Rousseau's Dog

by David Edmonds

  just explaining something about marine plants being acrid, when a cockney picnic party of youths, dressed as sailors, landed. Rousseau instantly took to his heels! The professor, being responsible for his safe restoration, followed, and after a considerable chase, succeeded in running him down. Rousseau, seeing that there were no other pursuers, passed the matter off by the observation that marine men were acrid.

  In Chiswick, he was also away from Hume’s fellow lodger in Lisle Street, Louis-François Tronchin. The young man (who was not unsympathetic to Rousseau) was well aware of his fellow Genevan’s feelings: he told a friend that the Tronchin name was odious to Rousseau, and that Rousseau believed he (Louis-François) might have come to spy on his conduct, to persecute him and even to assassinate him. Tronchin must have informed his father, the physician Dr. Théodore Tronchin, who replied at the beginning of March that he was not surprised.

  [Rousseau’s] pride and his mistrust torment him. These are two demons who pursue him and pursue him everywhere. He knows us little if he thinks we pursue him too. I pity him. I know of no one more ill-starred. He has lost his friends and disturbed his country. The remorse that tears his spirit pursues him and pursues him everywhere. He fears me as God’s rage. Because he knows I understand him.

  Rousseau had been Dr. Tronchin’s patient and friend until July 1759. Their breach came when Tronchin was urging Rousseau to return to Geneva from his solitary life in France and asked Rousseau how it was “that the proclaimed friend of mankind is no more the friend of men.” But if distance from the young Tronchin promoted Rousseau’s peace of mind, Chiswick brought still greater relief: for there at his side, at last, was his gouvernante. It had been four months since he had seen her in Isle Saint-Pierre, by far the longest period they had been apart in over two decades. He had missed her and entreated her to join him. She had reached her home, Paris, but, not unnaturally, was frightened of journeying across the Channel to Britain.

  A solution presented itself. However, withheld from Rousseau—forever—were the exact details of her journey to England. And for good reason.

  THE SOLUTION HAD materialized in the shape of lusty, young James Boswell.

  He was then at the end of his European tour and was passing through Paris some three weeks after Hume and Rousseau had left it. Visiting John Wilkes on Monday, January 27, he picked up a copy of the St. James’s Chronicle and saw that his mother had died. That evening he sought solace in a brothel. A letter arrived from his father the next day, confirming the bad news and asking his son to come home. Boswell was “quite stupefied.” On Wednesday, having discovered that Le Vasseur was in town, he went in search of her at the Hôtel de Luxembourg in the rue Saint-Marc, where she was staying with the first lady-in-waiting to the Duchesse de Luxembourg. Le Vasseur shared her fears about her trip to London; “If only we could travel together,” she said. Boswell replied that was exactly what he had come to propose. She and Rousseau had been in regular contact: she showed Boswell a couple of letters from him. Apparently she could read well enough to follow his instructions on how to wash his new shirts, and to heed a warning about the future: “Resign yourself to suffering a great deal.” “Quackery this,” Boswell commented.

  In a depressed state of mind, preoccupied with thoughts of his mother, Boswell set out with his companion on Friday, January 31.

  There is no direct record of what followed en route to London. Boswell’s journal entries for the first eleven days of February 1766 vanished. A slip of paper took their place with the laconic comment “Reprehensible Passage,” written by one of Boswell’s literary executors. They were reconstructed by Colonel Ralph Isham, who had conserved the Scotsman’s papers and must have read the appropriate passages: according to Frank Brady and Frederick Pottle, editors of Boswell’s papers, the story is “gleaned from his notes.”

  He had not planned a seduction, but on their second night on the road they slept together.

  His initial attempt was “a fiasco,” and it was only after Le Vasseur comforted him that he regained some strength. He expected her plaudits—was he not youthful and ardent compared with Rousseau? Nevertheless, the next morning, he received a damning verdict on his performance: “I allow that you are a hardy and vigorous lover, but you have no art.” Seeing his crestfallen face, she offered to give him lessons. That night he had to fortify himself with a bottle of red wine. Her advice was to be ardent but gentle, and not to hurry. Also, he should make better use of his hands. He wrote that she rode him “agitated, like a bad rider galloping downhill.” When he grew fed up with the technical instruction, he tried to turn the conversation back to Rousseau—to hear some of his dicta philosophi—but this only bored her. It was a mistake, he reflected, to get entangled with an old man’s mistress.

  Rousseau, meanwhile, was worried. On February 6, he wrote to Mme de Boufflers—surely they should have arrived in England by now?

  Le Vasseur and Boswell sailed into Dover on Tuesday, February 11, and went straight to bed. His final entry of the voyage summed up the outcome, and perhaps restored his pride: “Wednesday, 12 February. Yesterday morning had gone to bed early, and had done it once: thirteen in all. Was really affectionate to her.” As they were together for ten days, that is an impressive but not exceptional statistic.

  They ate their first meal of the day—beefsteaks—late in the afternoon in Rochester. The night of February 12, Le Vasseur probably stayed at Hume’s. On February 13, Boswell “went to Mlle Le Vasseur, with whom was David Hume,” breakfasted, then escorted her to Chiswick. On that journey Boswell gave his word that he would keep their affair a secret, until either Rousseau or Le Vasseur had passed away.

  Boswell had not set eyes on Rousseau for a year and a half, and though they enthusiastically embraced, the younger man was disappointed and shocked by how aged and weak the exile looked. They had a perfunctory discussion: Rousseau talked of moving to Wales, and Boswell inquired whether Scotland had any claim over him, to which Rousseau replied, “I shall act like the kings; I shall put my body in one place, and my heart in another.”

  Leaving Le Vasseur in Chiswick, Boswell kept his widowed father waiting a little longer and scurried straight to the Mitre Tavern off Fleet Street to renew his ties with Dr. Johnson. Johnson promptly rebuked him for spending time with Wilkes and Rousseau. Did Johnson really see Rousseau as a bad man? asked Boswell. “Sir,” the doctor rejoined, “Rousseau is a very bad man. I would sooner sign a sentence for his transportation than that of any felon who has gone from the Old Bailey these many years. Yes, I should like to have him work in the plantations.”

  A month later Lord Marischal, having heard about his reunion with Le Vasseur, wrote to Rousseau: “I rejoice with you on the arrival of Mlle Le Vasseur, and with Mr. Boswell on the pleasure he has received in being able to do you a service; he is a truly honourable man, a perfect gentleman.”

  NOT LONG AFTER Rousseau and Le Vasseur were reunited, Rousseau went up to London for a sitting with Allan Ramsay in the painter’s studio at 67 Harley Street. The next year, Ramsay would become the principal portrait painter to George III and cease painting private sitters. He was a firm friend of David Hume’s: the year they formed their Edinburgh debating club, the Select Society of Edinburgh, 1754, was also the year Ramsay first painted Hume, portraying him in a scholar’s cap and patterned white waistcoat.

  Ramsay’s 1766 depictions of Rousseau and Hume are considered among his finest accomplishments. He had never before encountered Rousseau, but was no fan of his works. He later wrote to Diderot, describing in derogatory terms Rousseau’s championing of nature. “Those who indulge in intellectual pursuits find little charm in the bare necessities of life. Reduced to bare necessity, one must bid farewell to poetry, painting and all the agreeable branches of philosophy, and embrace instead Rousseau’s Nature—Nature on all fours.”

  Although he sketched Rousseau and Hume at roughly the same time, the portraits are striking for their differences. Hume is bewigged, and in diplomatic unif
orm of gold and crimson with a lace-cuffed shirt. His mien is calm and serious. He is looking straight ahead, his eyes wide and full, though he appears not to be seeing us while he pursues some thought, an impression reinforced by one side of his face being in partial shadow. (Light and shadow were significant means of displaying character for British portraitists of this period.) He lives partly in a hidden world. While his forehead is broad, and his neck dewlapped, he is not so porcine as the descriptions of “fat David Hume” might lead us to expect. In a visual cliché, Hume’s left arm rests on two thick leather-bound volumes, telling us we are in the presence of a man of learning. But beyond that, the image is of a man of mature powers, of reason, deep thought, and skeptical judgment.

  In a study of the two paintings, the philosopher Nigel Warburton points out that Hume rarely wore such fancy clothes. On examining the portrait, even King George was moved to mention this, to which Ramsay riposted, “I wished posterity should see that one philosopher during your Majesty’s reign had a good coat upon his back.” Although, of course, Hume had been a diplomat, Warburton surmises that the dress was really an amusing and knowing nod to Hume’s self-description as the “ambassador from the dominions of learning to those of conversation.” However, there is evidence that Hume had in the past taken some delight in dressing up—in Turin, his love of his elaborate lace-edged uniforms tickled a rear admiral who warned Hume that sea air might tarnish his “Lace locks.”

  Ramsay’s reading of Rousseau is more compelling still. Rousseau is seated sharply away from the artist, his face turned in semi-profile. Because of the angle of the body, he is forced to look at us from the corner of his eyes, giving an apprehensive quality to his glance, wary, even distrustful. The effect is multiplied by the lighting: only the face and shoulder are illuminated. He appears thin and tired and drawn. He is dressed in his habitual Armenian clothing, including his fur hat. He holds the edges of his cape together with his right hand, “protectively,” says Warburton. But Rousseau does not escape the cliché: the man of sensibilité has his finger pointing straight to his heart.

  Initially, Rousseau seemed pleased with the outcome. To Du Peyrou he recounted that “a good painter” had portrayed him in oil for Hume. Not only had the king wanted to see the work but an engraving was to be made. Subsequently, Hume sent six prints to Mme de Boufflers in May to distribute among “enthusiasts for our friend.” He told her it was “done from an admirable portrait which Ramsay drew for me.”

  AS ROUSSEAU WENDED his way back from sitting for Ramsay, he suffered a nasty jolt: Sultan ran off. It was not the first time. The dog was giving Rousseau “unbelievable trouble.” Hume had reported one escapade to Mme de Barbantane only a fortnight earlier, in mid-February, though he was illustrating his charge’s celebrity, not Sultan’s mischief. “Every circumstance, the most minute, that concerns him, is put in the newspapers. Unfortunately, one day, he lost his dog; this incident was in the papers next morning. Soon after, I recovered Sultan very surprisingly: this intelligence was communicated to the public immediately, as a piece of good news.”

  Now Sultan had disappeared again. A Rousseau devotee promised the distraught owner he would put an advertisement in the press and on March 4, 1766, the following appeared in the Public Advertiser:

  As it happened, Sultan navigated his own way back to the Pulleins’.

  The sitting for Ramsay was also memorable for another, more positive, reason. At the painter’s, Rousseau finally solved his housing problem.

  Throughout this period, Rousseau remained intent on moving to Wales. Hume, in his own words, was “putting a hundred obstacles in the way,” judging that Rousseau would be happier closer to civilization. In a letter to Mme de Barbantane, he remarked that, “Hundreds of persons have offered me their assistance to settle him; you would think that all the purses and all the houses of England were open to him.”

  One of the hundreds offering assistance was the M.P. for Derbyshire and commissioner for commerce, William Fitzherbert, a member of Garrick’s and Johnson’s circle. Through Garrick, Fitzherbert suggested lodging Rousseau at his family seat, near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. Rousseau declined: Fitzherbert’s sister would be in residence, and according to Hume, “[Rousseau] feared he would constrain her.” But a neighbor of Fitzherbert’s then made a similar proposal, also passed on through Garrick. And so Richard Davenport, blessed with a character of uncommon compassion and generosity, entered Rousseau’s life.

  Richard Davenport was, in Hume’s description to Hugh Blair, “a gentleman of 5 or 6,000 pounds [or some £500,000 a year in today’s values] in the North of England, and a man of great humanity and of a good understanding.” He had a remote house which “pleases the wild imagination and solitary humour of Rousseau.”

  Elderly, with one leg shorter than the other, Davenport was prone to agonizing gout. He had been educated at Westminster School and Cambridge University, and had read some law in the Inner Temple. He could trace his family to the twelfth century and had recently bought back the family estate at Davenport in Cheshire. Rousseau’s future place of asylum, Wootton Hall, was in the hills of Staffordshire (though so close to Derbyshire that its location has often been described as in that county).

  Hume’s sense of responsibility for the practicalities of the exile’s well-being can be seen in his detailed interrogation of Fitzherbert about Wootton Hall: “1. Is there wood and hills about Mr. Davenport’s house? 2. Cannot Mr. Rousseau, if he should afterwards think proper, find a means to boil a pot, and roast a piece of meat in Mr. Davenport’s house so as to be perfectly at home? 3. Will Mr. Davenport be so good as to accept of a small rent, for this circumstance I find is necessary? 4. Can Mr. Rousseau set out presently and take possession of his habitation?”

  Hume then told Fitzherbert that he had mentioned Davenport’s offer to Rousseau, who had “seemed to like it extremely” and would accept if Davenport would take payment. Hume suggested thirty pounds for “board, firing and washing.” He met Davenport at the end of February, and then arranged for Rousseau to make his acquaintance at Ramsay’s studio on Saturday, March 1, 1766.

  However, Rousseau would not commit himself. He complained to Du Peyrou that as soon as he made up his mind where to go, everyone conspired to make him change it.

  Hume pressed on, wearily and fruitlessly, with his searches, but on March 10 the exile finally decided on Richard Davenport’s mansion, Wootton Hall, “on the mountains of Derbyshire.” He would leave, he told Du Peyrou, on March 19 and “finish his days there.”

  Hume was skeptical that Rousseau would be content for long. “Never was a man, who so well deserves happiness, so little calculated by nature to attain it.” To Hume, as to Diderot and Tronchin before him, the solitary life appeared unnatural. Perhaps their attachment to the discourse of reason was threatened by Rousseau’s belief in the primacy of nature.

  Hume proposed putting up Rousseau and Le Vasseur for one night in Lisle Street, on March 18, before they took the chaise north.

  11

  Together—and Worlds Apart

  Rousseau was pre-eminently the philosopher of human misery.

  —PROFESSOR JUDITH SHKLAR

  He drew his pen and a system fell.

  —JOHN HOME on David Hume

  TO JUDGE SOLELY by his paeans of love and esteem for Rousseau, Hume must have been the happiest inhabitant of London during the first months of 1766. He lavished praise on his guest in letter after letter, peppered with copious assurances of how well they got along.

  Thus, on January 19 he described Rousseau to Mme de Boufflers as having an excellent warm heart, “and in conversation kindles often to a degree of heat which looks like inspiration. I love him much, and hope that I have some share in his affections.”

  On February 2, he gave his brother a self-serving account of Rousseau’s decision to choose London over Berlin, and Hume over Frederick the Great: “[Rousseau] came to Strasbourg, with the intention of going to the King of Prussia, who pressed him earn
estly to live with him. At Strasbourg my letter reached him, making him an offer of all my services; upon which he turned short, and having obtained the King of France’s passport, came and joined me at Paris.” Hume was effusive about this “very modest, mild, well-bred, gentle-spirited and warm-hearted man as ever I knew in my life. I never saw a man who seems better calculated for good company, nor who seems to take more pleasure in it.”

  Exactly a fortnight later, he distanced himself from d’Holbach’s grisly warning that he was nursing a viper in his bosom, telling Mme de Barbantane:

  M. Rousseau’s enemies have sometimes made you doubt of his sincerity, and you have been pleased to ask my opinion on this head. After having lived so long with him [less than two months in fact] and seen him in a variety of lights, I am now better enabled to judge; and I declare to you that I have never known a man more amiable and more virtuous than he appears to me; he is mild, gentle, modest, affectionate, disinterested; and above all, endowed with a sensibility of heart in a supreme degree. Were I to seek for his faults, I should say that they consisted in a little hasty impatience, which, as I am told, inclines him sometimes to say disobliging things to people that trouble him. … He is apt to entertain groundless suspicions of his best friends; and his lively imagination working upon them feigns chimeras, and pushes him to great extremes … but for my part, I think I could pass all my life in his company without any danger of our quarrelling.