To Benjamin Franklin from Soulavie, [after 12 August 1781]
From Soulavie
ALS: American Philosophical Society
[after August 12, 1781]1
L’Abbé soulavie prie Monsieur francklin de vouloir bien se ressouvenir qu’il est prét de S’occuper aux ordres du Ministre2 De L’histoire civile des pays montagneux de la france meridionale ou il montrera toutes les operations de la Grande Bretagne pour Le soulevement de ces regions et leur changement en Republique. L’abbé Soulavie est logé hotel de M. leveque de Bayeux3 rue des vieilles thuileries
Notation: Soulavie, L’abbé
1. This letter appears to refer to matters the two discussed on August 12, 1781, recorded in the preceding document, and might refer to the memoir written only a few days later, described at the end of our annotation to that document.
It might also refer to the spring of 1782. At that time opposition to the war in America had formed “dans le sein de la France:” Jean-Louis Giraud Soulavie, Mémoires historiques et politiques du règne de Louis XVI, depuis son mariage jusqu’à sa mort (6 vols., Paris, 1801), V, 189. At BF’s urging Soulavie consented to write an article to accompany a catalogue raisonné of the manuscripts collected during his travels in the south and the work was published in four installments on May 20, June 6, 24, and 26, 1782. The article proper, which the two men worked on together, appears at the end of the last installment. We will print the rest of the account with the correspondence between the two men in 1782. The whole account and BF’s conversation of Aug. 12, are summarized by A.O. Aldridge in Franklin and His French Contemporaries (New York, 1957), pp. 67–72.
2. Vergennes.
3. Joseph-Dominique de Cheylus (1717–1797): DBF; Almanach royal for 1781, p. 58.