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I hesitated some time whether I should make any reply to this strange memorial. At length I determined to write Mr Rousseau the following letter.
MR HUME TO MR ROUSSEAU.
Lisle-street, Leicester-fields, July 22d, 1766.
SIR,
I shall only answer one article of your long letter: it is that which regards the conversation between us the evening before your departure. Mr Davenport had imagined a good natured artifice, to make you believe that a retour chaise had offered for Wooton; and I believe he made an advertisement be put in the[Pg cxi] papers, in order the better to deceive you. His purpose was only to save you some expenses in the journey, which I thought a laudable project; though I had no hand either in contriving or conducting it. You entertained, how ever, suspicions of his design, while we were sitting alone by my fire-side; and you reproached me with concurring in it. I endeavoured to pacify you, and to divert the discourse; but to no purpose. You sat sullen, and was either silent, or made me very peevish answers. At last you rose up, and took a turn or two about the room; when all of a sudden, and to my great surprise, you clapped yourself on my knee, threw your arms about my neck, kissed me with seeming ardour, and bedewed my face with tears. You exclaimed, 'My dear friend, can you ever pardon this folly! After all the pains you have taken to serve me, after the numberless instances of friendship you have given me, here I reward you with this ill humour and sullenness. But your forgiveness of me will be a new instance of your friendship; and I hope you will find at bottom, that my heart is not unworthy of it.'
I was very much affected, I own; and I believe, there passed a very tender scene between us. You added, by way of compliment, that though I had many better titles to recommend me to posterity, yet perhaps my uncommon attachment and friendship to a poor unhappy[Pg cxii] persecuted man, would not altogether be overlooked.
This incident, Sir, was somewhat remarkable; and it is impossible that either you or I could so soon have forgot it. But you have had the assurance to tell me the story twice in a manner so different, or rather so opposite, that when I persist, as I do, in this account, it necessarily follows, that either you or I am a liar. You imagine, perhaps, that because the incident passed privately without a witness, the question will lie between the credibility of your assertion and of mine. But you shall not have this advantage or disadvantage, whichever you are pleased to term it. I shall produce against you other proofs, which will put the matter beyond controversy.
First, You are not aware, that I have a letter under your hand, which is totally irreconcilable with your account, and confirms mine.[41]
Secondly, I told the story the next day, or the day after, to Mr Davenport, with a friendly view of preventing any such good natured artifices for the future. He surely remembers it.
Thirdly, As I thought the story much to your honour, I told it to several of my friends[Pg cxiii] here. I even wrote it to Mde. de Boufflers at Paris. I believe no one will imagine, that I was preparing beforehand an apology, in case of a rupture with you; which, of all human events, I should then have thought the most incredible, especially as we were separated almost for ever, and I still continued to render you the most essential services.
Fourthly, The story, as I tell it, is consistent and rational: there is not common sense in your account. What! because sometimes, when absent in thought, I have a fixed look or stare, you suspect me to be a traitor, and you have the assurance to tell me of such black and ridiculous suspicions! Are not most studious men (and many of them more than I) subject to such reveries or fits of absence, without being exposed to such suspicions? You do not even pretend that, before you left London, you had any other solid grounds of suspicion against me.
I shall enter into no detail with regard to your letter: the other articles of it are as much without foundation as you yourself know this to be. I shall only add, in general, that I enjoyed about a month ago an uncommon pleasure, when I reflected, that through many difficulties, and by most assiduous care and pains, I had, beyond my most sanguine expectations, provided for your repose, honour and fortune. But I soon felt a very sensible uneasiness when[Pg cxiv] I found that you had wantonly and voluntarily thrown away all these advantages, and was become the declared enemy of your repose, fortune, and honour: I cannot be surprised after this that you are my enemy. Adieu, and for ever. I am, Sir, yours,
D. H.
[41] That of the 22d of March, which is entirely cordial; and proves that Mr Rousseau had never, till that moment, entertained, or at least discovered the smallest suspicion against me. There is also in the same letter, a peevish passage about the hire of a chaise.—Mr HUME.
To all these papers, I need only subjoin the following letter of Mr Walpole to me, which proves how ignorant and innocent I am of the whole matter of the King of Prussia's letter.
MR WALPOLE TO MR HUME.
Arlington Street, July 26th, 1766.
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, and before Rousseau's arrival there, of which I can give you a strong proof; for I not only suppressed the letter while you staid 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 and make a cordial visit to a man, with a letter in my pocket to laugh at him. You are at full liberty, dear Sir, to make use of what I say in your justification, either to Rousseau or[Pg cxv] any body else. I should be very sorry to have you blamed on my account: I have a hearty contempt of Rousseau, and am perfectly indifferent what any body thinks of the matter. If there is any fault, which I am far from thinking, let it lie on me. No parts can hinder my laughing at their possessor, if he is a mountebank. If he has a bad and most ungrateful heart, as Rousseau has shown in your case, into the bargain, he will have my scorn likewise, as he will of all good and sensible men. You may trust your sentence to such, who are as respectable judges as any that have pored over ten thousand more volumes.
Yours most sincerely,
H. W.
Thus I have given a narrative, as concise as possible, of this extraordinary affair, which I am told has very much attracted the attention of the public, and which contains more unexpected incidents than any other in which I was ever engaged. The persons to whom I have shown the original papers which authenticate the whole, have differed very much in their opinion, as well of the use I ought to make of them as of Mr Rousseau's present sentiments and state of mind. Some of them have maintained that he is altogether insincere in his quarrel with me, and his opinion of my guilt, and that the whole proceeds from that excessive[Pg cxvi] pride which forms the basis of his character, and which leads him both to seek the eclat of refusing the King of England's bounty, and to shake off the intolerable burthen of an obligation to me, by every sacrifice of honour, truth, and friendship, as well as of interest. They found their sentiments on the absurdity of that first supposition on which he grounds his anger, viz. that Mr Walpole's letter, which he knew had been every where dispersed both in Paris and London, was given to the press by me; and as this supposition is contrary to common sense on the one hand, and not supported even by the pretence of the slightest probability on the other, they conclude, that it never had any weight even with the person himself who lays hold of it. They confirm their sentiments by the number of fictions and lies which he employs to justify his anger; fictions with regard to points in which it is impossible for him to be mistaken. They also remark his real cheerfulness and gaiety, amidst the deep melancholy with which he pretended to be oppressed; not to mention the absurd reasoning which runs through the whole, and on which it is impossible for any man to rest his conviction. And though a very important interest is here abandoned, yet money is not universally the chief object with mankind: vanity weighs farther with some men, particularly with this philosopher; and the very ostentation[Pg cxvii] of refusing a pension from the King of England—an ostentation which, with regard to other Princes, he has often sought—might be of itself a sufficient motive for his present conduct.
