U1 Library Letter from 'Rhe Boston U1thenteum
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u1 Library 'rhe Boston Letter from u1thenteum No. 59 1\'IA Y 1954 A Franklin Exhibition ARLY in January, when I had just returned from a meeting of the Adminis trative Board of The Papers of Benjamin Franklin-sponsored jointly by the American Philosophical Society and Yale University-Me. Umberto Coletti Perucca called and offered the Athenreum one of the most delightful and unexpected gifts of recent years. This consisted of three terra-cotta medallions by Jean-Baptiste N ini ( 171 7-1 7 8 6) of Franklin, of his friend and landlord at Passy, Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, and of Queen Marie-Antoinette. These charming portraits are now on display in the Exhibition Room on the second floor. Benjamin Franklin's arrival in France produced an extraordinary rash of portraits, medallions and other likenesses, many of them embellished with the legend ERIPUIT COELO FULMEN SCEPTRUMQUE TIRANNIS which was applied to Franklin by Turgot. Madame de Campan in her Memoires sur la vie de Marie-Antoinette recalled that at the exposition of Sevres porcelain in the palace at Versailles, medallions of Franklin bearing this legend were sold "sous les yeux du roi." As Carl van Doren describes the multiplicity of Franklin portraits, "it was such a fad that Louis XVI, bored with the Comtesse Diane de Polignac's ardours over her American hero, is said to have presented her at New Year's with a vase de nuit of Sevres porcelain elegantly if sur prisingly adorned \vith Franklin's picture and his Latin epigram." This gift, attested to by Madame de Campan, was apparently not produced in a unique edition, for the Bostonian Society is reported, on trustworthy authority, to have had such an article \vi thin the present century, although they can produce at the present only a neatly mounted Sevres medallion of Franklin. Nini did no less than nine terra-cotta medallions of Franklin, several with the fur c~p that almost became Franklin's badge of office in France, and one with a liberty cap. The medallion given by Mr. Coletti is no. 68 of A. Storelli's check list-lean Baptiste Nini~ sa vie, son oeuvre, 1717-1786 (Tours, 1896)-and shows a capless Franklin surrounded by the Turgot n1otto, with the signature NINI F 1779. The Marie Antoinette likeness of 1780 is a variant of Storelli's no. 73, while the Le Ray de Chaumont of 1771 figures in the same check list as no. 51. Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, Intendant of the Invalides and owner of the chateau of Chaumont-sur-Loire (where Nini directed a pottery and glass works), supported the American cause with such enthusiasm that he lodged Franklin, rent free, on the grounds of his Hotel Valentinois at Passy. In 1778 he commissioned J.-S. Duplessis to paint an oil portrait of Franklin, which subsequently became the proper ty of Thomas Jefferson, and was bought by the Boston Athenreum in 1828. Although still the property of the Athenreum, this Frank1in portrait-like the unfinished Stuart heads of George and Martha Washington-has been on exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts since 1876. When John Adams arrived in Paris in the spring of 1779 he occupied part of Franklin's house, and, like an independent Yankee, offered to pay rent. Le Ray de Chaumont demurred, claiming, as Carl van Doren puts it, "that, so long as the future of America was uncertain, it was enough of a reward to him that his house had been immortalised by Dr. Franklin and his associates." From 1782 onward Franldin paid rent for his quarters, and Le Ray de Chaumont eventually re ceived grants of American lands in New York State which his son subsequently de veloped. Among the unexpected ephemera that are always turning up in the Athe nreum catalogue are two presidential addresses delivered by J. Le Ray de Chaumont to the Agricultural Society of Jefferson County on 29 December 1817 and 29 Sep tember 1824, as well as two broadsides of 1817, printed at Watertown, New York, concerning Le Ray's Jefferson County lands. These, together with a selection from the Athenreum's Franklin imprints and its solitary Franklin manuscript, are now on display in the Exhibition Room. The Franklin letter-a fine one to his mother written from Philadelphia on 12 April1750-has been in the Athenreum for more than a century. It was first printed, in sloppy form, as Letter IX of Jared Sparks's A Collection of the Familiar Letters and Miscellaneous Papers of Benjamin Franklin; now for the first time published (Boston, 1833), pp. 17-19. Although an accurate text is available in Albert Henry Smyth, The Writings of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1905), volume III, pp. 3-5, Franklin's comments upon his children and upon himself are so characteristic as to warrant reprinting here. "As to your Grandchildren, Will is now nineteen years of age, a tall proper Youth, and much of a Beau. He acquired a Habit of Idleness on the Expedition, but begins of late to apply himself to Business, and I hope will become an industrious Man. He imagin'd his Father had got enough for him, but I have assured him that I intend to spend what little I have myself, if it please God that I live long enough; and, as he by no means wants Sense, he can see by my going on, that I am like to be as good as my Word. "Sally grows a fine Girl, and is extreamly industrious with her Needle, and delights in her Book. She is of a most affectionate Temper, and perfectly dutiful and obliging to her Parents, and to all. Perhaps I flatter myself too much, but I have Hopes that she will prove an ingenious, sensible, notable, and worthy Woman, like her aunt Jenny. She goes now to the Dancing-School. "For my own Part, at present, I pass my Time agreably enough. I enjoy, thro' Mercy, a tolerable Share of Health. I read a great deal, ride a little, do a little Business for myself, more for others, retire when I can, and go into Company when I please; so the Years roll round, and the last will come; when I would rather have it said, He lived usefully, than He died rich." , L_._ __ When this letter was written Abiah Franklin was already in her eighties, having survived fifty-five years of married life and five of widowhood. Her son began his letter with an acknowledgment of one of hers, observing tactfully: "We read your Writing very easily. I have never met with a Word in your Letters but what I could readily understand; for, tho' the Hand is not always the best, the Sense makes every thing plain." Upon her death in 17 52, at the age of eighty-five, she was buried in the Granary Burying Ground beside her husband, Josiah. Benjamin Franklin marked their graves with a simple tablet, but in 1827 a group of Boston citizens placed on the site the twenty-one-foot obelisk of Quincy granite that is so familiar a sight from the windows of the Athenreum. WALTER Mum WHITEHll..L LATEST ACCESSIONS WITH OTHERS NOT PREVIOUSLY LISTED • Art BEATON, CECIL. The Glass of Fashion. LODGE, R. C. Plato's Theory of Art. BERENSON, BERNHARD. Seeing and Knowing. MALRAUX, ANDRE. The Voices of Silence. BLUNT, ANTHONY. Art and Architecture in MIDDLETON, M. S. Jeremiah Theus, Colonial France, 1500 to 1700. Artist of Charles Town. CONSTABLE, W. G. The Painter's Workshop. MILNE, J. L. The Age of Inigo Jones. DB MAM, E. S. The Bridges of Britain. READE, BRIAN. Regency Antiques. DB MARE, MARm. G. P. A. Healy, American SHEPHEARD, PETER. Modern Gardens. Artist. SUMMERSON, JoHN. Architecture in Britain, FORD, K. M., and CREIGHTON, T. H. Quality 1530 to 1830. Budget Houses. TAUBES,. FREDERIC. The Mastery of Oil Paint- GIBBINGS, T. H. R. Homes of the Bra\e. mg. G RABAR, ANDRE. Byzantine Painting. TRUMBULL, JoHN. Autobiography. HILL, H. D. and S. Antique Gold Boxes. WEEKLEY, MONTAGUE. Thomas Bewick. JONES, BARBARA. Follies and Grottoes. WRIGHT, F. L. The Future of Architecture. Autobiography and Letters ADLER, PoLLY. A House Is Not a Home. HOWLAND, LLEWELLYN. Triptych. BARKER, Sir ERNEST. Age and Youth. ICKES, HAROLD. Secret Diary. BLOOM, URSULA. Trilogy. KELLY, E. L. and F. B. Clown. BROOKS, VAN WYCK. Scenes and Portraits. LAFARGE, JoHN. The Manner Is Ordinary. COOPER, DuFF. Old Men Forget. LANCASTER, OsBERT. All Done from Memory. DODGSON, C. L. The Diaries of Lewis Carroll. LUTYENS, Lady E. L. A Blessed Girl. FIELD, HENRY. The Track of Man. McKENNEY, RuTH. Far, Far from Home. FLAUBERT, GusTAVE. Selected Letters. MEYER, A. E. E. Out of These Roots. FREUCHEN, PETER. Vagrant Viking. ROOSEVELT, THEODORE. Letters (vols. 7-8). GALWAY, Lady. The Past Revisited. SIMPSON, ALYsE. Red Dust of Kenya. GARNETT, DAVID. The Golden Echo. STARK, FREY A. The Coast of Incense. GARRISON, J. H. Behold Me Once More. TWEEDSMUIR, Lord. Always a Countryman. GRANTLEY, Lord. Silver Spoon. WECHSLER, J. A. The Age of Suspicion. GUARESCHI, NINO. The House That Nino WODEHOUSE, P. G. Performing Flea. Built. WOLFE, THOMAS, and WATT, H. A. Corre- HENREY, RoBERT. Madeleine's Journal. spondence. HENRICHSEN, M. K. Seven Steeples. YUSUPOV, Prince FELIX. Lost Splendour. Belles Lettres and Literary Criticism ABBE, GEORGE. Bird in the Mulberry. NETHERCOT, A. H. Men and Supermen; the AIKEN, CoNRAD. Collected Poems. Shavian Portrait Gallery. BISHOP, MoRRIS. A Bowl of Bishop. ORWELL, GEORGE. England Your England. BOWRA, Sir C. M. Problems in Greek Poetry. PARKER, DoROTHY, and D'USSEAU, A.