All the time, too, he was busy in many other ways. There has surely never been such a good-natured man of letters. The study door in the attic was open not only to all his friends, but to all the Grub Street vagrants and parasites of Paris. Diderot purified his friend d’Holbach’s German-French and profusely helped his dearest Grimm in the ‘Literary Correspondence;’ he corrected proofs for Helvétius, Raynal, and Galiani, gave lessons in metaphysics to a German princess, and was, for himself, not only an encyclopædist, but a novelist, an art-critic, and a playwright. He also wrote dedicatory epistles for needy musicians, ‘reconciled brothers, settled lawsuits, solicited pensions.’ He planned a comedy for an unsuccessful dramatic author, and, in roars of laughter, indited an advertisement of a hair-wash to oblige an illiterate hairdresser. The story has been told often, but still bears telling afresh, of the young man who came to him with a personal satire against Diderot himself. ‘I thought,’ says the satirist, ‘you would give me a few crowns to suppress it.’ ‘I can do better for you than that,’ says Diderot, not in the least annoyed. ‘Dedicate it to the brother of the Duke of Orleans, who hates me; take it to him and he will give you assistance.’ ‘But I do not know the Prince.’ ‘Sit down, and I will write the dedication for you.’ He did, and so ably, that the satirist obtained a handsome sum.
Another day he composed for the benefit of a woman, who had been deserted by the Duc de la Vrillière, a most touching appeal to the Duke’s feelings. ‘While I lived in the light of your love, I did not ask your pity. But of all your passion there only remains to me your portrait—and that I must sell to-morrow for bread.’ The Duke sent her fifty louis.
It is hardly necessary to say that Diderot’s friends availed themselves as freely of his purse as of his brains. In return for his mighty expenditure of time, talent, and energy for the Encyclopædia he never received more than the princely sum of one hundred and thirty pounds a year. As he was the sort of person who always took a carriage if he wanted one, who had a pretty taste in miniatures and objets d’art which he found it positively imperative to gratify, as he loved high play and always lost—as, in brief, he could never deny himself or anybody else anything—it was physically impossible he should ever be solvent.
One graceless hanger-on turned back as he was leaving him one day. ‘M. Diderot, do you know any natural history?’ ‘Well,’ says Diderot, ‘enough to tell a pigeon from a humming-bird.’ ‘Have you ever heard of the Formica leo? It is a very busy little creature; it burrows a hole in the earth like a funnel, covers the surface with a fine sand, attracts a number of stupid insects to it, takes them, sucks them dry, and says, “M. Diderot, I have the honour to wish you a very good morning.”’ It may be said of Diderot that he could love, but not respect; and that is the inevitable attitude one takes towards himself.
In 1755, during his work at the Encyclopædia and for those innumerable idle persons who had much better have worked for themselves, poor Nanette went on a second fatal visit to Langres and gave her husband the opportunity of falling in love with Mademoiselle Volland, and starting a memorable correspondence.
Sophie Volland was a rather elderly young lady, with spectacles, and a good deal of real cleverness and erudition. Whether Diderot, who was now a man of forty-two, was ever literally in love with her, or whether he was ‘less than lover but more than friend,’ remains uncertain. His letters to her are warmly interesting, frank, natural, spontaneous, with many passages of exquisite beauty and thoughtfulness. There is but one fault—that fatal fault without which Diderot would not have been Diderot at all but some loftier man—his irrepressible indecency.
He had much to tell Mademoiselle. The words seem to trip over each other in his anxiety to show her all he had done and felt. He was now famous. The Encyclopædia had thrown open to him, cutler’s son though he was, the doors of the salons; a great quarrel he had with Eousseau in 1757—the dingy details of which there is neither interest nor profit in recalling—made him the talk of the cafés.
But this loud, explosive Denis was scarcely a social light. He said himself that he only liked company in which he could say anything. And what Diderot meant by anything was considered indecorous even in that freest of all free-spoken ages. Good old Madame Geoffrin lost her patience with him, not only for his licence, but for talking so movingly about duty and neglecting all his own. She was not going to ignore his Mademoiselle Volland. She treated him ‘like a beast,’ he said, and advised his wife to do the same. As for Madame Necker—‘qui raffole de moi,’ said the complacent Denis himself—she too ‘judged great men by their conduct and not by their talents,’ which was very awkward indeed for a Diderot.
There was a third house where he visited much more often and got on much better; but that was not because Madame d’Épinay was its mistress, but because Grimm was its presiding genius. His friendship with the cool German had a sentimentality and a demonstrativeness which Englishmen find hard to forgive, but which were sincere enough not the less. Grimm took complete control of his impulsive, generous colleague. Because Grimm bade him, Denis began in 1759 writing his ‘Salons,’ or criticisms on pictures, and became ‘the first critic in France who made criticism eloquent;’ while, when Grimm was away, almost all the work of the ‘Literary Correspondence’ fell on Diderot’s too good-natured shoulders. When his dearest friend was not there, Diderot’s steps turned much less often towards Madame d’Épinay’s house.
In 1759 he first spent an autumn at the only place at which he was perfectly at home, and where he soon became a regular visitor.