Claude Laurent to James Madison, 25 March 1815
From Claude Laurent
Quai de Gévres No 34
Paris, le 25 Mars 1815.
Monsieur le Président,
J’ai pris la liberté de vous adresser, il y a environ trois ans, une flûte en Cristal de mon invention.
Veuillez bien me permettre de vous témoigner le désir que j’aurais d’apprendre Si elle vous est parvenue & si ce faible hommage de mon industrie vous a été agréable.
Je vous prie de vouloir bien agréer l’hommage de la considération la plus distinguée avec laquelle j’ai l’honneur d’être, Monsieur le Président, Votre très humble et très obéissant serviteur.
Laurent 1
CONDENSED TRANSLATION
Laurent took the liberty, about three years ago, to send JM a glass flute invented by himself. Begs leave to express his desire to learn whether it reached JM, and whether this small homage of Laurent’s industry was acceptable to him. Asks that JM be so good as to accept his highest consideration.
RC (DLC). In a clerk’s hand, with Laurent’s signature and street address. Docketed by JM, with his note: “Flûte in Cristal.”
1. Claude Laurent (d. 1848), a clock-maker by trade, filed a patent for his glass flute in 1806, the same year he won a silver medal for the instrument at the Paris industrial exposition. Along with the superiority of its key work and tone, a panel of experts emphasized the advantages of the flute’s glass construction, which rendered it impervious to moisture and less prone to temperature-related pitch fluctuations. Laurent’s flutes were widely remarked in Europe, and he manufactured them profitably until at least 1847 (Ardal Powell, The Flute [New Haven, 2002], 147). The instrument he sent to JM, bearing the inscriptions “A.S.E. James Madison President des Etats-unis” (to his excellency James Madison President of the United States) and “Laurent à Paris, 1813” on its silver fittings, was kept in the Madison household and probably played by at least one visitor, Thomas Ludwell Lee Brent (Brent to Dolley Madison, 6 Jan. 1842, ). It is now part of the Dayton C. Miller Collection at the Library of Congress; photographs of it may be viewed at the Library of Congress website, https://www.loc.gov/item/dcmflute.0378/.