To Benjamin Franklin from Louis-Pierre Dufourny de Villiers, 8 December 1779
From Louis-Pierre Dufourny de Villiers3
ALS: American Philosophical Society
Paris le 8. Xbre. 1779
Venerable Docteur
Une Personne que je désirerois obliger, m’a consulté sur l’employ qu’elle pourroit faire de Papiers-monnoye des Etats-unis d’Amérique dont elle a pour une somme considérable. En faisant une grande diminution elle a trouvé un acquéreur: mais celuy cy veut s’assurer que les Papiers proposes ne sont pas contrefaits et sur ce qu’on luy a dit que l’Etalon (ou Régitre auquel ils ont été couppés) etoit entre vos mains, il m’a invitté a m’en informer afin de les vérifier par le rapprochement. Ainsi je vous prie tres instamment de me faire scavoir si cet Etalon existe en Europe et en quelles mains.
Vous etes sans doutte informé Monsieur le Docteur de la tenüe de l’Assemblée publique de la Faculté, demain Jeudy, plaçe de Sorbonne,4 mais peut-être ignores vous, combien il y a lieu d’espérer une conciliation entre elle et la Société Royale de Médeçine,5 je suis certain que les meilleurs esprits de part et d’autre, sont dans la disposition actuelle d’employer leurs bons offices pour faire cesser une division aussy scandaleuse, et opérer par la réunion des efforts tout le bien qu’on attendoit de la Rivalité.6
On se persuade si façilement ce qu’on souhaitte vivement, que tenant pour certaine la lettre écritte par Mr. Bouthillier de Nantes au Marquis de Serans,7 selon laquelle Mr. le Comte d’Estaing s’etant porté sur la Georgie, auroit enlevé le général Prévôt et son armée, deux vaisseaux Anglois de 50. canons et 28 transports et seroit allé a Neuw-york; j’en felicitte Votre Excellence, avec toutte l’affection nationalle, avec l’attachement le plus respectueux et suis de Votre Excellence Le tres humble et tres obeissant serviteur
Dufourny DE Villiers
Rue des Fossés de Monsieur le
Prince vis avis celle de Tourraine
Notation: Dufourny de Villiers 8. Xbre. 1779.
3. BF’s sculptor friend has been identified in XXIII, 451n.
4. This was the second public assembly held by the Faculty of Medicine, whose meetings were instituted in November, 1778, to counter those of the Royal Society of Medicine. The Society’s gatherings were attended by members of the scientific community, including BF, a member since June, 1777 (XXIV, 176–7; XXVII, 557, 561), and several ministers of the court. The bitter dispute raging between the tradition-bound Faculty and the more cosmopolitan and innovative Society also took the form of satirical pamphlets, poems, songs, and well-publicized anonymous letters. Indeed, in February, 1779, BF himself was depicted in a satire, Dialogue entre Pasquin & Marforio, said to be the most vicious of all those aimed at the Society. In it a duplicitous sage assumes BF’s form to delude the innocent hero. This Franklin is seated on an ivory throne, supported by science and virtue, with chained leopards at his feet. Illuminated by a halo, he represents liberty. With a word he changes a vision of the Society as honorable and principled into its nightmare opposite. BF appears again at the climax of the play to transform with his wand the members of the Society into bestial analogues of their characters. The reviewer wonders why BF figures as a principal in these apocalyptic scenes; “peut-être parce qu’il est médecin & républicain”: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XIII, 281–4 (quotation on p. 284). Alfred Owen Aldridge discusses this dramatic representation of BF in Franklin and his French contemporaries (New York, 1957), pp. 105–7. For a background discussion of the conflict see Charles C. Gillispie, Science and Polity in France at the End of the Old Regime (Princeton, 1980), especially pp. 212–18. Caroline C.F. Hannaway gives a complete account of the Society and its dispute with the Faculty in “Medicine, Public Welfare and the State in Eighteenth Century France: The Société Royale de Médecine of Paris (1776–1793)” (unpublished Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1974). The dispute is outlined on pp. 406–11.
5. BF’s friend Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg, a member of the Faculty and initially hostile to the Society, had attempted in February, 1779, to reconcile the two factions with proposals published in his anonymous pamphlet Lettre d’un médecin de la Faculté de Paris, à un de ses confrères, au sujet de la Société Royale de Médecine: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XIII, 284. When the Faculty showed no interest in reconciliation, Dubourg joined the Society on May 18 as an associé ordinaire, to the outrage of the Faculty. Dubourg’s role is discussed in Hannaway, “Medicine, Public Welfare and the State,” pp. 478–80.
6. A description of the Dec. 9 meeting does not mention any attempted reconciliation: Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XIV, 312–13; Hannaway, p. 483. Indeed, at this same time Bachaumont describes a virulent satire of the Society, a suite of dialogues recapitulating the anecdotes of earlier libels: Mémoires secrets, XIV, 301–2, 303–4. See also Métra, Correspondance secrète, IX, 215–22. There are further echoes of the quarrel during this period in Bachaumont, Mémoires secrets, XV, 2–3, 7. The Faculty and the Society were both abolished in the Revolutionary period, their dispute unresolved.
7. Probably Guillaume Bouteiller, a prominent Nantes merchant: Meyer, Armement nantais, p. 129. Armand-Louis, marquis de Sérent (1736–1822), became the governor of the children of the comte d’Artois in 1780: Larousse.