There were generally three or four of them staying in the house, and sometimes very many more. Diderot was here often for weeks together, and sometimes for months. He had a special bedroom always reserved for him. In d’Holbach’s most intimate confidence, his abundance, fecundity, and inspiration were in piquant contrast to the Baron’s calm learning and well-regulated sense. Here too came, but not very often, Diderot’s partner in the Encyclopædia, d’Alembert. Too shy and retiring to enjoy Grandval’s freedom and liveliness as a recreation, d’Alembert’s work for his party was not to be advanced, as his brethren certainly advanced their work, by speculative talk in clever company—but always in solitude, in silence, and in simplicity.
Turgot, like d’Alembert, was from time to time a guest, but a rare one. Turgot was beginning to Do, what most of his friends were still discussing How to do.
Little Galiani skipped down very often from the Italian Embassy, and the Paris he worshipped, to amuse the Baron’s house-party by telling it those stories, ‘like dramas,’ which no one ever found too long. ‘That man is a pantomime from his head to his feet,’ said admiring Diderot, watching him. After 1761, the heavy Abbé Morellet, the would-be refuter of Galiani’s wit on the Corn Laws, was constantly at the Baron’s ‘developing my theories on public economy’ to his own great satisfaction. His audience have not left their feelings on record.
Grimm, Diderot’s dear Damon, was here very often, with that slightly nauseous affection for his Pythias, which, said the frankly vain Denis, made d’Holbach jealous. For jealous, one may be allowed to read ‘disgusted.’
Grimm’s chère amie, Madame d’Épinay, sometimes accompanied him. Her sister-in-law, Madame d’Houdetot, often drove down to Grandval with her superb Marquis de Saint-Lambert in her train. Pitted deeply with the smallpox, with a cast in her eye, and a little given to too much wine, the secret of Madame d’Houdetot’s charm is hard to be found by this generation. But in that one, it was not only Rousseau who discovered it to his cost. Saint-Lambert’s ‘faith unfaithful kept him falsely true’ to her for so many years that it came to be considered quite praiseworthy, and he would have been admitted to Grandval as Madame d’Houdetot’s constant lover, if his passion for Madame du Châtelet and his poem on the ‘Seasons’ had not given him the entrée as a literary character as well.
His rival, Jean Jacques Rousseau, was also an habitué at d’Holbach’s. The peaceful Baron could agree even with that fretful child of genius, until one unlucky day, when, Grandval having suffered gladly and politely a curé’s reading of his own stupid tragedy, Jean Jacques bounces furiously out of his armchair, seizes the manuscript from its author, and throws it to the ground—‘Do you not see these people are laughing at you? Go back to your curacy.’ The kindliest and politest of hosts tries to smooth the ruffled plumage of both playwright and Rousseau. If the curé was appeased is not a matter of moment. Jean Jacques burst out of the house in a rage, and despite all the efforts of Grimm and of Diderot, as well as of d’Holbach himself, never returned to it. ‘He imagined all his misfortunes our doing ... and thought we had incited ... all Europe against him,’ says Grimm. He did try, however, to make some amends to his good host by portraying him in the ‘New Éloïsa’ in the character of Wolmar—‘benevolent, active, patient, tranquil, friendly, and trustful.’
Marmontel came here very often: and that dreadful, garrulous old bore, the Abbé Raynal, was constantly to be found seeking ideas among the Baron’s guests for his ‘History of the Two Indies,’ which received, and did not deserve, the advertisement of burning.
The cautious Buffon soon edged away from this salon, as he also edged away from the gatherings of Helvétius. The monstrous things these people talk about might come to the ears of the authorities—accompanied by the fact that the politic author of the ‘Natural History’ was among the talkers! Helvétius himself was often at d’Holbach’s, until the storm of fury and hatred which assailed his book ‘On the Mind’ banished him, astounded and embittered, to his estates in Burgundy.
Madame Geoffrin, with her prim little cap tied under her firm old chin, drove down to play picquet with the Baron and to scold Diderot for neglecting his wife.
It was partly owing to the influence of Diderot—himself greatly bitten by the Anglomania just creeping into fashion—that the Baron entertained Englishmen so largely both in Paris and in the country.