Note: Following my introduction (see my previous post), the next part of my revised paper “Adam Smith in the City of Lights”explains how Smith found himself in Paris in February 1764.

The road to Paris

Qu’elle me semblait la plus belle et la plus charmante de toutes les villes barbares. (Sorbière 1660, p. 574)

She [Paris] appears to me the most beautiful and charming of barbarian cities. (my translation)

Why did Adam Smith travel to Paris in early 1764? The second-largest capital in 18th-century Europe (after London), the City of Light boasted a comprehensive system of street lamps as well as many magnificent public spaces, including the Champs-Élysées, “la plus belle avenue du monde” (Hermant 1856, p. 226); the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, which would later become the Panthéon, the final resting place of such literary giants as Rousseau and Voltaire; and the Place de la Concorde, where one monarch was celebrated with a statue and another was put to death by a revolutionary tribunal. Finding himself in this magnificent European capital for the first time on 13 February 1764, Adam Smith had a powerful patron, British politician Charles Townshend, to thank for this chapter in his life, for the doors of this great city were first opened to Smith by Townshend in 1759. It was in that year that Smith published his first magnum opus, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and first came to Townshend’s attention.

Townshend was a prominent politician who, four years earlier, had married into the British aristocracy when he wed a wealthy heiress, Caroline Campbell, the eldest daughter of the second Duke of Argyll and the widow of Francis, Lord Dalkeith, the eldest son of the second Duke of Buccleuch. Townshend thus became stepfather to Lady Dalkeith’s three surviving children, two boys and a girl: Henry Scott (1746–1812), Hew Campbell Scott (1747–1766), and Frances Scott (1750–1817). (See Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave 2020, p. 33.) The eldest child, Henry (whose portrait is pictured below), was heir to the title of “Duke of Buccleuch”. A direct descendant of King Charles II of England and King Henry IV of France, Duke Henry was born into one of the wealthiest and most prestigious families in Scotland. Moreover, upon reaching the age of majority in September of 1767, Duke Henry would become one of Scotland’s largest landowners.

For his part, Charles Townshend was contemplating sending Henry to the continent upon the completion of his stepson’s studies at Eton (see, e.g., Hume’s 12 April 1759 letter to Smith; Letter #31). At the time, the “grand tour” was a rite of passage for the sons of elite British families, “the ‘crown’ of [their] education” (Cohen 2001, p. 129). Smith himself describes this aristocratic custom in Book V of The Wealth of Nations (Smith 1981, Glasgow edition, p. 773 (¶36)) as follows:

In England it becomes every day more and more the custom to send young people to travel in foreign countries immediately upon their leaving school, and without sending them to any university. Our young people, it is said, generally return home much improved by their travels. A young man who goes abroad at seventeen or eighteen, and returns home at one and twenty, returns three or four years older than he was when he went abroad ….

At some point in the summer of 1759, Townshend travelled to Scotland and met with Smith personally in Glasgow to discuss his appointment as Henry’s private tutor and guardian during his Grand Tour. (See Smith’s 17 September 1759 letter to Townshend (Letter #39, reprinted in Mossner & Ross, 1987), where Smith writes, “I had the pleasure of seeing you at Glasgow.”) After meeting with Townshend in Glasgow in the summer of 1759, Smith then drew up a list of fifty-three books for the future Duke to study. (Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave 2020, p. 38.) Among Smith’s reading list were all the classics of ancient Greek and Roman literature, including Homer, Sophocles, and Virgil. (See Letter #41, note 2, reprinted in Mossner & Ross, 1987.)

Although Smith had already agreed in principle to accept the appointment as Henry’s tutor, in a letter to Smith dated 25 October 1763 (Letter #76), Townshend gives Smith an opportunity to back out of their arrangement:

The time now drawing near when the Duke of Buccleugh intends to go abroad, I take the liberty of renewing the subject to you: that if you should still have the same disposition to travel with him I may have the satisfaction of informing Lady Dalkeith and His Grace of it, and of congratulating them upon an event which I know that they, as well as myself, have so much at heart. The Duke is now at Eton: He will remain there until Christmass. He will then spend some short time in London, that he may be presented at Court, and not pass instantaneously from school to a foreign country; but it were to be wished He should not be long in Town, exposed to the habits and companions of London, before his mind has been more formed and better guarded by education and experience.

By the time Smith had received Townshend’s letter, the 1763/64 academic year at Glasgow University had already begun. As a result, Smith would have to either politely decline Townshend’s offer or take a leave of absence from his professorship at Glasgow University. In the event, Smith accepted the offer but tried to postpone the date of departure until after the end of the academic year. In a letter dated 12 December 1759 to his friend David Hume (Letter #78), Smith reports:

The day before I received your last letter I had the honour of a letter from Charles Townshend, renewing in the most obliging manner his former proposal that I should travel with the Duke of Buccleugh, and informing me that his Grace was to leave Eton at Christmas, and would go abroad very soon after that. I accepted the proposal, but at the same time expressed to Mr Townshend the difficulties I should have in leaving the University before the beginning of April, and begged to know if my attendance upon his Grace would be necessary before that time. I have yet received no answer to that letter, which, I suppose, is owing to this, that his Grace is not yet come from Eton, and that nothing is yet settled with regard to the time of his going abroad. I delayed answering your letter till I should be able to inform you at what time I should have the pleasure of seeing you.

Although the remaining correspondence between Smith and Townshend has not survived, Townshend must have rejected any postponement of Duke Henry’s Grand Tour, for by all accounts (see, e.g., Rae 1895, p. 174; Phillipson 2010, p. 183; Ross 2010, p. 210) Smith was in London by mid-January 1764, and he and the young Henry departed for the coast of France soon thereafter.