(Author’s note: below is Part 3 of my series of blog posts on Adam Smith’s second visit to Paris.)

I never saw so much wit, grace, and beauty united in one person. Mme de Boufflers, at the age of thirty, had all the bloom of twenty: she was justly esteemed the most amiable woman of her time; and the more she was known, the more she was admired. (Dutens 1806, pp. 8-9, quoted in Mossner 1970, p. 425)

The salons of pre-revolutionary Paris were the social space of Parisian high society, or le monde, and the salon of Marie Charlotte Hippolyte de Saujon (Madame la Comtesse de Boufflers, pictured below) was the most splendid and sumptuous of all. As it happens, Adam Smith himself may have become acquainted with the salon society of Paris through the Countess de Boufflers, who was the “principal mistress” of Louis François de Bourbon, the 6th Prince of Conti (Mossner 1970, p. 434). Her salon met on Friday evenings in the Prince of Conti’s urbane residential headquarters, the Temple, a medieval compound that was originally built in the 13th century by the Knight Templars and subsequently destroyed during the tumult of the French Revolution (ibid., p. 459). (For a period painting depicting the intimate setting of her salon, see “Supper of the Prince de Conti at the Temple” (1766) by Michel Barthelemy.)

Although neither Boufflers nor the Temple are mentioned in Smith’s surviving Paris correspondence, other evidence indicates that Smith was personally acquainted with the Comtesse and was a guest at her salon, which attracted some of the foremost men of letters of the Enlightenment era, including such leading lights David Hume, who lived in Paris from 1763 to 1765 and became close friends with the Comtesse; Horace Walpole, who attended many a soiree in the Temple during his five visits to Paris; and J. J. Rousseau, who resided there before departing with Hume to London in January 1766 (Mossner 1970, p. 511). Was Adam Smith among her famed guests?

In a letter addressed to her close friend and confidant David Hume, which is dated 6 May 1766, the Comtesse de Boufflers writes: “Je vous ai dit, ce me semble, que j’ai fait connoissance avec M. Smith, et que, pour l’amour de vous, je l’avois fort accueilli.” (Stewart 1970, p. 185. “I told you, it seems to me, that I became acquainted with Mr. Smith, and that, for your sake, I warmly welcomed him.” My translation.) In other words, the Comtesse de Boufflers tells Hume that she “warmly welcomed” Smith (“je l’avois fort accueilli”). This declaration implies that Smith must have attended her famed salon at least once in the spring of 1766, i.e. during his second visit to Paris. In fact, Smith may have visited the Temple and Madame de Boufflers more than once, for in another letter addressed to David Hume, this one dated 25 July 1766, the Comtesse reports: “Je fait priet votre ami Mr Smith de venir chez moi. Il me quitte a l’instant.” (Stewart 1970, p. 185. “I prayed for your friend Mr Smith to pay me a visit. He’s leaving me right now.” My translation.)

What did Smith and Boufflers and her dinner-party guests talk about? Did they, for example, discuss the nature of human sympathy or the finer points of Smith’s impartial spectator? In her May 6 letter to Hume, the Comtesse de Boufflers reports that she is reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments: “Je lis actuellement sa théorie des sentiments moraux: je n’en suis pas fort avancée, mais je crois de cela me plaira.” (Stewart 1970, p. 185. “I am currently reading his theory of moral sentiments: I am not very advanced, but I think I will like it.” My translation.) Did she begin reading Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in anticipation of meeting Smith, or did meeting Smith leave such a great impression on the Comtesse as to motivate her to read his first magnum opus? Either possibility is plausible.

It is also, however, possible that Smith did not discuss his philosophical work at all, that he just had a good time. Although some scholars, such as Dena Goodman (1989, 1996), have described the central role the Paris salons played in Europe’s literary and intellectual circles, other scholars, such as Nancy Collins (2006) and Antoine Lilti (2005), have painted a less rarified and more snobbish picture of these sumptuous salons, describing them as “frivolous and light-hearted” (Ketton-Cremer 1966, p. 211). (Cf. Lilti 2009, p. 10: “Salons were mostly organized as little courts, revolving around the hostess, and ruled by the ideals of politesse, witty conversation, social distinction, and galanterie.”)

Whichever of these pictures of the pre-revolutionary salon is the more accurate one, perhaps it was at the Comtesse de Boufflers that Smith obtained introductions to such leading lights as Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, an illustrious femme de lettres and one of the most well-known and best-selling European novelists of her day, or to Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, one of the most original and preeminent économistes of the Age of Enlightenment.

To be continued …