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Monographs Website: www.bshs.org.uk/monographs Dorinda Outram, editor THE LETTEAS OF SEOASES CUUIEA A SUMMARY CALENDAR OF MANUSCRIPT AND PRINTED MATERIALS PRESERVED IN EUROPE, THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND AUSTRALASIA The British Society for the History of Science Copyright © by Dorinda Outram 1979 First published 1980 ISBN 0 906450 05 5 Published by The British Society for the History of Science Halfpenny Furze, Hill Lane, Chalfont St Giles, Bucks. UPS 4NR, England Printed by Central Print Unit, University of Lancaster, England CONTENTS Introduction Tables: quantitative analyses of letters listed in the calendar 12 Abbreviations used in the calendar 14 Index to archives consulted IS Index to holdings 20 Sources used for the identification of recipients 23 Calendar 27 Letters to unknown correspondents in order of date 93 Undated-letters to unknown correspondents 96 Index 97 INTRODUCTION The letters of Georges Cuvier form our most complete record of an exceptionally crowded life. This calendar aims to provide a research tool for the reconstruction of this life, of its events, and of the contacts and influences which formed it. TIlis introduction discusses the importance of such a collection of letters, their archival history, and the editorial principles governing their selection and presentation. Letters contain, first of all, a mass of fact snd detail which is invaluable to the historian seeking to reconstruct the real complexity of events and situations, but they also deserve to be interrogated at a more sophisticated level. The existence of a large body of correspondence is not simply a result of the absence of telephone and typewriter; on the contrary, letters had positive, complex and changing functions whose mapping is vital to our understanding of the milieu which generated them and of their place in that milieu. In a political and intellectual world still governed by a .small ~lite, the language of deference dominated communication by letter. Forms of address, offers of reciprocal services, and allusions to the status of the recipient all recurred constantly. This was because both writer and recipient, except within intimate friend­ ships, were concerned to mark, to write within, and often to exploit a mutual recognition of each other's status. Letters in fact are one way of approaching a study of the ways in which society ascribed status. They offer a way of getting behind the obfuscations of hagiography, according to which everyone was important within their own lifetime, or was neglected only to be recognised at their true worth by later and more enlightened scientists, (I) to find out how reputation really was ascribed to individuals by their contemporaries. Such a mapping of connections between individuals and of the deference they ascribed to each other can also help to isolate allegiances and groupings with greater confidence than has hitherto been possible. Questions such as who were 'the Eclectics' or 'the 2 The letters of Cuvier Ideologues' have perhaps continued to present difficult problems because inappropriate methods have been used to answer an inappro­ priate question. Intellectual and political allegiance within a small-scale, yet constantly shifting and multi-normative ~lite was bound to be fluid rather than definitive, and to include directions which may seem contradictory or simply formless. Every member of this ~lite concentrated on himself a number of different functions. The performance of these differe.nt functions wi thin a small group, bound by ties of family and friendship, conferred different roles to the same IMn and thus blurred even further the question of the ascription of individual responsibility and allegiance. Cuvier's own multiplicity of political and scientific roles was notorious in his lifetime, and this calendar of letters faithfully reflects its diversity. As Permanent Secretary of the First Class of the Institut, as effective head of the Museum national d'Histolre naturelle, as Inspector-General of Public Education, as head of one of the sections of the Conseil d'Etat, and as Director of the non­ Catholic religions in France, he became many things to many different people. tlany of the spheres of interest shaded into one another. His correspondence with A. G. Camper is a striking example of how a scientific friendship could become dominated by political considerations. Yet one thing that all these areas of activity possessed in common was the operation of patronage. Patronage implied deference and the definition of deference. Cuvier himself had seen the mechanisms of patronage from many different angles. In the 1790s, it was an essential part of the formation of his career to attract powerful patronage through the medilIDl of the language of deference expressed in letters. Writing to Olivier or Lac~p~de, for example, Cuvier used a deferential form of language to describe difficult and original anatomical observations, observations which Cuvier knew placed him well on the way to equality with his correspondents. To gain their interest, in other words, he had at once to seem their equal iri some ways, and yet be careful to define himself as non-threateningly inferior in others. CC!vl.er played off the ambiguity always present in the early nineteenth-century scientific community between the ascription of high status to the successful observer of nature, and the simultaneous recognition that all observers of nature were likely to be able to record facts of great value. The aristocracy of mind and the republic of science had to be neatly played off against each other. Letters were also the major medilIDl by which aspiring intellectuals from the provinces, which Cuvier was in the 1790s, made their way into Parisian life, whether by obtaining an actual Introduction 3 pos1t10n, or by ga1n1og the status of a respected, if invisible, scientific colleague and collaborator. They can thus illuminate another largely unexplored question, about the relationship between provincial and Parisian science at this date. Cuvier's correspondence with Traulle, for example, recapitulates many major themes: the feeding of information about new finds in natural history from field naturalists in the provinces to sedentary scientists in Paris; the use of such information in the grand publications of Cuvier and his associates; Cuvier's successful campaign for the admission of his friend to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres; the strong links in Traulle's work between antiquarian archaeology on a local level, and a high degree of palaeontological expertise; and last but not least, the reasoning behind Cuvier's search for membership of many provincial scientific societies. Provincials could also draw attention to themselves in ways which exploited the duality of Cuvier's scientific prestige and the multiplicity of his offices. Most common was the gift of a recent publication to the Library of the Institut. whose receipt would automatically be formally acknowledged by Cuvier himself in his capacity as Perpetual Secretary. Such a work would be noted and examined without incurring the risks of a prize competition or a formal report. Cuvier himself used similar devices on an international scale, to bring himself to the attention of other scholars in a way that by-passed formal structures of evaluation, but which nevertheless contributed to the spread of his reputation and of his current projects; see, for example, his letters to Everard Home and Sir Joseph Banks. Provincials could also attract the attention of the Parisian great in other ways. In this world of personalised power, appeal to the emotions, as well as to the expertise, of the patron was a legitimate way of gaining access to his presence and to the prizes and rewards he had to offer. When the patron was a former provincial himself, such as Cuvier, the most powerful emotion was nostalgia. These appeals to the shared memory of a past life, and to the gratitude which must surely be present for services rendered in the days of obscurity, were not easy to shake off.