ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)

Lot 196
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10000 - 12000 EUR
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Result : 13 650EUR
ROUSSEAU Jean-Jacques (1712-1778)
L.A.S. "JJRousseau", Spalding in Lincolnshire 11 May 1767, to Richard DAVENPORT at Wootton, Ashburnbag (Derbyshire); 1 page and a quarter in-4, address with red wax stamp with the motto Vitam impendere vero (small angular gap, address sheet restored, stamp a little crushed). Rousseau, in exile in England, requests the hospitality of his friend for him and his companion Thérèse. [Richard DAVENPORT (1706-1771), friend of Hume and Rousseau, will welcome the latter during his English exile in the company of Thérèse Levasseur, in his manor at Wootton Hall. Rousseau had taken refuge in England after the publication of Émile and the Social Contract, welcomed by Daveport at Wootton Hall, where he resided for a year, from March 22, 1766 to May 1, 1767, indulging in botany. However, during a crisis of mistrust, Rousseau fled Davenport's house in a hurry to take refuge in Spalding, from where he returned to France, even before receiving Davenport's reply]. "You must be offended, sir, but you have enough guts to stop being so when you think of my fate. I preferred liberty to the stay of your house; this feeling is quite excusable. But I infinitely prefer the sojourn in your house to any other captivity, and I prefer any other captivity to the one I am in, which is horrible, and which, whatever happens, will not last. If you will, Sir, receive me again in your house, I am ready to go there in case I am given my liberty, and when I am there, after the experience I have had, I shall hardly be tempted to come out again to look for new misfortunes. If you agree with my proposal, please try to let me know through some reliable intermediary and make it easier for me to return home from here. If you only write to me by post, your letter will reach me all the less as I am staying with the postmaster. I await your reply with impatience; not so much for me, I confess, whose heart is now dead to all pleasure; but for the unfortunate companion of my destiny, whose fate makes me shudder with horror if she comes to lose me, she remains here alone, unknown and abandoned. Instead of losing me in your house, there is at least one support left for her: for I know you too well to fear that you would abandon her in such a case."
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