In fact, Hume had already discovered his foe’s whereabouts and, in one of a series of crossed letters, had written to Davenport on May 16. Davenport, he said, had probably heard from Fitzherbert that his “wild philosopher” had appeared at Spalding, whence he had written an extravagant letter to the chancellor. “In short, he is plainly mad, after having been long maddish; and your good offices, with those of Mr. Conway, not to mention mine, being joined to the total want of persecution in this country, have pushed him beyond all bounds of patience.” Hume’s phrase “want of persecutions” caught the eye of Ralph Leigh, the editor of Rousseau’s correspondence: “the echo of the King of Prussia letter makes one think.”
Shortly thereafter, details of Rousseau’s tragic missive to the lord chancellor found their way into the press, which was taking a renewed interest in Rousseau’s activities. The May 16–19 edition of the London Chronicle carried the following notice.
Mr. Rousseau, it now appears, is at Spalding in Lincolnshire; from whence he hath written a most extraordinary letter to the Lord Chancellor, demanding that a messenger may be sent down to that place to conduct him in safety to Dover, for which, he says, there is an absolute necessity. And this act of hospitality he requests, as the last he shall ever require from a country, which he is henceforth determined to abandon forever.
Rousseau lingered for nine days in Spalding, a town with few distractions besides a nearby racecourse and a Tuesday market with only three stalls, two of which sold nothing but gingerbread.
Having discarded his gowns in Wootton, Rousseau had a blue coat made. Once the favored guest of French nobility, he was now approached by the local surgeon and librarian of the Gentlemen’s Society, Edmund Jessop. Jessop penned a long, florid note in Latin, expressing his desire to discuss one of the Genevan’s publications which, though condemned by many, merited approbation in Jessop’s view. Rousseau took his time before delivering a rebarbative response:
You address me as a literary man, sir, in a literary language, on subjects of literature. You load me with eulogies so pompous that they are ironical, and you think to intoxicate me with such incense. You are mistaken, sir, on all these matters. I am not a man of letters. I was so once, to my misfortune, but I have long since ceased to be.
And he went further:
Excessive eulogy has never flattered me. … You style yourself a surgeon. If you had spoken to me of botany, and of the plants your country produces, you would have given me pleasure, and I should have been able to discourse with you on that.
THE NEXT DAY, Rousseau, Le Vasseur, and Sultan left for Dover: he could not wait to reach the sea. Their resources were so strained that the philosopher was forced to sell his silver cutlery to pay their way.
Fortunately, if they traveled nonstop, Dover was only two days away. There was a twice-weekly coach, “the Flying Machine,” which departed from an inn in Boston, stopped off in Spalding, and then sped the 99.5 miles through Peterborough to the Spread Eagle Inn in Gracechurch Street in the heart of the city of London. From there, it was a day’s run to the coast on a direct route that went via Dartford, Rochester, Sitting-bourne, and Canterbury.
In Dover on or about May 18, Rousseau composed two letters, one to Davenport, the other to Conway, which began in tiny characters that steadily grew in size as the missive went on.
When he saw the sea, he told his former landlord, he realized he was free to cross it, and even considered returning to Wootton. It was only when he happened upon a newspaper article (about his leaving Wootton) that he was forced to change his plans. Having assumed that Davenport was the source for this piece, Rousseau issued a sorrowful rebuke. He restated his belief that friendship imposed its duties even when broken.
The press had indeed picked up Rousseau’s flight. There were poems and ditties, including one in the Lloyd’s Evening Post about Rousseau turning his arse on God. The London Chronicle accused him of abusing “his protector and friend … the ingenious Mr. Hume,” who had conducted him to the land of liberty. Rousseau’s pride, caprice, and ingratitude were “unbecoming in a man of his singular talents and genius.” The Gentleman’s Magazine spoke of his quitting Wootton in a very abrupt manner and abusing his benefactor “in the most ungenerous terms.” Where they obtained this information, we can only guess. Certainly not from the gout-ridden benefactor.
In seven pages to Conway, Rousseau’s other letter rehearsed the plot against him, adding that it was so extensive that the state must be involved. Perhaps the aim was to prevent the publication of his memoirs. However, he assured Conway that he did not believe him to be personally implicated. Conway had been deceived by Rousseau’s enemies. He warned Conway against any attempt by the state to have him assassinated: he, Rousseau, was (unfortunately) so well known that his death or disappearance would inevitably prompt investigation. He proposed an agreement: if he were allowed to leave the country in peace, he promised in return that he would abandon his memoirs and not mention a word of his complaints nor utter one word against Hume—or always to speak of him with honor.
The most interesting aspect of Rousseau’s proposal is how he undertook, if challenged, to explain his previous accusations. A flash of true insight shines through. He would blame them on his bad humor and the effect on him of the mistrust and offense brought on by his misfortunes. He admitted to “too many unjust suspicions with which to reproach myself.” All the preceding sentences are in the third person—on how “he” would abandon his memoirs and “he” would explain “his” accusations. The confession of unjust suspicions alone is in the first person, giving it a plangent reality.
Conway showed Hume the letter and, according to Hume, thought it “the composition of a whimsical man not a madman.” Hume then told Davenport: “[Rousseau] says that all the world in England are prejudiced against him; for which, however, he knows no reason, except his behaviour to me, in which he confesses he might be to blame.” Writing to Turgot, Hume quoted Rousseau directly, but, intriguingly, given the mea culpa, omitted the term “unjust suspicions.”
In fact, Rousseau and Le Vasseur had already booked their passage to France, though their boat remained in harbor because of strong winds. This was a routine problem in Dover. Boats had to travel through a series of sluices and then a slender constructed throat—a design which made the harbor impassable whenever a storm coincided with a neap tide (the point at which high water is at its lowest level).
For forty-eight hours Rousseau brooded on his situation. He stood on a hillock and addressed an uncomprehending crowd. One version of his leaving had him at dinner with a local man whom he suddenly suspected of being about to detain him on Conway’s instructions. Rousseau rushed to the ship. Another told how, at his lodgings, on May 21, he was served a meal with parsley, which he suspected was hemlock (though as a botanist he would be familiar with the plant). He rushed from the room, made for his ship, and hid in a cabin. Nobody, not even his gouvernante, was now beyond distrust. They sailed that night, reaching France in the morning.
ROUSSEAU HAD BOLTED in a pitiable state, but the Scot was unrelenting. In the first week of October 1767, he gave an account of Rousseau’s flight to Adam Smith, summing it up:
Thus, you see, he is a composition of whim, affectation, wickedness, vanity, and inquietude, with a very small, if any, ingredient of madness. He is always complaining of his health; yet I have scarce ever seen a more robust little man of his years. He was tired in England; where he was neither persecuted nor caressed: he resolved, therefore, to leave it; and having no pretence, he is obliged to contrive all those absurdities, which, he himself, extravagant as he is, gives no credit to … The ruling qualities above mentioned, together with ingratitude, ferocity, and lying, I need not mention eloquence and invention, form the whole of the composition. [Authors’ italics]
Hume relayed to Smith—the tone is of barely restrained glee—how Hume’s friends in Paris and the public were shunning him. “He endeavoured to regain his credit by acknowledging to every
body his fault with regard to me: but all in vain. … He has had the satisfaction, during a time, of being much talked of, for his late transactions; the thing in the world he most desires: but it has been at the expense of being consigned to perpetual neglect and oblivion.”
But, on the day Rousseau set foot again in France, Hume sat down to write to his French friends about the final act of this drama. And he appeared then to be concerned for Rousseau’s fate, though making the serpentine suggestion that Rousseau was insane and therefore outside the law.
To Mme de Boufflers, he counseled that if she heard of Rousseau’s being caught and arrested, she might “employ [her] credit in restoring him to his liberty, by representing him in his true colours, as a real and complete madman, who is an object of compassion, and can be dangerous to nobody.” At greater length, he suggested to Turgot, while giving a (heavily anti-Rousseau) account of his flight, that, “If he could be settled in any safe and quiet retreat, under a discreet keeper, he has wherewithal to bear all charges for his support.” He added, “It would be proper that his gouvernante should enter into the scheme, tho’ I find that Mr. Davenport had entertained no very advantageous idea of her character or conduct while they lived with him.” Nothing in Davenport’s correspondence, at least, supports that.
Turgot’s reply tactfully avoided the idea of a retreat with a keeper, brushing it aside with the quip that Rousseau’s state of madness was preferable to his former less exalted state of ingratitude. He gave a list of people who would help Rousseau, including de Boufflers and Conti, de Montigny, and de Malesherbes. (So much for Rousseau’s being shunned.) He did not think the French were so barbarous as to arrest Rousseau.
So the affair ended just where it began, with Hume involved in schemes to save Rousseau. However, in the context of Hume’s unforgiving mood—his distortions, his assertions of madness—this final “assistance” appears more tainted by vengeance than moved by charity.
21
After the Storm
Divine man, you have taught me to know myself.
—ROBESPIERRE
Rousseau was mad but influential, Hume was sane but had no followers.
—BERTRAND RUSSELL
WHEN ROUSSEAU DISEMBARKED in Calais on May 20, the Paris parlement’s order for his arrest was still in force. Warned about this by Conti, he accepted the hospitality of the prince at his château near Gisors, a medieval city in Normandy dominated by an eleventh-century fortress. There he lived incognito, adopting the name “Renou.”
He was preoccupied by his memoirs and was still suffering bouts of paranoia. Toward the end of part two, he hinted at the nightmare that lay ahead when he left Switzerland. Presumably referring to Mme de Boufflers and Mme de Verdelin, he recalled, “I thought I was setting out for Berlin [when] I was in fact leaving for England, and the two ladies who were trying to control me, after having driven me by weight of intrigue from Switzerland, where I was not sufficiently in their power, finally managed to deliver me over to their friend [Hume].”
There were also long periods of serenity. In mid-June, Hume’s “absolute lunatic” wrote a polite, restrained, and balanced letter to Davenport thanking him for everything he had done and asking him to settle an account and to forward his post and trunks to his bankers. He hoped to see Davenport in France one day.
Replying on July 4, Davenport attended to the business matters and added, “The only thing I ever took amiss was your saying that I put a paragraph in the newspapers concerning your leaving Wootton, which upon my honour I neither directly nor indirectly did.” The house was always at Rousseau’s service if he came to England again. His granddaughter Phoebe insisted “she will abhor Wootton since she knows you are not there.” And “It will give me more pleasure than you even can imagine to hear from you, pray don’t refuse me that satisfaction, & if I can be of any sort of service depend on me.” Later the same month, he wrote again, having finally managed to get over to Wootton. He calculated he owed Rousseau £21.9s and had sent it to Rougemont. The house seemed “horrid dull” without its tenants. Phoebe sent a thousand thanks for the music he had left but said “she had much rather hear you play the pieces yourself.” The old gentleman sent his compliments to Le Vasseur: he was particularly obliged to her, he said, as “I have the satisfaction of bearing about me everyday, the marks of her favour.” This possibly referred to a pair of stockings she had knitted at his request.
The warm correspondence with Davenport continued on both sides as though Rousseau’s year in Wootton had passed entirely without incident. Phoebe had the stuff, Rousseau thought, “to make her the most adorable woman in England.” However, as he counseled all guardians, he implored Davenport to raise her outside the household. In December he wrote again. “You want to know how I spend my time. Just about as at Wootton. I dwell in a very pleasant place where I live as solitary as possible, munching my hay as usual, fearing nothing, desiring nothing. … I have my ‘Host’ [Du Peyrou] here who is convalescing, and with whom I play chess: he does not play so well as yourself, but on the other hand he is not so obliging as to allow himself to lose when he can win.” As for Davenport, there was a note of unmistakable regret when the old gentleman said he missed Rousseau.
In the summer of 1768, suspecting the domestic staff to be agents of Hume, Rousseau, with Conti’s continued assistance, fled the château. He went, via the Temple, to Lyon and Grenoble, where his maman, Mme de Warens, was buried. On April 29, 1768, at Bourgoin, near Lyon, he finally married Le Vasseur, his loyal partner of twenty-three years, aiming to regularize her position. Two minutes before the secular ceremony Le Vasseur still had no idea what was happening. In a short speech, Rousseau explained his decision as rewarding her long devotion. Afterward she took satisfaction in calling Rousseau “my husband,” though within a year Rousseau was complaining that she had become fed up with his morose moods and that sometimes a day would pass without their exchanging a single word.
Rousseau was seriously contemplating Davenport’s invitation to return to Wootton (a plan he ditched for fear that Walpole was now plotting against him). Meanwhile, he continued to wander and to botanize. In 1769, one walk “with three gentlemen” went disastrously wrong when the weather suddenly turned for the worse. Then: “One of our gentlemen was bitten by a dog [and] Sultan was half massacred by another dog: he disappeared and I thought him dead of his wounds or eaten by the wolf, and I was absolutely confounded on my return here to find him tranquil and perfectly healed.”
In 1770, Rousseau moved back to Paris and resumed the vocation that had sustained him throughout his life, copying music. He was asked by a group of dissident Polish aristocrats, and consented, to write the Considerations on the Government of Poland (published posthumously in 1782). Brooke Boothby was among those to visit him in Paris, “When one day I vainly endeavoured to argued [sic] with him on his insane notions [of being constantly persecuted], I imprudently asked him if I was included amongst his oppressors. His eyes darting fire,—’Do not force me [to reply],’ he said.” Courageously, Brooke Boothby raised the issue of the pension from George III. It had been authorized, but Rousseau had still not given instructions as to how it should be paid; considerable arrears had built up. Rousseau’s response was that as he had spoken of his treatment in England in “an unfavourable manner,” the first thing he required was a public apology. (It is not obvious who was supposed to deliver it.) Nevertheless, at home he is said to have displayed a portrait of George III.
For a period, Rousseau’s educational theories were all the rage, not only in France and England, but in Switzerland, Germany, and Ireland, too. Scores of pedagogical treatises were produced, almost all of them bearing his imprint. Parents who experimented by raising their children on Rousseauian principles experienced mixed results, some reporting that they produced a disconcerting wildness in their guinea pigs. It is possible that Davenport intentionally brought up his orphaned grandson Davies along Rousseauian lines. The boy turned out well, but fretted that he ha
d received insufficient formal education, and did not like to hear the name of Rousseau mentioned.
In Paris during 1770–71, Rousseau gave readings—sometimes for up to seventeen hours—from the Confessions. His erstwhile friend Mme d’épinay, feeling defamed by his portrayal of her as a schemer and gossip, eventually persuaded the police to prohibit them. His readings elicited polarized reactions. Some listeners wept and kissed Rousseau’s hand during passages of high emotional drama. Others were revolted. Mme de Boufflers totally repudiated him after reading the book on publication. The memoirs were “like those of a farmyard worker or even lower, disagreeable, as well as tedious, thoroughly insane and spiteful in the most disgusting manner. I cannot get over it that I used to make a cult … of this filthy animal.”
Also posthumously published was the insanely brilliant Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, which had gestated over several years. In these split-personality dialogues between Rousseau and Jean-Jacques, Rousseau is judge, jury, and defendant as the author’s deeds and personality are forensically examined and extracts from his writings used as evidence against him. Rousseau convicts himself on several counts, including being weak willed and following his whims, rather than being influenced by his duty. (Here he also has second thoughts on Ramsay’s portrait of him, accusing Hume of having contrived the painting out of sheer malice and ensuring that in every respect—posture, clothes, Ramsay’s palette—the sitter emerged as dark and monstrous with, in Rousseau’s characterization, “the face of a frightful cyclops.”)
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