Early life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

by William H. Fredlund

1712 June 28, born GENEVA.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is born to Isaac Rousseau, a clockmaker, and his wife Susan Bernard. JJ has older brother François(born 1705.) The Rousseau home is at 40 Grand Rue. Building still there with plaque. Rousseau family of French Huguenot origin, had been in Geneva for five generations.(Since 1549)

1712 July 1.
Mother Susan Bernard dies.

1712 July 4.
JJ baptized in Saint Pierre the Calvinist cathedral of Geneva where Calvin preached. From 1712 to 1717, JJ lives in the family home on Grand Rue of elegant Geneva.(mother's family).

1717.
Father Isaac's poor management puts family in bad situation have to move out of big house and into tiny apt in unfashionable Geneva of the workers. This is JJ whole life: aspirations of the upper class. Reality: no money.

1722.
Isaac gets into fight, challenges a duel, gets summoned by authorities. Decides to flee Geneva. Isaac lives rest of his life outside the boundaries of Geneva in nearby Switz. Thus in 1722 when JJ is now age ten he is left in Geneva to the mercies of his mother's family. Basically he is an "orphan" for the rest of his youth.

1722 BOSSEY.
Uncle sends JJ and his cousin Benjamin to a country parson named Jean Jacques Lambercier nearby Geneva. Lambercier has lovely single sister who helps. JJ discovers he loves being spanked by Mlle. Lambercier.

1724.
JJ back in Geneva in his uncle's house.

1725.
JJ was apprenticed to an engraver, Geneva, Abel Ducommun (1705-?) Now JJ has descended again into lower class contrary to all the upper class life of his uncle's house. His self conscious life. Buying the pears. He absolutely hates his life as a lower-class apprentice. Thought of himself as a "special" person from a special family. This is his first experience with the lower classes and he hates them when he is among them up close.

1728 March.
JJ goes for country walk with friends. They get locked out of the city gates: too late. Decides to run away

1728 SAVOY, ANNECY March 21.
Arrives Annecy. Sent to meet Françoise-Louise de la Tour, Baronne (Baroness) de Warens. Mme de Warens, aged 29. (JJ always call her "Maman," Mama.) What did JJ look like? They said he was "attractive." (See JJ's own description of himself at this moment of his life in his Confessions, Oxford World's Classics edition, p. 47: "I was not what you would call handsome, but my figure was neat and trim; I had a shapely foot, a slender leg, a jaunty air, a lively face, a pretty mouth, black eyebrows and hair, eyes which were small and quite deepset, but which flashed with the fire that burned in my veins.")

1728 TURIN (March).
Guest at house of Mme suggests JJ go to a hospice for Protestant converts to Roman Catholicism. JJ sets off walking with companion over Alps to Turin.

1728.
Leaves the hospice hates it. Gets job with Countess de Vercellis, Palazzo Cavour as a footman. Hideous descent for this proud "citoyen" of Geneva. His cavorting in the alleys of Turin exposing bottom!

1728 December.
The Countess died: "a woman who farts is not dead." And died. JJ again alone out on the streets.

1729 SAVOY, ANNECY.
JJ runs away from Turin with friend. Walks back to Savoy, Annecy, goes to house of Mme de Warens. JJ is welcomed into house. At suggestion of friend, JJ enters a Catholic seminary in Annecy. He hates.

1731 CHAMBERY, SAVOY.
Mme has moved to apt in Chambery. JJ comes.(age 19) Tearful reunion. Complex household with Mme's "accountant" Claude Anet living there too and her secret lover. He attempts suicide. Was this because of JJ? JJ gets job in the Survey Office. Lasts 8 months. (never does like a steady job of any kind. Hates being told what to do.) Now JJ enters music actively. Studies then begins giving music lessons in Chambery. Active for rest of his life in music: writes it and makes living copying music.

1733.
Life continues in Chambery for the menage a trois. JJ is 21 and JJ Mme (Maman) decides it is time to end his virginity. She openly proposes to alter this situation and he accepts. No doubt Claude Anet discerned what was going on. How did JJ feel? ("I felt as if I had committed incest.")

1734.(March)
Claude Anet dies of illness.

1735, LES CHARMETTES.
Mme de Warens leases small house in the country valley of Les Charmettes outside Chambery. Here JJ & Mme live tranquil in summer of '35 and summer of '36 before she later takes another lover (Wintzenreid). These summers of '35, '36, '37 provide JJ with the romantic mythology of house in country with bubbling brooks and flowers and walks in the country and all the other romantic visions of nature linked to Love! All this is when JJ begins to write seriously.

1737.
JJ now turns 25, age of majority in Geneva. He now has right to claim his inheritance from his mother's estate. So he sets off to Geneva to get lawyer to help. He received 30,000 florins which he brings to Mme to help with expenses.

1737 Fall.
JJ journeys to Montpellier for a "cure" (also may have been to get away from Mme new lover Wintzenreid). Relations not good now between JJ and Mme. The new man in the house has spoiled the dream. But JJ goes back anyway.

1738.
JJ back at Les Charmettes in a new menage-a-trois with Wintzenreid the new young lover ("tall, pale well-built") a former hairdresser. JJ miserable summer of 1738 having to share Mme with W. Ruined the whole romantic idyll. His writing increases and it is summer 1738 when he publishes first piece. Writes on Life of Solitude (Remember Werther talks of the same thing). Here is one of the cornerstones of Romantic imagery: man happy in nature.

1739.
JJ spends summer at Les Charmettes with Mme and Wintzenreid. Here have situation so much like Sorrows of Young Werther. The threesome and JJ stays there and lives it and suffers.

1740.
JJ (age 27) decides to leave Les Charmettes, can't stand the threesome. Time to spread his wings and fly away from Maman.

1740, LYONS.
April JJ goes to Lyons. Joins household of Jean de Mably, Provost General of province of Lyons for King. JJ enters one of most sophisticated well educated households of Lyons. Enlightenment, Progress, Science, political theory, technology. Mably: Believe the credo of Bacon, that science will save us. JJ to be the tutor to little Mably children. JJ project for Mably children: drop Latin and Greek. Part of the old vs new. Battle of the Books of 17thC.

1742, PARIS.
The ambitious young man comes to the capital to make his name and fortune. Here JJ is like another fictional character Julien Sorel. Moves into Hotel Saint Quentin near the Sorbonne (Left Bank). Arrives Paris with letters of introduction to all the important people thanks to the Mably family. Thus JJ connected to upper class from the start. (contrary to the myth of the poor talented poet who makes it on his talent). JJ meets immed the secretary of the Academy of Archaeology who invites JJ to submit his new system for musical notation to the academy and soon JJ attends session. JJ's play Narcisse, brings to Paris, shows to the playwright Marivaux. M. encourages. Narcisse shows us JJ in the world of Watteau. Same playful gay light inconsequential world of mid century Paris that drove all into arms of Romanticism. JJ there too. Narcisse: Valere loves Angelique. A and sister pay painter to paint picture of Valere in the clothes of a woman. Valere falls in love with the painting. Perfect:! homosexuality, narcissism, transvestite all perfect fo gay world of Paris mid-18thC.

1743 VENICE.
JJ gets job as secretary to Amb to Venice. summer '43 he arrives Venice. JJ has NO interest in Venetian painting. Isn't that interesting? He loved music, but no love of painting.

1744 PARIS.
JJ back in Paris. Moves in and lives for one year with his friend, Don Manual Ignacio Altuna, Spanish nobleman.

1745 Spring.
Altuna returns to Spain. JJ impoverished not a penny so now reduced again to that terrible poverty that alternates with living among the rich. Moves back to the Hotel Saint-Quentin. Meets Therese Levasseur (lives with mother & father in the Rue Saint-Jacques) "I declared to her in advance that I would never abandon her and never marry her."

1746.
JJ joins the Dupin family as paid retainer. For next five years helps both husband and wife with their publications. does research. prepares for publication books. Son Françueil and he work on science projects together.

1748.
Birth of JJ's first child to Therese. JJ decided and convinced Therese to get rid of the little unwanted bastard. Oct, Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws is published. Montesquieu was friend of the Dupins. JJ working with Diderot on the project of the Encyclopedia the most characterisitc of mid-century Enlightenment projects. To gather all human knowledge together in one publication. JJ defines self as "chameleon." Meets Mme d'Epinay and begins to frequent her castle fifteen miles from Paris. Mme d'Epinay is the lover of his friend Françueil de Dupin.

1749 July 23.
Diderot arrested thrown into prison in Vincennes. August JJ conversion on road to visit hot day hot walk.(Reminds us of Paul on the road to Damascus and Luther on the road home in storm.) JJ reads in the Mercure de France about the competition of the Academy of Dijon. Talks with Diderot about it. Was it Diderot who chose the side he should take since would be least expected?????
Here we have the CENTRAL REVERSAL OF ENLIGHTENMENT PARIS:
JJ at work on the Encyclopedia writes essay that attacks the whole premise of optimistic progressive Encyclopedia. One of most violent changes of direction in intellectual history. Diderot's optimistic prospectus for the Encyclopedia appears at exactly the same time as does Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and the Sciences. JJ's Discourse refutes everything the Encyclopedia stands for. Science is evil says JJ. Harmful effects. Science is rooted in vice. sciences such as jurisprudence are only refective of human vice. Denounces the Bacon dream of science increasing wealth and thus improving man's life. JJ says this is just lust for luxury.Frugality is good for us. The arts and sciences cast garlands of flowers over the chains that men bear, crushing in them that sense of original liberty for which they are born, making them like their slavery, and turning them into what is called a civilized people. We must always follow commands; never our own nature. Modern man will finally explode and cause him to beg to have his innocence and ignorance and poverty back.
"Setting myself against everything that excites admiration today, I can only await a universal outcry." Instead they gave him the PRIZE!!!!!!!!!!!! Voltaire rejected totally the essay that was tolerated in some circles in Paris. He found its reactionary views totally contrary to his own progressive ones.

1750-1757, HOTEL DE LANGUEDOC.
JJ moves in to Hotel with Therese, lives there surrounded by Therese family esp her mother who is constant interfering woman. July, Rousseau wins the Dijon prize. 1751, Mercure de France begins to publish letters about it and thus it becomes the great cause celebre of Paris,

1751, January.
Discourse published in Paris. Mercure publishes many letters about it. June, first volume of the Encyclopedia appears. 1753 Feb. JJ opera, Le Devin de Village, performed in Paris to huge success. (Devin=diviner or soothsayer) pastoral drama of true love. Complete simplicity. shephards and shepherdesses. Innocence wins out. Purity of country. Here is the Rousseau world. Le Devin de Village is performed before the King at Versailles.

1754, Summer.
JJ and Therese visit Geneva. Rousseau welcomed as celebrity. JJ considers resettling permanently back in Geneva. Has brief last meeting with Mme de Warens. Returns to Paris by Oct. Samuel Johnson to James Boswell: "I think Rousseau one of the worst of men; a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been. Three or four nations have expelled him; and it is a shame that he is protected in this country!"

1755, August.
Publish the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality in Amsterdam and copies are on sale in Paris in the summer of 1755.