Rousseau's Dog (27 page)

Perhaps Hume anticipated her feeling affronted: after all, she saw herself as his soul mate, and yet he had contacted d'Holbach first. In any case, misleading her in this way was naive. In practice, given how inclusive and gossipy a social circle she moved in and what status she enjoyed, the chance of her not having heard of the d'Holbach letters was slim. In fact, Mme de Boufflers had already complained to Julie de L'Espinasse of Hume's leaving her in ignorance; had he told her about the affair, she would have kept it to herself, as d'Holbach should have done.

Hume's strategy was now fixed on those Parisians who already disliked and distrusted his adversary, and he dispatched a full history of his involvement with Rousseau to d'Alembert.

In the third week of July, Paris became Hume's campaign headquarters, with a meeting
chez
Mlle de L'Espinasse of practically all his Parisian friends. By chance, they congregated just as d'Alembert received Hume's most recent bulletin: it included Hume's plan to send an account to a chosen few. These brilliant Enlightenment spirits—exponents of the supremacy of reason and exactly the people Hume wanted to share his thoughts—formed themselves into an ad hoc advisory committee, Turgot, l'abbé Morellet, Marmontel, among them. All were burning to learn the latest and to counsel Hume on tactics.

D'Alembert reported their initial conclusions to the anxious Scot: everybody, including he and Julie, now thought the story must be made
public. If the matter had not made such a sensation, and if Hume had not complained in so lively a manner, he would have continued to advise discretion. But now the public was so taken with the quarrel, and things were so advanced, that Hume ought quickly to put the truth before them.

Plainly, however, shock at Hume's berserk letters to d'Holbach had not worn off. The message from the advisory committee was unanimous and unambiguous. “Practise the greatest moderation, but at the same time the greatest clarity and the greatest detail.” Hume should explain that he was publishing at that moment in order to give Rousseau the chance to reply. He should then go into detail, but stick to the simple facts, with no bitterness, without insult, without even reflecting on Rousseau's character or writings. He must not repeat too often how he was Rousseau's benefactor; everyone knew that already.

D'Alembert added that it was also put about that Rousseau suspected Hume of a hand in what d'Alembert called “Mr. Valpole's” King of Prussia letter. D'Alembert disapproved of the spoof: to torment an unfortunate being who had done you no ill was cruel. It was essential that Hume prove he had nothing to do with this rotten deed (d'Alembert was quite sure he did not).

However, not all voices were tuned in a chorus for publication.

On July 22, while taking the waters with her lover Conti at Pouguesles-eaux, an ancient spa some 220 kilometers south of Paris, Mme de Boufflers began a memorable epistle to Hume. In her indignation, and with notable insight, she offered her friend a finely worked judgment on the affair. He could not have asked for guidance that was more sensitive—or less welcome.

D'Alembert had forwarded Hume's newest letter for her perusal. “I confess that it has surprised and afflicted me to the last degree. What! You recommend to [d'Alembert] to communicate [Hume's account of Rousseau's behavior], not only to your friends in Paris (a definition at
once very vague and very extensive), but to M. de Voltaire, with whom you have very slight connections, and with whose principles you are so well acquainted.” She also firmly rebuked him for asking d'Holbach to investigate Rousseau's means. “What use do you intend to make of the new inquiries with which you have charged M. D'Olbach? You have not apparently the design of writing anything against this unfortunate man. You will not become his denunciator, after having been his protector.”

She had discussed matters with Adam Smith, she recorded. She and Smith believed that Hume had misread Rousseau's letter refusing the pension, and Smith suggested Hume should reread it to Conway. “It does not seem to us, that he is refusing the pension, nor that he wants it made public. He begs that it may be deferred till the tranquility of his soul, disturbed by violent sorrow, is re-established. In his ill-temper, your mistake, which he supposed was intentional, must have put the finishing stroke to his misfortunes, by souring his mind, and completely upsetting his reason.” Even so, Hume should have demonstrated his superiority by not involving himself further and by acting with “generous pity” toward Rousseau.

Hume was now cornered. The violence of his language and the severity of his allegations, she told him, the liberty he gave to d'Holbach to tell the world, the engagement of his Parisian supporters in managing the affair, the promise to supply evidence of Rousseau's plotting against him—all these made it nigh impossible for Hume to avoid publication. Paradoxically, his lack of moderation had put his reputation more at risk than Rousseau's; the injured innocent had become the vicious attacker. Some of Hume's friends, Mme de Boufflers maintained, feared for him.

She could have meant Turgot. The meeting
chez
de L'Espinasse had left this enlightened statesman uneasy. On July 23, he wrote the first of a number of letters rehearsing his doubts and tactfully providing Hume with another approach; it was a subtle exercise in the diplomacy
of dissuasion. His first opinion, he said, had been not to publish, and he had come around to the common view only after reviewing all the circumstances. For in the eyes of Rousseau's numerous partisans, Hume had become the accuser and, as such, obliged to justify himself. Rousseau's accusations were so wild that no one would give any credence to them. So the only reason for publishing was to show that Hume's own counteraccusations of villainy, of baseness, and of atrocity were justified. If he had the proofs of Rousseau's maneuvering, then they must be declared, even though bringing down a man of talent was sad or regrettable; the hypocrite's mask must be ripped off, the truth exposed.

“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.

S
O 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 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.