27,1765, to the small lakeside city of Bienne. He had received so warm a welcome, he told Du Peyrou that same day, that he hoped to winter there and in the spring go to England, “where I ought to have gone in the first place.” Mme de Verdelin received the same message. She had promised to arrange a laissez-passer for him to cross French territory on his way into exile. Rousseau seemed to have made a volte-face: he told her that England was “the only country where some liberty remains.” But in fact, he had still not finally made up his mind. Invitations had arrived from Vienna and Corsica; Prussia and Silesia were also canvassed. The main contender was Berlin, where Earl Marischal had promised asylum, though he worried that the climate was too cold. However, Rousseau was mistaken about Bienne’s hospitality. On October 28, he told Du Peyrou that he was leaving on the morrow—before he was chased out. Forty-eight hours later he was in Basel writing to Le Vasseur. He would head for Strasbourg; after that he did not know what he would do. He added that during the journey Sultan had done ten leagues at a gallop.

  He left Switzerland, “that murderous land,” never to set foot in it again, and headed north, back into France.