Louis XV, the “Well-Beloved”: 1710–74. King of France 1715–74. Great-grandson of Louis XIV, inheriting the throne at the age of five under the regency of the worldly, dissolute, but liberal Philippe, duc d’Orléans. After Louis dispensed with chief ministers in 1744, his court became a place of factional scheming while the king occupied himself with a series of mistresses, of whom the most famous was Mme de Pompadour, and lost almost all France’s overseas possessions to Britain. His ineffectual rule led to the decline of royal authority and prestige, and so strengthened the forces of revolution.
Luxembourg, Charles-François-Frédéric de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Maréchal de France, Duc de: 1702–64. Distinguished soldier and protector of Rousseau at his country seat of Montmorency. Provided the coach for Rousseau to escape after the Paris parlement issued a warrant for his arrest following the publication of Émile. Rousseau thought him “weak but trustworthy.” His wife, Madeleine-Angélique (1707–87), whom Rousseau found charming, was a great supporter of both Rousseau and Le Vasseur. From her salon, she arbitrated on correct style and behavior—even though earlier, when married to the Duc de Boufflers, she had been notorious for her dissipated habits.
Montigny, Jean-Charles-Philibert Trudaine de: 1733–77. Philosophe. Friend of Hume’s and translator of his Natural History of Religion. Scion of one of the most influential families in France, he was in charge of national finances for roads and transport.
Morellet, Abbé André: 1727–1819. An enlightened economist, conversationalist, and writer. Although in holy orders, he became part of the group of atheist philosophes who met at d’Holbach’s.
Suard, Jean-Báptiste-Antoine: 1734–1817. Journalist and editor of the Gazette de France and Gazette littéraire de France. Translator of Hume’s account of the falling-out with Rousseau.
Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de l’Aulne: 1727–81. Economist, reformer, and statesman. Contributor to the Encyclopédie and advocate for policies of internal free trade and laissez-faire, in part as a means of undermining privilege and feudal interests. Regional administrator for Limoges (1761), minister of marine (1774), and controller of finances (1774–76) when his zeal for modernization of the state led to his downfall. His contemporary reputation was for sagacity, penetrating intelligence, and profundity. Voltaire said of him, “I have scarcely ever seen a man more lovable and better informed.” Translated Hume’s discourse Of the Balance of Trade.
Verdelin, Marie-Madeleine de Brémond d’Ars, Marquise de: 1728–1810. Daughter of impoverished nobleman and close friend of Sophie d’Houdetot’s, with whom Rousseau was infatuated. After an uneasy start in 1759, became a sympathetic friend to Rousseau and played a major role in his move to London. Later, they fell out. Rousseau accused her of being a gossip.
Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet): 1694—1778. Playwright, philosopher, moralist, historian, wit, successful businessman, prolific correspondent, campaigner against superstition and intolerance; this last role is epitomized in his famous motto écrasez l’infame (crush the infamous thing). Twice imprisoned in the Bastille and spent time in exile in England. In 1764, he anonymously published Le Sentiment des citoyens, exposing hurtful secrets about Rousseau, whom he met only once, in a salon in 1751.
… and other philosophes, rich patrons, nobles, gentlemen of the court, confidential servants, men in black, outraged parlementarians, and archbishops.
SWITZERLAND
Du Peyrou, Pierre-Alexandre: 1729–94. Financier living in Neuchâtel, where he built a new quayside on the lake and gave many of Rousseau’s manuscripts to the municipal library. Came from a rich French Huguenot family in Dutch Guyana. Became friendly with Rousseau through their shared joy in rambling and natural history. Suffered from gout. In 1782, he published the first complete edition of Rousseau’s works. In his many letters, Rousseau addressed him as “my dear host,” and he addressed Rousseau as “my dear citizen.”
Ivernois, François-Henri d’: 1722–78. Genevan merchant and French refugee who effectively forced his friendship on Rousseau (in spite of the exile’s attempt to bore him away), becoming a determined visitor at Môtiers, a walking and botanizing companion, and a regular correspondent thereafter.
Ivernois, Jean-Antoine d’: Medical doctor and eminent naturalist who taught Rousseau botany on Isle Saint-Pierre. Cousin (removed) of François-Henri.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: 1712–78. Genevan-born music copyist, composer, novelist, educationalist, essayist, political theorist, and controversialist, and precursor of the Romantics.
Tronchin—the family: Among the leading citizens of Geneva, its members included Dr. Théodore Tronchin, a physician famous across Europe, seen as the model of the wise and humane doctor, and consulted by nobility and sovereigns. He recommended fresh air and “a spare diet” but is best known for promoting vaccination against smallpox. He achieved fame by vaccinating the Duc d’Orléans’s children; in 1765, the duc invited him to take up residence in France, which he did in 1766. He also wrote a well-known book on the “dry bellyache.” François Tronchin was on Geneva’s governing Petit Conseil and was a proponent of action against Rousseau. Jean-Robert Tronchin was Geneva’s prosecutor general and author of the attack on Rousseau, Letters from the Countryside, in 1763. Théodore’s son, Louis-François, a pupil of Adam Smith’s at Glasgow University, was staying in Hume’s London lodgings when Rousseau arrived. Rousseau believed Louis-François was there to spy on him. The Tronchins were close to Voltaire. Théodore was his doctor. (Théodore also attended Rousseau until they quarreled in 1757.)
Warens, Louise-éléonore de la Tour Pil, Baronne de: 1699–1762. Swiss baroness, alchemist, and dedicated proselytizer for Catholicism. On Rousseau’s leaving Geneva, she became his mother figure and lover. He admired her remarkable complexion. She died in great poverty.
… and radical watchmakers, Genevan oligarchs, affronted pastors, stone-throwing villagers.
PRUSSIA
Frederick the Great: 1712—86. Born in Berlin, son of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, became King Frederick II in 1740. Practiced enlightened bureaucratic despotism at home and bellicose aggression toward his neighbors. Known as the philosopher king, he immersed himself in French culture from an early age, played the flute, and was a patron of Helvétius, Voltaire, and d’Alembert. He gave refuge to Rousseau.
SCOTLAND
Blair, Reverend Hugh: 1718—80. Edinburgh Presbyterian cleric and professor of rhetoric and belles lettres. Close friend and regular correspondent of David Hume’s and a leading figure in the Scottish Enlightenment.
Boswell, James: 1740–95. Scottish lawyer, writer, diarist, and biographer of Samuel Johnson; also notable for his perpetual whoring and drunkenness. Son of Lord Auchinleck. He first met Hume in Edinburgh as a fellow member of the Select Society. In 1764, he visited Rousseau in Switzerland, and at the end of January 1766, he notoriously accompanied Rousseau’s gouvernante, Thérèse Le Vasseur, from Paris to Chiswick.
Bute, John Stuart, Earl of: 1713–92. Scottish courtier and politician. Enjoying a closeness to the future George III’s mother, Dowager Princess Augusta (she liked his legs), that provoked scandalized gossip, Bute became the prince’s tutor. On George’s accession in 1760, Bute was, in turn, a senior courtier, secretary of state, and finally first lord of the treasury in 1762. In 1763, he negotiated the Treaty of Paris to end the Seven Years’ War. He became the subject of intense public hostility in England and was attacked in John Wilkes’s journal, North Briton. He resigned in 1763 but was accused of exercising power through the king, from “behind the curtain,” against his successor, George Grenville. Grenville eventually forced the king to dismiss Bute from court but he remained a bogeyman for Whig politicians. In private life, Bute was a notable botanist.
Craufurd, John: 1742–1814. Man-about-town, known as “Fish”; friend of Boswell’s. In Paris in 1765, he was a favorite of Mme du Deffand’s. Much to his consternation, she wrote passionate letters to him on his return t
o London in 1766. In London, well known as a gambler, he introduced Hume to Almack’s club. In 1768, he became an M.P.
Elliot, Sir Gilbert, of Minto: 1722–77. Scottish politician and friend of Hume’s. Elliot helped him in the composition of Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Elliot was M.P. for Roxburgh and supporter of Bute, parliamentary orator, lord of the admiralty in 1756, Keeper of the Signets for Scotland in 1767, treasurer of the navy in 1770. His sons were in Paris under Hume’s supervision in 1765.
Hume, David: 1711–76. Scottish philosopher, essayist, historian, diplomat, and savior of Rousseau.
Marischal, Keith, George, tenth Earl Marischal: 1692/3?-1778. Scottish Jacobite. Friend of Hume’s and a “father” to Rousseau. Involved in Jacobite uprising of 1715. After its failure, he escaped to the Continent, but in 1719 fought in the unsuccessful Jacobite attempt to invade with Spanish support and was severely wounded. He was outlawed and his estates were forfeited. Disenchanted with the Jacobite leadership, he wholeheartedly entered the service of Prussia. He won Frederick the Great’s favor and was appointed his ambassador to Paris (1751), governor of Neuchâtel (1752), and ambassador to Spain (1758). While in Spain, Marischal warned the British government of hostile Spanish plans and by degrees his punishment was rescinded, beginning with a pardon by George II in May 1759. The value of his estates was returned in 1761 under George III. He visited Scotland but decided to end his days in Prussia. He gave Rousseau refuge in Neuchâtel, but after the attack on Hume reduced contact to a minimum. Rousseau said he was “wise but he is human” and remained forever grateful to him. The Earl of Chatham (Pitt) visited Earl Marischal some months before the latter’s death, when Marischal observed how strange it was that “one of George III’s ministers should come to receive the last breaths of an old Jacobite.” In fact, Chatham died first.
Ramsay, Allan: 1713–84. Edinburgh-born portrait painter. With the help of Bute, he rose to be George III’s “principal portrait painter in ordinary” in 1767. (It is recorded that he painted at least 150 pairs of coronation portraits of George III and Queen Charlotte.) He was also a political essayist and classical scholar who became a member of London intellectual society. An Edinburgh friend of Hume’s, with whom he (and Adam Smith) founded a debating club, the Select Society, in 1754. That same year, he painted Hume in Edinburgh, and in 1766 he painted both Hume and Rousseau in London at his studio at 67 Harley Street. An accident to his right arm in 1773 terminated his career.
Smith, Adam: 1723–90. Moral philosopher and economist. Hume’s close friend and one of the brightest stars of the Scottish Enlightenment: when he was received by the cabinet of Pitt “the Elder,” they rose to their feet. “We all stand, Mr. Smith, because we are all your pupils,” said Pitt. Elected to the chair of logic at Glasgow in 1751 and to the chair of moral philosophy the following year. In 1759, he published the Theory of Moral Sentiments. In 1763, he was made tutor to the sons of the Duke of Buccleuch and went on the grand tour, visiting Voltaire in Ferney and staying in Paris. He returned to Scotland in 1766. In 1776, he published the founding text of modern economics, The Wealth of Nations, in which he shattered the dominant mercantilism in favor of free trade.
Smollett, Tobias George: 1721—71. Scottish author of rambling novels and jocund reporter of contemporary scene. Historian and translator of Don Quixote. Had little sensibility for sensibilité.
… and other stars of the Scottish Enlightenment, writers, clerics, publishers, hostesses, landladies.
ENGLAND
Boothby, Sir Brooke: 1744–1824. Born and died in Ashbourne. Translator, botanist, poet, and supporter of Rousseau. A fluent French speaker, he met Rousseau at Wootton in 1766 “in a romantic valley at the bottom of the Weaver hills” and visited him in Paris in 1774. A famous Wright of Derby portrait has him lying down reading a copy of Rousseau, thus demonstrating his sensibilité. He acquired a reputation for indolence and drunkenness.
Conway, Henry Seymour, Honorable: 1719–95. Soldier and leading Whig politician, nephew of Robert Walpole and cousin of Horace Walpole, who cared for him deeply. His first career and love was the army (lieutenant general). He saw active service at Dettingen, Fontenoy, and Culloden. He was also a Westminster M.P. from 1741. He was related by marriage to the third Duke of Richmond, whose sister, the beautiful and wayward Lady Sarah Lennox, married Sir Charles Bunbury. Conway became a political cause célèbre in 1764 when dismissed from his positions both at Court and in the army for voting against general warrants. When Rockingham took over from Grenville in July 1765, Conway was appointed to the heart of his government, becoming secretary of state for the southern department (leading the House of Commons, but also responsible for France, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and the Ottoman Empire, together with Ireland and the American colonies). He steered negotiations with the French and managed the charged issue of repealing the 1765 American Stamp Act. In May 1766, he moved to the northern department (responsible for relations with the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Poland, and Russia); when Rockingham fell, he stayed on under Pitt and Grafton. In March 1767, he invited Hume to become his undersecretary. At this period, Conway voted against his own government on regulating the East India Company and American taxation. He resigned his office in 1768 but remained in the cabinet at the king’s request until 1770. He then continued to be heavily involved in American affairs, vigorously opposing war against the colonies. He made his last Commons speech in 1784, losing his seat shortly thereafter.
Davenport, Richard: 1705–71. Owner of Wootton Hall in Staffordshire, which he let to Rousseau in March 1766, as well as his family seat, Davenport, at Calvely in Cheshire and three other properties. Described by Hume as “a very good, as well as a very rich man,” he enjoyed an income of between £6,000 and £7,000 at a time when a gentleman could manage on £300 a year and a tradesman was doing well on £400. By the time he met Rousseau, he was a widower, elderly, lame in one leg, and suffering from gout. He looked after two grandchildren, Phoebe and Davies, who got on well with Rousseau.
Dewes, Mary: 1746–? Niece of Bernard Granville and his sister Mary Delany: she enchanted Rousseau when they met at Calwich Abbey.
Garrick, David: 1717–79. Actor, producer, dramatist, poet, and co-manager of Drury Lane Theatre. A monument in Lichfield Cathedral bears an epitaph by his friend Samuel Johnson: “I am disappointed by that stroke of death that has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.”
George III: 1738–1820. Grandson of George II, he acceded to the throne of Great Britain and Ireland in 1760, also becoming elector, then king, of Hanover. In 1761, he married a protestant princess, Charlotte Sophia, daughter of Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Abroad, his reign saw Britain win an overseas empire in the Seven Years’ War, become isolated in Europe, and lose the American colonies. At home, before 1770, the lack of political skills of this hardworking monarch, who “gloried in the name of Briton,” led to a decade of governmental instability in which he could influence the formation and dissolution of seven successive administrations but not find the key to stability. From 1788, he endured bouts of madness that some have put down to the inherited condition of porphyria.
Grafton, Augustus Henry Fitzroy, Duke of: 1735–1811. Whig politician of a moderate and conciliatory frame of mind. He was secretary of state for the northern department in 1765 under Rockingham (conscious of his inexperience, he said he felt like a girl who was going to be married: much pleased with the general idea but much frightened as the hour drew near), resigning in May 1766. Under Rockingham’s successor, Pitt “the Elder” (earl of Chatham), he was first lord of the treasury, becoming prime minister when Chatham resigned in 1768, departing in turn in January 1770. He held office in subsequent administrations. While he was quite hardworking, he was also indecisive, lacking in leadership, and overly eager to avoid trouble. Walpole wrote of him that “he thought the world should be postponed to a whore and a horserace.”
Granville,
Bernard: 1699–1775. Owner of Calwich Abbey, which he acquired in 1738, and so Rousseau’s neighbor in Wootton. An elderly, civilized, urbane, if rather taciturn bachelor, with a love of music and gardens. He spoke good French and maintained a warm relationship with Rousseau. Elder brother of Mary Delany and uncle of Mary Dewes.
Grenville, George: 1712–70. Whig M.P. from 1741 and brother-in-law of the elder Pitt, under whom he twice served. On Pitt’s resignation in 1761, Grenville stayed on under Bute, though his opposition to the Treaty of Paris saw him shunted to the sidelines. Nonetheless, when Bute resigned in April 1763, Grenville succeeded him and, with difficulty, forced the king to dismiss Bute from his private councils. With the attributes of a conscientious technician, he was not to George III’s liking: the king complained, “I would rather see the devil in my closet every day than Mr. Grenville.” His administration saw a prolonged battle against John Wilkes, the ultimately unsuccessful defense of general warrants, and the introduction of stamp duties on the American colonies in 1765. In July that year, the king finally managed to replace him with the Marquess of Rockingham.
Hertford, Francis Seymour Conway, Earl of: 1718–94. Brother of Henry Conway, nephew of Robert Walpole, cousin of Horace Walpole. Appointed Britain’s first ambassador to Paris after the end of the Seven Years’ War, he took Hume as his private secretary. He left that post on appointment in July 1765 as lord lieutenant of Ireland but then became lord chamberlain to and close confidant of George III.
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