It would sound vain to tell you the honours and distinctions I receive, and how much I am in fashion; yet when they come from the handsomest women in France, and the most respectable in point of character, can one help being a little proud? If I was twenty years younger, I should wish they were not quite so respectable. … Yet, you know, my present fame is owing to a very trifling composition, but which has made incredible noise. I was one evening at Madame Geoffrin’s joking on Rousseau’s affectations and contradictions, and said some things that diverted them. When I came home, I put them in a letter, and showed it next day to Helvétius, and the Duke de Nivernois, who were so pleased with it, that after telling me some faults in the language, which you may be sure there were, they encouraged me to let it be seen. … The copies have spread like wildfire, et me voici à la mode. … Here is the letter.
He sent copies of the letter to other regular correspondents. To one (John Chute, who worked with him on Strawberry Hill), he recounted why he felt moved to upbraid Rousseau—whom he regarded as a charlatan and hypocrite.
I enclose a trifle that I wrote lately, which got about and has made enormous noise in a city where they run and cackle after an event, like a parcel of hens after an accidental husk of a grape. … I am peevish that with his parts [Rousseau] should be such a mountebank; but what made me more peevish was, that after receiving Wilkes with the greatest civilities, he paid court to Mr. Hume by complaining of Wilkes’s visit and intrusion.
And to another (Anne Pitt), he archly deprecated his newfound fame: would she believe that, as news of the hoax letter swept the French capital, he became the fashion?
Everybody would have a copy; the next thing was, everybody would see the author. Thus was I dandled about, with my little legs and arms shaking like a pantin [child’s puppet].
However, not all the town reveled in his wit. Mme de Boufflers and Conti became enraged by it: in Walpole’s words, he “had the misfortune to give great offence au Temple.” On January 7, Mme de Boufflers had even mailed a letter to Hume hoping to catch him at Calais. Missing him there, it was forwarded to London. She asked whether “a letter from the King of Prussia that was circulating round Paris was true or false. … They say [the letter] is full of irony.”
As we have seen, Hume must have raised this with Rousseau on or before January 18, probably stirred into action by her mentioning it. Rousseau wrote to Mme de Boufflers that day, and Hume to her the next when he added the P.S. “M. Rousseau says the letter of the King of Prussia is a forgery; and he suspects it to come from M. de Voltaire.” But by that time, she had already discovered it was a spoof. When, on January 12, Walpole supped at Mme du Deffand’s, his hostess said Mmes de Luxembourg and de Boufflers had both been there to complain about the letter: Mme de Boufflers said it was “wicked to be so hard on an unfortunate and so ridicule him.” A fortnight later, l’Idole du Temple lined up the Prince de Conti to add weight to her finger-wagging. Walpole found their earnestness comical and, according to the description he sent to Thomas Gray, played the clown.
Madame de Boufflers, with a tone of sentiment, and the accents of lamenting humanity, abused me heartily and then complained to myself with the utmost softness. I acted contrition … I acted contrition, but had like to have spoiled all, by growing dreadfully tired of a second lecture from the Prince of Conti who took up the ball, and made himself the hero of a history wherein he had nothing to do. I listened, did not understand half he said (nor he neither), forgot the rest, said “Yes” when I should have said “No,” yawned when I should have smiled, and was very penitent when I should have rejoiced at my pardon.
Walpole enclosed yet another copy. To the Reverend Mr. Cole, on February 28, 1766, he also scorned Rousseau’s idiosyncrasies and—a leitmotif of the philosophes, this—questioned his genuineness. The “King of Prussia” letter was
only a laugh at his affectations. I hear he does not succeed in England, where his singularities are no curiosity. Yet he must stay there, or give up all his pretensions. To quit a country where he may be at ease, and unpersecuted, will be owning that tranquillity is not what he seeks.
WALPOLE’S HANDIWORK WAS now making a splash in London, too. His distribution alone had guaranteed that a number of copies were circulating around the city. An early mention in the press appeared on January 28–30 in the St. James’s Chronicle: “A letter is handed about Paris, said to have been written by the King of Prussia, to the celebrated Rousseau.” The British Chronicle for January 31 soberly pointed out it had not yet been “authenticated.”
Toward the end of January or beginning of February, Hume returned to the subject with Mme de Boufflers, supposing by that time she had learned Walpole was responsible. “[Walpole] is a very worthy man; he esteems and even admires Rousseau; yet he could not forbear, for the sake of a very indifferent joke, the turning him into ridicule, and saying harsh things about him. I am a little angry with him; and I hear you are a great deal; but the matter ought to be treated only as a piece of levity.”
“A piece of levity” or not, the spoof must have made Hume deeply uncomfortable—even beyond what might be natural when a companion is satirized accurately. We can conjecture that it was only with Mme de Boufflers’s Calais letter, showing how public the King of Prussia hoax had become, that Hume was panicked into telling Rousseau of its existence. There is every reason to suppose that Hume was aware of the letter’s true authorship from the outset, though he let Rousseau suspect, first, Voltaire, then d’Alembert.
The Scotsman was notably anxious lest Mme de Boufflers think he had contributed the key witticism to the bogus letter, and, curiously, he had a (guilty?) need to have his memory vouched for. In mid-February, he asked Mme de Barbantane to assure Mme de Boufflers “that Horace Walpole’s letter was not founded on any pleasantry of mine; the only pleasantry in that letter came from his own mouth, in my company, at Lord Ossory’s table; which My Lord remembers very well.” In his anxiety to disclaim responsibility, Hume had let slip that he was present at the satire’s creation.
So the question arises, what precisely did Hume know of the letter and when did he know it?
LORD OSSORY WAS one of two young men whom le bon David would summon as witnesses in his defense. The other was John Craufurd (often rendered as the modern “Crawford”). Hume and Walpole dined with both regularly in Paris in the winter of 1765. Walpole told Thomas Brand on October 19, “The man I have liked best in Paris is an Englishman, Lord Ossory, who is one of the most sensible young men I ever saw.” He praised him, too, as one of the “properest and most amiable young men I ever knew.” In fact, Ossory was a determined gambler and, with John Craufurd, a founder member of Almack’s notorious club in Mayfair in 1764. Back in London, they put Hume up for membership. As for Craufurd, nicknamed “Fish” for his inquisitive manner, he was a man-about-town, close to Mme du Deffand. Sitting relaxed in an easy chair, he looks out from his portrait with a cool, appraising gaze. He is probably the subject of a Paris police report that praises a young Briton’s sangfroid on discovering his mistress cheating on him when he had paid her to be faithful for six months. (He became M.P. for a Scottish constituency in 1774.)
Hume’s approach was to deny having had any sight of the satire while he was in Paris, and Walpole (glorying in his wit) backed him up. He confirmed, at Hume’s request, that he had not shown it to Hume, even though they lived for a while in the same inn, because the Scotsman was Rousseau’s host. Walpole wrote (on July 26), “I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing the King of Prussia’s letter, but I do assure you with the utmost truth that it was several days before you left Paris, & before Rousseau’s arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you; but it was the reason why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him, as you often proposed to me; thinking it wrong to go & make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him.”
That was the line. Howev
er, Walpole’s Paris Journal, which provides a daily record of where Walpole went and with whom he dined and supped in December 1765 and January 1766, indicates that this was less than the whole truth.
AS WE RECORD above, Hume told Mme de Barbantane that “Horace Walpole’s letter was not founded on any pleasantry of mine; the only pleasantry in that letter came from his own mouth, in my company, at Lord Ossory’s table.” And what the Journal shows is that the only occasion on which Hume dined with Walpole and Lord Ossory was on December 12, when Walpole entertained Hume, Ossory, and Craufurd. That was probably when the joke began. A few days before the dinner, Hume must have received Rousseau’s letter throwing himself “into [Hume’s] arms”; as the jesters enjoyed themselves, the exile was on the road to Paris. The four men, no doubt prompted by Walpole and fueled by a good meal, poked fun at the man shortly to be in Hume’s charge.
Certainly in the Republic of Letters, Hume’s role was bruited about. Even his dearest Parisian confidante, Mme de Boufflers, was convinced that a witticism of his had prompted the most biting of the sarcasms. She leveled the accusation at Hume on July 25, 1766:
I have heard it said, and perhaps it has been stated to [Rousseau], that one of the best phrases in Mr. Walpole’s letter belongs to you; that you had said by way of bantering, and speaking in the name of the King of Prussia: “If you are in love with persecutions, I am king, and I can procure you all sorts.”. … If this statement be founded in fact, and if Mr. Rousseau has been informed of it; irritable, fiery, melancholy, and even proud, as he is said to be, can it be a matter of astonishment, that he should grow mad with vexation and rage?
“Fish” Craufurd was the likely bearer of this news, though he, too, maintained Hume’s innocence in public. Hume may have guessed the source of the leak. In August 1766, he warned Mme du Deffand to avoid Craufurd: he was a good for nothing.
But even if Hume coined that taunt, had he seen the letter in which Walpole used it? And if he had not seen it, was he at least aware of it? Walpole made no secret of the spoof—far from it. He carried his jeu d’esprit across Paris to dinners and suppers, accepting various corrections to the French suggested by the Duc de Nivernois, Helvétius, and Henault, with all of whom Hume mingled. And the Journal reveals that Hume had at least two direct opportunities to hear of it. On December 24, he was at the dinner where, said Walpole, “Helvétius was much diverted with [the letter], and pointed out one or two faults in the French.” On January 1, at supper with Mme du Deffand and with her encouragement, the author read the letter aloud to the assembled company. Hume was present at this occasion as well. So it seems plausible that when Hume insisted he did not see the letter until London, he was sticking to the literal truth, while allowing this economy with the vérité to give the impression of complete ignorance.
Meanwhile, the spoof continued to ripple through London society. On March 13, Lady Hervey told Walpole that “nothing ever was so genteel, so delicate and so just.” On April 3, it appeared in the St. James’s Chronicle, printed in both French and English. The London Chronicle followed on April 5.
One of these papers—probably the St. James’s Chronicle—even made its way to the wilds of the Derbyshire Peaks and into the hands of the victim. Sir Brooke Boothby recollected finding Rousseau “in extreme agitation” in consequence. “I endeavoured to console him by remarking that in England no one was exempt from such little babells [sic], but he would hear nothing. He was as certain that it was the production of d’Alembert as if he had seen him write it & that Hume was certainly his accomplice.”
Rousseau reached for his pen. In its April 8–10 edition, the St. James’s Chronicle printed his response (in translation), more sorrow than anger, but with two far-reaching phrases. It was addressed to the printer Henry Baldwin:
Wootton 7 April 1766
You have been wanting, Sir, in the respect which every private person owes to crowned heads, in publicly ascribing to the King of Prussia a letter full of extravagance and malice by which circumstance alone you should have known he could not be the author. You have even dared to transcribe his name, as if you had seen him write it with his own hand. I inform you, Sir, that this letter was fabricated at Paris; and, what rends and grieves my heart, the impostor has his accomplices in England. You owe it to the King of Prussia, to truth, and to me, to print the letter which I write to you, and which I sign, as an atonement for a fault with which you would doubtless reproach yourself severely, if you knew to what base acts you have rendered yourself accessory. I make you, Sir, my sincere salutations. [Authors’ ital.]
An overreaction, Hume thought—describing it to Mme de Boufflers, he belittled the letter as “full of passion, and indeed of extravagance.” But the St. James’s Chronicle felt an editorial statement was required, apologetic in tone.
The imposture was a very innocent one, and we do not imagine that readers were deceived by it. It was indeed nothing more than a harmless piece of raillery, not calculated to injure the philosopher in this country. It was handed about town for several weeks before it made its way into the St. James’s Chronicle, and we are told that it was a jeu d’esprit of an English gentleman, now at Paris, well known in the Catalogue of Noble Authors.
The last comment was a scarcely veiled reference to Walpole. Meanwhile, the spoof letter and Rousseau’s reply were picked up in other papers. And Rousseau’s hurt response caught Grimm’s satiric eye in Paris as juicy material for mockery in his Europe-wide cultural newsletter. “If the monarch took these things as keenly as the author, and if Frederic was of the state of mind of Jean-Jacques, this letter could become the subject of a bloody war.”
Unfortunately for Rousseau, his anguished reply in the St. James’s Chronicle served only to egg on his critics. A series of other malevolent newspaper squibs were aimed in his direction. On April 17–19, passages of a parody entitled in English “A Letter from M. Voltaire to M. Jean-Jacques Rousseau” and in French Lettre de M. de Voltaire au docteur J. J. Pansophe were printed in the London Chronicle and the Lloyd’s Evening Register and noted in the Gentleman’s Magazine.
The news writers will keep an exact register of all your actions and jests, and will talk of John James, as they do of the king’s Elephants, or the queen’s Zebra; the English love to amuse themselves with oddities of every kind, but this pleasure never amounts to esteem.
Although nothing in the Pansophe pasquinade besmirched Rousseau personally, he saw it as evidence of his enemies’ colluding in Paris and London. But other letters in French followed the King of Prussia letter into the newspapers, and two did pierce their thin-skinned target.
The first (St. James’s Chronicle, April 17–19) purported to come from a Quaker, “Z.A.,” thus allowing the author to adopt the familiar tu form with the Genevan. It chided him for getting upset over une Bagatelle: he was in the land of liberty, and liberty had its price; there were always people who abused it. “But your words grieving and rending are too strong. And what piqued you was that your character was nailed down too well. It is a foolish vanity to believe oneself above charity.” The letter ended by quoting Voltaire (thus exacerbating the insult) on the propriety of accepting charity publicly without regrets. “Think it over.” Signed “Z.A.”
Then (St. James’s Chronicle, April 24–26) there was a Greek “Tale” which opened with the words “In Greece there was a charlatan,” and concerned a pill salesman, “the most singular man any one had ever seen.” It concluded with a sentence about the charlatan’s death, “some say from boredom and rancour, but most said simply that he stopped being singular since people stopped talking about him.” To Rousseau’s mind, this mockery was “still more cruel, if that were possible” than the King of Prussia satire.
THE TRAFFIC WAS not all one way. Other letters in the papers supported Rousseau, including one (St. James’s Chronicle, May 3–6) that attacked Walpole by insinuation. Signed with the initial X, it assailed the “scribe,” now traveling, who had picked up some French and used it to “t
hrow ridicule on a very respectable man.—Respectable to the literary world by his writings—to the humane one by his misfortunes.” X called on his brother scribblers to be contented with teizing [sic] one another. That appears to have prompted the last and most important of the letters in French hostile to Rousseau—a highly personal assault (St. James’s Chronicle, June 5–7), but addressed to X and signed V.T.h.S.W. One scholar, Frederick Pottle, has argued that Walpole wrote it, the initials standing for Votre Très humble Serviteur Walpole, and that he was also author of the earlier Greek tale. Certainly, both letters are in his style.
Adopting a restrained and polite tone, “in all humility” it asked Rousseau’s defender to clear up several little difficulties that embarrassed V.T.h.S.W.
Had Rousseau not renounced the bourgeoisie of Geneva and then written the Letters from the Mountain?
Had the author of La Nouvelle Héloïse not treated his relatives and friends with froideur (not to say more) and often changed his friends and called them monsters?
Had the author of Discours sur l’inégalité des conditions not opened his door to the great and closed it to the humble?
And V.T.h.S.W. closed with a final thrust: he knew that this extraordinary man lived by principles different from ordinary folk—but what were those principles?
All this was grist to a mill already turning. In mid-March, Rousseau had only the glimmerings of a plot against him. By April 9, he had made up his mind and begun to assemble his case.
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Flight from Reason
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