To Benjamin Franklin from Anne-Louise Boivin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy, [after 20 October 1783?]
From Anne-Louise Boivin d’Hardancourt Brillon de Jouy
AL: American Philosophical Society
ce lundi avant de partir [after October 20, 1783?]6
Adieu mon bon papa, en Vérité il m’en coutte presqu’autant d’aller á paris que d’aller a Nice;7 pourtant je viendrai vous voir, le coeur me dit que vous pourrés venir aussi; pourqu’oi donc estre si beste? C’est que j’aime beaucoup le bon papa et que quand on aime Si fort, on est toujours un peu beste au moment de se quittés:
Mille tendrésses de tous les miens; amitiés aussi pour le petit fils qui n’ayant pas la goutte est instamant priés de venir nous donner des nouvélles de la vostre le plus souvent qu’il pourra:
Le bon papa veut il se chargér d’embrassér la jolie mde caillot8 pour lui et pour moi, toutes les fois qu’il la vérra:
Addressed: A Monsieur / Monsieur Franklin / [In another hand:] A Passy
6. This letter signals Mme Brillon’s move from Passy to Paris, where the previous March she and her husband had purchased the elegant Hôtel de Mailly on the rue des Vieilles Haudriettes in the Marais. The date of their move is not known. It was probably after Oct. 20, when their daughter Cunégonde married Lt. Col. Antoine-Marie Paris d’Illins; the marriage contract, signed on Oct. 13 (Archives nationales), lists both mother and daughter as living at Passy. The young couple also moved into the Hôtel de Mailly, and Mme Brillon established it as her main residence, though she continued to visit her other homes: Bruce Gustafson, “Madame Brillon et son salon,” Revue de Musicologie, LXXXV (1999), 301, 315; information on the purchase of the hôtel and the addresses on the marriage contract were kindly provided by Professor Gustafson. Paris d’Illins is identified in Jacques and Noel Charavay, Les Généraux morts pour la patrie, 1792–1871 (2 vols., Paris, 1893–1908), II, 61–2.
The Brillons sent BF a printed wedding announcement (undated, APS) on which BF wrote, “They were married Monday Oct. 20, 1783”. In 1781 BF had proposed that Cunégonde marry WTF, but the Brillons rejected the idea: XXXIV, 560–3.
7. Where she had gone in September, 1781, to recover her health: XXXV, 513.
8. Blanchette Caillot.