Previously we saw that Boswell managed to make a good first impression on Rousseau; despite Rousseau's inaccessibility and illness Boswell was able to get an interview and chat pleasantly with him. Boswell, however, was interested in more than this; he was dead set on further discussions, and in particular on gathering what he could of Rousseau's moral wisdom.

The next day, which was Tuesday, December 4, 1764, he went to Rousseau at five, finding him in a better mood than before. They seemed to have joked around quite a bit, with Rousseau even making a pun. After he had been dismissed by Rousseau, Boswell fell to talking with Thérèse Le Vasseur, Rousseau's housekeeper and mistress, and by this point had charmed her enough that she was an ally in his attempts to keep talking to Rousseau. (Boswell notes here in passing, apparently from Thérèse herself, that Rousseau "consulted Mademoiselle and her mother on the merits of his Héloïse and his Émile."1 Boswell and Thérèse would later have a sexual affair while Boswell was escorting her to England in 1766.)

On Wednesday he called on Rousseau in the morning and, to start conversation, told him about his conversion to Catholicism. Rousseau gave Boswell a summary of his own tangled religious history, at which point Boswell stopped him and asked him if he considered himself Christian:

I looked at him with a searching eye. His countenance was no less animated. Each stood steady and watched the other's looks. He struck his breast and replied, "Yes. I pique myself on being one."2

Having received this assurance, Boswell then began to move the discussion in the direction he wanted it to go by asking if Rousseau suffered from melancholy. When Rousseau replied that he had no natural disposition to it, but had been affected by it due to the events of his life, Boswell said that he suffered from it terribly. "And how can I be happy, I, who have done so much evil?"3

Rousseau responded with some basic advice:

Begin your life anew. God is good, for he is just. Do good. You will cancel all the debt of evil. Say to yourself in the morning, 'Come now, I am going to pay off so much evil.' Six well-spent years will pay off all the evil you have committed.4

But what of the instruments of religion, like penances?

Mummeries, all of them, invented by men. Do not be guided by men's judgments, or you will find yourself tossed to and fro perpetually. Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts; they may be impelled by motives of interest or convention to talk to you in a way not corresponding to what they really think.5

At this point Boswell asked Rousseau to assume direction of him, as a sort of spiritual director. It was probably ill-timed; after all, Rousseau had just finished telling Boswell that he should trust his own judgment and not anyone else's. Rousseau's reply was that he could only assume responsibility for himself, not anyone else, and the interview seemed to have ended shortly afterward.

Rebuffed! Less tenacious men might have given up on the dream of having Rousseau help them sort out their lives, but Boswell was not a less tenacious man, and he turned his thought to how he could keep Rousseau on the line. His idea was ingenious. It was probably not possible to get Rousseau to listen to his life in conversation; but if Boswell wrote his troubles down, the great philosopher would inevitably read it, and when Boswell returned after a trip, he would finally stand a chance of getting detailed moral advice from Rousseau. So he wrote down his troubles, with a cover letter, and gave it to Thérèse before setting off on his brief journey. Peter Martin's summary captures it well:

It is a remarkably candid autobiography, as we have already seen, meant for Rousseau's eyes alone, touching on his wretched religious education, hypochondria, and adulterous affair with Lord Kames's daughter. In a covering letter, he implored Rousseau's help to sort out the opposing sides of his tormented mind and body: 'Oh, vouchsafe to preserve a true Scot!...You love that ancient country. Preserve a sapling from it."6

Again Boswell had calculated perfectly how to manage Rousseau. When Boswell returned on December 14, Rousseau was indeed more forthcoming. But those conversations deserve their own discussion.

To be continued.

1. 1. Boswell on the Grand Tour, p. 229.
2. 2. Boswell on the Grand Tour, p. 230.
3. 3. Boswell on the Grand Tour, p. 231.
4. 4. Boswell on the Grand Tour, p. 231.
5. 5. Boswell on the Grand Tour, p. 231.
6. 6. Peter Martin, A Life of James Boswell. Yale University Press (New Haven: 2002) p. 180.