To Benjamin Franklin from Rosalia Maria Paradis, 27 October 1784
From Rosalia Maria Paradis2
ALS: American Philosophical Society
paris le 27 8b. 84
Monsieur
Pardonnés la liberté que je prend de vous importuner Mais l’amittié que vous avés bien voullu Nous temoigner3 M’enhardit a vous faire une prierre. Le desir que Nous avons de Nous procure un Souvenire d’un homme qui est aussi Célebre par Ses tellents et Son Mérite personelle que vous. Nous Mettrions au Comble de faveur Si vous voulliés bien Nous Mettre un Mot Comme Souvenire dans Ce pettit livre qui est destiné a Cet ussage.4 Nous vous en aurions la plus vive Reconnoissance ayant l’honneur detre avec la plus parfait Consideration Monsieur votre tres heumble et obeisante Servante
Paradis Mere
Addressed: á Monsieur / Monsieur Franclin / a Passy
Notation: Paradis 27 Oct. 1784
2. Wife of Viennese court counselor Joseph Anton Paradis and mother of Maria Theresia Paradis, the blind, 25-year-old harpsichord virtuoso whom she was accompanying on a concert tour of European capitals. They reached Paris c. March 20, 1784, and, at the time of the present letter, were preparing to leave for London: Marion Furst, Maria Theresia Paradis: Mozarts berühmte Zeitgenossin (Cologne, 2005), pp. 18–19, 56–151. Mlle Paradis’ April 1 debut in the Concert spirituel series at the Tuileries palace received rapturous reviews; critics had never before heard such dynamic range coaxed from a harpsichord: Jour. de Paris, April 4, 1784; Mercure de France, April 10, 1784.
Pahin de La Blancherie soon publicized Paradis’ other remarkable accomplishments as a blind person: Kempelen, whom Parisians would remember as the inventor of the mechanical Turk (XXXVIII, 495–6; XL, 80), had taught her to spell, using pinpricked cards of his devising, and had invented for her a printing machine that enabled her to write. She had tactile maps, arithmetic tables, and playing cards: Jour. de Paris, April 24, 1784. La Blancherie’s article inspired Valentin Haüy to interview her and begin teaching her methods. In November he staged a public demonstration of his first pupil’s reading skills, and in February, 1785, assisted by the Maison philantropique (which BF had joined in June: XLII, 399n) and with the approval of the Académie des sciences, he founded a free school for those born blind: Zina Weygand, The Blind in French Society from the Middle Ages to the Century of Louis Braille (Stanford, 2009), pp. 87–105, 327. These events bore out BF’s 1783 prediction that the “useful Inventions” of Kempelen, a “Genius,” would benefit mankind: XL, 497.
3. Mlle Paradis had played the fortepiano for BF and guests at Passy on May 2. While the musicians in attendance deemed her interpretation outstanding, it did not please BFB, who thought it “si bien embrouilliez qu’on n’y entend goutte”: BFB’s journal, entry of May 2, 1784. Paradis may have held additional interest for BF as a former patient of Franz Anton Mesmer, who, in 1777, had claimed to have restored her vision using animal magnetism. Her deeply suspicious parents ended the therapy, and Mesmer left Vienna for Paris not long afterward. Paradis’ own arrival in Paris corresponded with the time that BF was appointed to the royal commissions charged with investigating Mesmer’s theories: XLII, 184–90; Furst, Maria Theresia Paradis, pp. 42–50, 107–9.
4. BF complied the same day; see the following document.