Sir Brooke Boothby: Rousseau's Roving Baronet Friend
Jacques Zonneveld’s chronological study of the life and literary contributions of Sir Brooke Boothby represents an arduously documented account, from his family lineage and birth in 1744 to his death in financial exile in 1824. Through reference to archival documentation and published works of Sir Brooke, Zonneveld speaks to the cultural attainments of a Georgian gentleman of sensibility, fashionable pursuits, and education. Like many of the English aristocracy of that period, he participated in the Republic of Letters and traveled frequently on the Continent. His special gift for languages--including absolute fluency in French, sufficient to elicit praise from the marquise du Deffand—gave him much pleasure and solace in his countless idle hours. With frequent reference to his daily activities among friends and acquaintances abroad and at home, Zonneveld’s portrait of Boothby emerges layer by layer, a sympathetic but flawed figure. In his youth, Boothby eagerly played the mondain role expected of him. Once married, Sir Brooke’s passion became the restoration of Ashbourne Hall, his ancestral home, leased to him by his father in 1784. There, he updated the buildings, created new landscaping, bought interior accoutrements, and rare plant specimens for his extensive greenhouses. As Zonneveld notes, each improvement was made “at irresponsibly great financial cost.” He exhausted three fortunes (uncle’s, father’s, and wife’s), found unhappiness in marriage, and lost his precious only daughter, before he came to grips with his own folly. Transformed by life’s misfortunes, Boothby spent his last ten years in exile from his family, fleeing imminent debtor’s prison. His fall is sad, but not uncommon. As an English officer and gentleman, he was not schooled in provident wealth management, but pursued his appetites for music, botany, good company, literature, the visual arts, and architecture. So, from this case study, it is clear that Sir Brooke was a man about town, an amateur in the best sense, and an accomplished writer.
Zonneveld’s case study embraces both the details of Boothby’s life and his writings. He chooses to intermingle the chronological narrative with analysis of his written oeuvre. While this mixture makes logical sense, it can be jarring to be following the biographical flow only to be interrupted by long stretches of textual analysis. Chapters II through V, from Boothby’s first European Grand Tour through the death of his daughter, Penelope, in 1791, provide insight into his personality and circle of sociability. For scholars of the long eighteenth century, Sir Brooke Boothby is probably best known for his friendship with Jean Jacques Rousseau. Chapters II and III, the most compelling in the book, concern the multiple encounters between Boothby and Rousseau and Sir Brooke’s publication in Lichfield in 1780, of the First Dialogue, Rousseau, Juge de Jean Jacques, a manuscript entrusted to Boothby in 1776. Zonneveld has synthesized the relevant correspondence among the various parties interested in Rousseau’s welfare and the posthumous publication of his three Dialogues. The two men, English aristocrat and French philosopher, were linked in part through their mutual botanizing. The Rousseauian view permeates much of Boothby’s later political writing, reflecting his deeply Romantic nature. In a more scientific vein, with Erasmus Darwin, Boothby participated in the translation into English of Linneaus’ A System of Vegetables and The Families of Plants. In 1793, Boothby became a Fellow of the Linnaean Society upon the recommendation of Dr. Darwin.
Chapter IV concerns Boothby’s involvement with the artistic and literary worlds. Over his lifetime a number of artists painted his portrait, the most arresting being his recumbent image in a pastoral landscape by Joseph Wright of Derby. Boothby’s contacts within Wright of Derby’s artistic circle included Josiah Wedgewood, Joshua Reynolds, and Henry Fuseli, whom he admired especially. Drawn to the sublime of Fuseli’s subject pictures, he purchased The Nightmare (Detroit, Detroit Institute of Arts) that had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781. It was still at Ashbourne Hall in 1839. Zonneveld gives piquant evidence of Sir Brooke’s admiration for Fuseli through his involvement in a “poetic pageant” performed in the summer of 1783 in honor of the artist; the text is attributed to Boothby. He played the leading role as the valiant knight, enticing Fuseli to act the magician; the actions were based on two of Fuseli’s “Gothic” paintings. Drawn to the emerging artistic taste on the Continent, while in Paris, Boothby paid a visit to Jacques Louis David and encouraged him to visit London, a trip that never took place. Boothby’s artistic taste was advanced for his time, extending beyond the usual gentleman’s interest in Italianate views of Claude Lorrain or Salvator Rosa, embracing the two poles of painterly taste at the end of the eighteenth century—Romantic and Neo-classical. Joshua Reynolds also worked for Sir Brooke, producing a half-length portrait from 1784 and the delicate image of his daughter, Penelope, seated on a garden bench from 1788. On the literary side, he knew and admired Dr. Johnson, participated in the Linnaean translation, and attended the philosophical societies and assemblies that were staples of English town life. His involvement with civic life was not exclusively cultural or intellectual either, since he served as Justice of the Peace for many years and witnessed all manner of humanity in his courtroom. It was in this capacity that Sir Brooke’s Whiggish political sentiments were honed. In 1790, he boldly took on one of the stentorian voices of his age in his Letter to the Right Honourable Edmund Burke.
Chapter V concerns Boothby’s political writings and the two key texts he challenged were Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution of 1790 and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791). Boothby’s critiques are based in part on his reading of texts like Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws, but certainly, as well on his exposure to Jean Jacques Rousseau’s ideas expostulated in person and in print. Also, his response to Burke was informed by his direct and prolonged knowledge of French politics and culture. While Boothby was no democrat, he did invoke the idea of natural rights. He opposed George III’s American policy, caviled against governmental venality, especially the perseverance of the rotten boroughs, favored the freedom of religion, and advocated for the return of former Whig policies. In the 1792 publication of Observations on the Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs and on Mr. Paine’s Rights of Man, Boothby responds to a second text by Burke (Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs, 1791) and to Paine. In the first part, Sir Brooke’s liberalism shines forth in his defense of the social contract between the people and the ruler; his ideas are suffused with Rousseau’s spirit. While drawn to the abstract principles set down by Jean Jacques, Boothby knows that moral governance has to be a lived experience. For the second part of his text, Boothby takes up the cudgel against Paine reluctantly having previously admired his arguments in favor of the American Revolution in Common Sense. In The Rights of Man, though, Boothby sees dangerous extremism that would subvert the English constitution. He vehemently opposes Paine’s advocacy for universal suffrage, but tends to misread Paine’s words and intentions in much of his text, for which contemporary reviewers took him to task. An active participant in the Republic of Letters, his critique of contemporary authors is sincere and founded on Rousseauian principles. Had the Whigs been called to form a government, one can see how Sir Brooke might have joined Parliament or taken a cabinet position. Instead, this man of contemporary political sensibilities and good education was left to molder in the retired life of the country gentleman. Unfortunately for Boothby, with the death of his daughter, the collapse of his marriage, and the disastrous financial strain brought on by exuberant spending, his life after 1792 was anything but idyllic.
The second half of Zonneveld’s biography pieces together Sir Brooke’s last thirty years through his poetry (Sorrows. Sacred to the Memory of Penelope, 1796), translations (Racine’s Britannicus, 1803 and Molière’s Misanthrope, 1819), and incidental pieces (Fables and Satires, with a Preface on the Esopean Fable, 1809; Venality, 1793 and 1802; The Fudger Fudged, 1819). Having leased Ashbourne Hall and sold other properties to help satisfy his creditors, Boothby sometimes stayed in Britain—particularly in Shrewsbury, where his doctor, Robert Waring Darwin, resided, or in Edinburgh, which offered a convivial social network—and sometimes traveled abroad. Wherever he landed, Sir Brooke came into contact with leading literary figures from Sir Walter Scott to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but his pervasive melancholy and rootlessness refract through the surviving letters. One cannot help but feel sorry for his troubles. During his final and complete exile from Britain in 1814, Sir Brooke eventually made his way to Boulogne. Occasionally, his nephew George or other acquaintances from the Lichfield days like Maria Edgeworth visited, but mostly he was alone with a manservant or maid. He continued to write poetry and letters, but his lifelong ill health and advanced age slowly closed his view onto the wider world.
The case study of Sir Brooke Boothby provides the reader with glimpses into Georgian society both familiar and unfamiliar. From libraries across Europe and Britain, Zonneveld has uncovered an archival treasure that elucidates the life and published works by Boothby and his contemporaries. Unlike the popular biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman, Zonneveld is aiming for a scholarly readership. One drawback of this study is that one can get submerged under the accumulated minutia and lose sight of Boothby. It is precisely the meticulous detail of Sir Brooke’s life that detracts from the overarching storytelling. The text contains the full citation apparatus and nicely chosen illustrations, representing various members of Boothby’s large circle of acquaintances, which is helpful for further reference. However, the book lacks the more holistic approach available in works like John Brewer’s The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, even though the two works share many common themes of British sociability. Zonneveld is himself an accomplished linguist, but as a stylist in English, he lacks a certain freedom. Nevertheless, as a scholarly biography, Sir Brooke Boothby provides a valuable survey of later Georgian society where the aristocratic, cultural, and intellectual currents interpenetrate.
