Rousseau's Dog (22 page)

And to another (Anne Pitt), he archly deprecated his newfound fame: would she believe that, as news of the hoax letter swept the French capital, he became the fashion?

However, not all the town reveled in his wit. Mme de Boufflers and Conti became enraged by it: in Walpole's words, he “had the misfortune to give great offence
au Temple.
” On January 7, Mme de Boufflers
had even mailed a letter to Hume hoping to catch him at Calais. Missing him there, it was forwarded to London. She asked whether “a letter from the King of Prussia that was circulating round Paris was true or false. … They say [the letter] is full of irony.”

As we have seen, Hume must have raised this with Rousseau on or before January 18, probably stirred into action by her mentioning it. Rousseau wrote to Mme de Boufflers that day, and Hume to her the next when he added the P.S. “M. Rousseau says the letter of the King of Prussia is a forgery; and he suspects it to come from M. de Voltaire.” But by that time, she had already discovered it was a spoof. When, on January 12, Walpole supped at Mme du Deffand's, his hostess said Mmes de Luxembourg and de Boufflers had both been there to complain about the letter: Mme de Boufflers said it was “wicked to be so hard on an unfortunate and so ridicule him.” A fortnight later,
l'Idole du Temple
lined up the Prince de Conti to add weight to her finger-wagging. Walpole found their earnestness comical and, according to the description he sent to Thomas Gray, played the clown.

Walpole enclosed yet another copy. To the Reverend Mr. Cole, on February 28, 1766, he also scorned Rousseau's idiosyncrasies and—a
leitmotif of the
philosophes,
this—questioned his genuineness. The “King of Prussia” letter was

W
ALPOLE'S HANDIWORK WAS
now making a splash in London, too. His distribution alone had guaranteed that a number of copies were circulating around the city. An early mention in the press appeared on January 28–30 in the
St. James's Chronicle:
“A letter is handed about Paris, said to have been written by the King of Prussia, to the celebrated Rousseau.” The
British Chronicle
for January 31 soberly pointed out it had not yet been “authenticated.”

Toward the end of January or beginning of February, Hume returned to the subject with Mme de Boufflers, supposing by that time she had learned Walpole was responsible. “[Walpole] is a very worthy man; he esteems and even admires Rousseau; yet he could not forbear, for the sake of a very indifferent joke, the turning him into ridicule, and saying harsh things about him. I am a little angry with him; and I hear you are a great deal; but the matter ought to be treated only as a piece of levity.”

“A piece of levity” or not, the spoof must have made Hume deeply uncomfortable—even beyond what might be natural when a companion is satirized accurately. We can conjecture that it was only with Mme de Boufflers's Calais letter, showing how public the King of Prussia hoax had become, that Hume was panicked into telling Rousseau of its existence. There is every reason to suppose that Hume was aware of the letter's true authorship from the outset, though he let Rousseau suspect, first, Voltaire, then d'Alembert.

The Scotsman was notably anxious lest Mme de Boufflers think he had contributed the key witticism to the bogus letter, and, curiously, he had a (guilty?) need to have his memory vouched for. In mid-February, he asked Mme de Barbantane to assure Mme de Boufflers “that Horace Walpole's letter was not founded on any pleasantry of mine; the only pleasantry in that letter came from his own mouth, in my company, at Lord Ossory's table; which My Lord remembers very well.” In his anxiety to disclaim responsibility, Hume had let slip that he was present at the satire's creation.

So the question arises, what precisely did Hume know of the letter and when did he know it?

L
ORD
O
SSORY WAS
one of two young men whom
le bon David
would summon as witnesses in his defense. The other was John Craufurd (often rendered as the modern “Crawford”). Hume and Walpole dined with both regularly in Paris in the winter of 1765. Walpole told Thomas Brand on October 19, “The man I have liked best in Paris is an Englishman, Lord Ossory, who is one of the most sensible young men I ever saw.” He praised him, too, as one of the “properest and most amiable young men I ever knew.” In fact, Ossory was a determined gambler and, with John Craufurd, a founder member of Almack's notorious club in Mayfair in 1764. Back in London, they put Hume up for membership. As for Craufurd, nicknamed “Fish” for his inquisitive manner, he was a man-about-town, close to Mme du Deffand. Sitting relaxed in an easy chair, he looks out from his portrait with a cool, appraising gaze. He is probably the subject of a Paris police report that praises a young Briton's sangfroid on discovering his mistress cheating on him when he had paid her to be faithful for six months. (He became M.P. for a Scottish constituency in 1774.)

Hume's approach was to deny having had any sight of the satire while he was in Paris, and Walpole (glorying in his wit) backed him up.
He confirmed, at Hume's request, that he had not shown it to Hume, even though they lived for a while in the same inn, because the Scotsman was Rousseau's host. Walpole wrote (on July 26), “I cannot be precise as to the time of my writing the King of Prussia's letter, but I do assure you with the utmost truth that it was several days before you left Paris, & before Rousseau's arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you stayed there, out of delicacy to you; but it was the reason why, out of delicacy to myself, I did not go to see him, as you often proposed to me; thinking it wrong to go & make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him.”

That was the line. However, Walpole's
Paris Journal,
which provides a daily record of where Walpole went and with whom he dined and supped in December 1765 and January 1766, indicates that this was less than the whole truth.

A
S WE RECORD
above, Hume told Mme de Barbantane that “Horace Walpole's letter was not founded on any pleasantry of mine; the only pleasantry in that letter came from his own mouth, in my company, at Lord Ossory's table.” And what the
Journal
shows is that the only occasion on which Hume dined with Walpole and Lord Ossory was on December 12, when Walpole entertained Hume, Ossory, and Craufurd. That was probably when the joke began. A few days before the dinner, Hume must have received Rousseau's letter throwing himself “into [Hume's] arms”; as the jesters enjoyed themselves, the exile was on the road to Paris. The four men, no doubt prompted by Walpole and fueled by a good meal, poked fun at the man shortly to be in Hume's charge.

Certainly in the Republic of Letters, Hume's role was bruited about. Even his dearest Parisian confidante, Mme de Boufflers, was convinced that a witticism of his had prompted the most biting of the sarcasms. She leveled the accusation at Hume on July 25, 1766:

“Fish” Craufurd was the likely bearer of this news, though he, too, maintained Hume's innocence in public. Hume may have guessed the source of the leak. In August 1766, he warned Mme du Deffand to avoid Craufurd: he was a good for nothing.

But even if Hume coined that taunt, had he seen the letter in which Walpole used it? And if he had not seen it, was he at least aware of it? Walpole made no secret of the spoof—far from it. He carried his
jeu d'esprit
across Paris to dinners and suppers, accepting various corrections to the French suggested by the Duc de Nivernois, Helvétius, and Henault, with all of whom Hume mingled. And the
Journal
reveals that Hume had at least two direct opportunities to hear of it. On December 24, he was at the dinner where, said Walpole, “Helvétius was much diverted with [the letter], and pointed out one or two faults in the French.” On January 1, at supper with Mme du Deffand and with her encouragement, the author read the letter aloud to the assembled company. Hume was present at this occasion as well. So it seems plausible that when Hume insisted he did not
see
the letter until London, he was sticking to the literal truth, while allowing this economy with the
vérité
to give the impression of complete ignorance.

Meanwhile, the spoof continued to ripple through London society. On March 13, Lady Hervey told Walpole that “nothing ever was so genteel, so delicate and so just.” On April 3, it appeared in the
St.
James's Chronicle,
printed in both French and English. The
London Chronicle
followed on April 5.

One of these papers—probably the
St. James's Chronicle
—even made its way to the wilds of the Derbyshire Peaks and into the hands of the victim. Sir Brooke Boothby recollected finding Rousseau “in extreme agitation” in consequence. “I endeavoured to console him by remarking that in England no one was exempt from such little babells [sic], but he would hear nothing. He was as certain that it was the production of d'Alembert as if he had seen him write it & that Hume was certainly his accomplice.”

Rousseau reached for his pen. In its April 8–10 edition, the
St. James's Chronicle
printed his response (in translation), more sorrow than anger, but with two far-reaching phrases. It was addressed to the printer Henry Baldwin:

An overreaction, Hume thought—describing it to Mme de Boufflers, he belittled the letter as “full of passion, and indeed of extravagance.”
But the
St. James's Chronicle
felt an editorial statement was required, apologetic in tone.

The last comment was a scarcely veiled reference to Walpole. Meanwhile, the spoof letter and Rousseau's reply were picked up in other papers. And Rousseau's hurt response caught Grimm's satiric eye in Paris as juicy material for mockery in his Europe-wide cultural newsletter. “If the monarch took these things as keenly as the author, and if Frederic was of the state of mind of Jean-Jacques, this letter could become the subject of a bloody war.”

Unfortunately for Rousseau, his anguished reply in the
St. James's Chronicle
served only to egg on his critics. A series of other malevolent newspaper squibs were aimed in his direction. On April 17–19, passages of a parody entitled in English “A Letter from M. Voltaire to M. Jean-Jacques Rousseau” and in French
Lettre de M. de Voltaire au docteur J. J. Pansophe
were printed in the
London Chronicle
and the
Lloyd's Evening Register
and noted in the
Gentleman's Magazine.

Although nothing in the
Pansophe
pasquinade besmirched Rousseau personally, he saw it as evidence of his enemies' colluding in Paris and London. But other letters in French followed the King of Prussia letter into the newspapers, and two did pierce their thin-skinned target.