Rousseau's Dog (28 page)

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.

T
HUS 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:

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.

A
CCORDING 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

I
T SUITED
H
UME
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:

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:

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 you 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.”

Nobody was emerging well from the episode. The editor did not temper his outright condemnation of Walpole. His part in the affair “appears neither consistent with humanity nor with politeness.” It was altogether unworthy of him.

Rousseau had champions in Britain. The Zurich-born painter Henry Fuseli published
A Defence of Mr. Rousseau, against the Aspersions of Mr. Hume, Mons. Voltaire, and their Associates.
8vo. 1s 6d Bladon, which was scorned by the
Monthly Review
as “a bare-faced catch-penny job. The author is an impertinent intruder into a controversy of which he appears to know nothing more than what every reader might gather from the
Concise Account.
”

Several readers, after digesting the contents of the
Concise Account,
were sufficiently up in arms to write in to the press, under pseudonyms, including Emilius, Crito, and A. Bystander. In the November 27–29 edition of the
St. James's Chronicle,
a letter from “An Orthodox Hospitable Old Englishman” chided Hume. “If [his] heart had ever been indeed the friend of Rousseau, his philosophy and coolness might have treated Mr. Rousseau as a man under a strong and great mistake; this
would have been more for Mr. Hume's glory … to go on imputing all kinds of bad motives shows that a philosopher when provoked is not a better man at bottom than the poor mere bigot of religion.” AOHOE also rebuked Walpole for “an indecent and barbarous piece. …” He continues, “… humanity obliges me to wish that poor Rousseau may not be made uneasy here, but left in as much peace as possible.” Other correspondents also took up the cudgels for Rousseau: one recurring theme was the lack of hospitality and respect accorded the exile, which shamed the British nation. There was poetical support in the December 9–11
St. James's Chronicle:

A parody of this verse appeared in the next issue. Rousseau was mocked in a burlesque indictment that made the round of periodicals, while another correspondent asked what could be expected from such deists and infidels. Newspaper readers were clearly enjoying the affair—not quite the outcome Hume had in mind.

Although he came in for as much abuse and reproof as Rousseau, in February 1767, Hume informed Mme de Boufflers that there had been “a great deal of raillery on the incident, thrown out in the public papers, but all against that unhappy man. … There is even a print engraved of it: M. Rousseau is represented as a yahoo, newly caught in the woods; I am represented as a farmer, who caresses him and offers him some oats to eat, which he refuses in a rage; Voltaire and d'Alembert are whipping him up behind; and Horace Walpole making him horns of
papier mâché.
The idea is not altogether absurd.” (It had been printed in the
Public Advertiser
in January 1767: in his
Journal,
Boswell stated that the design for the cartoon was his.)