Rousseau's Dog

by David Edmonds

  “If [Hume] had the proofs …” But did he? What could they possibly have been? Turgot had identified Hume’s “proofs” as the weak point in his case and was delicately proposing an honorable retreat. Only four days later, he composed another long letter, for his hesitation over Hume’s course had been reinforced. He surmised that the real cause of Rousseau’s fury was Hume’s quip (the Prussian king could supply all the persecution Rousseau needed) as borrowed by Walpole, and the subsequent correspondence in the London press. In the country, living, as he was, a solitary life, Rousseau’s imagination had been ignited. The misreading of his pension letter by Hume and Conway seemed to demonstrate Hume’s treachery. So, Rousseau’s actions were not premeditated, Turgot concluded. Violent, impetuous, defiant, yes. But not villainy.

  Hume’s obsessive rage, however, had blinded him to all other possibilities: come what may, he would expose Rousseau. If in July, he had been genuinely seeking advice about publication, by August he had made up his mind. The conundrum was how to publish while retaining his reputation as le bon David and the confidence of those advising him against publication.

  However, those opposed to publication now included the Republic of Letters advisory committee. Their volte-face had been inspired, oddly, by news of Rousseau’s long letter—the detailed indictment in which Hume had identified twelve lies. A report of it that Hume sent to Paris produced the response that this was not the appropriate time for publication: the committee was as comforted by its irrefragable absurdity as Hume professed to be. On August 4, d’Alembert reassured Hume that when he read this account of Rousseau’s accusations, his first reaction was to admire the rhetoric, but his second was to laugh and shrug his shoulders. Rousseau was a lunatic, a dangerous lunatic, fit for Bedlam. However, he wanted only to be talked about, whatever the cost, and to ensure this did not happen was the worst punishment one could inflict on him.

  D’Alembert had also decided the time had come for him to inform Rousseau directly that he had played no part in the King of Prussia letter. He wrote a short note that he asked Hume “to throw to the wild beast across his barricade.” (True to form, Hume did not send it on to Rousseau.)

  Hume now sought a solution to his publication problem by simply putting the decision into the hands of others. He dispatched two packets with all the papers to the powerful financial administrator Jean-Charles Trudaine de Montigny, asking him to peruse them and to advise, then forward the papers to d’Alembert. He included “a short narrative to connect the letters” and left it to his French friends to determine what to do with them. “I am really at a loss what use to make of this collection.” It was an approach either dictated by the need not to cross the antipublication coterie or else testifying to a willingness to wound but not strike.

  Across the Republic of Letters, sympathy was almost all on Hume’s side. But after seeing Rousseau’s case for themselves, they concluded that Hume had overreacted to ludicrous charges. Perhaps a sensitivity to the persecuted Genevan’s evident distress equally dictated holding back. Even d’Holbach, who had so signally lacked discretion, was cautious: if forced to break his silence, then Hume was not to go beyond a simple exposition of the facts, with the proofs he must have in hand. From Hume’s fellow countryman Lord Marischal came a plea for restraint: “It will be good and humane in you, and like le bon David, not to answer.” In September, d’Alembert informed Hume he had read the gros paquet. Rousseau’s indictment left him unmoved.

  Meanwhile, Hume had given the papers to the king and queen, or rather, as he told Mme de Barbantane at the end of August, “The King and Queen of England expressed a strong desire to see these papers and I was obliged to put them into their hand. They read them with avidity, and entertain the same sentiment that must strike every one. The King’s opinion confirms me in my conviction not to give them to the public unless I be forced to it by some attack on the side of my adversary, which it will therefore be wisdom in him to avoid.” (The copy in the Royal Archive at Windsor has a handwritten inscription on the cover: “? Sent to the King about 1767.”) The phrase “confirms me in my conviction not to give them to the public” is curious when he had abdicated responsibility for publication to his French supporters.

  SO FAR AS those French friends were concerned, the question of publication was apparently deferred indefinitely. But if Hume still wanted to publish, by a supreme irony Rousseau came to his aid.

  Rousseau must have anticipated that Hume would refuse to let the matter drop. In the middle of July 1766, François Coindet, a young Swiss friend who worked for the banker Jacques Necker and had assisted with the illustrations for Héloïse, warned Rousseau that his enemies were spreading poison about him in Paris. He specifically mentioned the two violent letters Hume had written to d’Holbach and reported that Hume intended to publish his version of all that had passed between them.

  On August 2, Rousseau wrote to the Paris publisher, Pierre Guy. The letter showed clearly how his paranoia was still seething, and it gave Hume just the rationale (or pretext) he needed.

  Rousseau had heard about the uproar in Paris, he told Guy. He felt as if twenty poignards were being stabbed in his breast. Alone, he could do nothing to combat the hydra-headed league formed against him. Destroy one of their calumnies and twenty more would arise. Rather, he should leave it to the public to judge, remain quiet, and try to live and die in peace. “They say that Mr. Hume has called me the lowest of the low and a villain. If I knew how to reply to such language, I would deserve his description.” He then summed up his story in a brilliant, stirring, Manichean paragraph. It was a question of two men, one of whom took the other to England, almost against his will; one of whom was ill, friendless, isolated by language, in retreat; the other active, with friends at Court, moving in the grand world, well connected with the press. And the latter allied himself with the mortal enemies of the former. He had heard Hume would publish. So be it. Let him at least do it faithfully.

  Although Rousseau had forbidden Guy to publicize his letter, news of it naturally leaked out: the rumor was that Rousseau had challenged Hume to publish, had dared him to do so honestly. By mid-August, Hume had heard about it through d’Holbach.

  In September, a translated extract of Rousseau’s letter appeared in the London Chronicle and the Lloyd’s Evening Post. The London Chronicle also carried an earlier report, datelined Paris, August 26:

  The Sieur John James Rousseau hath written to several persons in this city, and amongst others to a bookseller, whom he acquaints that he is not ignorant of there being a considerable party formed against him, of which Mr. H– – is the chief; but he defies his enemy to dare, as he has threatened, to publish their correspondence, as he has wherewith to confound the English philosopher. However, we dare not yet condemn Mr. H– –.

  The challenge was in the public domain. On September 7, d’Holbach told Hume that Rousseau’s many fanatics and supporters were interpreting Hume’s silence as guilt, so open justification had become necessary. Nonetheless, he still recommended moderation, simply facts and proofs. The authors of the Gazette littéraire were offering to be his publishers: he could not be in better hands.

  Let d’Alembert know he was free to edit the papers to suit “the latitude of Paris,” Hume requested Adam Smith, on September 9. In the various collections of correspondence, there is no specific fiat from Hume for d’Alembert to set publication in motion, but this Smith letter looks like Hume’s way of prodding d’Alembert on. On October 6, less than a month after that message via Smith, d’Alembert informed le bon David that his intentions (stated presumably in the original packet) had been fulfilled.

  Editing, he said, had been entrusted to Jean-Báptiste-Antoine Suard, editor of the Gazette littéraire. Suard had translated the paper and made a few changes on Hume’s instruction. A preface had been added to say, in accordance with Hume’s wishes, how reluctant the Scotsman had been to publicize the quarrel but why he felt compelled to do so. Publication would be in eight to ten days
in the name of his friends, not just d’Alembert, as he was a participant in the quarrel. D’Alembert had included his declaration disavowing all knowledge of Walpole’s letter, though it would have been better, he said, if Hume had sent the original disavowal on to Rousseau. Mme de Boufflers and Mme de Verdelin did not wish to be named and would not be.

  THUS WAS BORN the Exposé succinct de la contestation qui s’est élevée entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau avec des pièces justificatives.

  While he had a free hand, d’Alembert’s own target was now “Valpole’s” letter. He wanted to put himself in the clear. He also wanted to savage Walpole for ridiculing Rousseau, a man who had done Walpole no harm. Walpole should eternally reproach himself, he told Hume.

  On his own initiative, Suard suppressed the sharper remarks about Rousseau that d’Alembert slipped into the text; he did not exclude critical comments by d’Alembert about Walpole’s jeu d’esprit.

  Suard and d’Alembert disagreed on an epigraph: should it be Tacitus or Seneca? Neither, the editor decided, but at the end of the main text, a passage of Seneca was inserted from De Beneficiis (Book VII, chapter 29). The choice is revealing:

  I have wasted a good deed. And yet, can we ever say that we have wasted what we consider sacred? A good deed is one of these things; even if there is a bad return, it was a good investment. The beneficiary is not the sort of man we hoped; let us remain what we have been, and not become like him.

  Decoded, the text offers humane reproach as much as reassurance to the injured and vengeful Hume: his good deed should have been its own reward. It seems fairly to represent the ambiguity of the Scot’s philosophe friends toward Rousseau’s bizarre conduct and Hume’s own violent response.

  ACCORDING TO D’ALEMBERT, the clash created the least stir in London of all the capitals of Europe. Travelers from England confirmed that. Nonetheless, though he had earlier reckoned it superfluous, Hume arranged the details of an English edition with his publisher, William Strahan, in October. The English text should follow the French, he insisted, since he had allowed the French to make such alterations as they thought fit. He would deposit the original letters in the British Museum; this was in response to Rousseau’s taunt that Hume dare not publish them. (The museum declined the deposit.) Commercial considerations were not far away: “The whole will compose a pretty large pamphlet, which, I fancy, the curiosity of the public will make tolerably saleable.”

  His satisfaction with the French version did not last. He was soon instructing Strahan to utilize the original English text where possible, and he made changes up to the middle of November and the publishing of A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau; with the Letters that passed between them during their Controversy. As also the Letters of the Hon. Mr. Walpole and Mr. D’Alembert, relative to this extraordinary affair. Translated from the French. London. Printed for T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt near Surrey-street, in the Strand. MDCCLXVI.

  At the end of the Account, Hume anticipated twenty-first-century public relations, quoting the thoughts of “Friends” on the case. Some blamed Rousseau’s vanity and ostentation. Some viewed his conduct in a more compassionate light, with Rousseau as an object of pity. Others supposed domineering pride and ingratitude to be the basis of his character, but that “his brain has received a sensible shake, and that his judgement has been set afloat—carried to every side by the current of his humours and his passions.” Still others believed that he was “in a middle state between sober reason and total frenzy.”

  Hume told the Account’s readers that he was of the latter opinion—adding his doubts as to whether Rousseau was ever more in his senses than at present. “It is an old remark, that great wits are near allied to madness, and even in those frantic letters, which he has wrote to me, there are evidently strong traces of his wonted genius and eloquence.”

  So Hume had his publication, but had he retained the support of his friends?

  18

  Love Me, Love My Dog

  Our reputation, our character, our name, are considerations of vast weight and importance. —HUME

  The celebrated J. J. Rousseau … the celebrated Historian … the celebrated quarrel. —1820 introduction to Hume’s private correspondence

  IT SUITED HUME to present publication of the Exposé as somehow done without his volition, as certainly not what he had wanted, almost against his will—yes, even forced upon him.

  He wrote from Edinburgh to Horace Walpole on October 30:

  A few days ago I had a letter from M. d’Alembert, by which I learn that he and my other friends at Paris had determined to publish an account of my rupture with Rousseau, in consequence of a general discretionary power which I had given them. … My Parisian friends are to accompany the whole with a preface, giving an account of my reluctance to this publication, but of the necessity which they found of extorting my consent. [Authors’ italics] It appears particularly, that my antagonist had wrote letters of defiance against me all over Europe, and said that the letter he wrote me was so confounding to me, that I would not dare to shew it to any one without falsifying it. These letters were likely to make [an] impression, and my silence might be construed into a proof of guilt.

  Again in November, he emphasized to Walpole with what unwillingness he had released his account, “Had I found one man of my opinion, I should have persevered in my refusal.”

  Ironically enough, Walpole was just such a man, as he vigorously pointed out to Hume, having received the pamphlet. He was surprised: after all, Hume had been against publication. It was also contrary to the advice of his best friends, not to speak of his own nature. Indeed:

  I am sorry you have let yourself be over-persuaded, and so are all that I have seen who wish you well. … You add, that they told you Rousseau had sent letters of defiance against you all over Europe. Good God! My dear Sir, could you pay any regard to such fustian? All Europe laughs at being dragged every day into these idle quarrels, with which Europe only wipes its b-s-e [backside].

  In November, his English patron, Hertford, dropped him an intriguing line thanking him for the copy of “the printed dispute.” Hertford had been in Paris, “but you will not imagine I waited till this time to see it, a paper which was in everybody’s hands. … I was however surprised to find it in print after what you had told me. …”

  Meanwhile, Voltaire was relishing the opportunity to go for Rousseau. And, on November 1, Grimm recorded: “M. Voltaire has had printed a little letter addressed to M. Hume, where he has given the coup de grâce to poor Jean-Jacques. This letter had been very successful in Paris, and it has possibly done more harm to M. Rousseau than M. Hume’s pamphlet.” (It was reprinted in London.) “If [Rousseau] should need it,” wrote Voltaire, “one should throw him a hunk of bread on the dunghill where he lies gnashing his teeth at the human race. But it was necessary to show him up for what he is so as to enable those who might feed him to guard against his bites.” While Hume had endeavored to co-opt George III on his side, Voltaire attempted in vain to enlist Rousseau’s mighty admirer Frederick the Great. “You ask me,” wrote the king, “what I think of him? I think he is unhappy and to be pitied. … Only depraved souls kick a man when he is down.”

  Sitting it out, but not down, in Wootton, Rousseau could congratulate himself both that Hume had been unmasked and that he, the exile, was enduring his tormentors with noble patience. They could do and say what they liked while he awaited death. As for the alleged plotter-in-chief, in mid-November Rousseau wrote to a friend: “For myself, I have nothing to say to Mr. Hume, except that I find him too insulting for a good man, and too noisy for a philosopher.”

  In Britain, while sympathy with Hume and indignation against Rousseau were widespread, they were far from universal. Hume’s account circulated in the press. The Gentleman’s Magazine, London Magazine, the St. James’s Chronicle, the London Chronicle, and the Monthly Review for November printed long extracts from the Exposé. “You can’t conceive how much y
ou are put in the right and Rousseau in the wrong by everybody here [in London],” wrote the classicist and politician Robert Wood, who had been instrumental in Hume’s going to Paris.

  The Monthly Review article was sandwiched between a collection of “squibbs and crackers” on Pitt’s elevation to the peerage and details of a plan to set up a free university for all comers. It offered its report, it declared, to gratify the curiosity of the many readers who would have heard of the “late quarrel between these two celebrated geniuses.” Although it pledged to present the narrative without comment, it could not resist a few lines. “It appears with the clearest evidence that Mr. Hume has acted the part of a generous and disinterested friend to Mr. ROUSSEAU: in regard to the conduct of the latter, humanity seems to dictate silence.”

  So the Review decided not to publish the fifty pages of Rousseau’s indictment, though the editor was not hostile to Rousseau. The problem was his “extreme sensibility [that] renders him peculiarly liable to entertain suspicions even of his best friends …” What was required was not condemnation but “compassion towards an unfortunate man, whose peculiar temper and constitution of mind must, we fear, render him unhappy in every situation.”