9. The first extant letter from Searle since a March 15 acceptance of another dinner invitation: XXXIV, 455n. In the interim Searle had made futile attempts to raise a loan in the Netherlands and to sail back to America: XXXIV, 442–3n; XXXV, 530, 554n, 562–3, 590; William B. Reed, ed., Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed … (2 vols., Philadelphia, 1847), II, 464.

1. Among the others attending the dinner was Matthew Ridley, who had brought from America Robert Morris’ sons Thomas and Robert, Jr. While at Passy, on Nov. 29, they also met Thomas Barclay, Henry Bromfield, Jr., a Moses Andrews, and the three men introduced by JW in his second letter of Nov. 22, above, some or all of whom also may have dined with BF. Ridley’s stay in France is chronicled in a journal which he kept from Nov. 20, 1781, until February, 1783. The journal, now at the Mass. Hist. Soc., is described in Herbert E. Klingelhofer, “Matthew Ridley’s Diary During the Peace Negotiations of 1782,” W&MQ, 3rd ser., XX (1963), 98–101.