Benjamin Franklin Papers

To Benjamin Franklin from Louis-Joseph Plumard de Dangeul, [6 January? 1777?

From Louis-Joseph Plumard de Dangeul4

AL: American Philosophical Society

Moonday. [Jan. 6?, 17775]

M. de Dangeul is below desiring to pay his visit to Mr. doctor francklin, and woud have him so good as to remember that in 68. (London) m. de Dangeul was one of his assidue servants and hearers, at his Lodgind, and at M. le Chevalier Pringle at their assemblies in the evening.6He has some particular words to deliver to him.

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

4A political economist and author of Remarques sur les avantages et les désavantages de la France et de la Gr. Bretagne, par rapport au commerce . . . (2nd ed.; Leiden, 1754). On Jan. 9 he wrote again (APS), this time partly in French and partly in English, to say that BF had not come to see him, to inquire about the Doctor’s health, and to ask whether he was coming that morning. With this second note, presumably, he forwarded one that he had received from a M. Guillard, dated merely Tuesday [Jan. 7?], enclosing a pamphlet by an old and unnamed friend of his, which he hoped Dangeul would approve. “Vous voudrés bien alors le remettre to this great Republicain.” APS. Our guess is that Guillard was Nicholas-François, the well known playwright. He does not appear again in BF’s papers; neither does Dangeul except for his dinner invitation below, under Jan. 13.

5The present note, introducing himself, is clearly earlier than that just cited of the 9th, and the January date seems more probable than a Monday in late December.

6Dangeul seems to have brought to London a paper nominating him for the Royal Society and signed by French members, which BF and Pringle also signed; but the nomination did not go through. Above, VIII, 358.

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