1765
FEBRUARY
Grenville introduces Stamp Act for duties on North American colonies.
MARCH
Alexis-Claude Clairaut informs Hume of Rousseau’s misery. Hume responds with a plan to increase Rousseau’s income surreptitiously.
JUNE 3
Hume learns of his confirmation as embassy secretary.
JULY 10
Grenville dismissed as prime minister.
JULY 13
The Marquess of Rockingham takes over. In the subsequent reshuffle, Conway becomes secretary of state for the southern department and leading minister in the House of Commons. Hertford is offered lord lieutenancy of Ireland, with the Duke of Richmond to succeed him in Paris.
SEPTEMBER
Horace Walpole in Paris for start of six-month visit.
SEPTEMBER 6
Lapidation of Rousseau’s house in Môtiers forces him to move on again, to Isle Saint-Pierre.
OCTOBER 22
Hume writes to Rousseau at Isle Saint-Pierre with offer of help to flee to Britain.
OCTOBER 29
Having left Isle Saint-Pierre, and stayed briefly in Bienne, Rousseau goes to Strasbourg, but he is still undecided where to seek refuge.
NOVEMBER 2
Arriving in Strasbourg, Rousseau puts up at La Fleur inn. Here he receives Hume’s letter.
NOVEMBER 9
Duke of Richmond arrives in Paris to take up ambassadorship. Hume’s post as secretary is effectively terminated.
DECEMBER 4
Rousseau writes to Hume, “the most illustrious of my contemporaries.” He will put himself under Hume’s protection.
DECEMBER 9
Rousseau leaves Strasbourg for Paris.
DECEMBER 12
Walpole dines with Hume, Ossory, and Craufurd. At this jovial gathering, the quip is uttered that if Rousseau sought new misfortunes, Frederick the Great could supply all his needs.
DECEMBER 16
Rousseau arrives in Paris, parading next day in the Luxembourg gardens. He stays first with the widow Duchesne, then in the Temple.
DECEMBER 27
Walpole’s King of Prussia spoof letter satirizing Rousseau becomes public knowledge.
1766
JANUARY 3
Making his farewells, Hume is warned by d’Holbach that he is clasping a viper to his bosom.
JANUARY 4
Hume, Rousseau, Jean-Jacques de Luze, and Sultan leave Paris for London.
JANUARY 4/5
Rousseau hears Hume mutter in his sleep, “I hold Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”
JANUARY 10–11
Crossing the Channel from Calais, Hume raises the possibility of a pension from George III.
JANUARY 13
Rousseau, Hume, and Sultan enter London.
JANUARY 18
Hume tells Rousseau that the King of Prussia spoof letter is in circulation.
JANUARY 23
Rousseau and Hume see Garrick in Drury Lane royal performance.
JANUARY 28–30
The St. James’s Chronicle carries a brief report from Paris of the King of Prussia letter.
JANUARY 31
Rousseau leaves London to lodge with the grocer Pullein in Chiswick.
Boswell and Le Vasseur set out together from Paris—they begin an affair on the second night.
(IN THIS PERIOD)
Rockingham administration in parliamentary battle to repeal Grenville’s Stamp Act.
FEBRUARY 13
Boswell escorts Le Vasseur to Chiswick, where she is reunited with Rousseau.
MARCH 1
Rousseau sits for portraitist Allan Ramsay at 67 Harley Street. He meets Richard Davenport, his future landlord at Wootton in Staffordshire. Sultan runs away, but later reappears.
MARCH 18
Rousseau and Le Vasseur stay overnight with Hume in Lisle Street before leaving for Wootton in the retour chaise. Rousseau’s version of what occurred between him and Hume becomes central to his accusations against Hume.
MARCH 22
Rousseau arrives in Wootton. He writes to Hume, designing the letter to put Hume to the test—is Hume a traitor or not?
APRIL 3
The King of Prussia spoof letter appears in the St. James’s Chronicle.
APRIL 7
Rousseau writes to the St. James’s Chronicle in protest at the King of Prussia letter. Rousseau’s letter appears in the April 8–10 edition.
APRIL 9
Rousseau writes to Mme de Verdelin with first detailed account of Hume’s plot against him.
MID-APRIL
The London Chronicle and the Lloyd’s Evening Register carry a letter (thought to be by Voltaire) to a Doctor Jean-Jacques Pansophe, mocking Rousseau.
APRIL 17–19
In a sequence sparked off by the King of Prussia letter and Rousseau’s protest, the St. James’s Chronicle carries letter from a Quaker “Z.A.” mocking Rousseau.
MAY 2
Conway notifies Hume that the king has offered a pension of £100 p.a. to Rousseau on condition it is secret.
MAY 3–6
The St. James’s Chronicle carries letter from “X” defending Rousseau and criticizing author/s of April letters.
MAY 12
Rousseau writes to Conway explaining that he is too upset to decide on the pension and asking for its delay.
MAY 14
Conway becomes secretary of state for northern department.
MAY 17
Hume writes to Rousseau assuming that the pension’s secrecy is the problem and hoping he will change his mind on that score. He adds that Walpole is sorry for the spoof letter.
JUNE 5–7
The St. James’s Chronicle carries letter signed V.T.h.S.W. attacking Rousseau and apparently demonstrating personal knowledge of his time in London.
JUNE 19
Hume writes to Rousseau: if he promises to accept the pension, Conway will ask the king to make it public.
JUNE 21
Hume sends Rousseau a formal note requesting an answer to his offer of June 19 and explaining that, as he is returning to Scotland, he will be unable to help more.
JUNE 23
Rousseau sends Hume “the last letter you will receive from me.” He accuses Hume of bringing him to England in order to dishonor him.
JUNE 26
Hume replies to Rousseau demanding particulars of the accusations against him and the name of the “calumniator” who had made them.
JUNE 27 AND JULY 1
Hume writes letters to d’Holbach condemning Rousseau in language of extraordinary violence. Hume also sets about retrieving from Blair and Davenport his earlier letters praising Rousseau.
JULY 8
Hume tells Davenport that Rousseau had plotted the pension refusal so as to cancel all his obligations to Hume.
JULY 10
Rousseau sends Hume a detailed indictment. In it, he describes how he mocked Hume, giving him three (metaphorical) “slaps” that Hume did not feel.
JULY 22
Hume sends Rousseau his reply to the indictment. He goes on to annotate Rousseau’s indictment in preparation for possible publication. He identifies twelve “lyes.”
At around this time, Hume’s friends in Paris discuss how he should react to Rousseau’s charges by publishing his defense.
JULY 30
Rockingham’s administration is dismissed. The king asks Pitt (earl of Chatham) to form new government. Conway continues as secretary of state.
AUGUST 2
In a letter to his Paris publisher, Pierre Guy, Rousseau appears to be challenging Hume to publish. News of letter leaks out.
EARLY AUGUST
Hume sends all papers from the Rousseau affair to d’Alembert. Having read Rousseau’s long indictment, d’Alembert and other friends tell Hume that his publishing a defense is unnecessary.
LATE AUGUST/SEPTEMBER
London newspapers carry note saying Rousseau has issued a challeng
e to his enemies to publish. Opinion in Paris now swings back to the desirability of Hume’s publishing his account.
SEPTEMBER 9
Hume asks Adam Smith to inform d’Alembert that he has a free hand to edit Hume’s account.
OCTOBER
Exposé succinct de la contestation qui s’est élevée entre M. Hume et M. Rousseau avec des pièces justificatives published in Paris.
NOVEMBER
Publication of English edition of A Concise and Genuine Account of the Dispute between Mr. Hume and Mr. Rousseau.
1767
JANUARY
Jean-François-Maximilian Cerjat in Ashbourne area.
MARCH
Rousseau discusses with Davenport plans to move to London. Davenport revives question of royal pension.
MARCH 12
Rousseau sells his library in preparation to depart.
MARCH 18
Conway informs Davenport that the king has granted Rousseau a pension of £100 p.a.
APRIL 27
Davenport arrives at Davenport Hall and is confined there by gout.
MAY 1
Rousseau leaves Wootton.
MAY 5
Rousseau, in Spalding, asks the lord chancellor for an official guide for the journey to Dover.
MAY 14
Rousseau leaves Spalding.
MAY 18
Rousseau, in Dover, writes to Conway seeking an agreement on safe passage and accepting his suspicions of Hume were unjust.
MAY 22
Rousseau, Le Vasseur, and Sultan arrive in Calais.
1768
APRIL 29
Rousseau marries Thérèse Le Vasseur.
1770
JUNE ONWARD
Rousseau returns to Paris, completes the Confessions, and reads them aloud to rapt audiences until forbidden by the authorities. (The Confessions are published posthumously in 1781.)
AUGUST 25, 1776
Death of Hume.
JULY 2, 1778
Death of Rousseau.
Dramatis Personae
PARIS
Alembert, Jean-Báptiste le Rond d’: 1717–83. The natural son of the salon hostess Mme de Tencin and an eminent soldier, Chevalier Destouches-Canon. Abandoned as a baby by his mother in a wooden box on the steps of the Paris church of Saint-Jean-le-Rond (the baptistery of Notre-Dame), after which he was named. His father, nonetheless, paid for his upkeep and education. A foremost mathematician—he developed partial differential equations—he became a leader among the philosophes and a major force in the French Enlightenment. Diderot invited him to be coeditor of the Encyclopédie; he wrote the article setting out its aims. Socially he was in demand as a jester and mimic. He is also known for his devotion to Julie de l’Espinasse, to whose aid he came when her aunt and patron, Mme du Deffand, turned her out.
Boufflers, Marie-Charlotte-Hippolyte de Campet de Saujon, Comtesse de Boufflers-Rouverel: 1725–1800. Married when twenty-one years old to édouard, comte de Boufflers (d. 1764), she soon became the mistress of the Prince de Conti, remaining with him until his death in 1776. Making her home at the Temple, Conti’s Paris residence, she was known as l’Idole du Temple, but her sensibility, cultivation, and accomplishments also gave her the title Minerve savante. Her salon was among the most brilliant of the age. After writing to Hume in Britain in 1761, she entered a relationship with him of passionate friendship; she was the go-between who brought him together with Rousseau, whom she greatly admired and supported until the publication of the Confessions in 1770.
Choiseul, étienne-François, Comte de Stainville, Duc de: 1719–85. After a brilliant career as soldier and diplomat, he became minister for foreign affairs from 1758 to 1761, then minister for the navy (1761–66), and for war (1761–70) while simultaneously taking responsibility for foreign affairs from 1766. He was seen as the most influential figure in French politics and, in effect, prime minister. He negotiated the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years’ War and avoided total humiliation for France, then concentrated on rebuilding the French navy and reforming the army. A believer in limited monarchy, he was a protector of the philosophes and a supporter of the Encyclopédie. Rousseau, who regarded Choiseul as a great statesman, dined with him in 1761 at the Luxembourgs’. Choiseul facilitated Rousseau’s return to Paris in late December 1765 and, concerned at his flouting the parlement’s authority, prompted his departure for London on January 4, 1766. When Rousseau returned to France in 1767, Choiseul again ensured that he remained unscathed. When Choiseul called for war against England in 1770, court intrigues forced him into exile and he never regained power.
Conti, Louis-François de Bourbon, Prince de: 1717—76. Distinguished soldier and Louis XV’s private political adviser from 1747 until 1757. In that time he carried out secret diplomacy in Europe for the French king. He then retired to the Temple (his Paris residence as grand prior of the Order of Knights of Malta). He was well known as an atheist and supporter of the philosophes. After a quarrel with his principal mistress, Mme d’Arty, in 1751, Conti began his long relationship with Mme de Boufflers; however, he was determined not to marry her. Patron of Rousseau after meeting him in 1760. Lost to Rousseau at chess.
Deffand, Marie de Vichy de Chamrond, Marquise du: 1697–1780. Briefly but famously mistress of the infant Louis XV’s regent, Philippe, duc d’Orléans. In later life, though increasingly blind, she held a salon in Paris at the Convent des Filles de Saint Joseph in rue Saint-Dominique, where she was noted for the quickness of her wit, her sprightliness, and the range of talent in attendance. On Monday nights, the cream of Enlightenment Paris came to dinner in her salon decorated in buttercup-yellow silk. Took in her illegitimate niece Julie de l’Espinasse, but ejected her when she proved more popular than her aunt, thus earning the eternal hatred of d’Alembert. Rousseau initially felt sympathy for her handicap, but turned against her because of, among other things, “her wild prepossessions,” “her incredible prejudices,” and “her invincible obstinacy.” She corresponded extensively with Voltaire and was smitten by Walpole, with whom she exchanged some 1,700 letters, bequeathing him her favorite black spaniel, Tonton, who was not house-trained.
Diderot, Denis: 1713—84. Atheist, novelist, playwright, exponent of radical theories of the stage, innovative literary and art critic, first and principal editor of the Encyclopédie, working on it from the prospectus in 1750 to the final plates in 1772. Of relatively humble origin—the son of a master cutler—he was educated at a Jesuit college. The burly Diderot and Rousseau met in the Café Procop in Paris in 1741, beginning a friendship that endured for fifteen years.
épinay, Louise-Florence-Pétronille Tardieu d’Esclavelles d’, Dame de la Live: 1726–83. Wife of dissolute tax-farmer general, from whom she separated. Held a salon in rue Saint-Honoré attended by such philosophes as d’Alembert, d’Holbach, and Grimm, who became her lover. An early supporter of Rousseau’s, she lent him a property, the Hermitage, when he left Paris. There he wrote Héloïse. Sister-in-law of Sophie d’Houdetot’s, whom Rousseau loved insanely. Mme d’épinay parted company with Rousseau in 1757 when he refused to accompany her to Geneva to consult Dr. Tronchin: he suspected a plot between her and Grimm to dishonor him.
Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, Freiherr von: 1723–1807. An impecunious German baron who became a tutor in Paris to the Duc d’Orléans and entered the inner circle of the philosophes. He was notorious for having fallen into a cataleptic fit over an unrequited love. His great contribution to the spread of enlightened ideas was the fortnightly cultural newsletter from Paris known as the Correspondance littéraire that he edited from 1753 to 1792. Circulating uncensored among the courts, the sovereigns and nobility in Germany, Scandinavia, and Russia, the mix of news, gossip, comment, and notes on recent publications is now regarded as invaluable cultural history of the age. He fell out with Rousseau over what he saw as the latter’s ingratitude to his lover Mme d’épinay, but prided himself on not attacking Rousseau in print. Ruined by the French Revolution,
he survived only through a pension from Catherine the Great.
Helvétius, Claude-Adrien: 1715–71. Philosophe whose ambition was to reform society through education. His book De l’esprit [Of the Mind], published in 1758 and containing an attack on religious-based morality, was banned and burned in France and Switzerland, and led to a temporary suspension of the Encyclopédie with which he was associated. So radical was this book that such philosophe friends as Diderot and Rousseau rushed to join the critics.
Holbach, Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron d’: 1723–89. Immensely wealthy German resident of Paris who provided equally lavish hospitality and financial backing for the philosophes and the Encyclopédie. He was a participant in the French Enlightenment whose passion for atheism shook even the other philosophes. A specialist on applied science, he contributed over four hundred articles to the Encyclopédie, on subjects ranging from chemistry to the roots of religion. An admirer and close friend of Hume’s, he warned Hume against Rousseau.
L’Espinasse, Julie de: 1732–76. Illegitimate offspring of the Comtesse d’Albon and Mme du Deffand’s eldest brother, Gaspard. Attracted by her quickness of mind, in 1754 Mme du Deffand took her to assist in her salon, but ejected her in 1764 when she proved too popular with the guests. D’Alembert felt passionately about her—though this passion was not reciprocated—and set her up in the rue Saint-Dominique; her salon then became a magnet for the younger generation of philosophes. She died brokenhearted for love of Comte Guibert and is immortalized in Diderot’s Le Rêve d’Alembert.
Le Vasseur, Marie-Thérèse: 1721–1801. Rousseau’s partner by whom he had five children between 1746 and 1752. A laundry and kitchen maid, she met Rousseau in 1745 at the Paris Hôtel Saint-Quentin, where he was staying: they lived together until his death in 1778. Rousseau described his relationship with her as one of “attachment” rather than love, terming her his aunt, gouvernante (housekeeper), and sister. Following Rousseau’s death, she was seduced by a much younger man, the thirty-four-year-old valet to the Comte de Giradin, Henri Bally, whom she married in November 1779.
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