Rousseau, Jean-Jacques - Father of the French Revolution

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Roger Betteridge, of Shardlow, takes us back to the mid-18th century when one of the world’s greatest philosopher’s, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, found sanctuary in Derbyshire.

NEAR Ashbourne, the decaying remnants of Wootton Hall moulder silent and remote. Shallow broken steps slope nowhere through trees and rough abandoned parkland.

But once the most famous feet in Europe climbed them a dozen times a day for it was here that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writer, philosopher, one of the greatest minds of his time, had come in fear of his life.

By 1765, European church and state had been provoked to a frenzy by Rousseau’s explosive ideas.

His books Emile, The Social Contract and Letters from a Mountain, openly questioned accepted political and religious dogma.

They were banned and burned across the continent and their frightened author feared for his life.

His alarmed friend, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, offered him sanctuary in London.

Rousseau paused only to arrange passage for his mistress, dog and his great collection of unfinished manuscripts before taking his friend up on his offer.

He wrote at the time: “At 53 I feel my courage has gone... The climate in Europe is too harsh... I should have gone to England right off.”

He sailed from Calais on January 1, 1766. Foolishly he allowed his faithless and uncontrollable mistress, Therese Levasseur, to travel much later with the author James Boswell who was reluctant to accompany her.

Their erotic and lingering journey from Paris took a fortnight.

An exhausted Boswell wrote: “I was seduced in coach and inn 13 times between Paris and London. I drank to sustain my fading virility. How can Rousseau be so besotted to think her many children his?”

By the middle of February, Rousseau and Therese had rooms in Chiswick and Hume already feared the worst: “Madame Levasseur is wicked, quarrelsome and tattling.

“His affection for this creature is beyond all expression. She is too dull to know in what year of the Lord she is. But she has absolute authority over him.”

Already the escape to England was as good as doomed.

A fortnight later, while posing for a portrait in the London studio of Allen Ramsey, Rousseau met Richard Davenport.

Davenport, a wealthy Cheshire merchant, invited Rousseau to become his guest at Wootton Hall, his rarely used second home near Dovedale.

Deep in remote countryside, no place in England would be safer from the French assassins who Rousseau feared.

A rent of £30 was agreed and, on March 22, Rousseau and his reluctant mistress moved in.

The Dovedale omens were good. From his extensive second-floor apartment, a delighted Rousseau wrote to Hume: “This is one of the few happy things in my life. The valley beyond my window has enchanting nooks to supply long walks and opportunities to herbalize.

“I would rather live in the hole of a rabbit here than in the finest apartment in London.”

And a French friend quickly heard: “This house has the loveliest lawn in the universe. Cascades, groves, fountains and walks in charming meadows, woods and gardens. Beyond the tiny hamlet of Wootton, the mountains of another world.”

Through the Staffordshire and Derbyshire spring, Rousseau revelled in his new freedom.

His latest work The Confessions took shape, he went plant collecting in Dovedale with his new friend the Duchess of Portland, he arranged musical soirees, entertained Erasmus Darwin and, above all, relished the esteem and affection of local families.

For a few short weeks, his coach and mistress clattering regularly to shop through Ashbourne and Derby, Rousseau was alone, busy and content.

But the idyll was short-lived. Unseasonable rains made his Wootton garden cave impossible to use.

He began to quarrel with Hume under the delusion that his friend was trying to prevent a Royal pension, he suspected a satirical letter published in London was a personal attack and he became convinced that French agents hidden in Derbyshire were waiting to kill him.

The whole experience, he later wrote, became his “affaire infernale”.

And, above all, there was Therese Levasseur.

Unable to speak English, bored witless by Wootton, alone in an alien land, she became impossible to control.

She found the weather intolerable and the shops of Derby unworthy of custom.

She accused Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland of a “scandalous relationship” and she suspected the housekeeper, maids and gardeners of plotting to poison her.

But, of course, the unspoken, killer problem was the total absence of young and virile lovers.

Within 12 Dovedale months, Rousseau was touching on insanity.

He became convinced that French agents had him cornered, that even to leave the house risked assassination, that his corpse would lie unseen for weeks on some remote Derbyshire hillside.

In the spring of 1767, he wrote to his landlord Davenport virtually accusing him of being part of the murderous plot. You have, monsieur, the obligation to know what is going on with your guest. I am in the hands of everyone.

“The net is stretched tight between London and Wootton and nothing can escape. I intend to leave immediately.”

He left Wootton under cover of an April night, cowering behind the drawn curtains of his coach, with an alarmed and hysterical Therese crouching at his feet.

Afraid of imagined pursuit, he refused to take the direct Dover road, instead steering a slow and crazy course east towards the North Sea.

By early May, exhausted and all but clinically mad, he pulled into Spalding’s market square and its White Hart coaching inn and collapsed.

The paranoia of his Spalding fortnight beggared belief.

With Therese quartering the town in search of new gowns and young East Anglian virility, Rousseau remained in his darkened bedroom.

He refused to eat what he claimed was poisoned food and bombarded London’s Lord Chancellor with repeated demands for a mounted armed escort to Dover.

Without at least 100 men as guard, he claimed, he was as good as dead.

A disappointed, gibbering Rousseau finally made his lonely dash for the south coast and the Dover Packet.

He locked himself in his cabin for the whole Channel crossing, leaving an infuriated Therese to shout abuse at him across the crowded, heaving deck.

On May 22, a startled Calais awoke to find him home, to be called, he insisted, the newly married Monsieur Renou and his gracious wife from their honeymoon in Dovedale’s calming peaks.

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This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.