Economists -- Great Britain -- Biography; Smith, Adam, 1723-1790
Madame Riccoboni was not the only Frenchwoman who was touched with
Smith's personal charms; we hear of another, a marquise, "a woman too
of talents and wit," who actually fell in love with him. It was during
an excursion Smith made from Paris to Abbeville, with the Duke of
Buccleugh and several other English noblemen and a certain Captain
Lloyd, a retired officer, who was afterwards a friend, perhaps a
patient, of Dr. Currie, the author of the _Life of Burns_, and told
the doctor this and many other anecdotes about the economist. Lloyd
was, according to Currie, a most interesting and accomplished man, and
his acquaintance with Smith was one of great intimacy. The party seem
to have stayed some days at Abbeville--to visit Crecy, no doubt, like
patriotic Englishmen, and this French marquise was stopping at the
same hotel. She had just come from Paris, where she found all the
world talking about Hume, and having heard that Smith was Hume's
particular friend and almost as great a philosopher as he, she was
bent on making so famous a conquest, but after many persistent efforts
was obliged eventually to abandon the attempt. Her philosopher could
not endure her, nor could he--and this greatly amused his own
party--conceal his embarrassment; but it was not philosophy altogether
that steeled his breast. The truth, according to Lloyd, was that the
philosopher was deeply in love with another, an English lady, who was
also stopping in Abbeville at the time. Of all Currie heard concerning
Smith from Captain Lloyd this is the only thing he has chosen to
record, and slight though it is, it contributes a touch of nature to
that more personal aspect of Smith's life of which we have least
knowledge. Stewart makes mention of an attachment which Smith was
known to have cherished for several years in the early part of his
life to a young lady of great beauty and accomplishment, whom Stewart
had himself seen when she was past eighty, but "still retained evident
traces of her former beauty," while "the powers of her understanding
and the gaiety of her temper seemed to have suffered nothing from the
hand of time." Nobody ever knew what prevented their union, or how far
Smith's addresses were favourably received, but she never married any
more than he. Stewart says that "after this disappointment he laid
aside all thoughts of marriage"; but the Abbeville attachment seems to
have been a different one from this and a later.
While in Paris Smith was a very steady playgoer. He was always a great
admirer of the French dramatists, and now enjoyed very much seeing
their plays actually represented on the stage, and discussing them
afterwards, we may be sure, with an expert like Madame Riccoboni.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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