‘I had for me all the blew bonnets to a man, and a Lady whose good heart I respect still more than her birth, tho it be the very highest, she made press me (sic) to ask a pension, assuring me it would cost but one word. I excused myself as having no pretention to merit it. She bid me not name her, in leaving you to guess I do not injure her. She said the same also to Baron Kniphausen.’
Years later, from Neufchâtel, he wrote to Andrew Mitchell, ‘The Provost of Kintore presents his compliments,’ adding some congratulations on Mitchell’s pension.
Not even the Provostship of Kintore reconciled the Earl, a changed man, to a changed Scotland. Conceivably he was not welcomed by the Jacobite remnant around the cracked bell. Bigotry, hypocrisy, and intolerable sabbatarianism were what the Earl disliked in his own country. He was also resolute against marrying, declined faire l’étalon, as Frederick delicately put it. Early in 1761, he made up his mind to return to Neufchâtel, and to compose the quarrels of Protestants and heretics. At Neufchâtel the Earl made an acquaintance rather disagreeable to most English tastes, the moral and sensible Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The philosopher’s account of the Earl is in his ‘Confessions.’ According to him, Marischal, beginning life as a Jacobite, ‘se dégoûta bientôt,’ which is not historically accurate. ‘La grande âme de ce digne homme toute républicaine’ could not endure ‘l’esprit injuste et tyrannique’ of King James! The wicked people of Neufchâtel, whom the Earl ‘tried to make happy,’ ‘kicked against his benevolent cares.’ A preacher ‘was expelled for not wanting many persons to be eternally damned.’
Rousseau went to Neufchâtel to escape the persecution which never ceased to attack this virtuous man. Frederick allowed him to hide his virtues in this hermitage, and made some rather slender offers of provision (twelve louis, says Rousseau), which exasperated the sage. On seeing the Earl his first idea was to weep (Jean-Jacques perhaps followed Richardson in his tearfulness), so extremely emaciated was the worthy peer. Conquering his ‘great inclinations to cry,’ with an effort, Rousseau admired the Earl’s ‘open, animated, and noble physiognomy.’ Without ceremony, and acting as a Child of Nature, Jean-Jacques went and sat down beside the Earl on his sofa. In his noble eye Rousseau detected ‘something fine, piercing, yet in a way caressing.’ He became quite fond of the Earl. Wordsworth has justly remarked that you seldom see a grown-up male weeping freely on the public highway. But, had you been on the road between Rousseau’s house and the Earl’s you might have seen the author of the ‘Nouvelle Héloïse’ blubbering as he walked, shedding larmes d’attendrissement, as he contemplated the ‘paternal kindnesses, amiable virtues, and mild philosophy of the respectable old man.’
I know not whether I express a common British sentiment, but the tears of Jean-Jacques over our Scottish stoic awaken in me a considerable impatience. The Earl was incapable, for his part, of lamentations. Jean-Jacques was too ‘independent’ to be the Earl’s guest. Later, he conceived in that bosom tingling with sensibility that the Earl had been ‘set against him’ by Hume—‘Ils vous ont trompé, ces barbares; mais ils ne vous ont pas changé.’ It was true, the Earl could break Prince Charles’s heart, but he always made allowances for Jean-Jacques. Rousseau, not knowing that the Earl’s heart was true to him, writes: ‘Il se laisse abuser, quelquefois, et n’en revient jamais.... Il a l’humeur singulière, quelque chose de bizarre et étrange dans son tour d’esprit. Ses cadeaux sont de fantaisie, et non de convenance. Il donne ou envoie à l’instant ce qui lui passe par tête, de grand prix, ou de nulle valeur indifféremment.’ Nevertheless the Earl was the cause of Rousseau’s ‘last happy memories.’
The Earl left Neufchâtel; he arranged for Rousseau’s refuge in England. David Hume, who was dear to the Earl, arranged the reception of Rousseau in England, and every one has heard of Rousseau’s insane behaviour, and of the quarrel with Hume. Rousseau wanted to write the History of the Keiths, and asked the Earl for documents. Jean-Jacques was hardly the man to write Scottish family history, and the documents were never entrusted to him.
Here follows the letter on the topic of Rousseau, which the Earl wrote to Hume:—
‘Jean Jaques Rousseau persecuted for having writ what he thinks good, or rather, as some folks think, for having displeased persons in great power who attributed to him what he never meant, came here to seek retreat, which I readily granted, and the King of Prussia not only approved of my so doing, but gave me orders to furnish him his small necessarys, if he would accept them; and tho that King’s philosophy be very different from that of Jean Jaques, yet he does not think that a man of an irreprochable life is to be persecuted because his sentiments are singular, he designs to build him a hermitage with a little garden, which I find he will not accept, nor perhaps the rest which I have not yet offered to him. He is gay in company, polite, and what the French call aimable, and gains ground dayly in the opinion of even the clergy here; his enemys else where continue to persecute him, he is pelted with anonimous letters, this is not a country for him, his attachment and love to his native Toune is a strong tye to its neigbourhood, the liberty of England, and the character of my good and honored friend D. Hume F⸺i D⸺r[29] (perhaps more singular than that of Jean Jaques, for I take him to be the only historian impartial) draws his inclinations to be near to the F⸺i D⸺r, for my part, tho it be to me a very great pleasure to converse with the honest savage, yet I advise him to go to England, where he will enjoy Placidam sub libertate quietem. He wishes to know, if he can print all his works, and make some profit, merely to live, from such an edition. I entreat you will let me know your thoughts on this, and if you can be of use to him in finding him a bookseller to undertake the work, you know he is not interested, and little will content him. If he goes to Brittain, he will be a treasure to you, and you to him, and perhaps both to me (if I were not so old).