prior probability

I am honored and humbled to have been awarded el premio Don Quijote by the Puerto Rico Bar Association (PRBA) in Orlando, Florida last night (see here), especially considering how I have tilted at so many metaphorical windmills during my academic career, such as the use of “range voting” to break the impasse over Puerto Rico’s political status (here), retrodiction markets to test the truth values of conspiracy theories (here), and auctions to solve the tragedy of the outer space commons (here), just to name a few of my more Quixotic causes. Shout out to my colleagues and friends Tony Anthony Suarez, Joel Montilla, and Rebeca Arenas for making this happen, and shout out to my dear wife Sydjia for her patience, love, and good cheer!

Via the International Adam Smith Society:

We are thrilled to announce a Call for Papers for our 2025 conference at the University of Salento in Lecce, Italy! The conference will take place March…

Call for Papers: 2025 International Adam Smith Society Conference in Lecce, Italy

Note to self: the deadline to submit an abstract/proposal is 1 November.

Having read Homer’s Iliad and listened to Dominic Keating’s epic 19-hour readout of this legendary lyric poem, I can now say that the Iliad‘s reputation as the first great literary masterpiece of the Western canon is totally deserved. In addition, during the next few weeks I will be reading the following works of ancient Greek literature and philosophy:

1. Hesiod, Works and Days
2. Theognis, Elegies
3. Sappho, selected poems
4. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
5. Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound
6. Sophocles, Oedipus the King
7. Sophocles, Antigone
8. Euripides, Hippolytus
9. Euripides, Medea
10. Aristophanes, Lysistrata
11. Aristophanes, Clouds

Author’s note: Below the fold is my first formal writing assignment for my graduate seminar on ancient Greek and Roman literature/philosophy. All references to the Iliad are to the Caroline Alexander translation of Homer’s great epic.

Author’s note: the excerpt below is from the conclusion of my revised paper “Adam Smith in the City of Lights“.

Oct. 27, 1766. The Duke of Buccleuch, I’m told, is arrived. He [Henry] and Lady Frances are all she [Lady Dalkeith] has left of six. (Fay 1956, p. 158.)

Smith’s his first melancholy duty [upon his return to London] would be to accompany his pupil, the Duke of Buccleuch, in a cortége to the family home on Grosvenor Square, bringing the body of the younger brother, and somehow find words to express to Lady Dalkeith his sorrow and regret about the loss of her son while in his charge (Ross 2010, p. 234.)

The first of the two passages above is a private journal entry in the diary of Lady Mary Coke, Hew’s aunt and Lady Dalkeith’s (Hew’s mother) youngest sister. If her account is indeed accurate, it would mean that Duke Henry and his tutor had cut short their grand tour and returned to London as early as the end of October.

Upon their hasty return to London it is reported that Smith and Duke Henry brought back with them no less than three trunks (Alcouffe & Massot-Bordenave 2020, p. 204), presumably full of books, souvenirs, and other keepsakes. Among their Paris mementos was a “sensitively-rendered miniature” (see image below) of Hew Campbell Scott painted by the famed French artist Jean-Baptiste Greuze (Ross 2010, p. 234). This one tangible artifact of Smith’s time in Paris is an oil on canvas, and it is relatively small, measuring 64.1 x 52.7 centimeters or about 25.2 x 20.7 inches (Buccleuch Collections/Bridgeman Images n.d.). It shows Hew Campbell Scott in the uniform of the 3rd Foot Guards in half-length, presenting Hew’s visage and his body from the waist up. Although we do not know exactly when or where Hew Campbell Scott sat for his portrait, the artist, Jean-Baptiste Greuze, was settled in the French capital at this time (Dilke 1911).

Alas, it was Smith’s somber task to place this little portrait in the hands of Hew’s mother, Lady Dalkeith. (Ross 2010, p. 234.) According to Ross (2010, p. 232), Hew’s remains were subsequently interred at Dalkeith, the ancestral home of the Buccleuch clan. If so, are his remains still there? In addition, this final chapter of Smith’s last days in Paris poses many other unanswered questions. 

Why, pray tell, did Smith address his letters announcing Hew’s illness and death to Hew’s young sister, Lady Frances, and not to his mother, Lady Dalkeith or to his stepfather Lord Townshend? Also, in his correspondence with Lady Frances, Smith had initially described Hew’s condition as a “fever”, but what was the true cause of his death? Did Hew die of natural causes or was he poisoned? Most importantly, regardless of the cause of Hew’s fatal illness, what were the legal ramifications for Smith, if any, of the death of a minor under his care in a foreign country?

(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 …

Note: my next few blog posts are from the third and last part of my revised paper “Adam Smith in the City of Lights”, which revisits Smith’s last days in Paris (October 1766). Below is an excerpt, where I describe an oft-overlooked aspect of Smith’s travels–his short stay in Compiègne in August 1766. (The works cited are below the fold.)

… for centuries Compiègne was the site where kings stopped on their way to Reims for coronation and where Charles IX (r. 1560-1574) and Louis XIII (r. 1610-1643) celebrated their marriages.” (Plax 2017, p. 109, footnote omitted)

Adam Smith’s second sojourn in Paris (February to July 1766) concluded when Smith and his pupils travelled to Compiègne sometime in August of 1766. (Rae 1895, p. 197.) As an aside, both John Rae and Ian Simpson Ross incorrectly describe the Scottish philosopher’s stay in Compiègne as an “excursion”. Rae (1895, p. 22), for example, reports that Smith “had been in the habit while in Paris of taking his pupils for excursions to interesting places in the vicinity, … and in August 1766 they went to Compiègne to see the camp and the military evolutions which were to take place during the residence of the Court there”, while Ross (2010, p. 227) writes, “[Smith] took his protégés, Buccleuch and his brother, on excursions to places of interest such as Compiégne when the Court went there for the diversion of hunting.”

But the visit to the royal hunting park at Compiègne was not a mere “day trip” or weekend excursion. Instead, it was most likely one of the highlights of Adam Smith’s three-year grand tour travels and probably deserves a chapter or paper of its own, for it was in Compiègne that Smith and his pupils got to reside at a royal château and attend one or more hunts with the King of France. The pristine 20,000-acre forest at Compiègne was not only one of the oldest royal hunting grounds in France, dating to the time of the Merovingian king Clovis; the whole area was saturated with the history of past French kings and the origins of the monarchy: “French kings, beginning with Francis I, began the habit of short, but frequent, stays to enjoy the hunt” (Plax 2017, p. 109).

As it happens, Compiègne was also the site of Louis XV’s favorite chateau and hunting grounds, and the Chateau de Compiègne was the center of court life and the exercise of royal power when Louis XV and his Court were in town during the summer months (Plax 2017). In the words of art historian Julie Anne Plax, “Versailles was and always would be associated with Louis XIV, but Compiègne, with its well-ordered hunting park, would bear the mark of Louis XV …” (ibid., p. 116). Among other things, Louis XV had commissioned the construction of a new royal château, the plans for which were drawn by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, and every summer the king moved his royal court to Compiègne, where he hunted on the average of four to five days a week (ibid., p. 103). In 1764, for example, David Hume, in his capacity as Secretary of the British Embassy, had followed the French Court to Compiégne and spent the months July and August there (Mossner 1970, p. 461). For his part, Smith must have somehow secured a coveted invitation to make this visit, perhaps through Smith’s contacts at Britain’s embassy in Paris.

What is unclear, however, is how long Smith’s sojourn in Compiègne lasted. In a letter dated August 1766 from David Hume addressed to Adam Smith, Smith’s Paris mailing address “Anglois Hotel du Parc roiale, Fauxbourg St Germain a Paris” is crossed out and a new forwarding address, consisting of the words “a Compiègne”, are added twice, in another hand. (See Letter #96, note 1, in Mossner & Ross 1987.) Additionally, in a letter dated 26 August 1766 (Letter #94), Smith reports to Lord Townshend that Duke Henry became ill “on Thursday last” (ibid.). Following the Gregorian calendar, which was adopted in France in 1582 (see, e.g., E. Cohen 2000), 26 August 1766 would have been a Tuesday. We can therefore surmise that Smith and his pupils had arrived in Compiègne toward the middle part of August, perhaps even earlier, but how long did they stay there? Smith’s only other letter from Compiègne is dated 27 August 1766 (Letter #95), so he must have remained there until the end of August or the beginning of September, at least until Duke Henry recovered from his illness.

Alas, upon their return to the French capital at the end of the summer/beginning of fall 1766, Smith’s last days in Paris would be somber ones, marred by the death of Duke Henry’s younger brother, Hew Campbell Scott.

To be continued …

(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.