* By 1770, having established his reputation and his fortune, Hume had done all he had set out to do when he was a lad, and was content to enjoy life. The only flaw in his existence was that, even though he was no longer producing, his critics continued to throw stones at him without a letup. It was nothing at all new to him, and he continued in his relaxed lifestyle up to his death in 1776.
* Hume, "opulent" with the monies from the HISTORY and his pensions, shifted to new quarters near Edinburgh Castle after his return, though he soon found them less than satisfactory. However, Edinburgh had been expanding while he was gone, and so he decided that he would have lodgings built to his own specification in the "New Town", paying a bit over 165 pounds for a plot of land on Saint Andrew's Square in the development.
Access to the development was limited during its construction, and so when Hume went to inspect progress on his house, he had to cut across a bog. One day he slipped off the path and became mired. Unable to extricate himself, he called to an old fishwife who was passing by for help -- but she was reluctant to provide any assistance to the person she recognized as the notorious "Hume the Atheist".
If she wished to make an issue of his views on Deity, Hume was not hindered from making an issue of hers, replying: "But my good woman, does not your religion as a Christian teach you to do good, even to your enemies?"
She thought that over, then replied, with a certain logic, that "ye shallna get out o' that, till ye become a Christian yoursell" -- and said he should recite the Lord's Prayer and the church's list of fundamental beliefs. Much to her surprise, Hume promptly did so, not being one to take religious issues very seriously one way or another, and she helped him out. He often recounted the story, concluding that the fishwife was the most acute theologian he had ever encountered.
Hume moved with Katherine and Peggy Irvine to his new home in 1771. Additional servants were hired, to be under the direction of Irvine, and somewhere along the line, earlier or later, he also acquired a pet pomeranian dog with the name of "Foxey', who was his constant companion. One of his friends, a young woman named Nancy Ord -- a daughter of Lord Ord, an official with the Scottish exchequer -- noted that the side street that led to Hume's house was unnamed, and so with a piece of chalk named it on a wall: "Saint David's Street" -- as a joke. The joke stuck; Saint David's Street it was from then on, and indeed the name would eventually be made official.
A rumor made wide rounds that Hume intended to marry Nancy Ord, but he denied it. It seems he had contemplated the matter, but he was now in his sixties, she was only about half that, and at his age Hume was more focused on getting his affairs in order than taking a wife. Adam Smith, Hume's "Dear Smith", only infrequently came from Glasgow to Edinburgh, but Hume always had a room prepared for him at Saint David's Street. Hume also entertained other guests -- one of the notable being Benjamin Franklin, who stayed with Hume for several weeks in the fall of 1771.
In addition, David had close contacts with the family of his brother John; of course, David continued his visits to Ninewells. John relocated to Edinburgh in 1767 to oversee the education of his children -- three sons and two daughters, three other offspring having died in infancy. David took a keen interest in John's sons, using his ample funds to assist them in life; the eldest, Joseph, had little interest in a life of letters, so David purchased for him a commission as an officer in a regiment of dragoons. David was much closer to John's son David, inclined to the scholarly as was his uncle, who took a very close interest in the lad's education as a lawyer. The younger David eventually reciprocated the affection by legally changing his name from "Home" to "Hume", much to his father John's annoyance; in later life, the younger David would become a professor of law at Edinburgh University, achieving the academic distinction that had always remained out of his uncle's reach, and carrying on the family's association with the law.
Otherwise, Hume was happy mostly to just read, socialize, and cook -- he became an enthusiastic amateur chef. When his publisher encouraged him to extend his HISTORY, he replied with characteristic geniality: "I must decline not only this offer, but all others of a literary nature, for four reasons: Because I'm too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich."
BACK_TO_TOP* Hume, having established a substantial body of work, did work to maintain it, editing and revising, having his works republished. The critics continued their sniping at him without a letup, Hume writing in 1768 to a friend of one attack:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It has no manner of Sense in it; but is wrote with tolerable Neatness of style ... I am obliged to [the author] for the Treatment which he destines me, to be lock'd up for five years in a Dungeon, then to be hanged, and my Carcass to be thrown out of Scotland.
END QUOTE
Adam Smith, as much as he liked Hume, had to admit that Hume was inclined to bring his troubles on himself, Smith writing in a letter that Hume "would have no enemies had he not courted them, seems desirous of being hated by the public but has only succeeded at being railed at" -- adding that Hume was "a fool capable of performances which few wise men can execute."
Hume himself could appreciate the comic justice in his situation. While he was in London in the service of the government, he had paid a visit to his friend Lord Charlemont, who found Hume bubbling over with humor, as if having heard a great joke. He asked Hume what was going on, with Hume replying:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Why Man, I have just now had the best thing said to me I ever heard ... I was complaining in a Company, where I spent the Morning, that I was very ill treated by the World, and that Censures past upon me were hard and unreasonable -- That I had written many Volumes, thro'out the whole of which there were but a few Pages that contained any reprehensible Matter, and yet for those few Pages I was abused and torn to pieces.
"You put me in Mind," said an honest fellow of the Company, whose Name I did not know, "of an Acquaintance of mine, a Notary public, who having been condemned to be hang'd for forgery, lamented the Hardship of his Case, that after having written many Thousand inoffensive Sheets, He shou'd be hang'd for one Line."
END QUOTE
That made the attacks no less aggravating, one of the most abusive examples being "An Essay On The Nature And Immutability Of Truth: In Opposition To Sophistry & Skepticism" -- published in 1770 by one James Beattie, professor of moral philosophy and logic at Marischal College in Aberdeen. Beattie's target was the entire hierarchy of Enlightenment philosophy, notably that of Britain from Hobbes on, Hume being in the top rank in Beattie's scorn. Scorn it was, Beattie choosing to angrily rail instead of offering a reasoned argument for his own views, in one notable example describing the skepticism of Hume and those like him as: "Those unnatural productions, the vile effusions of a hard and stupid heart, that mistakes its own restlessness for the activity of genius, and its own [nitpicking] for sagacity of understanding."
Among the scholarly community, only those of the same mind as Beattie took his essay seriously, others finding it simply flatulent -- but Beattie cared not at all, he had written his demagoguery for the vulgar audience. His tract proved very popular, selling well in part thanks to endorsement by Samuel Johnson and others; Beattie was awarded an honorary degree by Oxford and granted a pension of 200 pounds a year by the king.
The painter Sir Joshua Reynolds jumped on the popular bandwagon, painting "The Triumph Of Truth", in which Beattie sits with bland self-satisfaction while, to the side, an angel smites the figures of Hume, Voltaire, and a third man whose identity remains uncertain. The novelist Oliver Goldsmith took Reynolds to task, reprimanding him specifically for his fatuous jab at Voltaire, the reprimand effectively protesting mistreatment of Hume as well:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It very ill becomes a man of your eminence and character ... to degrade so high a genius as Voltaire before such a mean a writer as Dr. Beattie; for Dr. Beattie and his book together will, in the space of ten years, not be known ever to have been in existence, but your allegorical picture, and the fame of Voltaire will live for ever to your disgrace as a flatterer.
END QUOTE
Hume resented Beattie's essay, calling it "a horrible large lie" -- perceptive criticisms Hume could deal with, loud jeering was tiresome -- and described Beattie as "that biggoted silly Fellow". Still, Beattie was nothing really new to Hume, just another nuisance like William Warburton, though Beattie managed to be louder than most. Hume could only take satisfaction in knowing that Beattie would certainly be forgotten, having done nothing to make himself worth remembering. Over two centuries on, Goldsmith's irritable complaint to Reynolds is evident truth.
BACK_TO_TOP* Hume's pleasant life of effective retirement of course would have to come to an end sooner or later; it was rather sooner, Hume writing in his little autobiography:
BEGIN QUOTE:
In spring 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment's abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name a period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. ... It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.
END QUOTE
Come the new year of 1776, he did take a great interest in two momentous books of the era, Adam Smith's THE WEALTH OF NATIONS and Edward Gibbon's DECLINE & FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, writing congratulations to both authors. In April, Hume penned his little autobiography, as a component of getting his personal affairs in order. Late in the month, he took a trip south to London to consult with doctors; while the medical profession in modern times has its limitations, in Hume's time it had little but limitations, and Hume knew it. The doctors all proclaimed they had sure cures for him, but finally he simply returned to Edinburgh to wait for the end.
James Boswell visited Hume some weeks before his death. Boswell had long been distressed by Hume's irreligion, all the more so because Boswell found it such a contradiction to Hume's personality, Boswell once writing in a letter: "Were it not for his infidel writings, everybody would love him. He is a plain, obliging, kind-hearted man." Boswell went to Saint David's street mostly because he wondered if approaching death had made any change in Hume's attitude -- to find out it had not, in the slightest:
BEGIN QUOTE:
On Sunday forenoon the 7 of July 1776, being too late for church, I went to see Mr. David Hume, who was returned from London and Bath, just adying. I found him alone, in a reclining posture in his drawing-room. He was lean, ghastly, and quite of an earthy appearance. He was dressed in a suit of grey cloth with white metal buttons, and a kind of scratch wig ... He seemed to be placid and even cheerful.
He said he was just approaching to his end. I think these were his words. I know not how I contrived to get the subject of immortality introduced. He said he never had entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clarke. I asked him if he was not religious when he was young. He said he was ... He then said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said that when he heard a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious. This was just an extravagant reverse of the common remark as to infidels.
I had a strong curiosity to be satisfied if he persisted in disbelieving a future state even when he had death before his eyes. I was persuaded from what he now said, and from his manner of saying it, that he did persist. I asked him if it was not possible that there might be a future state. He answered it was possible that a piece of coal put upon the fire would not burn; and he added that it was a most unreasonable fancy that we should exist for ever.
That immortality, if it were at all, must be general; that a great proportion of the human race has hardly any intellectual qualities; that a great proportion dies in infancy before being possessed of reason; yet all these must be immortal; that a porter who gets drunk by ten o'clock with gin must be immortal; that the trash of every age must be preserved, and that new universes must be created to contain such infinite numbers. This appeared to me an unphilosophical objection, and I said, "Mr. Hume, you know spirit does not take up space" ...
I asked him if the thought of annihilation never gave him any uneasiness. He said not the least; no more than the thought that he had not been ... I was like a man in sudden danger eagerly seeking his defensive arms; and I could not but be assailed by momentary doubts while I had actually before me a man of such strong abilities and extensive inquiry dying in the persuasion of being annihilated. But I maintained my faith ....
He had once said to me, on a forenoon while the sun was shining bright, that he did not wish to be immortal. This was a most wonderful thought. The reason he gave was that he was very well in this state of being, and that the chances were very much against his being so well in another state; and he would rather not be more than be worse.
... Mr. Hume's pleasantry was such that there was no solemnity in the scene; and death for the time did not seem dismal. It surprised me to find him talking of different matters with a tranquility of mind and a clearness of head which few men possess at any time ...
Mr. Lauder, his surgeon, came in for a little, and Mr. Mure, the Baron's son, for another small interval. He was, as far as I could judge, quite easy with both. He said he had no pain, but was wasting away. I left him with impressions which disturbed me for some time.
END QUOTE
Hume was toying with Boswell a bit, likely knowing that Boswell was not such a friend, inclined to scorn Hume behind his back; Boswell clearly recognized the comment about Christians being "scoundrels" as a reverse of Christian gibes against nonbelievers. Certainly Hume must have had difficulty keeping a straight face when Boswell asserted that "spirits do not take up space" -- claiming the existence of mystical worlds that, literally inconceivably, lack space or substance -- but Hume restrained himself from firing back a rejoinder that couldn't have been anything but derision. It was enough for Hume to say that it was a "most unreasonable fancy" to think of living forever.
Boswell later reported the exchange to his master, Dr. Johnson: "David Hume said to me he was no more uneasy to think he should not be after this life, than that he had not been before he began to exist."
Johnson replied scornfully: "Sir, if he really thinks so, his perceptions are disturbed; he is mad. If he does not think so, he lies. He may tell you he holds his finger in the flame of a candle, without feeling pain; would you believe him? When he dies, he at least gives up all that he has."
If Johnson's rejoinder could have or did reach Hume, Hume had no comment on it; Hume had already spoken of his relief in letting go, and what more could he have said? The end came for Hume on 25 August 1776, Adam Smith reporting on the matter in a letter dated 9 November 1776 to Hume's literary executor, William Strahan:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It is with a real, though a very melancholy pleasure, that I sit down to give some account of the behavior of our late excellent friend, Mr. Hume, during his last illness.
Though, in his own judgment, his disease was mortal and incurable, yet he allowed himself to be prevailed upon, by the entreaty of his friends, to try what might be the effects of a long journey. A few days before he set out, he wrote that account of his own life, which, together with his other papers, he has left to your care ...
Mr. Hume's magnanimity and firmness were such, that his most affectionate friends knew that they hazarded nothing in talking or writing to him as to a dying man, and that so far from being hurt by this frankness, he was rather pleased and flattered by it. I happened to come into his room while he was reading this letter, which he had just received, and which he immediately showed me. I told him, that though I was sensible how very much he was weakened, and that, appearances were in many respects very bad, yet his cheerfulness was still so great, the spirit of life seemed still to be so very strong in him, that I could not help entertaining some faint hopes.
He answered, "Your hopes are groundless. An habitual diarrhoea of more than a year's standing, would be a very bad disease at any age: at my age it is a mortal one. When I lie down in the evening, I feel myself weaker than when I rose in the morning; and when I rise in the morning, weaker than when I lay down in the evening. I am sensible, besides, that some of my vital parts are affected, so that I must soon die."
"Well," said I, "if it must be so, you have at least the satisfaction of leaving all your friends, your brother's family in particular, in great prosperity."
... He had now become so very weak, that the company of his most intimate friends fatigued him; for his cheerfulness was still so great, his complaisance and social disposition were still so entire, that when any friend was with him, he could not help talking more, and with greater exertion, than suited the weakness of his body. At his own desire, therefore, I agreed to leave Edinburgh, where I was staying partly upon his account, and returned to my mother's house here, at Kirkaldy, upon condition that he would send for me whenever he wished to see me; the physician who saw him most frequently, Dr. Black, undertaking, in the mean time, to write me occasionally an account of the state of his health.
On the 22d of August, the Doctor wrote me the following letter: "Since my last, Mr. Hume has passed his time pretty easily, but is much weaker. He sits up, goes down stairs once a day, and amuses himself with reading, but seldom sees anybody. He finds that even the conversation of his most intimate friends fatigues and oppresses him; and it is happy that he does not need it, for he is quite free from anxiety, impatience, or low spirits, and passes his time very well with the assistance of amusing books."
[In a letter dated 26 August, Dr. Black reported Hume's death:] "When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak, and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it."
Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion.
His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind or the steadiness of his resolutions.
His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men. It never was the meaning of his raillery to mortify; and, therefore, far from offending, it seldom failed to please and delight, even those who were the objects of it.
To his friends, who were frequently the objects of it, there was not perhaps any one of all his great and amiable qualities, which contributed more to endear his conversation. And that gaiety of temper, so agreeable in society, but which is so often accompanied with frivolous and superficial qualities, was in him certainly attended with the most severe application, the most extensive learning, the greatest depth of thought, and a capacity in every respect the most comprehensive. Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.
END QUOTE
Hume was buried on Thursday, 29 August; a watch had to be posted on the grave lest it be desecrated. Smith went public with his letter and Hume's little autobiography, the result being an epitaph to Hume in the form of a campaign of slurs and complaint against him not exceeded by any that he had endured during his life. Smith was not surprised by the criticism, but he was taken aback by the vehemence of it -- saying a decade later that, in response to a kindly gesture to a dear friend, he had received "ten times more abuse" than he had over anything else controversial he had written.
In 1995 the city of Edinburgh, in recognition of Hume as one of the city's most illustrious sons, got around to setting up a statue of him, created by sculptor Alexander Stoddart. In the statue, Hume is rendered classically, dressed in a toga with a tablet in his hand. The tablet is blank -- a perfect gesture to Hume's ambiguity, Hume being a man more interested in sharp questions than dodgy answers. Indeed, instead of providing answers, he had a wonderful ability to show that there wasn't always an answer.
BACK_TO_TOP* Having become interested in David Hume some years back, I spent many hours working to understand his philosophy; as is my habit, I decided to write a book on the matter to organize my effort. As I envisioned the book, it would have initial biographical chapters on Hume, with following chapters to investigate his philosophy.
I put together the biographical component quickly enough, but to no surprise, doping out his philosophy ran into time. Having mentioned Hume online, I found that people were interested in reading about him -- so instead of waiting until I completed the book, I decided to release the biographical portion as a stand-alone document. The full document isn't going to happen, at least not as originally conceived; there will be stand-alone volumes on Hume's philosophy.
* Sources include Ernest Campbell Mossner's definitive THE LIFE OF DAVID HUME (2nd edition, Oxford Press, 1980), Hume's own autobiography, his ENQUIRIES, and his associated letters. Beyond Mossner's book, there isn't more, or even as much, as has been said of Hume's personal life.
The banner illustration is a portrait of Hume by painter Allan Ramsay, dated 1766; I retouched it extensively. The ending photo is of the statue of Hume in Edinburgh sculpted by Alexander Stoddart; the photo was by "TwoWings", dated 2006, and released into the public domain.
* Revision history:
v1.0.0 / 01 jun 14 v1.1.0 / 01 feb 18 / Review & polish. v1.1.1 / 01 jan 20 / Review & polish. v1.2.0 / 01 dec 21 / Minor updates. v1.2.1 / 01 nov 23 / Review & polish.BACK_TO_TOP
