From Benjamin Franklin to [Charbonnier de la Robole], [13 September 1784]
To [Charbonnier de la Robole]
AL (draft): Library of Congress; press copy of L (French translation):1 American Philosophical Society
[September 13, 1784]
Mr Franklin sends the Recommendatory Letters desired,2 but cannot advise Mr. Mouret to go to North America in Expectation of Employment in a Country of which he does not understand the Language, and thinks that if he will leave France he had better go to the French Islands St. Domingo, Martinique or Guadalupe, where there are Printing Houses, and where French is the Language of the Country.3
1. Written by L’Air de Lamotte, who added a dateline: “à Passy ce 13. 7bre. 1784.”
2. See La Robole’s memorandum, immediately above. We have found only one recommendation: to Hall and Sellers, Sept. 13, below.
3. Mouret seems to have stayed in Aix-en-Provence, where the imprint “de l’Imprimerie de Prosper Mouret” had appeared by the mid-1790s.