(Author’s note: below is Part 2 of 3 of my series of blog posts on Adam Smith’s third and last visit to Paris.)

It is my misfortune to be under the necessity of acquainting you of the most terrible calamity that has befallen us. (Adam Smith to Lady Frances, Letter #98.)

Two pieces of personal correspondence, both of which are written in Smith’s hand only four days apart (15 & 19 October 1766), report that Hew Campbell Scott had contracted a fatal fever. (See Letters #97 & #98.) Both missives are addressed to Lady Frances, Henry and Hew’s younger sister, and of all the extant letters of Smith during his travels in France, his 15 October letter to Lady Frances is the longest: a total of 894 words. (The second-longest piece of correspondence Smith wrote during his travels in France, a letter addressed to Charles Townshend, contains 626 words. See Letter #95.) By his own account, Smith wrote this letter late at night–11 o’clock P.M.–and it contains many gruesome details of Hew’s illness; among other things, Smith reports on Hew’s many “vomitings”, “purgings [that] continued with great violence”, and “delirium”, and he also describes how Hew had “bled very copiously at the nose” (Letter #97). By contrast, Smith’s next letter to Lady Frances–the last letter he would write from foreign soil–is short and to the point (Letter #98):

Paris, 19 Oct. 1766

It is my misfortune to be under the necessity of acquainting you of the most terrible calamity that has befallen us. Mr Scott dyed this Evening at seven o’clock. I had gone to the Duke of Richmonds in order to acquaint the Duke of Buccleugh that all hope was over and that his Brother could not outlive tomorrow morning: I returned in less than half an hour to do the last duty to my best friend. He had expired about five minutes before I could get back and I had not the satisfaction of closing his eyes with my own hands. I have no force to continue this letter; The Duke, tho’ in very great affliction, is otherwise in perfect health. I ever am etc. etc.

Adam Smith

Alas, although Smith had consulted with two eminent doctors–Quesnay and Richard Gem, the doctor assigned to the British embassy in Paris (see Armbruster 2019, p. 131)–and Hew had received the best medical care he could have possibly received in the Paris of his day and age, Hew’s illness was a fatal one.

Upon Hew’s untimely demise, moreover, Smith’s grand tour and his third and last sojourn in Paris would come to an abrupt close.

To be continued …