front door handle and escutcheon, Jean-Jacques Rousseau museum, Les Charmettes, France

i have just returned from two weeks in Italy and France

on the drive back i stopped overnight in Les Charmettes a picturesque hamlet near the town of Chambéry in the Savoie region of France; it is famed as a favourite retreat of the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778).

in 1728, Jean-Jacques Rousseau fled a watch-matching apprenticeship in Geneva and took refuge with Françoise-Louise de Warens, or Madame de Warens, who became his mistress and mentor whom Rousseau affectionately referred to as maman (mother) – she was 13 years Rousseau's senior.

in the summer of 1736, Rousseau and maman moved into a country house called Les Charmettes  which figures prominently in Rousseau's Confessions (Books V and VI) -according to him, his sojourn at Les Charmettes constituted "the short period of my life's happiness" and was instrumental in the development of his love of nature and the simple country life

during the revolutionary and subsequent romantic periods, Les Charmettes became a symbol of Rousseau's revolutionary thought as well as a shrine attracting such literary and political celebrities as George Sand and Alphonse de Lamartine

in 1905 Les Charmettes was classified an historical monument by the French government, the house and its grounds are now a museum open to the public

 

“The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract and The Discourses”