Salon

From c. 1750 to c. 1790, Baron d'Holbach used his wealth to maintain one of the more notable and lavish Parisian *salons*, which soon became an important meeting place for the contributors to the Encyclopédie.

Meetings were held regularly twice a week, on Sundays and Thursdays, in d'Holbach's home in rue Royale.^[18][19] Visitors to the salon were exclusively males, and the tone of discussion highbrow, often extending to topics more extensive than those of other salons.^[20] This, along with the excellent food, expensive wine, and a library of over 3000 volumes, attracted many notable visitors. Among the regulars in attendance at the salon—the coterie holbachique—were the following: Diderot, Grimm, Condillac, Condorcet, D'Alembert, Marmontel, Turgot, La Condamine, Raynal, Helvétius, Galiani, Morellet, Naigeon and, for a time, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.^[21] The salon was also visited by prominent British intellectuals, amongst them Adam Smith, David Hume, John Wilkes, Horace Walpole, Edward Gibbon, David Garrick, Laurence Sterne; the Italian Cesare Beccaria; and the American Benjamin Franklin.^[22][23]

Morellet, a regular attendee at D'Holbach's salon, described it as:

the place to hear the freest, most animated, and most instructive conversation that ever was...in regard to philosophy, religion, and government; light pleasantries had no place there.^[24]

In a frequently narrated story about a discussion that had taken place in D'Holbach's salon, David Hume had questioned whether atheists actually existed whereupon D'Holbach had clarified that Hume was sitting at a table with seventeen atheists.^[25]