1 - The Setting

Summary

In August 1782, a rather ordinary, middle-aged English merchant left the building that served as his combination home and business office on the city of London’s bustling Coleman Street. This same William Hodgson was heading toward Paris. Hodgson was then Director of William Hodgson and Company, a decade-old firm that dabbled in trade, storage, and finance. At the time, the merchant appeared to be rather well-off, and his excursion to France seemed to reflect his affluent situation.

If we use Laurence Sterne’s popular descriptive monograph A Sentimental Journey (1768) as a travel guide, we can obtain a glimpse of the route that William Hodgson probably followed on his long journey. Initially, he most likely traveled by one of the regular horse-drawn coaches that operated between Britain’s capital and Dover – or possibly Folkstone – in Kent. From one of these sea coast towns, he subsequently boarded one of the numerous smaller vessels that commonly plied their way across the English Channel to Calais. From this closest French entry port, Hodgson would have had to satisfy customs officials before booking another coach to transport him to his final destination. On his journey he likely traveled through the dusty, cultivated countryside, perhaps stopping briefly in such picturesque, venerable communities as Montreuil, Abbeville, Amiens, Creil, and Chantilly, before reaching the cosmopolitan and culturally vibrant French capital. As an Englishman, he was probably received more favorably than he would have been one year earlier when France and Britain were in a state of declared war. But now in the more open, amenable summer of 1782, peace negotiations among all the belligerents had already commenced in Paris so that travelers could feel more at ease.

It was also probable that, once in Paris, William Hodgson conducted dealings with his French commercial counterparts – especially since peace seemed almost at hand. This particular English merchant, however, had an even more important matter on his agenda. His most pressing motivation was a meeting with an old and respected friend, a regular correspondent, and a fellow clubman from his prewar London days. This was the illustrious and widely admired Dr. Benjamin Franklin, who was then an American Peace Commissioner in Paris, and who was lodging at Passy, just outside the city. Several years before the American Revolution had erupted in April 1775, Franklin had been an American colonial agent in London.