Rousseau's Dog (17 page)

Although he sketched Rousseau and Hume at roughly the same time, the portraits are striking for their differences. Hume is bewigged, and in diplomatic uniform 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.”

A
S 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

T
O 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 earnestly 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:

D'Holbach received a similar note. The German baron replied (in English) that he was glad Hume had “not occasion to repent of the kindness you have shown. … I wish some friends, whom I value very much, had not more reasons to complain of his unfair proceedings, printed imputations, ungratefulness &c. For my part, I wish heartily [Rousseau] may find, in your country, that repose his imagination and the sourness of his temper have deprived him of hitherto.” The letter ends with an intriguing sentence: “Mr. Grimm pays his most sincere thanks for the piece of service you did about Rousseau's manuscript.” What did he mean by this? The eminent Rousseau scholar R. A. Leigh wondered if Rousseau had read to Hume the section of the
Confessions
that dealt with Grimm. If so, it would explain something of Hume's later panic and horror at the prospect of his appearing in those pages.

While Hume was rhapsodizing about Rousseau, he was simultaneously pursuing the question of a royal pension for him, first broached on the boat to England. In late January, Hume informed Mme de Boufflers that a friend of his “who possesses much of [the king's] confidence” had talked to His Majesty. The pension was agreed on in principle, but Rousseau was seeking advice from his “father” in Berlin—Earl Marischal—on whether to accept it. Since Rousseau was such a contentious figure, the pension would not be made public: “You know that our sovereign is extremely prudent and decent, and careful not to give offence. For which reason, he requires that this act of generosity may be an entire secret.” A P.S. says it will be £100 p.a., “a mighty accession to our friend's slender revenue.”

For his access to George III, Hume was dependent on General Conway, who at the time had more pressing preoccupations. The Rockingham administration, and Conway in particular, was embroiled in the Stamp Act crisis. The Seven Years' War had drained the exchequer. In February 1765, under the previous Grenville ministry, stamp duties levied on paper used for all official documents (embracing everything
from newspapers to marriage certificates to wills) had been applied to the American colonies, incensing the colonists, who were not represented in the British parliament and who were never consulted. Faced with a wave of protest from across the Atlantic and at home from commercial interests, the new Rockingham government was seeking a way to repeal the detested act while maintaining the right of Parliament to tax the Americans. In the British Isles, the idea that the free-riding colonists should contribute to the cost of campaigns that had lifted the French threat to North America was predictably popular.