Decline and fall

In Putney, we have a hero. Here are the highs and lows. By Peter de Loriol

Above: Edward Gibbon

Said the eminently well-read and erudite author on the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon (1737-94): “It was at Rome… whilst musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while barefoot friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind.”

Gibbon was born in a large house at the base of Putney Hill called Lime Grove. The sickly child was brought up and educated at home by a variety of tutors until he was sent to Westminster School in 1749. He was also to live at his maternal grandfather’s house with a maiden aunt by Putney Bridge.

He was a voracious reader, devouring all the books in his father’s and his aunt’s house. At Oxford University, much to his father’s disgust, Edward converted to Roman Catholicism. He was forced to leave and was sent to Lausanne to be re-converted to Protestantism. His re-conversion was mitigated by his romance with the daughter of a local pastor, Suzanne Curchod. His father once again put his foot down and insisted that the errant son return to England. Edward’s autobiography states that he ‘sighed as a lover’ but ‘obeyed as a son’. He was to remain a bachelor for the rest of his life whilst Suzanne became the wife of the most powerful man in Europe, Jacques Necker, and the mother of Madame de Staël.

Gibbon’s first writings were in French and it was not until his visit to Rome in 1764 that he conceived his great opus. He became Colonel of the Hampshire militia, followed in his father’s footsteps as an MP, a quiet and inglorious one, and held a lucrative post with the Board of Trade. His first volume of Decline and Fall was published in 1776 and met with considerable acclaim.

It was in this tour de force that Gibbon set out his own philosophy of Christianity. He had been profoundly influenced by the philosopher Montesquieu. He examined the secular side of Christianity as a social phenomenon. Christianity, he maintained in chapters 15 and 16, had a special role in the fall of the Roman Empire. This assertion was to be met with some furious reactions, but if anything, the reactions helped to sell his book.

He was a quiet man, enjoying the company of such friends as Diderot, d’Alembert, Samuel Johnson and Voltaire. A vain man, his small frame encased in a fat body in middle age barely managed to carry a vast head. His vanity didn’t extend to his personal ‘toilette’, making it difficult for many to approach him without carrying scented handkerchiefs.

He spent most of his life in Switzerland near to some of his closest friends, travelling to England with his manuscripts for publication. On one occasion he stayed in Putney as a guest of Lady Elizabeth Foster. Both he and a French physician were courting her. The Frenchman, irked by Gibbon’s successful dalliance, remarked, “When my Lady Elizabeth Foster is made quite ill by your twaddle, I will cure her.”

Gibbon stood up and looked down his nose at the impertinent Frenchman, replying, “When my Lady Elizabeth Foster is dead from your recipes, I will immortalise her.”

Further reading:
Old and New London, Edward Walford
Edward Gibbon: Making History,Roy Porter, 1988