Rousseau's Dog (13 page)

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:

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.”

T
HE 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

R
OUSSEAU 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 Rousseau 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

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.”

In the literally rambling novel
Humphrey Clinker,
which Hume's compatriot Tobias Smollett started in 1768, the focal character, well-to-do Squire Bramble, says: “I have observed, for some time, that the public papers are become the infamous vehicles of the most cruel and perfidious defamation; every rancorous knave—every desperate incendiary, that can afford to spend half-a-crown or three shillings, may skulk behind the press of a newsmonger, and have a stab at the first character in the kingdom, without running the least hazard of detection or punishment.” And the real-life Horace Walpole, in the postscript to his
Memoirs,
complained that the daily and evening newspapers “printed every outrageous libel that was sent to them.”

However, the number of press outlets, the freedom of comment, and the avid readership meant that London was the celebrity capital of Europe, leading the way in the culture and practice of instant fame.

F
OR THE MOMENT
at least, Rousseau was a figure of intense fascination. He was a literary giant, the subject of prurient rumors, the source of idle chatter in the coffeehouses. On Monday, January 13, the day of his arrival in London, the
Public Advertiser
reported, “All the world are eager to see this man, who by his singularity, has drawn himself into much trouble; he appears abroad but seldom, and dresses like an Armenian, probably on account of an infirmity which has remained with him since the operation he underwent for a retention.”

Knocking on his door at Buckingham Street was a string of admirers. They included General Conway, the Duke of York (Rousseau was out), and the Prince of Wales. George Harcourt, Viscount Nuneham, a fervid follower of Rousseau, called on him, as did George III's brother-in-law (the hereditary prince of Brunswick) and the Reverend Richard Penneck, keeper of the reading room of the British Library. There were dinners to go to: for instance, an invitation to the British Museum with the underlibrarian Dr. Matthew Maty, who was instrumental in establishing the library's collection of portraits. (Rousseau's cousin came to London and also paid him a visit.)

Hume was struck by the extent of the attention. “It is incredible the enthusiasm for him in Paris and the curiosity in London,” he wrote to his brother in February. “I should desire no better fortune than to have the privilege of showing him to all I please.” “Showing him” echoes Hume's appraisal of his guest as “the most singular man surely in the world,” but the distinction—in Paris, enthusiasm; in London, curiosity—has a spiteful quality. Hume, meanwhile, must have been missing the warm embrace of Paris. Rockingham's
Memoirs
record: “[Hume] went to France a plain, unaffected Scotchman. He came back with the
airs and feeling of a Frenchman.” He had a habit of launching into encomiums about the French, the
Memoirs
complain, comparing their loyalty and “their peaceable demeanour with the turbulence of his own countrymen.”

In the same letter to his brother, Hume described the public tumult when, on January 23, he accompanied Rousseau to the royal performance at Drury Lane Theatre.

The British monarch and the king of thespians—George III and David Garrick—both wanted a glimpse of the city's most distinguished newcomer. Garrick sent an invitation to Rousseau via Hume. It was so spontaneous that Mrs. Garrick was obliged to clear her husband's private box by putting off earlier guests.