To Benjamin Franklin from François-Félix Nogaret, [December 1784?]
From François-Félix Nogaret
ALS: American Philosophical Society
[December?, 1784]5
Monsieur
Vous vous souvenez de nos conventions. J’ai l’honneur de vous faire passer une note que nous avons reçue.6
Dans la Reponse que vous me ferez La grace de m’adresser, Je vous Serai obligé de mettre à La fin
Je vous prie de vouloir bien Mr communiquer ma Lettre aux membres de la R∴ L∴ Ecossaise du Patriotisme,7 et de lui temoigner mes regrets8 ainsi que Le Souvenir que nous conservons de Ses honnêtetés.
Pardon mille fois, Monsieur. Je vous remercie moi, de l’accueil que vous avez fait à M. Le Chevr. de sauvigny.9
Voulez vous bien faire agreer mes respects à Monsieur francklin et en recevoir la part qui vous est due.
J’ai l’honneur d’etre avec ces Sentimens Monsieur au nom du Fere et de la Maman et de La D[emoise]lle. votre très humble et très obeissant serviteur
felix Nogaret
Bibliothecaire de Mde. Comtsse d’artois a V[ersai]lles
Je joins ici l’imprimé d’un Fetit Foëme qui a eu ici, quelque Succès./.
5. The year is not in question, as WTF made a notation that the present letter was answered in 1784. The month is based on Nogaret’s thanking BF for having welcomed Sauvigny. Both elements are explained in the annotation below.
6. The note, which Nogaret copied (without a dateline) on a separate sheet, was sent to the Loge du Patriotisme by Jean-Baptiste Aubert, the French consul in Barcelona. Aubert asks the lodge to once again recommend to BF their Masonic brother Gautier for the position of American consul in Barcelona, as he has been informed that Barclay has received from Congress the power to appoint consuls. (He had not.) Aubert is identified in Anne Mézin, Les Consuls de France au siècle des lumières (1715–1792) ([Paris, 1998]), p. 110.
Gautier, a French merchant living in Barcelona, had petitioned BF for a consulship twice before: first in 1778 (XXVI, 210–11) and again in 1783, when the Loge du Patriotisme forwarded a mémoire from him accompanied by a recommendation of their own: XL, 218–19. Filed with the present letter at the APS are duplicates that Nogaret evidently provided to BF of those two 1783 documents. On the verso of the lodge’s letter of recommendation, Nogaret wrote, “Remettre au f∴ Motet adjt.” (Jacques-Nicolas Mottet was a member of Nogaret’s lodge: XL, 219n.) This direction was evidently ignored. Next to it, WTF wrote, “F. Nogaret 1783” and, later, “ansd 1784.”
7. The Respectable Loge Ecossaise du Patriotisme, formerly the Loge du Patriotisme, adopted Scottish Masonic rites on April 24. BF and WTF were invited to attend that meeting and witness the unique ceremony and special entertainments: Nogaret to WTF, April 22, [1784], APS.
8. Nogaret evidently knew that BF would not support Gautier’s application. In any case, Congress had resolved in March, 1784, that such appointments would be granted only to American citizens: XLII, 68n.
9. On the occasion, we believe, of a private dramatic reading for BF at Passy by playwright Billardon de Sauvigny (XXXIV, 469n). The work in question was a dramatization of the so-called Asgill affair of 1782: XXXVII, 432, 687–8; XXXVIII, 43, 59, 294. Sauvigny had completed his script and sent it to the actors in October, 1784. In December, it seems, anticipating that the play would be produced in four to six weeks, he asked Nogaret to arrange, if possible, a reading before BF and other “insurgents.” Nogaret conveyed this request in an undated letter to WTF, which began with an acceptance of WTF’s invitation to dine with the Franklins at Passy. Then, after relating Sauvigny’s credentials and his project, Nogaret proposed that he bring the playwright to Passy whenever convenient; he would need but two or three days’ notice. APS. This letter was probably written in early December, shortly after WTF returned from his three-month stay in London. The play, Abdir (earlier versions of the title character’s name included Agir and Agile), opened to the public on Jan. 26, 1785, at the Théâtre-Français, after undergoing changes mandated by the censors: Sauvigny to ———, Oct. 17, 1784 (Collections Comédie-Française); Jour, de Paris, Jan. 18–26, 1785; William Hanley, A Biographical Dictionary of French Censors, 1742– 1789 (2 vols. to date, Paris, 2005–), 1, 177.