Rousseau's Dog (33 page)

Having discarded his gowns in Wootton, Rousseau had a blue coat made. Once the favored guest of French nobility, he was now
approached by the local surgeon and librarian of the Gentlemen's Society, Edmund Jessop. Jessop penned a long, florid note in Latin, expressing his desire to discuss one of the Genevan's publications which, though condemned by many, merited approbation in Jessop's view. Rousseau took his time before delivering a rebarbative response:

And he went further:

T
HE NEXT DAY,
Rousseau, Le Vasseur, and Sultan left for Dover: he could not wait to reach the sea. Their resources were so strained that the philosopher was forced to sell his silver cutlery to pay their way.

Fortunately, if they traveled nonstop, Dover was only two days away. There was a twice-weekly coach, “the Flying Machine,” which departed from an inn in Boston, stopped off in Spalding, and then sped the 99.5 miles through Peterborough to the Spread Eagle Inn in Gracechurch Street in the heart of the city of London. From there, it was a day's run to the coast on a direct route that went via Dartford, Rochester, Sitting-bourne, and Canterbury.

In Dover on or about May 18, Rousseau composed two letters, one to Davenport, the other to Conway, which began in tiny characters that steadily grew in size as the missive went on.

When he saw the sea, he told his former landlord, he realized he was free to cross it, and even considered returning to Wootton. It was only when he happened upon a newspaper article (about his leaving Wootton) that he was forced to change his plans. Having assumed that Davenport was the source for this piece, Rousseau issued a sorrowful rebuke. He restated his belief that friendship imposed its duties even when broken.

The press had indeed picked up Rousseau's flight. There were poems and ditties, including one in the
Lloyd's Evening Post
about Rousseau turning his arse on God. The
London Chronicle
accused him of abusing “his protector and friend … the ingenious Mr. Hume,” who had conducted him to the land of liberty. Rousseau's pride, caprice, and ingratitude were “unbecoming in a man of his singular talents and genius.” The
Gentleman's Magazine
spoke of his quitting Wootton in a very abrupt manner and abusing his benefactor “in the most ungenerous terms.” Where they obtained this information, we can only guess. Certainly not from the gout-ridden benefactor.

In seven pages to Conway, Rousseau's other letter rehearsed the plot against him, adding that it was so extensive that the state must be involved. Perhaps the aim was to prevent the publication of his memoirs. However, he assured Conway that he did not believe him to be personally implicated. Conway had been deceived by Rousseau's enemies. He warned Conway against any attempt by the state to have him assassinated: he, Rousseau, was (unfortunately) so well known that his death or disappearance would inevitably prompt investigation. He proposed an agreement: if he were allowed to leave the country in peace, he promised in return that he would abandon his memoirs and not mention a word of his complaints nor utter one word against Hume—or always to speak of him with honor.

The most interesting aspect of Rousseau's proposal is how he undertook, if challenged, to explain his previous accusations. A flash of true insight shines through. He would blame them on his bad humor and
the effect on him of the mistrust and offense brought on by his misfortunes. He admitted to “too many unjust suspicions with which to reproach myself.” All the preceding sentences are in the third person—on how “he” would abandon his memoirs and “he” would explain “his” accusations. The confession of unjust suspicions alone is in the first person, giving it a plangent reality.

Conway showed Hume the letter and, according to Hume, thought it “the composition of a whimsical man not a madman.” Hume then told Davenport: “[Rousseau] says that all the world in England are prejudiced against him; for which, however, he knows no reason, except his behaviour to me, in which he confesses he might be to blame.” Writing to Turgot, Hume quoted Rousseau directly, but, intriguingly, given the mea culpa, omitted the term “unjust suspicions.”

In fact, Rousseau and Le Vasseur had already booked their passage to France, though their boat remained in harbor because of strong winds. This was a routine problem in Dover. Boats had to travel through a series of sluices and then a slender constructed throat—a design which made the harbor impassable whenever a storm coincided with a neap tide (the point at which high water is at its lowest level).

For forty-eight hours Rousseau brooded on his situation. He stood on a hillock and addressed an uncomprehending crowd. One version of his leaving had him at dinner with a local man whom he suddenly suspected of being about to detain him on Conway's instructions. Rousseau rushed to the ship. Another told how, at his lodgings, on May 21, he was served a meal with parsley, which he suspected was hemlock (though as a botanist he would be familiar with the plant). He rushed from the room, made for his ship, and hid in a cabin. Nobody, not even his
gouvernante,
was now beyond distrust. They sailed that night, reaching France in the morning.

R
OUSSEAU HAD BOLTED
in a pitiable state, but the Scot was unrelenting. In the first week of October 1767, he gave an account of Rousseau's flight to Adam Smith, summing it up:

Hume relayed to Smith—the tone is of barely restrained glee—how Hume's friends in Paris and the public were shunning him. “He endeavoured to regain his credit by acknowledging to everybody his fault with regard to me: but all in vain. … He has had the satisfaction, during a time, of being much talked of, for his late transactions; the thing in the world he most desires: but it has been at the expense of being consigned to perpetual neglect and oblivion.”

But, on the day Rousseau set foot again in France, Hume sat down to write to his French friends about the final act of this drama. And he appeared then to be concerned for Rousseau's fate, though making the serpentine suggestion that Rousseau was insane and therefore outside the law.

To Mme de Boufflers, he counseled that if she heard of Rousseau's being caught and arrested, she might “employ [her] credit in restoring him to his liberty, by representing him in his true colours, as a real and complete madman, who is an object of compassion, and can be dangerous to nobody.” At greater length, he suggested to Turgot, while
giving a (heavily anti-Rousseau) account of his flight, that, “If he could be settled in any safe and quiet retreat, under a discreet keeper, he has wherewithal to bear all charges for his support.” He added, “It would be proper that his
gouvernante
should enter into the scheme, tho' I find that Mr. Davenport had entertained no very advantageous idea of her character or conduct while they lived with him.” Nothing in Davenport's correspondence, at least, supports that.

Turgot's reply tactfully avoided the idea of a retreat with a keeper, brushing it aside with the quip that Rousseau's state of madness was preferable to his former less exalted state of ingratitude. He gave a list of people who would help Rousseau, including de Boufflers and Conti, de Montigny, and de Malesherbes. (So much for Rousseau's being shunned.) He did not think the French were so barbarous as to arrest Rousseau.

So the affair ended just where it began, with Hume involved in schemes to save Rousseau. However, in the context of Hume's unforgiving mood—his distortions, his assertions of madness—this final “assistance” appears more tainted by vengeance than moved by charity.

21

W
HEN
R
OUSSEAU DISEMBARKED
in Calais on May 20, the Paris parlement's order for his arrest was still in force. Warned about this by Conti, he accepted the hospitality of the prince at his château near Gisors, a medieval city in Normandy dominated by an eleventh-century fortress. There he lived incognito, adopting the name “Renou.”

He was preoccupied by his memoirs and was still suffering bouts of paranoia. Toward the end of part two, he hinted at the nightmare that lay ahead when he left Switzerland. Presumably referring to Mme de Boufflers and Mme de Verdelin, he recalled, “I thought I was setting out for Berlin [when] I was in fact leaving for England, and the two ladies who were trying to control me, after having driven me by weight of intrigue from Switzerland, where I was not sufficiently in their power, finally managed to deliver me over to their friend [Hume].”

There were also long periods of serenity. In mid-June, Hume's “absolute lunatic” wrote a polite, restrained, and balanced letter to Davenport thanking him for everything he had done and asking him to settle an account and to forward his post and trunks to his bankers. He hoped to see Davenport in France one day.

Replying on July 4, Davenport attended to the business matters and added, “The only thing I ever took amiss was your saying that I put a paragraph in the newspapers concerning your leaving Wootton, which upon my honour I neither directly nor indirectly did.” The house was always at Rousseau's service if he came to England again. His granddaughter Phoebe insisted “she will abhor Wootton since she knows you are not there.” And “It will give me more pleasure than you even can imagine to hear from you, pray don't refuse me that satisfaction, & if I can be of any sort of service depend on me.” Later the same month, he wrote again, having finally managed to get over to Wootton. He calculated he owed Rousseau £21.9s and had sent it to Rougemont. The house seemed “horrid dull” without its tenants. Phoebe sent a thousand thanks for the music he had left but said “she had much rather hear you play the pieces yourself.” The old gentleman sent his compliments to Le Vasseur: he was particularly obliged to her, he said, as “I have the satisfaction of bearing about me everyday, the marks of her favour.” This possibly referred to a pair of stockings she had knitted at his request.

The warm correspondence with Davenport continued on both sides as though Rousseau's year in Wootton had passed entirely without incident. Phoebe had the stuff, Rousseau thought, “to make her the most adorable woman in England.” However, as he counseled all guardians, he implored Davenport to raise her outside the household. In December he wrote again. “You want to know how I spend my time. Just about as at Wootton. I dwell in a very pleasant place where I live as solitary as possible, munching my hay as usual, fearing nothing, desiring nothing. … I have my ‘Host' [Du Peyrou] here who is convalescing, and with whom I play chess: he does not play so well as yourself, but on the other hand he is not so obliging as to allow himself to lose when he can win.” As for Davenport, there was a note of unmistakable regret when the old gentleman said he missed Rousseau.

In the summer of 1768, suspecting the domestic staff to be agents of Hume, Rousseau, with Conti's continued assistance, fled the château. He went, via the Temple, to Lyon and Grenoble, where his
maman,
Mme de Warens, was buried. On April 29, 1768, at Bourgoin, near Lyon, he finally married Le Vasseur, his loyal partner of twenty-three years, aiming to regularize her position. Two minutes before the secular ceremony Le Vasseur still had no idea what was happening. In a short speech, Rousseau explained his decision as rewarding her long devotion. Afterward she took satisfaction in calling Rousseau “my husband,” though within a year Rousseau was complaining that she had become fed up with his morose moods and that sometimes a day would pass without their exchanging a single word.