To Benjamin Franklin from Courtney Melmoth, 15 March 1778
From Courtney Melmoth
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Hotel D’Orleans, 15 March. 1778
Sir.
Some few Days ago the Bearer, (Monsieur Monié) was recommended to me by a friend who sent with him the inclos’d card.2 He proves himself a man of singular ingenuity by those Portraits he will have the pleasure to shew you, and I hope your judgment upon them will tally with that which your grandson was pleas’d to pass on them yesterday. If that is the Case I shall have reason to congratulate myself upon being the Instrument of introducing a patriotic Artist to the Attention of so amiable a Protector as Dr. Franklin. Agreeable to the tenor of the Inclos’d Billet, Mrs. Melmoth would have accompanied Mr. Monié, but she is unluckily prevented this pleasure by Indisposition. I am Sir Your most obedient Servant
Courtney Melmoth
Addressed: To Dr: Franklin / At Passi
2. This was an undated and unsigned note to Mrs. Melmoth (APS) introducing and recommending Monié. He had just made, for the fun of it, a portrait of BF in chased and gilded bronze; she is asked to persuade BF to recompense him generously. Nothing definite is known about the artist, and the bust or medallion has not been located. Melmoth commissioned it, according to one suggestion, as his wife’s reply to the episode of the Nini medallion, for which see above, XXV, 532–5; Charles C. Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven and London, 1962), pp. 340, 342–3.