Editor’s NoteEditor’s Note3227To Étienne Dumont1 November 1825 (Aet 77)

Q.S.P 1 Nov^r 1825

My dear Dumont

It would delay the completion of your wishes, for which I am making every exertion my weak faculties permitt, were I to detail to you the contretems by which I have been kept from giving an earlier answer to your letter.² My sole occupation consists at present in revising and causing to be copied the whole of that portion of my Constit. Code which regards the Judicial Establishment. I have already made some progress in it—original and copy—and shall be disappointed if it is not compleated before ten days are at an end. Meantime I am casting about for the promptest and upon the whole the most eligible mode of transmission.

•                          Yours ever
•                                                        J.B.

A week I was detained at Bouloigne by stress of weather. At Dover two days by scarcity of means of conveyance.

Turn over

On my arrival, my Richard (Doane) found a letter to him dated 16 July from the Marquis de Ginestous,³ written for the purpose of pg 178obtaining one from me to introduce him to you: for which I can not imagine what need he could imagine, his acquaintance with De Candole⁴ considered. Decandole I was to have met at dinner at J.B. Say's, but instead of him I met the sad news of his sudden departure and the cause of it.

The D. de Broglie⁵ I met at la Gr.^e an invitation to which detained me in France two days indeed three days longer than I had intended.⁶ If any thing could have paid me for the loss of the small quantity of time I can have left for the use of mankind, it would have been that visit.

Vos mœurs et vos ecrits sont peints sur votre visage, said Gen. Foy⁷ to me at meeting: ever since which I have been walking upon stilts.

One bust by David pupil of the celebrated painter⁸ and one portrait by a Mademoiselle Pagès I have sat to at the entreating of these several friends under the notion of serving them. Both are pronounced striking likenesses. A Lithograph of the portrait you will have ere long, I am assured.⁹ The painting is to be exhibited one year in Paris, the next in London and then lapse to me: i.e. to my Exors &c.

Sitting to another has been promised as favour to Hughes¹⁰ who has executed striking likenesses they say of the King,¹¹ D. of York¹² and Sussex &c.¹³ I am promised a copy which it is said will be worth 30 guineas.

Sincere thanks for your offer of meeting. I had virtue enough to refuse the like from my Brother with any or all of his family.

With notice of three instances of cure of similar complaints within M^r Koe's knowledge I began to day bathing in an imitation of the Barege waters.¹⁴