Adams Family Correspondence, volume 3
1778-05-31
I now Sit down with an intent to give you an account of the Place I dind at yesterday doctor Franklin his son a young Gentleman & I went to Place Calld montmartre at the Castle of the Count Brancard & dind there with him and some other Gentleman & Ladies, from which Place there is a most Beautiful Prospect of the City. On this hill the famous king henry the 4th incamped his army when he laid Seige to Paris. it is the highest hill in the neghborhood of Paris & excepting Mount Calvare & Minemontan it Commands the most extensive & most Beautiful Prospect.1
these excursions afford me some pleasure & give me some Consolation for my not being with my Freinds at Braintree among whom I think you one of the first & therefore I subscribe myself your affectionate Cousin.
JQA's imperfect knowledge and spelling make it difficult to identify with certainty some of the persons and places he mentions. Franklin's “son” must be William Temple Franklin, his grandson and secretary. Their host, “Count Brancard,” is more or less recognizable as one of the members of the numerous and powerful Brancas family, with several of whom Franklin was on friendly terms; see
Cal. Franklin Papers, A.P.S.,
passim; JA, Diary and Autobiography
, 4:77. “Minemontan” is no doubt Ménilmontant, the neighborhood of Père Lachaise Cemetery in the eastern part of the city.
1778-06-01
I having wrote Twice to your brother1 & not having yet wrote to you I now take a pen into my hand to write a few Lines to you to inform you of a Little excursion I took last.2 Mr. Lee his nephew My Pappa & I went to the theatre Calld the Italien Comedy where we had the women & the Secrets of which we See but very Little the next was Silvain in which the Scene represented on one side an old house & the other a row of trees the next was Calld the nymphs of diana in which the scene represented a beautiful place in Which Stood a Statue and in the middle of the Stage a Block for another Statue & all the actresses had on white Silk gowns with Part of them dragging behind them on the ground with a case of quivers at their Backs.3 I am &c.
31
Only the immediately preceding letter from JQA to his cousin William Cranch, Lucy's brother, has been found.
That is, “last week”?
The dramatic pieces seen by JQA at the Comédie Italienne may be identified as follows: Les femmes et le secret, a comedy by Antoine François Quétant, 1767; Silvain, a comedy by Jean François Marmontel, 1770; and Les nymphes de Diane, a comic opera by Charles Simon Favart, 1747 (Clarence D. Brenner, A Bibliographical List of Plays in the French Language, 1700–1789, Berkeley, 1947, Nos. 10294, 8868, 6292).