Rousseau Part 34

The desire to protect himself against the defamation of his enemies led him at this time to compose that account of his own life, which is probably the only one of his writings that continues to be generally read. He composed the first part of the Confessions at Wootton, during the autumn and winter of 1766. The idea of giving his memoirs to the public was an old one, originally suggested by one of his publishers.

To write memoirs of one's own life was one of the fancies of the time, but like all else, it became in Rousseau's hand something more far-reaching and sincere than a pa.s.sing fashion. Other people wrote polite histories of their outer lives, amply coloured with romantic decorations. Rousseau with unquailing veracity plunged into the inmost depths, hiding nothing that would be likely to make him either ridiculous or hateful in common opinion, and inventing nothing that could attract much sympathy or much admiration. Though, as has been pointed out already, the Confessions abound in small inaccuracies of date, hardly to be avoided by an oldish man in reference to the facts of his boyhood, whether a Rousseau or a Goethe, and though one or two of the incidents are too deeply coloured with the hues of sentimental reminiscence, and one or two of them are downright impossible, yet when all these deductions have been made, the substantial truthfulness of what remains is made more evident with every addition to our materials for testing them. When all the circ.u.mstances of Rousseau's life are weighed, and when full account has been taken of his proved delinquencies, we yet perceive that he was at bottom a character as essentially sincere, truthful, careful of fact and reality, as is consistent with the general empire of sensation over untrained intelligence.[375] As for the egotism of the Confessions, it is hard to see how a man is to tell the story of his own life without egotism.

And it may be worth adding that the self-feeling which comes to the surface and a.s.serts itself, is in a great many cases far less vicious and debilitating than the same feeling nursed internally with a troglodytish shyness. But Rousseau's egotism manifested itself perversely. This is true to a certain small extent, and one or two of the disclosures in the Confessions are in very nauseous matter, and are made moreover in a very nauseous manner. There are some vices whose grotesqueness stirs us more deeply than downright atrocities, and we read of certain puerilities avowed by Rousseau, with a livelier impatience than old Benvenuto Cellini quickens in us, when he confesses to a horrible a.s.sa.s.sination. This morbid form of self-feeling is only less disgusting than the allied form which clothes itself in the phrases of religious exaltation. And there is not much of it. Blot out half a dozen pages from the Confessions, and the egotism is no more perverted than in the confessions of Augustine or of Cardan.

These remarks are not made to extenuate Rousseau's faults, or to raise the popular estimate of his character, but simply in the interests of a greater precision of criticism. In England criticism has nearly always been of the most vulgar superficiality in respect to Rousseau, from the time of Horace Walpole downwards. The Confessions in their least agreeable parts, or rather especially in those parts, are the expression on a new side and in a peculiar way of the same notion of the essential goodness of nature and the importance of understanding nature and restoring its reign, which inspired the Discourses and Emilius. "I would fain show to my fellows," he began, "a man in all the truth of nature," and he cannot be charged with any failure to keep his word. He despised opinion, and hence was careless to observe whether or no this revelation of human nakedness was likely to add to the popular respect for nature and the natural man. After all, considering that literature is for the most part a hollow and pretentious phantasmagoria of mimic figures posing in breeches and peruke, we may try to forgive certain cruel blows to the dignified a.s.sumptions, solemn words, and high heels of convention, in one who would not lie, nor dissemble kinship with the four-footed. Intense subjective preoccupations in markedly emotional natures all tend to come to the same end. The distance from Rousseau's odious erotics to the glorified ecstasies of many a poor female saint is not far. In any case, let us know the facts about human nature, and the pathological facts no less than the others. These are the first thing, and the second, and the third also.

The exaltation of the opening page of the Confessions is shocking. No monk nor saint ever wrote anything more revolting in its blasphemous self-feeling. But the exaltation almost instantly became calm, when the course of the story necessarily drew the writer into dealings with objective facts, even m.u.f.fled as they were by memory and imagination.

The broodings over old reminiscence soothed him, the labour of composition occupied him, and he forgot, as the modern reader would never know from internal evidence, that he was preparing a vindication of his life and character against the infamies with which Hume and others were supposed to be industriously blackening them. While he was writing this famous composition, severed by so vast a gulf from the modes of English provincial life, he was on good terms with one or two of the great people in his neighbourhood, and kept up a gracious and social correspondence with them. He was greatly pleased by a compliment that was paid to him by the government, apparently through the interest of General Conway. The duty that had been paid upon certain boxes forwarded to Rousseau from Switzerland was recouped by the treasury,[376] and the arrangements for the annual pension of one hundred pounds were concluded and accepted by him, after he had duly satisfied himself that Hume was not the indirect author of the benefaction.[377] The weather was the worst possible, but whenever it allowed him to go out of doors, he found delight in climbing the heights around him in search of curious mosses; for he had now come to think the discovery of a single new plant a hundred times more useful than to have the whole human race listening to your sermons for half a century.[378] "This indolent and contemplative life that you do not approve," he wrote to the elder Mirabeau, "and for which I pretend to make no excuses, becomes every day more delicious to me: to wander alone among the trees and rocks that surround my dwelling; to muse or rather to extravagate at my ease, and as you say to stand gaping in the air; when my brain gets too hot, to calm it by dissecting some moss or fern; in short, to surrender myself without restraint to my phantasies, which, heaven be thanked, are all under my own control,--all that is for me the height of enjoyment, to which I can imagine nothing superior in this world for a man of my age and in my condition."[379]

This contentment did not last long. The snow kept him indoors. The excitement of composition abated. Theresa hara.s.sed him by ign.o.ble quarrels with the women in the kitchen. His delusions returned with greater force than before. He believed that the whole English nation was in a plot against him, that all his letters were opened before reaching London and before leaving it, that all his movements were closely watched, and that he was surrounded by unseen guards to prevent any attempt at escape.[380] At length these delusions got such complete mastery over him, that in a paroxysm of terror he fled away from Wootton, leaving money, papers, and all else behind him. Nothing was heard of him for a fortnight, when Mr. Davenport received a letter from him dated at Spalding in Lincolnshire. Mr. Davenport's conduct throughout was marked by a humanity and patience that do him the highest honour. He confesses himself "quite moved to read poor Rousseau's mournful epistle." "You shall see his letter," he writes to Hume, "the first opportunity; but G.o.d help him, I can't for pity give a copy; and 'tis so much mixed with his own poor little private concerns, that it would not be right in me to do it."[381] This is the generosity which makes Hume's impatience and that of his mischievous advisers in Paris appear petty. Rousseau had behaved quite as ill to Mr. Davenport as he had done to Hume, and had received at least equal services from him.[382] The good man at once sent a servant to Spalding in search of his unhappy guest, but Rousseau had again disappeared. The parson of the parish had pa.s.sed several hours of each day in his company, and had found him cheerful and good-humoured. He had had a blue coat made for himself, and had written a long letter to the lord chancellor, praying him to appoint a guard, at Rousseau's own expense, to escort him in safety out of the kingdom where enemies were plotting against his life.[383] He was next heard of at Dover (May 18), whence he wrote a letter to General Conway, setting forth his delusion in full form.[384] He is the victim of a plot; the conspirators will not allow him to leave the island, lest he should divulge in other countries the outrages to which he has been subjected here; he perceives the sinister manoeuvres that will arrest him if he attempts to put his foot on board ship. But he warns them that his tragical disappearance cannot take place without creating inquiry. Still if General Conway will only let him go, he gives his word of honour that he will not publish a line of the memoirs he has written, nor ever divulge the wrongs which he has suffered in England. "I see my last hour approaching," he concluded; "I am determined, if necessary, to advance to meet it, and to perish or be free; there is no longer any other alternative." On the same evening on which he wrote this letter (about May 20-22), the forlorn creature took boat and landed at Calais, where he seems at once to have recovered his composure and a right mind.

FOOTNOTES:

[350] Jan. 1766--May 1767.

[351] Streckeisen, ii. 275, etc. _Corr._, iii.

[352] Burton, ii. 299.

[353] The materials for this chapter are taken from Rousseau's _Correspondence_ (vols. iv. and v.), and from Hume's letters to various persons, given in the second volume of Mr. Burton's _Life of Hume_. Everybody who takes an interest in Rousseau is indebted to Mr.

Burton for the ample doc.u.ments which he has provided. Yet one cannot but regret the satire on Rousseau with which he intersperses them, and which is not always felicitous. For one instance, he implies (p. 295) that Rousseau invented the story given in the Confessions, of Hume's correcting the proofs of Wallace's book against himself. The story may be true or not, but at any rate Rousseau had it very circ.u.mstantially from Lord Marischal; see letter from Lord M. to J.J.R., in Streckeisen, ii. 67. Again, such an expression as Rousseau's "_occasional_ attention to small matters" (p. 321) only shows that the writer has not read Rousseau's letters, which are indeed not worth reading, except by those who wish to have a right to speak about Rousseau's character. The numerous pamphlets on the quarrel between Hume and Rousseau, if I may judge from those of them which I have turned over, really shed no light on the matter, though they added much heat. For the journey, see _Corr._, iv. 307; Burton, ii. 304.

[354] _Letter to a Member of the National a.s.sembly._ The same pa.s.sage contains some strong criticism on Rousseau's style.

[355] Burton, 304, 309, 310.

[356] _Ib._ ii. 309, _n._

[357] Mr. Howitt has given an account of Rousseau's quarters at Wootton, in his _Visits to Remarkable Places_. One or two aged peasants had some confused memory of "old Ross-hall." For Rousseau's own description, see his letters to Mdme. de Luze, May 10, 1766.

_Corr._, iv. 326.

[358] Burton, 313. It has been stated that Rousseau never paid this; at any rate when he fled, he left between thirty and forty pounds in Mr. Davenport's hands. See Davenport to Hume; Burton, 367. Rousseau's accurate probity in affairs of money is absolutely unimpeachable.

[359] _Corr._ iv. 312. April 9, 1766.

[360] Here is a translation of this rather poor piece of sarcasm:--"My dear Jean Jacques--You have renounced Geneva, your native place. You have caused your expulsion from Switzerland, a country so extolled in your writings; France has issued a warrant against you; so do you come to me. I admire your talents; I am amused by your dreamings, though let me tell you they absorb you too much and for too long. You must at length be sober and happy; you have caused enough talk about yourself by oddities which in truth are hardly becoming a really great man.

Prove to your enemies that you can now and then have common sense.

That will annoy them and do you no harm. My states offer you a peaceful retreat. I wish you well, and will treat you well, if you will let me. But if you persist in refusing my help, do not reckon upon my telling any one that you did so. If you are bent on tormenting your spirit to find new misfortunes, choose whatever you like best. I am a king, and can procure them for you at your pleasure; and what will certainly never happen to you in respect of your enemies, I will cease to persecute you as soon as you cease to take a pride in being persecuted. Your good friend, FREDERICK."

[361] _Corr._, iv. 313, 343, 388, 398.

[362] _Ib._ 395.

[363] _Ib._ 389, etc.

[364] _Ib._ 384.

[365] _Ib._ 343, 344, 387, etc.

[366] _Corr._, iv. 346.

[367] _Ib._ 390. A letter from Hume to Blair, long before the rupture overt, shows the former to have been by no means so phlegmatic on this occasion as he may have seemed. "I hope," he writes, "you have not so bad an opinion of me as to think I was not melted on this occasion; I a.s.sure you I kissed him and embraced him twenty times, with a plentiful effusion of tears. I think no scene of my life was ever more affecting." Burton, ii. 315. The great doubters of the eighteenth century could without fear have accepted the test of the ancient saying, that men without tears are worth little.

[368] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 79.

[369] Walpole's _Letters_, v. 7 (Cunningham's edition). For other letters from the shrewd c.o.xcomb on the same matter, see pp. 23-28. A corroboration of the statement that Hume knew nothing of the letter until he was in England, may be inferred from what he wrote to Madame de Boufflers; Burton, ii. 306, and _n._ 2.

[370] Bernardin de St. Pierre, _Oeuv._, xii. 79.

[371] To Adam Smith. Burton, 380.

[372] Burton, 381.

[373] A very common but random opinion traces Rousseau's insanity to certain disagreeable habits avowed in the Confessions. They may have contributed in some small degree to depression of vital energies, though for that matter Rousseau's strength and power of endurance were remarkable to the end. But they certainly did not produce a mental state in the least corresponding to that particular variety of insanity, which possesses definitely marked features.

[374] Burton, ii. 314.

[375] For an instructive and, as it appears to me, a thoroughly trustworthy account of the temper in which the Confessions were written, see the 4th of the _Reveries_.

[376] Letter to the Duke of Grafton, Feb. 27, 1767. _Corr._, v. 98: also 118.

[377] _Ib._ v. 133; also to General Conway (March 26), p. 137, etc.

[378] _Corr._, v. 37.

[379] _Corr._, v. 88.

[380] See the letters to Du Peyrou, of the 2d and 4th of April 1767.

_Corr._, v. 140-147.

[381] Davenport to Hume; Burton, 367-371.

[382] J.J.R. to Davenport, Dec. 22, 1766, and April 30, 1767. _Corr._, v. 66, 152.

[383] Burton, 369, 375.

[384] _Corr._, v. 153.

CHAPTER VII.

THE END.

Before leaving England, Rousseau had received more than one long and rambling letter from a man who was as unlike the rest of mankind as he was unlike them himself. This was the Marquis of Mirabeau (1715-89), the violent, tyrannical, pedantic, humoristic sire of a more famous son. Perhaps we might say that Mirabeau and Rousseau were the two most singular originals then known to men, and Mirabeau's originality was in some respects the more salient of the two. There is less of the conventional tone of the eighteenth century Frenchman in him than in any other conspicuous man of the time, though like many other headstrong and despotic souls he picked up the current notions of philanthropy and human brotherhood. He really was by very force of temperament that rebel against the narrowness, trimness, and moral formalism of the time which Rousseau only claimed and attempted to be, with the secondary degree of success that follows vehemence without native strength. Mirabeau was a sort of Swift, who had strangely taken up the trade of friendship for man and adopted the phrases of perfectibility; while Rousseau on the other hand was meant for a Fenelon, save that he became possessed of unclean devils.

Mirabeau, like Jean Jacques himself, was so impressed by the marked tenor of contemporary feeling, its prudential didactics, its formulistic sociality, that his native insurgency only found vent in private life, while in public he played pedagogue to the human race.