Rousseau's Dog

by David Edmonds

  On the second day of November, Rousseau entered Strasbourg (French territory since 1697) and put up at an inn, La Fleur. There he received a fateful letter from Hume. It had been dispatched from Fontainebleau on October 22, the address written by Mme de Verdelin: à Monsieur Rousseau à Isle Saint Pierre au Canton de Berne en Suisse.

  Not expecting to assume personal charge of Rousseau’s welfare or even to be in England if Rousseau sought refuge there, Hume trod carefully in his approach to the exile. He was “afraid of being in the number of those troublesome people, who, on the pretence of being your admirers, never cease persecuting you with their letters.” However, he continued, if Rousseau still wished to go to London, he had arranged for Gilbert Elliot to take care of him. “If you let him know of your arrival, he will immediately wait on you, and will conduct you to your retreat. … As the English booksellers can afford higher prices to authors than those of Paris, you will have no difficulty to live frugally in that country on the fruits of your own industry. I mention this circumstance, because I am well acquainted with your resolution of laying mankind under obligations to you, without allowing them to make you any return.” In England, Rousseau would be free of persecution, “not only [because of] the tolerating spirit of our laws, but from the respect, which everyone there bears to your character.”

  Rousseau responded from Strasbourg, on December 4, to “the most illustrious of my contemporaries, a man whose goodness surpasses his fame,” and put himself under Hume’s wing, apparently without qualms:

  Your goodness affects me as much as it does me honour. The best reply I can make to your offers is to accept them, which I do. I shall set out in five or six days to throw myself into your arms. It is the advice of my Lord Marischal, my protector, friend and father: it is the advice also of [Mme de Verdelin], whose good sense and benevolence serve equally for my direction and consolation; in fine, I may say it is the advice of my own heart, which takes pleasure in being indebted to the most illustrious of my contemporaries, to a man whose goodness surpasses his glory. I sigh for a solitary and free retirement, where I may finish my days in peace.

  He was already thinking ahead to how he could best organize his passage. In a letter to Mme de Verdelin, he wrote, “p.s. I forgot to tell you, Madame, that I will find at Paris a companion for the journey to London. He is a business man, and these people have, and procure, great facilities for travel.” Jean-Jacques de Luze was a prominent citizen of Neuchâtel, and president of the Corn Exchange. Thérèse was still in Isle Saint-Pierre—Rousseau would have to send for her later. “I really cannot drag her with me … until I have found a refuge.”

  However, exhausted by nervous stress and the constant journeying, Rousseau was in no hurry. Initially, he took meals alone at the inn with only Sultan for company, but when word spread that he was in town, local people queued to pay their respects, and he became caught up in a social whirl. The director of the theater even put on a packed and rapturously received production of Le Devin du village, and then offered to stage Rousseau’s plays. But on December 9 at seven in the morning, Rousseau left for Paris. His post chaise rolled through Porte Saint-Antoine exactly one week later.

  At last the Swiss fugitive would come face-to-face with his Scottish patron.

  HOW THE OPENING encounter between saved and savior went appears not to have been recorded by either. Indeed, there is a mysterious lacuna in Rousseau’s letters from this period as a whole: missing are any details of his time together with Hume. One would be hard put to know they had even met. However, to Mme de Verdelin, on December 18, Rousseau made apparent his gratitude. He was, he said, “even more touched than proud because of the interest this sublime genius deigns to take in me.”

  At the end of December, Hume wrote an unreserved panegyric to Blair, comparing Rousseau to Socrates—only with more genius—and, like a starry-eyed lover, seeing beauty in his adored one’s blemishes:

  I find him mild, and gentle and modest and good humoured. … M. Rousseau is of small stature; and would rather be ugly, had he not the finest physiognomy in the world, I mean, the most expressive countenance. His modesty seems not to be good manners but ignorance of his own excellence. As he writes and speaks and acts from the impulse of genius, more than from the use of his ordinary faculties, it is very likely that he forgets its force, whenever it is laid asleep.

  Hume also reported that he had been assured (not saying by whom) that “at times he believes he has inspirations from an immediate communication with the Divinity: he falls sometimes into ecstasies which retain him in the same posture for hours together.”

  ROUSSEAU’S APPEARANCE IN Paris coincided with a prolonged spell of dreadful weather. Walpole complained that there had not been two good days together since October: he had not anticipated living in Siberia. Happily for Rousseau, his lodgings offered every protection.

  He was initially housed with the widow of his recently deceased Paris publisher Nicolas-Bonaventure Duchesne, but after three days, Conti moved him to the Hôtel Saint-Simon in the Temple, which afforded him both luxury and security, though Hume reported to Blair that the magnificence of the apartment made the Swiss uneasy.

  It would have been natural for a wanted man given such sanctuary to remain out of sight and to stay within the Temple precincts, where he could welcome guests. Not Rousseau. Although he told his correspondents that he was resolved to remain unobtrusive, he paraded through the streets, his Armenian costume flapping, Sultan by his side. Perhaps he had been notified that the parlement had decided not to enforce its warrant while he was merely passing through.

  In the Correspondance littéraire, Grimm recorded that Rousseau received a multitude of visitors in the hotel and that the day after his entrance into Paris,

  [he] walked in the Luxembourg in Armenian garb; but as no one knew in advance, no one profited by the spectacle. He also walked in the boulevard nearest his lodging at a certain time every day. His reappearance created great excitement: crowds gathered wherever he went.

  An observer said that “if you asked one half of the people what they were doing, they replied they wanted to see Jean-Jacques; and if asked who he was, they replied that they did not know anything about that, but that they were waiting to see him pass.” In a belated report about the buzz from Paris, the St. James’s Chronicle of January 21 informed its readers that the “celebrated Rousseau” was “perpetually besieged by crowds that thronged to see him.” One of those paying homage was the fugitive radical John Wilkes, who might have had some sympathy with his fellow exile, if not with his Scottish sponsor.

  In letters to Edinburgh, Hume left a sketch of their first conversations in the Temple. Rousseau spoke about his treatment in Switzerland by the mob in Neuchâtel: the stone bench laid above his door, the woman who objected to his theology and who said she would have liked to blow out his brains, his being banned by the canton of Bern. As related to Hume, all this was the consequence more of his democratic than of his religious principles. (That was certainly Dr. Tronchin’s view. The citizens of Geneva, he complained, had been inspired to campaign for political reform by On the Social Contract.)

  Hume acted as Rousseau’s Temple gatekeeper, waving away those visitors he considered undesirable or unwelcome to his charge. Mme de Boufflers, his supporter and fellow resident of the Temple, was present when Rousseau remarked how odd it was that he should be so beloved by Frenchwomen whose morals he had decried and so hated by Swiss women whom he had so much extolled. She resolved the paradox gracefully: “We are fond of you because we know that, however much you might rail, you are at bottom fond of us to distraction. But the Swiss women hate you, because they are conscious that they have not merit to deserve your attention.”

  Indeed, according to Hume, ladies beseeched him to introduce them to Rousseau: “Were I to open a subscription with his consent, I should receive £50,000 in a fortnight. … Voltaire and everybody else are quite eclipsed by him.” “Even his maid La [sic] Vasseur who is very homely and ve
ry awkward, is more talked of than the Princess of Morocco or the Countess of Egmont, on account of her fidelity and attachment toward him.” As Mlle Le Vasseur was still in Switzerland, it is not clear how Hume actually knew what she looked like, but he was plainly the recipient of gossip about Rousseau from his philosophe friends. He went on: “His very dog, who is no better than a coly [sic], has a name and reputation in the world.” (Hume might not have been so dismissive had Sultan been a socially acceptable spaniel.) De Luze remarked that the gouvernante was the chief cause of his leaving Neuchâtel: “She passes as wicked and quarrelsome, and tattling.”

  Robert Liston (a tutor to the sons of one of Hume’s friends), who suffered badly from Rousseau fever, did gain access. On the morning of Rousseau’s departure for London, Liston was introduced to him at the Hôtel Saint-Simon. This involved an encounter with Mme de Boufflers, ingenuously described by Liston as “a very famous woman and a great protectress of men of learning” who “made me some compliments.” Rousseau received him “very well. I was about an hour there, saw him dine, and had the honour to help him into the chaise. He said he would be glad to crack [converse] with me when I came to England &c. His person is very thin & delicate looking, his face, and especially his sharp black eyes, promise everything he has shown himself possessed of. His manners simple and affable.”

  Rousseau had initially seemed in no rush to leave Paris, but the mobs he attracted had begun to make him uneasy and he was becoming impatient to be alone. He wrote to de Luze, “I do not know how much longer I can endure this public scene. Could you for pity’s sake hasten our departure?”

  In the absence of any agreeable alternative, Hume had at last resigned himself to going back to London and was also anxious for them to move on. The Duc de Choiseul, then in charge of the Admiralty but just about to become minister of war, had notified the Prince de Conti and the British embassy that there was a limit to how much longer the authorities could ignore Rousseau’s open defiance of the warrant and the authority of the parlement.

  Grimm passed the news on to his readers: “The police told him to leave without delay if he did not want to be arrested; in consequence, he left on 4 January, accompanied by Mr. David Hume who was returning to England but proposed to come back to spend a lot of time in Paris.” To give them a breathing space from sightseers and well-wishers, Hume publicly announced their departure for January 2 while always planning it for the fourth.

  Some of Hume’s friends fretted that he had no idea what he was undertaking. After all, Diderot, d’Alembert, and Grimm had previous experience of Rousseau. The Scotsman was duly warned about Rousseau’s suspicious mind and persecution mania.

  Hume sought out Mme de Verdelin, cross-examining her in his quest for reassurance. She wrote to Rousseau that Hume had said, “I do not want to serve a man merely because he is celebrated. If he is virtuous and persecuted, I would devote myself to him. Are these stories true?” She managed to stiffen Hume’s resolve, so she claimed to Rousseau. “I commended him to your welfare. He is worthy of the trust. … His soul is made for yours.”

  Then, on the threshold of their journey, at about nine in the evening, Hume went straight from a two-hour visit to Mme de Boufflers and Rousseau to see d’Holbach, presumably to make his final farewells. Their conversation took an unexpected turn. Apologizing for puncturing Hume’s illusions, the baron warned him in chilling tones that he would soon be sadly disabused. “You don’t know your man. I will tell you plainly, you’re warming a viper in your bosom.” Hume expostulated, but according to Mossner’s colorful account, as Hume left, d’Holbach’s words rang in his ears. “You don’t know your man, David, you don’t know your man.”

  D’Holbach was not the only observer filled with foreboding on Hume’s behalf. On January 2, Walpole wrote to Lady Hervey:

  Mr. Hume carries this letter and Rousseau to England. I wish the former may not repent having engaged with the latter, who contradicts and quarrels with all mankind, in order to obtain their admiration. I think both his means and his end below such a genius. If I had talents like his, I should despise any suffrage below my own standard, and should blush to owe any part of my fame to singularities and affectations.

  On January 4, in a letter to Lady Mary Coke, Walpole returned to the subject, but in a frivolous vein: “Rousseau set out this morning for England. As he loves to contradict a whole nation, I suppose he will write for the present opposition. Pray tell me if he becomes the fashion.”

  THE LITTLE PARTY—Hume, de Luze, Rousseau, and Sultan—departed Paris in two post chaises. As Mossner tells it, Rousseau had instructed de Luze: “You will take your post chaise and Mr. Hume will take his, and we shall change from time to time.” Presumably, Sultan insisted on running ahead for part of the way, and perched with Rousseau for the rest.

  They passed four nights on the road, putting up successively at Senlis, Roye, Arras, and Aine before reaching Calais on January 8. In either Senlis or Roye (accounts disagree), the three men had to share a room. During the night, Rousseau had an unnerving experience that preyed on his mind. He heard Hume muttering, repeatedly, “Je tiens Jean-Jacques Rousseau [I hold Jean-Jacques Rousseau].” Rousseau broke out in a cold sweat as he lay there, wakeful and listening.

  In Calais, while they waited for the wind to come around in their favor, Hume mentioned the possibility of Rousseau’s being given a pension from George III. Rousseau queried how he could accept one from George III when he had refused one from Frederick the Great. Hume maintained that the cases were quite different, though it is unclear quite what he thought the distinction was. Rousseau said he would consult Earl Marischal. Hume also, in his words, “exhorted” Rousseau to start on his memoirs. Rousseau said he had already started, and went on, “I shall describe myself in such plain colours, that henceforth every one may boast that he knows himself and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.” “I believe,” said Hume, “that he intends seriously to draw his own picture in its true colours: but I believe at the same time that nobody knows himself less.”

  After twelve storm-tossed hours, they finally made Dover on January 11. Hume, now released from his seasickness, was struck by the apparent inconsistency between his guest’s chronic complaints of illness and his staying in the open during the crossing. To Mme de Boufflers he remarked that though Rousseau claimed to be infirm, he is “one of the most robust men I know” and that he had passed the night in the voyage on deck when the seamen were frozen to death, and came to no harm.

  They set out for London, breaking their journey at Canterbury and Dartford, and reached the capital on January 13.

  Rousseau’s presence was news, immediately announced to their readers by the London papers. And, for once, Hume was in demand in the English capital: society was agog to see his prize.

  9

  A London Sensation

  The English are such a mobbish people.

  —DAVID HUME

  ROUSSEAU WAS ALL the rage. The papers trumpeted both his docking in Dover and his appearance in London. The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser revealed, “The ingenious Mr. R arrived in town last Monday in company with David Hume esq.” Intriguingly, the London Chronicle gave details of Rousseau’s and Hume’s itinerary on separate pages, as if they were in no way connected—possibly at Hume’s request.

  Crowds came on to the streets. Lionized in Paris, Hume now found himself, in the words of a Scottish friend, “the show-er of the lion.” London society esteemed Rousseau’s work, sympathized with his predicament, and congratulated itself on welcoming him. In Britain, the Swiss author enjoyed an unrivaled reputation—higher than in any other part of Europe. Almost all his works had received favorable reviews, especially Héloïse and Émile, and the British press had closely followed his persecution. Long extracts from Héloïse had been reproduced in the London Chronicle, where he was compared to Samuel Richardson. The London Chronicle had also published passages from Émile and urged mothers to breast-feed their children, though it warned readers that Ro
usseau mistook “novelty of opinion for justness of thinking.”

  Booksellers cashed in on the publicity, advertising Rousseau’s books in the newspapers. Hume benefited: his History was also heavily promoted. Two papers that initially reported Hume’s securing a place for Rousseau in Richmond, published a correction, identifying his proper address as Buckingham Street, just below the Strand on the north bank of the Thames.

  The British were inordinately proud of their country as the land of tolerance and free speech. In The Comedian in 1732, Fielding wrote that free speech was “that pure and perfect state of liberty which we enjoy in a degree superior to every foreign nation.” The Swiss exile reflected this self-image back to them. The Public Advertiser notified its readers that Rousseau had been

  brought into much trouble and vexation, both in Switzerland and in France for having ventured to publish, in many works, his sentiments with a spirit and a freedom which cannot be done with impunity in any Kingdom or state except this blessed island. And ‘tis with pleasure we find he has chosen an asylum amongst a people, who know how to respect one of his distinguished talents.

  The significance of the papers at this period is difficult to exaggerate. The effective end of press licensing at the beginning of the century, improvements in technology, a reduction in costs, and an explosion in literacy had created an unprecedented interest in books, magazines, and papers. There was a boom in sales of both novels and works of nonfiction.

  The British public’s deepening love affair with newspapers—in the provinces as well as the capital—fundamentally altered the flow of information through society. In the capital, sixty newspapers were published. Readers could glut themselves on political news and comment, foreign news, Court news, crime news, news of births, marriages, and deaths. There were campaigns for technological developments and agricultural developments—in 1766, the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Machines, and Commerce offered twenty pounds for the best machine invented for slicing turnips. There were appointments, advertisements (given the overabundance of prostitutes, an unsurprising number promoted cures or palliatives for venereal disease), theater reviews, financial reports, shipping news, opinion, and, naturally, gossip about notables. The recognized use of coded references protected the purveyors of scandal and vituperative personal attacks on public figures. Hume worried about the growing power of the fourth estate and its lack of deference—in a private letter he railed against “the abuse of liberty.”