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

Je suis comme ces folles jeunes qui écoutent un amant sans penser au regret, toujours voisin du Plaisir. Grondez-moi, battez-moi, tuez-moi! Mais j’aime Monsier Smith, je l’aime beaucoup. Je voudrais que le diable emporta tous nos gens de letters, et qu’il me raptous Mr Smith. [My translation: Oh these Scotsmen! These Scotsmen! They come to please me and distress me. I am like a foolish young girl who listens to her lover without ever thinking of loss, which always accompanies pleasure. Scold me, beat me, kill me! But I love Mr. Smith, I love him greatly. I wish the devil would take all our men of letters, so long as brings Mr. Smith back to me.]

–Letter from Madame Riccoboni to David Garrick, reprinted in Nicholls 1976, pp. 88-89

Are these the words of a woman with a mere “schoolgirl crush on the Scot” (Leddy 2013, p. 11), or are they something more? Are they not a romantic confession of a woman madly in love with Adam Smith? As it happens, the author of this love letter was none other than Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, an accomplished actress in the famed Théâtre-Italien as well as an illustrious femme de lettres, one of the most well-known and best-selling European novelists of her day (Darnton 1998, p. 255). But she was not only 10 years older than Smith; perhaps she was also prone to literary exaggeration.

At the same time, her love letter is addressed to a close friend and confidant, fellow actor and author, the English thespian David Garrick, who she had befriended during his visit to Paris in 1763 and with whom she maintained a years-long correspondence. (See Nicholls 1976, pp. 18-19.) But could Madame Riccoboni’s letter have been meant for Adam Smith himself? That is, was it a confession of sorts? According to one Smithian scholar (Fay 1956, p. 6), Madame Riccoboni may have given this letter to the object of her affections for him to deliver in person to Garrick upon his return to London, but Smith never delivered Riccoboni’s letter.

Moreover, the first reference to or mention of Smith in Madame Riccoboni’s correspondence occurs as early as May 1766, during Smith’s second visit to Paris. Specifically, in a letter dated 21 May 1766, Riccoboni writes:

Il vient ici deux Anglois, l’un est ami de Garrick, l’autre est éscossois; mon Dieu quel Escossois! Il parle durement avec grandes dents–il est laid comme un diable. C’est Mr Smith, autheur d’un livre que je n’ai point lu. Je lui parle de l’Escosse et sur tout des montagnes. [My translation: Two Englishmen have arrived here. One is a friend of Garrick’s; the other is Scottish; my God what a Scot! He speaks with difficulty through big teeth–and he’s ugly as fuck. He’s Mr. Smith, author of a book I haven’t read. I talk to him about Scotland, and especially about mountains.]

–Letter reprinted from Madame Riccoboni to Robert Liston, reprinted in Nicholls 1976, pp. 70-72

Why does Madame Riccoboni report this initial encounter with Smith, and why is it significant? As it happens, her May 21 letter is addressed to Sir Robert Liston, a Scotsman who at the time had much in common with Smith. Like the Scottish philosopher, Liston was also residing in Paris in his capacity as a tutor to two sons of a British political figure, Sir Gilbert Elliot, the 3rd Baronet of Minto. (See Charrier-Vozel n.d.; Nicholls 1976, p. 20.) It is thus most likely that Riccoboni is simply informing Liston about the arrival of a fellow Scotsman and fellow tutor in Paris. But at the same time, despite Smith’s difficulty in speaking, his big teeth, and his ugly face (“Il parle durement avec grandes dents–il est laid comme un diable”), it sure sounds like she might be flirting with Smith, talking about Scotland and mountains. Could they have fallen in love that summer?

Alas, all we know for certain is that they must have met on more than one occasion after their initial meeting in May of 1766, for according to Smith himself, in a letter to his friend David Hume dated 6 July 1766, Smith had discussed the news of the so-called “Hume-Rousseau affair” with Riccoboni–along with several other persons as well–specifically, how, or whether, Hume should respond to Rousseau’s baseless accusations: “I am thoroughly convinced that Rousseau is as great a Rascal as you, and as every man here believes him to be; yet let me beg of you not to think of publishing anything to the world upon the very great impertinence which he has been guilty of to you…. Your whole friends here wish you not to write, the Baron [d’Holbach], D’Alembert, Madame Riccaboni, Mademoiselle Riancourt, Mr Turgot etc. etc.” (Letter #93)

This is a significant revelation because Rousseau’s first open declaration against Hume, accusing his Scottish host of abject treachery, does not occur until 23 June 1766. (See, e.g., Klein, et al., 2021.) Most likely, then, Smith and Riccoboni, along with the rest of their intellectual and artistic circle, discussed l’affaire Rousseau–Hume at length at one of the famed salons of Paris sometime between receiving news of Rousseau’s June 23 indictment and the 6th of July, i.e. the date of Smith’s letter to Hume. Beyond this, however–beyond their initial meeting and subsequent discussions about Hume and Rousseau–it is impossible to say with any degree of certainty whether Smith and Riccoboni were involved in a romantic relationship.

Aside from Madame Riccoboni, did Adam Smith develop any other romantic attachments during any of his three visits to Paris? Did he fall in love? The Abbé Colbert, Smith’s closest confidant during his time in Toulouse (March 1764 to October 1765), alludes to this possibility in a letter to Smith dated either 18 February 1766 or 18 September 1766 (see Letter #91, which is also reprinted in Buchan 2006, p. 77; Fay 1956, p. 157; Mossner & Ross 1987, p. 111; Ross 2010, p. 227):

Et tu, Adam Smith, philosophe de Glasgow, heros et idole des high-broad Ladys, que fais tu, mon cher ami? Comment gouvernes tu La duchesse d’Anville et Mad. de Boufflers, ou ton coeur est il toujours epris des charms de Mad. Nicol et des apparent apparens que laches de cette autre dame de Fife, que vous aimees tant? [My translation: And you, Adam Smith, Glasgow philosopher, high-broad Ladies’ hero and idol, what are you doing my dear friend? How do you govern the Duchess of Anville and Madame de Boufflers, where your heart is always in love with Madame Nicol and with the attractions as apparent as hidden of this lady of Fife that you loved.]

–Letter #91, reprinted in Fay 1956, p. 157

Is this passage a “smoking arrow”, so to speak, or was Colbert just writing in jest–the equivalent of literary banter among close friends? Putting aside the “lady of Fife”, Colbert’s letter refers to three possible love interests who are Frenchwomen: the “Duchess of Anville”, “Madame de Boufflers”, and “Madame Nicol”. Of these three women, however, only one was a Parisian: Madame de Boufflers.

To begin with, the “Duchess of Anville” most likely refers to Marie-Louise-Nicole Elizabeth, duchesse d’Anville (1716–1794), who was a granddaughter of La Rochefoucauld, the celebrated author of the Maxims. (Mossner & Ross, 1987, p. 111, n. 3.) According to Mossner and Ross (ibid.), she may have met Smith in Geneva, which Smith visited between his first and second visits to Paris. What about “Madame Nicol”? Alas, her the precise identity is unclear. According to Alain Alcouffe and Philippe Massot-Bordenave (2020, p. 262), she may have been the wife of Jacques Nicol de Montblanc, a wealthy landowner who presided over the Mont Blanc Estate in the present Croix Daurade district of Toulouse, but aside from this conjecture, we have no idea who “Madame Nicol” was, or where she was from. (Cf. Fay 1956, p. 157: “Is there a lead to the Nicol in Lord Holland’s postscript to Townshend of 27 May 1765, ‘I could say a great deal of Nicoll now at Thoulouse, but I think you know him?’”)

That leaves Madame de Boufflers. As it happens, Madame de Boufflers was not only one of the leading salonnières of pre-revolutionary France (Mossner 1970, pp. 459-460); she was also “one of the most prominent Anglophiles in Paris” (Stewart 1970, p. 184), having befriended both David Hume and Adam Smith during their respective stays in Paris and maintaining a healthy correspondence with them thereafter, but that said, we have no other evidence to suggest a romantic attachment between Smith and Madame de Boufflers. Perhaps it was Madame Riccoboni who had already stolen Smith’s heart.