George Washington's False Teeth: An Unconventional Guide to the Eighteenth Century

GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FALSE TEETH

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ALSO BY ROBERT DARNTON

J.-P. Brissot, His Career and Correspondence, 1779-1787 The Corpus if Clandestine Literature in France, 1769-1789 The Forbidden Best-Sellers if Prerevolutionary France Gens de lettres, Gens du Livre Berlin Journal, 1989-1990 Edition et sedition. Lunivers de la litterature clandestine au XVIIIe siecle The Kiss if Lamourette: Riflections in Cultural History The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History The Literary Underground if the Old Regime The Business if Enlightenment: A Publishing History 1" the Encyclopedia Mesmerism and the End 1" the Enlightenment

As COEDITOR

Democratie Revolution in Print: The Press in France 1775-1800

NEW YORK

LONDON

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· GEORGE , WASHINGTON'S .

FALSE TEETH ROBERT DARNTON w

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NORTON & COMPANY

Copyright

© 2 00 3

by Robert Darnton

All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America First Edition Page 1 (page

x,

detail) :

George Washington at Princeton, by Charles Willson

Peale, 1 7 79, oil on canvas, 9 3

X

5 8. 5 in. (23 6 .2

X

1 4 8.6 em.), Ace. no.

1 9 4 3 . 1 6 . 2 . Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Gift of Maria McKean Allen and Phebe Warren Downes through the bequest of their mother, Elizabeth Wharton McKean . For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Darnton, Robert. George Washington's false teeth : an unconventional gUide to the eighteenth century / Robert Darnton p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-393-05760-7

I . France-Intellectual life- 1 t8 h century. 2. Enlightenment-France. I . Title.

W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 1 0 II a www.wwnorton .com w. W. Norton & Company Ltd.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

t

lX

THE CASE FOR THE ENLIGHTENMENT: GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FALSE TEETH

.2

THE NEWS IN PARIS: AN EARLY INFORMATION SOCIETY

3

3

25

THE UNITY OF EUROPE:

76

CULTURE AND POLITENESS THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS: VOLTAIRE AND JEFFERSON

5

89

THE GREAT DIVIDE: ROUSSEAU ON THE ROUTE TO VINCENNES THE CRAZE FOR AMERICA: CONDORCET AND BRISSOT

7

119

THE PURSUIT OF PROFIT: ROUSSEAUISM ON THE BOURSE THE SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET: How HISTORIANS PLAY GOD

156

137

107

C O N T E N T S

NOTES

175

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INDEX

193

189

INTRODUCTION

THE FAT H E R O F H I S COU N T RY F I G H T I N G TOOTHACHE? It was

not the least of his battles, and he finally lost it. Having defeated the British and won the first election to the presidency, he was inaugu­ rated in 1789 with one tooth in his mouth, a lower left bicuspid . If you know how to look, you can see the effects of his losses on the dental front by inspecting his portraits

not the Gilbert Stuart on

the dollar bill, or the famous Stuart of 1796 in which the artist packed cotton behind Washington's lips to make them look more natural, but the portrait of 1779 by Charles Willson Peale (see Fig­ ure I), which shows the scar on the caved -in area beneath his left cheekbone, the result, it seems, of a fistula from an abscessed tooth. Washington was worked over by all the best-known dentists of the country. He had a large collection of false teeth, made of everything from elephant ivory, walrus tusk, and hippopotamus tusk to the teeth of a fellow human . l Nor was he alone in his war against tooth disease. His contemporaries probably worried more about the pain in their gums than about the new constitution in 1787. But they were an odd lot, if seen up close.

In fact, everything about the eighteenth century is strange, once you examine it in detail . The carriage of the marquis de Sade gets stuck in a traffic jam, and in a fit of road rage he runs his sword

I N T R O DUC T I O N

Fig.

J.

Georee Washineton at Princeton,

1779, detail. Gift of the Executors of the Elizabeth Wharton McKean Estate, 1943.16.2. Courtesy of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

through a horse's belly. The chevalier d' Eon announces he is a woman and stages dueling matches in drag. Lafayette deco­ rates his Paris town house with American Indians in native cos­ tume, while Marie-Antoinette dresses up as a milkmaid and manufactures a village in the gardens of Versailles. The eighteenth century is always adopting disguises and changing costumes. It is also full of civic lessons. It makes declarations

of inde­

pendence in America, of the rights of man in France

and it pub­

lishes treatises:

But it adds

The Spirit if the Laws, The Social Contract.

strange twists to its apologies for liberty. Montesquieu takes cues from Machiavelli and imagines a revolution erupting from a harem . Rousseau draws on Hobbes in an attempt to bind democracy to the General Will. And Mirabeau invokes Rousseau in order to manipu­ late the Bourse. Visit the eighteenth century, and you will return with your head spinning, for it is endlessly surprising, inexhaustibly interesting, irresistibly strange. The taste for strangeness does not suit the favorite flavors of his­ tory in the United States, but it could produce some positive effects, if only as an antidote to false historical consciousness. When the country faces catastrophe, Americans often turn to the Found­ ing Fathers for help, as though we could open a direct line to the eighteenth century and tap a font of wisdom. During the debates about impeaching Presidents Nixon and Clinton, for example, we

I NT R O D U CT I O N

tried to find a way out of the crises by poring over every scrap of paper produced by the men who had sat in the Constitutional Con­ vention. Yet they lived in a different world from ours. Open the correspondence between Jefferson and Madison, and you will stumble upon remarks like the following: "The earth belongs always to the living generation . . . . Every constitution then, and every law, naturally expires [sic] at the end of 19 years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force, and not of right." 2 If we ven­ ture far enough into "the lost world of Thomas Jefferson," as Daniel Boorstin called it, we are likely to get lost ourselves. This book provides a guide to the eighteenth century, not to all of it (that would require a multivolume treatise) but to some of its most curious, out-of-the-way corners and also to its main concern, the cause of the Enlightenment. I first imagined writing such a guidebook long ago while attempting to follow Jefferson through Paris. His trail led into the lives of Frenchmen who mixed an ide­ alistic passion for America with bareknuckled politics in Grub ,

Street. One of them, Etienne Claviere, actually got caught in a punch-up on the Paris Bourse, and his speculations involved him simultaneously in projects to found a utopian colony in Ohio and in plots to bring down the government in Versailles. Another Ameri­ cophile, Jacques-Pierre Brissot, turned up as a spy in the archives of the lieutenant general of police. The lines of inquiry opened onto so much unfamiliar territory that I finally decided to follow them instead of Jefferson and spent the next decades roaming around in the field of study known in France as the history of mentalities. The essays brought together here are field reports on that experience. But they do not wander all over the eighteenth-century map. They concentrate on four interrelated themes : French-American con­ nections, life in the Republic of Letters , modes of communication, and ways of thought peculiar to the French Enlightenment. Each of these themes offers a way into the remote mental world

I NTRODUCTION

. .

p

of the eighteenth century, but each also has some affinity with con­ temporary issues, and that poses a problem. "Thou shalt not com­ mit anachronism" is the historian's first commandment. We may break it if we draw connections between the present and the past. The danger of "presentism," as it is sometimes called, is more insid­ ious than it seems. Few historians sift through the past for moral lessons or imagine Washington as one of us, dressed up in period costume. But how can we see him except through our own eyes, looking back through our own time? Is there not a presentist bias built into the frame of our perception? And how can we get a direct view of him even when we contemplate the paintings of Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale? There is no unmediated access to the past. Historians deal with this dilemma by embracing a professional ethos. They try to reconstruct the past "as it actually was," accord­ ing to standards set by Ranke following Thucydides. 3 But this com­ mitment comes at a cost, for professional history tends to be esoteric, and professional historians often write for one another, cut off from the general public by a protective wall of erudition. This book is intended to break through that barrier. It is written for the general educated reader and is meant to provide historical per­ spective to current questions such as: Does the adoption of the euro challenge notions about the identity of Europe? Has the Inter­ net created a new information society? Can the obsession with the private lives of public figures expose fault lines in political culture? By projecting those questions against an eighteenth-century back­ ground, I think it is possible to see them in a new light, while at the same time enjoying a fresh view of the eighteenth century. That may sound like unashamed anachronism. I hope, however, to cope with the presentist element implicit in any picture of the past by acknowledging it and putting it up front. My argument is not that the eighteenth century was strange in itself

Washington

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I NT R O D U CT I O N

;0= .

.

.

did not think it odd to be deprived of twenty-first-century den­ tistry

but rather that it is strange to us. By confronting that

strangeness, we can get to know it better. We also may be able to fight off a threat that comes from the opposite extreme, what the French call

passeisme.

An obsession with the past may distort it by

magnifying everything that makes it peculiar and by blowing its peculiarities out of proportion. This sin goes under a different name among anthropologists: othering. For several years now they have issued warnings against attributing too much otherness to other cultures. To insist on the exotic uniqueness of another people may be to get them wrong in a way that puts them out of reach. 4 Simi­ larly, to make the past appear as too remote a foreign land may be to cut off access to it. Instead of reifying foreign cultures in the hope of capturing something imagined as their essence, we need to interrogate them . We need to learn to speak their lan­ guages, to put the right questions to the relevant sources, and to translate the answers back into an idiom that can be understood by our contemporaries. If you put that program into practice, you cannot avoid a con­ frontation with your own subjectivity. History, like anthropology, has shifted to a self-reflective mode, but it need not succumb to egocentricity any more than to ethnocentricity, as I hope these essays show. Some of them are written in the first person singular, which used to be taboo among professionals who tried to create an illusion of objectivity by maintaining a proper rhetorical distance between their subjects and themselves. Rather than deny subjectiv­ ity, I am trying in this book to honor a second commandment, "Thou shalt not other," even though it cuts against the first. I see no easy way around the double danger of

passeisme

and presentism,

except to shuttle back and forth across the centuries, looking for fresh perspectives. But that, as I understand it, is the value of his­ tory: not to teach lessons but to provide perspective.

I N T R O D U CT I O N

It also gives pleasure, especially for those who commute to the eighteenth century. The age of the Founding Fathers had serious business before it, but it also had fun. It cocked snooks, cut rugs, lowered booms, and pursued happiness of every variety. Unfortu­ nately, however, it also had bad teeth. Anyone who roams around in the eighteenth century keeps coming up against toothache. The most famous character in eighteenth-century Paris, aside from the public hangman, was Le Grand Thomas, a tooth puller who operated on the Pont-Neuf and cut quite a figure according to a contemporary description of him :

He could be recognized from a great distance by his gigantic size and the amplitude of his clothing. Mounted on a steel cart, his head held high and covered in brilliant plumes, he . . . made his virile voice boom out to both ends of the bridge and both sides of the Seine. He was sur­ rounded by a trusting public; toothaches seemed to expire at his feet. His zealous admirers, like an inexhaustible flood, crowded around him and never took their eyes off him . Hands lifted in the air, imploring his remedies, and doctors could be seen scuttling away along the side­ walk, raging inwardly with jealousy at his success. 5 Most of us today don't bother much about our teeth, except for the occasional qUick fix at our dentist. If we listened to the eigh­ teenth century, we would hear humanity grinding its teeth, such as they were, in a constant struggle against pain. Not even the king was immune. The doctors of Louis XIV broke his jaw trying to extract rotten molars. And the cult ofWashington owes a good deal to his dentures. My own dentist assures me that the false teeth of the Founding Father show up everywhere in dentistry textbooks and that jokes about them are standard fare in dental schools. For example:

I NT R O D UCT I O N

Dental student A: W hy does George Washington look so pained on the dollar bill?

Dental student B: Wooden dentures. Dental student A: No, it's because he didn't make it to the twenty-dollar bill. Did Washington really wear false teeth made of wood? I thought I saw them long ago at Mount Vernon, but Mount Vernon now has a Web page, which warns that the wooden teeth are a myth. Perhaps I should have extracted them from chapter ter 4, where they briefly reappear

I

and also from chap­

but I have left them there

nonetheless, because they belong to the mythical dimension of his­ tory, which is another subject of this book. Myths shaped mentali­ ties, and they too can be found in strange places, like eighteenth­ century salons, where they provided Condorcet with material for imagining himself as a

bourgeois de New Haven

and Brissot with an

opportunity to pursue exotic Americans in Paris

not just Lafayette

and his Indians but Hector Saint John de Crevecoeur, the Norman turned American farmer who passed as an expert on noble savages. The Web itself is surrounded by a myth, the notion that it ush­ ered in a new phase of history, "the information age." In this respect as well, the eighteenth century offers an opportunity for us to sharpen our historical consciousness, for it too was an age of infor­ mation with media of its own, and they transmitted messages that can still be picked up from the surviving documentation. On a good day in the archives , one can even piece together parts of the communication system through which they flowed . That historical task coincides with the general goal of this book: to open up lines of communication with the eighteenth century and, by following them to their sources, to understand the century "as it actually was," in all its strangeness.

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1

THE CASE FOR THE ENLIGHTENMENT: GEORGE WASHINGTON'S FALSE TEETH WE

LIVE

IN

AN

AGE

OF

I N F LATI O N :

I N F LAT E D

M O N E Y,

I N FLATED GRAD ES, I N FLAT E D LETTERS O F R E C O M M E N DATI ON, I N FLATED REPUTAT I O N S, A N D I N F LAT E D

I D EAS. The general

puffery has affected our understanding of the movement at the beginning of modern political culture, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, because it too has been blown up to such a size that it would not be recognized by the men who first created it. Having been floated at first with a few salons, it became a campaign to

bons mots in some Parisian crush 1'irifame, a march of

progress, a spirit of the age, a secular faith, a world view to be defended or combated or transcended, and the source of every­ thing good, bad, and modern, including liberalism, capitalism , imperialism , male chauvinism , world federalism, UNESCO humanism, and the Family of Man. Whoever has a bone to pick or a cause to defend begins with the Enlightenment. We scholars have added to the confusion because we have cre­ ated a huge industry, Enlightenment Studies , with its own associa­ tions, journals, monograph series, congresses, and foundations. Like all professionals, we keep expanding our territory. At last count, there were thirty profeSSional societies on six of the seven continents (Antarctica is still resisting), and at our last world con-

3

G E O R G E W A S H IN G T O N ' S FALSE T E E T H

gresses we listened to papers on the Russian Enlightenment, the Romanian Enlightenment, the Brazilian Enlightenment, the Josephinian Enlightenment, the Pietistic Enlightenment, the Jewish Enlightenment, the musical Enlightenment, the religious Enlight­ enment, the radical Enlightenment, the conservative Enlighten­ ment, and the Confucian Enlightenment. The Enlightenment is beginning to be everything and therefore nothing.

I I propose deflation. Let us consider the Enlightenment as a move­ ment, a cause, a campaign to change minds and reform institutions. Like all movements, it had a beginning, a middle, and, in some places but not others, an end. It was a concrete historical phenom­ enon, which can be located in time and pinned down in space: Paris in the early eighteenth century. Of course it had origins. What movement does not? They extended back to antiquity and covered the map of Europe. Cartesian doubt, Newtonian physics, Lockean epistemology, the cosmologies of Leibniz and Spinoza, the natural law of Grotius and Pufendorf, the skepticism of Bayle, the biblical criticism of Richard Simon, the toleration of the Dutch, the Pietism of the Germans, the political theories and freethinking of the Eng­ lish: One could list philosophical sources at length, and many his­ torians have done so. But to compile the sources is to miss the point, for the Enlightenment was less than the sum of its philosoph­ ical parts, and few of the

philosophes were original philosophers.

They were men of letters. Only rarely did they develop ideas undreamed of in earlier generations. Compare Voltaire with Pascal, Condillac with Locke, Diderot with Descartes, Laplace with New­ ton, d ' Holbach with Leibniz . The

philosophes worked variations

on

themes set for them by their predecessors. Nature, reason, tolera-

T H E CASE FOR T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T : G E O R G E WA S H I N G TO N ' S F A L S E T E E T H

tion, happiness, skepticism, individualism, civil liberty, cosmopoli­ tanism : All can be found, at greater depth, in the thought of the sev­ enteenth century. They can be found among eighteenth-century thinkers unconnected or opposed to the

philosophes,

such as Vico,

Haller, Burke, and Samuel Johnson. What, then, set the

philosophes

apart? Commitment to a cause.

Engagement. The philosophe was

a new

social type, known to us today as the intellectual. He meant to put his ideas to use, to persuade, propagandize, and change the world around him. To be sure, earlier thinkers had also hoped to modify the world . The religious radicals and the humanists of the sixteenth century were devoted to their causes. But the

philosophes

repre­

sented a new force in history, men of letters acting in concert and with considerable autonomy to push through a program. They developed a collective identity, forged by common commitment in the face of common risks. They were marked as a group by perse­ cution, just enough to dramatize their daring and not enough to deter them from undertaking more. They developed a strong sense of "us" against "them": men of wit against the bigots, honnetes hommes against exclusive privilege, the children of light against the demons of darkness. They were also an elite. Despite the leveling tendency inherent in their faith in reason, they aimed to take over the commanding

heights of culture and to enlighten from above. This strategy led them to concentrate on the conquest of salons and academies, jour­ nals and theaters, Masonic lodges and key cafes, where they could win the rich and powerful to their cause and even gain access, by back doors and boudoirs, to the throne. They reached a broad pub­ lic among the middle classes, but they drew a line above the peas­ antry. Better not teach peasants how to read, said Voltaire; someone had to plow the fields. This view, I realize, is heresy. It is politically incorrect. Although

G E O R G E WAS H I N G T O N ' S FALSE T E E T H

it allows for the influence of royal mistresses and

Brandes dames in

the salons, it concentrates on men . It is elitist, Voltairean, and incorregibly Parisian. What about the famous cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment? And the great thinkers not merely outside Paris but beyond the boundaries of France ? Although I consider Paris the capital of the Republic of Letters in the eighteenth cen­ tury, I agree that the Enlightenment spread from many sites: Edinburgh, Naples, Halle, Amsterdam, Geneva, Berlin, Milan , Lisbon, London, and even Philadelphia. Each city had its philoso­ phers, many of whom corresponded with the

philosophes,

and

quite a few outdid them. If one measures depth and originality of thought, it is difficult to find a Parisian who compares with Hume, Smith, Burke, Winckelmann, Kant, and Goethe. Why then concentrate on Paris? That is where the movement came together and defined itself as a cause. In an earlier phase, one that I would call the pre­ Enlightenment, philosophic writers like John Locke, John Toland, and Pierre Bayle crossed paths throughout England and the Low Countries. They shared itineraries and ideas, including Bayle's vision of an international Republic of Letters. But it was not until their intellectual heirs, the

philosophes,

set up camp and began

campaigning that the Enlightenment emerged as a cause, with partisans and a program . Its adherents forged their collective identity in Paris during the first decades of the eighteenth cen­ tury. As their movement gathered force, it spread , and as it spread, it changed, adapting itself to other conditions and incor­ porating other ideas. But it did not reach everywhere and cover everything in the spectrum of intellectual life. To equate the Enlightenment with the totality of Western thought in the eigh­ teenth century is to get it badly wrong. By viewing it as a concerted campaign on the part of a self-conscious group of intel­ lectuals , one can reduce it to its proper proportions. This perspec-

T H E CASE FOR T H E E N L I G HT E N M E NT: G E O R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S F A L S E T E ET H

tive does justice to its character, for the

philosophes

7

concentrated

less on developing systematic philosophy than on mastering the media of their time . They excelled in witty conversation, letter writ­ ing, manuscript bulletins, journalism, and all forms of the printed word, from the massive tomes of the

Encyclopedie

to the pamphlet

pates served up by Voltaire. The diffusionist view also allows for the spread of the Enlight­ enment to other parts of Europe in the second half of the eigh­ teenth century and to the rest of the world thereafter. By 17 {O like-minded philosophers in other sites had begun to think of themselves as

philosophes.

Paris drew them like a magnet, and the

Parisians enlisted them in the cause, delighted to find reinforce­ ment from original thinkers like Hume and Beccaria. But the for­ eign

philosophe,

with his imperfect French and incorrectly curled

wig, felt his foreignness in Paris. He often returned home deter­ mined to strike out on his own. (Despite the lionizing in Paris, Beccaria hustled back to Milan as fast as his coach would carry him and turned from criminology to aesthetics . ) The

sion

philosophe en mis­

in London, Berlin, and Milan also discovered alien sources of

thought, many of them distressingly Christian. Fissures opened; divisions developed; branches stretched out in new directions. Such is the nature of movements. They are always in motion, multiplying and dividing. An emphasis on diffusion does not imply indifference to ideas,

either among the

philosophes

or among the historians studying

them . Nor does it imply passivity on the receiving end of the mes­ sages sent out from Paris and from other transmission points along the circuits of intellectual exchange. On the contrary, the foreign­ ers talked back. Backtalk, personal interaction, mutual exchange of letters and books kept expanding "the Church," as Voltaire called it. And the cause carried conviction because the ideas of the philosophes were

ideesjorces,

like liberty, happiness, nature, and nature's laws.

G E O R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S FALSE T E ET H

But they were not particularly original. Thinkers in Stockholm and Naples did not need to read Voltaire in order to learn about toler­ ance and natural law. Those ideas belonged to the common stock of concepts accessi­ ble to the educated classes everywhere. Philosophers worked them over in new ways without any need for nudging from Paris and often without any alignment with the Enlightenment. What Voltaire and his coconspirators provided was not original matter for thought but a new spirit, the sense of participation in a secular cru­ sade. It began with derision, as an attempt to laugh the bigots out of polite society, and it ended with the occupation of the moral high ground, as a campaign for the liberation of mankind, including the enserfed and the enslaved, Protestants, Jews, blacks, and (in the case of Condorcet) women. From deflation to diffusion and diffusion to the study of a spirit, this approach to the Enlightenment may well seem suspect. For if we are not to make an inventory of ideas but rather to take the pulse of a movement, will we not be forced to rely on groping in the dark for a

ZeitBeist? I prefer to think that we can pursue a more

rigorous historicity. Movements can be mapped . One can follow them in space and time, as groups cohere and messages flow through communication systems. The Enlightenment grew out of a great crisis during the last years of the reign of Louis

XlV. For a century the power of the

monarchy and the prestige of literature had grown apace, but after

1 685

they grew apart. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the

quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns , the persecution of Jansenists and Quietists all came to a head while France suffered through a series of demographic, economic, and military disasters . With the state on the verge of collapse, men of letters attached to the court

Fenelon, La Bruyere, Boulainvilliers, Vauban, Saint­

Simon

questioned the basis of Bourbon absolutism and the reli-

, ,

, , j ,

T H E C A S E F O R T H E E NLI G H T E N M E N T : G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S F A L S E T E E T H

gious orthodoxy it enforced.

La ville

went its own way as

Ia cour

succumbed to paralysis, waiting for the death of the aged king. A new generation of espritsforts and

beaux esprits took over the

salons

and breathed new life into the libertinism developed during the seventeenth century. In 1 7 0 6 a twelve-year-old prodigy, Franyois­ Marie Arouet, later known as Voltaire, made his debut in the liber­ tine society of the Temple. By the death of Louis XIV nine years later he had established a reputation as the sharpest wit in town, and the town, or the wealthy, worldly part of it known as

Ie monde,

had given itself over to witticisms, most of them at the expense of the Church and whatever passed for dignity in the governing circles of the Regency. The Enlightenment at this stage remained confined to a narrow elite and also to word of mouth and manuscript.

Bons mots and lib­

ertine tracts passed from salon to salon, but they rarely appeared in print . The first great exceptions were Montesquieu's

Persanes

( 1 7 2I) and Voltaire's

Lettres philosophiques

Lettres

( 1 734) , Both

works showed an advance from wit to wisdom, for both authors mixed libertine impieties with serious reflections on despotism and intolerance. Having been beaten up by the lackeys of the chevalier de Rohan-Chabot and imprisoned twice in the Bastille, Voltaire had learned to appreciate the weakness of independent writers in a world dominated by protection networks of wealth and birth. The next great publishing event, the appearance of Le

Philosophe

in 1743, provided an answer to that problem. Writers should con­ form to an ideal type: neither a scientist nor a savant, but a new phenomenon, the

philosophe,

part man of letters, part man of the

world, and entirely engaged in using letters to rid the world of superstition. This little tract, later incorporated in the and in Voltaire 's

Encyclopedie

Evangile de Ia raison, served as a declaration of inde­

pendence for the intellectual and at the same time provided him

G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S FALSE T E ETH

m

with a strategy: He should work within the power structure, pro­

de lettres and gens du monde, in order to advance the cause of philosophie. The philosophes, as the group now began to be known, found

moting an alliance of gens

their greatest ally in C . G. de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, the director of the book trade from

1 750

to

1 763. Thanks to his pro­

tection, the Enlightenment burst fully into print. Despite persecu­ tion from clergymen and magistrates, the most important works, ,

from Montesquieu's

De l'esprit des lois (1 748) to Rousseau's Emile and Du contrat social ( I 7 6 2 ) , circulated safely through the arteries of the publishing industry. The Encyclopedie (seventeen volumes of text, 1 75 I-I 765, followed by eleven volumes of plates, the last published in 1 7 7 2 ) redefined the world of knowledge for the mod­ ern reader, infused it with philosophie, and identified it with a coterie of philosophes, the socilEte de gens de lettres named on its title page. The Encyclopedie caused a scandal and nearly went under; but by I 7 8 9 it had become the greatest best seller in the history of pub­ lishing. Despite some hard knocks, or rather because of them, par­ ticularly during the political-intellectual crisis of

1 757- 1 76 2 ,

the

philosophe had emerged as a new social type and a force to be reck­ oned with, the phenomenon that we now identify as the intellectual . The rest of the story need not be related here. It has plenty of complexities and contradictions (not the least of which was Jean­ Jacques Rousseau) , and it can hardly be reduced to a tranquil process of diffusing light by selling books. After the

1 7 50S

most

of it took place outside France, especially through the recasting of autocratic power in the form of enlightened absolutism . But every­ where

in the Prussia of Frederick II, the Russia of Catherine II,

the Austria of Joseph II, the Tuscany of the archduke Leopold, the Spain of Charles III, the Portugal of Joseph I , the Sweden of Gus­ tavus III

sovereigns and ministers looked to the

philosophes

for

guidance or legitimation. Nearly all of them read French; nearly all

T H E C AS E F O R T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T : G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S F A L S E T E E T H

consulted the

Encyclopedie,

ff

and so did the most important of their

subjects. The point of taking this detour through historicism is not merely to reduce the Enlightenment to manageable proportions but also to address the next question, its relevance to issues that arose after the eighteenth century. The inflated Enlightenment can be identified with all modernity, with nearly everything subsumed under the name of Western civilization, and so it can be made responsible for nearly everything that causes discontent, especially in the camps of the postmodernists and anti-Westernizers.

II Whatever our success in shrinking the Enlightenment down to its true size as an eighteenth-century phenomenon, we cannot deny that it produced a set of values that remained alive through the cen­ turies that followed and that set some societies apart from others. The nomenclature varies

modern vs. medieval, bourgeois vs.

aristocratic, liberal vs. traditional, capitalist vs. feudal

but taken

together, the contrasting terms point to a dividing line that has long existed in the collective consciousness. Like most boundaries, it has provoked conflict. Some have wanted to move it; some, to wipe it out. Now, however, it may simply disappear without a fight because a new line has been drawn:

1 989,

the demarcation of two eras­

before and after the Cold War. We have come to the end of a short century, which extended from 1 9 14 to

1 9 89, but we do not know

what century we have entered. The age of postmodernism? The term means different things to different people, but however unsatisfactory it may be, it conveys a sense of rupture from a time when the terms were clear or at least clearly strung out along a set of opposites. One was for or against

G E O R G E W A S H IN G T O N ' S FALS E T E ET H

a

liberalism, conservatism, capitalism, socialism, individualism, col­ lectivism, and so on, Now we talk, or rather discourse, about rep­ resenting, remembering, inventing, negotiating, construing, constructing, and deconstructing, Having taken the linguistic turn, we feel free to reedit reality and to pronounce the Enlightenment dead. But reality refuses to behave like a text, and the Enlighten­ ment seems to have life in it yet, because it is still a whipping boy, and one doesn't whip cadavers. The attacks have changed, however. In place of the old accusations mism, bourgeois ideology

shallow positivism, naive opti­

postmodernists have arraigned the

Enlightenment under a new set of headings. The indictment goes as follows: I

.

The Enlightenment's claim to universalism really served as a

cover for Western hegemony. The rights of man provided legitima­ tion for the destruction of other cultures. Example: Captain Cook. I would not minimize the damage wrought by Westerners when

they came into contact with other parts of the world, nor would I dispute Cook's reputation as a prototypical man of the Enlighten­ ment. But Cook showed much respect for native customs, far more than the conquistadors of the sixteenth century and the imperialists of the nineteenth. Tragedy could not be avoided in the West-East and North-South encounters, but it was driven by trade, disease, and technology rather than by philosophy. Mutual incomprehen­ sion certainly compounded the damage. Its cultural dimension was crucial; but the Enlightenment was not the same thing as Western culture, and the

philosophes

made laudable efforts not only to

understand other peoples but also to improve their lot: thus the

Histoire philosophique des etablissements et du commerce des Europeens dans les deux lndes, a radical and widely diffused tract by the abbe Raynal, which contributed greatly to the abolition of slavery. A related accusation goes somewhat differently:

2 . The Enlightenment was cultural imperialism masquerading as

,

.

,

,

j

1

!

T H E CASE FOR T H E E N L I G H T E N M E NT : G E O R G E WAS H I N GTO N ' S FALSE T E E T H

13

a higher form of rationality. It provided Europeans with a "civiliz­ ing mission" and a way of constructing "natives" that led to their silencing and subjugation. Example: Orientalism . This argument draws on Foucault, literary theory, and anthro­ pology to emphasize the epistemological and cultural ingredients in Western hegemony. No one who has read through those sources would deny that individuals are always construing others. In cross­ cultural contacts, "othering" (as the jargon would have it) can be fatal . It leads to "essentialism" (another current pejorative)

that

is, the projection of qualities on others in a way that reifies them in the eyes of the beholder and sometimes in their own eyes as well . In this respect Enlightenment thought can look "culture-bound" and "nondialogical" (two more taboos in postmodern social sci­ ence) . But every culture has boundaries. Western notions of indi­ vidualism may indeed be incompatible with the notions of selfhood developed in China and India. But the Enlightenment opened the way to an anthropological understanding of others . It was deeply dialogical and provided an antidote to its own tendency to dogma­ tize: Witness Diderot's

Supplement au Voyage de Bougainville and all his

dialogues. Orientalism certainly provided the Westerners with stereo­ types that they visited on the East, and the

philosophes contributed

their share to this tendency. Montesquieu and Voltaire may have put their sympathetic Persians and philosophical Chinese in a pos­ itive light in order to project criticisms back on France; but posi­ tive stereotyping is stereotyping, nonetheless, and it may close off receptivity to any genuine give-and-take with other cultures. But other ages, in contrast with the eighteenth century, were nearly all take and no give. Imperialism is essentially a nineteenth-century phenomenon, and it took its inspiration from the Romantics rather than the

philosophes.

Byron and Kipling, Delacroix and Ingres,

Verdi and Puccini outdid the artists of the eighteenth century by

G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S FAL S E T E E T H

�

far in creating exotic Orientals. Moreover, the exoticizing began long before the Enlightenment, and it often took the form of demonizing, Cruel Saracens, Oriental despots, and

tetes de Tures

have proliferated in the Western imagination since the early wars against the Ottoman Empire. Older prejudices date from the Cru­ sades. They developed over centuries, accompanied, it must be said, by Eastern prejudices against the West. (After I heard a paper on the reception of Rousseau in Japan, it seemed to me that we should consider "Occidentalism" as well as "Orientalism.") To pin Orientalism on the Enlightenment is to confuse the thought of a few intellectuals in the eighteenth century with the entire course of Western civilization. Finally, it must be stressed that the Enlightenment lacked the most poisonous ingredient of imperialism

namely, racism.

There is no getting around Jefferson's support of slavery or the biological speculations by Lord Kames and Lord Monboddo on the nature of Amerindians, Africans, and Orang Outangs. But for more typical views, one should turn to the passionate denuncia­ tion of slavery by Voltaire in

Candide,

Chapter 1 9 , which was

inspired by the radical egalitarianism of Helvetius's

De l'esprit.

Race was not a fundamental category in the thought of the

philosophes. The

world had to wait for the likes of Gobineau to

arrive at that level of philosophy. 3. The Enlightenment pursued knowledge so fanatically that it

undermined ethics. Ultimately that fanaticism fed into fascism, because it armed the state with superior technology and destroyed the moral barriers to the all-pervasive exercise of state power. Newton's natural law became reduced to matter in motion, despite his faith in an interventionist, Christian God. Kant's "dare to know" became "dare to reject the promptings of the conscience" despite his attempt to provide a rational basis for the Golden Rule. The

philosophes

did not merely damage organized religion; they also

T H E CASE FOR T H E E N LI G HT E N M E NT : G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S F A L S E T E E T H

15

sapped all morality, which ultimately rests on the irrational: faith and Revelation. Example: the marquis de Sade. Sade has indeed been presented as the ultimate

philosophe,

the

one who put d ' Alembert's "experimental physics of the soul" into practice in the darkest corners of cruelty. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno aligned Sade with Kant and Nietzsche in a "dialec­ tic of enlightenment" that stretched from Homer to Hitler. Faced with the disasters of totalitarianism and world war, they questioned the assumed wisdom of the Left, which associated Enlightenment with revolution . Instead they argued that the Enlightenment led by a negative dialectic to what might seem to be its opposite, fascism . One

can

see their point: Rational demystification of the eighteenth­

century sort might be understood to produce its dialectical oppo­ site, a modern mythology of science and technology, which opened onto a moral wilderness. But can one take it seriously as an account of the Enlightenment? Horkheimer and Adorno do not discuss the work of a single French

philosophe.

Instead of considering the

Enlightenment concretely, as a phenomenon located in time and space, they let it disappear from sight while speculating on the entire sweep of Western civilization. The blind spot in their speculations has serious consequences because the Enlightenment provided the main defense against the barbarism that they deplored. Montesquieu's attempt to shore up liberty against the inroads of despotism, Voltaire's campaigns against the perversions of justice, Rousseau's plea for the rights of the dispossessed, Diderot's questioning of all authority, including that of reason itself: Such were the weapons left by the intellectu­ als of the eighteenth century for their successors two hundred years later. Horkheimer and Adorno refused to make use of them. Instead they drew on another philosophical tradition, the one that leads from Hegel to Heidegger. Not that they subscribed to Heidegger's Hitlerism. But by viewing Hitler from the perspective

G E O R G E WA S H I N G TO N ' S FALSE T E E T H

�

of German dialectics, they were incapable of making sense of the supreme evil that overcame Germany. That evil stands condemned by the standards of human rights developed in the Enlightenment and proclaimed in the founding charters of democracy, notably the American Declaration of Independence and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen. There may be inadequate evidence for the "self-evident truths" of the American Declaration. They are articles of faith, not facts. But one must put one's faith somewhere

better, I believe, in the normative tradition of the

Enlightenment than in the dialectics deSigned to refute it. 4. The Enlightenment had an excessive faith in reason. By rely­

ing on rationalism, it failed to erect defenses against the irrational . Its naive cult of progress left humanity helpless before the horrors of the twentieth century. Faith in reason is indeed a faith, and it may not be adequate to sustain men and women confronted with the violence and irra­ tionality of the twentieth century. But rationalism does not distin­ guish the Enlightenment from other schools of thought, such as Thomism or Cartesianism . The pertinent distinction, as Ernst Cas­

esprit �stematique of the eighteenth century from the esprit de �steme of the seventeenth. The latter car­ sirer explained, sets apart the

ried reason to extremes by using it to construct all-embracing the­ ories. The

philosophes

challenged theories. They dared criticize

everything, but with very few exceptions

d' Holbach, Quesnay'­

they did not erect systems. What is the alternative to the critical use of reason? Embracing the irrational? Freud relied on reason in order to explore the irra­ tional. He followed the lead of Diderot, whose

Neveu de Rameau

provides a clinical case study of a man without morality, who wanted to kill his father so that he could sleep with his mother. Nietzsche celebrated the Dionysian ingredient in culture, but he admired Voltaire and did not provide a rationale for his postmod-

T H E CASE FOR T H E E N L I G H T E N M E NT : G E O R G E WA S HIN G T O N ' S F A L S E T E E T H

17

ernist followers to abandon the Voltairean struggle against tyranny and social injustice. The most typical of the postmodernist attacks on the Enlighten­ ment, John Gray's

EnliBhtenment's Wake, invokes Nietzsche in urging

us to abandon faith in normative principles and to accept the neces­ sity of taking up stands in a landscape shorn of meaningful markers. Like Horkheimer and Adorno, Gray does not pause to consider what the French philosophes actually wrote. Instead he offers a vague and unsubstantiated description of something he calls the enlight­ enment project and proceeds to condemn it for its failure to meet the standards set by postmodernist philosophy. Aside from its anachronism, the argument seems to assume that political culture derives from political theory, as if a wrong turn or a twist in the logic of a philosopher could determine the way ordinary mortals orient themselves in the world. Gray sets them straight. Armed with arguments from Nietzsche, Horkheimer, and Adorno, he slashes away at what he takes to be the Enlightenment world view, leaves it in tatters, and challenges his readers to accept their ''his­ torical fate"

that is, the world according to Gray, a world without

enlightenment, "the postmodern condition of fractured perspec­ tives and groundless practices.'" The philosophers of the Enlightenment probably would fail that test if .Gray administered it after considering their work. Con­ dorcet

distracted, no doubt, from an understanding of historical

fate by his efforts to free slaves, enfranchise women, and stop Robespierre

probably would get an F, for what could look more

groundless, when viewed from this side of Hitlerism and Stalinism, than his theory of progress: reason driving out falsehood with help from the printing press? But it may not be absurd to envision progress with a lowercase

p,

of which more later. Meanwhile what

should we make of the combination of reason and Terror, which drove Condorcet to suicide?

G E0 R G E WAS H I N GTO N ' S F ALS E T E E T H

15

5. The

Enlightenment belongs to the origins of totalitarianism.

It provided the theoretical basis for the Terror of the French Revo­ lution, which in turn pointed the way to the terrors of Hitler and Stalin. The common element in all three was the attempt to force the social order to conform to an ideological blueprint. True, in making his case for the Terror, Robespierre drew on Montesquieu and Rousseau. Like many other Jacobins, he tried to redesign France in accordance with political theory. But he also smashed the bust of Helvetius in the Jacobin Club and railed against the Encyclopedists, reserving his praise for the one

philosophe,

Rousseau, who made a break with the Enlightenment and opened the way to Romanticism. Rousseau's notion of forcing men to be free by making them conform to the dictates of an organic General Will undercut the notions of liberty developed by the other

philosophes.

But Rousseau never envisaged anything like the Terror,

and the Terror had nothing in common with the ideologies of fas­ cism and communism. The crimes committed by twentieth-century states violated basic principles of the Enlightenment: respect for the individual, for liberty, for all the rights of man. But rhetoric about the rights of man exposes the Enlightenment to a further critique : It says nothing about the rights of women. And what about animals, the environment, and other causes that command the attention of the post-Cold War world? Those ques­ tions lead to a final accusation.

6 . The

Enlightenment is outdated and inadequate as an outlook

for coping with contemporary problems. The

philosophes

champi­

oned an instrumentalist view of reason, which led to ecological dis­ aster, and a masculine view of civic life, which relegated women to the private sphere. True, the Enlightenment was time-bound as well as culture­ bound. It took place in a world where some causes of the twenti­ eth century remained unthinkable. It therefore failed to think great

T H E CA S E F O R T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T : G EO R G E WAS H I N GTO N ' S FALSE T E ET H

thoughts that later changed the boundaries of culture. To defend the Enlightenment is not to reject the poetry ofT. S . Eliot, the painting of Picasso, the physics of Einstein, or even the grammatology of Derrida. Nor is it to reject the rights of women. Olympe de Gouges and Mary Wollstonecraft actually owed a great deal to the example as well as to the ideas of the philosophes, even though some speculations of Diderot and Rousseau seem retrogressive when compared with the earlier notions of Poulain de la Barre. The point is not to make an inventory of ideas, crossing some off the list and adding others. It is to adopt an intellectual stance that will serve when lines are drawn and one's back is to the wall . When chal­ lenged to condemn torture in Argentina, war in Vietnam, or racism in the United States, where can we make our stand if not on prin­ ciples enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Dec­ laration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen? Having come to the end of the indictment, I realize that I have fallen into the role of an advocate and abandoned that of a historian. Historians often succumb to such slippage when they belong to the culture they study. Why not throw professionalism to the wind and slide all the way into sermonizing?

III If I may add some observations of my own, I would stress the refusal of the philosophes to respect boundaries, either of disciplines or of nations. Despite their Parisian origins and their proclivity for French, they lived in a Republic of Letters that was truly cosmo­ politan. It had neither borders nor police. It was open to ideas from everywhere. Yet no one in it, or anywhere else, conceived of the idea of nationalism. That barbarism began with the wars of 179 2 and the fatal notion of "My country, right or wrong!"

.2.0

G E O R G E WAS H I NGTO N ' S FALSE T E E T H

I recently strayed out of the eighteenth century in order to do some research on the British Raj in the archives of the India Office in London. Before long my ears were ringing with a refrain that appeared in all the documents.

Bande Mataram! Bande Mataram!

Bande Mataram ("Long live the Mother!"

that is, India) was the ral­

lying cry of the Indian revolutionaries who wanted to throw off the

FerinBhees ("foreigners") at the beginning of this century. It was their Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. It moved them to tears, occasionally even to suicidal bomb attacks. And its fascination, to a its unthinkability. What is

FerinBhee,

is

Bande Mataram to me?

And Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? Two centuries of bad weather have nearly worn the words off the faces of most town halls in France. I doubt that they resonate inside the souls of many French today. You hear them, if at all, in parody: "Neither Liberty, nor Equality, nor Fraternity, but a little more mustard,

s'il vous plait."

The last time I noticed a patriotic lump in a French throat was at a screening of

Casablanca, when

Humphrey Bogart got the crowd to

sing the "Marseillaise." Yet only yesterday men were killing one another for a few square kilometers of Bosnia. To die for Greater Serbia? Another unthink­ able thought. For a United Ireland? Only recenty has the IRA agreed to stop throwing bombs. The ETA bomb throwers still kill in the name of the Basque Fatherland. Kurds assassinate in Turkey, Palestinians in Israel, Israelis in Palestine, Tamils in Sri Lanka, all for rearrangements of the map. The same thing is going on in Cyprus, Azerbaijan, Chechnya . . . . No need to recite the entire list. We all know it well enough. What we do not and cannot take in is the passion that drives men to kill for such causes. For us, the tiny minority of well-fed, well­ educated Westerners, Robert Graves said it all at the end of World War I : "Goodbye to all that." Our fathers fought in World War II to extinguish nationalism , not to unleash it. Yet every day it explodes

T H E CA S E F O R T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T : G EO R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S FALSE T E ETH

.2 !

before our eyes on the screens of our television sets. How can we make sense of the drive to die for fantasies like Mother India? Here is Ajit Singh, a passionate nationalist, haranguing a crowd at Rawalpindi in

1 90 7 ,

according to a police agent who secretly

took down his words: "Die for your country. We are

[300,000,000] . They

are a lakh and a half

[ 15' 0,000].

30

crores

A puff of

wind would blow them away. Cannon are of no account. One fin­ ger can easily be broken. When five fingers join to make a fist, no one can break it. (This was given with great emphasis, and flowers were thrown. )" One gets the point. But can one "get" the gale of flowers, the stamping of bare feet, the songs bursting from chests, the small boys rushing to take oaths in blood, the old men with tears in their eyes, the lumps in all the throats? The words remain, the music has gone

at least for those of us

who respond to Graves and would add: "Goodbye and good rid­ dance! May nationalism die a thousand deaths and never rise again." Yet there it is, alive and howling all around us, practically within hearing distance of London, Amsterdam, Paris, and Rome. Is there any way we can pick up the beat, if not in sympathy, at least with enough empathy to understand the force that drives it? One way lies through a reconsideration of our own traditions. We may be appalled at the patriotic gore spread throughout our past, but even the most sophisticated of us, at one time or other, has felt that peculiar lump in the throat. I underwent an attack of lumpiness myself, I must confess, dur­ ing a gUided tour of Independence Hall in Philadelphia a few years ago. There sat Washington, the guide explained, in that very chair, in this very room . It was a handsome Georgian chair with an emblematic sun carved on its back, and Washington was presiding over the Constitutional Convention of I 7 8 7 . At a particularly diffi­ cult moment in the debates, when the fate of the young republic

G EO R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S FALSE T E ETH

seemed to hang in the balance, Benjamin Franklin, sitting here, asked George Mason, sitting there, "Is the sun rising or setting?"They got through that deadlock and a dozen others. And when at last they had completed their work, Franklin pronounced: "It is rising." "What great men they were," I said to myself, the lump growing in my throat. "Washington, Franklin, Madison

and Jefferson, at

that moment advising Lafayette during the first phase of the French Revolution. How much greater than our politicians today. They were men of the Enlightenment." I cannot comprehend the rising sun of Japan, and I doubt that Washington's sun meant much to the Japanese tourists at my side in Independence Hall . Seen from abroad, the cult of the Constitution and the Founding Fathers must look like an alien folklore. To be sure, Washington himself no longer stirs much emotion in Ameri­ can breasts. Unlike Lincoln and Roosevelt, he looks too stiff, propped up in those Gilbert Stuart portraits, jaw firm, lips pursed, brow ponderous, more an icon than a human being. Icons are for worshiping, but the iconic Washington worshiped in the United States is the one that looks out at us from the dollar bill. Now, the cult of the dollar may not be all bad. Its emotional range is limited but not lethal . Unlike nationalism, it inspires self­ interest rather than self-sacrifice, investment rather than bomb throwing. And for all its crassness, it is ecumenical; one man's dol­ lar is as good as another's. That principle also derives from the Enlightenment, the branch that runs through Mandeville and Adam Smith. Enlightened self-interest may not be as lofty as lib­ erty, Equality, Fraternity; but it made a new life possible in the New World for millions of immigrants, and it may ultimately ren­ ovate Russia, where the dollar has become the effective currency. This line of thought has a respectable ancestry. It passed through French physiocracy, Scottish moral philosophy, and English utilitar­ ianism. But it takes us Americans far away from the passions that

T H E CA S E F O R T H E E N L I G H T E N M E N T : G EO R G E WAS H I NGTO N ' S FALSE T E ET H

inspired our ancestors in the early nineteenth century, when they carved, painted, sewed, and spun images ofWashington into every­ thing they produced. If we cannot share that emotion, we may nonetheless learn something by catching a glimpse of the man behind the icon. Once, on a visit to Washington's estate at Mount Vernon, I ran across what must be one of the strangest relics ever displayed in a national shrine, stranger than all the bric-a-brac in the Lenin Museum of Moscow and the Wellington Museum of London, Wash­ ington's false teeth. There they sat, under glass and (as I then believed) made of wood! The Father of Our Country in wooden choppers! So that was why he looked so grim in the portraits. The man was in constant pain. He couldn't get any juice from his meat without sending shock waves through his gums. People often ask me, as a specialist in the field, Would I like to have lived in the eighteenth century? First, I say, I would insist on being born well above the peasantry. Second, no toothaches, please. While reading thousands of letters from people in all walks of eighteenth-century life, I have often encountered toothaches. The pain cuts through the archaic language, and the writer looms up in your imagination, waiting in dread for an itinerant tooth puller to arrive in town and, by a brief bout of torture, to put an end to the long weeks of agony. Today we have less toothache and more mustard, much of it first-rate, from Dijon. Can we call this Progress? That is another eighteenth-century idea that looks dubious when seen across two centuries of suffering. But some familiarity with what humanity has suffered in the past may help us appreciate the modest, incremen­ tal gains of pleasure over pain or progress with a lowercase p. It may also help us sympathize with those who took a stand for human rights in the face of inhumanity. I am thinking of Voltaire, not the young libertine but the angry old man, who threw all his last

.2.4-

G E 0 R G E WAS H I N GTO N ' S FALSE T E ETH

energy into the fight against fanaticism. If he seems too foreign for postmodern America, why not summon up the central figure in our own political culture? When the crunch comes, we may be able to face up to the injustices around us by gritting our teeth and remem­ bering how hard it Was for Washington to grit his.

..

..

THE NEWS IN PARIS: AN EARLY IN FORMATION SOCIETY

F ROM T H E T H R E S H O L D O F T H E TWE NTY- F I RS T C E N T U RY, IT APPEARS THAT T H E ROAD TO T H E N E W M I L L E N N I U M LEADS THROU G H S I L I C O N VA L LEY. We have entered the information age,

and the future, it seems, will be determined by the media. In fact some would claim that the modes of communication have replaced the modes of production as the driving force of the modern world. I should like to dispute that view. Whatever its value as prophecy, it will not work as history because it conveys a specious sense of a break with the past. I would argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that communication systems have always shaped events. I That argument may sound suspiciously like common sense, but if pushed hard enough, it could open up a fresh perspective on the past. As a starting point, I would ask a question about the media today: What is news? Most of us would reply that news is what we read in newspapers or see and hear on news broadcasts. If we con­ sidered the matter further, however, we probably would agree that news is not what happened

yesterday, or last week

but rather

stories about what happened. It is a kind of narrative, transmitted by special kinds of media. That line of reasoning soon leads to entanglement in literary theory and the World Wide Web. But if

G E0 RG E WAS H I NGTO N ' S FALS E TEETH

.26

projected backward, it may help disentangle some knotty problems in the past . 2 I would propose a general attack on the problem of how soci­ eties made sense of events and transmitted information about them, something that might be called the history of communica­ tion . In principle, this kind of history could provoke a reassessment of any period in the past, for every society develops its own ways of hunting and gathering information; its means of communicating what it gathers, whether or not it uses concepts such as news and the media, can reveal a great deal about its understanding of its own experience. Examples can be cited from studies of coffeehouses in Stuart England, teahouses in early republican China, marketplaces in contemporary Morocco, street poetry in seventeenth-century Rome, slave rebellions in nineteenth-century Brazil, runner net­ works in the Mogul Raj of India, even the bread and circuses of the Roman Empire. 3 But instead of attempting to pile up examples by roaming every­ where through the historical record, I should like to examine a communication system at work in a particular time and place, the Old Regime in France. More precisely I would ask, How did you find out what the news was in Paris around

1 750? Not, I submit, by

reading a newspaper, because papers with news in them

news

as we understand it today, about public affairs and prominent per­ sons

did not exist. The government did not permit them.

To find out what was really going on, you went to the Tree of Cracow. It was a large, leafy chestnut tree, which stood at the heart of Paris in the gardens of the Palais-Royal. It probably had acquired its name from heated discussions that took place around it during the War of the Polish Succession ( I 7 3 3- I 7 3 5) , although the name also suggested rumormongering

(craquer:

Like a mighty magnet, the tree attracted

to tell dubious stories) .

nouvellistes de bouche,

or

newsmongers, who spread information about current events by

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T H E N EW5 I N PAR I 5 : I N FO R M AT I O N SOCI ETY

.2.7

word of mouth. They claimed to know, from private sources (a let­ ter, an indiscreet servant, a remark overheard in an antechamber of Versailles), what was really happening in the corridors of power, and the people in power took them seriously because the govern­ ment worried about what Parisians were saying. Foreign diplomats allegedly sent agents to pick up news or to plant it at the foot of the Tree of Cracow. (See Figures 2 and 3 . ) There were several other nerve centers for transmitting "public noises" (bruits publics) , as this variety of news was known : special benches in the Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens (see Figure 4-) , informal speakers ' corners on the Quai des Augustins and the Pont-Neuf, cafes known for their loose talk, and boulevards where news bulletins were bawled out by peddlers of canards (facetious broadsides) or sung by hurdy-gurdy players. To tune in on the news, you could simply stand in the street and cock your ear. 4 But ordinary hearsay did not satisfy Parisians with a powerful appetite for information. They needed to sift through the public noise in order to discover what was really happening. Sometimes they pooled their information and criticized it collectively by meet­ ing in groups such as the famous salon of Mme. M . -A . L. Doublet, . ' h ." Twenty-mne "pans ' hioners," many 0f them known as "the pans well connected with the Parlement of Paris or the court and all of them famished for news, gathered once a week in Mme. Doublet's apartment in the Enclos des Filles Saint-Thomas. When they entered the salon, they reportedly found two large registers on a desk near the door. One contained news reputed to be reliable; the other, gossip. Together they constituted the menu for the day's dis­ cussion, which was prepared by one of Mme. Doublet's servants, who may qualify as the first "reporter" in the history of France. We don't know his name, but a description of him survives in the files of the police (and I should say at the outset that police archives pro­ vide most of the evidence I draw on here

important evidence, I

:u

G E O R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S FALSE TEETH

Fig. 2. Detail from an engrav­ ing after M. Peyrotte's "Coun­ cil of Monkeys: Dedicated to Messieurs the

nouvellistes of

the Tree of Cracow!' Courtesy of the Bibliotheque nationale de France. This satirical print shows newsmongers

(nouvel­

listes) at a favorite gathering place for a public reading of a report about a battle, possibly during the War of the Polish Succession, 1733-1735. One

monkey

nouvelliste draws a

figure in the sand to illustrate the alignment of troops. The others listen and comment with a knowing air, as if they could debate foreign affairs with all the expertise of gen­ uine statesmen. Public com­ mentary would no longer appear ridiculous in the 1 78os, when foreign affairs, like all the activities of the govern­ ment, were exposed to "the tribunal of public opinion;' as it was commonly called.

believe, but the kind that calls for especially critical interpretation) : He was "tall and fat, a full face, round wig, and a brown outfit . Every morning he goes from house to house asking, in the name of his mistress, 'What's new?"', The servant wrote the first entries for

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.2.9

each day's news on the registers; the "parishioners" read through them , adding whatever other information they had gathered; and after a general vetting, the reports were copied and sent to select friends of Mme. Doublet. One of them , J . -G. Bose du Bouchet,

G E O R G E WA S H I N G T O N ' S FALS E T E ETH

30

comtesse d ' Argental, had a lackey named Gillet, who organized another copying service. When he began to make money by selling the copies

provincial subscribers gladly paid six livres a month to

keep up with the latest news from Paris

some of his copyists set

up shops of their own, and those shops spawned other shops, so that by

1 7 50

multiple editions of Mme. Doublet's newsletter were fly­

ing around Paris and the provinces . The copying operations

an

efficient means of diffusion long after Gutenberg and long before Xerox

had turned into a minor industry, a news service provid­

ing subscribers with manuscript gazettes, or

nouvelles a 1a main.

D E C R J\.

,

Ca6(l'f.(�·r fJ�(I: ','i' jt;';'!lIe r(r;Il� ,Cttu)j. MIlrr!UlIU{ 9fU' ,,'enlt �" CO"'J"l"","c""'"'�''''''o''�'o'''," '�_=,,,�," O�"'OO'''' �'�'�='''O� ,�_"o,�'wm'o"@,,"".M_,"'��'_�oWo"'o' �'�,,�,�, =,owo_,,,,,,�_o�= ����_���

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The interrogations of the suspects in the Bastille provide a pic­ ture of the settings in which the verse circulated as well as the modes of their transmission. At each point, the poetry readings were accompanied by discussion . Bonis said that he had copied the first poem in the Hotel-Dieu, where he had found a friend deep in conversation with a priest. "The conversation turned on the subject matter of the gazettes; and this priest, saying that someone had been so wicked as to write some satirical verses about the king, pulled out a poem attacking His Majesty."40 Hal­ laire testified that he had made his copy during a dinner with some friends in the house of his father, a silk merchant in the rue Saint-Denis. Montange copied the poem after hearing it read aloud during a bull session in the dining hall of his college. Pierre Sigorgne, a professor at the College du Plessis, dictated two of the poems to his students ; it was a political dictee in the heart of the University of Paris! Sigorgne knew the poems by heart, and one of them had eighty-four lines. The art of memory was still flour­ ishing in eighteenth-century Paris, and in several cases it was rein­ forced by the greatest mnemonic device of all, music, for some of the poems were composed to fit the rhythms of popular tunes, and they circulated by means of singing, along with the songs that came from the court and that had provoked the investigation in the first place. Whether sung or declaimed from memory, the verse was copied on scraps of paper, which were carried about in pockets and swapped for other verses. The texts soon found their way into man­ uscript gazettes and, finally, into print. The two longest poems, "Quel est Ie triste sort des malheureux franyais" (What is the sad lot of the unhappy French) and "Peuple, jadis si fier, aujourd'hui si servile" (People, once so proud, today so servile) , appeared promi­ nently in Vie privee de Louis Xv, the hostile history of the reign that became a best seller in the I 7 8 os. In discussing the outburst of songs and poems in 1 749 , it observed:

G E O R G E WAS H I N G TO N ' S FALSE T E ET H

It was at this shameful time that the general scorn for the sovereign and his mistress began to become manifest, then continued to grow until the end of the reign . . . . This scorn broke out for the first time in some satirical verse about the outrage committed to Prince Edward [Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, who was arrested in Paris on December 1 0 , 1 748, and expelled from the kingdom in accordance with the British demands accepted by France in the peace of Aix-Ia-Chapelle] , where Louis XV is addressed in a pas­ sage that compares him with that illustrious exile : I1

est rai dans lesJers; qu'etes-vous sur Ie trone?

[He is a king in irons; what are you on the throne?] And then, in an apostrophe to the nation:

Peuple, jadis sifier, aujourd'hui si servile, , Des princes malheureux vous n 'etes plus ] asile! [People, once so proud, today so servile, You no longer provide a sanctuary for unhappy princes!] The eagerness of the public to seek out these pieces, to learn them by heart, to communicate them to one another, proved that the read­ ers adopted the sentiments of the poet. Madame de Pompadour wasn't spared, either. . . . She ordered a drastic search for the authors, ped­ dlers, and distributors of these pamphlets, and the Bastille was soon full of prisoners.4'

In short, the communication process took place by several modes in many settings. It always involved discussion and sociabil­ ity, so it was not simply a matter of messages transmitted down a line of diffusion to passive recipients but rather a process of assim­ ilating and reworking information in groups

that is, the creation

of collective consciousness or public opinion. If you will tolerate

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TH E N EWS I N PA R I S : I N FO R M ATI O N SOCI ETY

some jargon, you could think of it as a multimedia feedback sys­ tem. But that sounds rather fancy. I merely want to stress that there are theoretical issues at stake in this kind of study and that in pur­ suing it, I have drawn on the sociology of communication devel­ oped by Elihu Katz and Gabriel Tarde rather than the more voguish theories of Jiirgen Habermas.42 But to return to the medium of singing, the song that circulated most actively among the fourteen, "Qu'une batarde de catin," typ­ ified the ballads that had the most popular appeal in Paris. Its sim­ ple eight-syllable lines fitted a common tune, "Quand mon amant me fait la cour," which was also identified in some sources as "Dirai-je mon confiteor?" The catin (strumpet) in the first line was Mme. de Pompadour. And the catchy refrain, "Ah! Ie voilG, ah! Ie

void

/

Celui qui n'en a nul souci," pointed a finger at the king, clue­

less, carefree Louis. The first verse went as follows :43

Qy'une batarde de catin A la cour se voie avancee, Qye dans l'amour et dans Ie vin, Louis cherche une gloire aisee, Ah! Ie voila, ah! Ie voici Celui qUi n'en a nul souci. ,

[That a bastard strumpet Should get ahead in the court, That in love and wine Louis should seek some easy glory, Ah! there he is, ah! there he is He who doesn't have a care. ] Each verse satirized a public figure. After Pompadour and the king, the song worked its way down through ministers, generals,

G E O R G E WAS H I N GTO N ' S FA LSE TEETH

b�

prelates, and courtiers. Everyone appeared incompetent or cor­ rupt, and in each case the refrain reiterated the song's main theme: that the king, who should have taken responsibility for the welfare of his people, paid no heed to anything but drink and sex. While the kingdom went to hell, Louis remained "he who doesn't have a care." Although I cannot prove it, I think the song suggests a children's game

the kind in which one person stands in the middle of a cir­

cle and the rest join hands and skip around him singing "the farmer in the dell" or "the cheese stands alone"

except here the singing is

pure mockery : the king is the ultimate idiot. The verses cover all the major events and political issues between 1 748 and 1 750, and the versification is so simple that new subjects of mockery could easily be added as events evolved. That is exactly what happened, as you can see by comparing all the surviv­ ing versions of the song. I have found nine, scattered through vari­ ous manuscript collections. They contain from six to twenty-three verses, the later ones alluding to the most recent events such as the notorious cuckolding of the tax farmer A . -J. -J. Le Riche de La Popeliniere by the duc de Richelieu in the spring of 1 750. Further­ more, if you compare different versions of the same verse, you can find small differences in phrasing, which probably bear the mark of the oral diffusion process, since variations crept in as the song passed from one singer to another. The Parisians may not have been singers of tales, like the Serbs studied by Albert Lord, but they were singers of news.44 "Qu'une batarde de catin" contained so much news and commentary that it can be considered a sung newspaper. But it should not be considered in isolation, because it belonged to a vast corpus of songs, which extended nearly everywhere in Paris and covered virtually everything of interest to Parisians. It is impossible to measure the size of this corpus, but we can get some idea of its dimensions by examining all the evidence that remains in the archives. When consigned to writing, the songs first appeared on slips of paper like that in Figure

I

2 , which contains a selection

A N

Fig.

12.

E A R LY

T H E N EWS I N PA R I S : N FO R MATION SOCI ETY

-

Some verses from the song "Qu'une batarde de catin;' taken from the

abbe Guyard by the police when they searched him in the Bastille. Biblio­ theque de I'Arsenal, ms. I l �O, fols. 67�8, 174, 46, 47

and history of mentalities, xi, 99

Maupeou's destruction of judicial system In, 7 0

Gallet, Pierre, B �H Gallo-American Society, [ 2 7�3 [ , [ 34, 1 3" gardens: in

1 50 , 1 54, 1 5 7�5 S , I S 3n

Candide,

9 [ �96

in Monticello, 1 0 0

gastronomie,

82

Gaujoux (wigmaker), 44�4>, 46, 48, , [

Gazette d'Amsterdam, 34, 8 3 Gazette de France, 3 3 Gazette de Leyde, 34, 8 3 Gazette d' Utrecht, 3 4 gazettes, see journals and gazettes Geertz, Clifford, 99

Gelehrtenrepublik,

80

General Will, [ [ 7 , [ 2 9

Geneva, republic of, 8 3 , 1 09, 1 1 5 , I I 6� [ 7 revolution attempted in, I 2 7 , 1 3 8 , 1 4 3 , [n

gentlemen:

segmental identity of, 84 as social ideal, 8 I

Virginia farmers as, 99

nationalism in, 20, 7 8

George I, king of England, 7 8

in Seven Years War, 7 8 , 9 2

Germany, 8 1

reading public in, 34�3 )

see also news; Old Regime; Paris

Franklin, Benjamin, 2 2 , 1 2 0, 1 2 I , 1 2 5, 1 3 3 , 1 34, 1 3 7

fraternity, 2 0 , 2 2 , 83�84

Frederick II, king of Prussia (Frederick the Great), I O� I I , 7 8 , 8 1 , 8 3 , 1 64

Voltaire's quarrel with, 9 2 , 9 3

German language, 7 8

French war with, 4" 46, 47 Hitler in, I 5�[ 8

press in, 34, 8 4

Gibbon, Edward , 8 3

Gillet (manuscript copier), 30

Girondists, 1 2 6, 1 3 5 , 1 3 6, 1 3 9, 1 5 6 , 1 6 1 , [7[

free love, 8 5

Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, comte de, [ 4

French Revolution, 2 2 , 36, 6 7 , 8 3�84,

Goldoni, Carlo, 8,

French language, 7 8 , 7 9 , 8 3 , 8 6 , 9 5

[ [ 7� 1 8 , 1 5 3 , 1 5 8 , 1 7 2 , I 8 I n

Brissot in, 1 2 6, 1 3 6 , 1 56 , 1 6 1 , 1 7 1 , 1 7 3 Claviere in, 1 3 8

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 6 gold rush, U . S . , [ 0 [�2

Gore, Christopher, [ 7 2

Gorsas, A.-J. , 144, 1 50�5 [

, ,

r

193

I N 0 Ex

gossip,

2 7 , 3 7 , 38-53, 67 about public figures (mauvais propos), 35, 36, 3 7 , 3 8 , , 1 , >9 in spy reports, 38-H "Three Sisters" story and, 44-49, 50, 5 2 , 53 see also news Gouges, Olympe de, ' 9 grand tOUTS, 79, 80 Graves, Robert, 20, 2 I Gray, John, 1 7 Greek Orthodox Church, I 1 0 Greeks, ancient, 8 I , 89 "Grub Street Style of Revolution, The" (Darnton),

Gunston Hall,

' 7 2-73

Gustavus III, king of Sweden, Guyard, abbe Christophe,

I O- I I 55, >9, 64-66, 65,

1 8 In Habermas, JUTgen,

63, 1 8 I n Hallaire, Jacques-Marie, ,8, ,9, 6 1

Haller, Albrecht von, , Edwards on,

danger of presentism in, xii eureka moments in, literary,

1 08-9

94

of mentalities, xi,

96, 99, 1 0 3 mixing fact and fiction in, 48-49. 1 78n mythical dimension of, xv, 1 08 playing God in, '74 subjectivity in, xiii

value of, xiii

Voltaire's views on,

94-9,

historycooperative.orgl ahr, 4 1 ,

67, 1 78n

Hitler, Adolf,

98

happiness, pursuit of,

les deux lndes (Raynal), ' 2 , 7 ' , ' 20, 123 history, x-xv, I 2 I anthropological, 99

8,-86, 89-1 06, 1 2 8

1 04

egocentric asceticism and,

lOS Founding Fathers and, xiv, 9 1 , 96-1 0 2 , 1 04, l OS, 1 06 in historical perspective, 89-9 1 Jefferson's views on, 9 1 , 96-1 0 2 , 1 04, 1 06 libertinism and, 8, philosophes and, " 7-8 , 90 private vs. public factors in, 90, 1 0,-6 and right of property, 8,-86, 96-98 in U.S. jurisprudence, 1 0 1 Voltaire's views on, 9 1-95, 1 06 westward expansion and, 1 0 I -2, 1 04Hardouin (Parisian printer), 1 , 0 haussiers, 1 4 1 , 146, 149: I S I , 1 5 2 Hebrews, ancient, 8 I Hegel, G. W F., I , Heidegger, Martin, 1 ,-16 Helvetius, -Claude Adrien, '4, 1 8 , 90 Helvetius, Mme . , 1 25 Hemery, Joseph d', ,8 Henri IV; king of France, 69 Henry, Patrick, 98 Histoire philosophique et politique des ttablisse­ ments et du commerce des Europeens dans

I ,-1 8 , 76 Hobbes, Thomas, x , 90 Holbach, Paul-Henri-Dietrich, baron d ' ,

1 6, 7 2 , 90 Holland, press in, 34 Homer, I S Hapital des Enfants Trouves, Horace,

1 08, I 1 2

89, 100

Horkheimer, Max, Hotel de Ville, Hotel-Dieu,

1 S, 1 7

44

61

Houdetot, comtesse d ' ,

I 23, I 26

Huguenots,

74. ' >7 human rights, 1 6, 2 3-24, 8 7 , 88 human sciences, 1 07-8 Hume, David, 6 , 7 , 8 1 Hutcheson, Francis, 90 identities, segmental,

84 imagined communities, 83 immigrants, 1 0 2 , 1 34

impeachment debates, x-xi imperialism, cultural, incest,

47-48, 1 78n

Independence Hall, India,

1 2-14, 86-8 7 , 9S

2 1-2 2

' 3 , 87

nationalism in,

20, 2 1

happiness and,

90, 1 0" 1 06

individual:

respect for,

18

individualism, s ,

1 2 , 1 3 , 1 05, 1 06

information age: every age as,

2,

Internet and, xii, xv

see also communication systems; news

4,

.200

I N

0 E X

Ingres, Jean-Auguste-Dominique, intellectual tramps,

1 3- 1 4

I 1 0- 1 I

Internet, xii, xv, 2 �

map of Paris cafes on, 4 1 , 42, 43,

67, I 78n

20, 7 7 , 1 3 8 irrationality, 1 5 , 1 6-1 7 Israel, 2 0 italy, 8 2 Jacksonian politics,

1 00 Jacobin Club, 1 8 , 1 66 Jacobins, 1 8 , 1 36, 1 66 Jansenists, 8, 45, 47-48 Japan, 1 4, 2 2 Jefferson, Thomas, 14, 2 2 , 1 2 1 , 1 3 2-36, 1 75n, 1 84n Madison's correspondence with, xi

100, 1 0 2 in Paris, 1 2o, I 2. � , 1 26, 1 3 2-B and pursuit of happiness, 9 1 , 96- 1 0 2 , 1 04, 1 06 Jews, 8 Jobnson, Samuel, 5, 78-79 Jones, Howard Mumford, 1 0 1 Joseph I, king of Portugal, 1 0-1 1 Joseph II, Holy Roman emperor, 1 0-1 I Jouet, Denis-Louis, 58 jouTnal de Paris, 34, 1 1 9 , 1 20, 1 2 1 , 1 3 1 , 1 34, 143 , 1 64, I B I n Journal des savants, B Journal helvetique, 1 6 3 Journal historique de 1a revolution operee . . . par M. de Maupeou (Mairobert and d'Angerville), 7 1 , 7 2 , 73 journals and gazettes, 30-35, 6 1 , 1 43 history of, 3 I , I nn international trade in, 34 manuscript, 30-B , 36, 37 royal privileges and, 3 3 see also specifIc works Kames, Henry Home, Lord,

14 Kant, Immanuel, 6, 14, 1 5, 76, 7 7 Katz, Elihu, 63 Kim Dae Jung, 87 Kipling, Rudyard, 1 3- 1 4 Kissinger, Henry A . , 77 Korea, South, 87 Kornmann, Guillaume, I 2 7 Kurds, 2 0

8I

La Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de, 50 La Bruyere, Jean de,

Ireland,

at Monticello,

La Barre,

8-9 Lafayette, marquis de, 1 2 I , 1 2 2 , 1 25, 1 35, 1 53 American Indians and, x, xv, I 1 9 Condorcet's tensions with, 1 36, I 8¥ "La France," use of phrase, 3 7 , 68, I 8 1n La Harpe, Jean-Fran90is de, 1 3 1 , 165 laissez-faire government, 96 Lally-Tollendal, Thomas Arthur, comte de,

81 La Noue, Widow,

167

Laplace, Pierre-Simon, marquis de,

4 La Popeliniere, A . -J.-J. Le Riche de, 64 La Rouchefoucauld, duc de, 1 20, 1 25, I B , 1 35, I 84n La Rouchefoucauld-Liancourt, marquis de, 1 25 La Selle, Mme . , I I 2 Latin, 83 Lattaignant, Gabriel-Charles, 54 Laurens, H . -J. du, 7 1 Le Bret, 50-5 I Le Clerc, Jean-Louis, 5 1 Lecouvreur, Adrienne, 93 Lefebvre, Georges, 1 8 2n Le Grand Thomas, xiv

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm,

4, 92 Le Maire (librarian), I 56-57 Le Maitre, Jean-Pierre, 1 60 Lenoir, Jean-Charles-Pierre, 1 58-59, 1 6 7 , 1 68, 1 70, 1 7 3 Leopold, Archduke ofTuscany, 1 0-1 I Le Peletier de Forts, Michel-Robert, 41 Les DeIices,

9 2 , 93

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim,

8I

letters,

3 8 , 56, 98, 1 0 2-3 Brissot's unpublished, 1 59-60, 1 6 2 , 1 7 1 in correspondence networks, 80-8 1 see also manuscript news Lettersfrom an American Farmer (Crevecoeur), see Lettres d'un cultivateur americain Letters on the Blind (Diderot), 1 0 8 Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theater (Rousseau), 1 1 6- 1 7 Lettre philosophique par M. de V (anon . ), 7 2 Lettres d'un bouraeois de New-Haven (Con­ dorcet), I B Lettres d'un cultivateur americain (Crevecoeur), 1 2 3-24, 1 26, 1 2 8, 1 29, 1 34, 1 58 -

,

I N D E X

!'

Lettres Persanes (Montesquieu), 9 Lettres philosophiques (Voltaire), 9, 93 Le Vasseur, Therese, I I 2 , I I S , I 1 6 libelles (scandalous books), 35, 37-38 , 49, 5 1 , 6 1-6 2 , 69-74, I 78n brothel-to-throne formula of, 3 8 , 68-70 history of, 74, 1 8 In illegal trade in, 70-73 leitmotifs in, 73 literary qualities of, 7 2 liberalism, 1 2 , 90, 1 25 libertinism, 9, 85 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, 20, 2 2 liberty, x, 5", 7-8, 1 .5' 1 8 right to, 76, 85, 86, 96, 97, 98, 1 06, 1 30, 13I of self-development, 97 life, right to, 85, 96, 97, 98, 106 Lincoln, Abraham, 2 2 literacy, 5, 34-35, 1 77n literary history, 94 literary theory, I 3 , 25 literature, 8-9, 80 antiutopian, 1 04classical French, 94, 95 see also libelles; specific works Locke, Jolm, 4, 6, 80, 87, 97, 99, 1 04, 1 3 6 Loft, Leonore, 1 6 1 Lomenie de Brienne, Etienne Charles, 1 3 6 London, 7 , 84, 1 26, 148 Brissot in, 1 68-7 I libellistes in, 1 69, 1 70 Lord, Albert B . , 64, 1 8 I n Louisiana Purchase, 1 0 1 Louis XIV; king of France, xiv, 8-9, 94-95, 1 57 . Louis XV; king of France, 3 7 , 38-73 in coffee spilling incident, 3 7 , 68-70, 71, 73 coronation of, 48 dauphin's birth and, 44 incestuous adultery of, 47-48, 1 7 8n Maurepas's relationship with, 56-57 near death of, 46, 47, 48 Paris avoided by, 46-47, 1 7 8n parlements destroyed in reign of, 34 Rousseau presented to, I 1 .5' royal touch lost by, 45, 47, 48, 70 sacred power of, 47, 48 seX life of, 38-50, 63, 68-70 1

.2.0f

in songs and poems,

54-67 , 60, 65 "Three Sisters" story and, 44-53 , 50, 55 Louis XVI, king of France, 34, 74, 145, 1 53 Louvre, 47 Lucretius, 90 Luxembourg Gardens, news in, 2 7 , 32 luxury goods:

consumption of, trade in,

84, 85 8 1-8 2 , 1 2 8

Mably, Gabriel Bonnot de,

I

33

Machiavelli, Niccolo, x Madison, James, xi,

2 2 , 98, 99, 1 3 3 mail, regulation of, 34 Mailly, Mme. de, 45, 48

Mairobert, Mathieu-Fran90is Pidansat de,

36-38 , 1 78n Anecdotes sur Mme. 1a comtesse du Barry by, 36-3 8 , 68-7 2 arrest of, 3 8 , 54, 66, 1 78n-79n maltresse en tItre, 57 "Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre" (song) , 53 Malesherbes, C . G. de Lamoignon de, 1 0 Mallet du Pan, Jacques, 165 Malplaquet, Battle Of ( 1 709), 78 Mandela, Nelson, 1 6 1 Manuel, Pierre, 3 3 , 1 7 0 manuscript news, 2 7-3 3 , 36, 3 7 , 80-8 1 "Mapping Cafe Talk" (Darnton), 3 9-40, 4 1 , 42, 43, 1 78n Marat, Jean-Paul, 1 59-60, 1 7 0-7 I marches a prime, 14-1 marches a terme, 1 4 1 , 149, I I 2 Maria Leszczyflska, queen of France, 41-45 Marie-Antoinette, queen of France, x, 1 69 Martin, M . , 1 6 8 , 1 70 Marx, Karl, 90 Mason, George, 2 2, 98, 99 Masonic lodges, 5, 80 Massachusetts Historical Society, 1 7 2 Maupeou, Rene de, 70 "Maupeouana," 1 5" 3 ,

.

Maurepas, J. -F. PheIypeaux, comte de,

56-57, 66, 1 80n mauvais propos, 35, 36, 3 7 , 39 , 5 1 , 59 mayonnaise, 8 2 Mazarin, Jules, 74 Mazois (speculator), 146, 149, 1 50 Mazzei, Filippo, 1 20, 1 3 2 , 1 34, 1 3 5, 1 3 7-38, 1 84n

I N D E X

Medici court,

90 Meister, J.-H., 1 43 Memoires (Brissot), 1 43-44, 1 50, 1 6 2 , 1 66, 1 69, 1 7 2 , 1 73 Memoires de l'abbe Terray (Coquereau), 7 2 Memoires de Louis XV (anon.), 7 2 Memoires secrets pour servir a l'histoire de 1a Republique des Lettres en France (clan­ destine gazette), 3 1 , S I , 7 3 , 1 43 , 1 54, I 7 7n Mernoires secrets pour servir a l'histoire de Perse (roman a clifJ 49, . P , 5 2 Mencius, 87 mentalities, history of, xi, 96, 99, 1 0 3 Mercier, Louis-Sebastien, 5 3 , 7 I Mercure, 3 3 , 1 30, 1 3 1 Merlet, Fran�ois-Philippe, 5 I Mesmer, Franz, 79-80 Metz crisis, 46, 47, 48 middle class, 5 in consumer culture, 84-, 85 Milan, 7 "Mirabeau" (pen name), 1 44-46, 1 49-52 Mirabeau, Honore-Gabriel Riqueti, comte de, x,

1 34, 144-47, I 8 2n mistresses, royal, 6, I I S libelles on, 3 7-38 , 68-70 in police and spy reports, 3 8-45, 50-5 I in songs and poems, 54-S7, 6 2 , 6 3 , I Son "Three Sisters" story and, 44-53 , 50, 55 Moliere, 85, 95

monarchy:

degradation of,

64, 69-70, 73 literature and, 8-9 sacred power of, 47, 48, 69 see also specific monarchs Monboddo, James Burnett, Lord,

14

Moncrif, Fran�ois-Augustin Paradis de,

"Mondain, Le" (Voltaire),

54

9 2 , 9 3 , 95

monde, le: Rousseau's relationship with,

use of term,

I I 1-16

9 Voltaire and, 9 2 , 9 3 "Monstre dont la nOireJurie" (song), 5"8, 60 Montagne, Fleur de, 5 I Montaigne, Michel de, 1 14 Montange, Inguimbert de, 5 8 , 6 I Montbailli case, 8 I Montbrun, Fougeret de, 7 2

Montesquieu, baron de La Brede et de, x,

1 0, 1 3 , 1 5 , 1 14 Monticello, 1 00, 1 0 2 Montmorency, 1 1 6 morality, see ethics and morals Mornet, Daniel, 1 6 1 Morris, Edmund, 1 7 8n Moscow, 8 2 Mount Vernon, x� 2 3 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 85 Musee of Pilotre de Rozier, 1 64, 1 68 myths:

of Europe's origins,

history and,

76

XV,

I 08 of Rousseau's life, 1 0 8-9

Naples,

8, 83

Napoleon I, Emperor of France,

76

National Assembly, French,

145 nationalism, 1 9-2 2 , 76-78, 86 in England, 78-79 in France, 20, 78 in India, 20, 2 1 natural law, 7-8, 14, 96-97 natural rights, 96, 97, 98, 1 2 1 nature, American closeness to, 1 2 2 , I 24 nature, state of, 4-5, 7-8, 90, 1 3 2-3 3 Necker, Jacques, 1 5 3 N egatif party, 1 43 Nesle, marqUis de, 45, 55, 1 78n Neuchatel, 143 see also Societe typographique de Neuchatel Neveu de Rameau (Diderot), 1 6 Neville, Le Camus de, 1 6 7 New Deal, 1 0 5 news, 2 5"-75, I 7 6n-8 1 n in cafes, 2 7 , 36, 3 7-44, 50-5 I , 54, 66, 7 3 censorship of, 3 1-3 3 , 34, 3 8 , 7 3 , 1 77n defined, 2 5 at Doublet salon, 2 7-3 I , I nn foreign diplomats and, 2 7 manuscript, 2 7-33, 36, 37, 80-8 1 oral, 26-27 , 28, 32, 36, 3 7-53, 54, 67 ; see also gossip; songs and poems private lives of public figures in, xii,

36-75 "public noises"

9,

(brUits publics), 2 7 , 35, 36, 3 7 , 50-5 1 reception of, 68-70 at Tree of Cracow, 2 6-27, 28, 31, 75, I 76n-nn

I

see also communication systems; public .

newsmongers

(nouvellistes de bouche), 26-2 7, 28, 32, 36, 37-3 8 , 54 newspapers, 2S, 26, 34-3S , 84, I S 8 see also specific newspapers Newton, Isaac, 4, 14, 80, 1 0 8 New-York Historical Society, 1 7 2 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1 5, 1 6 - 1 7 , 90 nineteenth century:

Founding Fathers and, ix-xv,

2 1-24, 9 I ,

96- 1 0 2 , 1 04, l OS, 1 06 happiness in, 90, 1 0 1 -6 immigrants in, 1 0 2 imperialism in, 1 2 , 1 3-14

Northwest Territory Act,

Louis XV's avoidance of,

14

"Oeuvres diaboliques pour servir a l'histoire du temps" (collection of songs),

66

Old Regime,

77, 1 35 finance in, 1 3 7-55, I 84n-87n floating population of, I 1 0- I I news lll , see news political folklore in, 70 popular and elite culture in, 68 prerevolution of 1 787-1 7 8 8 in, 74-, 1 20, 1 35-36, 1 44-55, 1 84D Rousseau's break with, 1 1 4- 1 7 •

oral communication:

38

3 7-5 3 ,

54, 67 see also gossip; songs and poems Orientalism, 1 3-14 Orleans, due de, I 27 Ostervald, Frederic-Samuel, 1 60, 1 6 3 , 165, 1 73 othering, in anthropology, xiii, 1 3 Ottoman Empire, 14 pain, and pursuit of happiness, Palestinians,

20

I 20, 1 3 2

see news police in, see police; police reports Rousseau in, I 1 0-1 6 salons of, xv, 3 , 2 7-3 1 , 5 1-5 2 , 56, 8 1 , 8 3 , 9 2 , I I I , 1 14, 1 1 5, 1 25-26, 1 77n, 1 8 I n Voltaire's withdrawal from, 93 "parish, the" (Doublet salon), 2 7-3 I , 5 I , 56, 1 77n, 1 8 In Paris Ie modele des nations etrangeres, ou l'Europe fran,aise (Caraccioli), 83

"Par vos fayons nobles et franches" (song),

67 Pascal, Blaise,

passeISme, '.

Xlll

4

. . .

past:

distortion of, xiii

of Europe,

77

obsession with, xiii Ranke on, xii,

of news, 26-2 7 , 28, 32, 36,

Paine, Thomas,

46-47, 1 48n

news In,

101

Nouvelle Heloise, La (Rousseau), 1 1 6, 1 1 7 , 1 26 nouvelles a la main (oral news), 2 7-3 3 , 3 6, 3 7 Nouvelles de la Republique des lettres (Bayle), 80 nouvellistes de bouche (newsmongers), 26-2 7, 28, 32, 36, 37-3 8 , 54

historical recovery of,

143-45, 1 47-50, 1 53-H, 1 7 1 Panard, Charles-Franyois, 53-54, 1 76n Panchaud, Benjamin, 1 44, 1 50-5 1 Paris, 95, 1 37-38 American Indians in, x, xv, I 1 9 Bourse in, see Bourse cafes in, see cafes, Paris as capital of Republic of Letters, 6, 7, I I I celebration of dauphin's birth in, 44 craze for America in, xi, I 1 9-20, 1 2 2-29 Enlightenment in, 3- I 0, 1 9 Jefferson in, xi, 1 20, I 2S, 1 26, 1 3 2-33 Le Grand Thomas in, xiv

Nixon, Richard M . , x-xi

accidentalism,

1 6 5 , 1 66, 1 69-70

Brissot-Claviere collaboration and,

OpInIOn .

pamphlets,

.203

N 0 E X

89, 97, 1 02-3

1 7 5n Patriotejranrais, Le, I S 8, I 7 2 Paul, Saint, 1 08, 1 6 2 Peale, Charles Willson, ix,

x,

xii

peasants,

5, 2 3 , 85, 109, 1 25, 1 29 peddlers, arrests of, 34

Pelleport, Anne-Gedeon Lafitte de,

1 69-70 pessimism, U.S. tradition of, Petition of Right, English,

1 04-

96

"Peuple, jadis si fier, aujourd'hui si servile" (poem), 60,

6 1-62 Philadelphien a Geneve, Le (Brissot), 143, 1 48 , 1 65 Philosope, Le, 9-I 0

2.M

I N D E X

philosophes, 4-1 9 , 9S, I 2 6

folklore and,

Brissot's relationship with,

143, 1 6 2-63,

1 6,-66 commitment of,

4-l l

Condorcet's link with,

I

24-2,

as elite,

5-6 foreign, 6, 7-8, 99 media mastery of, 7 , 1 0 as men of letters, 4-" 9-1 0 persecution of, s, 9 , 1 0 politeness as viewed by, 8 I postmodernist attack on, 1 2-1 9 Rousseau's break. with, 1 1 6- 1 7 Picasso, Pablo, 1 9 Piron, Alexis, H-H Plan Turgot, 40 Plato, 89, 97 pleasure:

90 and pursuit of happiness, 89, 90, 97, 1 0 2-3 poems, see songs and poems Poland, War of Succession in ( 1 7 3 3- 1 73,), 26, 28, 70 police, 3 8-43 , 1 77n Bonafon questioned by, , 2 , 1 79n book trade and, 3 3 , 34, 1 6 7 , 1 7 0 Brissot's relationship with, 1 ,8->9, 1 6 7-7 1 , 1 74 eighteenth-century notion of, 39, 94 prisoners frisked by, ,4, H , 64-66, 6S public opinion and, 39, 47, 48 police reports, 38-43 "Affair of the Fourteen" and, 58-66, 60, fifteenth-century idea of,

6S

on Mairobert,

3 8 , ,4-,6

,0-, I Mme. de Vieuxmaison in, 5 1-,2 of Mme. Doublet's servant, 2 7-28 public opinion and, 39, 47, 48 see also spy reports politeness, 8 1 , 93-95, 1 1 4, 1 1 6 political culture, 1 7 , 94-9, Mme. de Pompadour in,

private lives of public figures in, xii,

36-H republican,

I

17 political theory, 1 7 , 1 8 pursuit of happiness in, Rousseau's views on, politics: culture and,

94-9,

96-99 I 1 7- 1 8

2 2, 70, H Pompadour, Mme. de, 4>, 48, H, 69, 71 in police reports, ,0-, I in songs and poems, 57, 6 2 , 63, 1 80n Pont-Neuf, 2 7 , H popular culture, 68, 1 0 3 Portugal, 1 0-l l postmodernism, I 1-19 cultural imperialism and, 1 2- 1 4 ethical issues and, 14- 1 6 linguistic terms of, I 2 reason as viewed in, 1 6- 1 7 totalitarianism and, 1 8 Pot Pourri, Le (Brissot), 1 69 power: balance of, fascist,

78-79 14- 1 6

symbolic forms of, I totalitarian, 1 .5' ,

18

18

Voltaire's views on,

94, 95

pralines, 8 2 Praslin, duc de,

82 Priface to Narcissus (Rousseau), I 1 5 prerevolution of 1 787-1 788, 74, 1 20, 1 3>-36, 1 44-H, 1 8 � presentism, xii

prime (premium), 1 4 1 progress, 1 6, 2 3 , 90 Condorcet's theory of, property,

1 2 1-2 2

77

pursuit of happiness substituted for,

8,-86, 96-98 Protestant ethic, 10, Protestants, 8 , 1 2 5, 1 44, 1 57 see also specific denominations Prussia, I O-l l

French war with,

78 psychoanalysis, 1 0 7 , 1 ] 2 psychobiography, 1 7 2-73 public gardens, news in, 2 7 , 32, 3 8 , 66 Tree of Cracow and, 26-27 , 28, 31, H, I 76n-77n "public noises" (brUits publics), 2 7 , H, 36, 3 7 , ,0-,1 public opinion, 28, H , 3 7 , 6 2 , 84-8,, 1 26, 1 77n Bourse and, 143, 1 53 police and, 39, 47, 48 "Three Sisters" story and, 46�48 U.S. pessimism expressed in, 1 04

.205

I N D E X

Voltaire 's command of,

80-8 [

see also communication systems; news public sphere, Habermas's theory of, [ 8 [n publishing industry, see book trade Puccini, Giacomo, 1 3-[4 Pucelle d'Orieans, La (Voltaire), J 2 Pufendorf, Samuel, baron von, 97 Pushkin, Aleksander, 8 3 Puttnam, David, [ 76n

Bourse and,

1 43

Enlightenment identified with, international,

6, 80 Paris as capital of, 6, 7 , Revol, Jacques, [ 67

80, 86

III

revolution: attempted in Geneva, as right,

1 27 , 1 38 , 143, 1 57

97, [ 2 8-29

see also American Revolution; French Revolution

Quai des AUgustins,

2 7 , 54 Quakers, 1 20, 1 2 3 , 1 24, 1 30, 1 3 2 , 1 34 "Quand Ie peril est agreable" (song), 56 "Quand mon amant me fait la cour" (song),

63 "Quel est Ie triste sort des malheureux franl'ais" (poem),

60, 6 [

Quesnay, Franl'ois,

[6 Qyestians sur L'Encyclapedie (Voltaire), 7 2 Quietists, 8 "Qu'une batarde de catin" (song), 54, 60, 63-67, 65 raCIsm,

14, 1 9 Rameau's Nephew (Diderot), [ [ 2-[ 3 Ranke, Leopold von, xii, [ 7 5n Rastadt, Treaty of ( [ 7 [ 4), 83 Rawalpindi, 2 [ Raynal, abbe G.-T.-F., 1 2, 7 1 , 8 7 , 1 20, 1 2 3 , [33 reason, 4-5, 1 3 , 1 5- 1 8 , 7 7 , 80, 8 1 , [ 2 5-26 Condorcet's passion for, 1 2 1-2 3, 1 36 Rousseauism vs. , I 3 I , 1 3 2 Recherches historiques et poiitiques sur ies Etats­ Unis de l'Amerique septentrionale (Mazzei), [ 3 2 , [ 3 3 , [ 34, [ 84n Reims, Cathedral of, 48 religion, 8-9, 14, 44-45, 79, 1 00, 1 2 3 , [ 24-25 civil, 1 1 7- 1 8 , 1 29 "natural," 1 24 see aiso specific religions Repanse de jacqueS-Pierre Brissat a taus Ies Iibel­ iistes qui ont attaque et attaquent sa vie passee (Brissot), [44 Representants, [43 republicanism, 1 1 7, 1 36, 143, 1 48, 1 50, [ 7 [-7 2 , 1 84n Republic of Letters, xi-xii, 1 9, I 1 2 , I 3 8 •

Revolutionary Tribunal,

[7[ RicheHeu, due de, 45, 46, 5" I , 64, 8 2 rights, 76-77, 85-86, [ 24, [ 54 human, 1 6 , 2 3-24, 8 7 , 88 to liberty, 76, 85, 86, 96, 97, 98, 1 06, 1 30, 1 3 1 to life, 8S, 96, 97, 98, 1 06 natural, 96, 97, 98, 1 2 1 revolution as, 97, 1 28-29 to security, 7 7 , 86, 98 of women, 1 8, 1 9 , 1 35 Robespierre, Maximilien de, 1 7 1 8 Robespierrists, [ 38 Robin, abbe Charles-Cesar, 1 20, 1 3 2 Rohan-Chabot, chevalier de, 9 Roman Catholic Church, 9, 46-48, 80, 9 3 , 1 09, 1 24, 1 6 2 Roman law, 76 Romans, ancient, 89, 99 romans a ely: keys for, 49, 50, 5 2 , [ 7 8n-79n "Three Sisters" story in, 45-46, 49, 50, 5 2 , 53 Romantics, 1 3, I 8 Rome, 90, 99 Roosevelt, Franklin D. , 2 2 , 1 05 Rossbach, French defeat at ( [ 757), 78 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, x, 1 0 , 1 5, 1 9 , 8 1 , [ 07-1 8, 1 3 1 , 143, 148, 1 55 Americanized, 1 26-2 7 anthropology and , [ 07-8, [ 09 , [ [4 background of, [ 09-[ [ Brissot compared with, 1 6 2 , 1 6 5 , 1 73 cosmopolitanism condemned by, 80 creation of, 1 07 happiness as viewed by, 90, [06 illegitimate children abandoned by, [ 0 8 , 1 12, 1 15 Japanese reception of, [ 4 ie monde's relationship with, I I 1 - [ 6 J

206

I N D E X

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques myth of, in Paris,

I

(continued)

08-9 I 1 0- 1 6 , 1 26

politeness as viewed by,

8 I , I 14, I 1 6 Rameau's nephew compared with, I I 2 - 1 3 royal pension of, I 1 5" , I 1 6 Vincennes walk of, 1 0 8-9, I I 2 , 1 1 4, 1 1 6

Rousseauism:

financial pamphlets and,

reason

VS.,

I B , 1 54--55

131, 132

royal touch, end of, 4-5, Russia,

4-7, 4-8, 70 1 0- 1 1 , 2 2 , 7 7 , 83

Sade, marquis de, ix-x,

Saint-Lambert, J.-F. de, Saint Petersburg,

80, 83

Saint-Simon, comte de, salons,

15 1 23 8-9

5", 6, 9, 80

of Doublet ("the parish"),

2 7-3 1 , 5 1 , 56,

1 7 7n, I B I n in Paris, xv, 3 , 2 7-3 1 , 5 1-5 2 , 56, 8 1 , 8 3 , 92, I I I , 1 14, 1 1 5, 1 25-26, 1 77n, IBIn Rousseau's attack on, 1 14 Rousseau's reception in, I I I , I 1 5" , 1 26 Savonarola, Girolamo, 90 science, 1 5" , 1 03, I 2 I screen memory, I 7 2-73 scrofula (King's Evil), 4-7, 4-8 Second Treatise on Civil Government (Locke), 97 secret du roi, ie, 3 I , 49-50, 70 secular culture, 76 security, right to, 77, 86, 98 self, cult of, 1 05 self-development, 97, 1 05 self-interest:

enlightened,

rational,

89

Seneca,

99 Sentimental Journey (Sterne), 78 Serbia, 20, 64 serfs, 77 servants, I I I dresses of, 84literary work of, 5 2 , 53 news copying services of, 27-3 I

seventeenth century, �

esprit de rysteme of, 1 6 "little ice age" of, 85

96 Seven Years War ( 1 756-1 763), 78, 9 2 Short, William, 1 35 Siecle de Louis XlV, Le (Voltaire), 94--95, 1 8 w Siecle de Louis Xv, Le (Voltaire), 1 8 I n Sigorgne, Pierre, 55, 6 I SinBer ifTales, The (Lord), 1 8 In Singh , Ajit, 2 I Sinnzusammenhang, 99 sixteenth century, 8 5" conqUistadors in, I 2 Gelehrtenrepublik of, 80 radicals and humanists in, 5 slavery, 8, 99 abolition of, I 2, I 7, 8 7 , I 2 3 , 1 3 S , 1 5"8 Voltaire IS denunciation of, 14Smith, Adam, 6, 2 2 , 1 36 social classes, 90 intermingling of, 68, 84-, I I I-I 2 Social Contract, The (Rousseau), 1 0 , 80, 1 1 6, 1 1 7- 1 8 , 143, I55, I 8sn socialism, 1 2 , 86, 90, 96 social welfare, 96 Societe economique de Berne, 1 64, 165 Societe typographique de Neucbatel (STN),

1 5 9-7 1 , 1 73-74songs and poems, 36, 39, 5 1 , 53-67, 55 in "Affair of the Fourteen," 58-67, 60, 65 collections of, 66-67 court origin of, 5 3 , 56-58 diffusion pattern of, 60, 60-62 , 63-66 of Favart, B-54 incest theme in, I 78n as mnemonic device, 5" 3, 6 I South Korea, 87 Spain, 1 0-1 I t 78 speculators, financial:

2 2 , 90

art of conversation in,

property in political debates of,

83

Qaioteurs, 1 4 2 , 147, 1 5 1 , 1 5 2 baissiers, 1 4 1 , 142, 144, 145, 1 47, 149, 1 53 haussiers, 1 4 1 , 146, 1 49 , 1 5 1 , 1 5 2 Spinoza, Baruch, 85 spy reports, 3 8-4-5, 4-7-4-8 of Brissot, 1 58-59, 1 70-7 1 , 1 74 on Mairobert, 3 8 royal mistresses in, 38-4-5 Stalin, Joseph, I 8 Stalinism, 1 7 Stamp Act, 98 state constitutions, 1 0 1

,

[

,

, ,

I N 0 E

"Three Sisters, The" (story),

state power:

in poems, SS

fascist,

1 4-16 totalitarian, 1 5, 1 8 stereotyping, 1 3-14 Sterne, Laurence, 78

46-48 in romans a clif, 45-46 , 49, 50, 5 2 , 53 Thucydides, xii

Stoics,

1 06

8

stock market,

see Bourse

89

Stuart, Charles Edward (Bonnie Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender), Stuart, Gilbert, ix, xii,

62

22

subjectivity, in history, xiii suburbs,

1 0 2 , lOS SuppJement au Voyaee de Boueainville (Diderot), 13 Sur Ies actions de la CompaBnie des eaux de Paris ("Mirabeau"), 146 Sweden, 1 0- 1 1 Switzerland, 143, 1 S9-60 Rousseau in, 1 09- I 0, I I I see also Geneva, republic of; Societe typographique de NeucMtel

Systeme de la nature (Holbach), 7 2 Tableau de Paris (Mercier), 7 1 Taconnet, Toussaint-Gaspard,

B-54 Tanastes, conte alleeorique (Bonafon), 49, S 2 , B Tarde, Gabriel, 63 Target, G.-J.-B., 1 2 3

Toland, John,

6 tolerance, 4-5, 8, I 29 religious, 1 24-2S toothaches, ix, xiv, 2 3 , 1 0 3 totalitarianism, 1 5 , 1 8 trade, 1 2 , I 25, I 2 7 , I 3 3 , 1 54 in books, see book trade in luxury goods, 8 1 -8 2 , 1 2 8 Tree of Cracow, 2 6-27, 28, ]S, 1 76n-77n Tuileries, 2 7 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 1 2 1 , 1 24, 1 25, 1 26 Turin, 1 09 Turks, 2 0 in Candide, 9 2 , 94 Tuscany, I 0-1 1 Twain, Mark, I 1 0 twentieth century: fascism in,

14--16 happiness in, 90, 1 0 2-6 immigrants in, 1 0 2 reason in, 1 6 totalitarianism in, I 5, I 8 United Nations, Brissot in,

philosophes' appeal to, 8 1-8 2 Rousseau on, I 14, I 1 7 taxes, 45", 1 05, 149 Condorcet's views on, 1 2 3 , 1 25, 1 3 5 Crevecoeur's views on, 1 29 in news, 3 8 , 5 1 , 55, 73 technology, 1 2, 1 4, 1 S happiness levels raised by, 1 02-3

death in,

teeth:

2 3 , 1 03

ofWashington, ix, xiv-xv,

23

Terror,

1 7, 1 8 , 1 6 1 theater, 93, 1 1 9 Rousseau's views on,

I

I 6- 1 7

Thtorie des lois criminelles (Brissot), 1 63-64, 1 6S, I67 Thtrese philosophe (d' Argens), 7 2 Thomism, 1 6

77

United States:

taste:

pain in, ix, xiv,

44-B

public opinion and,

stethoscope warmer, invention of, Stockholm,

.2.07

x

1 58, 1 7 1-72 l OS

and Declaration of independence,

16, 19,

85, 9 1 , 96, 97, 98, 1 0 1 false historical consciousness in, x-xi Founding Fathers and, ix-xv,

2 1-24, 9 I ,

96- 1 0 2 , 1 04, l OS, 1 06 French fascination with, xv, 1 1 9-36, 1 5 7 immigration in, 1 0 2 , 1 34pessImIsm In, 1 04pursuit of happiness in, xiv, 89, 9 1 , 96-1 0 6 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man, 77 universalism, 1 2 , 86-87 utopianism, 1 29 , 1 3 2 in Candide, 9 1 -94 .

.

.

Vade, Jean-Joseph,

53-54 Vauban, marquis de, 8-9

I N D EX

20S

vaudeville, .5" 3 , I 1 9 venereal disease, 57, I Son Verdi, Giuseppe, 1 3- 1 4 Versailles, x, xi, 2 7, 3 8 , 46, 56-58, 95, 1 14, 151, 167 Viala, Alain, 1 6 2 Vieo, Giambattista, s

in fight for rights of man and social justice,

I S , 1 7, 2 3-24, 86, 1 24 Jefferson compared with, 1 0 0 Lecouvreur's death and, 93 Nietzsche and, 1 6- 1 7 positive stereotyping by, 1 3 9 1 -95,

1 06 Rousseau's views on,

1 1 6-1 7 slavery denounced by, I 4 wit of, 9, 8 I writings of, 7 , 8, 9, 1 4, 7 2 , 9 1 -96, 1 1 0, r 8 In Voyaae a Amatonthe (roman a &j), 49 109, I I I War Ministry, French, 1 .5" 2 Warens, Mme. de,

( 1 740-1 748),

78 War of the Polish Succession

( 1 7 3 3- 1 7 3 5),

26, 28, 78 War of the Spanish Succession wars,

Vie privee de Louis XV (libelle), 49, 6 1 -6 2 , 7 2 , 75 Vieuxmaison, Mme. de, 5 1-52 Villeneuve, Venture de, I I I Vincennes, Rousseau's walk to, 1 0 8-9, I I 2 , 1 14, 1 1 6 Vintimille, Mme. de, 45 Virgil, 1 0 0 Virginians, 98-100 Voltaire (Fran9ois-Marie Arouet), 4, 5, 78, 1 30 , 1 6 2 Conclorcet's relationship with, 1 2 1 , 1 2 2 , "4 correspondence networks of, 80-8 1 cosmopolitanism of, 80-8 1 , 83 death of, 93

pursuit of happiness as viewed by,

War of the Austrian Succession

( 1 7° 1 - 1 7 14),

78 1 9 , 20, 8 I , 1 2 3

balance of power and, religious,

78-79

79, 90

Washington, D. C., eighteenth-century Paris compared with, Washington, George,

75 2 1-24, 98, J 06,

1 1 9-20, 1 3 1 false teeth of, ix, xii-xv, portraits of, ix,

x,

xii,

23 22, 23

Weber, Max,

99 welfare state, 1 03 , 1 05, 1 06 "We must cultivate our garden" (in

Candide),

9 1 -96 West, Raymond,

106

Westphalia, Peace of ( 1 648),

79 westward expansion, 1 0 1- 2 , 1 04 "white flowers" !Jleurs blanches), 56-57 Wilkes, John, 79 Williamsburg, Va. , 98 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 6 Wintzenried (itinerant coiffeur), I I 1 wit, 9, 8 1 , 9 2 , 1 30 Wolff, Christian, baron von, 9 2 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1 9 women: appeal to taste of,

8 1-82 Condorcet's views on, 8, 1 7 rights of, 1 8 , 1 9 , I 35 salons of, 27-3 1 , 5 1-52, 56, 1 7 7n, I B ln World War I, 2 0 World War II, 20 World Wide Web, xv, 25 see also Internet