To Benjamin Franklin from Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier, [24 January 1783]
From Antoine-Laurent and Marie-Anne-Pierrette Paulze Lavoisier7
AL: American Philosophical Society
Ce vendredy [January 24, 1783]8
Mr. et Mde. Lavoisier sont passés mercredy au soir ches M. francklin pour le feliciter Sur la grande revolution que son genie avoit preparée et qui vient d’etre affermie par la signature de la Paix.
Ils Se proposoient de l’engager a venir diner avec eux lundi prochain 27 a l’arsenal.9 Ils auront un peu de musique apres diner et ils seroient bien flattés quelle put amuser M. francklin quelques instans.
Cette invitation est Commune pour lui et M. son petit fils.
Notation: Lavoisier
7. Mme Lavoisier (1758–1836), daughter of farmer-general Jacques Paulze, married Lavoisier in 1771, when he was her father’s assistant at the ferme. She completed her education in Latin and foreign languages under her husband’s direction and collaborated with him in his laboratory, translating for him chemistry texts in English and Italian, taking notes on his experiments, and drawing skillful illustrations. Her translation of Richard Kirwan’s An Essay on Phlogiston, and the Constitution of Acids (London, 1787) was published at Paris in 1788 with Lavoisier’s notes refuting Kirwan’s theories. She studied drawing and painting with Jacques-Louis David, and in 1788 painted a portrait of BF after Duplessis which she sent to him in America; she also engraved the plates for Lavoisier’s Traité élémentaire de chimie (Paris, 1789). DBF; René Fric et al., eds., Œuvres de Lavoisier: Correspondance (6 vols. to date, Paris, 1955–), V, 274–6; Sellers, Franklin in Portraiture, pp. 273–4.
8. The Friday following the signing of the preliminary general peace treaties. The Lavoisiers mention “next Monday” as being the 27th; Jan. 27, 1783, did fall on a Monday.
9. The Lavoisiers had been hosting Monday dinners at the Arsenal for their friends and visiting scientists since 1776: DBF.