Policing Writers in Paris Circa 1750 Author(S): Robert Darnton Source: Representations, No

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Policing Writers in Paris Circa 1750 Author(s): Robert Darnton Source: Representations, No. 5 (Winter, 1984), pp. 1-31 Published by: University of California Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2928572 . Accessed: 27/07/2013 13:50

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ROBERT DARNTON

Policing Writers in Paris circa 1750:

FROM 1748 TO 1 753, a police officerin Pariswrestled with a problemthat is stillbedevilling the sociology and historyof literature: how do intellectualsfit into the socialorder? Of coursehe did notput thequestion in quitethose terms. He had never heard of intellectualsor sociology;he merelywanted to gatherinformation about writers.But he gatheredso muchof it thathis reports, 500 of themlying unpublished in theBibliotheque Nationale, constitute a virtualcensus of theliterary population of Paris-from the mostfamous philosophes to the mostobscure hacks-at the height of the Enlightenment.' JustwhyJoseph d'Hemery, inspector of the book trade,undertook such a task is difficultto say. The reports appear in three large registersunder the title "Historique des auteurs" withoutany introductionor explanation.As d'Hemery took up his officein June 1748, he may simplyhave intended to surveyhis new administrativeterritory, which included the inspectionof authors as an activity involvedin the policingof books. But d'Hemery had some extraordinarybooks to police duringhis firstfive years in office:L'Esprit des lois,the Encyclopedie,Rous- seau's firstdiscourse, Diderot's Lettresur les aveugles,Buffon's Histoire naturelle Toussaint's Les Moeurs,and the scandalous thesis by the abbe de Prades. The whole Enlightenmentseemed to burstinto print during the mid-centuryyears. At the same time, the tax reformsof Machault d'Arnouville,the Jansenist-Jesuit controversy,the agitationover the billetsde confession,the strugglebetween the crownand theparlements, and thefrondeurspirit following France's humiliationin the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelleproduced a general heating-upof the ideological atmosphere. However absolute the monarchyclaimed to be, it had to take account of public opinionand of the men who directedit withtheir pens. The new inspectorof the book trade clearlyhad his workcut out forhim, and he went about it systematically.He built up dossiers fromall kinds of sources: journals,spies, concierges, cafe gossips,and interrogationsin the Bastille.Then he selected informationfrom the dossiersand transcribedit on standardforms with printedheadings, which he filedin alphabetical order and broughtup to date as the occasion arose. The procedurewas more thoroughthan anythingdone previ- ously,but it seems primitivewhen viewed in the lightof the subsequenthistory of ideological police work. Instead of adapting data to a computerizedprogram, d'Hemery recounted anecdotes. In the reporton Crebillonfils,for example, he noted: "His fathersaid, 'There are only two thingsthat I regrethaving done, Semiramisand my son.' 'Oh, don't worry,'the son replied, 'No one attributes

REPRESENTATIONS 5 * Spring, 1984 ? ROBERT DARNTON

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Diagram I Age of Authors in 1750, as Listed in Bib. Nat. ms. nouv. acq. fr. 10781-10783 and Supplementary Sources

Number of Authors, Age Number of Authors age by decades

7 0-over 9 68-69 4 66-67 7 42 64-65 3 ( 62-63 2 60-61 17 Montesquieu 61

58-59 10 56-57 8 Voltaire 56 54-55 8 50 52-53 11 50-51 13

48-49 12 46-47 a11 44-45 13 75 42-43 14 40-41 25

38-39 16 Rousseau 38 36-37 23 Diderot 3 7 34-35 29 106 32-33 17 d'Alembert 33 30-31 21

28-29 19 26-27 15 24-25 21 86 22-23 13 8 20-21 11 under 20 7

Median Age: 38 Total: 359

eitherof them to you.' "Not only did d'Hemery go about informationretrieval withan unscientificsense of humor,he also exercised literaryjudgment. La Barre wrote passable prose but could not manage verse, he observed. And Robbe de Beauveset sinned in the opposite way: "There is some genius in his poetry,but he writesharshly and has very littletaste." D'Hemery would not have gone down well withthe Deuxieme Bureau or the F.B.I. It would be a mistake,therefore, to treatd'Hemery's reportsas hard data of the kind to be found in a modern census. But it would be a greatermistake to dismiss them for excessive subjectivity.D'Hemery had a more intimateknowl- edge of the eighteenth-centuryworld of lettersthan any historiancan hope to

2 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions acquire. His reportsprovide the earliestknown survey of writersas a social group, and they do so at a criticalmoment of literaryhistory. Moreover, they can be checked against a vast array of biographical and bibliographicalsources. After havingworked through all thismaterial and compiled the statistics,one can enjoy the firstclear view of the Republic of Lettersin earlymodern Europe. D'Hemery actuallyreported on 501 persons,but 67 of them never published anything,or anythingbeyond a few lines in La Mercure. So the reportscover 434 active writers.For 359 of them,the date of birthcan be established,for 312 the place of birth,and for333 the socio-occupationalposition. The statisticalbasis of the surveytherefore seems wide enough to supportsome firmconclusions. But how widelyhad d'Hemery cast his net in the firstplace? The only source against which to compare his surveyis La France litte'raire,a literaryalmanac, whichpurported to listevery living French author in 1756. As the listran to 1,187 names, it seems likelythat d'Hemery covered about a thirdof the totalpopulation of Frenchwriters. But which third?That question raises the furtherproblem of defininga writer.D'Hemery used the term "auteur" withoutexplaining it, and La France litteraireclaimed to include everyonewho had ever published a book. But the "books" it listed were mainly ephemeral works-sermons by village cures, orations by provincialdignitaries, medical pamphlets by small-towndoctors, in fact anythingthat anyone wanted to have mentioned, for the authors of the almanac had offeredto include in their own list the names of any books and authors that the general public could supply.As a result,La France litterairefa- vored the minor provincialliterati. By contrast,d'Hemery dealt with a broad range of writers,but he restrictedhimself almost entirelyto Paris. It seems rea- sonable to conclude thathis filescovered a major proportionof the active literary population and that the statisticsdrawn from them may give a fairlyaccurate pictureof literarylife in the capital of the Enlightenment.2

The demographicstructure of the groupis revealed in Diagram I. In 1750, the writersranged in age from ninety-three(Fontenelle) to sixteen (Rulhiere),but most of them were relativelyyoung. Rousseau, at thirty-eight,represented the median age exactly.The inner circle of Encyclopedistswas composed mainlyof men in theirthirties, beginning with Diderot, thirty-seven, and d'Alembert,thirty- three. Thus the bulge in the bar graph suggests somethingakin to a literary generation.With exceptionslike Montesquieu and Voltaire,who each had a foot in the Franceof Louis XIV, the philosophesbelonged to cohortswho reached their prime at mid-century.3 The geographical originsof the writers,which appear in Map I, fall into a familiarpattern. The south looks backward, except in urban areas scattered around the Rhone delta and the Garonne. Three-fourthsof the writerswere born above the celebrated Saint Malo-Geneva line, in northernand northeastern

PolicingWriters in Pariscirca 1750 3

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Table I Authors by Estate and Occupation, as Identified in Bib. Nat. ms. nouv. acq. fr. 10781-10783

Number of Authors in unspecified Identified Fathers Estate/Occupation 4 -5 date totala per centb number per cent

Upper clergy,secular 3 3 0.9 - - Upper clergy,regular 1 1 0.3 - - Lower clergy,secular 31 31 9.3 - - Lower clergy,regular 4 1 5 1.5 - - Titled nobility,no office 11 1 1 3.3 16 10 Officer,high administration 4 4 1.2 1 1 Officer,military 20 7 27 8.1 12 8 Officer,sovereign courts 10 2 12 3.6 12 8 Officer,high finance 2 2 0.6 6 4 Officer,lower courts 4 2 6 1.8 8 5 Lower administration 20 10 30 9.0 22 14 Lawyer, attorney 26 2 28 8.4 19 12 Law personnel 3 3 0.9 1 1 Doctor 6 6 1.8 1 1 Apothecary 0 1 1 0.3 4 3 Professor 10 10 3.0 0 0 Lower finance 2 .1 3 0.9 2 1 Merchant 1 1 0.3 11 7 Manufacturer 0 0 0.0 0 0 Rentier 10 10 3.0 0 0 Journalist 9 11 20 6.0 0 0 Private teacher 27 8 35 10.5 4 3 Librarian 6 6 1.8 0 0 Secretary 15 10 25 7.5 1 1 Sinecure 10 1 11 3.3 0 0 Actor 8 1 9 2.7 1 1 Musician 1 1 0.3 1 1 Student 3 3 0.9 Employee 5 1 6 1.8 8 5 Shopkeeper 2 2 0.6 6 4 Artisan 6 1 7 2.1 14 9 Servant 1 1 2 0.6 1 1 Wives, widows 9 9 2.7 Other 1 2 3 0.9 5 3 Total 271 62 333 99.9 156 100

NOTES: a67 non-authorsare excluded; 101 are unidentified.Total: 271 + 62 + 101 = 434 "writers." bI.e., per centof totalof firsttwo columns = 333. Columntotal reflects rounded-off numbers. cOwingto theirrelatively small number, the authors' fathers have been calculatedin wholenumbers in the per centcolumn. There is no informationon the fathersof the priests.

4 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions France,where literacyand schools were densest.Paris supplied a third(1 13) of the writers.So the map does not bear out anothercliche of culturalhistory-namely, that Paris has always dominated the countryby soakingup talentfrom the provinces. There were more home-grownauthors than one mighthave expected in the Paris of 1750.4 Any attemptto analyze the social compositionof a group of Frenchmenwho lived two centuriesago is liable to flounderin faultydata and ambiguous classifi- cation schemes. But just over three-fourthsof d'Hemery's writerscan be identified and classifiedunambiguously according to the categories in Table I. The remaining23.2 per cent of unidentifiedwriters contains a large numberof "gens sans e'tat"-hacks who driftedfrom job to job as Diderot and Rousseau did for manyyears. Although a good deal of informationexists about manyof them,they defyclassification and statisticalanalysis. But if one makes allowances for their existence in the unfathomablefloating population of the Old Regime, one can take Table I as a reliable indicationof the social dimensionsof the Republic of Lettersin Paris. The privilegedorders occupied a farmore importantplace in d'Hemery's files than they did withinthe population at large. Of the identifiedauthors, 16.8 per cent were noblemen. Althoughthey include some serious writers,like Montes- quieu, they tended to be gentleman amateurs, and to write incidentalverse or lightcomedies. As in the case of the marquis de Paulmy,who publishednovelettes under the name of his secretary,Nicolas Fromaget,they did not oftenwant to be identifiedwith such frothystuff. Nor did theywrite for the marketplace. D'He- merynoted that the comte de Saint-Foix" . . . worksas a gentlemanauthor and never takes any money forhis plays." Aristocraticwriters generally appear in the reportsas power brokers,channeling patronage towardmore lowlylitterateurs. Writingalso tended to be a secondary activityfor the clergymenin the reports,and therewere a greatmany of them: 12 percentof the authorswho can be identified.Only fourbelonged to the upper clergy,in contrastto dozens of abbes, among them Condillac, Mably, Raynal, and the threesome of the Encyclopedie, Yvon,Pestre, and de Prades. A fewpriests, like J.-B.-C.-M. de Beauvais and Michel Desjardins, continuedto produce court sermonsand funeraleulogies in the style of Bossuet. But in general the courtier-clerichad given way to the omnipresent abbe of the Enlightenment. Although71.1 per cent of the writerscame fromthe thirdestate, few of them can be considered "bourgeois" in the narrowsense of the term-that is, capital- ists livingfrom trade and industry.They included only one merchant,J. H. Our- sel, the son of a printer,and no manufacturers.There was a certain business element-eleven merchants-among theirfathers, 156 of whom can be identified.But literatureflourished less in the marketplace than in the professionsand the royal administration.Of the writers,10.2 per cent were doctorsor lawyers;9 per cent held minor administrativeoffices; and 15.6 per cent belonged to the

PolicingWriters in Pariscirca 1 750 5

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions \ . t ~~~~~~~~~~~GENEVA

Map I Birthplacesof AuthorsIdentified in Bib. Nat. ins. nouv. acq. fr. 10781-10783

PROVINCES: Villages,unspecified LEGEND (notappearing on map) Numberof Author-natives Anjou, 1 Languedoc,3 1 Bourgogne,1 Lorraine,1 * 2-5 Champagne,1 Normandie,2 6-i 1 Dauphine, 1 Saintonge,1 0 100+ Gascogne,1

REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions apparatus of the state, if magistratesfrom the parlementsand lower courts are included in the count. The largest group of fathers,twenty-two, came fromthe lower administration;the next largest, nineteen, were lawyers. After sifting throughthe statisticsand reading hundredsof biographicalsketches one gets the impressionthat behind many literarycareers stood an ambitious,sharp-witted, royal bureaucrat. Frenchliterature owes an incalculable debt to the commisand the law clerkas well as to the abbe. Prevostepitomized this species. The son of a lawyerturned court official in the bailliageof Hesdin, he was an abbe many times over. "He has been a member of everyreligious order," d'Hemery observed. When it came to earning a living,however, the largest group of writersde- pended upon what may be called the intellectualtrades. Thirty-sixper cent of them worked as journalists,tutors, librarians, secretaries, and actors, or else re- lied on the income froma sinecureprocured for them by a protector.This was the bread-and-butterelement in the Republic of Letters;and as it was dispensed by patronage, the writersknew which side their bread was buttered on. Moncrif certainlydid: He was a tax inspectorin the provinceswhen M. d'Argensonwas intendant.The prettysongs he composedmade him noticed by d'Argenson, who brought him to Paris and gavehim a position.From that time on, he [Moncrif]has alwaysbeen attached to him.... He is also secretarygeneral of the French postal service, a positionthat brings him in 6,000 livresa yearand thatM. d'Argensongave to himas a present.

At a lowerlevel, the literarypopulation contained a surprisingproportion, 5.1 per cent, of shopkeepers, artisans, and minor employees. They included both master craftsmen-a printer,an engraver,a painter-enameler-and relatively humble workers-a harness maker, a binder, a gatekeeper, and two lackeys. D'Hemery noted that one of the lackeys,Viollet de Wagnon,published his L'Au- teurlaquais with the help of a valet and a grocer. Favart reputedlyacquired his facilitywith verse by listeningto his fatherimprovise songs while kneadingdough in the family's pastry shop.5 Thus the lower classes played some part in the literarylife of the Old Regime-a considerablepart, if one considersthe writers' fathers,of whom 18.5 per cent belonged to the menupeuple. They were ordinary artisansfor the most part-cobblers, bakers, and tailors. So the careers of their sons, who became lawyers, teachers, and journalists,showed that exceptional possibilitiesof social advancement sometimes opened up for young men who could wield a pen. The literaryworld remained closed, however, to one social group,the peasantry.Of course d'Hemery did not look forwriters in the country- side, but he did not findthe slightestpeasant elementin the backgroundof writers who came to Paris from the provinces. Restifde la Bretonne notwithstanding, literaryFrance seems to have been primarilyurban. It was also mainlymale. Women presided over the famous salons and there- forewon a few places in the police files.But only-sixteenof them ever published

PolicingWriters in Pariscirca 1 750 7

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions anything.Like Mme. de Graffigny,the most famous of theirnumber, the female authors often turned to writingafter being widowed or separated from their husbands. Most of them were independentlywealthy. Two were teachers. One, CharlotteBourette, "la muselimonadiere," ran a soft-drinkshop, and one was a courtesan. The report on-the'courtesan, Mlle. de Saint Phalier, reads like the precis of a novel. Afterleaving her father,a horse dealer in Paris,she became a chambermaid in the house of a wealthytax farmer.The son of the house seduced and abducted her, only to be arrested by the father,who then forced him to marrya more suitablewoman, leavingMlle. de Saint Phalierin the streets.By the time the police ran across her, she had become a kept woman, consorted with actresses,and was about to publishher firstbook, Le Portefeuillerendu, dedicated to Mme. de Pompadour. D'Hemery had sadder storiesto tell when he filledin the entriesunder the rubric"histoire," for many careers followed trajectories that led fromthe garretto the gutter,with stopovers in the Bastille. L.-J.-C. Soulas d'Allainvalillustrates the pattern.Unable to supporthimself by the farces he wrote for the Comedie Ita- lienne,he took up politicallibelles and clandestinejournalism, which brought him straightto the Bastille.After his release, he sank deeper into debt. Ultimately,he was unable even to get paper from his stationer,who cut offthe pittance he received fromthe box officeof the Italiens in order to collect an unpaid bill of sixty livres. D'Allainval began to sleep "a la belle e'toile."His health gave out. D'Hemery recountedthe rest: He was struckdown by an attackof apoplexy in September, 1752 while a dinnerguest of M. Bertinof theparties casuelles, who put twolouis in hispocket and senthim off. As therewas no meansof nursing him at hisplace, he was broughtto theHotel-Dieu [paupers' hospital],where he vegetatedfor a longwhile. He finallyremained paralyzed and nowis reducedto looking for a place at Bicetreor at theIncurables. What a sad endfor a talented man.

D'Hemery expressed less sympathyfor Fran~ois-AntoineChevrier, "a bad subject,an audacious liar,trenchant, critical, and unbearablypretentious." After failingas a lawyer,soldier, playwright, and poet, Chevrierturned to pamphleteer- ing, undergroundjournalism, and espionage. The police chased him witha lettre de cachetthrough Germany and the Low Countries;but just as theywere closingin on him he died, down and out in Rotterdam.They got theirman in the case of Emmanuel-Jeande La Coste, a defrockedmonk aged fifty-nine,who was con- demned to a whippingand the galleys for the rest of his life. He had run offto Liege witha young girland had supportedhimself by peddling anti-Frenchpam- phlets,counterfeit lottery tickets, and, it seems, the girlherself. These characters belonged to Grub Street,an importantstratum in the Republic of Letters.To be sure, most writersdid not sinkso low as d'Allainval,Chevrier, and La Coste; but many shared an experience that marked the men of Grub Street:embastillement. Forty-fivewriters, 10 per cent of those in the survey,were locked up at least once

8 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions in a state prison,usually the Bastille.6If the Bastillewas almost emptyonJuly 14, 1789, it was fullof meaning forthe men who made it into the centralsymbol of radical propaganda beforethe FrenchRevolution. Of course no one could foresee 1789 in 1750. At mid-centurythe literary population may have been restive,but it was not revolutionary.Most of its mem- bers were strugglingto get a review in La Mercure, an entre'ein the Comedie Fran~aise, or a seat in the Academy. They supported themselvesin dozens of ways, some fromrentes, some fromoffices, some fromprofessions, and a great many from the jobs that were open to men of the pen: journalism, teaching, secretaryships,and, for the fortunate,sinecures. They came fromall sectors of society except the peasantry and from all corners of the kingdom except the backwardareas of the south.They included a small numberof women and a large numberof brightyoung men, sons of minorofficials and artisans,who won schol- arships,published poems, and ended up as lawyersand civilservants-or, in a few cases, full-timewriters, living like Diderot, "aux gages des libraires" (in the pay of the booksellers).

It would be satisfyingto end on that note, with a patternfirmly established and the philosophes located withinit. Unfortunately,however, literary theorists have taughthistorians to beware of texts,which can be dissolvedinto "discourse" by criticalreading, no matterhow solid they may seem. So the historianshould hesitate before treatingpolice reports as hard nuggets of irreduciblereality, whichhe has only to mine out of the archives,sift, and piece togetherin order to create a solid reconstructionof the past. The reportsare constructionsof their own, built on implicitassumptions about the nature of writersand writingat a time when literaturehad not yet been recognizedas a vocation. In draftinghis reports,d'Hemery acted as a kind of writerhimself. He, too, played a role in the Republicof Letterswhile at the same timeremaining subordi- nate to the lieutenant-generalof police and otherofficials in the Frenchstate. The reports show a combinationof literarysensitivity and bureaucratic orderliness that would be unthinkablein most police headquarters today. They contain as many remarksabout the quality of the authors' style as about the characterof theirreligious and politicalopinions. In the reporton the marquise de Crequy,for example, d'Hemery included a three-pageexcerpt of a dialogue she had written, not becuase it had any relevance to the ideological issues of the day but because it demonstratedher perfectmastery of prose. He praised "taste," "wit," and "talent" wherever he found it, even among "bad subjects" like Voltaire. "Esprit" (cleverness)was his favoriteterm. It seems to have been the firstquality he looked forin a writer,and it compensated for a good deal of strayingfrom the straight and narrow.The abbe Paul-Fran~oisVelly was "a very clever man" and a skirt- chaser,but so were "almost all monkswhen theyleave the monastery."The same

PolicingWriters in Pariscirca 17 50 9

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions went for Jean-Pierre Barnard, a "clever" priest with a special talent for funeral sermons: "He is a jolly old boy who enjoys pleasure and spends an evening with the girls whenever he gets a chance." D'Hemery understood the ways of the world. He did not take offense at a little bawdiness or anticleriolisrm, especially when it was offsetby "genius," as in the work of Alexis Piron: "His biting wit and reputation for impiety mean that he is not a member of the Academie Fran~aise. M. de Crebillon advised him never to think of being elected. But Les Fils ingrats,Gustave, and La Metromanie bear suffi- cient testimony to his genius. He can succeed in anything he undertakes." D'He- mery admired the philosophes, at least the moderate ones, like Fontenelle, Duclos, and d'Alembert. But he was horrified at atheism, and he seems to have sincerely believed in the official orthodoxies. His values show through clearly in all the reports, but especially in off-handremarks on ordinary writers, like Jean- Baptiste Le Mascrier: He was a Jesuitfor a long time.He edited Telliamedand variousother publications for the booksellers.He contributedto the Ceremoniesreligieuses and worked over the Me'moires de M. de Mailletsur la descriptionde I'Egypte,which does great honor to him by its style.He turnspoems very nicely,as is clear froma prologue to a play that was performedsome years ago. The Benedictines,where he has worked,agree thathe is a man of talent.Too bad that he isn'tmore creative.He has publishedan excellentwork of piety,a book thatis usefulfor everytrue Christian, but the people who know him most intimatelythink that the need to produce copy is makinghim graduallyshift to differentsentiments.

In short, d'Hemery took stock of the literary world with sympathy, humor, and an appreciation of literature itself. He shared some of the values held by the people under his surveillance, but he did not waver in his loyalty to church and state. Nothing could be more anachronistic than to picture him as a modern police officeror to interpret his police work as witch-hunting. It really represents something less familiar and more interesting: information-gatheringin the age of abso- lutism. No one expected to uncover revolutionary conspiracies in the mid-eighteenth century, when the Revolution was still unthinkable; but many bureaucrats in the Bourbon monarchy wanted to learn as much as possible about the kingdom-about the number of its inhabitants, the volume of its trade, and the output of its presses. D'Hemery belonged to a line of rationalizing officials that extended from Colbert and Vauban to Turgot and Necker. But he operated at a modest level-an inspector of the book trade belonged a notch or two below an inspector of manufactures-and he built up his files on a smaller scale than some of the surveys undertaken by ministers and intendants.7 The texts of the reports contain some evidence about the way they were written. They often contain remarks such as "See the attached sheets," or "See his dossier," which indicate that d'Hemery kept a file on each writer. Although the dossiers have disappeared, the references to them in the reports reveal the

10 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions kind of informationthey contained. They included clippingsfrom journals, pro- spectuses from booksellers,notes that d'Hemery made when he went on his rounds,records of interrogationsin the Bastille,letters from authors who wanted to ingratiatethemselves or to underminetheir enemies, and reportsfrom spies in the hireof the lieutenant-generalof police. Some of the spies had dossiersof their own. The report on Charles de Fieux, chevalier de Mouhy, shows how they worked:"He is a spy forM. Berryer[the lieutenant-general of police],to whom he furnishesa daily reporton everythinghe sees in the cafes, theatres,and public gardens." One can also findtraces of Mouhy's activitiesin otherreports, such as the one on Mathieu-Fran~oisPidansat de Mairobert: "He has just been arrested and takento the Bastillefor having distributed some [verse]attacking the kingand Mme. la marquise [de Pompadour]in cafes. Some was even found in his pockets upon his arrest.It was the chevalierde Mouhy who denounced him." Denuncia- tionsalso arrivedfrom jilted lovers,angry sons, and estrangedwives. Booksellers and printersproduced a steady flow of informationabout the sources of their copy-and especially the copy of their competitors.Landladies and cures supplied furtherdetails, and at the bottom of many dossiers d'Hemery could find scraps collected fromneighborhood gossips, not all of it malicious.Thus he wrote of Etienne-AndrePhilippe de Pretot: "As to his conduct, it is fairlygood. He is marriedand has children,which forces him to be orderly.He is well spoken of in his neighborhood." D'Hemery culled throughall this material before composing a report.The siftingand selectingmust have been difficult,because the dossierscontained such a disparate mixtureof hard data and loose gossip. So d'Hemery used standard forms-large foliosheets withsix headingsprinted in bold type:name, age, birth- place, description,address, and "histoire"(story). The headingsprovided a gridfor classifyingthe information,and the dates and handwritingof the entiresunder them provide some clues about d'Hemery's mode of composition.Most of the entriesare writtenin a clear, scribalhand, but at later dates d'Hemery added new informationin his own scrawl,which can be recognizedeasily from the lettersand memorandumsby him in the BibliothequeNationale. About half the reportsare dated on the firstday of the month,many of themon the firstof the year. It seems likely,therefore, that d'Hemery set aside special days to workover his files,called in one of the secretariesin the police administration,and dictated the reports, selectingthe informationthat seemed most importantto him,dossier by dossier. The whole process suggestsan attemptto be systematic,a willto impose orderon an unrulyworld of garret scribblersand salon lions. And it also expresses the ordering impulse behind the standardizing,pigeonholing, filing-and-classifying tendencyof the modern bureaucracy. D'Hemery representsan earlyphase in the evolutionof the bureaucrat;so his own voice can be heard quite clearlythrough the standardformat of the reports. He composed in the firstperson singularand in a casual style,which contrasts

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions markedlywith the formal and impersonal tone of his officialcorrespondence. Whereas his memos and letterswere oftendirected to "Monseigneur," Nicolas- Rene Berryer,the lieutenant-generalof police, his reports seem to have been addressed to himself.While filhinig in the birthplaceof Le Blanc de Villeneuve,for example, he corrected himselfoffhandedly: "From Lyon. No, I'm wrong; it's Montelimar,the son of a captain." His reporton the chevalierde Cogolin noted: July1, 1752.I havebeen informed that he diedinsane at thehouse of his brother, the almonerof the King of Poland and Dukeof Lorraine. December1. Thatisn't true.

The reporton a poet named Le Dieux contained an equally casual remark:"Julie told me thathe wrotea great deal of verse. That's true." Occasionally d'Hemery used foul language and spoke of importantpersonages in a tone that would not have been appreciated by his superiors.8The closer one studiesthe reportsto see whetherthey seem to be aimed at an implicitreader located somewhere in the hierarchyof the Frenchadministration, the more one comes around to the view that d'Hemery wrote them forhimself and used them in his everydayactivities, especiallyduring his firstyears on thejob, when he needed pointsof referencein order to steer a course throughthe complex subcultureof literaryfactions and publishingintrigues. Like everyoneelse, d'Hemery had to see some orderin the world,but he also faced the task of findinghis way around his beat. How did an inspector"inspect" the Republic of Letters?As a start,he had to be able to recognizewriters; so he took some care in fillingout the entriesunder the rubric "signalement"(description).They suggestthe way he looked at the authorsunder his surveillance.Thus, for example, the signalementof Voltaire: "Tall, dry,and the bearing of a satyr." Descriptionsinvolved somethingmore than the impact of an image on the eye. They were charged with meaning: "Nasty,toad-like, and dyingof hunger" (Bin- ville); "fat, ungainly,and the bearing of a peasant" (Caylus); "nasty, swarthy, small,filthy, and disgusting"Jourdan). D'Hemery wentbeyond simplecategories like handsome or ugly and shortor tall, because he perceived messages in faces. Thus the chevalierde La Morliere:"Fat, full-faced,and a certainsomething in the eyes." This practiceof readingfaces forcharacter probably derived from physiognomy,a pseudoscience thathad emerged duringthe Renaissance and had spread everywhereduring subsequent centuries through popular chapbooks.9 D'He- mery'sdescriptions contained a great many remarkssuch as "a harshphysiogno- my and character,too" (Le Ratz), "a very honest physiognomy"(Foncemagne), "detestable physiognomy" (Coq), "perfidious physiognomy" (Vieuxmaison), "hideous physiognomy"(Biliena), and "the saddest physiognomyin the world" (Boissy). Similarly,addresses gave offmeanings. Pidansat de Mairobertlived alone "in the rooms of a washerwoman on the thirdfloor, rue des Cordeliers." He was

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions obviouslya marginaltype, like a student-poetnamed Le Brun, who lived in the "rue de La Harpe, facingthe College d'Harcourt,in a furnishedroom kept by a wig-maker,on the second floor at the back" and an equally obscure versifier named Vauger,who lived "in the rue Mazarine in a furnishedroom kept by the firstwig-maker on the left,entering from the Carrefourde Buci, on the second flooron the streetside, the door facingthe stairs." Such men bore watching.They had no fixed e'tat,no groundingin property,family, and neighborhoodconnec- tions.Their addresses alone sufficedto place them. The rubric "histoire"provided the most room for situatingthe writers,and d'Hemery accorded it the largestspace on his printedforms. It was in composing histoiresthat he had to do the most selectingand organizingof materialfrom the dossiers,for his compositionswere narratives,as complex in theirway as contem- poraryfolktales. Some of themeven read like digestsof novels. Thus the histoireof the playwrightCharles-Simon Favart: He is theson of a pastry-cook,a very clever boy who has composedthe prettiest comic operasin theworld. When the Opera Comiquewas closed,the marechal de Saxe made himthe head ofhis troupe. Favart made a lotof money there; but then he fellin love with themarechal's mistress, la petiteChantilly, and marriedher, although he agreedto lether continueto live with the marechal. This happy union lasted until the end of the war. But in November1749, Favart and his wifequarreled with the marechal. After having used his influenceto get a place in theComedie Italienne and squeezeda lot of moneyfrom him [themarechal], Mme. Favart wanted to leave him.The marechalobtained an orderfrom theking to have her arrested and tohave her husband exiled from the kingdom. They fled, he in one direction,she in another.The wifewas capturedat Nancyand imprisoned,first at Les Andelys,then with the Penitentes of Angers. This affair stirred up a terrificstorm amongthe actors,who even senta deputationto the duc de Richelieuto demandthe returnof theircomrade. He let themcool theirheels in his antechamber.Finally, after theyhad had theirarrival announced a secondtime, he agreedto see them;but he gave thema verycold receptionand especiallymistreated Lelio [Antoine-FrancoisRiccoboni], whoquit the troupe as a result.So la Favartwas notgiven her liberty until she agreed to go back to themarechal, who kepther until his death.After that, she returnedto herhus- band,who had beenwandering outside France all thattime. Soon afterward, she took up a place once morein theComedie Italienne. Then, when the Opera Comiquewas restored, bothof themwanted to join it. But theItaliens gave hera fullshare in theirtroupe and gavehim a pensionin exchangefor a regularsupply of parodies; so theyare nowattached to thattheatre. 10

D'Hemery chose simple phrases and organized his narrative around a straightforwardchronological line, but he recounted a complicated story.Al- thoughhe did not embellishit witheditorial comments, he got across the notion of two young people fromhumble originsliving by theirwits in a world of cour- tiersand lettresde cachet.D'Hemery did not sentimentalizeover the plightof the underprivileged.On the contrary,he noted Favart's readiness to share his wife withthe marechal and her abilityto turnthe situationto her own advantage. But the narrativedevelops a powerfulundertow, which sweeps the reader's sympa-

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions thies away fromthe rich and powerful.Favart sets out to make his fortunelike a hero froma fairytale. He is small, poor, and clever ("Signalement: short,blond, and witha verypretty face.") Afterall kindsof adventuresin the land of giants- and the marechal de Saxe was probably the most powerfulman in France,aside fromthe King,in the 1740s-he wins the girland theylive happily ever afterin the Comedie Italienne. The structureof the storycorresponded to that of many popular tales. Its moral mighthave come from"Puss in Boots." But d'Hemery did not draw a moral. He went on to the next dossier, and one can only wonder whetherthe world of letters,as he inspected it, fitinto a frameworkthat had originallybeen devised in the world of peasants. In any case, the constructionof a police reportinvolved an element of story- telling,and the inspectionof writerstook place withina frameof meaning. One can thereforeread the histoiresas meaningfulstories, which reveal some basic assumptionsabout literarylife under the Old Regime. Few of them are as elabo- rate as Favart's. Some contain only two or three sentences, unconnected by a narrativeline. But theyall proceed frompresuppositions about the way the literary world operated, the rules of the game in the Republic of Letters.D'Hemery did not inventthose rules. Like the writersthemselves, he took them forgranted and then watched them at work in the careers under his surveillance.Despite their subjective character,his observationshave some general significance,for they belong to a common subjectivity,a social constructionof reality,which he shared withthe men he observed. In order to decipher theircommon code, one mustreread forwhat remainsbetween the lines, assumed and thusunsaid.

Consider a typicalreport about an eminentcitizen of the Republicof Letters, Fran~ois-Joachimde Pierres,abbe de Bernis. He had sat in the Academie Fran- Saise from the age of twenty-nine,although he had published only some light verse and an insubstantialtreatise, Rejexions sur lespassions et lesgoutts. A member of a distinguishedfamily and a favoriteof Mme. de Pompadour, he was rising rapidlythrough the officesof churchand state,which eventuallywould lead to a cardinal's hat and the ambassadorshipin Rome. What informationdid d'Hemery select for a reporton such a man? Afternoting Bernis's age (in his prime-38), address (good-rue du Dauphin) and looks (also good-"handsome physiognomy"), he stressedsix points: (1) Berniswas a member of the Academie fran~aise and count of Brioude and of Lyon; (2) "He is a lecher who has had Madame la princesse de Rohan"; (3) he was an accomplished courtierand a protege of la Pompadour,who had persuaded the pope to granthim a benefice,using the duc de Nivernaisas an intermediary;(4) he had writtensome "prettypieces in verse" and the Rejiexions sur les passions; (5) he was related to the marechal de La Fare, who always advocated his cause at court; and (6) he extended his own protection

14 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions to Duclos, whom he had had named to the positionof historiographerof France. D'Hemery did not pay much attentionto the literaryworks of the abbe. Instead, he situatedhim in a networkof familyrelations, clientages, and "protec- tions,"a key term,whichruns throughall the reports.Everyone in the police files was seeking,receiving, or dispensingprotection, from princes and royalmistresses down to two-bitpamphleteers. Just as Mme. de Pompadour got Bernisan abbey, Bernis got Duclos a sincecure. That was how the systemworked. The police did not question the principleof influencepeddling. They assumed it: it wentwithout saying,in the Republic of Lettersas in societyat large. That it prevailedat the middle and lowerranges of literarylife can be appreciated fromthe reportson writerslocated well below the abbe de Bernis. Pierre Laujon, for example, followed a well-traveledroute throughthe upper middle ranksof the Republicof Letters.Like many writers,he began as a law studentand wrote verse forpleasure. The versifyingresulted in a hit at the Opera Comique; the hitattracted protectors; and the protectorsprocured sinecures. It was a classic success story,whose stages stand out clearlyin d'Hemery's narrative: Thisyoung man is veryclever. He wrotesome operas, which were performed at the [OperaComique] and thePetits Apartements of Versailles, which won him the protection of Mme.de Pompadour,of M. le duc d'Ayen,and ofM. le comtede Clermont,who gave himthe post of secretary to hisheadquarters. That prince also madehim secretary to the governmentof Champagne, a positionworth 3,000 livres a year.

To be sure, Laujon had natural assets: wit, good looks ("Signalement:blond and with a very prettyface"), an attorneyfor a father,and a relative who was the mistressof the comte de Clermont.But he played his cards right. So did Gabriel-Fran~oisCoyer, thoughhe had a weaker hand and never rose above a middle rung in the literaryhierarchy. Without wealth, familyconnections,or a pleasing face ("disagreeable and elongated physiognomy"),he none- thelesspersevered in turningout books and belles-lettres.Finally a source of steady income opened up, and he snatched it. He is a priestwho is clever,although a littleinclined toward pedantry. For a longtime he hauntedthe streetsof Paris,broke and withoutemployment. But at last he founda place as tutorfor the princede Turenne.Having served in it to the satisfactionof the prince,the latterrewarded him with the post of almonerfor the colonel-generalof the cavalry.As therevenue of thatpost now goes to thecomte d'Evreux, M. de Turennehas providedhim witha pensionof 1,200 livres,which he will collectuntil the death of d'Evreux.

One of Bernis'proteges, Antoine de LaureZs,occupied a precariousposition on a lower-middlerung of the ladder. When he draftedthe originalreport on Laures, d'Hemery could not predictwhich way the young man's career would turn.On the one hand, he came froma good family:his fatherwas dean of the chamberof

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions audits in Montpellier.On the other,he had run out of money.In fact,he would starve in his garret,if his odes to the king and to Mme. de Pompadour did not bringin some patronage soon. But accordingto a note added later to the report, the verse seemed to be working. He managedto gethimself introduced to themarquise [de Pompadour], thanks to the creditof the abbe de Bernis,and he has boastedthat she gavehim permission to lookout foran affairthat will bring in some money and thatshe will make him succeed. Some time laterhe managedto getan introductionto thecomte de Clermont,to whomhe nowpays court,thanks to theintervention of M. de Montlezun,his relative. "I On a stilllower rung,Pierre-Jean Boudot, the son of a bookseller,compiled, abridged, and translated prodigiously.But he depended on protectorsfor his living."He is veryclever and is veryprotected by the presidentHenault, who got a job in the BibliotheZquedu Roi for him," d'Hemery noted, adding that Boudot was believed to have writtenmost of theAbrege' de 1'histoirede Francethat appeared under Henault's name. Meanwhile,Pierre Dufour, the twenty-four-year-oldson of a cafe owner,was tryingto make his way at the bottomof the literaryworld. He workedas a devil in a printingshop. He peddled prohibitedbooks. He insinuated himselfamong the actors and playwrightsof the Comedie Italienne and the Op- era Comique, thanks to the favor of Favart, his godfather.And somehow he attached himselfto the comte de Rubanprez,who gave him lodging and some ineffectualprotection. D'Hemery put Dufour down as a suspicious character,a scramblerand hustler,who would writeand peddle undergroundliterature while pretendingto keep an eye on it forthe police: "He is a devious littleguy, and very slippery."Dufour actually wrote a great deal-a half-dozenplays and skits,a book of poems, and a novel. But he failedto parlay any of it into a position;so he finally gave up writingand settledfor a job in a bookstore. The constant, unremittingquest for protection stands out everywherein d'Hemery's accounts of literarycareers. Fran~ois Augier de Marigny hears a positionhas opened up in the Invalidesand dashes offsome poems in praise of the comte d'Argenson,who will name someone to it. Charles Batteux cultivatesthe doctor of Mme. de Pompadour and thereforewins a vacant professorshipin the Colle'gede Navarre.Jean Dromgoldnotes thatthe valor of the comte de Clermont is not adequately celebrated in a poem about the battle of Fontenoy.He attacks the poem in a pamphlet and is promptlynamed secretaryto the headquartersof Mgr. le comte de Clermont. Such were the facts of literarylife. D'Hemery recorded them unblinkingly, withoutany moralizingabout toadyismamong the writersor the vanityof protectors. On the contrary,he sounded shocked when a protege deviated from the unswervingloyalty he owed to his patron.Antoine Duranlon had won the favorof the house of Rohan, which had him named principal of the College de Maitre Gervais afterhe had served the familysatisfactorily as a tutor.But once he was installed,Duranlon sided witha factionin the Sorbonne thatopposed the Rohans

1 6 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions in a quarrel over some honorificrights claimed by the abbe de Rohan-Guemenee. The Rohans had Duranlon strippedof his post and exiled to Bresse-and it served him right,d'Hemery observed, for the protege had responded to the protector with "the blackest ingratitude."How laudable, by contrast,was the behavior of F.-A.P. de Moncrif.Moncrif owed everythingto the comte d'Argenson,who as already mentionedhad seen him throughall the steps of an ideal literarycareer: three secretaryships,a cut of the revenue of theJournal des savants,a seat in the Academie fran~aise,an apartmentin the Tuileries,and a position in the postal serviceworth 6,000 livresa year. When Moncrifuncovered some satiresagainst the king and Mme. de Pompadour emanating from the anti-d'Argenson,pro- Maurepas factionof the court,he promptlydenounced theirauthors-and rightly so: not onlyshould a writernever bite the hand thatfed him,he should also smite all hands in the enemy camp. Thus protectionfunctioned as the basic principleof literarylife. Its presence everywherein the reportsmakes anotherphenomenon, the literarymarket place, look conspicuousby its absence. Occasionally d'Hemery mentioneda writerwho attemptedto live by his pen. Gabriel-HenriGaillard, for example, venturedinto the marketfor a while in 1750, afterliving from jobs dispensed by Voltaire(for establishedwriters also functionedas protectorsthemselves):

He was sublibrarianin the Colle'gedes Quatre Nations,an unimportantposition, whichhe quitin order to takeup a job as a children'stutor, which M. de Voltairearranged forhim. He onlystayed in it forsix months, and nowhe livesfrom his writing.... His last worksare fullof praise for Voltaire, to whomhe is completelydedicated.

But soon afterwardshe took up a job on theJournal des savants,which kept him solventfor the restof his career. D'Hemery also mentioneda pamphleteernamed La Barre, who triedto writehimself out of a state of "frightfulindigence" when the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelleput an end to his employmentas a propagandistin the ministryof foreignaffairs. "Having no resourceswhatsoever after the end of the war, he gave himselfover to La Foliot[a bookseller],who keeps him alive and forwhom he writesa fewthings from time to time." But such cases were rare,not because therewas any lack of writerswho needed supportbut because booksellers were unwillingor unable to provide it. And in a later entryin La Barre's report, d'Hemery noted that he had finallysnared "a smalljob on the Gazettede France," thanksto the interventionof the lieutenant-generalof police. When desperate formoney, writers generally fell back on marginalactivities, such as smugglingprohibited books or spyingon the smugglersfor the police. They could not hope to strikeit rich with a best seller,because the publishers' monopoly of book privilegesand the pirating industrymade it impossible to expect much fromsales. They never received royalties,but sold manuscriptsfor lump sums or a certainnumber of copies of the printedbook, whichthey peddled or gave to potential protectors.Manuscripts rarely fetched much, despite the

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions famous case of the 6,000 livrespaid to Rousseau forEmile and the 120,000 livres that went to Diderot for twentyyears of labor on the Encyclope'die.D'Hemery noted thatFran~ois-Vincent Toussaint received only 500 livresfor the manuscript of his best seller, Les Moeur4,although his publisher,Delespine, made at least 10,000 livresfrom it. Toussaint'scase illustrateda generalproposition: "He works a great deal for booksellers,which means that he has a hard time making ends meet." D'Hemery remarked thatJoseph de La Porte supported himselfby his pen, "and has only that to live on," as if thatwere unusual. The common pattern was to aim at enough succesde prestige to attracta protectorand land a place in the royal administrationor a wealthyhousehold. One could also marry.Jean-Louis Lesueur did not leave much of a markin the historyof literature,but his career representedan ideal type fromthe viewpoint of the police: beginningwith little more than talentand amiability,he acquired a respectablereputation, a protector,a sinecure,and a wealthywife.

He is a cleveryoung man, who wrote some comic operas that were performed with a fairamount of success.M. Bertinde Blagnygot to knowhim at thetheatre, befriended him,and gavehim ajob inthe parties casuelles worth 3,000 a year.That is wherehe is now employed. He just marrieda womanwho has broughthim something of a fortune.He certainly meritsit, because he is a niceboy with a mostamiable character.

D'Hemery did not take a sentimentalview of matrimony.He treated it as a strategicmove in the making of a career-or else as a mistake. Writers'wives never appeared as intelligent,cultivated, or virtuousin the reports; they were eitherrich or poor. Thus d'Hemery did not waste any sympathyon C. -G. Coque- ley de Chaussepierre:"He marriedan unimportantgirl from his village,who has neitherbirth nor wealth. Her sole meritis that she is related to the wife of the formerattorney general, who only marriedher [the relation]as a matterof con- science, afterhaving kept her fora long time as his mistress."Similarly, Poiteven Dulimon seemed unlikelyto scribblehis way out of obscurity,because "he made a bad marriagein Besan~on." "Bad" marriagesproduced childrenrather than money, and so the reports show a succession of unhappy peres de famille battling against unfavorabledemographic odds-Toussaint: reduced to hack writingbe- cause he had eleven children;Mouhy: spyingfor the police because he had five; Dreux de Radier and Rene de Bonneval: weighed down withoffspring and there- forecondemned to Grub Streetfor the rest of theirlives. It followed that writerswho needed "good" marriagesbut could not make them should avoid matrimonyaltogether. Apparently most of them did. D'He- merykept an eye on familyconnections, but he mentionedwives and childrenin only two dozen reports.Although the informationis too scatteredto lend itselfto firmconclusions, it seems that the majorityof writers,especially those in the "intellectualtrades," never married.And if theydid, theyoften waited untilthey

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions had acquired a reputationand a sinecure-or even a seat in the Academie Fran- Saise. Thus the career ofJ. -B. -L. Gresset,another success storyin the eyes of the police: firstseveral hitsin the Comedie Fran~aise,then election to the Academie, and finally,at age forty-four,marriage to the daughterof a wealthymerchant in Amiens. But how was a writerto steer clear of passion while workinghis way up to immortality?D'Alembert urged all philosophesto embrace a lifeof chastityand poverty.'2But d'Hemery knew that that was more than flesh would bear. He recognizedthe existence of love just as he acknowledged the economics of marriage. Marmontel and Favart both appear as "amourache's"(in love) in theirre- ports-each withan actresskept by the marechal de Saxe. Marmontel'shistoire is as richin intriguesas Favart's;in fact,it reads like a plot fromone of theirplays: The young playwrightfalls in love with the actress, Mlle. Verriere,behind the back of the old marechal. They dismissa lackey so that theycan give fullrein to theirpassion withoutbeing observed. The lackey,who operates as a spy for the marechal and perhaps for the police as well, learns of theirliaison nonetheless; and soon theyface disaster-the loss of 12,000 livresa year forthe actressand the severingof protectionsfor the author. But all ends well, because Mlle. Verriere apparentlysucceeds in repairingthe damage withthe marechal while Marmontel moves on to one of her colleagues, Mlle. Cleron. Afterlooking througha great many keyholes,either directlyor throughintermediaries, d'Hemery saw quite clearlythat most writerswould take mistresses. Easier said than done. Actresses fromthe Comedie Fran~aise did not often throwthemselves into the arms of impecuniousauthors, even those withphysiog- nomies like Marmontel'sand Favart's.The men of Grub Streetlived withwomen from their own milieu-servants, shop girls,laundresses, and prostitutes.The settingdid not tend to produce happy households,and fewof d'Hemery's histoires had happy endings,especially if seen fromthe woman's point of view. Consider the love lifeof A.-J.Chaumeix, an unknownauthor who arrivedin Pariswith little money and great expectations. At firsthe survivedby part-timeteaching in a boarding school. But the school collapsed, and he retreatedto a roominghouse, where he seduced the servantgirl, after promising marriage. He soon fellout of love with her, however. And as he had begun to make some money by writing anti-Enlightenmenttracts for the booksellerHerissant, the jilted fiancee,who was probably pregnant,demanded reparationsfrom Herissant and managed to collect 300 livresfrom Chaumeix's account. Chaumeix thentook up withthe sisterof anotherfree-lance teacher. This timehe did not escape marriage,even thoughthe woman was "a she-devil,who is worthnothing and fromwhom he got nothing," according to d'Hemery. But some years later, he ran offto a tutoringjob in Russia, leavinghis wifeand a baby daughterbehind. Liaisons were dangerous for a man of letters,because he mightmarry his mistress,no matterhow "bad" the match. D'Hemery reportedthat A.-G. Meus-

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions nier de Querlon fellin love witha procuressand marriedher in order to get her out of prison.Before long he had his back to the wall and a familyto support.An appointment to the Gazettede France followed by the editorshipof the Petites affichessaved him fromdestitution. But he never accumulated enough to provide for himselfin his old age,-wiren he had to be saved once again by a pension grantedby a financier.Several other authorslost theirhearts in brothels,according to the accounts of theirprivate lives thatappeared in d'Hemery's files.A poet named Milon foundhimself unable to escape froma passion forthe procuressof an establishmentat the Carrefourdes Quatre Cheminees,where he was a regular customer. The playwrightand futurejournalist Pierre Rousseau lived with the daughterof a prostitute,whom he passed offas his wife.And two otherhacks, the compiler F.-H. Turpin and a pamphleteer named Guenet, not only frequented prostitutesbut married them. Grub Street marriages occasionally worked out. D'Hemery noted that Louis Anseaume had been livingdown and out as a part- time teacher untilhe marriedthe sisterof an actress in the Opera Comique-"a marriagethat he made fromneed ratherthan frominclination." Two years later he was doing quite well,writing and producingcomic operas. But marriageusual- ly dragged an author down. The normal patternshows up clearlyin two brutal sentences in the report on the indigent playwrightLouis de Boissy: "He is a gentleman. He married his laundress." Seen fromthe perspectiveof the other reports,the marriagesof Rousseau and Diderot-to a semiliteratelaundry maid and the daughterof a washerwoman,respectively-do not look unusual.

If writerscould not expect to live by their pens and to lead a respectable familylife, how did writingitself appear as a career? The dignityof men of letters and the sanctityof theircalling had already emerged as a leitmotivin the worksof the philosophes,13 but no such theme can be found in d'Hemery's reports.Al- thoughthe police recognizeda writerwhen theysaw one and sortedhim out from otherFrenchmen by givinghim a place in d'Hemery's files,they did not speak of him as if he had a professionor a distinctposition in society.He might be a gentleman,a priest, a lawyer, or a lackey. But he did not possess a qualite'or conditionthat set him apart fromnonwriters. As the Frenchphrases suggest,d'Hemery used an ancient social vocabulary, which leftlittle room for modern, free-floatingintellectuals. He may have been out of date in comparisonwith Diderot and d'Alembert,but his language probably corresponded quite well with the conditionsof authorshipin the mid-eighteenth century.The police could not situate the writerwithin any conventional category,because he had not yet assumed his modern form,freed fromprotec- tors,integrated in the literarymarket place, and committedto a career. Given the conceptual cloudinesssurrounding this uncertain position, what sortof statusdid he have?

20 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Althoughthe police reportsdo not provide a clear answer to that question, they contain some revealingremarks. For example, d'Hemery oftenreferred to writersas "boys" (garqons).The expression had nothingto do with age. Diderot appeared as a "boy" in his report,although he was then thirty-seven,married, and a father.The abbe Raynal, the abbe de l'Ecluse-des-Loges,and Pierre Si- gorgnewere all "boys" in theirmid-thirties; and Louis Mannorywas a "boy" of fifty-seven.What set them apart fromwriters classified implicitly as men, and oftenexplicitly as gentlemen,was theirlack of social distinction.Whether journalists, teachers,or abbes, they occupied vague and shiftingpositions in the lower ranks of the Republic of Letters. They moved in and out of Grub Street and clusteredin the sectorof the socio-occupationalspectrum referred to above as the "intellectualtrades." One must fall back on that anachronism,because the Old Regime did not have a category for people like Diderot. "Boy" was the best d'Hemery could do. He would never thinkof applyingsuch a termto the marquis de Saint-Lambert,a militaryofficer, who was onlythirty-three at the writingof his report,or to AntoinePetit, a doctor,who was thirty-one."Boy" impliedmarginal- ity and served to place the unplaceable, the shadowy forerunnersof the modern intellectual,who showed up in the police filesas genssans etat. D'Hemery's use of language should not be attributedto the peculiaritiesof a status-consciousbureaucrat. He shared the prejudices of his time. Thus in the reporton Pierre-CharlesJamet, he remarkedas a matterof course, "He is said to be froma good family";and he noted thatCharles-Etienne Pesselier, a tax farmer, was "a man of honor [galanthomme], which is sayinga lot for a poet and a financier." But d'Hemery was no snob. In his report on Toussaint,he wrote, "He is hardlywell born,since he is the son of a shoemakerin the parishof Saint Paul. He is no less an estimable person for all that." When the reportsdisparage writers, they do not seem to express d'Hemery's personal views so much as attitudes embedded in his surroundings.Of course one cannot distinguishclearly between the personal and the social ingredientsin such statements.But in some places, especiallyin off-guardmoments or casual asides, d'Hemery seemed to articulate general assumptions.For example, in the histoireofJacques Morabin,he observed in a matter-of-factmanner, "He is clever and is the author of a book in two volumesin quarto entitledLa Viede Cice'ron,which he dedicated to M. le comte de Saint Florentin,who protectshim and forwhom he was secretary.It is this lord who gave him to M. Henault." A writercould be passed fromone protectorto another,like a thing. The tone of such remarkscorresponded to the treatmentthat ordinarywrit- ers received. The drubbing given Voltaire by the servants of the chevalier de Rohan is oftencited as an example of the disrespectfor authors at the beginning of the century. But writers who offended important personages were still thrashedin the era of the Encyclope'die.Pierre-Charles--Roy, a fairly distinguished elderlyplaywright was nearlykilled by a pummelingfrom a servantof the comte

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions de Clermont,who wanted to exact revenge fora satiricalpoem writtenduring a disputed election to the Academie Fran~aise. G.-F. Poullain de Saint-Foixterror- ized audiences throughoutthe 1740s by bashing anyone who jeered his plays. He was rumoredto have dispatchedseveral criticsin duels and to have threatenedto cut offthe ears of any reviewer vhopanned him. Even Marmonteland Frerongot involvedin a brawl. While the beau mondestrolled between acts in the foyerof the Comedie Fran~aise,Marmontel demanded satisfactionfor some satiricalremarks that Freronhad leveled at him in the Anne'elitte'raire. Freron suggested that they step outside. Aftercrossing swords a few times,they were separated and turned over to the marshals of France, who handled affairsof honor. But the marechal d'Isenquien dismissed them as "small game, good only for the police," and the affairappeared in d'Hemery's reportsas "comic." To d'Hemery as to everyone else, therewas somethinglaughable about the notionof a writer'shonor and the spectacle of writersdefending it as if theyhad been gentlemen. Of course many writersdid not need to worryabout being protected,physi- cally abused, or made into the buttof jokes. It was unthinkablefor them to marry prostitutesor to be called "boy," for they had an independentdignite, an established positionas magistrates,lawyers, or governmentofficials. But the common writerremained exposed to the brutalitiesof a rough-and-tumbleworld, and his contemporariesdid not raise him on a pedestal. While the philosophes laid the foundationof the modern cult of the intellectual,the police expressed a more ordinary,down-to-earth view of their"game." Writingmight embellish the career of a gentlemanand lead to a sinecurefor a commoner.But it was more likelyto produce ne'er-do-wells.D'Hemery sympathizedwith the familyof Michel Porte- lance, a brightyoung man who mightmake somethingof himself,if only he could give up his penchantpoetry: "He is the son of a domestic servant,and he has an uncle who is a canon, who made him studyand intended to make somethingof him. But he has given himselfover completelyto poetry,which has driven the uncle to despair." At the same time,d'Hemery admired talent.To him, Fontenellewas "one of the most beautifulgeniuses of our century,"and Voltaire was "an eagle in his spiritbut a very bad subject in his opinions." Althoughthe voice of the police inspectorcould be heard in thatremark, it containeda note of respect.D'Hemery gave quite a sympatheticaccount of Montesquieu's difficultieswith L'Esprit des lois and of Montesquieu himself:"He is an extremelyclever man, terriblytroubled with poor eyesight.He has writtenseveral charmingworks, such as the Lettres persanes,Le Templede Gnide,and the celebratedL'Esprit des lois." Such remarkswould have been unthinkableunder Louis XIV, when Vauban and Fenelon were exiled fromcourt for less daringpublications and when Racine gave up writingin order to take up gentility.Nor would theyhave been in place in the nineteenthcentury, when Balzac and Hugo established the heroic style of authorshipand Zola consummatedthe conquest of the marketplace. D'Hemery

22 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions expressed an in-betweenstage in the evolutionof the writer'sstatus. He did not thinkof writingas an independentcareer or a distinctestate. But he respected it as an art-and he knew it bore watchingas an ideological force.

Althoughideology did not exist as a concept for d'Hemery,he ran into it everyday-not as a downwardstreaming of Enlightenmentor an upward surging of revolutionaryconsciousness, but as a formof danger that he encounteredat streetlevel. The notionof danger appears in severalreports, usually in connection withremarks on suspicious characters.D'Hemery used a graduated scale of epi- thets: "good subject" (Fosse), "fairlybad subject" (Olivier, Febre, Neel), "bad subject" (Courtois, Palmeus), and "very bad subject" (Gournay,Voltaire)-or ''not suspicious" (Boissy), "suspicious" (Cahusac), and "extremely suspicious" (Lurquet).He seemed to measure his language carefully,as ifhe were gaugingthe degree of danger in each dossier.And the contextof his remarkssuggests that he associated danger with "bad subjects" in a way that was peculiar to police work under the Old Regime. Palmeus was "a dangerous, bad subject," because he wroteanonymous letters against his enemies to people in authority.Mlle. Fauque de la Cepede lookedjust as bad, because she had embroiledtwo loversby counter- feitingtheir handwriting in fakeletters-an intriguethat might seem trivialtoday but thatd'Hemery took seriously:"That talentis verydangerous in society."The abilityto compromisesomeone seemed especially threateningin a systemwhere individualsrose and fellaccording to their"credit" or reputation.Those most "en credit,"the placemen, or "gensen place," had most to lose by fallingfrom favor. So d'Hemery was especially wary of persons who collected informationin order to damage reputationsin high places. Thus P.-C. Nivelle de la Chaussee: "He has never done anythingsuspicious, yet he is not liked because he is considered dangerous and capable of hurtingpeople secretly." Secrethurting-an idea transmittedby verbssuch as "nuire"and "perdre"(to harm, to ruin)-usually took the formof denunciation,the principlecontrary to protection,which operated throughoutthe system as a countervailingforce. D'Hemery encountereddenunciations everywhere he went.An impecuniouspoet named Courtois hired himselfout to an army captain who wanted to put an enemybehind bars by providinginformation in an anonymousletter to the police. A Mme. Dubois quarreled violentlywith her husband, a sales clerk in a tailor's shop, and then triedto get him shutup in the Bastilleby means of a letterunder a false name, sayingshe had seen him reading a violentpoem against the kingto a crowd duringthe Mardi Gras celebrations.A banker,Nicolas Jouin,had his son's mistressthrown in prison;and the son retaliatedwith an anonymousletter, which broughtthe fatherto the Bastille by revealing that he had writtena series of Jansenisttracts, including a pamphlet against the archbishopof Paris.

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The surveillanceof this slander was a full-timejob forthe police. D'Hemery did not botherwith cases in whichreputations of humble people were at stake.He turned a deaf ear to a cafe waitresswho complained about being pilloriedin a pamphlet by her jilted lover, a poet named Roger de Sery. But he paid close attentionto Fabio Gherardini,_whomaligned the genealogyof the comte de Saint- Severinin a pamphlet; to Pierre-CharlesJamet, who defamed the controllergen- eral and his ancestors;and to Nicolas Lengletdu Fresnoy,who wanted to publisha historyof the Regency,which was "full of very strongthings against familiesin power." When clans and clientageswere slandered,it was an affairof state; forin a systemof courtpolitics, personalities counted as much as principles,and personal creditcould be sapped by a well-placedpamphlet. Thus ideological police work was oftena matterof huntingdown pamphleteers and supressinglibelles, the formthat slander took when it appeared in print. D'Hemery took special care to protect the reputationof his own protectors- notablyBerryer, and the d'Argensonfaction of the court-and his reportssome- times show thatin trailinga writerhe was acting on ordersfrom his superiors.In the reporton Louis de Cahusac, for example, d'Hemery noted that Berryerhad "told me thathe was consideredsuspicious in courtand thathe should be investi- gated closely." Cahusac did not write revolutionarytracts. But he looked like a "bad subject" because he went through a succession of clientages-from the comte de Clermont,to the comte de Saint Florentin,to the tax farmerla Poplin- iere-and came out witha pseudo-Japanesenovel, Grigri, which contained enough informationto ruin a great many reputationsin court. Similarly,Berryer warned d'Hemery to keep an eye onJ.-A.Guer, a "bad subject" in the Machault factionof the court,because he had recentlytraveled to Holland in order to arrangefor the printingof some "suspicious manuscripts." Adjectiveslike "suspicious," "bad," and "dangerous" proliferatedin the reports on such characters. D'Hemery described L.-C. Fougeret de Montbron as particularly"bad," because he specialized in libelles: He recentlyhad printedin The Hague a workof eightto nine sheetsentitled Le Cosmopolite,citoyen du monde.It is a satireagainst the government of France and especially againstM. Berryerand M. d'Argens,who is a particulartarget of his resentment, because he thinksthat he [themarquis d'Argens] had himrun out of Prussia, where he usedto live.

The most dangerous libellistesaimed at the most elevated figuresin the kingdom, firingfrom beyond its borders. In April 1751, d'Hemery noted that L. -M. Bertin de Frateaux "is presentlyin London and was formerlyin Spain. He is stillsaying bad thingsabout his countryand has banded with a group of bad subjects to produce satiresagainst it." A year later d'Hemery reportedthat Bertin was in the Bastille.After seizing some manuscriptsthat he had hidden in Paris,the police had sent an agent to lure him out of London, and had captured him in Calais. He

24 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions remained in prison for two and a half years for having written"libelles of the greatestviolence against the kingand the entireroyal family." D'Hemery's job, as he understoodit, involvedthe protectionof the kingdom by the suppressionof anythingthat could damage the authorityof the king.The scurrilouspamphlets about Louis XV and Mme. de Pompadour,which may strike a modernreader as littlemore thanrumor-mongering, looked likesedition to him. So he reservedhis strongestlanguage forlibellistes like Nicolas Lengletdu Fresnoy, "a dangerous man, who would overthrowa kingdom,"and forthe pamphleteers andfrondeurswho gatheredin the salons of Mme. Doublet and Mme. Vieuxmai- son, "the most dangerous [society]in Paris." These groups did not merelygossip about court intriguesand politics, they wrote up the most damaging news in libellesand manuscriptgazettes, which circulated"under the cloak" everywhere in France.A half-dozenof these primitivejournalists ("nouvellistes") figure in d'He- mery's reports. He took them seriously,because they had a serious effecton public opinion. His spies heard echoes of theirnouvelles in cafes and public gardens, and even among the common people, where news traveled by word of mouth. Thus a spy's account of a harangue by Pidansat de Mairobert, a key nouvellistefrom the Doublet salon and "the worst tongue in Paris," according to d'Hemery: "Mairobert said in the cafe Procope, while talkingabout the recent reforms[the vingtiemetax], that someone fromthe army ought to wipe out the whole court,whose sole pleasure is to devastate the common people and perpe- trateinjustice." Police agents were always picking up seditious talk ("propos"), and writers were oftenjailed forit. D'Hemery kept trackof it all in his files,where one often runsinto suspiciouscharacters like F.-Z. de Lauberivieres,chevalier de Quinsonas, a soldier turnednouvelliste who was "extremelyfree in hispropos," J.-F. Dreux du Radier, exiled "forpropos, F.-P. Mellin de Saint-Hilaire,sent to the Bastille "for having made propos. . . against Mme. de Pompadour," and AntoineBret, also in the Bastille for "seditious proposagainst the king and Mme. de Pompadour." Sometimesone can almost hear the talk. D'Hemery's reporton Pierre-Mathiasde Gournay,a priest,geographer, and "very bad subject," reads like a stenographic account of what was in the air in public places:

On March14, 17 51, while walking through the gardens of the Palais Royal and talking aboutthe police, he said thatthere had neverbeen a moreunjust and barbarousinquisi- tionthan the one thatrules over Paris. It is a tyrannicaldespotism, which everyone holds in contempt.The sourceof it all, he said,is a feebleand sensualking, who doesn't care about any affairsexcept thosethat give him a chance to besot himselfwith pleasure. It is a womanwho holds the reins.... It wasn'tpossible to hearthe rest.

The same theme appeared in the poem that the sales clerk'swife, Mme. Dubois, sent to the police in order to inculpate her husband and in several other poems

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions thatwere set to the tunes of popular songs and sung throughoutthe streets.Police agents heard people fromevery milieu singingverse such as: Lache dissipateurdes biensde tessujets, Toi qui comptesles jours par les mauxque tufais, Esclavedun ministreet d'unefemme avare, Louis,apprends le sortque le ciel te prepare. (Indolentdissipator of your subjects' wealth, You,who reckon the days by the evil that you do, Slaveof a ministerand ofan avariciouswoman, Louis,hear what heaven has in storefor you.)

The king was gettinga bad press in all the media of the time-in books, pamphlets, gazettes,rumors, poems, and songs. So the kingdomlooked rather fragileto d'Hemery.If the supremeprotector lost command of his subjects' loyalty,the whole protectionsystem might collapse. D'Hemery did not foreseea revolution; but in inspectingthe Republic of Letters,he saw a monarchythat was becoming increasinglyvulnerable to hostilewaves of public opinion. While cour- tiersrose and fellthrough shifting clientages, pamphleteers eroded the respectfor the regimeamong the generalpublic; and dangerlurked everywhere-even in the shabby room offthe Place de l'Estrapade, where a "boy" named Diderot was scribblingon a "dictionnaireencyclope'dique." On the face of it, however,it seems odd that d'Hemery should have associated Diderot with danger. Diderot did not write libellesbut Enlightenmenttracts, and the Enlightenmentdoes not appear as a threateningforce in the reports.In fact, it does not appear at all. D'Hemery never used terms like Lumie'resand philosophe.Although he compiled dossierson virtuallyall the philosopheswho had published anythingby 1753, he did not treatthem as a group; and he oftengave them a clean bill of health as individuals.Not onlydid he writerespectfully about older, distinguishedfigures like Fontenelle,Duclos, and Montesquieu; but he also described d'Alembertas "a charmingman, both in his characterand in his wit." Rousseau figuresin the reportsas a pricklycharacter but a person of "eminent merit" and "great intelligence,"who had a special talent for music and literary polemics. Even Voltaire,"a very bad subject," appears primarilyas a notoriety and an intriguerin the world of lettersand the court. D'Hemery mentionedonly two of the famousphilosophic salons-those of Mme. Geoffrinand the marquise de Crequy.And he referredto them only in passing,while completelyneglecting the importantgroups of intellectualswho clusteredaround Mlle. de Lespinasse, Mme. du Deffand,Mme. de Tencin,and the baron d'Holbach. Apparentlyhe did not identifya philosophicmilieu and did not conceive of the Enlightenmentas a coherent movement of opinion, or did not conceive of it at all. The intellectual tide that appears as a mainstreamof culturalhistory in most textbooksdoes not surfacein the police reports.

26 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions It is there,however,-below the surface.Unlike the libellistesand nouvellistes, Diderot representedan insidiousvariety of danger: atheism. "He is a youngman who plays the witand prideshimself on his impiety;very dangerous; speaks of the holy mysterieswith scorn," d'Hemery noted. The report explained that after having writtensuch horrorsas Les Pense'esphilosophiques and Les Biyouxindiscrets, Diderot had gone to prisonfor the Lettresur les aveuglesand now was workingon the "dictionnaireencyclope'dique" with Fran~ois-VincentToussaint and Marc-An- toine Eidous. Those writershad dossiers of theirown in d'Hemery's files,and so did theirpredecessor in the originalEncyclope'die enterprise, Godefroy Sellius, as well as the booksellerswho financedit. They all appeared as dubious characters, who lived in Grub Streetfashion, turning out a compilationhere and a translation there, interspersedwith bits of pornographyand blasphemy.Thus d'Hemery noted that Eidous had furnishedsome of the salacious material for Diderot's Bifouxindiscrets, which one of the Encyclope'diepublishers, Laurent Durand, had put out clandestinelyin 1748, while another Encyclopedist,Jean-Baptiste de la Chapelle, had supplied impietiesfor the Lettresur les aveugles:"He pretendsthat Diderot took the conversationof Saunderson fromhim, which is the strongest thingagainst religionin the Lettresur les aveugles." The cross referencein the reportscertainly made it look as though Diderot kept bad company,and the companyreflected badly on the Encyclope'die,especially afterone of Diderot's collaborators,the abbe Jean-Martinde Prades, was run out of Francefor heresy. In early 17 52, just as the second volume of the Encyclope'- die was being published, the professorsof the Sorbonne discovered impieties scatteredthroughout the thesisthat de Prades had recentlydefended successfully fora licentiatein theirown facultyof theology.It was distressingenough to find philosophicalrot-not to mentionlax examinationprocedures-in the temple of orthodoxy,but de Prades seemed to take his text fromthe PreliminaryDiscourse to the Encyclope'die.He actually supplied Diderot with copy on theologicalques- tions and shared rooms withtwo othercollaborators, the abbes Yvon and Pestre. Moreover, the trio of abbe-Encyclopedistshad ties with abbe-philosophes:the abbe Edme Mallet, another contributorto the Encyclope'die;the abbe Guillaume- Thomas-Fran~oisRaynal, later notoriousas the author of the outspokenHistoire philosophiqueet politique des e'tablissementset du commercedes Europe'ens dans les deux Indes; and the abbe Guillaume-AlexandreMehegan, who later became an editor of the Journalencyclope'dique and went to the Bastille in 1752 for his Zoroastre, whichd'Hemery describedas "an atrociouslibelle against religion, which he dedicated to M. Toussaint." De Prades and Yvon escaped the same fateonly by fleeing fromFrance, but theydid not lose contactwith their former associates. D'Hemery noted thatYvon continuedto writefor the Encyclope'diefrom his place of refugein Holland, and that Pestre was correctingproofs for a pamphlet vindicatingde Prades, who had settledsafely with Frederick II in Prussia. The combinationof hereticalabbes and garretatheists made the Encyclope'die

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions look suspicious; but unlike subsequent commentators,such as the abbe Barruel, d'Hemery did not detect any conspiracybehind it. He apparentlymade no special effortto track down its contributors.Only twenty-twoof them appear in his reports-less than 10 per cgut-ofall those who had writtenat least one articleby 1765, when the finalvolumes of textwere published.Between 1748 and 1753, the book had not yetbecome anathema to the authoritiesand a symbolof the Enlight- enment to the reading public. It was still a legal enterprise,protected by d'He- mery's superior,Lamoignon de Malesherbes, Director of the Book Trade, and dedicated to the comte d'Argenson,Minister of War. So d'Hemery did not treatit as a seriousideological threat,although he kept an eye on the originalnucleus of its authors. But he did see danger in Diderot-not because of Encyclope'disme,a concept that does not appear in the reports,but because Diderot contributedto a current of free-thinkingthat seemed to be flowingeverywhere in Paris. D'Hemery took special note of the fact that Diderot was reportedto mock the sacraments:"He said that when he gets to the end of his life, he will confess and receive [in communion]what they call God, but not from any obligation; merely out of regardfor his family,so thatthey will not be reproachedwith the factthat he died withoutreligion." The distressingthing, as d'Hemery saw it, was that plentyof otherwriters shared that attitude.Several of them appear in the reportswith the epithet "libertin"(free-thinker) attached to theirnames: thus L.-J.-C.Soulas d'Al- lainval,Louis-Mathieu Bertin de Frateaux,and Louis-NicolasGueroult. D'Hemery turnedup popularizersof science,like PierreEsteve, who wrotea materialisttract on the originsof the universe;historians like Fran~oisTurben, who transformeda historyof England into a general indictmentof religion; and a whole flockof impious poets-not merely well-knownlibertins like Voltaire and Piron,but obscure versifierslike L. -F.Delisle de la Drevetiere,J. -B. La Coste, an abbe Ozanne, an abbe Lorgerie,and a clerknamed Olivier. D'Hemery knew what manuscripts these men kept in theirportfolios and what theywere currentlywriting: Lorgerie had just completed "an epistle against religion,"and Delisle was workingon "a poem in whichreligion is mistreated."As he received reportson what was being said in salons and cafes, d'Hemery also knew that the comte de Maillebois had recitedan obscene poem aboutJesus Christ and Johnthe Baptistat a dinnerparty, that the abbe Mehegan openly preached deism, and that Cesar Chesneau du Marsais was an outrightatheist. Surveillance of religionwas an importantpart of police work,and ford'Hemery it seemed to be a matterof measuringa risingtide of irreligion. How thispolicing took place and whyit was importantcan be illustratedby a finalexample, the reportonJacques le Blanc, an obscure abbe who wroteantireli- gious tracts from a room in Versailles. Aftercompleting a treatise entitledLe Tombeaudes pre'Juge's sur lesquelssefondent les principales maximes de la religion,Le

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Blanc began to look for a publisher. He ran into a man called Valentin,who claimed to know his way around the Parisianbook industryand offeredto act as his agent. But a reading of a synopsisof the manuscriptconvinced Valentinthat he could make more money by denouncingLe Blanc to the archbishopof Parisin returnfor a reward.The archbishopsent him to the police withinstructions to set a trap to catch the abbe "enflagrant delit." Valentinand d'Hemery concocted a rendezvous in an eating house at the rue Poissoniere in Paris. Then Valentin instructedLe Blanc to come in disguise,so he would not be recognized,and to bring the manuscript,because two booksellerswere eager to buy it. The abbe changed his clerical gown foran old black suit and an ancientwig. Looking like a down-at-the-heelshighwayman, according to d'Hemery's rathersympathetic account,he arrivedat the appointed time. Valentinintroduced him to the booksellers, who were actually policemen in disguise. Then, just as they were about to close the deal, d'Hemery swooped in, gatheredup the manuscript,and hauled Le Blanc offto the Bastille. The masquerade could have made an amusing histoire. But it appears sad and seriousin d'Hemery's narrative.Valentin is a nastyadven- turer,Le Blanc a misguidedvictim, and the manuscripta workof iniquity.D'He- merysummarized its propositionsas follows:the Bible is a collectionof fairytales; the miracles of Christare fables, used to dupe the credulous; Christianity,Juda- ism,and Islam are equally false; and all proofsof the existenceof God are absurdi- ties "invented for political reasons." The political implicationsof the episode seemed especially importantto d'Hemery: "At the bottom of his manuscriptis written,'Done in the cityof the sun,' whichis Versailles,where he lived when he wroteit, 'in the harem of hypocrites,'which is his monastery." D'Hemery did not separate impietyfrom politics. Although he had no interest in theologicalarguments, he believed that atheismundercut the authorityof the crown. Ultimately,then, libertins constituted the same threatas libellistes,and the police needed to recognizedanger in both forms,whether it struckbelow the belt as personal defamationor spread abroad fromthe garretsof philosophers.

Diderot thereforeappears as the incarnationof danger in the files of the police: "He is a veryclever boy but extremelydangerous." Seen in the lightof 500 otherreports, he also seems to fitinto a pattern.Like many otherwriters, he was a male, in early middle age, from a familyof educated artisans and a small city outside Paris. He had married a woman of equally humble origins,and he had spent three monthsin the prison of Vincennes as well as a great deal of time in Grub Street.Of course many otherpatterns can be seen in the reports.No socio- logical formulawill do justice to them all, forthe Republicof Letterswas a vague, spiritualterritory, and its authorsremained scatteredthrough society, without a clear professionalidentity. Nonetheless, in identifyihngliderot,d'Hemery distin-

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This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions guished a critical element in the Old Regime and one that especially needed watchingfrom the perspectiveof the police. By watchingthe police watch the likesof Diderot,one can see the dim figureof the intellectual'4take on a percepti- ble shape and emerge as a fowe to be reckonedwith in earlymodern France.

Notes

This essay was writtenas chapterfour of a book to be publishedin 1984 by Basic Books, Inc., entitledThe Great Cat Massacre and OtherEpisodes in FrenchCultural History. A prelimi- narysketch appeared inJ. P. Hardy andJ. C. Eade, eds., Paperspresented at theFifth David NicholSmith Memorial Seminar, Canberra 1980 (Oxford,1983), pp. 143-55. 1. This studyis based on the manuscriptreports of Joseph d'Hemery in the Bibliotheque Nationaleof Paris,nouv, acq. fr.10781-10783. All quotationscome fromthat source and can be identifiedeasily in themanuscript, because thereports are arrangedalphabetically accordingto the names of the authorsunder investigation. I plan to publishthe fulltexts of the reportsin a volume to be edited in collaborationwith Robert Shackletonand eventuallyto use themfor a book on the riseof the intellectualin France.Although they have neverbeen studiedas a whole,the reports have been consultedfor a fewbiographi- cal works,notablyJeunesse de Diderot1 713-1 753 (Paris,1939) by FrancoVenturi. 2. Jacques Hebrail and Joseph de La Porte,La Francelitte'raire (Paris, 1756). The authors explainedthe character and purposeof theirwork in an 'Avertissement"which contained a generalappeal forbibliographical information to be sentin by anyone,and especiallyby unknownwriters. The new informationappeared in the formof "additions"in the edition of 1756, and "supple'ments"were publishedin 1760, 1762, 1764, and 1784. In the edition of 1762, p. v, the authorsestimated that somewhat more than 1,800 "auteurs"were then alive in France.Allowing for growth in the population,in the prestigeof authorship,and in book production,it seems likelythat about 1,500 Frenchmenhad publisheda book or pamphletin 1750. 3. On the much-debatedquestions concerning generations, cohorts, and otherage groups, see CliftonCherpack, "The LiteraryPeriodization of Eighteenth-CenturyFrance," Publica- tionsof the Modern Language Association of America, LXXXIV (1969), 321-28, and Alan B. Spitzer,"The HistoricalProblem of Generations,"The American Historical Review, LXXVIII (1973), 1353-83. 4. On the Saint Malo-Geneva line as a demarcationof socio-culturalhistory, see Roger Chartier,"Les deux France.Histoire d'une geographie,"Cahiers d'histoire, XXIV (1979), 393-415. Fora discussionof the Paris-provincequestion, see RobertEscarpit, Sociologie de la litte'rature(Paris, 1968), pp. 41-44. Of course as Parisis located in the north,one might expect a map of the birthplacesof authorsliving in Paristo under-representthe south.It also seems unreasonableto expect a close correlationbetween the birthplaces of authors and crude indicatorsof literacysuch as those discussedin Fran~oisFuret and Jacques Ozouf,Lire et e'crire. L'Alphabitisation desfranqais de CalvinaJules Ferry, 2 vols. (Paris,1977). 5. See thearticle on FavartinJ.-F and L.-G.Michaud, eds., Biographie universelle (Paris, 1811- 1852), vol. XIII, pp. 440-42 as well as the more scholarlystudies of Georges Desnoire- terres,Epicuriens et lettre's(Paris, 1879) and Auguste Font,Favart, l'Ope'ra-Comique et la comidie-vaudevilleaux XVIIe etXVIIIe sie'cles(Paris, 1894).

30 REPRESENTATIONS

This content downloaded from 150.135.114.84 on Sat, 27 Jul 2013 13:50:28 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6. In almost half the cases, the embastillementcame afterthe completionof d'Hemery's report.Despite theirvigilance concerning suspicious characters, the police did not orient theirsurveillance toward the criminalelement in the Republic of Lettersbut rather attemptedto do a generalsurvey of all the writersthey could find. 7. The attemptsof officialsto increase the power of the state by systematicstudy of its resourcesgoes back to Machiavelliand thedevelopment of "reasonof state" as a principle of government.Although this tendency has usuallybeen treatedas an aspect of political theory,it also belongsto thehistory of bureaucracyand to thespread of "rationalization" (ratherthan Enlightenment),as Max Weber understoodit. For a recent surveyof the literatureon the intellectualhistory side of the question,see Michael Stolleis,"Arcana imperiiund Ratiostatus. Bemerkungen zur politischenTheorie des friihen17. Jahrhun- derts,"Verdffentlichung derJoachim-Jungius-Gesellschaft derWissenschaften, no. 39 (Gdttingen, 1980),5-34. 8. Thus thereport onJean-Fran~ois de Bastide:"He is a Proven~al,is wittybut not talented, and fucksMadame de Valence,the mistressof M. Vanoe, the ambassadorof Holland." 9. See RobertMandrou, De la culturepopulaire aux XVIIe etXVIIIe siecles.La Bibliothe'quebleue de Troyes(Paris, 1964). 10. Formore informationon all theseintrigues, see theworks cited in note five. 11. The characterof Laures' poetry,now deservedlyforgotten, can be appreciatedfrom a glance at hisEpitre a M. le comtede Bernis(Paris, 1752) and hisEpitre a Madamela marquise de Pompadour(n.p., n.d.). 12. See d'Alembert,Essai sur la socit'te'des gens de lettreset desgrands, sur la rtputation,sur les meceneset sur les retcompenses litte'raires, in d'Alembert's Melanges de litterature,d'histoire et de philosophie(Amsterdam, 1773; 1sted., 1752). 13. This themeappears mostprominently in d'Alembert'sEssai sur la sociitedes gens de lettres, Voltaire'sLettres philosophiques of 1734, the anonymoustract Le Philosopheof 1743, and the articlePhilosophe in volumeXIII of theEncyclopt'die. 14. I have used the term"intellectual" without defining it, because I have triedto establishits boundariesby reconstructingthe contemporarycontext of "authors." I should explain, however,that I do not thinkthat intellectuals and authorsare the same thingand thatI derivemy conceptof theintellectual from sociologists like Karl Mannheim, Edward Shils, and PierreBourdieu. See especiallyBourdieu, Questions de sociologie(Paris, 1980).

PolicingWriters in Pariscirca 1 750 3 1

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