A New Chapter of Boswell: Unpublished Letters to Rousseau and Voltaire

MAY, 1921

BY CHAUNCEY B. TINKER

IN August, 1764, James Boswell, aged twenty-three and still very much of a boy, was sojourning for a season in Berlin. He had fled from the study of the law in Holland, which had been his serious purpose in coming abroad, and had set out to see the world. His father had consented that he should travel in Germany and see something of life in the German courts, which were commonly supposed to have an improving effect on insular manners. The consent was the more easily given as the boy was to have, as guide, Lord Keith, better known as the Earl Marischal of Scotland and the favorite of Frederick the Great. He had long been Governor of the Principality of Neuchâtel, and had become the intimate friend and the protector of Jean Jacques Rousseau. Lord Keith, who, despite his notoriety as a Stuart sympathizer, had been permitted to visit Scotland in 1764, was now about to rejoin his Prussian master.

It was during the last weeks of June and the first of July that young James Boswell had had the privilege of traveling in his company as far as Berlin. But now, toward the end of August, he had grown bored. He cared nothing for the German courts. Not there did he find the Great, in the glory of whose presence he longed to stand and shine — if not with a radiance of his own, at least thereafter in a reflected light. ‘I can see,’ he writes, ‘little advantage to be had at Berlin. I shall, however, remain here a fortnight, after which I intend passing by Manheim and one or two more of the German courts, to Geneva. I am there at the point from whence I may either steer to Italy or to France. I shall see Voltaire. I shall also see Switzerland and Rousseau. These two men are to me greater objects than most statues or pictures.’

And so, having extracted from his father the necessary permission and the necessary money, he set out once more upon his travels, this time with no other guide than his own sure instincts. The winter of 1764 and 1765 has hitherto been almost a blank page in the biography of Boswell; but with the aid of his letters to Rousseau, which have never been published or even read over by scholars, but copies of which have, by great good fortune, come into my hands, we are enabled to tell in outline the story of his life during this period, and to see the influence of events in fixing the literary ambitions of him who was to be the Prince of Biographers.

Boswell departed from Germany, then, disgusted with courts, and repining at the dearth of great men in that country, and went to Switzerland. He went first to the Val de Travers, where he proposed to meet Rousseau. He had decided to approach him with no other recommendation than his own social genius. Now, inasmuch as this was not, in general, Boswell’s method of approach to a great man, we are justified, I think, in assuming that he had failed to find anyone who could give him the necessary letter of introduction. Lord Keith might have done it, but he knew Rousseau all too well to care to do it. It is clear that he explained to Boswell that Rousseau was living in retreat from the world and denying himself to all visitors. Boswell had better give up the attempt to meet him. But the young Scot was not easily discouraged. He had never yet failed to meet anyone whom he had made up his mind to meet. There must be ways of prevailing even upon a Rousseau. There are a thousand kinds of appeal that may be made to a philosopher: one might, for example, rest one’s case on one’s dire need of spiritual counsel. It is only necessary to show a philosopher that one is a worthy disciple, that one has lived a life not unlike that of the master. And so the artful creature composed the following letter, which I render into English, since it is somewhat difficult to see the implications of Boswell’s tortured French phrases.

VAL DE TRAVER, 3 December 1764.
MONSIEUR, —
I am a gentleman of an old Scotch family [un ancien gentilhomme écossois]. You know my rank. I am twenty-four years old. You know my age. It is sixteen months since I left Great Britain, completely insular, knowing hardly a word of French. I have been in Holland and in Germany, but not yet in France. You will therefore excuse my language. I am on my travels, and have a genuine desire to perfect myself. I have come here in the hope of seeing you.

I have heard, Sir, that it is difficult to meet you [que vous étes fort difficile] and that you have refused the visits of several persons of the highest distinction. For that, Sir, I respect you all the more. If you were to receive everyone who came to you just to be able to say boastingly, ‘I have seen him,’ your house would no longer be the retreat of exquisite Genius nor of elevated Piety; and I should not be enthusiastically eager to be received there.

I present myself, Sir, as a man of unique merit, as a man with a sensitive heart, a spirit lively yet melancholy. Ah! if all I have suffered gives me no special merit in the eyes of M. Rousseau, why was I ever so created, and why did he ever write as he has done? [a-t-il tellement écrit?]

Do you ask me for letters of recommendation? Is there need of any with a man like you? An introduction is necessary in the world of affairs, in order to protect those who have no insight for impostors. But, Sir, can you, who have studied human nature, be deceived in a man’s character? My idea of you is this: aside from the unknowable essence of the human soul, you have a perfect knowledge of all the principles of body and mind; their actions, their sentiments, in short, of whatever they can accomplish or acquire in the way of influence over man. In spite of all this, Sir, I dare to present myself before you.

I dare to submit myself to the proof. In cities and in courts where there is a numerous society, it is possible to disguise one’s self; it is possible even to dazzle the eyes of the greatest philosophers. But I put myself to the severest proof, It is in the silence and the solitude of your hallowed retreat that you shall judge of me; think you that in such circumstances I should be capable of dissimulation?

Your writings, Sir, have softened my heart, raised my spirits, and kindled my imagination. Believe me, you will be glad to see me. You know Scotch pride. Sir, I come to you to make myself worthy to belong to a nation that has produced a Fletcher of Saltoun, and an Earl Marischal. Pardon me, Sir, but I am moved! I can no longer refrain. O beloved St. Preux! Inspired Mentor! Eloquent and amiable Rousseau ! I have a presentiment that a noble friendship shall be born this day.

I learn with great regret, Sir, that you are frequently indisposed. You may be so at present; but I implore you not to let that prevent your receiving me. You will find in me a simplicity which will in no wise disturb you and a cordiality which may assist you in forgetting your pains.

I have much to say to you. Although but a young man, I have had a variety of experiences, with which you will be impressed. I am in serious and delicate circumstances, and am most ardently desirous of having the counsels of the author of La Nouvelle Héloïse. If you are the benevolent man that I think you, you will not hesitate to bestow them upon me. Open your door, then, Sir, to a man who dares to say that he deserves to enter there. Trust a unique foreigner. You will never repent it. But, I beg of you, be alone. In spite of my enthusiasm, after having written you in this manner, I am not sure that I would not rather forego seeing you than meet you for the first time in company. I await your reply with impatience.
BOSWELL.

Who could refuse such a request? Certainly not a Jean Jacques Rousseau. Apparently the interview came off exactly as Boswell desired it. From remarks in later letters and hints dropped here and there, it is possible to reconstruct the general scheme of their association. Since romantic melancholy had become, thanks to Rousseau, the fashionable pose, Boswell told of the temperamental gloom that frequently descended upon him; of the hypochondria that had afflicted him in Utrecht, whither he had gone to study the law. (It is noteworthy that, with Boswell as with ourselves, the sharpest fits of melancholia were coincident with confinement in harness.) He told him all this, and elicited from Rousseau the compliment which he never tired of quoting, ‘Il y a des points où nos ames sont lies.'

He told him, moreover, of his affairs of the heart, and explained that he was in doubt with regard to his latest flame, Mlle. Isabella de Zuylen (whom he called ‘Zelide’), as being the final choice of his heart. He even sent Zelide’s letters to the philosopher! ‘You are the only one to whom I have shown them. I could trust you with anything in the world.’ He would like to have Rousseau’s impressions regarding the character of Zelide. He sent him a sketch of his own life, — which would be worth its weight in gold to-day if it could be turned up, — in order that the great man might be thoroughly acquainted with his new friend. They conversed about the Earl Marischal, and Boswell proposed to write a ‘Portrait’ (as it was called in the salons) or character sketch of him. (It would appear that Rousseau’s genius recognized the youngster’s fitness for this kind of composition). He got a promise from him of a letter to his philosophic friend, De Leyre, the librarian of the Duke of Parma, destined to achieve a certain prominence in the French Revolution — a man whose acquaintance Boswell promptly cultivated in Italy.

He begged Rousseau to correspond with him. He demanded his advice with regard to the employment of his time in Italy. Inasmuch as Rousseau was a musician, Boswell, in the third of his letters, discovered in himself a penchant for that art. He tells Rousseau that he likes to sing, confesses that he plays a bit on the flute, but that he despises it. Some two years before, he had tried the violin, but found it a difficult instrument and gave it up. ‘Tell me, would it not be well for me to apply myself seriously to music — up to a certain point? Tell me which instrument I should take up. It is late, I admit; but should I not have the pleasure of making continuous progress, and — ’ But it is no longer fair to conceal from the reader the ipsissima verba of the French original: ‘Ne serais-je pas capable d’adoucir ma vieillesse par les sons de ma lyre?’ The vision of James Boswell in the rôle of Ossian, with white beard streaming to the winds, amid the romantic glades of Auchinleck, soothing his stricken age with a lyre, is one that no kindly imagination will reject.

But Rousseau was more than musician, more than a philosopher retired from the world. He was a teacher of conduct, and his influence had long since been felt as a force in the daily lives of men. Therefore Boswell submits to him a practical question of morals. He cites, with a vividness of narrative that was later to become the most distinguished mark of his literary achievement, an affaire d’honneur in which he had become involved the summer before, and from which he had escaped with more skill than glory. I give it without abbreviation.

‘Last summer in Germany I found myself in the midst of a large company, a company very disagreeable to me and in which I was sorry to be losing my time. The talk was all in praise of the French. Thereupon I declaimed against that nation in the rudest terms. An officer rose, came to my side and said, “Monsieur, I am a Frenchman, and none but a scoundrel would speak as you have done of that nation.” We were still at dinner. I made him a bow. I had half an hour for reflection. After dinner I led the captain out into the garden. I said to him, “ Sir, I am greatly embarrassed. I have been very impolite. I am sincerely sorry. But you have made use of a word which a man of honor cannot endure, and I must have satisfaction. If it be possible to avoid a quarrel, I should be delighted, for I was in the wrong. Will you be so good as to beg my pardon before the company? I will first beg yours. If you cannot agree to my proposal, we must fight, although I admit to you that I shall do so with repugnance.” I addressed him with the sang-froid of a philosopher determined to do his duty. The officer was a fine fellow. He said to me, “Sir, I will do as you wish.” We returned to the company, and made our apologies, one to the other. We embraced. The affair was ended. I could not, however, rest content without consulting two or three Scotsmen. I said to them, “Gentlemen, I am a simple man. I am not in touch with your social rules, but I believe that I have acted like a man. You are my compatriots. I ask your advice.” They assured me that the affair had been honorably adjusted between us. They advised me to take this experience as a lesson for the future.'

But still the young man’s mind is not at rest. He charges himself at times with cowardice—‘ Je suis d’un tempérament craintif.’ The philosopher’s opinion is sought. ‘ What do you seriously think of duels?’ There is the peculiarly Boswellian touch, the conscious art of the interviewer disguising itself under the mask of naïvté. In dealing with Boswell, nothing is easier than to let our attention dwell on his apparent simplicity, or vanity, or even folly, to the point of entirely missing the thing that he would be at. What Rousseau happens to think about Boswell’s valor of strictly secondary importance comin this particular incident is, of course, pared with the primary intention of getting the great man to express himself. One may sacrifice a great deal of personal esteem if one can draw forth from Rousseau a dissertation on dueling. And so Boswell adds to the question I have quoted this skillful observation: ‘You have not said enough of the matter in your Héloïse. There are people who think that the Gospel teaches us to be too supine in this regard.’ Clearly the young man has prepared the ground. If Rousseau replies at all, he can hardly avoid the expression of his views on dueling, and the pages of Boswell’s notebook (and of his future ‘Reminiscences of Rousseau’) will be enriched with a unique morsel.

But the ending of this third letter from which I have been quoting is, in truth, one of the most delightful and characteristic bits that our biographical adventurer ever penned. His busy mind had discovered yet another avenue of approach to the retired sage, which would lead (could one but get started upon it) straight into the domestic privacies of life which Boswell so dearly prized. Obviously one means of approach to a man is through his mistress. Therefore Boswell ends his letter thus, ‘You will not take offense if I write occasionally to Mlle. Vasseur. I swear that I have no intention of carrying off your duenna [d’enlever votre gouvernante]. I sometimes form romantic plans; never impossible plans.’

What reply — if any — Jean Jacques made to this attractive proposal I cannot tell. Nor, alas, have any letters from Boswell to Thérèse LeVasseur as yet rewarded my search. But certain it is that the proposal gave no offense. For when, some thirteen months later, Rousseau crossed the Channel to England, he went in company with his philosophic friend, David Hume, and entrusted Thérèse to the care of Boswell, who crossed some weeks later.

But there was another philosophic retreat for our young enthusiast to penetrate— Ferney. There dwelt a man who interested him no less than Rousseau — Voltaire, now in his seventyfirst year, but brilliant still, brilliant as a meteor which, with fear of change, perplexes monarchs. Just how the genial young tuft-hunter got into the presence we cannot tell, but it is probable that he brought a letter of introduction from the Earl Marischal, who must have had less scruple about exposing Voltaire to the Boswellian bacillus than the hypochondriac Rousseau. Be this as it may, Boswell was received, and by his own statement — and he was not given to inaccuracy — spent an hour with the aged philosopher, in conversation tête-à-tête.

Can you imagine the scene — the withered, but still sinister, Son of the Morning, with his satirical smile and his benevolent eye, confronting the busy, inquisitive, entertaining young Scot? ‘It was,’ says Boswell in describing the interview to Rousseau, ‘a most serious conversation. He talked of his natural religion in a striking manner.’ James, you see, had introduced the subject of religion—doubtless by means of citing his own infidelities. Already he has in mind an account of his discussion with Voltaire, which shall correct the popular impression of him as devoid of the religious instinct.

After Voltaire had talked for a time, the young man said to himself (and on the principle that James Boswell uttered whatever came into his head, I do not scruple to assert that he cried aloud), ’Aut Erasmus, aut diabolus!’ In discussing his favorite theme of the nature of the soul, Boswell asked Voltaire a question which well indicates the skill with which he ensnared his destined prey, and which, indeed, has a very modern ring to it. ‘I asked him if he could give me any notion of the situation of our ideas which we have totally forgotten at the time, yet shall afterwards recollect. He paused, meditated a little, and acknowledged his ignorance in the spirit of a philosophical poet, by repeating as a very happy allusion a passage in Thomson’s Seasons, “Aye,” said he, “ ‘Where sleep the winds when it is calm?’” ’

Of course he got Voltaire to express an opinion of Rousseau; and tells us, in his Tour to Corsica, that the older philosopher consistently spoke of the younger with a ‘satirical smile.’ Yet Boswell let his romantic imagination (as he would have called it) play with the notion of bringing the two men together, and even had the temerity to say to Rousseau, ‘In spite of all that has happened, you would have loved him that evening’. An astute remark, which may lead to much. For, if Rousseau replies to the letter, he may assent to this pious opinion or he may reject it, but in either case there begins new matter for a biographer. As we know, neither James Boswell nor anybody else reconciled the two philosophers; but James, I regret to say, did something to increase the asperity between them. In the spring of 1776, after Rousseau had quarreled with his English friends, Boswell designed and published a ‘ludicrous print,’ into which he introduced his three philosophical friends, Rousseau, Hume, and Voltaire. Rousseau in the shaggy attire of a ‘wild man’ (as conceived in the reign of George III) occupies the centre of the picture, while Voltaire smiles cynically in the background, as one of the bystanders cries out, ‘ Wip ’im, Voltaire!’ On New Year’s Day, 1765, James Boswell departed from Geneva, in search of new worlds to conquer and other great men to record. He had come into conjunction with two of the major planets of the literary heavens. He had filled notebooks with his accounts of their conversation — notebooks whose loss the world will long deplore. He passed from Geneva to Turin with his social and anecdotical soul aflame, rapt away, one fancies, in a vision of all the glory that might be his.

On the tenth of January, he learned that John Wilkes, in political exile from his native land, was, for the moment, in Turin. At once he prepared himself for the attack. O reader, do you perchance know the ballet of Tamar? If you do, you will recall the close of that vivid drama. Tamar, having finished off one victim, beholds from her window, as she sinks back into momentary ease, the approach of another wayfarer. She lifts herself from cushioned luxury, and beckons to him afar. And so the piece ends as it had begun. Or are you, perchance, a reader of M. Benoît’s sultry romance, L’Atlantide? If so, you will recall the cruel loveliness of the princess, whose malign ambition is to surround herself with the glistening images of her lovers, preserved forever, actual yet golden. Now such a passion as that of Tamar or the Atlantide possessed the innocent soul of James Boswell, biographer. It is a paltry business to think of him as a parasite who attacked but a single victim. Nay, rather, his was the golden hand of the realist, who preserves human life in its actuality, yet ever at its best and fullest. And if it be that there mingled with his vision of an Atlantidean circle of the golden great a baser ambition to shine in the reflected light of his splendid victims, who shall begrudge it him? Is not the artist worthy of his fame?

And so John Wilkes, demagogue, ‘Apostle of Liberty,’ esteemed the wittiest and the most dangerous man of his day, comes within James Boswell’s ken. He is not to be won as were the philosophers. But our artist knows many wiles, and the approach which he will make in this case will be of a quite different kind. We will not attempt to reduce the fine art of the great biographer to a formula, nor do we at present care to emphasize the mere contrast of method exhibited in James Boswell’s conquest of John Wilkes. For that, to make use of a time-honored phrase, is another story.