How to Be Sociable: Charrière's Dialogue with Rousseau in Lettres trouvées dans des portefeuilles d'émigrés

How to Be Sociable: Charrière's Dialogue with Rousseau in Lettres trouvées dans desportefeuilles d'émigrés Giulia Pacini C'est avec la raison et les arts que l'on pourrait quelquefois oublier ses souffrances [...] . Vivons ensemble, chère Germaine; doutons, croyons, raisonnons, déraisonnons ensemble et ne nous quittons pas même à la mort": Alphonse, the hero of Isabelle de Charrière's Lettres trouvées dans des portefeuilles d'émigrés (1793), tiius extols the value of the arts, as well as the importance of being sociable.1 Similar statements echo diroughout this epistolary novel, its plot consisting of efforts to maintain ongoing conversations and attempts to establish useful international relations among friends and strangers across Europe. Geographically and ideologically separated by die outbreak of die French Revolution and consequent civil war, Charrière's protagonists develop asupport network that is crucial not only to their understanding ofcurrent events but also to their survival and future happiness. As the narrative insists upon the value of discursive practices bodi public and private (two dimensions diat are clearly intertwined in diis text) , it illustrates Charrière's ideal form of 1 Isabelle de Chamère, Lettres trouvées dans desportefeuiUes d'émigrésin Œuvres Computes (OQ, ed.Jean-Daniel Candaux et al., 10 vols. (Amsterdam: van Oorschot, 1979-84), 8:460-61. References are to this edition. I have modernized Charrière's spelling. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION, Volume 17, Number 2,January 2005 254 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FICTION sociability. More important, this novel offers one ofCharrière's most eloquent reactions toJean-Jacques Rousseau's political theory. Lettres trouvées dans desportefeuilles d'émigrésdialogues, in fact, widi die Discours surl'origine et lesfondemenb de l'inégalitéparmi les hommes; and, in unison with anodier of Charrière's texts, Eloge deJ.-J. Rousseau (1790), this novel rewrites the philosophes "chimerical" descriptions of an ideal social contract {OC, 10:204). In die process, Charrière tackles moral and political problems posed by die French civil war, and ponders the conditions ofpossibility ofa more peaceful and equitable society. By die end of 1792, Revolutionary ideology had spread from France across Europe. Among other places, it had reached die Principality ofNeuchâtel, where foryears the Swiss bourgeois had ill tolerated die yoke ofPrussian audiority. Inspired by recent news reports from Paris and swayed byJacobin propaganda, in 1792 die citizens ofNeuchâtel had shown dieir first signs ofunrest. Similarly to their Parisian counterparts , they erected freedom trees, danced the carmagnole, and donned revolutionary red bonnets; diey called for a war against Prussia and attacked fellow countrymen suspected of entertaining monarchist persuasions. In response, the State Council sent a delegation of five men to meet with the Swiss Jacobins. When these negotiations failed, die Chancellor of Neuchâtel, Charles-Godefroy Tribolet, decided to change tack: hoping diat public opinion might be assuaged by a forceful piece of literature, he commissioned Isabelle de Charrière to write aseries ofpolitical pamphlets.2 Pleased at die invitation to participate in Neuchâtel's public affairs, Charrière composed an epistolary dialogue meant to pass as an audiendc correspondence between a Swiss and a Frenchman. Along widi its diree sequels, this textwas eventually credited widi playing a role in die reestablishment ofpeace in the area.3 Immediately after completing diis project (now known as Lettres trouvées dans la neige), Charrière began composing Lettres trouvées dans 2 In a letter to Charrière, Tribolet oudined die stakes ofthis project: "Il s'agit, Madame, de reconcilier des pères, des enfants, des frères, des sœurs, des maris, des femmes, des amis" (10 February 1793; OC, 3:498). 3 Charrière's friend, critic, and collaborator Alexandre-Pierre Du Peyrou remarked: "En toutje crois vos lettres utiles, autant qu'agréables à lire" (Du Peyrou to Charrière, 3 May 1793; OC, 4:49). HOW TO BE SOCIABLE255 desportefeuilles d'émigrés, an epistolary novel whose tide, plot, and dates are in perfect continuity with diose used in die earlier pamphlets written for Tribolet Both works address die problems caused by die French civil war, and die last episde ofLettres trouvées dans la neige...